Without Warning Part 10

"Not Confucian," said Lee, raising both eyebrows and positively beaming at his skipper with all of his remaining teeth on show. "Just confusing."

The old Chinaman held up one hand in triumph. Pete allowed himself a genuine smile that crinkled the net of lines at the corners of his eyes as he smacked out a high five. It might well be the last smile of his life.

"Mr. Lee, John Woo doesn't know s.h.i.t about Chinese action heroes if he doesn't know you ... Now, let's deal with this shoeless f.u.c.kwit, shall we? I won't have his stinky f.u.c.king plates of meat oozing and peeling all over my new boat. Take her up to thirteen knots, if you will. We'll leave a little bit of tiger in the tank for later, if needed."

Lee fitted a set of headphones over his ears, plugged them into a digital radio clipped onto his sun-faded canvas pants, and opened the throttles on the big boat's ma.s.sive Caterpillar engines, unleashing a stampede from the fifteen hundred horsepower contained in each. Acceleration was smooth and instantaneous. Pete felt himself rocking back on his heels as they leapt forward, and Mr. Lee began a series of sharp tacking maneuvers to make any boarding operations as difficult as possible. The radio in Pete's hand crackled to life. It was Jules.

"We're in position, Pete."

"Good work, Julesy. Keep your finger on the trigger. Big-boy rules today."

He signed off and moved over to the port side of the bridge, where he could see one cigarette boat slowing down and looping in and out, attempting to match its course and speed to the yacht. There were six men crammed into the small c.o.c.kpit, all of them toting weapons. Shoeless Dan was standing by the wheel, one hand on the windshield, the other waving madly at the bridge of the Aussie Rules. He'd know Pete was on board. The Diamantina was roped to the stern, b.u.mping along in their wake.

Dan stood about six-two in his perennially bare feet, but he added another nine or ten inches to his height with the largest 'fro Pete had ever seen on a white man. The fact that Dan was afflicted with red hair made him stand out even more dramatically from his brown-skinned crew. He was yelling, to no effect, grinning like a hyena on crystal meth.

Pete glanced at Lee, an unspoken question pa.s.sing between them. Lee nodded brusquely that he had the helm under control. The Chinaman suddenly spun the wheel hard aport in response to a radio call from one of the girls. Pete plucked a handset from the console a few feet down from Lee and powered up the yacht's loudspeakers. He was going to tell Dan to back off or get blown away. Unfortunately he hit the wrong switch, punching through an audio feed from the media room, where BBC World was running an ad for an upcoming repeat of Pride and Prejudice on UKTV.

"... it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy," boomed the giant luxury yacht. "May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"

The effect upon the Mexicans was salutary. They began shooting.

"Oh, for f.u.c.k's sake," cursed Jules.

She didn't know whether Pete had done that on purpose or not-he had a pretty inappropriate sense of humor-but the result was the same. Whatever small chance they had of talking Dan down suddenly disappeared, and they were now committed to a shoot-out in which they were outnumbered plenty to one. Hunkered down on the pool deck, where she'd been quietly watching the boat in which Shoeless Dan was traveling, she popped up from cover, and squeezed off a couple of bursts from the M16 as the go-fast made a sudden turn and ran in toward the docking bay. Both vessels were moving erratically at speed and most of her clip missed, but at least one of the men flew back in his seat as his head suddenly appeared to lose its structural integrity. A red mist painted the other pa.s.sengers in the boat as it came around violently and laid on speed for the bow to get out of Jules's line of fire.

She performed a quick and dirty bit of math, swung the 16 around, and angled the barrel upward at about sixty degrees. The grenade launcher triggered with a hollow thump, sending a single 40-mm high-explosive round downrange. Jules was running forward, crouched low and swapping out her spent mag, well before it hit. She tensed up, waiting for the detonation, but it never came. The round dropped into the sea without exploding.

"Oh, for f.u.c.k's sake."

Yes, she tended to repeat herself under pressure.

"Lee!" she yelled into the radio. "Target One is heading forward."

"I see him, Miss Julianne," Mr. Lee replied, his voice calm in her earphones, like that of a parent soothing a distressed child.

The yacht veered across the path of the smaller boat without warning, nearly throwing Jules over the safety rail. She'd just regained her footing when Pete crashed into her. He'd emerged unexpectedly from a doorway, carrying a sawed-off shotgun he'd taken from Fifi. The cut-down stock slammed painfully into her unprotected arm, numbing it.

"Jesus, Pete. Watch out!"

"Sorry, darlin', didn't see you. Heads down!"

He quickly raised the weapon and fired, the blast making her ears ring. Pete worked the slide and fired again and again, until he'd emptied the entire load, then he dropped and rolled onto his back as Jules jumped up and loosed off a series of clattering bursts. The first went nowhere near the go-fast. She had had to squint into a lowering sun and had simply hosed out some fire in the general direction of the boat. The second went a little closer as she adjusted her aim, but the shots flew over the heads of the men as Lee tacked again and she lost balance. The third blast, which emptied her clip, raked the foredeck of the boat, sending bright chips of metal and polished fibergla.s.s flying and twinkling into the salt air and late-afternoon sun. A m.u.f.fled whoomp and a satisfying flash told her something vital had gone up, but before she could nail them with a round from the grenade launcher, Pete dragged her down, just as a line of automatic fire ripped along the bulkhead behind her with a heavy, industrial hammering sound. A hot steel chip grazed one cheek, burning her.

"s.h.i.t," she gasped. "Thanks, Pete. Owe you a blowie for that one."

"Consider me blown," shouted Pete over the uproar. "Gimme the sixteen and a couple of mags, take my shottie and get back to Fifi at the loading dock. She's got at least one of the p.r.i.c.ks on her case. Crazy f.u.c.ker jumped onto the diving platform on a flyby."

"Okay. Got it," she shouted, fishing two full magazines out of her combat harness.

From the rear of the yacht she heard the unmistakable hammering of Fifi's favorite gun, a Russian PKM.

They quickly exchanged weapons, and he stuffed the reloads in his cargo pockets as she spun around.

Pete headed forward.

Jules found her shipmate crouched low at the bow of a SeaVee dive boat that hung next to the big custom-built sport fisher on the lower deck at the rear of the yacht.

"Sorry, Julesy," said Fifi. "a.s.shole got on when his buds had me pinned down. I put a lot of fire down there but don't know whether I even winged him. A frag woulda been nice to roll down on him."

It was hard to hear her over the tumult of gunfire and snarling engine noise.

Jules patted her on the back, where she'd slung "the worm," a rocket launcher Pete had acquired on their last trip to the Maldives. It was stamped with Australian army markings and serial numbers, and had probably been stolen from the garrison on Timor. They had only one warshot for it, and Pete forever had to remind Fifi that she couldn't fire off a practice round. She'd been desperate to light that sucker up since he'd bought the thing.

"You leave this guy to me, babe," said Jules. "We really need you to nail one of those f.u.c.kers out there. Pete's working on Shoeless Dan's ride. That leaves the other one for you. Think you can take him with that thing?"

She indicated the launcher on Fifi's back.

Fifi suddenly hauled up her PKM and punched out a short, angry burst that chewed big, expensive chunks of paneling out of the yacht down by the steps to the diving platform. A heavy, Soviet-era design, the gun was powerful enough to be used as an antiaircraft weapon. The uproar when she fired it was enormous. Jules's ears were already ringing from the shotgun blasts a few minutes earlier, and now they began to hum a single deep tone to let her know they'd suffered some real damage.

"Sorry!" shouted Fifi. "Saw him again. a.s.shole has only two ways up onto the deck. Those stairs down there. You have to move across from one side to the other all the f.u.c.king time to check that he hasn't snuck up. Can't keep an eye on both at once, you see. But then he can't be in both places at once either. He's packing some kinda light fully-auto. Maybe an Uzi or an MP5. And yeah, I can put a hurtin' on that other f.u.c.ker, no problemo."

"Okay," said Jules. "You go."

Her own voice sounded dull and very distant to her, as though her head had been packed in cotton.

She flicked the safety off her shotgun as Fifi moved away. The yacht was still weaving an erratic course, changing tack without warning as Mr. Lee strived to prevent their attackers from boarding any more men. Bent low, Jules couldn't see the go-fast boats, but the deep growling of their engines as they maneuvered around the larger vessel was loud and constant. Distance and the sheer ma.s.s of the superyacht often muted the pop and crackle of gunfire from Shoeless Dan's men, but the impact of their rounds. .h.i.tting home was often deafening, as they crashed into metal or gla.s.s just overhead.

Jules shifted position, scowling furiously. The boat deck was crowded with three big vessels, and at least half a dozen Jet Skis, all of which provided excellent cover, but also denied her a clear line of sight to her target. It was also a terrible f.u.c.king mess, totally ripped up by hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Her guy was trapped a level down, where he'd come aboard on the diving platform. Conceivably, if she could find a position that covered both sets of stairs up onto the boat deck, she could keep him pinned down until the others were free to help her. But then, she wasn't familiar with the design of the yacht, and it was more than possible that he might be able to work his way up and behind her via an internal route directly from the docking bay. She didn't see any way of avoiding a direct confrontation with the little p.r.i.c.k.

Despite the late hour, the sun was still putting out a fierce heat that made all her clothes sticky with sweat. Her tongue felt dry and swollen, and she had trouble swallowing. The yacht swung hard astarboard, nearly throwing her to the deck, but she used the momentum to push forward a few more feet to where a couple of black Jet Skis lay under the keel of the biggest of the auxiliary vessels, the forty-two-footer. That gave her a better view. She could now see at least part of the other staircase, but it also left her a good deal more exposed.

She caught a flash of long matted hair, and blasted away at it, to be rewarded with a strangled cry. Jules didn't think the wound was mortal. A Remington made a horrible mess of a human head when it struck with full force, and she saw no evidence of that. Most likely a couple of pellets. .h.i.t home and raked out some skin and bone. But nothing fatal.

"Time to double down, Lady Balwyn," she muttered to herself, summoning up her courage with a phrase her father had often used.

A whoosh and a sudden explosive roar told her that Fifi had launched her rocket. Without thinking, without waiting, Jules leapt up and ran forward, racking another sh.e.l.l into the breech and squeezing it off. The shotgun boomed in her hands. She racked the slide again.

Boom.

She'd made the head of the stairs and fired down into the well.

Boom.

But the boarder was nowhere to be seen.

d.a.m.n!

He must have moved over. b.l.o.o.d.y tracks led away to the other side of the boat. There was one particularly large splatter, but it wasn't flecked with bone chips or brain flecks, and so mostly likely wasn't evidence of a killing stroke. Still moving as quickly as she could in the pitching, treacherous conditions, she attempted to rack another sh.e.l.l, but the Remington clicked empty.

Oh for f.u.c.k's ...

And then she was on top of him.

A small wiry man, deeply tanned, his bare torso covered in dense, brightly colored swirls of tattoo ink. He was waving a gun around, but was apparently blinded. His face was bathed in blood, and the flesh from his nose up had been badly torn by a few pellets of buckshot.

He fired wildly at the sound of her approach, unloading the better part of an MP5 mag at her, but Jules was already diving before he pulled the trigger. Head tucked in, heart pounding, she crashed into his thighs and knocked him backward into a set of air tanks on the diving platform. Awkwardly, but with all of her strength, she slammed the b.u.t.t of the shotgun into the soft fleshy part of his upper arm, paralyzing it, and trying to lock the injured limb under her knee as they wrestled.

The rank, sour stink of his sweat mingled badly with the coppery smell of blood and something richer, nastier. He writhed about beneath her weight, much stronger and quicker than she, but badly wounded and handicapped by his lack of clear vision.

For her part, Jules was restricted by having to keep so much weight on his gun arm. Knowing she couldn't win a battle of strength or endurance, she dragged the empty shotgun around and smashed the stock into his face. He screamed with rage and pain, and redoubled his efforts to get out from under her, but three more blows, the last one caving in his forehead, ended any resistance.

The body twitched and shuddered and then went limp as his bowels voided themselves all over her legs.

She gagged, but just managed to hold it together. s.n.a.t.c.hing the MP5 from his twitching fingers, she crawled to her feet with the muzzle trained on him the whole time. Her leg muscles were rubbery and weak, and her knees folded up beneath her as she backed away.

Sitting with her legs splayed out in front of her, covered in gore and worse, she took a minute or so to realize that she couldn't hear any more gunfire. And then, after a few moments where all she could manage was to breathe and tremble uncontrollably, she realized that for the first time all day, she'd forgotten about the energy wave that had swept away most of America.

"Clubfoot d.i.c.khead," Pete murmured through clenched teeth as he dived back inside the yacht to avoid getting his head shot off on his journey toward the bow. "We didn't have to do it like this." They were taking on a terrifying amount of fire now, in spite of the damage Jules had done to Dan's boat. It spoke volumes for the benefit of simply having more fingers on triggers than the other guy. Dan was handing them some serious f.u.c.king grief, and it p.i.s.sed him off mightily. He hadn't been allowed to enjoy a single day as the master of Greg Norman's superyacht before some s.k.a.n.ky barefoot s.h.i.teater in a Carrot Top fright wig came along and ruined everything by poking holes in his beautiful new boat with a ridiculous amount of automatic gunfire. He had no idea how Dan had come to be out here; probably he'd just loaded up and headed out looking for targets of opportunity as soon as his tiny peabrain had realized that the federales and the USN were permanente desaparecidos. Frankly, Pete couldn't give a s.h.i.t. He'd have happily had Dan along as a sidekick, had they been able to berth unmolested at Acapulco, and had Dan agreed to a rigid schedule of foot powder treatments. But this-he emerged onto a forward deck and immediately ducked beneath a couple of rounds from something heavy and unpleasant, a forty-five most likely-this was bulls.h.i.t, and a total liberty and tantamount to taking the f.u.c.king p.i.s.s.

He kept low and swapped out the mag that Jules had been using. The sun was in the last stage of a long dive in the west, which gave him a momentary advantage as the go-fast sped out of the yacht's long shadow. He saw half of Dan's crew suddenly throw their hands up to shade their eyes from the burnt orange brilliance of the sun's rays. This was it. Slowly, and with infinitely more calm than he actually felt, Pete Holder stood up, knees bent slightly to allow him to adjust for movement of the deck. He took careful aim and squeezed off an entire clip in four discrete bursts, forcing himself to drop the iron sight back on the c.o.c.kpit after each salvo.

"Excuse me, Daniel," he said to himself. "But cheeky little f.u.c.kers sometimes need a good smack on the a.r.s.e."

The effect of taking the time to aim properly rather than just banging away was devastating. The first round st.i.tched up Shoeless Dan, raking a line of fire up his fat belly, punching him backward out of the boat. The last Pete saw of him was a pair of blackened, swollen feet as they spun up and over the side. The next two bursts cut down all of the remaining men, bar one, who had the presence of mind to duck out of sight. The yacht climbed up a small wave while he was hiding, but Pete bent loose at the knees, keeping the gun sight on the c.o.c.kpit of the cigarette boat the whole time. His stomach clenched tightly, and he could feel his a.n.u.s puckering in fear, but he maintained the stance, even as a couple of rounds strayed up from the battle at the stern of the ship.

"Come on," he whispered to himself. "Just pop your ugly mug up and ..."

He'd fired before making any conscious decision to do so. The last surviving Mexican in Shoeless Dan's boat suddenly leapt up and tried to snap off a couple of shots while grabbing the steering wheel and spooling up the engines. It was a hopeless, desperate thing to do, and it killed him. Pete sent at least half a dozen rounds downrange, and while only three intersected the target, they hit him in the back of the neck, tearing through bone and meat with enough force to sever the head. The body was jerked upright and tossed over the side. The head appeared to drop to the floor of the boat.

Nausea and revulsion boiled up inside him, but he sucked in a mouthful of air. It reeked of smoke and gunpowder, which didn't really help, but there was nothing for it. He had to push on. He turned to run for the stern just in time to see a line of white smoke snake out from the deck above him.

"Eat the worm, motherf.u.c.kers!"

It was Fifi, yelling from somewhere up on the pool deck.

His eyes instinctively followed the path of the rocket down through the air and into the side of the second go-fast boat, which blew apart as the warhead speared into her, just above the waterline behind the crew cabin. Pete ducked as debris and shrapnel flew out from the point of impact with enough speed to kill anyone who happened to be in the way. Unfortunately, that described his situation precisely. His old knees weren't as quick or as flexible as they'd once been, and a fist-sized chunk of red-hot steel neatly took off the top third of his head.

He staggered back a few steps before his knees buckled underneath him and he fell to the deck, vaguely aware in his last moments of life that he had, after all, been f.u.c.ked by the fickle finger of fate.

"b.u.g.g.e.r ..." he croaked with his last breath.

The disinfectant stung, but it was the least of Jules's myriad hurts. She seemed to exist within a tornado of pain, of dull aches and sharp, shooting agonies of bruised muscle and tortured bone. Apart from Mr. Lee, who was smiling as he dabbed at the deep cut on her cheek, they had all taken damage during the fight with Shoeless Dan. Fifi had one arm in a sling, and was limping from a flesh wound to her thigh. Lee finished up by gently pressing a thick bandage into place high on her wounded cheek and handing her a couple of blue capsules. The small pharmacy on the yacht had given up a treasure trove of sedatives and balms.

"For the pain, Miss Julianne."

"Thanks," she replied in a dry, cracked voice.

Jules popped her pills and washed them down with a mouthful of gin and tonic, prepared for her by Fifi.

"Would it be churlish, at this point, to remind everyone that a couple of hours ago, Pete had Shoeless Dan tagged as a reliable chap and potential crewmate?"

Fifi sniffed and shook her head.

"He was always a f.u.c.king softie, Pete. I loved him so much." Her face crumpled and she let herself go, releasing a high-pitched keening sound that turned into a series of wails and sobs.

"It would be ungracious and beneath a lady of your breeding, Miss Ju-lianne," said Lee, whose own face was a mask, carved from ancient teak.

Darkness had fallen outside, or a sort of darkness. It glowed with a noticeable red hue thrown off by the energy wave, which was now eighty nautical miles to their north, but still visible. The three survivors had bathed and changed after cleaning up the worst of the damage and bloodshed. While they were at it, they got rid of the last remains of the former crew members, too. It hadn't been such a bad job, compared with washing away the carnage of battle.

They'd wrapped Pete's body in a blanket and stored him in one of the galley's huge freezer units. He'd once told Jules that if he ever bought it, he'd want his ashes scattered at an awesome surf break somewhere. Wouldn't matter which one. Maverick's. Pipe. Margaret River. They were all good. Just as long as it was pumping when he took his last ride.

They had gathered in the upper salon, one of the cozier, less formal s.p.a.ces. A couple of olive-green two-seater lounges, hugely overstuffed and obscenely comfortable, sat around two sides of a giant brown ottoman. A pair of white single-seaters took up one other side, where floor to ceiling bifold windows gave onto an expansive view of the sea far below. Jules had bathed for two hours to rid herself of the stink of the man she'd killed, and the irrational guilt she felt at living when Pete hadn't. A couple of hundred dollars' worth of French toiletries had helped a little with the former, although she still felt as if some corruption had worked its way under her skin. And she knew she was going to be down about Pete for weeks. It was harsh, but she was more affected by his death than by the weird s.h.i.t happening to the north.

She sipped at her drink, feeling lonely and abandoned, stretched out on the lounge, burrowing deeper into the waffle-weave bathrobe she'd found in one of the cabins. "You know what," she sighed. "Dan was always a bit of a maddie, but even he wouldn't start a fight like that without good reason."

"He had good reason," said Fifi, who'd recovered some of her composure. "f.u.c.kin' Jane Austen on full volume. Drives me nuts when you play those vids, Julesy."

Jules smiled sadly. Fifi still held a grudge for getting her a.r.s.e dragged into Sense and Sensibility by Julianne once. She'd thought she was seeing the sequel to Dumb and Dumber.

"It'd make me go for the gun locker, too," mumbled her friend. "Stupid m ... mo ... motherf.u.c.ker," she said before lapsing back into tears.

Jules downed her drink in one long pull and stood up unsteadily, looking for the gin bottle.

"I'm sorry about Pete," she said. "I'll cry myself to sleep later, but we don't have time to wallow. This Twilight Zone rubbish is going to upset the apple cart in the worst way possible, and it will likely happen very quickly. I suspect Dan was simply ahead of the curve. Well, him or someone who paid him. His operation didn't normally run to go-fast boats, or hired banditos."

"Shoeless Dan always most unimpressive," said Mr. Lee as he cleared away the first-aid kit. "First I ever hear of him was of redheaded giant trying to sell stolen dog food to Vietnam criminals. Tried to say real dog in can. Vietnam tie bag of cans to Shoeless Dan and throw him in water. Only escapes because they cannot tie knot well."

"No," said Jules as she handed Fifi a Tasmanian beer. "They probably tied those knots fine. But there were some things Dan did know well. Knots, sails, boats, tides, who'd take a bribe and who wouldn't, the range and speed of every coast guard cutter in the Keys, anything to do with smuggling by sea and he was good for it. But piracy was not his gig."

"Yeah, well, he surely wasn't worth a pinch of s.h.i.t as one," sniffed Fifi.

"So, what was the story today?" asked Jules as she picked a sandwich from a silver platter on the ottoman in front of her. She wasn't really hungry. It was just something to do. Fifi had found half a turkey and a leg of Iberian ham in one of the giant double-door refrigerators down in the main galley, and she'd thrown together a small feast of cold cuts and salad. She wasn't eating either, and Jules suspected that preparing the meal was more about therapy than hunger. Long before Fifi had taken up smuggling she had qualified as a commercial chef.

Fresh rolls, slathered with melting b.u.t.ter, lay in a pile next to a big bowl of baby spinach leaves, walnuts, pear, and Parmesan slivers. The drugs Jules had taken had begun a slow waltz with her gin and tonic, and she let the warm waves of sleepiness wash over her.

"Yeats, my friends. The story today was Yeats," she said, answering her own question, if somewhat impenetrably. "The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. That's where we are right now. On the edge of anarchy."

Honolulu, Hawaii

The early-evening drive down to the governor's residence was enough to convince James Ritchie that the islands were going to go down a tube at high speed unless someone got their act together. The curfew seemed to have had no effect, and the state government had no interest in enforcing it. Thousands of people were milling about the streets, many of them agitated and besieging any place they could buy emergency supplies of food and water. Large, increasingly unstable crowds had gathered outside travel agencies and airline shop fronts, which remained open well after normal business hours. Every gas station had a trail of vehicles snaking away from its pumps, leading Ritchie to wonder where the h.e.l.l they thought they were going to escape to in their SUVs and family sedans.