John Birmingham - Without warning

A grappling hook clanged down in front of her and bit deeply into the fibreglass walls of the gunnel. She didn’t stop to look, instead whipping out her machete and slamming the weapon down on the line as she passed. An ululating scream fell away into the churning maelstrom and Jules moved on to where she could hear the bark of automatic weapons starting up.

She found the two Gurkhas, Sharma and Thapa, taking cover behind a couple of jet skis and engaging at least three boarders who’d leapt across and hidden themselves behind one of the smaller runabouts. ‘Coming up behind,’ she cried out over the savage din.

‘Please cover us from behind,’ Thapa yelled, and Jules dropped low, aiming her shotgun back up the exposed passageway along which she had just run.

Less than two seconds later a man swung over the rail and dropped to the deck. She registered him as young, dark and rake-thin; he was wearing cut-off (or possibly rotted) denim shorts and his naked torso was covered in swirling, amateurish tattoos. Jules cut him down with one blast from the shotgun, tearing a football-sized chunk of meat from his stomach and rib cage.

Behind her, she heard the Gurkhas scream something, but could not turn – as another man dropped to the deck beside his fallen mate. The Rules pitched over, and before she could shoot him, he tumbled back into the sea with a terrified scream.

A quick look over her shoulder, and she saw a chromatic, disordered flicker of scenes. Thapa and Sharma leaping at the intruders with kukri daggers drawn. A flash of silver blade. Gouts of blood. A shot, and Thapa flying backwards and slamming into the side of the sport fisher.

Then movement in front of her again – two of them this time. The yacht plunged and her shot went high and wild. Their guns cracked and spat at her.

She racked another round into the shotty and squeezed the trigger again. The first man flew backwards as she fired twice without success. The dead man’s body shielded his mate. She was going to run out of ammunition before she finished him.

A thunderclap and a spray of wet, organic matter.

Both pirates dropped to the deck.

Jules blinked and saw Denby Moorhouse, the banker, stick his head out of a hatchway and look her way. His grin was feral and he pumped his fist twice. ‘Yessss!’

She flinched as bullets stitched up the hatchway and Moorhouse disappeared.

Fifi had lost two of her crew already. Dietmar was gone, shot in the throat. One of the engineers, Rohan or Urvan – she could never remember which was which – had died as soon as he’d stepped outside. She had two men left: a wounded Rhino, who had joined her from the bridge, and the surviving half of Rohan and Urvan. She was also out of ammunition.

No more boarders were pouring out of the Viarsa 1, but from the sounds of the struggle on the lower decks, there had to be more than enough of them on the Rules already.

‘Rhino, your arm’s fucked – gimme that 16, would you?’ she yelled over the noise.

The old Coast Guard man readily handed over the weapon. His left arm dangled uselessly at his side, dripping blood through a makeshift tourniquet, and his normally ruddy complexion was grey. Fifi led them aft again, hunkered over, shuffling forward until they could pour fire down on the boat deck.

Popping up quickly, she spied Jules and one of Shah’s men guarding a fallen Gurkha with about half-a-dozen boarders closing in on them. The conditions were so rough there was no point attempting to pick them off with single shots. She pointed to a couple of the boarders and indicated to Rohan, or Urvan, that he should draw a bead on them. Only then did she cry out: ‘Julesy. Heads down, babe!’

She bobbed up and fired.

Dropped.

Moved, popped up and fired again.

She’d cleaned four of them up when a single bullet from the wheelhouse of the Viarsa 1 blew out her brains.

Jules was out of ammo, curled up in a ball, under one of the boats with Sharma. The Gurkha was edging forward with his kukri dagger. A small lake of blood, thinned only slightly by salt water, sloshed about the deck. She gripped her machete and followed him as he advanced on a pair of bare, filthy feet a couple of metres away.

They were within an arm’s length, close enough to see all of the open sores on the man’s deep brown, stringy calves, when the shooting seemed to reach a crescendo. The feet lifted off the deck and a body, riddled with bullets, crashed down on top of a coil of rope. A few isolated, individual shots followed, and then silence.

She had no idea who had carried the day until she heard Pieraro’s voice.

‘Miss Julianne?’

Dawn rose over Guantanamo Bay, a blood-red shroud for the silent battlefield. Ships still burned in the water and wrecked aircraft smouldered on the airfield over which the flag of Venezuela now flew. Few civilians remained on the craft in the bay. Over four thousand had been rounded up and herded out onto the salt flats beyond the base perimeter, where they sat in the sun, surrounded by soldiers and marines of the Venezuelan armed forces.

In the base commandant’s office, never truly his to begin with, Brigadier General Tusk Musso stared at his opposite number, who was seated behind a desk that wobbled precariously. It had been damaged in the fighting, and every time General Alano Salas leaned on it, the entire surface tilted. It made for a slightly ridiculous pantomime, but Salas seemed to think it important that he should be able to sit behind Musso’s desk.

Lieutenant Colonel Stavros sat to Tusk’s left, sporting a bandage over one eye, while two aides to the Venezuelan commander stood behind the desk, flanking Salas at each shoulder. They were armed. The Americans were not. Next to the shattered window, a Venezuelan soldier was recording the meeting with a large shoulder-mounted camera.

Musso tried to remember who, exactly, had been the last American general to surrender on a battlefield. General Lee was the most notable example, but hardly the last. If memory served correctly, he was reasonably certain that General Jonathan Wainwright was the last man to surrender. He had an untenable situation as well, at Corregidor, after old Dugout Doug slipped away for Australia.

General Salas scribbled something onto a pad, signed it and looked up. ‘My terms for the cessation of hostilities are explicit, General Musso. Unconditional surrender of all forces in Guantanamo Bay.’

Salas presented the piece of paper with a flourish. Musso wondered why he’d bothered to write down such a simple thing. For the National Museum in Caracas, perhaps. Hugo Chavez had cracked down hard on his country, but it was one of the few nations in South America still functioning, which made the Venezuelan president a major power in the hemisphere now. Perhaps the major power, for the foreseeable future. He would want this piece of paper for the archives. The marine officer ignored it.

‘And what about safe passage for my civilian population?’

‘Unconditional surrender, sir,’ Salas insisted. ‘I shall accept nothing less.’

Musso shook his head. ‘That is unacceptable.’ He then leaned forward, and the two men on either side of Salas shifted their stance perceptibly. ‘Allow me to explain what will happen if you do not agree to negotiate,’ Musso continued. ‘While my tactical situation is untenable and deteriorating, my ability to resist is not. I extended an offer of a ceasefire entirely out of concern for my refugee population, whom you have deliberately targeted in violation of the laws of war…’