Without Warning Part 33

Jules risked a quick glance at her paying customers. They seemed entirely nonplussed, and she supposed they had no reason to question the arrival of the Pieraro clan. Miguel had clearly established himself as a powerful figure in their eyes only yesterday. If that power meant he could drag along his extended family they would probably accept that. After all, they were all too used to the privileges of power themselves.

The crowd noise intensified, noticeably, spilling over and around the Fairmont's centerpiece architectural statement, the main hotel built in the form of a giant Aztec pyramid. She could see dozens of guests on their balconies hiding from the disturbance outside, and too many of them were pointing at her little group. Time to go.

"Listen," she said. "This isn't over. Not by a f.u.c.king long shot. I cannot take all of those people you've brought. I do not have stores for them, and they will not be allowed off the boat at the other end. Not to mention the trouble it's going to cause with everyone who actually paid for their pa.s.sage. But. We don't have time to get into this now. We need to get away from this city. It is going under. Right now. I'll take your extras on today. Take them a safe distance down the coast, away from the city. That's where it's going to be worst. But they will have to get off. Do you understand? You need to talk to them about where that might be. I'm sure they will have relatives somewhere, in some stagnant backwater, who'll take them in. Probably be glad of the extra hands come bean-harvest time. But I can't take them."

She held Pieraro's eyes this time, not flinching away from the falling man she saw in there.

"Because they cannot pay," he said at last, with an air of injured dignity.

"If you want to make me the b.i.t.c.h, okay. Because they cannot pay. n.o.body is going to fuel and provision me if I cannot pay. That is the only reason I'm taking those rich a.r.s.eholes anywhere. They are buying my fuel, my food, my arms and ammunition, and surely even you can see that right now nothing trumps that."

"They have brought their own food," said Pieraro in a dry, flat voice. "Beans. Dried meat. Flour. They will not be a burden."

"Oh, my G.o.d, I cannot believe we're even having this discussion. You are not an idiot, Miguel. You know how things are. You know what's coming ...f.u.c.k, you know it's already here."

"They are my family, Julianne. My family. Do you not have a family of your own?"

His attempt at guilting her out produced only a short, bitter laugh.

"Oh, Miguel, that is so not a road to go down with me. Look. We have to move. Now. Get everyone down to the ... Heritage, was it? Get them onto the buses. We have to get around to the bay, to the big jetty up the beach from the Hyatt. Do you know it? Good. Fifi and Thapa will be waiting there. It is going to be a very crowded trip out to the Rules."

Pieraro closed his eyes.

"Thank you," he said, as if in prayer.

"We are dropping them off, Miguel. Somewhere. Okay?"

"Okay. Somewhere safe."

The crackle of gunfire started, muted by distance and smothered by the sudden roar of an enraged, terrified mob.

"I think Roberto has taken off his smiley face," said Jules. "Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here."

Acapulco Bay

"Jeez, Julesy. We taking a mariachi band with us? Cool."

Fifi had switched over to a Larry the Cable Guy camouflage baseball cap with the trademark fishhook in the bill. Jules ignored the hat, especially the Confederate flag.

"Don't start, Fifi. Just get them on board."

The trip around the southern headland of Acapulco Bay had not been entirely uneventful. Both Shah and Julianne had been forced to open fire on a couple of makes.h.i.+ft roadblocks that had not been there an hour earlier. The roadblocks were being manned by would-be carjackers. At least she a.s.sumed they were carjackers.

Her pa.s.sengers, paying and nonpaying, poured out of the two beaten-up-looking school buses Pieraro had obtained from G.o.d only knew where, and stood blinking in the harsh light, on a ma.s.sive baking slab of cracked concrete, an empty parking lot overlooking the water. They were all upset, and some of the Americans looked positively ill. The Aussie Rules's giant sports fisher bobbed slowly up and down at the end of the pier, which jutted out more than a hundred meters into the bay. No other craft were moored there, and one look out over the water told her why. Thousands of vessels, from small aluminum dinghies to oceangoing megayachts, were on the move, heading away from sh.o.r.e toward the mouth of the bay. Only the slightest puff of breeze ruffled the ubiquitous palms onsh.o.r.e, but out on the bay the enormous flotilla had churned up a ma.s.s of white water.

"Any trouble getting away?" asked Jules.

"Some," admitted Fifi, who was dressed in a denim microskirt and distressed red tee emblazoned with the legend Zombie Squad-We can handle it from here. We've talked about this on the Internet. A Marlboro dangled from her lips. Jules wondered what her friend would do when she finally ran out.

She hefted up her PKM. "But we got her done."

Jules winced.

"You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

Fifi rolled her eyes, "Just a few rounds downrange. Jeez, who died and made you Captain Sensible?"

Jules stared past Fifi into a place she wasn't even sure existed.

Fifi caught the hint. "Oh. Yeah. Pete. Uh, sorry."

"Fine," said Julianne, throwing up her hands. "Let's just get them on board before we draw another crowd." She could see cars beginning to pull over to the side of the freeway on the hill up above them. Small groups of people were already picking their way down through the scrub, doubtless hoping to clamber on board the boat with them. Across the confusion of the bay, the center of Acapulco was a disaster movie. Fires blazed at so many locations she couldn't count them, but it was eerily quiet, like watching TV with the sound down. After a second she realized why. No sirens, anywhere. The absence was chilling.

"Come on, move your a.r.s.es," she called out to the dawdling travelers. Phoebe had actually stopped to take pictures with a small digital camera.

"Where the f.u.c.k are you going to get them printed?" cried Jules in frustration. "Move!"

Shah and Thapa began herding everyone toward the dock, occasionally glancing back up toward the roadway. A few more cars had pulled over. Pieraro spoke to an old man among his people, who nodded before firing off a scorching fusillade of native oaths and curses and clouting a teenaged boy, who'd stopped dead, transfixed by Fifi's T-s.h.i.+rt. The Mexicans, all hauling heavy sacks of food by the looks of them, began to run down the pier. The Americans, dropping some of their luggage as they went, followed suit as Thapa chivvied them along.

"If you would be so kind as to hurry your a.r.s.es up now."

"Mr. Shah?" said Jules. "My gun if you please."

The Gurkha sergeant produced her shotgun from the cabin of the SUV, racking a round into the chamber before handing it over to her.

"Thank you," said Jules. She fired three shots into the air over the heads of the people swarming down the hillside toward them. It had a salutary effect on her own charges as well, speeding their pa.s.sage down the jetty to a sprint.

"h.e.l.l, yeah," enthused Fifi. "Time for a little redneck persuasion."

She let rip with a short, snarling burst from her heavy Russian machine gun, firing into the windows of an abandoned building overlooking the parking lot, shattering a dozen panes of gla.s.s. The sound was scarifying, and the small horde descending the slopes stopped and dropped immediately.

"Go, go," said Shah, waving them off toward the boat, where Thapa and Pieraro were hurriedly helping everyone aboard, in some cases by throwing them bodily over the side.

The girls didn't wait to be told twice. They set off at a sprint. A few moments later Jules heard the car start up again, and, looking back over her shoulder, she saw the former soldier drive it onto the jetty. He followed them, stopping halfway down, before turning the wheel to effectively block any further access.

"They'll just crawl over it," said Fifi, leveling the PKM on the makes.h.i.+ft blockade.

"They won't," promised Jules.

Shah climbed out, tossed something into the cabin, and ran as quickly as she'd ever seen a short, refrigerator-shaped man run. A few seconds later, as the first of their desperate pursuers made the start of the pier, the grenade exploded, lifting the vehicle a few inches off the deck, but not moving it far enough to topple it into the water. Everyone ducked. When Jules straightened up, access from the sh.o.r.e was blocked by the burning wreckage.

"Nice work, buddy," said Fifi as Shah trotted up to them. "You like NASCAR at all?"

Smiling like an imp, Shah lifted his shoulders.

"NASCAR. Never heard of it. But I never liked Toyotas much," he said.

Fifi wondered if anyone even drove a Toyota in NASCAR.

Out on the water, it was worse. The sports fisher was big and powerful enough to speed around or muscle through the occasional logjams of smaller craft that blocked its way, and the sight of Pieraro, Thapa, and Shah heavily tooled up and guarding against all attempts at boarding precluded any such misadventures. But Jules still had a h.e.l.l of a time clearing the bay, on which an unknowable number of vessels jostled for primacy. Where the h.e.l.l most of them thought they were going, she had no idea. The little runabouts and motor boats and inflatables that numbered in the thousands would founder in even moderate seas, and word from Mr. Lee back on the Rules was that storms in the high lat.i.tudes had whipped up a b.i.t.c.hing four-meter swell on a nasty chaotic cross chop of at least another meter and a half. They were going to have a lot of seasick pa.s.sengers in less than half an hour. But at least they would survive.

Jules shook her head as she spun the wheel to dodge what looked like a garbage barge barely able to stay afloat under the weight of seven or eight hundred people, all tightly packed onto mounds of rubbish. They were throwing the rotting, malodorous ballast overboard as quickly as they could, but the wake from her sudden turn set the flat-bottomed scow wallowing dangerously, and at least a dozen men and women went over the side. She nudged the throttles forward and tried to ignore their flailing figures. They wouldn't be the last people to drown today.

A cacophony of horns, whistles, sirens, and Klaxons overlay constant screaming and calls for help. The farther out into the bay she took them, the worse it grew. Bodies began to appear in the churning water, some floating near capsized boats, others obviously killed by gunfire. At one point she cut their speed back to allow a small pod of surf skiers to paddle by. They saluted her with their oars before resuming their rhythmic progress.

"How did they get this far?" she said to n.o.body in particular.

Fifi appeared at her elbow with a couple of chilled Coronas. She watched the surfers for a moment before shrugging.

"Surf breaks get pretty crowded. They're probably used to it. Wanna beer?"

"You have to be f.u.c.king kidding ... oh ... what the h.e.l.l. Could you open it for me?"

Fifi popped the tops and pa.s.sed one to Jules. She kept one hand to the wheel while draining half the cerveza in a couple of long pulls. The crisp, icy cold bite was like an angel's kiss. Indeed, she couldn't recall ever enjoying a beer nearly as much. It was almost obscene.

"You coulda waited, you know," said Fifi. "I cut up some limes."

"Only poofs fruit the beer, sweetheart. What's happening below?"

Fifi finished her own drink and tossed the empty bottle overboard before answering. It crashed into the prow of a ferry, eliciting a raised fist and long string of unintelligible curses from the skipper. She flipped him the finger.

"Miguel's got the mariachi band all stowed away down below. They're cool. No problemo. That f.u.c.king prom queen though, and her brother ..."

"Phoebe and Jason?"

"Yeah, them. They're already arguing with the banker and his b.o.o.b job about who gets the big cabin."

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 a.r.s.e."

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

"d.a.m.n, Julesy," said Fifi. "n.o.body's in charge of that son of a b.i.t.c.h. You'd better haul a.s.s. This ain't gonna be pretty."

Jules did not need encouraging. As Shah came hammering up the steps to warn them of the impending disaster, she flicked on the boat's PA system.

"Hey. Listen up, everyone. 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 s.h.i.+p's horn pounded at them, and all around her, those s.h.i.+ps 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 boat leapt ahead.

"I'm on it," she cried out over the rising clamor 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 the boat inches from Fifi's head. She unlimbered the PKM and spat a stream of tracers back at them. "f.u.c.kers!"

"Get down and stop arsing around!" Jules shouted.

Reefing the wheel to port, she narrowly avoided spearing 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 amids.h.i.+ps and it 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 s.h.i.+p roared in one long, deafening note.

Shah pointed her toward a stretch of slightly less crowded water, and Jules opened the boat's engines all the way. The ma.s.sive 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 s.h.i.+ps collided. Risking a look back over the stern, she saw the container s.h.i.+p keel over violently. So great was the impact that dozens of the giant steel crates stacked high on its deck were thrown clear; those from the upper stacks described long slow arcs over the top of a few lucky s.h.i.+ps before cras.h.i.+ng down and utterly destroying a host of smaller boats. One rusted blue P&O container turned end over end and flew a good hundred meters before slamming amids.h.i.+ps into the overcrowded garbage barge they had previously left in their wake. It struck like a giant fist, crus.h.i.+ng hundreds of people instantly and cleaving the barge in two. Bow and stern folded up like a jackknife and sank in less than a minute. More and more of the ma.s.sive steel boxes began to fall away as the s.h.i.+p tilted over. They rained down over the side, falling directly on top of those vessels and people who'd been initially spared as the first containers sailed well over their heads.

Jules flinched, expecting to hear the volcanic eruption of the oil tanker going up, but it never came. Then the thundering collision and avalanche of containers gave way to torturous tearing and grinding of steel plates as momentum crushed the two s.h.i.+ps 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 safe pa.s.sage through the chaos of the collision, Shah appeared at her side as they finally swung out around the southern head of Acapulco Bay and got a little sea room in which to maneuver. To port stood the high, wooded slopes through which they'd driven back from Revolcadero Beach, and Jules made certain to maintain a safe distance from them. Twice they'd hit roadblocks rolling through there, and she didn't fancy getting sniped by some resentful bandito sitting up on the bluffs. Around them the smaller craft began to suffer in the open ocean. The cries of distress from hundreds of small boats suddenly swamped by the powerful and unruly ocean swell was distressing. She had seen a lot of children on some of those d.i.n.ky little tubs, but she pushed them out of her mind. To stop and pick up anybody would mean getting swarmed by hundreds, possibly thousands of people. Julianne left the throttles open and brought them around to the southwest, heading for the rendezvous with Mr. Lee.

"I have spoken to Thapa," said Shah after a few moments. "As you asked, he has done some work back on sh.o.r.e. Investigating the attack on your vessel by this Shoeless Dan."

"Whoa," said Fifi. "He's cute and smart. Man, I'm gonna have to get me some of that later."

The way she was eyeballing the small, well-muscled Gurkha standing at the stern, Jules knew it was no idle threat.

"Did he find out anything useful?" 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 a.r.s.es really."

Shah, who seemed able to maintain his balance in the rough conditions simply flexing at the knees, shook his head.

"It is his job. And mine. He discovered nothing specific about the attack on your boat, but there are at least three syndicates, criminal enterprises, that moved very quickly to capitalize on the Disappearance. Most of their activities were restricted to land, but one of them already had a history of maritime criminality. Perhaps this is how they came to know your shoeless friend."

"Makes sense." Jules shrugged. "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 it a very wide berth. "But there's not much of a piracy culture around here," she added. "Not like parts of Asia. A lot of smuggling yes. But not piracy. The Americans would not 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."

Shah bobbed and ducked quite comically to maintain his balance without ever 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," he said.

Jules frowned testily. "Look, I'm really p.i.s.sed 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 the mariachi band."

"The what?"

"Sorry. In-joke."

Fifi produced another beer from an icebox on the flying deck and winked at Shah.