Without Warning (38 page)

He held up an olive-drab container with a white plastic slide top on it by way of explanation. Kipper grunted, asking for a mug of black, no sugar.

“Damn, that’s hard core,” said McCutcheon. “You sure you’ve never been in the service?”

Kipper nodded grumpily. “I’m certain. People shouting at me just pisses me off.”

“Well, fair enough then. You gotta love the shouting, or it’s just not the life for you. How’s your family, by the way? They pulling through okay, got enough supplies?”

Kipper shook his head in exasperation.

“Look, what the fuck is this? I have a major disaster on my hands. Eighteen people dead. And you call me in here to make fucking small talk.”

The major walked over to the door and carefully closed it, cutting off the growing hubbub from the corridor outside.

General Blackstone spoke up as he did so.

“The last time I checked,” he said, “we had a lot more than eighteen dead.
When last I checked, our casualty count was well over three hundred million, Mr. Kipper. So I have some sour news for you, sir. Get over this morning. It was a minor fuckup. There will be more of them.”

“A minor …”

“That’s right. And there will be more of them. More death. More chaos. Get used to it. And get used to dealing with it. Because if we don’t deal, it’s game over here. In this city. Everywhere.”

Kipper waved away the cup of coffee McCutcheon held out.

“What are you talking about? If this morning was your idea of dealing with things, then yeah, we’re fucked.”

“Look, this is kinda delicate,” said the air force man, taking a perch on the edge of the desk, where he could look down on Kipper. “We’ve got a bit of a problem with the council, I’m afraid.”

Kipper shrugged. He’d wondered how on earth the military was going to go on working so closely with a group of people who were almost their antithesis. “Well, apart from this morning, things do seem to be getting done,” he offered. “All my department’s requests are going straight through the Special Means Committee and getting approved without any questions. What’s the problem?”

McCutcheon sort of whistled inward, which Kipper recognized as the universal sign of bad news coming.

“Well, the thing is, we don’t really have a Special Means Committee,” he confessed.

“What?” asked Kipper, completely dumbfounded.

Blackstone leaned forward.

“I had them arrested three days ago.”

McCutcheon actually looked embarrassed for a second.

“Yeah. And we’ve been kinda winging it ever since.”

The roadblock was almost professional: four old cars arranged in a herringbone pattern that forced any oncoming traffic to slow to a crawl as it negotiated a winding course through the obstruction. A dozen armed men, locals by the look of them, lounged on the hoods and inside the vehicles, passing around bottles of no-name tequila and Dos Equis lager, and smoking an assortment of cigarettes and reefer.

“We could take that left,” suggested Fifi, pointing to a narrow side street, which remained open to traffic, just before the roadblock.

“No,” said Shah without hesitation. “Too narrow. Nowhere to go. And they have weapons on the roofline and windows above. We must reverse immediately or go through.”

“Drive on,” said Jules. “But slowly. Don’t spook them. They’re probably just shaking down the
turistas.
I’m sure we can talk them around to leaving us be.”

She lifted the dark gray Franchi SPAS-12 autoshotgun from the improvised gun rack Shah had installed on the dashboard of the Jeep Cherokee, and jacked a round into the chamber. Behind the wheel Sergeant Shah— they’d all taken to calling him that now—slowed the vehicle and made sure
his own weapons cache, a pair of MP5s, was close to hand. In the backseat Thapa and Fifi readied themselves.

They had almost managed to drive right up to the edge of Acapulco Diamante, the most exclusive tourist enclave in the city, but the roadblock brought them to a halt a couple of hundred meters from the start of the private resorts and clubs. Jules had been expecting trouble even earlier, which was why the jeep was equipped with so much firepower. Until now, however, the sight of a few gun barrels lazily produced out of the windows had been enough to negotiate passage through the town, where most of the violence they encountered was still small-scale and anarchic.

“Sergeant Shah, if you wouldn’t mind, I think Fifi and I will handle the negotiations. A prominent display of your willingness to kill anybody who interferes with us would help, of course.”

“Of course, Miss Julianne.”

The former noncom brought them to a halt at least twenty-five meters from the blockade. A lot of the men up ahead were carrying rusty revolvers and forty-fives, which were unlikely to hit anything they aimed at more than ten meters away. And most of them appeared to be drunk or stoned, which further called into doubt their chances of deliberately targeting anybody. There was a lot to be said for volume of fire, though, and they had plenty of that to go around.

Jules slipped a pair of sunglasses down over her eyes and stepped out of the jeep, fitting a radio headset. Fifi emerged behind her, already wearing her commo gear, the same sets they’d used back on the
Rules.
Immediately the wolf whistles and catcalls began. It was almost comical, really. It was a hot, bright day and both women were dressed in shorts and hiking boots. Jules wore a Level III-A armored vest over a white T-shirt, but Fifi had only a sleeveless checked L. L. Bean to protect her. She’d knotted it, exposing a long expanse of tanned, finely muscled midriff, and most of the would-be desperadoes were torn between which of the
chiquitas
they wanted to objectify and harass the most.

One guy stood out from the rest, simply because he didn’t ogle them or grab his crotch. He just stared cold and hard at the four gunned-up intruders.

“That’d be our guy,” Jules whispered into the mike. “He’s mine.”

“Gotcha,” said Fifi, who took her much-loved Russian PKM from Thapa at that moment. Jules was almost certain she felt the ambient temperature drop as her blood began to run cold.

“What’s happening back at the car?”

“Both Shah and Thapa are good to go, if they have to.”

“Are they being obvious about it?”

“Yup.”

“Excellent
and…
Good morning,
señor.
This is your turf now, I suppose?”

Jules favored the gang leader with the full wattage of her smile, holding the shotgun so as to squeeze just a little more cleavage up into his face.

“You presume I speak English, no?”

“You look like an intelligent, educated man. Well-traveled and worldly-wise. It’s a reasonable assumption.” She beamed at him. “Especially when you use big words like ‘presume.’ “

In fact he looked like the worst sort of bad news. Sober and mean and not likely to be sweet-talked or bullshitted into anything he didn’t fully intend to do.

“I am the block
capitán
here now,” he informed her. “I coordinate security for the Mayan and Fairmont resorts.”

You mean you’re shaking them down for protection,
she thought.

“Well, that’s excellent,” said Jules. “Because that is where we are headed this morning. So if you’d like to provide an escort for me and my friend here …”

Fifi winked and grinned, while never taking her finger off the trigger of the PK.

“Howdy,
Capitán.
“

“… we’ll be on our way,” Jules continued. “We have business up there, Mr…. ?”

“What business?”

He was instantly on guard, alive to the possibility that somebody might trespass on his turf. She wondered about his backstory. He seemed too smart for a street thug, and yet he’d gathered a vintage crop of them around him. There seemed no obvious structure to his crew, no settled hierarchy of lieutenants or enforcers. He might be telling the truth about them providing a form of security to the resorts. After all, Shah and his men had hired out to do just that to pay for their former lodgings, and of course they were now doing the same for her.

“There are some American citizens in the resorts,” she improvised. “Their government has arranged evacuation and we’re providing …”

“They have no government,” he cut in. “It is gone.”

“Not all of it.” She smiled disarmingly. “Not the part with all of the guns and tanks and stuff. You know. The military. There’s a good many of them
still hanging around, and if you can still get a news service you’ll see that they’re organizing safe passage for any U.S. citizen who wants it. We’re just part of that service. We’re … contractors.”

She shifted the Franchi, a big, heavy-hitting piece of artillery, just to remind him of his proximity to it.

She dropped her voice, however, so that only she and the
capitán
could hear.

“Let me guess what’s happening here,
puta …
“

Jules noted the instant flush of anger to his face. She could tell he wanted to bitch-slap her for that, but the shotgun stayed his hand.

“You probably had a couple of your crew back there take a few potshots at some of the guests. Maybe they roughed up a gringo or two. And then you magically appeared to offer your services to preserve them from the attentions of such dreadful ruffians. Of course, a premium service like you’re providing doesn’t come cheap. There’s all the men to pay, the equipment to maintain, and the smokes and the beers and the three-dollar whores don’t come cheap, do they? Well, except for the whores. And you plan on, what, holding them here until you’ve bled them dry? Is that right?”

A quiet smile was all the reply she received. Jules stepped in a little closer. Spoke a little more softly.

“You’re obviously the brains of this operation. You look about a hundred times smarter than anybody here. What were you last week? A cop, a soldier, or something?”

He didn’t answer, but then he didn’t smack her down either. He was listening.

“So think about this, Professor. Think about how much more it costs you to buy a cup of coffee, or a beer, or a taco, than it did two days ago. Think about how the money you’ve been taking off these fat, white fools is worth less every day than the one before. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you? Because you’re the smart one here.”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Think about how
quickly
that’s happening. Ask yourself how long it’s going to be before the money they have in there—” Jules motioned behind him, toward the protected enclave “—isn’t good for anything but wiping your arse. How long will that be? Another week? Maybe two? Their money is going to be worthless a long time before you relieve them of it.”

She could see that she’d struck a nerve; now she had to move quickly, before he’d made the logical connection and turned his guns around on the resorts. She moved right into his personal space now, but not in a threatening
way. He had a good two or three inches of height on her, and she used it by turning her face up toward his and widening her eyes just a little more.

“This city is falling to pieces. You’re part of that, aren’t you? You know how it’s going to be here very soon and you’re setting yourself up as a new power. But you know what, it’s not just you. We drove in here this morning. Some places are burning. Some looted. Saw a couple of bodies on the streets here and there. Saw plenty of guys like you, too. The marina where my boat’s tied up, they’ve hired some muscle who would take these faggots of yours down in less than a minute. That’s not meant to be insulting. They’re just better equipped, better trained, better paid, too, I’d guess. Looks like a lot of ex-military types down the marina. Like my Mr. Shah and his friend back there.”

The
capitán
flicked a glance back at the jeep where the two Gurkhas stood, squat and utterly impassive. Between them they were more heavily armed than his entire crew. They fairly bristled with automatic weaponry, and Thapa even sported a kukri at one hip.

Jules was almost whispering now, softly and gently, like an old lover.

“Not many ex-mil types here though, are there,
Capitán?
Just you, really. You’re the only true pro here, which means you know what’ll happen if my guys back there open up on you. I’ll get shot, almost certainly. Just because I’m standing so close to you. My friend Fifi, with that enormous Russian machine gun, she’ll probably make it to cover because she’ll put out enough fire to make sure nobody draws a bead on her. And Shah and Thapa, well, look at them. They’re cold motherfuckers. They’ll do the job. But your guys … well … I think we both know what’ll happen when thousands of rounds of ammunition start heading toward them, don’t we? So let’s not even go there. Let’s see if we can work something out between us, you and me, so that everyone’s a winner. Perhaps you could start by telling me your name.”

“Miguel Pieraro,” he said quietly. “I am not police, no. I was vaquero. A cowboy … a boss of cowboys.” His shoulders straightened with real pride. “But that was before. I worked in the north, by the border. I worked for an American cattleman, with large herds below the Rio Grande. I ran his business there. He supplied McDonald’s.”