The Gurkhas were a real find, the first stroke of good luck they’d had in a week. The Nepalese warriors were long famed as members of one of the finest regiments in the British Army. Fearsomeness alone did not make them special, however-the world wasn’t short of violent men. The Gurkhas were special because they combined a well-deserved reputation for savagery in battle with an equally well-founded renown for disciplined professionalism.
The British Army had recruited Gurkha infantry since the 1850s, and thousands still served in the regiment named for them. Such fame had they earned that former members were in high demand by private security concerns all over the world. Of course, this too made them little different from old boys of any of the world’s A-list military outfits, but for Julianne Balwyn the five Gurkha warriors standing before her were of singular appeal because they had, until a week ago, been employed as shipboard security by Carnival Cruise Lines, headquartered in Florida.
Unfortunately, the Disappearance had robbed them of an employer and any way of getting home from Acapulco. Jules chewed at the stub of a pencil while she pondered exactly how much legitimate work she might have for them, but she pushed that thought to one side. For now, she needed some tough, reliable men who wouldn’t fall apart if you pointed a gun at them, and who, just as importantly, she could trust not to sell her out.
‘So, Mr Shah, how long did your serve in the regiment?’
‘Twelve years, ma’am,’ replied the short but powerful-looking man who acted as the group leader. His accent was quite polished, for a sergeant from Nepal. ‘Four years as a private soldier. Eight as a non-commissioned officer.’
‘A sergeant?’
‘For the last six, yes, ma’am.’
Jules nodded as she scanned the employment history of the five men. The minimum any of them had served was six years. Shah had the longest stretch, at twelve. He was the only one who’d risen above corporal, making him the natural leader, even though they no longer took Her Majesty’s coin. Jules was thankful for that last point – it made negotiating with them a simpler affair.
She leaned back in the old wooden chair behind a scarred table on which sat a small pile of papers, the men’s resumes, and a loaded handgun within easy reach. A big shiny Mac 10, unsafed and set to full auto, for which she had traded away her former skipper’s beloved yacht, the Diamantina. The beautiful wooden cruiser had been worth the gun, a thousand rounds of ammunition, two Mexican Army M16s, one crate of 5.56 mm reloads, and a half-pallet of rice, milk biscuits and flour, all packed tightly into bags stamped A Gift from the People of America – US AID. The guns and stores were secured in a cage behind the Gurkhas. She would’ve preferred to have transferred them to the super-yacht, but had decided with Fifi and Mr Lee that hiring reliable security was their first priority.
‘Do you mind if I ask why you left the Cunard Line?’ she asked. The men had all been employed by the premier British cruise liner, and some had even worked on the QE2. In her admittedly biased opinion, signing on with the Florida-based party-boat operators, Carnival, was not the first step on the happy staircase to success.
‘Downsizing,’ said Shah. Coming from him, the western technobabble sounded almost alien. ‘The labour hire firm that subcontracted our services to Cunard was bought out by P amp;O, who were taken over by Carnival a year later. We were transferred to their Caribbean operations a fortnight ago. We were to pick up our next berth here at Acapulco.’ The former sergeant shrugged as a way of finishing his explanation.
Jules sighed. ‘Say no more.’
The dockside warehouse she’d hired was a long way from the resort town’s tourist centre, but she could make out the beachfront apartments and hotels through a greasy, unwashed window to her right. One of the bigger towers was ablaze, with flames leaping high over the top floor. It was a moot point whether anybody was trying to put it out. Most likely not. The lower floors were probably being looted as she sat there.
‘Well, Mr Shah. My father would have been impressed with your regimental connections. He was a Navy man, but he didn’t hold with all that inter-service rubbish. And he thought very highly of Cunard. It’s a pity you got shafted like that.’
She didn’t mention that the old rogue had been banned by Cunard for cheating at cards on a cruise through the Med ten years earlier, and how only a swift return by his lordship of the swindled funds and an abject apology to his victims had kept the rozzers from becoming involved. Shah looked like the sort of chap who’d throw card cheats over the side.
Instead she continued: ‘I’d be very keen to take on you and your men, Mr Shah, but there are two issues we need to settle. One I don’t see causing much difficulty; the other, however, we’ll have to see.’
Julianne spoke directly and forcefully, never taking her eyes off the man she was addressing. Behind him, his companions remained as immobile as stone dogs.
‘Firstly, this won’t be a pleasure cruise. My ship – which, you should know straight off, we boarded and took over after the original crew disappeared behind the event horizon last week – has already been attacked once. My captain was killed, and in turn we killed every one of the pirates attempting to seize the vessel. I do not expect that will be the last trouble we see. I cannot guarantee anyone’s safety, quite the contrary, but we will endeavour to avoid whatever hazards we can.’ She gestured back over his shoulder to the view of downtown Acapulco. ‘I probably don’t need to tell you that things are going to get worse, do I?’
‘No,’ agreed Shah. ‘The risks are acceptable. And your second point?’
‘Payment,’ she said. ‘And length of contract. Without a stable currency in which to negotiate, we are stuck with bartering for your services. As a minimum I promise free passage to the port of your choosing in Asia, at which point our business together will be deemed complete. Right now, I cannot give you a schedule. We might get there in a few weeks, it could be six months. Over and above passage, you’ll require payment. I’m happy to hear any suggestions you might have about how we calculate a reasonable figure.’
Shah nodded slowly, his eyes peering into an unknowable future. She noted he didn’t consult his men.
‘Gold,’ he said at last. ‘We shall settle on an amount of gold, the value to be calculated at the end of the cruise, based on an equivalent pay scale to that which we would have earned with Carnival, plus hazard pay at current regimental rates, for each day spent in combat. The pay of any man killed or totally and permanently disabled to be delivered to his family by those surviving, along with a compensation payment to the value of his entire contracted fee. As to length of service, we would insist on an end to the contract within twelve months of its commencement.’
It was Jules’s turn to nod sagely and give the impression of hard thought. She quickly toted up what she was getting into and figured it to be worth about half of their current liquid assets. A lot, in other words. On the other hand, there would doubtless be ample opportunity for ‘salvage’ in the near future. And, if she could just get to the Caymans before everything turned completely pear-shaped, she might be able to access her own accounts, and maybe even Pete’s. Beyond that broad-brush plan to cash up and lay in stores, she wasn’t sure what they would do. Lee was no more interested in returning to his home village than she was in heading for England, where there were still warrants out for her arrest on charges relating to the money her father had sent her. As for Fifi, whatever sorry excuse for home and hearth she’d once had was now lost behind the energy wave. It was possible they might well end up going with Pete’s original plan and heading for Tasmania. It was far enough from everywhere to be safe, surely, and he’d insisted it was one of the few places in the world that would still be able to feed itself following a core meltdown of the old world order.
After a moment’s consideration she glanced at the men behind Shah. ‘Do you mind if I talk to your men?’ she asked him.
‘No. Ask them what you will.’
‘Are you men okay with that offer? Do you need to discuss it?’
The briefest of nonverbal conferences took place, with each man quickly exchanging glances, shrugs and nods with each other.
‘That will be acceptable,’ replied the man standing nearest to Mr Shah. Jules was pretty certain it was the former corporal, Birendra. His first name was as long as a Himalayan mountain path, and just as difficult to negotiate.
‘Good-o, then,’ said Jules. ‘Mr Shah, if you would like to work out the precise figures, we shall draw up a contract today. I’d like to get some of your men out to the yacht as soon as possible, but I will need two of you here with me over the next couple of days as we take on crew.’
Shah grunted in affirmation and, she was sure, nearly saluted her. ‘Corporal Birendra will take Subba and Sharma out to the vessel. I will remain with Thapa and you.’
‘Okay,’ said Jules, still unsure who was who, other than Shah and possibly Birendra. She did note the use of the military rank, too. ‘I imagine you fellows will have personal effects you want to pick up. And I suppose there’s a bill for your accommodation to be worked out?’
‘Yes and no,’ replied Shah. ‘We have personal items to gather. For the last week, however, we have provided security to our hotel in return for lodging. No bill.’
And soon after you’re gone, no hotel, Jules thought to herself. ‘Just one other thing, Mr Shah – or would you prefer “Sergeant”?’
‘That is your choice, Miss.’
‘Okay then. Your men here – I’m sorry to have to ask, and I mean no disrespect – but do they all speak good English? It’s just that it could be an issue in a tight spot, couldn’t it?’
Shah’s face split open into a wide grin. ‘The Queen’s English, ma’am. With a touch of sarf London, from the instructor in their barracks.’
‘All right,’ Jules smiled. ‘That will do fine. If you would like to detail a small party to pick up your gear from the hotel, I’ll draft up some papers for you to check and sign if acceptable. Then I’ll need your help transferring those stores behind you to my boat. We’ll run out to the yacht, you can meet the others, secure the ship, and then you and I and Mr… Thapa, was it? – we’ll get back on shore and round up some reliable crew.’
Shah indicated his agreement but he had one more question. ‘Do we have a destination, Miss?’
‘Please, “Jules” will be fine. And no, I have no idea where we are headed initially. Just the hell away from here and that bloody wave.’
It was late before they returned to port. Shah’s men loaded the cruiser in less than an hour, but motoring to and from the Aussie Rules was a nine-hour round trip. For now the marina’s own security staff, boosted by some freelance heavies, were more than up to the task of securing her boat and the small dockside lockup against any looters, but that wouldn’t always be the case. She was quietly relieved when Thapa took up watch on the 42-footer, while she and Mr Shah plotted out their next move.
It was coming up on ten at night, and the dock was well lit, courtesy of a diesel-fired generator she could hear droning away in the distance. Incredibly, she could also hear music, laughter and the tinkle of glasses drifting across from the more expensive berths, where a large number of luxury yachts were docked, one of them as big as her own. Apparently the owners and their guests had enough money and muscle to convince themselves they could remain unaffected by events outside the marina. Not all of the berths were occupied, however. Jules calculated that a third were empty, the boats that normally filled them having lit out already. But of those who had stayed, it seemed most were intent on pretending they could hold back reality with good cheer and hired guns.
Acapulco proper, though, was a patchwork of light and dark. From the flying deck of the cruiser, parts of the city looked entirely normal. Lights twinkled in houses and apartments, traffic streamed along the waterfront, and throngs of people were visible through the big pair of Zeiss binoculars she’d brought back from the Rules. Elsewhere, chaos reigned. Buildings burned and the pop and crackle of gunfire was constant. Sirens had wailed through the first few nights, but they were becoming less frequent. In fact, Jules couldn’t recall the last time she’d noticed one. She poured three cups of coffee and silently thanked God that the thick blanket of toxic waste released by the burning of hundreds of empty American cities had drifted east, and not south. She was convinced this place would be falling apart a lot more quickly if a nuclear winter had descended as it had in Europe.
‘Thapa, come get your brew,’ barked Shah, as he handed a steaming mug down to the heavily armed rifleman on the deck below. Thapa took his drink with a grateful bow of the head and a smile for Jules, making her feel much better about having to hire and trust so many strangers with guns.
She couldn’t help wondering how Pete would have played all this. Badly, she guessed, given that his first thought had been to team up with Shoeless Dan, just a couple of hours before Dan had attacked and killed him. She still missed the old fool, though. They’d been good friends, even if Pete had just a little too much of the surf bum about him to trust in a situation like this. He took his business seriously, and he was a smart bloke who’d played the odds as well as anyone she knew of. But in the end he was like so many Australians she’d met – ultimately prone to falling back on a naive, almost childish belief that everything would work out for the best.
Nothing in Julianne Balwyn’s life led her to believe that. To an outsider, to someone like Shah, for instance, she must surely have appeared as just one more rich oik, the lucky child of old landed gentry, wasting the advantages of the best schools, an ancient title, and a thousand years of hereditary privilege. For Jules, however, her old life was an anxious, contingent affair, where the pressure to maintain appearances was grossly aggravated by the manifest inadequacies of two parents whose laziness and selfishness were exceeded only by their sense of entitlement. She was well rid of all that bullshit.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’re not going to need bartenders or butlers, but looking over the old crew manifest, we will easily need more than a dozen warm bods to run the engine room, the bridge, the IT systems, and do general deck duties. Probably be an idea to have a ship’s doctor too, if we can find one. A proper helmsman who could handle the tub in a bad blow. A navigator for when the GPS goes down… I mean, where does it end? How do I pay them all?’
Shah swallowed his coffee in one long draw. ‘You don’t,’ he replied with a single, emphatic shake of the head. ‘They pay you.’
‘Beg your pardon?’ Jules was perplexed, but intrigued.
In reply her new security chief held up the empty mug. ‘This coffee, Miss Julianne, it came from your own stores. But if you had bought it here today, on shore it would have cost you twenty-five euros.’
That caused a raised eyebrow, but on reflection it shouldn’t have. She already knew that raging inflation and currency collapse had reduced the worth of the greenbacks they’d stowed away in the Diamantina to a fraction of their face value. That’s why she’d got rid of them so quickly. The small office and waterfront store she’d rented here for five days had cost fifty thousand US dollars upfront. Now it would probably be a six-figure sum, but she was a lot more sanguine about that than she had been a week earlier. As soon as they’d hit port she’d moved to unload most of the cash as quickly as possible, and had managed to get forty cents on the dollar, taken in the form of fuel, stores, gold, medicine and arms, most of it now safely aboard the Aussie Rules.
Shah moved to the railing of the boat’s flying bridge and gestured at the party scenes around the marina. ‘For now, these people are comfortable,’ he said. ‘They have food, shelter, safety, power.’
He turned away and pointed to the brighter, more chaotic nighttime scene of Acapulco central, where uncontrolled fires duelled with neon and fluorescent light to hold back the darkness. ‘Over there,’ he continued, ‘some people are still fine, but many are beginning to suffer and to fear for themselves. Soon, everyone will be afraid. A cup of coffee, a loaf of bread, it could be worth more than your life. People will pay you to get them away from that.’
‘American refugees?’ she pondered aloud. The richest, whitest refugees in the world. It was a bizarre thought, but entirely logical when you considered where events were headed, or indeed where they were right now. ‘Where would we take them? Alaska? Hawaii? The last I heard people were leaving Hawaii, not going there. I don’t think they’re even letting new people in. Same with Seattle, I think. Aid shipments in, flights out, and that’s it.’
Shah moved his shoulder almost imperceptibly. His version of a shrug. ‘If you have English-speaking passengers, take them to an English-speaking port. England, New Zealand, Australia. They are not closed and they will accept refugees, especially with money.’
‘By the time we get there, though, any money they have will be worthless,’ countered Jules.
‘US dollars, certainly,’ he agreed. ‘But yen or pounds or euros – some surviving currency – they will be acceptable. At least to us, in the short term, for the purposes of provisioning. It would help you too, Miss Julianne,’ he added, with a knowing smile.
‘How so?’
‘The yacht is not yours, no? The owner, a famous man, the original passengers and crew, they are gone. But even so, you will need to have some legitimate reason for having taken her over. Ferrying refugees away from danger, especially Americans, to friendly countries – to friendly frightened countries – it could make your passage into any harbour much less difficult. You could be a hero, a rescuer, not a villain and a smuggler.’ His eyes glinted with real humour in the dark.
‘You’re not quite the ramrod-straight, do-it-by-the-book type you first appear, are you, Sergeant?’
‘No good sergeant is, Miss Julianne.’
Jules let her eyes wander over the distant vista of the city as it disintegrated. Long strings of beaded light, the headlights of cars leaving town, wound up into the hills behind the bay. Camp-fires burned here and there, pushing back the blackness, while occasional flashes of light betrayed either cameras or gunfire. A huge blaze had engulfed a high-rise tower, the flames shooting upwards like a giant roman candle, and yet not far away she could see candy-coloured neon and a pair of searchlights, picking out a nightclub where (local rumour had it) you could still dine and drink as though nothing had happened, as long as you could meet the very steep cover charge.
‘Okay,’ she said, making up her mind. ‘Crew first. They work for their passage or they get left behind. We’ll start here, at the marina, by putting out word we’re offering a berth to qualified hands. But you and I might head out tonight, hit the right bars, gather the first of our flock. We can trawl the international hotels tomorrow, looking for passengers.’
‘And where will we offer passage to, Miss Julianne?’
‘Somewhere big and safe and far away. Somewhere the toxic cloud won’t reach. Somewhere that can feed itself. Defend itself, if need be.’
Shah gave her a quizzical look, inviting her to go on. Jules nodded at a framed photograph fixed to the starboard bulkhead. It showed the boat’s previous owner, Greg Norman, teeing off at Royal Sydney.
‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s take his boat back home for him, shall we?’