John Birmingham - Without warning

‘Rohan, Urvan,’ she went on, ‘when I give the call to repel boarders, you’ll have to down tools here and come help out on deck? You understand that?’

The Dutchmen were both in their thirties, veterans of North Sea oil-rig tenders, who’d been stranded in Ecuador by the collapse of the airline carrying them home from a sex tour of Bangkok. They nodded and tried to look resolute, but she could tell neither of them wanted to leave the relative security of the engine room.

‘All right, everyone. Get your weapons, then get back to work. If you can pull a miracle out of your arses we won’t have to fight.’

She moved from one handhold to the next, negotiating an exit with the engineers on her tail. They’d left the storm behind twelve hours ago, but the sea was still a vista of churning, mountainous waves. At least it would make any boarding difficult. When the Dutchmen headed aft to the gym-turned-armoury, she hurried as best she could up to the main lounge, where she found Shah and Birendra engaged in the interminable process of teaching her passengers how to kill. She held on to the doorway to steady herself and beckoned Shah over when she caught his eye. He moved with fluid grace across the pitching deck, barely needing to check himself against the movement of the ship.

‘Yes, Miss Julianne? The engines, they are down?’

‘Yeah, and I don’t think we’re getting them back any time soon. How’re your pupils going, Mr Shah?’

‘They do well, miss,’ the Gurkha replied. ‘Some of the Americans have guns at home. Moorhouse the banker hunts with a shotgun – I think we should arm him with one. The others should take the M16s. They are A2 models, quite reliable. We have seventeen of them and three thousand rounds of ammunition. I would suggest creating three fire teams. Pieraro can watch over one, two of my men will take the others. Volume of fire, Miss Julianne, that will be crucial.’

Jules had to agree. Even the Yanks, who may have had pistol club or hunting experience, would never have shot at another human being – and crucially, would never have been shot at. The decks were still heaving all over the place, and she knew from personal experience that firing from one unstable platform at another usually meant missing your target. Sergeant Shah was right: best to just throw up a wall of lead.

‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘Your guys and Miguel will need to run those teams, otherwise we’ll fire off all of our ammo and hit nothing but waves and sky. What about the crew and your chaps? What’s happening with them?’

Shah looked behind him to where Corporal Birendra was instructing the Mexican children in how to reload an M16 magazine. He was making a game of it, laughing and clapping along as they pushed the rounds in. Jules shook her head sadly. What a sight.

‘We have spent much time on this, Miss Julianne,’ the sergeant assured her. ‘I will lead the reaction force. We will have the heavy weapons, including the rocket launchers. Three RPG7s and eight warheads, deployed from the upper decks. Depending on how the enemy attempts to effect their boarding, we shall use them to interrupt the assault or interdict any heavy-weapon crews on the Viarsa 1.’

‘Fifi’s gonna be pissed off,’ replied Jules with a smile. ‘She loves rocket launchers.’

‘Miss Fifi will lead the fire team composed of crew members. She will also suppress any heavy-weapons fire from the Viarsa with her machine-gun. The crew I have divided up according to their levels of competence. She will take the best of them as a reserve, holding the pool deck and providing cover over the aft sections. If needed, they have been trained to split into two sections, one to hold the pool level and the other to be deployed as needed.’

‘Okay. Sounds like a plan,’ agreed Jules, slightly encouraged.

‘What about those kids, though? I’m really not comfortable having children in the thick of it.’

Shah shook his head, frowning gravely. ‘It is a bad business, Miss Julianne. But unavoidable. They cannot run away, not in this sea state, and they are very useful. Birendra has trained them well to load and to clear blockages. They know to keep their heads down. And Miss, remember too, they are not spoilt little brats – they are village children, from the edge of the desert. They have all worked from their earliest days, and their lives have been hard, sometimes violent. They will be scared, but I think they will endure the battle more calmly than some of the others.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I know what you’re talking about, Sergeant. I’m really worried about some of my bigger dilettantes just going to pieces.’

The deck dipped sharply as they slid over another crest. One of the kids that Birendra was teaching rolled himself into a ball and tumbled across the thick woollen carpet in the empty lounge, squealing with laughter.

‘Now roll back, roll back, little yeti!’ called out Birendra.

Jules had to admire his patience. She found the children a challenge and was more than happy to have as little to do with them as possible.

‘How long until we are intercepted?’ asked Shah.

‘Two to three hours, depending on how hard we can push the second engine. I don’t want to blow it too, though. If we get stuck without any propulsion at all, we’re royally buggered.’

‘Then I shall take all of the civilians outside for a live fire exercise,’ the Gurkha said. ‘It would be best if they hear the guns before the real shooting starts.’

‘Yes, it would be,’ agreed Jules. ‘Who knows, it might even put off our chasers.’

It didn’t, but the live fire did give her some hope and, she supposed, her charges too. Sergeant Shah gathered everyone on the boat deck at the stern and had them fire off three rounds. One individually; one in their fire teams; and one en masse. It was the latter that gave everyone some heart. Shah had assembled quite an armoury for the yacht and the roar of so many guns firing all at once was more than impressive – it was actually frightening. The youngest children, who would be having nothing to do with the fight, as agreed, were all herded inside during the exercise, but it was still loud enough to upset them. Quite a few of the adults, too, Julianne thought.

But when the single crack of thunder had dissipated on the strong ocean breeze, what remained were forty-one people, most of whom were grinning like fools.

‘Bring it on!’ yelled Fifi, leaping onto a diving locker and waving her ass at the small dot of the pursuing vessel. ‘You want some of this? Come and get it, baby!’

The younger members of the crew laughed and grinned, and some of the Mexican village boys began smacking their own behinds and crying out ‘Brinning on, si! Brinning on!’

‘Maybe we should be the pirates,’ said the Rhino, who stood beside Jules on the pool deck, above the display. He was wearing a side arm for the first time and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark aviator glasses. His face was flushed, but Jules couldn’t smell any rum on his breath. He was smoking, of course.

‘How long, Rhino?’

‘Less than an hour.’

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 2000-tonne former toothfish poacher, muscled through a seven-metre swell to put itself within a few hundred metres 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.