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

by Tayell, Frank

  Tess braked, stopping by Hernando’s increasingly battered truck, waving at the bar in the hope for recognition more than as a signal. She drew her pistol as someone by the stopped convertible opened fire. Single shots, and so ill-aimed, Tess couldn’t tell if the woman was shooting at her or at the bar. Using the truck as cover, Tess returned fire, emptying her magazine before ducking down, moving to the other end of the truck as she reloaded. She heard two cracking retorts, but only a single thud of a bullet slamming into the vehicle’s bodywork.

  The situation wasn’t ideal: three hostiles, armed, boarding an icebreaker which had a hull as thick as armour. It wouldn’t be as fast as the warship, but the warship was engaged with boats in the north. Plane, boats, icebreaker, all departing from different directions. Scattering. Making it impossible for everyone to be captured. But this icebreaker had been kept until last. It was Hernando’s boat. Mikael’s boat. The leaders’ boat. A shot hit her truck. A burst hit the bar.

  She sprang up and fired at the man climbing up the ship’s side. He made for an easy target. Her bullet took him in the side. As he fell, he twisted, turned, so he hit the jetty head-first. It was a high enough fall to knock him out, but probably not to kill him, except that the ship had drifted half a metre from the pier. The man’s legs and waist were over the edge. Slowly, he slid down into the water, already foaming as the engines increased their tempo. The ship was already prepped for departure. That was why Hernando, if not Mikael, had come to the pier. Another burst, poorly aimed, ripped through the vegetation behind her.

  She sprang from cover again, but couldn’t see any targets on the pier. They’d made it aboard. Gun raised, expecting to see a shooter at the stern, she ran, sprinting for the side of the boat. Ropes had been holding the vessel in place, but those fell, severed from the deck. The icebreaker was manoeuvring slowly, and was over a metre from the jetty when she jumped for the ladder. Her left hand caught the rung, but her gun-hand slammed against metal. The pistol fell from her grip as her elbows, and then her knees, slammed into the ship, but her feet found the rungs. Below, the sea frothed, and not just from the engines. A fin cut through the waves, speaking of a horror below as visceral as that on deck.

  A familiar pain rose from her hip, joined by newer aches from shoulder and knees, but one rung at a time, she hauled herself up, pausing only when a distant explosion rocked the island. Hoping it was just a cannon shell, she gripped the top rung. Leaning back, she brought her feet up further, then launched herself over the side, rolling into a crouch as she landed on the deck.

  An axe was running towards her, its wielder barely a metre behind. The axe swung up while the gangster pounded down the gangway. Experience told her there wasn’t time to draw her knife, so she dived, tackling the man at the knees, pushing up and off, and throwing him over her shoulder, over the side of the ship into the shark-infested waters below.

  Barely had she time to regret the guilty flash of satisfaction when an anvil slammed into her chest. She fell back to the deck, rolling again, and beneath the shadow of the deck-crane even as she gasped for air. Shot. She’d been shot. Right in the vest. And someone was shooting still. Bullets pinged off the deck-crane around which she sheltered. A large crane made of thick steel, with even thicker steel panelling running around the base, but with a control unit close to her head.

  She pulled herself upward, every breath an agony. The shooting had ceased, so the shooter was approaching, wanting to confirm the kill. This ship was ready to depart. How ready? The crane controls had a shed of levers and a star-scape of lights, but one of the recessed red buttons was marked emergency release. She slammed her hand down. The lock disconnected, the cable unspooled, and the hook slammed into the deck. Not as hard as she was expecting, but if she’d not been holding herself upright, she’d have fallen. The shooter hadn’t been expecting it. The shooter had fallen.

  As Tess swung herself around the crane, and while the uncoiling cable lashed around the deck, she saw her enemy, the woman who’d been in the back of the convertible. She was prone, on all fours, at the base of the ladder, but already pulling herself back up. Tess staggered onward, drawing her knife, while the woman wasted time looking for her fallen gun.

  The shooter bent to pick up a dropped revolver. Tess lunged, just as the ship rocked, adding its motion to her weight, as the blade plunged into the terrorist’s side. Hot blood washed over Tess as she pulled the blade out. The woman grabbed Tess’s arm, but her grip was weak, and growing weaker. Tess pushed her away, down to the deck. It was easier than killing a zombie. Far easier. Tess grabbed the dying gangster’s revolver, and hauled herself up the steps towards the bridge. Behind her, the clack of the winch was replaced by a slithering groan as the loose cable slid across the deck.

  Not her problem. No, hers was on the bridge, because someone must have been aboard the icebreaker, getting this ship ready for departure. But the bridge was empty.

  Tess staggered to a halt against the console. Through the window, she saw empty ocean as the boat churned through the waves, still picking up speed.

  Her eyes tracked from one control console to the next until they settled on the familiar sight of a radio.

  “Te Taiki, this is Tess Qwong on the icebreaker. Can someone tell me what a ship’s handbrake looks like?”

  Chapter 44 - A Long Way from the Outback

  Corn Island, Nicaragua

  With a wrenching effort, Tess removed her vest, in which two slugs were still embedded. She didn’t remember the second shot. Her ribs were bruised, but probably not broken, and she was, remarkably, alive.

  It took twenty minutes for the helicopter to arrive overhead. By then, following Captain Adams’s radioed instructions, Tess had cut power to the engines. Three sailors jumped from the helicopter, which took flight almost immediately, returning to shore. Leaving Lt Renton to turn the ship around, she began the search for the last terrorist.

  He was easy to find, as he’d taken refuge in the captain’s cabin which he’d then secured from the inside. She put a sailor on guard, and limped back to the bridge, only pausing to examine the bullet marks in the bulkhead and bloodstains on the deck.

  By the time they reached the shore, the battle was over. Clyde was waiting on the jetty. She waved him up to the deck.

  “There’s one last cartel killer in the captain’s cabin,” she said. “Can you find some cutting gear?”

  “I’ll try talking first,” Clyde said. “Can I offer him a deal?”

  “No, but you can tell him we want to know what happened here. If he wants to pretend he’s a victim, that’s fine, so don’t mention any prisoners we’ve freed. What’s happened ashore?”

  “We won,” Clyde said.

  “Good to know, but are there any specifics I should be aware of?”

  “They stuck two bricks of C4 with a timer beneath the runway’s fuel tanks,” Clyde said. “Found it before we refuelled the helicopter.”

  “That’s good,” Tess said. “And it’s good there’s fuel for the helicopter. And that it didn’t blow up.”

  “I think the device was supposed to be another diversion, because they didn’t rig the bomb to the VX.”

  “You found more nerve agent?” Tess asked.

  “Two canisters so far. First was in the hangar. In a transportation-container. It’s military grade, and custom-built, but unmarked.”

  “It’s a WMD,” Tess said. “Which nation would want to sign their name on that crime?”

  “It’s a deeper tragedy than that,” Clyde said. “I found the second canister beneath the plane.”

  “Do you mean the crashed plane?”

  “It doesn’t appear to have leaked. The scientists aren’t taking any chances. They’re geared up, and dismantling it. The canisters slot into a dispersal device built beneath the plane’s wing. That’s a commercial jet, and it’s a military-grade dispersal device. The design would have been trialled. Tested. It’s a wing-mounted delivery system that looks remarkably similar to a
spare, external fuel tank.”

  “Trialled it? But not with VX or surely we’d have known about it,” Tess said.

  “You’d like to think so,” Clyde said. “But the evening news had a limited number of spots for faraway tragedies.”

  “Can you guess who designed it?”

  “Not yet, but there aren’t many suspects. This is the work of a national government, and a military-grade factory.”

  “Then every possible suspect is dead,” Tess said. She took a deep breath, and stalled halfway through, wincing as she rubbed her ribs. “D’you know, I’ll be glad when we’re out of this sea. So the explosive at the fuel tanks would have been a diversion. But so were the boats, leaving from different piers. How many got away?”

  “Four were sunk. Two fast-boats, two yachts. There’s no way to know how many people were aboard.”

  “Could a ship have evaded detection?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “It’s possible there are some cartel-terrorists still hiding on the island. Give me a team of ten, and thermal imaging, and a week, and I’ll find them.”

  “What could they tell us that the man in the cabin couldn’t?” Tess asked. “You get him out, I’ll speak to the former captives, and then to the captain.”

  With a weary sigh, followed by a clenching wince, she climbed over the side of the ship.

  She reached the shore-side bar at the same time as a white pick-up, marked harbour-master, and driven by Captain Adams. Two sailors with a stretcher jumped out of the back, and hurried to the bar.

  “We’re collecting Mr Mackay,” Adams said. “We’re docked in the north.”

  “Were there many fatalities?” Tess asked.

  “None yet, but there were casualties,” Adams said. “The enemy was trying to flee rather than fight.”

  The two sailors came out of the bar with Glenn Mackay strapped to a stretcher, and with Zach a step behind.

  “The cartel were keeping prisoners on the island,” Tess said. “Five were reported to require medical assistance.”

  “We’ve found eight,” Adams said. “Three from the U.S. who seem to know you, and five South Americans. Two are in a bad way. Three are worse. They’ve been transferred to the ship. Your friends are still in the crossroads house.”

  “An enemy combatant’s locked himself into the captain’s cabin on the icebreaker,” Tess said. “Clyde’s fishing him out.”

  “Was that ship our diesel trader?” Adams asked.

  “Couldn’t say,” Tess said. “Not yet. But a battle was fought on that icebreaker long before we arrived. There are bloodstains and bullet holes in the corridors. I’ll need more time to inspect it.”

  “Perhaps your old friends will be able to tell us,” Adams said.

  “Are you coming, Zach?” Tess asked.

  “Well, I’m not staying here,” he said.

  They drove slowly until they reached the crashed plane, where a pair of yellow-clad figures were huddled near the wing.

  When they stopped at the house, Tess jumped down. Adams got out, too.

  “Zach, stay with Glenn,” Tess said, and looked back towards the crashed plane while the truck sped away. “If you’d not stopped the escaping boats, how far could they have reached?”

  “The mainland, easily,” Adams said. “It’s only seventy kilometres away. The island of Little Corn is much closer.”

  “They must have had a destination in mind,” Tess said. “Clyde said an explosive had been rigged at the runway-fuel tanks, so that plane wasn’t going to land here again.”

  “It was a lucky shot that took out the plane,” Adams said. “A life at sea breeds superstition. It’s a habit I tried to avoid, but it’s a notion that seeps into one’s thinking. The shell hit the runway in front of the plane, and from sufficient distance the pilot, instinctively, turned. The plane careened off the runway, and so broke its landing gear. A second earlier, the plane might have made it into the air. A second later, and we’d have scattered the plane’s contents across the island. There’s VX aboard.”

  “Clyde told me. In a military-grade dispersal system.”

  “They might have constructed it to survive a crash, but not a direct impact,” Adams said.

  “During the confrontation on the pier, the bloke I think was their leader wanted us to get back in the boat and return to the ship,” Tess said. “That plane is why. They were going to strafe the warship.”

  “I imagine so,” Adams said. “Would we have shot down a civilian plane flying low overhead? Probably not. These sisters knew the politicians they’d been bedding down with would want to obliterate all witnesses. An attack sub, or even a destroyer, would be too noticeable an acquisition for two drug-dealing gangsters, so they purchased a nerve agent, and a system with which to deploy it against enemy ships. After the end of the world, to them, every ship became an enemy.”

  “So they’re not likely to be the fuel-traders,” Tess said. “Though I’m not ruling it out. But it does make me wonder, among other questions, why they came to this particular island.”

  “Let’s see if your friends know the answer,” Adams said.

  When the truck had pulled in, the three Americans had been sitting on the stoop of the central villa. Corrie and Olivia had stood up, though Pete hadn’t. He sat, head bowed over a food-can whose contents he was shovelling into his mouth. Olivia rested a hand on his shoulder. Corrie had taken a few steps towards them, but then stopped, waiting, clearly anxious while the two professionals conducted their private conversation.

  “Hey Corrie,” Tess said with a broad smile. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “We’re guarding the food,” Corrie said, coming over to meet them.

  “There’s food here?” Adams asked.

  “This is their stash-house,” Corrie said. “They kept the food upstairs. They kept us in the cellar. You’ll want to know everything, Inspector— sorry, Commissioner, but can we talk alone?” She nodded towards Olivia and Pete. “I know everything you need to know, and they don’t need to relive it.”

  “Sure,” Tess said. “Can you walk, Pete?”

  “Mmm,” he said, his mouth full of pineapple.

  “Take that road, and you’ll find my ship and crew,” Adams said. “Tell them there’s food here, and I want it aboard.”

  “This is Captain Adams,” Tess said, as the couple walked away. “Corrie used to live in my patch of the bush, keeping an eye on the dingo-fence. She’s a mate of mine, and of Mick Dodson’s.”

  Corrie nodded. “Hey. Thanks for saving us.”

  “How did you come to be here?” Adams asked.

  “After we flew to Canada, me and Pete went to find Olivia in South Bend. That’s where she and Pete lived before. Afterward, we linked up with General Yoon’s army. We were at the rear when the bombs fell, but the front was close to the Saint Lawrence. Ground zero for the nuclear strikes. The general’s army was wiped out. Judge Benton took command and was organising a retreat, but the three of us went west to see if we could make contact with you, with the Pacific Alliance. We didn’t get very far. But we found Lisa Kempton. She was being held prisoner by these cartel people.”

  “Kempton? Do you mean that eccentric billionaire?” Adams asked.

  “Oh, you don’t know?” Corrie asked. “Lisa’s been trying to stop these people for decades. The cartel and their pet politicians. Well, she failed, obviously. She went east to finish them off. We went west to try to reach you guys, but we didn’t get far before we learned Vancouver had been bombed and people were fleeing inland. It was a real mess. Zombies and refugees don’t mix well. People were hungry and scared. So were we. The three of us drove south, and crossed the border. Kempton had set up supply stashes for her people, for after the apocalypse. That’s where they caught us.”

  “Who’s they?” Tess asked. “Do you mean the cartel?”

  “They were waiting for Kempton but we turned up instead.”

  “How did they get you here?” Adams asked.


  “By jet-plane,” Corrie said. “We stopped once. I overheard them talking while we changed plane, and I think they said we were in West Virginia. We were blindfolded the whole time, and drugged when we changed aircraft, but it can’t have been more than two days between them grabbing us and bringing us down here.”

  “They found you at a stash house in the U.S., near the Canadian border, and flew you here?” Adams asked. “Why not kill you?”

  “Because I persuaded them I knew stuff,” Corrie said. “Things about Kempton, like where her other safe houses were. Where she might be. How she’d stayed ahead of the sisters all these years. I exaggerated a lot, and lied about the rest, but they believed me. Except the sisters were supposed to be here, so it was stupid.”

  “It kept you alive,” Tess said.

  “No,” Corrie said. “Because afterwards, Hernando explained what the sisters were going to do with Kempton when they caught her. They wanted to torture her for years. Literally. He was trained as a doctor. He even knew her blood type so he could set up transfusions. It was… even in a year where we’ve seen zombies and nuclear bombs, it was sickening. It would have been better if they’d killed us up north, because when the sisters got here, he made it clear he was going to practice on us.”

  “But the sisters didn’t arrive?” Adams asked.

  “No, so we were treated… not like guests, but we weren’t really harmed. Not except when we almost escaped. We made it to the docks, but they had a sentry watching the boats. We had some food with us, so they… they skinned the woman who was in charge of the kitchen. In front of us. It was like back in that golf club in Broken Hill.”

  “We saw it in Colombia, too,” Tess said. “They even left a video of Hernando torturing some of the locals.”

  “Right, you went to their mine, didn’t you?” Corrie said.

  “You know about that?” Tess asked.

  “They knew about that,” Corrie said. “The plane flew around looking for ships, looking for the sisters. Any ship that wasn’t cartel was lured here. Except, a few days ago, the plane returned reporting the mine was now just a smoking crater, and a warship was seen sailing northwest.”