‘I think we’re probably okay to go,’ said Jules.
Fifi agreed, and triggered a burst from the PKM. ‘Yeah. I think you’re probably right.’
Tracer rounds zipped away over the heads of the islanders, forcing them all to duck below the gunwales of the small fleet of lobster boats heading towards the Rules. Jules hit the press-to-talk button on her headset.
‘Mr Lee, are those contacts still closing?’
The old pirate’s voice came crackling back to her. ‘They are still on a course to intercept us, Miss Julianne. In forty-two minutes, if we do not leave now.’
‘Okay, Lee. Everyone’s aboard. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
Jules felt the deck thrum under her feet as the engines growled into life and she reached out for the handrail to steady herself against the inertia. The bow lifted appreciably as they thrust forward, adding their speed to the bluster of a freshening nor’-wester. Jules and Fifi crouched instinctively as a few puffs of white smoke from the decks of the lobster boats told of a couple of ancient shotguns being fired in their direction. Fifi responded with another snarling burst from the heavy Russian machine-gun. Again, she aimed well over the mast of the lead boat, and again their pursuers all ducked. It would’ve been a ridiculous pantomime were it not so serious. The islanders meant to delay them long enough for those radar contacts to close with them.
Jules was now certain they were being chased by one of the Peruvian syndicates.
She pressed the talk button on her headset again. ‘Sergeant Shah. Have your men stand ready please. I don’t think they’ll be needed, but best we don’t try our luck.’
‘They are in position, Miss Julianne. The passengers have been secured below by Pieraro. He will join us on the boat deck.’
Jules thanked him. She didn’t bother looking for the small squad of mercenaries. The super-yacht was too large and they were mostly arrayed on the lower decks towards the stern, giving them a clear field of fire over the heads of the lobster boats as the Rules came around.
Fifi safed her weapon when she could no longer draw a bead on the little wooden tubs. ‘You want me to head on down there, Julesy?’ she asked, referring to the Gurkhas’ position below-deck. ‘Be a shame to waste the ammo, though, if we’re not trying to hit them. This 7.62 Eastern Bloc standard doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’
Julianne shook her head, trailing a regretful look back over the retreating vista of the Juan Fernandez Archipelago, the trio of islands located some four hundred miles west of the Chilean city of Valparaiso. ‘No, save your fire, Fifi. We’ll need it soon. And those guys are no real threat.’
Behind the tiny, bobbing armada of trawlers, the soaring peaks of the main landmass, Robinson Crusoe Island, knifed into a slate-grey sky above the village of San Juan Bautista. The lonely settlement, the only one anywhere in the archipelago, clung to the water’s edge at the mouth of a steep valley that funnelled bitter winds down into Cumberland Bay. The uppermost reaches of the jagged volcanic mountains were lost inside a mass of scudding clouds. The gale roaring down on them had teeth and blew stinging salt spray into her face, but in spite of all that, it had been a great port in which to lay up and recover from the mad dash away from Acapulco and down the coast. Even more importantly, it had been about as far removed from the rest of the world as you could be, without pulling on your thermal knickers for a trip to the Antarctic. That had been the deal clincher after the Middle East went up. None of her passengers or crew had objected to the change in course. None of them wanted to be anywhere near a big city that might disappear inside a mushroom cloud.
Robinson Crusoe Island, a solitary fleck of volcanic rock in the vastness of the southern oceans, seemed a perfect bolthole. Too bad it hadn’t worked out a little longer.
As the boat built up to its maximum speed, the muted pop of gunfire from astern was lost in the roar of the wind. Jules and Fifi remained on the flying bridge for the moment, wrapped in oilskin coats, taking in the view as they hastily exited Cumberland Bay.
‘I can’t believe they narked us out,’ said Fifi sadly ‘After they gave us those lobsters and everything!’
Jules shrugged. ‘Lobsters they have an abundance of, Fifi. But diesel, food, medicine – those they’re running out of fast. Shah said the boat from Valparaiso hasn’t been for two months. I don’t think it’ll be coming again.’
‘So what, dropping a dime on us to the fucking syndicates is their idea of self-help?’
The Englishwoman lifted her hands in a gesture of resigned acceptance. ‘What are they gonna do, Fi? We weren’t part of the tribe. We’re just a big shiny boat full of stuff they need and can’t get anymore. These people are doomed and our time with them was up. Get over it, hon.’
Fifi looked like she wanted to argue, but eventually just deflated.
As much as San Juan Bautista had been an excellent place to sit out Armageddon, truth be told, it also creeped Jules out. It probably would’ve creeped her out even before the end of the world. It was a small, wind-ravaged speck of burnt rock out in the middle of a howling ocean. She found the villagers strange and remote, and San Juan itself was shrouded in a forgotten air that she was certain predated the recent catastrophe.
As Mr Lee took them out into the exposed waters again, the yacht began to pitch and roll on the much rougher swell. The bow climbed larger and larger waves, each time smashing down into the dark trough on the other side with an enormous boom. Jules took another look off to starboard at the wreath of funereal clouds gathering around the highest of the island’s summits before motioning to Fifi to follow her inside.
Lee was at the helm in the gleaming bridge, joyfully directing the other crew members present – Dietmar, the German navigator they’d picked up in Acapulco, along with Rhino Ross, who was chewing the stub of a much-abused cigar. Apart from a bag of clothes, his personal luggage consisted entirely of foul-smelling stogies, which he insisted on smoking at all times, right down to the nub. The smell reminded Jules of her father’s library, so she indulged the old Coast Guard chief, over the protests of her passengers who objected to his ‘second-hand carcinogens’. And after all, there was plenty of room on board to escape the smoke.
‘How’s it looking, Rhino?’ asked Jules, as she shook off the spray and slid the hatch closed behind her.
‘Excellent. Just excellent, if you’re in the market for an old-fashioned ass-kicking today. Two boats. The lead vessel is making about eleven knots, pulling away from the other one, which is topping out at about eight.’
‘Any idea how big or how many of these hoodlums we might be dealing with?’ she said, without any hope of a positive answer.
The Rhino puffed on his cigar, firing up the embers right under his nose. He shook his head. He was about fifty years old, and his face was a bright-red relief map of broken blood vessels and sun-spots. ‘Sorry, Skip. They’re not in visual range. I wouldn’t have seen them until they were on us if we’d been anchored any further inside the bay. The mountains were blocking the return.’
She sucked the salt from her lip and thought it over. The Rules had a comfortable cruising speed of fifteen knots, which they could push out to seventeen and a bit for a while, especially now she had some engineers she could trust. But if they had any trouble in the hugely complicated engineering plant, or if they hit foul weather, their pursuers were highly likely to catch up. Plus, of course, she’d burn through their fuel a lot quicker at top speed. Jules rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb. This was not what she had planned when she’d agreed to soak a bunch of rich tourists for as much as she could get. She wondered what Pete would have done.
‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see this ending well. Fifi, let’s get everyone together, shall we. Anyone who can hold a weapon, down in the main lounge. Mr Lee, you just keep as much distance between us and them as you can. I’ll be back soon.’
She had one last look back towards the islands. A storm front was piling up to the south-east, smudging out the horizon. She was confident in the super-yacht’s ability to handle a big blow and could only hope that whoever was chasing them didn’t enjoy such a pimped-out ride. Perhaps they could lose them in bad weather.
It really was an incongruous sight. She’d never been taken with the fabulously over-egged opulence of the main lounge area on the Aussie Rules - it was a bit too clubby and try-hard for her tastes. But she had to admit she liked the sight of the half-dozen little village urchins who’d come on board with Miguel bouncing and leaping from one deep blue lounge chair to the next. Or rather, she liked the look of utter dismay on the faces of some of her wealthier passengers.
Fifi followed her in, toting the PKM. It brought a quick level of decorum to proceedings, with even the children stopping and pointing. They were experienced enough to know what it meant.
‘All right. Listen up, everyone,’ Jules cried out.
With all of the passengers and some crew gathered in there, she guesstimated that nearly thirty people were in the room. It held them comfortably. Pieraro’s extended family, who’d proven themselves less trouble and much more help than her paying guests, were mostly clustered together quietly under the oil paintings of Greg Norman’s dogs, with just a few of the youngest children still roaming around unleashed. Julianne subtracted them from her plans; they would need to be hidden away somewhere with a minder. Perhaps Grandma Ana, who was the oldest of the Mexicans and spent most of her days shelling beans and peeling vegetables in the weak sun up on the pool deck. Jules had no doubt that she’d cut the throat of anyone who tried to harm the little ones, but she was virtually immobile. The rest of the clan, though, she’d come to appreciate. They worked hard. Ate little. Some of the men were good shots. They were reliable in a fight and would do whatever Miguel ordered, without demur. Plus, they’d proven themselves diabolically effective traders whenever the Rules had put into shore for resupply. Jules was still adamant they would have to leave the boat at some point, but for the moment, she couldn’t see her way clear to dropping them anywhere. The mainland, which they had now left behind anyway, was too dangerous, especially near any of the larger cities.
Her small crew, recruited in Acapulco and at a handful of trading stops at smaller, self-sufficient towns and villages on the way down to Crusoe, were all handy with weapons in one form or another, while Shah’s men, it went without saying, were utterly formidable. As she totted up the number of potential shooters in the lounge, Shah himself appeared at the main entrance and nodded silently to her. His men had the situation in hand for the moment.
The problem, as always, was the passengers – the rich, skiving dilettantes she had taken on board to fund the trip and provide her with a fig leaf of respectability when she arrived in Hawaii or Sydney, or wherever they were headed. While some of them had proved themselves not completely odious, and one or two, such as Marc Unwin, the oil broker, had even brought some of their arcane skills to bear for the benefit of all, as a group they were a bunch of fucking oxygen thieves. The trust-fund brats, Phoebe and Jason, had alienated all of the crew by treating them like staff. Indeed, Jason still sported a black eye from one of the engineers. Moorhouse, the merchant banker, had become a virtual recluse as he’d come to realise that the old world, and his fortune within it, was never coming back. As for the others, they simply made pains of themselves at every opportunity, for want of anything better to do. Well, she had a job of work for them to do now.
‘Okay,’ she said simply. ‘Pirates. Looks like we have two shiploads of them bearing down on us from the north.’
A murmur surged through the adults, while some of the youngest began a chant of ‘Piratas! Piratas!’, before Grandma Ana whacked one of them behind the ears and they all shut up quickly. Even the whackee held in his tears.
‘We had our problems with these guys before we got to Crusoe, and it looks like we’ve got them again.’
‘How?’ asked the banker. ‘How’d they find us out here?’
Fifi shrugged. ‘Somebody on the island probably dropped a dime on us. Five’ll get you ten, one of the lobster boats chugged out of port and went looking for someone who’d be interested. They couldn’t take us themselves…’
‘But they sold us out to someone who could,’ Jules finished for her.
More audible concern and a good deal of anxious muttering from the A-list passengers greeted that. Jules held up her hands to forestall any panic.
‘They could take us, if they caught us sleeping on the job. But they won’t. You have all seen these sorts of characters before. We chased them off then, we’ll do it again now. I’ve only called everyone together because this time it looks like there’s more of them, and they have a bigger, faster ship than before. It makes sense,’ she explained. ‘Things have turned to custard on the mainland. People are killing each other for a handful of beans in the big cities. In a situation like that, you will always get bandits who group together to prey on the weak… But we are not the weak.’
Fifi hoisted her large, ugly-looking Russian machine-gun to emphasise Julianne’s point. Sergeant Shah folded his massive arms and allowed his solid granite head to dip once in a nod of agreement.
‘We will try to outrun these guys,’ Jules continued. ‘One of their boats is already falling behind and the weather is closing in. That will help. They’ll have to fight a storm instead of us. But they have a second vessel that could catch ours if we have any problems, and so we need to be ready. Everyone, and I mean everyone,’ she repeated, eyeing off her American passengers, ‘will be armed and ready to repel any boarders.’
She expected objections but the statement simply dropped into a fearful silence.
‘I do not expect you to get into machete fights. You’ll lose. But we have enough small arms and ammunition to distribute among you and you will defend the boat with them. That means you will have to shoot people. Dead. This is not something you can leave to Sergeant Shah and his men – there will be too many for them to handle on their own. No offence, Mr Shah…’
Shah smiled. None taken.
‘Now, I need you to divide yourselves up into two groups: those who are familiar with firearms and those who are not. Sergeant Shah and Corporal Birendra will give the latter a quick tutorial in how to pull a trigger. That’s all we ask of you. The others will go with Fifi down to the gun lockers and arm yourselves appropriately. Do not panic. Whatever may happen, will not happen for many hours yet, possibly even a day or two. Familiarise yourself with your weapons and whatever firing station you are assigned. Learn its blind spots and weaknesses. Identify a fall-back route. And then get some rest. Watch a movie, hit the gym – whatever does it for you. If you have to fight, it’s best you’re not shagged out from running around like headless bloody chickens for half a day beforehand.’
At least some of them laughed. Nervously.
Jules took a few steps towards the group. ‘It may not come to anything,’ she said. ‘We may outrun them. We have enough fuel for six thousand miles of cruising. Enough food stocks now for a month, with some rationing. We may lose them in the storm that’s brewing up out there. But we may not.’ She paused, very briefly, taking in the effect she was having.
The faces of the older Mexican men were unreadable, their eyes like black polished stones in a dark night. The women looked much more defiant, but also fearful for the children. Some of the younger men, boys really, looked excited. Her A-listers, on the other hand, were quietly freaking out.
‘You need to understand this, most of all,’ Julianne concluded. ‘Anyone who steps onto this boat with hostile intentions will be cut down. They will be killed. And there will be no mercy shown them. Because we will receive none in return.’