Without Warning Part 48

Julianne shaded her eyes against the sun and stared at the dark shape closing with them from astern. It was about twice the size it had been when last she checked.

First blood went to Fifi. As the Viarsa 1, a red-hulled two-thousand-ton former toothfish poacher, muscled through a seven-meter swell to put itself within a few hundred meters of the Rules, Fifi lay under a tarpaulin on the pool deck, tented to allow her spent cartridges to eject, with only the barrel of her Russian tripod-mounted machine gun poking out. Shah had deployed everyone to their fighting positions and then ordered them to remain under cover. The Aussie Rules appeared deserted as it wallowed about under reduced power. Fifi took her time, adjusting to the relative rise and fall of the two vessels. With the Viarsa coming up astern she had a clear view of the vessel's foredeck and bridge. She had intended to unload a magazine into the wheelhouse, hopefully cutting down some of the more important crew members, but as the distance between hunter and prey collapsed, an infinitely more tempting target presented itself. At least a dozen men, all armed, began to gather near the bow of the Viarsa 1, pointing at the Rules and occasionally firing the odd random shot.

Fifi waited in her little tent, patiently tracking the closely grouped cl.u.s.ter of men with her sights. Three times she imagined squeezing off a burst, but held her fire, waiting to see what the arrhythmic dance of the two ships did to her aim. Once, as the Rules fell hard aport into a boiling black trench, she would have missed completely. The second and third times, however, were fine.

On the fourth occasion that the two ships lined up, she fired.

The battered, rusting trawler had pulled to within two hundred yards. The boarding party had stopped firing, possibly at the behest of a large, bearded man who had just rushed down onto the deck. He was yelling and gesticulating, obviously warning them to move away. The eerie quiet of the Rules and the complete lack of any movement on deck had apparently unnerved him. The poacher heaved itself over a line of black swell shot through with steaks of dirty foam just as the Rules began to climb a wall of water large enough to steady the yacht's ceaseless tossing from side to side. For three precious seconds, as the trawler slid down the face of the wave behind, Fifi enjoyed a relative stable platform and an exposed slow-moving target.

She breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

The PKM began its harsh industrial jackhammering, and lines of tracer arced out across the southern ocean to kiss the bow of the Viarsa 1. She had a two-hundred-round box mag loaded with Russian standard 7.62 rifled cartridges and tracers. The long, whipping line of light ribboned across the gap between the ships almost instantly and tore the men apart. She fired in three separate bursts, as hot spent casings bounced off the tented tarpaulin and stung her whenever they touched exposed flesh. Only two survived: the bearded man who had rushed onto the deck to warn his comrades of the danger they faced, and another who dived for cover as soon as her first target disintegrated in a shower of blood and body pieces.

She noticed a twinkling light on the roof of the wheelhouse and rolled off her perch a split second before the tarpaulin was chewed to pieces by the line of return fire.

Whump.

Whump.

Two lines of gray smoke reached out for the twinkling star on the Viarsa 1, which disappeared inside twinned explosions as the rocket-propelled grenades detonated, taking out the machine gun. Fifi heard another snarling burst of automatic fire and wondered whether Shah or one of his men had targeted the bridge, as she had intended to. Belly-crawling to her next firing station, where Dietmar waited with a fresh box of ammunition, she didn't dare put her head up to look.

The Rules was now taking fire from the length of the trawler.

Shah had disposed of his resources very well.

Five independent fire teams, providing coverage for the length of the yacht, with the least experienced and reliable given the best cover. Peering at the Viarsa, he had to wonder who was running things over there. As soon as Fifi had opened up on the fo'c'sle more men had emerged from the rear of the wheelhouse and begun to spread out on the aft decks, taking cover here and there, and firing in an uncoordinated, indiscriminate fashion. Stupid fishermen, he thought. His teams, all run by his own men or Pieraro, worked in concert and directed their fire onto specific targets.

"Blue barrels, aft," he called out, and his shooters sent a torrent of gunfire into the rear of the ship, where two men had just popped up and started firing at the bridge of the Aussie Rules. One of them flipped over backward as a dark fan of blood painted the white crane nearby. The other dropped straight down and didn't come back up.

Puffs of smoke appeared, and the occasional tracer zapped across, punching into the aluminum skin of the yacht with a terrible clang.

"Smokestack, aft," he called out again, sending a lethal stream of automaticweapons fire across the gulf between the ships, a distance, he noted, that was narrowing rapidly.

Armed with her trusted shotgun, Julianne crouched in the entrance to the bridge, watching Mr. Lee as he hunkered down and attempted to steer them away from the Viarsa with only limited power. He was also handicapped by having to keep his head below the line of the windows lest he get shot. Dozens of rounds had already smashed through the gla.s.s and wounded the Rhino, who was bleeding heavily from one arm, cursing up a storm, and puffing rapidly on a new cigar.

"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 a.s.sumed 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 m.u.f.fled 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 fibergla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sageway 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 st.i.tched 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 f.u.c.ked, 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 Guantanamo 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 Guantanamo 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 Chavez 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage for the civilian population out of Guantanamo 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 pa.s.sage 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 c.o.c.ksucker 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."

Salas turned pale.

"I ... I'll need to consult my superiors," he stammered.

"You do that."

With Tommy Franks back in the top job, Admiral Ritchie found that many of the political calls he'd recently had to make could be pa.s.sed up the line to his superior, a situation for which he was entirely grateful. He had even managed to get home for more than four hours and have a meal with his wife this week, after which they had spoken on the phone with Nancy, their daughter, for a few short but precious minutes. She was staying with a couple of college friends in Edinburgh, sharing an apartment rather than braving one of the American refugee camps in the south of England. It was a blessed relief to hear her voice again. It meant Ritchie could set aside personal worries and concentrate on his much greater professional ones.

He had his hands full coordinating refugee flows throughout the Pacific, while standing watch over the strategic situation in Asia, a fancy way of saying he was holding his breath and watching the collapse of China and the northeast Asian economies, hoping it wouldn't spill over into the wider world. His ability to do anything about it was disappearing fast. He simply couldn't sustain the Pacific fleet much longer, even with the help of allies such as j.a.pan, who were themselves teetering on the edge of collapse.

But Musso's gambit had dragged him right back into the center of a purely political question. Would he be a party to authorizing a strategic interdiction?

d.a.m.n the euphemisms. Call it what it was: a nuclear attack.