A/N: I love discussions about the ownership of Chuck. I love them so much, I insist on starting every chapter with one.
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Lee held the inflatable black rubber boat steady with just minimal power to the outboard motor. It took at least a little headway to avoid having the sea turn the boat parallel to the waves and swamp it. The swells were about four feet high, not huge, but significant enough for their little craft. They were running without lights and were dressed all in black; a dangerous practice, but rendering them invisible against the black water of the Pacific.
Chuck said, "Ok. I'm going to go over it one last time...don't give me that look, Sarah, you know I get nervous about this stuff...ok, once you and the rope are out we are committed to this spot...if the ship hits the rope and you are not too far back on the ship we are good...if it misses the rope entirely, we pick it up and try again a few miles further on...but...and this is the bad one, if somehow you find yourselves too far back on the ship and heading for the stern, you cut loose immediately...immediately...activate the scooters and get the hell away...if you are sucked into the propellers..."
"Chum," said Sarah with a grin. Both swimmers had water scooters harnessed to them to pull them away from the ship and its dangerous propellers. The scooters were the variety used by scuba divers, comprised of a battery power source, a propeller in a safety cage, and two handles for the swimmer/diver being towed to grasp. Each was roughly the size of a motorcycle engine. Chuck had made sure that all their electronic gear had fully charged batteries and emergency spares.
"Stop that. It's not funny. This is serious. Those scooters can only pull you away at three miles per hour. That's not a ton of speed, so make the decision quickly. If you're not sure, cut loose and get away. Better that we do this a few times to get it right than you take any unnecessary risks."
"We've got it, Chuck. Thanks," said Mei-Ling.
Chuck continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Now if you do have to run away from the ship, activate your infrared lights. Lee and I have NVG's to spot you. And Casey and Fen are in the chopper," Chuck gestured upwards, "as spotters with the same gear. The last thing we need, other than the propellers, is for you to be lost at night in the Pacific. This is a big fucking ocean. The infrared is a great back up to the trackers you're wearing. You also have the equipment if, God forbid, you are lost until daylight, both the dye packets and the diver's signal tubes. Ok, I know that we've got a ton of safety plans about what to do if the hook up with the ship fails, but it's scary and dangerous, so ...well, I worry." The dye packet would mark the surface of the water with a wide streak of green florescent dye and the signal tube was a four foot long bright orange tube which would be inflated and waved around to attract attention.
"Thanks, Chuck," said Sarah sweetly. "It's gonna be fine."
Operating at sea was complicated and dangerous. Not only were there more variables to go wrong, but when they did there was precious little margin for error. Sarah and Mei-Ling were going to board the Golden Voyage, but the other four members of that night's team were the more nervous. They had contingency plans for any number of scenarios.
"I hope so. Now, on the way out, once you have the hard drive, you get back in the water, move to the bow of the ship, cut yourselves loose and use the scooters to power away. Signal with the infrared beacons and Lee and I will come for you. That's the easy part, because you will be in control of your position relative to the ship. Ok?"
Both women acknowledged the instructions.
"Ok, Casey. All good up there?"
"We're good. The ship has not changed course or speed. You're in the right place for the first try. Let's get started." Through the radio they could hear the rhythmic thumping of the helicopter blades over his head.
"Right. Here we go," said Chuck.
Double checking his GPS location system on his phone, Chuck had Lee turn the boat ninety degrees and stop it. They weren't exactly parallel to the waves, but had to act fast at this point anyway or the waves would swamp into the small rubber boat.
Chuck and the women began to feed the rope out into the water while Lee held a straight course and moved the boat very slowly. The rope was fifty yards long (one hundred and fifty feet). Given that the ship was one hundred and forty-seven feet long, even if the rope connected only at the far end, it was unlikely that the other end would foul into the props. The black rope had black floats at either end and at ten-yard intervals. Each float also had a hockey puck sized incredibly strong rare earth magnet annexed to it. The plan was for the ship to run into the rope, laid out perpendicular to its line of travel, the magnets to attach to the hull, and Sarah and Mei-Ling, attached to the rope, to hitchhike on its journey. There were any number of things that could go wrong with the plan, but they thought they'd accounted for most of them.
Once the rope was laid into the water, Lee doubled back to the center of the rope and stopped. Mei-Ling gave her brother a hug and slipped overboard. Sarah gave Chuck a quick, but fervent kiss.
He said, "Be safe."
"Don't worry. We'll be ok."
"You'd better," he said with a slight grin.
Sarah slipped overboard and gave a small gasp as she entered the cold water. A wetsuit worked by allowing the cold water to come into contact with the skin. Kept in place by the black neoprene suit, the thin layer of water warmed to body temperature and thereafter kept the wearer at a comfortable temperature, but the initial shock of hitting the cold water was just as cold as it would be without protection.
She and Mei-Ling clipped themselves to the rope. Then they clipped themselves to each other with a ten-foot length of rope. If something happened, they wouldn't be separated from each other, but the ten-foot length wouldn't impede their movement or activity. Chuck handed each of them a bulky bag of gear, which they also clipped to themselves.
Each woman wore a black wetsuit, complete with hood, a dive mask and snorkel, and swim fins. In addition, each had a life vest for buoyancy, although the wetsuit itself had a great deal of inherent buoyancy.
Chuck said, "Comm check."
In his ear he heard Sarah and Mei-Ling say, "Check."
"Ok," he said. "Casey, they are deployed. What's the story with the ship?"
"About two miles from you. You should see its lights by now. Time for you and Lee to get the hell out of Dodge," he said.
"Right. Good luck, Sarah, Mei-Ling," said Chuck. The women waved in response. Lee turned the boat and headed out to sea. They would stay just outside visual range of the ship's crew, but otherwise as close as possible to Sarah and Mei-Ling.
The women bobbed in the cold water, only now beginning to warm up.
With their masks down and snorkels in their mouths only their eyes and the tops of their heads were above the water line. For all intents and purposes, they were invisible. They waited for the arrival of the Golden Voyage.
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Casey sat in the pilot's seat of the Bell 206 helicopter and peered anxiously down at the black ocean water. He saw the lights of the Golden Voyage approaching the spot Chuck and Lee had vacated, leaving Sarah and Mei-Ling afloat in the night. Flying at night could be a disconcerting experience. Over water everything they could see was all black, but for the occasional ship. To one side the lights of Los Angeles formed a sparkling sea stretching away to the east and contrasting sharply with the black Pacific.
He looked over to Fen in the co-pilot's seat. She was using binoculars to try to keep an eye on Sarah and Mei-Ling in the water below, an almost impossible task at night.
He peeled off towards the beach. He didn't want to be hovering too close the ship and draw attention to himself. It was almost four AM and, with luck, most of the crew was asleep, but Casey was a cautious man.
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Suddenly, the ship loomed out of the night, impossibly huge to the two women in the water and moving dangerously fast towards them. Each woman held the handle of her scooter with one hand, its motor running, but no gears engaged. If they had a problem, they would disengage from the line with the floats and magnets and put the scooters in gear. They would head away from the ship as quickly as the scooters and their frantic kicking would take them.
Like a parachutist mentally rehearsing all that could go wrong with a jump over and over again and then being pleasantly surprised when the chute actually opens without drama, the women were relieved when the Golden Voyage hit the floating rope about a third of its way along. They were swung towards the hull of the ship as the magnets attached. As they hit the hull with a thump, the clatter of their gear sounded tremendously loud to them, but in reality the noise was swallowed by the sounds of the ship's passage through the surf.
Sarah said, "We're on. No problem."
"Excellent," said Chuck. "Let us know when you reach the deck."
"Right." They were pulled hard to the hull and against the ropes connecting them. The ship wasn't moving too fast as these things go, but the women spies were being dragged through the ocean waves at around 20 knots. If the weather had been anything more than calm, they would have been heavily battered. Even as it was, moving was very challenging. They were happy that all their equipment was connected to them, or it would have been ripped from their hands by the force of the water moving past them.
Moving slowly and carefully, so as not to make any mistakes, the women turned off their scooters and connected them to the magnet rope for later retrieval and use.
Sarah opened her gear bag and removed the climbing devices Casey had obtained for them. Connecting them by their magnets to the ship's hull above the waterline, she held the now empty bag open for Mei-Ling. Mei-Ling took off her snorkel and mask, wetsuit hoodie, fins and buoyancy vest and stowed them in the bag. Then, she repeated Sarah's actions with her own bag and Sarah stowed her swim gear in it. The women were now free of most of their gear, wearing only the harnesses connecting them to the ropes and festooned with smaller gear pouches.
With nods to each other, they reached for and began to don the climbing gear. Sarah leaned back and raised one foot. Mei-Ling detached one of the magnetic boots from the hull and moved to attach it to Sarah's foot, still in the wetsuit bootie. The climbing boot was a heavy metal arrangement with fittings similar to those shoe attachments on a snow board, but with a large flat magnet rising straight up from the toe, parallel with the front of the shin. By moving the foot in a certain way, the wearer could engage the magnet with the metal surface or disengage the same. Mei-Ling repeated the process with Sarah's other foot. It wasn't easy to accomplish with the water sweeping past them at 20 knots, but they managed it. Then Sarah did the same for Mei-Ling's feet.
Once done, the women turned to face the hull of the Golden Voyage and engaged the magnets on their boots. Next they reached for the gauntlets which matched the boots. Slipping their arms through the forearm guides, they disengaged the magnets to move the handles to the right positions for climbing. The gear was heavy, weighing in at almost 25 pounds for each of them, but solid and effective. They paused.
Sarah said, "Good?"
Mei-Ling nodded.
They unclipped from the magnet rope and began to climb. It was slow and laborious, but not scary. Move the lever and disengage the magnet. Move the boot or gauntlet up. Engage the magnet and pull or push your body up to the device. Repeat. They moved slowly up the hull towards the deck still connected to each other by the ten feet of safety rope. It took about fifteen minutes for the climb to be completed. The side of the hull was dirty and rusty, but the magnets held.
As they had climbed, the water had drained from their wetsuits, leaving them in the formfitting black neoprene; warm enough, but slightly damp.
Near the railing of the deck they stopped to listen. They heard no sounds of activity on the ship.
"Casey," said Sarah in a whisper. "You see anything on deck?"
"Negative, Walker. Looks quiet from here."
"Right. We're going over the rail."
The women disconnected themselves from the safety rope connecting them and from the climbing gear, leaving the rope attached to the gear still magnetized to the side of the ship. With a quick nod to each other they smoothly and silently slipped over the rail and were on the deck of the Golden Voyage.
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Chuck said to Lee, "Ok, here we go."
"How sure are you that you are right about the location of the computer room?" asked Lee, for probably the tenth time that night.
"About sixty percent. It makes the most sense to be near the equipment on the bridge and the ship's radio, but far enough back to be almost off-site to the bridge in the case of a real failure. The room with the extra cooling fits that description and is a good guess. They are some pretty impressive ladies, Lee. If that's not the room, they'll find the right one."
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It was that room. They had made their way to an upper deck and somewhat forward to the room Chuck had thought most likely to contain the computer hard drive. They had heard a great deal of activity on the ship, very surprising at this late (or was it early?) hour, but had seen no crewmembers on the deck. Their success in finding the room unseen was due more to the emptiness of the decks than to their not inconsiderate skills at concealment and stealth.
The room was unlocked and unoccupied. They entered and, seeing no windows, turned on the overhead light. Off to one side stood their target, the computer system for the ship.
In their ears, they head Casey say, "Mei-Ling, Sarah, what's going on? All the lights on the deck just turned on. Are you ok?"
"Yeah, Casey. We're ok. We're at the hard drive right now. Can you tell what's happening?" asked Sarah.
She and Mei-Ling moved some equipment aside to access the tower containing the hard drive.
"Other than the lights, I don't' see any activity at all. No crew or passengers. Nothing."
Chuck said, "If you were blown, they'd have crewmembers on deck looking for you. Maybe this has nothing to do with you?"
"Hell of a coincidence, kid. Sarah, Mei-Ling, your call. You want to abort the mission and get out?"
The women glanced at each other as they turned the tower around to access the back. As they both removed screwdrivers from waterproof pouches on their harnesses, Sarah said, "Negative, Casey. We're just getting the hard drive now. Only another few minutes, then we're out of here."
"Right. Fen and I will hover nearby."
They began to work in tandem unscrewing the back panel on the computer tower. In a few moments it was open.
They were jostled to the side as the ship turned hard. Sarah said, "Casey, what the hell was that?"
"Dunno, Walker. You're turning around for some reason...no...not turning around...the turn is straightening out...What the hell? You're heading straight to the beach...what the fuck?"
"What's on the beach, Casey?" asked Mei-Ling.
"Hold on...Fen, focus on the beach..."
Fen's voice came over the communications net, obviously excited, "Trucks...there are trucks parked near the beach..."
"But there's no dock," said Chuck.
"Ta ma de bastards," said Mei-Ling, not a polite phrase in Mandarin. "They know we are on to them...the authorities...when Fen and Lee escaped...They know we are going to raid the ship at the port. They are trying to get the cargo off..."
"But, Mei-Ling. There's no dock there. Casey, see any small boats? Between the ship and the beach?" asked Chuck.
A pause, then, "No. Nothing but water."
Mei-Ling said, "They don't care..." She and Sarah had finished removing the hard drive from the tower. She put it into a waterproof bag and secured it to her harness.
Fen said, "Oh, God. Oh, God. They are coming up on deck from the hold. Hundreds of people are coming up on deck. Oh, shit."
"They don't care. They are going to throw them overboard and the strong ones will make it to shore. Dammit," swore Mei-Ling.
"Lee and I will get there as soon as we can," said Chuck.
The ship ran aground. Sarah and Mei-Ling were knocked off their feet to the deck of the ship. As they climbed to their feet, an announcement was made over the ship's PA system in Chinese. Mei-Ling said, "They are telling them to jump. Jump into the water and make it to shore."
"We have to stop them," said Sarah. "Come on."
The women ran out of the computer room and slid down the stair railings to the main deck. They immediately encountered five crewmen. The two women spies attacked the five men like bee-stung wildcats. Within moments, all five lay unconscious on the deck. They heard splashes as dozens of people jumped into the cold water.
Running towards the bow of the ship, Mei-Ling started to shout in Mandarin, telling people to stay onboard. Not to jump. They were about 300 yards from shore and the surf looked high.
A couple of crewmembers ran at Mei-Ling, to stop her. Sarah kicked one in the stomach and the other in the head. As the first one was getting to his feet her knee caught him under the chin and he went down. Mei-Ling continued to shout. She switched to Cantonese and tried again. Dozens more people, men and women, went overboard anyway. There were shouts. Soon there were screams from the people in the water.
Sarah shouted into their communications net, "Chuck, where are you? We have people in the water."
"We're still a few minutes out."
"We're heading to the beach," said Casey from the chopper.
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Fen said, "Oh, God. Casey, people will die. The water is too cold and rough. They are hundreds of yards from shore. This is murder...oh, God."
"We'll do what we can, Fen. Use your cell phone. Get the police...the Coast Guard...whatever...get us some help on that goddamn beach..."
She took out her cell phone, got 911 on the line, and began to describe what was happening. Meanwhile, Casey overflew the beach looking for a place to land. A few hundred yards inland he found a golf course and put the chopper down. He and Fen got out of the aircraft and ran towards the beach, Fen still on the phone.
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Chuck and Lee swung the boat around one side of the grounded ship and saw six or seven people leap overboard while they watched. There must have been over a hundred men and women already in the cold water, most of them lugging their luggage.
Chuck said, "We're here, Sarah. What do you want us to do?"
Sarah said, "I have no fucking idea, Chuck. Just try to help." She sounded more than a little frantic.
Chuck said to Lee, "Any ideas?"
His eyes wide with something like panic, Lee said, "I don't know...I mean...I..."
"Right," said Chuck. "Ok. We only have a limited amount of space on this boat. We can't pick up everybody. Look for people in trouble...people who can't make it to shore...we go for them." Chuck looked around and saw someone thrashing and making no forward progress while trying to hold on to a bag. He pointed. "Head there. Let's get that guy."
They approached the man. Lee called out to him in Chinese and Chuck reached for him, pushing he bag aside. The man screamed at Chuck in Chinese. Chuck said, "Lee, tell him to leave the bag. We can pick up more people if we leave the bags. Tell him." Chuck tried again, pushing the bag aside to help bring the struggling man onto the inflatable boat. Lee yelled to the man.
With strength bred in panic, the man hit Chuck on the side of his head and began to back away. Lee said, "Chuck, that bag contains everything he owns. Everything in his life is in that bag."
"Shit..ok, tell him we get it...tell him we'll bring his bag too...shit."
With that assurance, the man clambered into the boat. Two other men saw the boat and swam towards it, but Chuck directed Lee away from them and towards another man who was struggling to stay afloat. They dragged him and his bag onto the boat. With another three swimmers rescued, they pulled to the side of the struggling, screaming mass of people and made their way to the beach.
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"Fen, head to the beach. See if you can help any of them," he said.
Casey himself ran directly towards the trucks. Police sirens howled in the distance. He found four or five Chinese men bunched together smoking cigarettes and chatting while they watched the people pour into the water from the grounded ship. Although he didn't understand their words, it was clear that they were enjoying the spectacle. Fury gripped him. Some of those people might very well drown out there and these assholes were having fun watching it. He reached out from the darkness and grabbed two of them by their heads, smashing their heads into each other with a dull thunk sound. They fell to the ground. One of the other men lunged at Casey, who stepped aside and rammed him face first into the side of the truck.
The other two ran away as the sirens approached. Casey stalked forward looking for anyone else with the trucks. He spotted the middle-aged man who had been with Lo Pan at dinner at the Bamboo Dragon. The man had his back to Casey and was looking at his phone. Casey, moving as silently as a ghost, got himself within arms-length of the man, reached out and snatched the phone from the man's hands. As he looked up in surprise, Casey grabbed him by the chin and slammed his head into the door of the truck behind him.
Before dropping the phone in his pocket Casey glanced at the screen. The man had just sent a text message to a group of recipients.
489-VNY/HDH/HUN. 0800.
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Aboard the ship, Mei-Ling said to Sarah, "They are panicked. They see America right over there. Desperate, scared people. Goddammit."
As she turned to try to convince a young woman not to venture into the cold water, a crew member leaped at both women spies with a club raised high. He brought the club down to strike Mei-Ling, but Sarah caught his wrist in both her hands. She twisted, locking the man's arm straight, then dropped to one knee. His forward momentum carried him onward and he somersaulted through the air to land heavily on the steel deck. Without interrupting her conversation with the young woman, Mei-Ling kicked the man in the head, knocking him out. The woman said something to Mei-Ling, who turned to Sarah and said, "This bastard raped her a week ago."
"Oh," said Sarah, as Mei-Ling kicked the unconscious man in the testicles very hard.
While she was occupied with that, the young woman slipped over the side and into the water.
Sarah watched as a young man calmly stripped to his underwear, put his clothes into a plastic garbage bag, sealed it carefully and jumped into the Pacific with his makeshift luggage.
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Chuck and Lee headed back out with their boat. They swung wide, so as to make their way all the way out to the ship and the people farthest from shore. Chuck said, "The scooters...the scooters, Lee. They can help some people make it to shore. Take us around to the port side of the ship. Sarah and your sister would have tied them off there."
In a few minutes, they had gotten both of the scooters from the rope and swung back around the side of the ship to the struggling yelling mass of men and women in the water. Chuck turned on both scooters and found struggling swimmers to give them to. Then they looked for more people to help.
Finding a couple of men unable to get thru through the surf, Chuck started to pull them in. Others saw, though and came at the small craft. As five or six men tried to clamber up one side, the boat began to dip dangerously down along that side. Chuck threw his weight up against the other side of the boat to counter-balance, but then a woman came from behind him and grabbed the boat from that side, pulling it down. Chuck was surprised, overbalanced and fell overboard. The cold water as a shock, but he righted himself in a moment. A wave hit him and knocked him under again.
Chuck had always been a strong swimmer and the ocean didn't panic him. His long arms and legs pushed him through the waves. He yelled at Lee, trying to control the now badly overloaded boat, "Go, get them to shore. I'll be ok...go!"
Triggering his communications gear to the rest of the team, he said, "Casey, what's going on onshore?"
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As police and fire department personnel arrived, Casey immediately made himself known and demanded to speak to the man or woman in charge of the rescue effort on the beach. It turned out to be a woman police Captain by the name of Reynolds. She was a hard looking woman in her early forties.
"I'm Reyonlds," she said.
Casey flashed his credentials and said, "Casey. I'm a Federal officer. I've got a team here, but this whole thing went sideways."
"Oh, so this is your fault?"
"Only that these bastards must have figured out we had a reception planned for them in Long Beach and decided to dump their cargo here. I'm guessing they didn't much care if the weak ones drown."
"I'd like to drown those pricks myself," she said.
"You and me both, Captain."
"Where's your team?"
"Woman down there. She's a nurse, but we'll need a hell of a lot more medical than her," Casey pointed to Fen, helping struggling people out of the surf. "Two women in black wetsuits on the ship, one American blonde, one Chinese. And two men in black in a black inflatable boat."
"Ok, I'll put the word out. Do you know how many people in the water? I can't see shit."
"Almost three hundred on board the ship. No telling how many have jumped, but it looks like most of those. We have a chopper with a searchlight coming?"
"Yeah, it's on its way. "
"In the meantime, why don't we get these trucks pointed to the water and get their highbeams on."
"Good idea, I'll get someone on it."
"And there are three of four guys over there unconscious. Please take them into custody. I'll deal with them later"
"Right. Unconscious?"
"Yeah, they annoyed me."
"Remind me not to annoy you," she said with a grimace.
"And I have a chopper over there on the golf course, but no searchlight, so that's not gonna help."
"Ok, I'll keep it in mind though."
He grunted. In his ear he heard Chuck ask, "Casey, what's going on onshore?"
"Police and rescue personnel arriving, but it's still a clusterfuck here. What's your status?"
"I'm in the water. Lee is bringing a boatload up. I'm swimming for the beach."
"Right. Fen is on the beach helping. Look for her."
"Right."
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Sarah glanced over the side of the ship and gasped. "Oh, shit. Mei-Ling. There's someone down there face down. Someone drowning. Are we still useful up here?"
"No, Sarah. I can't do any more here. I tried, but there's only a handful left who won't try to swim for it. Let's get in the water and try to help."
Smoothly and gracefully, they vaulted together over the ship's rail and fell to the black water below. Sarah swam to the person face down in the water. It was a young man. She turned him over and grabbed him from behind with one arm across his chest, holding him under the opposite armpit. With the small of his back and his butt against her hip, keeping his head and face above water, she began to swim to shore with a strong sidestroke.
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Lee brought to boat towards shore and the five or six people and their baggage unloaded. He saw Fen hip deep in the water trying to help people through the surf.
He turned the boat around and headed back out.
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As Chuck made it to the surf zone, he reached out to steady a young man trying to make it past the battering waves. Chuck was already shivering from the cold water, but did his best to ignore it among all these people in desperate need of his help.
He half carried the man out of the water and up onto the sand.
In his ear he heard Sarah, "Chuck, I'm coming to the beach. I could use your help."
"Where are you?" he called.
"Here." He saw her waving and dove into the water to her. She was carrying/towing someone who looked dead.
"Give him to me," he said.
Chuck took the man in his arms, the man's arm hanging limp in front of him, and carried him up onto the beach, being careful not to fall in the crashing waves. "FEN," Chuck screamed. "FEN"
She came over and immediately took charge of the man. "Here, lay him down here." Chuck did so. "Right, I got this now, Chuck."
He looked around and saw Mei-Ling helping someone else from the water. A helicopter and searchlight arrived and lit the scene. Police, firemen and rescue workers were beginning to swarm over the beach. He thought he saw a news van. The flashing lights of dozens of emergency vehicles lit the scene behind the beach. The Triad's trucks were turned toward the water with their lights on.
There were people everywhere on the beach. Standing, sitting and milling around. The prostrate man Fen was working on wasn't the only one. At least a half dozen men or women were lying on the sand with paramedics in attendance. The sound of screams and yelling from the water mixed with the harsh voices and squawks from the radios of the rescue workers on the beach and the pounding thrum of the hovering helicopter.
A small police boat arrived and began to pick up people in the water.
Some paramedics came to help Fen with the man she was working on. Police walked around handing out blankets. Somebody put a blanket around Chuck.
He saw Sarah. Like him, she was taking in the scene with disbelief...even a bit of shock. Wordlessly, they came together and Chuck wrapped them both in his blanket. They stood for a moment just holding each other, an island of calm in a sea of chaos.
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A/N2: At 2AM on June 6, 1993, the freighter Golden Venture deliberately ran aground about three hundred yards off Rockaway Beach in New York City. The grounding was at the direction of the Chinese gangsters in charge of the human trafficking operation. The passengers, 286 illegal immigrants from Fujian Province in China, both panicked and eager to reach American soil, jumped overboard into the cold waters of the Atlantic. Both the New York Police Department and the Fire Department (generally tasked with rescue in NYC) arrived on the scene to help. Ten of the immigrants died in the cold water that night.