Without Warning (76 page)

“Apologies, Miss Julianne,” cried out Lee as the whole ship rang like an iron bell.

The
Viarsa
had just stuck them broadside.

Fifi’s voice came through on her headset.

“Here they come, Julesy. Lots of them.”

“On my way.”

“Shoot them down,” said Pieraro, without any urgency or, he hoped, trace of fear in his voice. It was difficult, however, to contain his marauding emotions. He was not leading some band of old seadogs or hardened mercenaries. His little fire team was composed entirely of men and boys from the village, and unlike him, most of them had never known violence beyond a trifling smack in the head from a parent or uncle. Now they were fighting for their lives.

“As they climb across, shoot them down,” he said. “Do not linger. Stand up, shoot, and drop down again.”

His small group of fighters, six in all, did as they were told and had been taught, popping up and firing short bursts at the Peruvians, before scuttling like bugs to another hiding place. Pieraro himself snapped up his M16 and squeezed off short bursts whenever a slow-moving Peruvian exposed himself.

Well, he assumed they were Peruvians.

It was possible, he supposed, that they may have been from anywhere.

All that mattered now, however, was that a small army of them appeared to be boiling up from the innards of the ship and attempting to board the ship where his family sheltered. Some threw grappling hooks and thick lines across. Others darted from cover as the two vessels banged together and attempted to leap from one to the other. He flinched as one man missed
his jump and fell between the converging vessels. The crunch of steel plate on aluminum was slightly muffled as his body was pulped by the collision. Pieraro could not help but see the flattened remains peel away from the flanks of the trawler and fall into the sea.

“They are getting on board,” cried Adolfo, one of the older men.

“Stay where you are. Keep firing. The others will take care of them,” yelled Miguel.

“The boat deck!”

Jules hurried up behind the racing form of two Gurkhas as they headed aft to repel the first of the intruders. Doubled over to remain below the line of the gunwale, she moved as quickly as she could but had trouble keeping up with them. The uproar of the battle was enormous, much worse than anything she’d experienced before. Bullets whined and pinged around her, chewing huge pieces out of the yacht’s superstructure. She did not dare lift her head. And all the time the vessel lurched up and down, dancing drunk-enly on the huge waves.

A grappling hook clanged down in front her and bit deeply into the fiberglass walls of the gunnel. She didn’t stop to look, instead whipping out her machete and slamming the edged weapon down on the line as she passed. An ululating scream fell away into the churning maelstrom and Jules moved on to where she could hear the bark of automatic weapons starting.

She found the Gurkhas, Sharma and Thapa, taking cover behind a couple of Jet Skis and engaging at least three boarders who’d leaped across and hidden themselves behind one of the smaller runabouts.

“Coming up behind,” she cried out over the savage din.

“Please cover us from behind,” Thapa yelled, and Jules dropped low, aiming her shotgun back up the exposed passageway along which she had just run. Less than two seconds later a man swung over the rail and dropped to the deck. She registered him as young, dark, and rake-thin. He was wearing cut-off, or possibly rotted, denim shorts, and his naked torso was covered in swirling, amateurish tattoos. She cut him down with one blast from the shotgun, tearing a football-size chunk of meat from his stomach and rib cage.

Behind her, she heard the Gurkhas scream something, but could not turn as yet another man dropped to the deck beside his fallen mate. The
Rules
pitched over and before she could shoot him he tumbled back into the sea with a terrified scream.

A quick look over her shoulder and she saw a chromatic, disordered flicker of scenes. Thapa and Sharma leaping at the intruders with kukris
drawn. A flash of silver blade. Gouts of blood. A shot and Thapa flying backward to slam into the side of a sportfisher.

Movement in front of her again. Two of them this time.

The yacht plunged and her shot went high and wild. Their guns cracked and spat at her.

She racked another round and squeezed the trigger again. The first man flew backward as she fired twice more without success. The dead man’s body shielded his mate.

She was going to run out of ammunition before she finished him.

A thunderclap and a spray of wet, organic matter.

Both pirates dropped to the deck.

Jules blinked and saw Moorhouse the banker stick his head out of a hatch and look her way. His grin was feral, and he pumped his fist twice.

“Yessss!”

She flinched as bullets stitched up the hatchway and Moorhouse disappeared.

Fifi had lost two of her crew already. Dietmar was gone, shot in the throat. One of the engineers, Rohan or Urvan, she could never remember which was which, had died as soon as he’d stepped outside. She had two men left. A wounded Rhino, who had joined her from the bridge, and the surviving half of Rohan and Urvan.

She was also out of ammunition.

No more boarders were pouring out of the
Viarsa,
but from the sounds of the struggle on the lower decks there had to be more than enough of them on the
Rules
already.

“Rhino, your arm’s fucked, gimme that 16, would you?” she yelled over the noise.

The old coast guard man readily handed over the weapon. His left arm dangled uselessly at his side, dripping blood through a makeshift tourniquet, and his normally ruddy complexion was gray. Fifi led them aft again, hunkered over, shuffling forward until they could pour fire down on the boat deck.

Popping up quickly, she spied Jules and one of Shah’s men guarding a fallen Gurkha with about half a dozen boarders closing in on them. The conditions were so rough there was no point attempting to pick them off with single shots. She pointed to a couple of men and indicated to Rohan, or Urvan, that he should draw a bead on them, before crying out, “Julesy! Heads down, babe!”

She bobbed up and fired. Dropped.

Moved, popped up, and fired again.

She’d cleaned four of them up when a single bullet from the wheelhouse of the
Viarsa
blew out her brains.

Jules was out of ammo, curled up in a ball, under one of the boats with Sharma, who was edging forward with his kukri. A small lake of blood, thinned only slightly by salt water, sloshed about the deck as she gripped her machete and followed the Gurkha as he advanced on a pair of bare, filthy feet a couple of meters away.

They were within arm’s length, close enough to see all the open sores on the man’s deep brown, stringy calves when the shooting seemed to reach a crescendo. The feet lifted off the deck, and a body, riddled with bullets, crashed down on top of a coil of rope.

A few isolated, individual shots followed and then, silence.

She had no idea who had carried the day until she heard Pieraro’s voice.

“Miss Julianne?”

Dawn rose over Guantánamo Bay, a bloodred shroud for the silent battlefield. Ships still burned in the water, and wrecked aircraft smoldered on the airfield over which the flag of Venezuela now flew. Few civilians remained in the bay. More than four thousand had been rounded up and herded out onto the salt flats beyond the base perimeter, where they sat in the sun, surrounded by soldiers and marines of the Venezuelan armed forces.

In the base commandant’s office, never truly his to begin with, General Tusk Musso stared at his opposite number, who was seated behind a desk that wobbled precariously. It had been damaged in the fighting, and every time General Alano Salas leaned on it, the entire surface tilted precipitously. It made for a slightly ridiculous pantomime, but Salas seemed to think it important that he should be able to sit behind Musso’s desk.

Lieutenant Colonel Stavros sat to Musso’s left, sporting a bandage over one eye, while two aides to the Venezuelan commander stood behind the desk, flanking him at each shoulder. They were armed. The Americans were not. Next to the shattered window a Venezuelan soldier was recording the meeting with a large shoulder-mounted camera. There had been no sign of the TVes reporter for hours. His signal had cut out during an ambush of the small armored column by Sergeant Price.

Musso tried to remember who, exactly, had been the last American general to surrender on a battlefield. General Lee was the most notable example, but hardly the last. If memory served correctly, he was reasonably certain that

Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainright was the last man to surrender. He had had an untenable situation as well, at Corregidor, after old Dugout Doug slipped away for Australia.

Musso’s opposite number scribbled something onto a pad, signed it, and looked up. “My terms for the cessation of hostilities are explicit, General Musso. Unconditional surrender of all forces in Guantánamo Bay.”

Salas presented the piece of paper with a flourish. Musso wondered why he’d bothered to write down such a simple thing. For the National Museum in Caracas, perhaps. Hugo Chávez had cracked down hard on his country, but it was one of the few in South America still functioning, which made him a major power in the hemisphere now. Perhaps
the
major power, for the foreseeable future. He would want his piece of paper for the archives. The marine officer ignored it.

“And what about safe passage for my civilian population?”

“Unconditional surrender, sir,” Salas insisted. “I shall accept nothing less.”

Musso shook his head. “That is unacceptable.”

He leaned forward, and the two men on either side of Salas shifted their stance perceptibly.

“Allow me to explain what will happen if you do not agree to negotiate,” Musso continued. “While my tactical situation is untenable and deteriorating, my ability to resist is not. I extended an offer of a cease-fire entirely out of concern for my refugee population, whom you have deliberately targeted in violation of the laws of war …”

Salas glanced over his shoulder and appeared to consider saying something to the cameraman, but turned back to Musso instead.

“That is a despicable lie.”

Musso shrugged.

“You’re not the only one with a camera, General Salas. Returning to the matter at hand, however, I have dispersed my remaining forces throughout the base and surrounding area. The better part of a marine brigade. Three thousand armed men, including a component of special-operations-capable personnel. You have not had much luck locating the majority of them as of yet.”

“We will.”

“I seriously doubt that. You will provide a guarantee of safe passage for the civilian population out of Guantánamo Bay. Furthermore, you will provide …”

Salas slammed his hand down on the desk, causing it to tilt again and spill a couple of pens onto the floor in front of the Americans.

“Surrender is to be unconditional, General Musso!” he shouted.

Musso raised his voice and continued, “… You
will
provide safe passage
for our military personnel. In return, we will surrender our remaining holdings in Cuba.”

“We already hold your remaining holdings in Cuba.”

Musso jerked his thumb at the shattered window behind him. “Three thousand of my marines say you don’t. And if they do not hear from me within the next twelve hours, this marvelous silence we have enjoyed will come to an end. More to the point, the United States will not rest until the civilian population of this facility is evacuated to safe harbor. Those three thousand will be joined by other forces within days.”

Salas laughed. Partly it was forced, but not entirely.

“The United States does not exist, you stupid man. Where have you been this last month? You do not make threats anymore. The Muslims were chasing you out of their lands before your Jewish friends murdered them all. As we shall chase you out of our territory now. Your threats are empty and worthless.”

Musso shook his head. “Really? General Salas, I’ll be the first to admit it: We’re down. However, we still have the bulk of our navy. We have our submarines, and the majority of our armed forces were deployed overseas when the Disappearance took place. We are still strong. Stronger than you will ever be, and
we will not leave anyone behind, sir.
“

“It is an empty threat.”

Musso decided to push his luck. “You have raised the issue of what the Israelis did recently. They had less than two hundred nuclear weapons. We, my friend, have far more than that, and more to the point, we really do not need your oil anymore.”

Musso leaned forward and invested his voice with all the growling threat he could muster.

“How many ballistic-missile submarines does the Venezuelan navy have, General Salas?”

Stavros looked as if he was holding his breath. Musso rolled on.

“You tell that little cocksucker el Presidente of yours that if we do not get acceptable terms, we will atomize every major population center in Venezu ela by the end of the day.”