The Death Box. J. Kerley A.
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Название: The Death Box
Автор: J. Kerley A.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780007493661
isbn:
To James Lewinski,
Who showed me Prufrock
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by J.A. Kerley
Copyright
About the Publisher
The stench of rotting flesh filled the box like black fog. Death surrounded Amili Zelaya, the floor a patchwork of clothing bearing the decomposing bodies of seventeen human beings. Amili was alive, barely, staring into the shadowed dark of a shipping container the size of a semi-trailer. Besides the reek of death, there was bone-deep heat and graveyard silence save for waves breaking against a hull far below.
You’re lucky, the smiling man in Honduras had said before closing the door, ten days and you’ll be in Los Estados Unitos, the United States, think of that. Amili had thought of it, grinning at Lucia Belen in the last flash of sunlight before the box slammed shut. They’d crouched in the dark thinking their luck was boundless: They were going to America.
“Lucia,” Amili rasped. “Please don’t leave me now.”
Lucia’s hand lay motionless in Amili’s fingers. Then, for the span of a second, the fingers twitched. “Fight for life, Lucia,” Amili whispered, her parched tongue so swollen it barely moved. Lucia was from Amili’s village. They’d grown up together – born in the same week eighteen years ago – ragged but happy. Only when fragments of the outside world intruded did they realize the desperate poverty strangling everyone in the village.
“Fight for life,” Amili repeated, drifting into unconsciousness. Sometime later Amili’s mind registered the deep notes of ship horns. The roar and rattle of machinery. Something had changed.
“The ship has stopped, Lucia,” Amili rasped, holes from popped rivets allowing light to outline the inside of the module, one of thousands on the deck of the container ship bound for Miami, Florida. The illegal human cargo had been repeatedly warned to stay quiet through the journey.
If you reveal yourselves you will be thrown in a gringo prison, raped, beaten … men, women, children, it makes no difference. Never make a sound, understand?
Eventually they’d feel the ship stop and the box would be offloaded and driven to a hidden location where they’d receive papers, work assignments, places to live. They had only to perform six months of house-keeping, yard work or light factory labor to relieve the debt of their travel. After that, they owned their lives. A dream beyond belief.
“It must be Miami, Lucia,” Amili said. “Stay with me.”
But their drinking water had leaked away early in the voyage, a split opening СКАЧАТЬ