Without Warning (70 page)

“Pearl is up, sir,” a marine private said, holding up a phone. “A lot of static.”

Musso thanked the private and took the phone. “General Musso.”

“Franks, this line secure?”

Musso shook his head. “I sorely doubt it. It’s probably trailing across one of the sat news channels as we speak, sir.”

He looked around the command bunker. Some of the screens were running live feeds from Venezuelan TV. The static on the phone connection grew in intensity. Musso shook the phone, even though he knew it didn’t do any good. It made him feel better. “Say again, sir?”

“As a matter of fact, TVes is running us live, Musso. Bastards. What is your status?”

Musso rubbed his forehead and thought for a moment. If they were live on TVes, this conversation was going out to the world. He might be able to use this to his advantage. He couched his next words very carefully, trying to remember the lessons he was taught at Charm School when he received his first star.

“Enemy forces are aggressively targeting civilian refugees at my position, sir,” Musso said. “I’ve got multiple civilian vessels burning in the bay or sinking. We lost a C-5 Galaxy as it tried it take off. My air liaison officer tells me more than two hundred U.S. civilians were on board. We’re probably looking at upward of a thousand civilian casualties minimum, perhaps more. My own casualties are climbing as well.”

“Any attempt to offer a cease-fire?” Franks asked. “To mitigate civilian casualties.”

Musso blinked. Every fiber in his soul screamed at him to fight it out, resist to the last, make the enemy pay, but the civilians were his priority. They were his boss, his reason for being in the first place.

“By us or by them, sir?”

“Either.”

“Negative, sir. I’ve not even had a chance to think about it,” Musso said.

“The civilians need to be your top priority, General Musso,” said Franks. “I’m ordering you to attempt to contact the enemy commander to seek terms of a cease-fire. We will try to do the same on our end. In the meantime, until you receive such a cease-fire, should it be forthcoming, resist with maximum effort. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Musso said. What other choice did he have if the Venezuelans weren’t willing to accept terms? Even though he’d moved underground, he could still hear a savage battle chewing up the base above him.

“Also know this.” Frank paused for a moment. “If you go under, we will extract retribution from the Venezuelans at a time and place of our own
choosing. We will make this night very expensive for them. Do you understand, General Musso?”

I’m not the only one playing to the media, then,
Musso realized. “I do, sir.”

“Carry on. Franks out.”

Musso hung up the phone and found Lieutenant McCurry in front of him.

“We’ve lost the airfield, General,” he said.

That meant Pileggi was probably dead. He nodded and hurried over to a display carrying security-cam vision of the area. He could see that the tracer fire at the field across the bay had flickered out. The burning hulks of civilian and military aircraft littered the runway.

On a separate display, the armored column was stalled out, harassed by ambushes set up by Gunny Sergeant Price’s security teams. Musso felt like he was falling into a deep well, an abyss of despair that seemed to know no end. From the depths of this descent, he heard himself speak the words. They sounded faint and weak to his ears.

“We need to find a white sheet.”

Mr. Lee heaved on the wheel and took
the Aussie Rules
up the face of the giant wave at about forty degrees. Jules held on, wedging herself into a corner of the bridge, unaware that she was clenching her teeth, willing the superyacht over the moving ridge of black, storm-tossed seawater. A force-eleven storm raged outside, reducing visibility to near zero as it hurled sheets of rain and ocean spume at the thick glass windows of the wheelhouse. Lightning strobed, followed almost immediately by the crash of thunder as Lee took them over the crest and down the other side, dropping so precipitously that Julianne had to hold on to the grab bars even more tightly to avoid having her head smashed into the ceiling.

“Nice work, Mr. Lee,” she called out over the uproar.

The old Chinese helmsman did not reply, remaining steadfastly focused on trying to feel the heaving ocean beneath their keel.

“Radar, how we doing? Have we lost those cheeky fuckers yet?” she called out. The Rhino, who had strapped himself into his chair, gave her a ready thumbs-up and raised his voice over the shrieking of the storm, speaking around the newly lit cigar that was fugging up the air in the bridge.

“Hard to tell, Skipper, but I’d bet two inches of horn that they’re losing contact. Slow but sure. Last time I had a good fix it looked like they’re having real fucking problems with the storm. We had about eighteen nautical miles on them.”

“But they weren’t breaking off pursuit?”

“Afraid not, no, ma’am. Oh, and Boss Jules, is this a good time to ask about the location of the humidor? It’s just that I couldn’t find it in the library like you said and …”

Julianne silenced him with a warning look.

“Alrighty then,” he hurried on. “We’ll sort that out later.”

The ship suddenly tilted precipitously, as a rogue wave took them abeam and tried to roll the vessel over. Lee cursed in Mandarin and spun the wheel again, calling for more power. Jules would not admit it, but her heart felt as though it might burst out of her rib cage. She took a deep, difficult breath and announced as calmly as she could, “I’m going to go check on everyone down below. Shout out if there’s any change at all, for better or worse. Good work, everyone. We’ll outrun these blaggers yet.”

Lee didn’t reply or even turn his head, so fiercely was he concentrating. He stood on the balls of his bare feet, knees flexing to meet the rise and fall of the deck, eyes seemingly unfocused, simply lost somewhere out in the dark and violence of the storm. The Rhino, by way of contrast, looked quietly pleased with himself. The bridge crew, Dietmar the navigator and Lars, the Norwegian backpacker turned first mate of the
Aussie Rules,
both grinned like stupid dogs given a pat on the head. They were among the younger members of her pickup crew, and even though they’d been shot at half a dozen times so far, they still seemed to think it was all just insane fun, a great story they couldn’t wait to tell all the Helgas and Anyas at their next travelers’ lodge. Nobody but Lee and herself seemed to be much bothered by any of it. Jules wondered how they’d be feeling if things turned bloody and personal in a few days, should the Peruvians get close enough to board. The
Rules
enjoyed a speed advantage of a few knots and had put some good distance between them, but they were hanging on doggedly.

She clawed her way out of the corner into which she’d been jammed and tried to roll out of the bridge and into the companionway, all in sync with the movements of the yacht. With seas running at ten meters, whipped up into a frenzy by sixty-knot winds, her progress was slow and extremely hazardous. She found the conventional stairwells and wide corridors of the
Aussie Rules
more difficult in extreme weather than the cramped conditions she’d grown used to on Pete’s little yacht. It was so much bigger that the chances of being thrown clear across a room or hallway by a particularly bad wave were significantly
higher. As she proceeded toward the media center, she climbed up a steep, pitching rise, levitated into the air, and crashed back onto a plunging deck as Lee took them through another boiling ravine on the surface of the southern ocean.

Finally reaching her destination after a trek that took five minutes instead of the usual one, Jules launched herself through the door into the plush confines of the media room with a real sense of deliverance. She found Shah, Fifi, and Miguel there, all of them wedged deeply into the soft blue armchairs, talking among themselves, if somewhat volubly over the sound of the storm. The big screen was lit up with a feed from the Rhino’s radar, showing a highly degraded image on which one sole vessel occasionally popped out, the giant trawler
Viarsa 1,
a toothfish poacher turned pirate raider.

“How’s it goin’?” asked Fifi.

“Spiffing,” said Jules. “They’re holding on. I was really hoping we’d lose them in the storm, but Rhino says not. They’re used to these conditions and worse. We’re not.”

“No,” Fifi agreed. They really weren’t. On
the Diamantina
they’d always run from big storms, or harbored up or anchored on the lee side of an island wherever they could, and ridden them out. Only once or twice had Pete been caught out in open seas when a big blow started up, and that had been nothing like this.

“Miguel. How’re your guys hanging on?” she asked. “They wouldn’t see a lot of ocean storms back in the village, I’d imagine.”

The vaquero, whose face was a study in granite stoicism, shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Very sick, Miss Julianne. The children are frightened. They are all frightened, but only the children admit so.”

Jules saw the
Viarsa
appear as an indistinct, faraway blip on the big screen. It must have climbed a crest at the same time as the
Rules,
and been painted by the radar. She wondered if there was somebody on the other vessel, hunched over a screen, hanging on for a fleeting glimpse of them through the fury of the storm. There had to be. Otherwise they’d have lost them already.

“As soon as the weather calms down enough to get them out of their bunks I want you and Shah to start training everyone again. And the Yanks, too. Just the basics, as we discussed. Aiming, firing, reloading, clearing jams. Over and over and over with every minute we have. These bastards may never get within a bee’s willy of us, but if they do, I want to kick them so hard that their goolies pop out of their eye sockets.”

“They will be fine, Miss Julianne,” Shah assured her. “They did very well in their lessons before the storm. They understand what is required. And
what will happen to them if the pirates get control. They will fight. All of them. Even the children if you let them.”

She looked across at Miguel. Deep hollows under his eyes gave him a ghoulish appearance in the dim light of the room. The ship plunged and rolled again, forcing him to grab the arms of his deep, padded chair with white knuckles that stood out starkly against the blue fabric.

“I have discussed this with my wife and the old ones,” he said. “We have agreed that only the very youngest will go with Ana and one of the crew in the big launch if the worst happens. The others will carry ammunition and if they can hold a weapon, they may fire it, too.”

It was hard to be certain in the half-light, but she thought he might have been on the verge of tears.

“My daughters, they will fight,” he said. “They must. Better for them to die quickly than to live out their years as a slave to some stinking Peruvian
cabron.
“

“Miguel,” said Jules, as softly as she could and still be heard. “I promised you safe passage for your family. The girls do not have to fight. If the
Viarsa
gets close enough we can put them in the sports fisher with Lars or Dietmar and Granna Ana. They would outrun any pursuit.”

Miguel smiled sadly.

“And then what, Miss Julianne? How far are we from safe land? They would not survive a storm like this, and they would be heading into the weather. I told you I would hold you responsible for their safety, but I do not hold you responsible for this. You are not pursuing us. You did not bring the storm out of the skies.”

Shah clapped his hands together, a thunderous sound.

“Enough of this talk! This will defeat us as surely as any man. How many of these monkeys have we seen off these last weeks? They are desperate, foolish fishermen playing at pirates. Let me tell you what will happen if they should come alongside us.
We
will cut
them
down and take their stores for our own.”

“Hooah!” cried Fifi, grinning hugely. “That’s the spirit, mountain man!”

Julianne braced her back against one arm of her chair and her feet against the other as the
Rules
began another tumbling ride down a foaming summit. She glanced at the screen to see if they’d lost radar contact with the
Viarsa,
but it wasn’t onscreen. It must have been hidden in some shifting valley of water at that moment. The seas were large enough to tower over both vessels at times, hiding them from each other.

“Okay,” sighed Jules. “Shah’s right. If you’ll all excuse me, I’d best get on with my King Henry routine.”

“I am sorry, Miss Julianne?” said Miguel.

“A little Shakespeare, darling. Benefits of what classical education I received before Daddy pissed away his ill-gotten gains and all of the family silver. ‘For forth he goes and visits all his host… Upon his royal face there is no note, how dread an army hath enrounded him.’ “

The Mexican was an intelligent man, but she could see that she’d lost him.

“Don’t bother none about her, Miguel,” said Fifi with good humor. “She gets all thinky and stuff sometimes. Your girls, they’ll be fine. I will personally take apart any motherfucker who tries to interfere with them.”