Using his best De Niro, Eddie said in English, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”

Tang stopped and stared, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “I know this movie!” he exclaimed.

“You’ve seen Taxi Driver?”

“Yes! We were shown it in school because it was so decadent that it drove one of your people to try to kill the president.”

Eddie chuckled, imagining some Communist party official putting a spin on how Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Reagan related to a breakdown of our running dog capitalist ways.

“You really are an American?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. “And very soon a ship’s going to enter the bay.”

Tang looked over his shoulder at the smoldering volcano. It was a couple miles up from the beach but seemed to blot out half the horizon. Ominously, the ash had stopped spewing from the caldera, though it continued to drift over the work site.

“I know,” was all Eddie could answer to the unasked question.

“Hey, look,” Tang pointed out to sea. The pair of fishing trawlers was headed back toward the beach. “Fresh slop tonight, eh?”

Eddie watched the squat boats for a moment. Gulls swarmed around their fantails. There was no logical reason for them to return. Savich was abandoning the Chinese in the shadow of an erupting volcano, so why would he bother feed them? Then he noticed that they were moving faster than normal; white foam boiled around their blunt bows, and the seabirds had to wing hard to keep pace. Their holds were empty, Eddie realized, and he saw, too, that they weren’t headed for the jetty but angling more toward the tugboat in position to pull the processing plant from the beach.

Eddie’s senses went on high alert, sending a jolt of adrenaline that could make him forget, at least temporarily, his exhaustion and misery. The Russian guards must have felt the same thing. They clutched their weapons a little tighter and instinctively moved to cover positions.

“Follow me,” Eddie ordered.

He and Tang were near the sluice boxes, twenty yards from the separating plant. If his fears were correct, the two of them were much too exposed. He led Tang around the far side of the long metal tables and up the hillside, trying to put as much distance between them and the coming crossfire.

“What is happening?” Tang panted.

Before he could reply, automatic gunfire rippled from the nearest trawler. The dozen Spetsnaz had already found sufficient cover, so they could ignore the incoming rounds and instead concentrate on taking out the Indonesian guards who’d turned their weapons on them. The battle reached a fever pitch in less than five seconds. Tracer fire cut the smoggy air like laser beams, and laborers too slow or too disorientated to dive out of the way were cut down indiscriminately.