John Birmingham - Without warning

Jules squeezed her eyes shut for just a second. It was dangerous to have them closed for any longer. ‘As long as they keep it down there, I don’t give a rat’s arse.’

A deep, high-powered horn sounded off to starboard, where a large container ship had dropped dozens of lines over the side to pick up people struggling in the water. Another big ship, an oil tanker, was heading straight for it. Jules wondered why until she saw the telltale sparkle of gunfire around the tanker’s bridge.

‘Damn, Julesy,’ said Fifi. ‘Nobody’s in charge of that son of a bitch. You’d better haul ass. This ain’t gonna be pretty.’

Jules didn’t need encouraging. As Shah came hammering up the steps to warn them of the impending disaster, she flicked on the boat’s internal PA system. ‘Hey, listen up everyone,’ she began calmly. ‘Get down low and grab something. I’m going to have to lay on some speed and do some rally driving.’

Another long, shrieking blast on the container ship’s horn pounded at them, and all around it, those ships that could put on speed suddenly did so, leaping up at their bows and churning up white wakes.

‘You have seen?’ asked Shah.

Julianne pushed the throttles to three-quarter power and the sport fisher leapt ahead. ‘I’m on it,’ she cried out, over the rising clamour of horns and the screaming of thousands of people in the water and on nearby boats.

Stray rounds from the firefight on the tanker splattered against their vessel inches from Fifi’s head. She unlimbered the PKM and spat a stream of tracers back at them. ‘Fuckers!’

‘Get down and stop arsing around!’ Jules shouted.

Reefing the wheel to port, she narrowly avoided spearing into an old wooden yacht that looked a lot like the Diamantina. It was certainly of the same vintage and seemed to be crewed by three swimsuit models. Another sharp turn to starboard swept them around two more yachts, which had already collided with each other, and a bright yellow water taxi that was dangerously overloaded. The bow wave from her boat struck it amidships and the taxi went over.

Jules was sorry, but there was nothing she could do about it. Behind them the horns of both the tanker and the container ship roared in one long, deafening note.

Shah pointed her towards a stretch of slightly less crowded water and Jules opened the boat’s engines all of the way. The massive bulk of the sixty-foot power craft lifted even higher in the water and she gripped the silver wheel hard, concentrating on not running into anyone. A few blasts on her own horn began to scatter and clear some room up ahead, but then the warning was lost in a huge, world-ending uproar as the two giant ships collided.

Risking a look back over the stern, she saw the container ship keel over violently. So great was the impact that the giant steel crates stacked high on its deck were thrown clear; those from the upper stacks describing long, slow arcs over the top of a few lucky boats, before crashing down and utterly destroying a host of smaller vessels further out. One rusted blue P amp;O container turned end over end and flew a good hundred metres before slamming amidships into the overcrowded garbage barge they’d left in their wake earlier. It struck like a giant fist, crushing hundreds of people instantly and cleaving the barge in two. Bow and stern folded up like a jackknife and the flat-bottomed craft sank in less than a minute. More and more of the massive steel boxes began to fall away as the container ship tilted over. They rained down over the side, falling directly on top of those vessels and people who’d been initially spared when the first containers had sailed well over their heads.

Jules flinched, expecting to hear the volcanic eruption of the oil tanker going up, but it never came. The thundering collision and the avalanche of containers gave way to torturous tearing and a grinding of steel plates as momentum crushed the two large ships together.

‘Awesome,’ said Fifi as Jules turned away from the spectacle to concentrate on threading their way through the pandemonium of fleeing craft.

Having hung back while she negotiated a safe passage, Shah appeared at her side now, just as the sport fisher finally swung out around the southern head of Acapulco Bay and got a little sea room around her. To port stood the high, wooded slopes through which they’d driven back from Revolcadero Beach less than an hour ago, and Jules made certain to maintain a safe distance from them. Twice they’d hit roadblocks while rolling through there and she didn’t fancy getting sniped at by some resentful bandito sitting up on the bluffs.

Around them, the smaller craft began to suffer in the open seas. The cries of distress from hundreds of small boats suddenly swamped by the powerful and unruly ocean swell was distressing. Jules had seen a lot of children on some of those dinky little tubs, but she pushed it out of her mind. To stop and pick up anybody would mean getting swarmed by hundreds, possibly thousands, of people. She left the throttles open and brought them around to the south-west, heading for the rendezvous with Mr Lee.

‘I have spoken to Thapa,’ said Shah. ‘As you asked, he did some work back on shore, investigating the attack on your vessel by this Shoeless Dan.’

‘Whoa!’ cried Fifi. ‘He’s cute and smart. Man, I’m gonna have to get me some of that later.’

From the way she was now eyeballing the small, well-muscled Gurkha standing at the stern, Jules knew it was no idle threat. ‘Did he find out anything useful, Mr Shah?’ she asked, as the towering Aztec pyramid of the Fairmont hove into view a few miles off the port bow. ‘It’s okay if he didn’t. I wasn’t expecting much, just wanted to cover our arses really.’

Shah, who seemed able to maintain his balance in the rough conditions by simply flexing at the knees, dismissed her last words with a shake of his head. ‘It is his job, Miss Julianne, and mine. Private Thapa discovered nothing specific about the attack on your boat, but there are at least three syndicates, criminal enterprises, that moved very quickly to capitalise on the Disappearance. Most of their activities were restricted to land, but one of them already had a history of maritime criminality. Perhaps this was how they came to know your shoeless friend.’

‘Makes sense,’ Jules replied with a shrug. ‘Maritime criminality was Shoeless Dan’s special power.’ She spun the wheel to take them on a long, looping course around a paddle-steamer that had somehow found itself blundering through the waves. It was nearly as badly overcrowded as the sunken garbage barge had been, and she wanted to give them a very wide berth. ‘But there’s not much of a piracy culture around here,’ she added. ‘Not like in parts of Asia. A lot of smuggling, yes, but not piracy. The Americans wouldn’t have allowed it, even in Mexican waters. You think somebody’s branching out? I mean, not that we’ll be hanging around long enough for them to try their luck.’

The huge Gurkha bobbed and ducked quite comically to maintain his balance, without once needing to grab on to anything to steady himself. ‘You will if you insist on hugging the coastline to drop Pieraro’s people anywhere, Miss Julianne,’ he said.

Jules frowned testily. ‘Look, I’m really pissed off about that. But I didn’t see any way around it. Miguel had that Colombian nutter holding the crowds off us and he could have very easily put us right in the poo if I’d cut up rough about his mariachi band.’

‘His what?’

‘Sorry. In-joke.’

Fifi produced another beer from an icebox on the flying deck and winked at Shah. ‘They’re cool with me,’ she said. ‘I think they’re cute. Wanna brew, anyone?’