Without Warning (62 page)

Robinson Crusoe Island, a solitary fleck of volcanic rock in the vastness of the southern oceans, had seemed a perfect bolt-hole.

Too bad it hadn’t worked out a little longer.

As the boat built up to its maximum speed, the muted pop of gunfire from astern was lost in the roar of the wind. Jules and Fifi remained on the flying bridge for the moment, wrapped in oilskin coats, taking in the view as they hastily exited Cumberland Bay.

“I can’t believe they narked us out,” said Fifi, sadly. “After they gave us those lobsters and everything!”

Jules shrugged.

“Lobsters they have an abundance of, Fifi. But diesel, food, medicine— those they’re running out of fast. Shah said the boat from Valparaiso hasn’t been here for two months. I don’t think it’s coming again.”

“So what, dropping a dime on us to the fucking syndicates is their idea of self-help?”

Julianne lifted her hands in a gesture of resigned acceptance.

“What are they to do, Fi? We weren’t part of the tribe. We’re just a big shiny boat full of stuff they need and can’t get anymore. These people are doomed, and our time with them was up. Get over it.”

As Mr. Lee took them out into the exposed waters again, the yacht began to pitch and roll on the much rougher swell. The bow climbed larger and larger waves, smashing down into the dark trough on the other side with an enormous boom. Jules took one last look off to starboard at the wreath of funereal clouds gathering around the highest summits before motioning to Fifi to follow her inside. Lee was at the helm in the gleaming bridge, joyfully directing the other crew members present, Dietmar the German navigator they’d picked up in Acapulco along with the Rhino, who was chewing the stub of a much-abused cigar. Apart from a bag of clothes, his personal luggage consisted entirely of foul-smelling stogies, which he insisted on smoking at all times, right down to the nub. The smell of the Davidoffs reminded Jules of her father’s library, so she indulged the old coast guard chief, over the protests of her passengers, who objected to his “secondhand carcinogens.”

“How’s it looking, Rhino?” asked Jules as she shook off the spray and slid the hatch closed behind her.

“Excellent. Just excellent, if you’re in the market for an old-fashioned ass kicking today. Two boats. The lead vessel is making about eleven knots. Pulling away from the other, which is topping out at about eight.”

“Any idea how big? How many of these hoodlums we might be dealing with?” she asked without any hope of an answer.

The Rhino puffed on his cigar, firing up the embers right under his nose. He shook his head. He was about fifty years old, and his face was a bright red relief map of broken blood vessels and sunspots.

“Sorry. They’re not in visual range. I wouldn’t have seen them until they were on us if we’d been anchored any farther inside the bay. The mountains were blocking the return.”

She sucked the salt from her lip and thought it over. The
Rules
had a comfortable cruising speed of fifteen knots, which they could push out to seventeen and a bit for a while now that she had some engineers she could trust, but if they had any trouble in the hugely complicated engineering plant, or if they hit foul weather, their pursuers were likely going to catch up. Plus, of course, she’d burn through their fuel a lot quicker at top speed. Jules rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb. This was not what she had planned when she’d agreed to soak a bunch of rich tourists for as much as she could get. She wondered what Pete would have done.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I don’t see this ending well. Fifi, let’s get everyone together, shall we? Anyone who can hold a weapon, down in the main lounge. Lee, you just keep as much distance between us and them as you can. I’ll be back soon.”

She had one last look back toward the islands. A storm front was piling up to the southeast, smudging out the horizon. She was confident in the
Rules’s
ability to handle a big blow and could only hope that whoever was chasing them didn’t enjoy such a pimped-out ride. Perhaps they could lose them in bad weather.

It really was an incongruous sight. She’d never really been taken with the fabulously overblown opulence of the main lounge area on the
Aussie Rules.
It was a bit too clubby and try-hard for her tastes. But she had to admit, she liked the sight of the half-dozen little village urchins who’d come on board with Miguel bouncing and leaping from one deep blue lounge chair to the next. Or rather she liked the look of utter dismay on the faces of some of her wealthier passengers.

Fifi followed her in, toting the PKM. It brought a level of decorum to the proceedings, with even the children stopping and pointing. They were experienced enough to know what it meant.

Pirates.

“All right. Listen up, everyone,” Jules cried out. With all of the passengers and some crew gathered in there, she guesstimated that nearly thirty people were in the room. It held them comfortably. Miguel’s villagers, who’d proven themselves less trouble and much more help than her paying guests, were mostly clustered together quietly under the oil paintings of Greg Norman’s dogs, with just a few of the younger children still roaming around unleashed.
Julianne subtracted them from her plans. They would need to be hidden away somewhere with a minder. Perhaps Granna Ana, who was the oldest of the Mexicans and spent most of her days shelling beans and peeling vegetables in the weak sun up on the pool deck. Jules had no doubt that she’d cut the throat of anyone who tried to harm the little ones, but she was virtually immobile. The rest of them, though, she’d come to appreciate. They worked hard. Ate little. Some of the men were good shots. They were reliable in a fight and would do whatever Miguel ordered them to, without demur. Plus, they’d proven themselves diabolically effective traders whenever the
Rules
had put into shore for resupply. Jules was still adamant that they would have to leave the boat at some point, but for the moment, she couldn’t see her way clear to dropping them anywhere. The mainland, which they had now left behind anyway, was too dangerous, especially near any of the larger cities, and the villagers had proven themselves too useful.

Her small crew, recruited over half a dozen trading stops at smaller, self-sufficient towns and villages on the way down to Crusoe, were all handy with weapons in one form or another, while Shah’s men, it went without saying, were utterly formidable. As she totted up the number of potential shooters in the lounge, Shah himself appeared at the main entrance and nodded silently to her. His men had the situation in hand for the moment.

The problem, as always, was the passengers, the rich, skiving dilettantes she had taken on board to fund the trip and provide her with a fig leaf of respectability when she arrived in Hawaii, or Sydney, or wherever they were headed. While some of them had proved themselves not completely odious, and one or two, such as Marc Unwin, the oil broker, had even brought some of their arcane skills to bear for the benefit of all, as a group they were a bunch of fucking oxygen thieves. The trust-fund brats, Phoebe and Jason, had alienated all of the crew by treating them like staff. Indeed, Jason still sported a black eye from one of the engineers. Moorhouse, the merchant banker, had become a virtual recluse as he had come to realize that the old world, and his fortune within it, was never coming back. The others simply made pains of themselves at every opportunity for want of anything better to do.

Well, she had work for them now.

“Okay,” she said simply. “Pirates. Looks like we have two shiploads of them bearing down on us from the north.”

A murmur surged through the adults, and some of the youngest began to chant, “Pirates pirates,” but Granna Ana whacked one of them behind the ears and they all shut up quickly. Even the whackee held in his tears.

“We’ve had our problems with these guys before we got to Crusoe, and it looks like we’ve got them again.”

“How?” asked the banker. “How’d they find us out here?”

Fifi shrugged. “Somebody on the island probably dropped a dime on us. Five’ll get you ten one of the lobster boats chugged out of port and went looking for someone who’d be interested. They couldn’t take us themselves …”

“But they sold us out to someone who could,” Jules finished for her.

More audible concern, and a good deal of anxious muttering from the A-list passengers, greeted that. Jules held up her hands to forestall any panic.

“They
could
take us, if they caught us sleeping on the job. But they won’t. You have all seen these sort of characters before. We chased them off then, we’ll do it again now. I’ve only called everyone together because this time it looks like there’s more of them and they have a bigger, faster ship. It makes sense,” she explained. “Things have turned to custard on the mainland. People are killing each other for a handful of beans in the big cities. In a situation like that, you will always get bandits who group together to prey on the weak … But we are not the weak.”

Fifi hoisted her large, ugly-looking Russian machine gun to emphasize Julianne’s point. Shah folded his massive arms and allowed his solid granite head to dip once in a nod of agreement.

“We will try to outrun these guys,” Jules continued. “One of them is already falling behind, and the weather is closing in. That will help. They’ll have to fight a storm instead of us. But they have another vessel that could catch ours if we have any problems, and so we need to be ready. Everyone, and I mean
everyone,
“ she repeated, eyeing her American passengers, “will be armed and ready to repel any boarders.”

She expected objections, but the statement simply dropped into a fearful silence.

“I do not expect you to get into machete fights. You’ll lose. But we have enough small arms and ammunition to distribute amongst you, and you
will
defend the boat with them. That means you will have to shoot people. Dead. This is not something you can leave to Sergeant Shah and his men. There will be too many for them to handle on their own. No offense, Shah.”

Shah smiled. None taken.

“I need you to divide yourselves into two groups. Those who are familiar with firearms and those who are not. Sergeant Shah and Birendra will give the latter a quick tutorial in how to pull a trigger. That’s all we ask of you. The others will go with Fifi down to the gun lockers and arm yourselves appropriately. Do
not
panic. Whatever may happen will not happen for many hours yet, possibly even a day or two. Familiarize yourself with your weapons and whatever firing station you are assigned. Learn its blind spots and weaknesses. Identify a fallback route. And then get some rest. Watch a
movie, hit the gym. Whatever does it for you. If you have to fight, it’s best that you’re not shagged out from running around like headless fucking chickens for half a day beforehand.”

At least some of them laughed. Nervously.

Jules took a few steps toward them.

“It may not come to anything,” she said. “We may outrun them. We have enough fuel for six thousand miles of cruising. Enough food stocks now for a month with some rationing. We may lose them in the storm that’s brewing up out there. We may not.”

She paused, very briefly, taking in the effect she was having. The faces of the older Mexican men were unreadable, their eyes black polished stones in a dark night. The women looked much more defiant, but also fearful for the children. Some of the younger men, boys really, looked excited.

Her A-listers, on the other hand, were quietly freaking out.

“You need to understand this, most of all,” she concluded. “Anyone who steps onto this boat with hostile intentions will be cut down. They will be killed. And there will be no mercy shown them. Because we will receive none in return.”

“We could let em loose,” Stavros deadpanned. “About seventy-five miles north of here.”

General Tusk Musso snorted softly. Yep, it would solve a few problems if he could just throw all of his prisoners into the Wave. But then what would the
New York Times
say?

Nothing. Not now.

Goddamn, but he needed a rest.

Musso pushed the tips of his fingers under his sunglasses and rubbed at his sore, bloodshot eyes. He could feel bristle growing on his cheeks. The camp had run out of razor blades. He’d have to do something about that. Have to maintain standards.

They had run out of Kiwi boot polish as well, hard as that was to believe. Most combat boots looked as if they had been polished with a Hershey bar, if at all. The general wore a pair of the new, now rare, suede tan Marine Corps boots. At least he didn’t have to worry about spit and polish every night.

The afternoon sun was warm, but not uncomfortably so. Nonetheless it glinted off the steel and wire of Camp 4 with a fierceness that made the sunglasses necessary. It was quiet today. The next call to prayer was still an hour
away, and the prisoners’ initial excitement after the Disappearance had long since evaporated. The Israelis had made sure of that. Most of these humps were now as alone in the world as the Americans who still guarded them.