Without Warning (12 page)

The empty yacht—the crew had to be dead or “gone”—presented as a brilliant white blade on the deep blue of the Pacific. It almost hurt to look at the thing, so brightly did it gleam in the tropical sun. From the bridge it dropped through four decks before kissing the waterline, where he would have guessed it was maybe 230 or even 240 feet in length. A big twin-engine game fisher hanging from two cranes in a dedicated docking bay at the stern would have easily outsized the
Diamantina
all on its own. Instead it looked like a toy, which in a way it was. A rich man’s plaything. Pete could see other, slightly smaller vessels stowed away in the rear dock.

“It’s like a fucking amphibious assault ship for the go-go party crowd.” He whistled.

Not a soul moved anywhere on the open decks, and behind her the impossible, iridescent wall of coherent energy raised itself high into the heavens.

“You’re going to steal it, aren’t you?” said Jules in a resigned voice.

“No. I’m going to salvage her.” Pete grinned, his first real, sunny smile in hours. “Keep her safe from the sort of villainous rogues one meets around these parts. I’m sure if the owners ever make it back from the Twilight Zone there’ll be a more than generous reward for her return.”

Jules rolled her eyes. Fifi nodded uncertainly. Her eyes never left the horizon.

“I dunno, Pete. We’re coming up on that thing. We’re much closer than you thought was safe coupla hours back. It’s like it’s curving toward us or something.”

“Mr. Lee, could you bring us alongside her?” said Pete, ignoring Fifi’s quite reasonable point. Selective deafness was a useful skill he’d picked up from his mother.

The old Chinese pirate grinned and began to swing their helm over on a converging curse with the slow, aimless track of the yacht. As they drew closer Pete noted the name on the stern.
The Aussie Rules.

He whistled, both at the unexpected connection with home, and the very strong feeling that he knew this boat from somewhere. It was maddening though, he couldn’t remember where. There was little time to ponder the mystery, as he busied himself with preparations for the boarding. Truth was, he was no happier than Fifi about their proximity to the vast standing wave that filled the northern sky, but if his instincts played out, this baby might be the answer to their prayers. It could be that the superyacht was too hot to hold on to even with the world collapsing around his ears, but she’d be packed to the gunnels with all sorts of goodies they could trade for jewels or gold. He had a feeling that the world’s definition of wealth was going to get back to basics very quickly.

Still, he was no happier than Fifi about their proximity to the vast standing wave that filled the northern sky.

“Steady as she goes, Mr. Lee. Steady now.”

Over the next five minutes Lee brought the
Diamantina
alongside the immense bulk of the yacht. Even with the sun high overhead, they sailed in the shade of the much larger vessel. Lee matched their speed to that of their quarry, and then slowly dialed down the engines, slipping back toward the docking bay at the vessel’s stern. Pete could tell that the yacht had been well cared for. Anyone who could afford to buy such a magnificent craft could obviously afford to lavish attention on her. Her hull was free of any buildup below the wa-terline. The portholes were all crystal clear, the glass freshly cleaned, possibly even this morning. As they drew level with the docking bay, Lee edged their speed back up again, holding position perfectly, just a foot away. Pete gave him a nod and a wink before stepping off. The little Chinaman stood at the wheel, as though organically connected to the
Diamantina
through it. He didn’t move much, but when he did it was in perfect sync with the swell, the light chop, and the grosser, sluggish movement of the other vessel.

“We cool?” asked Pete.

Fifi and Jules, both of them back in their combat rigs, agreed in turn.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s fuck this cat.”

Lady Julianne Balwyn was not, at first blush, the sort of fabulous creature one might expect to find gracing one of England’s older landed families. She had the bearing, the soft beauty, and the polished vowels of a woman whose
family had enjoyed hundreds of years of privilege and favor. But in her case, as with her father, something had gone wrong. Lord Balwyn, a spectacular wastrel and confidence man, had told her more than once that Sir Francis Drake had added his seed to the Balwyn family line, accounting for the freebooters and blackguards who regularly popped up in their history, and whether it was true or not—Jules was smart enough to take
everything
her father said with a mountain of salt—it was undeniable that in the last Lord Balwyn’s eldest daughter, the family’s propensity for throwing up the occasional black sheep had reached a very particular zenith.

As she cross-decked from the
Diamantina
to the superyacht, however, she found herself once again grateful to her father for instilling in her such a bleak, pragmatic, Nietzschean view of humanity. While Pete, their putative leader, was lost in an uncontrolled moment of fanboy worship, Jules kept her head down and her poo in one sock.

A favorite saying of Daddy’s.

“Holy shit,” cried Pete. “You know what, I really think this
is
Greg Norman’s yacht.”

“Who?” asked Fifi.

“You know,” said Pete, who was now
very
excited. “The golfer? The Great White Shark? A terrible fuckin’ choker, actually, but a great businessman. I think he designed a lot of golf courses when he wasn’t losing PGA playoffs. Talk about money for nothing and your chicks for free. Although, you know, your lady golfers, there’s a reason those chicks are free. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is his yacht. Or was.”

“You think so?” Jules deadpanned, as they stood by a large swimming pool, inlaid with a stylized shark motif. She held a solid gold putter in one hand and in the other a white straw hat, both sporting the same cartoon outline of a great white.

“Greg who?” asked Fifi.

Pete shook his head despairingly.

“If it ain’t NASCAR it just ain’t real for you, is it, sweetheart?”

“What’s up with NASCAR?”

Before Pete could answer, Jules cut him off, snapping her fingers.

“Excuse me, people? End of the world over here? Greg Norman’s yacht getting all
Marie Celeste
on us? Let’s maintain our focus, shall we?”

“Sorry,” said Pete. “It’s just, you know, it’s
the Shark,
baby!”

“Stupid fucking game anyway,” muttered Fifi. “Buncha fat-ass white guys in ugly pants, driving around in those faggy little carts …”

“Fifi.” Jules’s voice took on a warning edge. She was fond of her white-trash friend, but managing the bimbo eruptions was a full-time job.

“Got it,
got it,” said Fifi. “Maintaining focus.”

“Come on, let’s have a little look-see,” said Jules. She slipped her carbine over one shoulder and took out a handgun, a Beretta Px4, even though she wasn’t expecting to find anyone on board. They’d been calling out since boarding, but it had the same feeling as knocking on the door of an empty house. She knew they were alone. The ever-suspicious Fifi, however, kept a sawed-off shotgun to hand with a shell racked in the tube. Her thumb stroked the safety, ready to flick it off at the slightest provocation.

They stood by the pool, located on the second of four upper decks, the sun glinting fiercely off the water as it slowly sloshed around with the gentle motion of the boat. The tip of the
Diamantina
‘s mainmast rolled through a small arc a few meters away. By leaning over the polished rail, Jules could see the top of Mr. Lee’s bald head a long way below. The pool looked to be about ten meters long, with four round black stools peeping above the waterline at the far end, where they abutted a full bar with its own beer taps and all the fixings for a high-end cocktail party. A large plate of fruit salad, wilted in the heat, lay untouched in the center of the polished hardwood bar top. White padded cushions lay along both sides of the pool, with pillows scattered here and there. She could read Pete like a cheap novel and knew that it was all he could do to resist diving in and asking the girls to set him up a margarita. To move things along she strode forward, taking the port-side companionway.

“Hello,”
she called out. “Is anyone on board? Do you need help?”

“Oh, fuck!” Fifi cried out. “Oh, gross me out!”

Jules spun around, but no obvious threat had emerged from anywhere. Rather, Fifi was dancing about as if she’d trodden in something nasty.

Which she had.

“Oh, goddamn! This is worse than rendered hog fat.”

“What is it?” asked Jules, as she hurried over, just one step behind Pete.

“Gawd, that is nasty,” he said, suddenly pulling up.

Before them on the deck was a pile of burned clothes out of which had leaked a couple of gallons of the vilest-looking green-black substance Jules had ever seen.

“What is it?” shrieked Fifi, who was losing it, badly.

“I think it might have been the shark,” muttered Pete, rubbing at his face. He gingerly toed a straw hat away from the mess. “Ugh. Darlin’, I really think you ought to throw those shoes of yours over the side.”

Fifi shook her head, disgust acid-etched into her features.

“Man, I don’t wanna touch that gunk. What is it?”

Jules leaned over and peered at the toxic ooze.

“I think Pete’s right,” she said. “I think it used to be someone.”

“What happened to them?” asked Fifi with a quavering voice.

The only answer was the hiss of the Pacific sliding past the hull a long way below them.

“How many of those things are there?” she asked, tiptoeing over to the gunwale and using a pistol to ease off her deck shoes.

“Careful you don’t shoot yourself in the foot,” warned Pete.

She shuddered.

“Couldn’t be no worse than getting this crap on me. What if it’s like the Blob? What if I turn into that… stuff?”

Jules could clearly hear the approaching edge of hysteria in her friend’s voice.

She strode over, put a steadying hand on Fifi’s shoulder, reached down, and pulled off the shoe she’d been trying to dislodge, before tossing it into the sea. Some of the oozing substance ended up on her hand, but she wiped that off on her shirt.

“It’s gross. But it’s not the Blob,” she said. “We’ll have to clean up if they’re all like this. It’ll be a devilish health hazard otherwise. What do you think, Pete? How many would have been on board?”

The Australian shrugged. “Dunno, sweetheart. At a guess, a boat this size, well over a dozen, maybe even twenty, but some of them would have been cooks, bartenders, cleaners, and so on. Perhaps even a caddy. There’ll be a crew manifest somewhere.”

“Do you think he was on it, you know, when they got zapped?” she asked, indicating the straw hat with a nod.

Pete stared at the obscene mess on the polished deck. He looked very grim.

“The Shark? I dunno. Could have been. Unless he lent it out to someone. Or ran charters. I don’t think he did, though. I read somewhere that he kept this baby very much to himself.”

It did raise other, more pressing questions in Jules’s mind. If it was the golfer’s yacht—and the mess in front of them wasn’t him—then he was definitely going to want it back. And if they had to make a run Down Under, to put some serious distance between themselves and whatever had happened to the U.S., there’d be no hiding this yacht anywhere. It
would
be noticed.

“I suppose we’d best have a look around then,” she said. “Fifi, maybe you could find a pair of shoes somewhere.”

Fifi nodded, looking sickly.

They moved farther up toward the bow.

Another pile of clothes, a uniform belonging a crew member, lay at the bottom of the steps up to the next deck, oozing the same putrescent substance.

“Man, I am so not looking forward to swabbing that up,” muttered Pete.

“Maybe we should blow this off,” suggested Fifi. “I really don’t dig this at all, Pete. It’s freaking me out. You know this is the bit in the movie where you’re sitting there yelling at the screen,
‘Get off the boat, you fucking dumb-asses!’ “

Jules and Pete both ignored her, stepping through a doorway.

A cool curtain of chilled air washed over them. The yacht’s climate-control system was obviously unaffected by the loss of the crew. It kept the interior of the boat at a perfect twenty-one degrees Celsius. A small readout just inside the hatch confirmed the fact.

Jules whistled in appreciation.

The shock of cold air hadn’t pulled her up short. It was the full-blown opulence of the interior fit-out. Unlike the
Diamantina,
where you could never forget that you were on a small boat, Norman’s yacht seemed designed to provide the experience of stepping into a grand European hotel at sea. Polished wood paneling glowed with a soft red warmth. Brass gleamed. Thick woolen carpets covered the floor. As she got over the surprise and moved on, Jules briefly caught sight of huge staterooms, lavishly furnished with antique tables and cabinets and massive, overstuffed armchairs. Oil paintings hung from the walls wherever they turned. Here a bush scene—from Australia, she presumed. There, an enormous portrait of four white dogs. A grand staircase connected the decks above and below them, again looking as though it would not be out of place in a French palace or grand Italian villa.

Jules counted another seven piles of clothes and organic matter as they explored.

The surroundings seemed to overwhelm Fifi, who momentarily forgot her fear and disgust.

“Man, this is like a hotel or something,” she said. “A real hotel, too. Not just a Motel 6. This is more like a Holiday Inn.”

“In here,” said Jules, leading them into a private cinema where two rows of plush royal-blue lounges faced a giant wide-screen TV. She thanked God there were no putrescent rag piles in here.

“Pete, do you think you could work some video magic?”

“Mate, there’s gotta be more than five hundred channels on this thing,” he said, waving a black plastic remote control at the screen. Immediately, the sound came booming up, making them all jump.