Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation]

by Tayell, Frank

  “Clear!” Clyde said, even before Tess had turned. Hernando and his two guards were down.

  “Are you okay, Zach?” Tess asked, running past him.

  “Yeah, no worries,” he said.

  Clyde overtook her, sweeping his gun from one corpse to the next, and then to the treeline.

  “That was dumb, Zach,” Tess said.

  “Nah, because I know him. I know Hernando. He’s that bloke from the video in Colombia. He’s the torturer.”

  “I know,” she said, “but shouting it out wasn’t smart.”

  “Yeah, but it’s over now,” Zach said. “We won.”

  “We haven’t,” Clyde said. “That was all wrong. That’s not how you go about hijacking a warship.”

  “What d’you mean?” Zach asked.

  “Back to the boat,” Tess said. “We need to warn the captain.”

  But it was too late. The helicopter buzzed low over the sea, not heading towards the pier, but looping low above the beach. Mackay ran along the pier, rifle raised.

  “It’s the cartel,” Tess said as she walked over to Hernando’s body. On his wrist was a tattoo she’d seen before: a branch with three leaves. “It’s the bloody cartel. Glenn, warn the captain. Clyde, are these ships empty?”

  “If they weren’t, we’d be dead,” Clyde said. “Some bullet holes in that yacht. Old ones.”

  “Soldiers are being deployed inland,” Mackay said.

  “I think we found the sisters,” Tess said. “Zach, behind me. Clyde, eyes on the road. Mackay, watch the trees.”

  She led them down the pier, around Mikael’s truck, and took cover behind Hernando’s vehicle. To her left was the restaurant and bar, festooned with signs offering boat hire as prominently as drinks. To her right was the harbour master’s office, and behind that were the port’s service buildings. All small. All dark. Not a single electric bulb was on, but it was a blue-sky midday.

  “They drove here from somewhere,” she said. “Mackay—”

  The ground shook, and the roar of the ship’s cannon was lost beneath the earthquake detonation. Dust and smoke plumed upward, inland.

  “That was the runway,” Mackay said, half-listening to the radio. “Captain says— ugh.” He fell, clutching his leg.

  “Sniper!” Clyde said, pushing Zach from his feet. “East. The trees. Stay behind the truck. Zach, take my carbine. Keep your head down, and empty the entire magazine into the trees on the count of three. Three. No more, no less. Start counting.”

  And before Tess could stop him, Clyde ran from behind the truck, and towards the palms. A single shot strummed through the broad leaves as he disappeared from sight.

  “Now, Zach,” Tess said. She grabbed Mackay’s vest-straps, hauling him closer to the vehicle. Behind, and above, lead tore through the air with a machine-rattle bark that was over almost as soon as it began.

  “I’m out,” Zach said. “Should I fire another magazine?”

  “No. Grab the radio. Call the ship,” she said, pulling out her emergency med-kit. “You’ll be okay, Glenn. The bullet missed the artery. Zach, tell the ship we’re taking fire and want to know what the captain’s plan is.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Mackay hissed. “Ducked when I should’ve jumped.”

  “No worries. We’ll get you out of here,” Tess said.

  “They’re the cartel, aren’t they?” Mackay asked.

  “Seems so. That should stop the bleeding,” Tess said, securing the dressing. “Zach, we’re commandeering that blue pick-up. We’ll chuck Glenn in the back, drive to our boat, and kick our way back to the ship.”

  “We’re not,” Zach said, lowering the radio. “The helicopter saw boats leaving from the north of the island. The warship is chasing them. That explosion we heard, that was us shooting at a plane trying to take off. We blew it up!”

  “Are the cartel fleeing the island?” Tess asked.

  “I guess,” Zach said. “The captain’s chasing them.”

  “Clear!” Clyde called from the trees. “Coming out. Hold your fire.”

  Tess slowly leaned around the car, only standing when she saw Clyde jog from between the palms.

  “Only one sniper,” he said. “Atop a generator-shed.”

  “The cartel are fleeing the island,” Tess said. “Taking boats from the north. The Te Taiki is in pursuit, but she blew up a plane trying to take off.”

  “Understood,” Clyde said, and without explaining, sprinted off to the bar, pushed open the door, ran in, and ran out again a moment later. “Zach, help the commish with Mackay. We’re getting him inside there until our ride returns.”

  She and Zach carried a barely protesting Mackay inside, and onto a bench seat near the door. Clyde followed, but stayed in the doorway.

  “If the enemy are fleeing, some might come here for those boats,” Clyde said. “We don’t want to be on the water halfway between a cannon and its target.”

  “So we’ll wait here and ambush anyone fleeing,” Tess said.

  “Your call, Commish,” Clyde said.

  “You mean you wouldn’t?” she asked. “We’re in your world now. Tell me what to do.”

  “They’re on the run, so let’s keep them running,” he said. “Drive north, and drive them before us, in that truck, before they can dig in or get organised.”

  “Agreed,” Tess said.

  “I’ll radio in what we’re doing, then we’ll move,” Clyde said.

  “Zach, find the back door,” Tess said, though she glanced back to Mackay before returning to the window, watching the approach road to the harbour. They’d stumbled into a war, so she’d trust to Clyde’s judgement. Besides, floating atop shark-infested waters wasn’t the best place for a bleeding man to wait for safety.

  A plane had been destroyed attempting to take off. Was it the same plane they’d seen a few days ago, closer to the smoking mass grave in Colombia? Maybe. The cartel had been waiting for the warship, and hoping it would sail elsewhere. When it approached, Mikael had been sent to the pier. That didn’t entirely explain the three-sided nature of the quayside confrontation, but they had killed the torturer. Hopefully those two who’d accompanied him were his best people.

  “Helicopter’s out of fuel,” Clyde said. “Nicko and Bruce are on the ground, west of the runway. There’s a third pier on the island’s western shores. Our boys just neutralised a group trying to escape. We’ll drive north, meeting them at a junction with a west-bound road.”

  “Zach, stay here,” Tess said.

  “What? No way,” he said.

  “Your mission is to keep Glenn alive,” Tess said. “If they try to come into this bar, shoot them. But if they go for a boat, let them, and let the Te Taiki send them straight to Hell.”

  Chapter 43 - Pursue and Ye Shall Find

  Corn Island, Nicaragua

  In a crouch, Tess ran from the bar and across the empty car park. From the north came the crackle of gunfire, a small explosion, then a larger though more distant one. The battle wasn’t close, but nor was it close to being over.

  “I’m driving,” she said, as Clyde ran to the driver’s side of the green pick-up.

  Barely slowing, he jumped over the hood.

  “Show-off,” she said. “This car’s nearer to retirement than me. But it’s old enough not to have any electronics, so why is the interior newly refurbed?”

  The keys were in the ignition, and the truck started on the first go.

  “No guns, or gun rack,” Clyde said.

  “Yep, I noticed that,” she said, spinning the truck back, and around Hernando’s bullet-flecked truck. “Mikael wasn’t armed, and wasn’t entirely in command.”

  “Do you think he was the local warlord,” Clyde said, “but Hernando was the sisters’ lieutenant?”

  “That would explain the quayside confusion,” she said.

  “According to the copter, this road should run parallel to the runway,” Clyde said. “Down there. Halfway, there’s the turning to the western pier. Tha
t’s the R.P.”

  “They kept boats in the north, south, and the west, plus a plane ready to go on the runway. Mikael said there were fifty people here. If he wasn’t lying, how many are left?”

  “Not many,” Clyde said. “So we’ll keep ’em running.”

  She drove past houses, a shop, a small hotel. The managed palm-wilderness suddenly gave way to the rigidly cleared runway from which dusty smoke plumed from a crater and poured from a broken plane. The jet lay on its belly with its nose on the road, but other than cloying smoke flowing from its port engine, it appeared intact. So did the pair of people helping each other into the back of a red taxi which had stopped on the road a hundred metres ahead.

  “Slow!” Clyde said, rearing out of the window, firing at the car. But Tess had to swerve around the debris the plane had left on the road. Clyde missed his shot.

  Tess drove them up onto the kerb, shattering a quartet of terracotta pots, two on either side of a sun-bleached front door. The fleeing plane-passengers were all aboard the taxi, which was reversing at speed. Tess brought the truck back onto the road, beyond the smoking plane, and the taxi was now directly ahead of them. But the enemy was driving backwards, and she was catching up.

  The taxi reversed into a courtyard-driveway shared by three two-storey villas, and stopped. The two passengers ran to the steps leading up to the middle of the three houses while the driver jumped out, and sheltered behind the car as he levelled an assault rifle.

  “Slow!” Clyde said, firing blind out of the window. He missed. Their enemy didn’t. Bullets shattered the wing mirror, ripping paint from the bodywork, and pierced the windscreen, tearing a hole through the padded roof.

  “Brace!” Tess yelled, as spider web cracks frosted the windscreen. She ducked low, and ducked lower as another burst from the assault rifle shattered the glass in front. Screaming in key with the engine, she stamped her foot on the accelerator, ramming her truck into the taxi. Momentum slammed her back against the seat, while physics shunted the taxi forward, crushing the shooter sheltering behind.

  Clyde threw open his door, falling outside, staggering to his feet, bringing his rifle to bear on the villa’s partially open door. Tess eased outside.

  “You okay, Commish?” Clyde asked.

  “No worries,” she said, wincing, testing her limbs. Bruised, but not broken.

  Shots rang out inside the house. Tess drew her sidearm, and trained it on the curtained windows while Clyde aimed his weapon at the door.

  “Going in?” he asked.

  “Have to,” she said.

  “Who’s there?” someone called from inside, a woman with a U.S. accent.

  “Australian Federal Police, acting on a U.N. warrant to find survivors. Your mob shot at us.”

  “Australia?” the woman called back. “You’re not with the cartel?”

  “No,” Tess called. “Are you?

  There was a whispered back-and-forth on the other side of the closed door, of which the only words Tess could clearly discern were: “well, of course they’d say that.” It was a man who’d spoken, again with a U.S. accent.

  “We’ve got a warship in the harbour,” Tess called. “If you don’t open the door, we’ll have them drop a shell right on your head.”

  “Hang on,” the man said.

  “Seriously?” Clyde said. But he lowered his carbine a fraction. “Don’t think they’re hostile, Commish.”

  To the left of the door, a net curtain moved. A face appeared, but vanished too quickly for her to see more than a shadow.

  “No way,” came a half-hissed comment from inside.

  “I’m losing my patience out here,” Tess called.

  “What do you want me to do, boss?” Clyde asked.

  “Is that Inspector Tess Qwong?” the woman called from inside the villa.

  “Who’s there?” Tess said.

  The door opened. A woman stepped out. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, though they were holding a bloody machete. More blood covered her jeans and shirt, while exhaustion covered her face. Far paler than when Tess had seen her last. Far older, though it was only two months. But she wouldn’t forget the face of the hermit-woman hiding from her past up by the dingo-fence in the outback.

  “Corrie Guinn? How did you end up here?” Tess asked.

  Corrie wasn’t alone. The man who stepped out of the shadows was her brother, Pete. The third-degree sunburn from when she’d first met him had faded into a tan, over which was laid a week of sweaty grime, and beneath which were bruises. Like his sister, the signs of a crash diet were visible around his eyes and neck, though his cheeks were covered in a youthfully eccentric beard. Like her, he wore a tourist’s left-behinds: cream slacks that barely reached his ankles, but with material to spare for the waist; a lurid shirt in such a violent purple hue it was nearly a crime; no socks, no shoes. His hands were cuffed, and awkwardly holding a revolver.

  “Inspector Qwong!” Pete said. “You can’t believe how good it is to see you. To see anyone.”

  “No worries, Pete. Good to see you, too. We’re out here hunting down the sisters. The cartel terrorists.”

  “You’ve found them,” Corrie said. “Not the sisters. They’re not here. But these are their people. They caught us in the States, and flew us down here to wait for their bosses.”

  “Hands, Pete!” a different woman said. Short, barely topping one-point-six metres tall, with equally short hair, hacked rather than cut. Her figure hard to discern in the baggy tourist-reject shirt and shorts, cinched around her waist with a belt, but in her hand was a key.

  “This is Olivia. Livy, this is Tess Qwong. Remember me telling you about her and Liu Higson from Broken Hill?”

  “Hands, Pete,” Olivia said briskly. “Nice to meet you, Ms Qwong.”

  “How many hostiles are here?” Tess asked.

  “Forty-three, yesterday,” Corrie said instantly. “There are five other prisoners. Locals. I don’t know where they’re keeping them, but last time we saw them, they were in a really bad way.”

  These three, by contrast, were not. They were dirty, bruised, exhausted, but had no obvious cuts or broken bones.

  “Commish!” Clyde called.

  Tess spun, and saw Clyde pointing north, but with his hand rather than a gun. Two figures sprinted towards them: Hawker and Oakes.

  “There are five more prisoners, plus you three?” Tess asked. “Is anyone else on this island friendly?”

  “Not even a little,” Corrie said.

  “Bruce, there’s forty-three hostiles,” Tess said as the colonel ran into earshot.

  “Not now there’s not,” Hawker said.

  “You own the battleship, right?” Pete asked.

  “A couple of days ago, their plane spotted a navy warship to the south, near their Colombian fuel-base,” Corrie explained. “They had some weapon in the hangar they were going to use to kill you.”

  “Bruce, that’s probably the VX,” Tess said.

  “They won’t fly anything out of here now,” Hawker said.

  “But it might be rigged to blow,” Clyde said. “That’d be a good way to ensure we wouldn’t follow them. You said it was in the hangar over there? I’ll go check it out.”

  “Nicko, time to earn our pay,” Hawker said. “Tess, hold this house. If there’s an explosion, get inside, close the windows and doors, and stay inside until the dust has settled.”

  While the three soldiers jogged across the road, to the runway and toward the hangar beyond, Tess leaned against the car, taking a moment to allow her brain to catch up with events. “Pete and Corrie Guinn. Of all the places in the world, of all the people, I find you here. And you found Olivia, Pete. Good on ya, but how?”

  “Accident,” Pete said.

  “Destiny,” Corrie said.

  “A little of both,” Olivia said. “How is it you’re here, Inspector?”

  “Essentially, we’ve been hunting the cartel,” she said. “I’m a commissioner now. Corrie, do you remembe
r Anna Dodson? She’s the deputy prime minister in Canberra. We’ve had a…” She trailed off, turning towards a mosquito-whine rising in volume to diamond-drill. An engine. Two engines: a lime-green Kawasaki speed-bike that could have outraced a plane during take-off, and a bright red Ferrari-convertible as old as Mick.

  The biker raised a pistol. The first shot was a close one, whistling past her ear and slamming into a wooden window shutter, but the recoil threw off the biker’s balance. The bike weaved. The biker’s second two shots went wide. So did Tess’s first, but not her second. The bullet clipped the man’s shoulder, sending up a haze of blood which hovered in the air as the bike tumbled to the verge. The rider rolled across the road, and into the path of the old Ferrari. The rider hit the splitter, rolled up the bumper, and onto the hood, before the car swerved, shaking the corpse off, and ruining the aim of the woman with the submachine gun in the back. Bullets sprayed everywhere, but mostly at the sky. Tess fired back, but though the car was trailing sparks as well as dust, it kept on speeding south. Towards the pier. Towards Zach and Mackay.

  “Hold this position!” she yelled, running to the fallen motorbike. Holstering her gun, she pulled the bike upright.

  So this is war, she thought as she rode off, it’s just another chase.

  The bike wanted to race. She didn’t let it, keeping her speed low as she followed the settling cloud back to the pier. Above the engine’s burr, it was hard to hear anything, until she heard gunfire. Growing in volume.

  At the pier, the Ferrari had to slow to drive around the stalled truck, but it didn’t stop. Zach was shooting from inside the bar. The car’s rear-passenger emptied her submachine gun’s magazine. But the car was weaving, and Tess was nearing.

  The convertible burst onto the concrete pier, accelerating, then braking just as swiftly, stopping by the icebreaker.