John Birmingham - Without warning

‘By us or by them, sir?’

‘Either.’

‘Negative, sir. I’ve not even had a chance to think about it,’ Tusk admitted.

‘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 for a ceasefire. We will try to do the same at our end. In the meantime, until you receive such a ceasefire, resist with maximum effort. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Musso replied. 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…’ Franks paused for a moment. ‘If you go under, we will exact 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?’

Okay, I’m not the only one playing to the media then … ‘I do, sir,’ he replied.

‘Carry on, Tusk. Franks out.’

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

‘We’ve lost the airfield, General,’ she said.

That meant Susie Pileggi was probably dead, Musso realised. He nodded and hurried over to a display that carried security-cam vision of the airstrip area. He could see that the tracer fire across the bay had flickered out now. The burning hulks of civilian and military aircraft littered the runway. On a separate display, the Venezuelans’ armoured column was stalled out, harassed by ambushes set up by Gunnery Sergeant Price’s security teams.

Tusk 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 she was clenching her teeth, willing the 228-feet super-yacht over the moving ridge of black, storm-tossed sea water. 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?’ Jules asked.

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 were 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 I couldn’t find it in the library, like you said, and -’

Julianne silenced him with a warning look.

‘Alrighty then,’ he said, conceding the point. ‘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 never have admitted 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 everybody 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 pick-up crew, and even though they’d been shot at half-a-dozen times so far, the two Northern Europeans 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 travellers’ hostel. Nobody but Mr Lee and herself seemed to be too 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 she’d been jammed into and tried to roll out of the bridge and through to the companion-way in synch with the movements of the yacht. With seas running at ten metres and 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 to be more difficult in extreme weather than the cramped conditions she’d grown used to on Pete’s little yacht. It was so much bigger here that the chances of being thrown clear across an open area by a particularly bad wave were significantly higher. As she proceeded towards the media centre, 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 oceans.

Having finally reached her destination after a trek that took three minutes instead of the usual one, Jules launched herself through the door and into the plush confines of the media room with a real sense of deliverance. She found Shah, Fifi and Pieraro there, all of them wedged deeply into the soft blue armchairs, talking amongst 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 a lone vessel occasionally popped out – the giant trawler Viarsa 1, according to the Rhino, a toothfish poacher turned pirate raider.

‘How’s it goin’, Julesy?’ asked Fifi.

‘Spiffing. 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, harboured up or anchored on the leeside of an island wherever they could, and ridden them out. Only once or twice during their time together 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 people 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.’