Without warning

by John Birmingham

  The yacht veered across the path of the smaller boat without warning, nearly throwing Jules over the safety rail. She’d just regained her footing when Pete crashed into her. He had emerged without warning from a doorway, carrying a sawn-off shotgun he’d taken from Fifi. The cut-down stock slammed painfully into her unprotected arm, numbing it.

  ‘Jesus, Pete. Watch out!’

  ‘Sorry, darlin’, didn’t see you. Heads down!’ He quickly raised the weapon and fired, the blast making her ears ring.

  Pete worked the slide and fired again and again, until he’d emptied the entire load, then he dropped and rolled onto his back as Jules jumped up and loosed off a series of clattering bursts. The first burst went nowhere near the go-fast. She’d had to squint into a lowering sun and had simply hosed out some fire in the general direction of the boat. The second went a little closer as she adjusted her aim, but the shots flew over the heads of the men as Lee tacked again and she lost balance. The third blast, which emptied her clip, raked the foredeck of the boat, sending bright chips of metal and polished fibreglass flying and twinkling into the salt air and late afternoon sun. A muffled whoomp and a satisfying flash told her something vital had gone up, but before she could nail them with a round from the grenade launcher, Pete dragged her down – just as a line of automatic fire ripped along the bulkhead behind her with a heavy, industrial hammering sound. A hot steel chip grazed one cheek, burning her.

  ‘Shit,’ she gasped. ‘Thanks, Pete. Owe you a blowie for that one.’

  ‘Consider me blown,’ shouted Pete over the uproar. ‘Now, gimme the 16, and a couple of mags. You take my shotty and get back to Fifi at the loading dock – she’s got at least one of the pricks on her case. The crazy fucker jumped onto the diving platform on a fly-by’

  ‘Okay. Got it,’ she yelled back, fishing two full magazines out of her combat harness. From the rear of the yacht she heard the unmistakable pounding of Fifi’s favourite gun, a Russian PKM.

  They quickly exchanged weapons and he stuffed the reloads into the pockets of his cargo pants as she spun around.

  Pete headed forward.

  * * * *

  Jules found her shipmate crouched low at the bow of a SeaVee dive boat, which hung next to the big custom-built sport fisher on the lower deck at the rear of the yacht.

  ‘Sorry Julesy,’ said Fifi. ‘Asshole got on board when his buds had me pinned down. I put a lot of fire down there but don’t know whether I even winged him. A frag woulda been nice to roll down on him.’

  It was hard to hear her words over the tumult of gunfire and snarling engine noise, but the meaning was clear enough. Jules patted her on the back, where she’d slung ‘the worm’ – a rocket launcher Pete had acquired on their last trip to the Maldives. It was stamped with Australian Army markings and serial numbers, and had probably been stolen from the garrison on Timor. They had only one warshot for it, and Pete forever had to remind Fifi that she couldn’t fire off a practice round. She’d been desperate to light that sucker up since he’d bought the thing.

  ‘You leave this guy to me, babe,’ said Jules. ‘We really need you to nail one of those fuckers out there. Pete’s working on Shoeless Dan’s ride, that leaves the other one for you. Think you can take him with that thing?’ She indicated the launcher on Fifi’s back.

  Fifi suddenly hauled up her PKM and punched out a short, angry burst, chewing big, expensive chunks out of the yacht’s panelling down by the steps to the diving platform. A heavy Soviet-era design, the gun was powerful enough to be used as an anti-aircraft weapon. The uproar when she fired it was enormous. Jules’s ears were already ringing from the shotgun blasts a few minutes earlier and now they began to hum a single deep tone to let her know they’d suffered some real damage.

  ‘Sorry!’ shouted Fifi. ‘Saw him again. Asshole has only two ways up onto the deck – those two sets of stairs down there. You have to move across from one side to the other all the fucking time to check he hasn’t snuck up. Can’t keep an eye on both at once, you see, but then he can’t be in both places at once either. He’s packing some kinda light fully auto. Maybe an Uzi or an MP5. And yeah, I can put a hurtin’ on that other fucker out on the water, no problemo.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jules. ‘You go.’ Her own voice sounded dull and very distant to her, as though her head had been packed in cotton wool.

  She flicked the safety off her shotgun as Fifi moved away. The Rules was still weaving an erratic course, changing tack without warning as Mr Lee strived to prevent their attackers from boarding any more men. Bent low, Jules couldn’t see the go-fast boats, but the deep growling of their engines as they manoeuvred around the larger vessel was loud and constant. And although distance and the sheer mass of the super-yacht at times muted the pop and crackle of gunfire from Shoeless Dan’s men, the impact of their rounds hitting home was often deafening, as they crashed into metal or glass just overhead.

  Jules shifted position, scowling furiously. The boat deck was crowded with three big vessels and at least half-a-dozen jet skis, all of which provided excellent cover, but also denied her a clear line of sight to her target. The whole area was a terrible fucking mess, totally ripped up by hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Her guy was trapped a level down, where he’d come aboard on the diving platform. Conceivably, if she was able to find a position that covered both sets of stairs up onto the boat deck, she could keep him pinned down until the others were free to help her. But then, she wasn’t familiar with the design of the yacht, and it was more than possible that he might be able to work his way up and behind her via an internal route directly from the docking bay. She didn’t see any way of avoiding a direct confrontation with the little prick.

  Despite the late hour, the sun was still putting out a fierce heat that made all her clothes sticky with sweat. Her tongue felt dry and swollen, and she had trouble swallowing. The yacht swung hard a-starboard, almost throwing her to the deck, but Jules used the momentum to push forward a few more feet to where a couple of black jet skis lay under the keel of the biggest of the auxiliary vessels, the 42-footer. That gave her a better view – she could now see at least part of the other staircase – but it also left her a good deal more exposed.

  She caught a flash of long matted hair and blasted away at it, to be rewarded with a strangled cry. Jules didn’t think the wound was mortal. A Remington made a horrible mess of a human head when it struck with full force, and she saw no evidence of that. Most likely a couple of pellets had hit home and raked out some skin and bone. But nothing fatal.

  ‘Time to double down, Lady Balwyn,’ she muttered to herself, summoning up her courage with a phrase her father had often used.

  A whoosh followed by a sudden explosive roar told her that Fifi had launched her rocket. Without thinking, without waiting, Jules leapt up and ran forward, racking another shell into the breech and squeezing it off. The shotgun boomed in her hands. She racked the slide again.

  Boom.

  She’d made the head of the stairs and now fired down into the well…

  Boom.

  But the boarder was nowhere to be seen. Damn!

  Blood tracks led away to the other side of the boat. There was one particularly large splatter, but it wasn’t flecked with bone chips or brain flecks, and so mostly likely wasn’t evidence of a killing stroke. Still moving as quickly as she could in the pitching, treacherous conditions, she attempted to rack another shell, but the Remington clicked empty. Oh, for fuck’s -

  And then she was on top of him – a small wiry man, deeply tanned, his bare torso covered in dense, brightly coloured swirls of tattoo ink. He was waving a gun around, but apparently blinded. His face was bathed in blood, and the flesh from his nose up had been badly torn by a few pellets of buckshot.

  He fired wildly at the sound of her approach, unloading the better part of an MP5 mag at her, but Jules was already diving before he pulled the trigger. Head tucked in, heart pounding, she crashed into his thighs and knocked him backwards into a se
t of air tanks on the diving platform. Awkwardly, but with all of her strength, she slammed the butt of the shotgun into the soft, fleshy part of his upper arm, paralysing it, and tried to lock the injured limb under her knee as they wrestled.

  The rank, sour stink of his sweat mingled badly with the coppery smell of blood and something richer, nastier. He writhed about beneath her weight, much stronger and quicker than her, but badly wounded and handicapped by his lack of clear vision.

  For her part, Jules was restricted by having to keep so much weight on his gun arm. Knowing she couldn’t win a battle of strength or endurance, she dragged the empty shotgun around and smashed the stock into his face. He screamed with rage and pain, and redoubled his efforts to get out from under her, but three more blows, the last one caving in his forehead, ended any resistance. The body twitched and shuddered and then went limp as his bowels voided themselves all over her legs.

  She gagged, but just managed to hold it together. Snatching the MP5 from his twitching fingers, she crawled to her feet with the muzzle trained on him the whole time. Her leg muscles were rubbery and weak, however, and her knees folded up beneath her as she backed away.

  Sitting there with her legs splayed out in front of her, covered in gore and worse, it took her a minute or so to realise she couldn’t hear any more gunfire. And then, after a few moments when all she could manage to do was breathe and tremble uncontrollably, Jules realised that, for the first time all day, she’d forgotten about the energy wave that had swept away most of America.

  * * * *

  ‘Clubfoot dickhead,’ Pete murmured through clenched teeth as he dived back inside the yacht to avoid getting his head shot off on his journey towards the bow. ‘We didn’t have to do it like this.’

  They were taking on a terrifying amount of fire now, in spite of the damage Jules had done to Dan’s boat. It spoke volumes for the benefit of simply having more fingers on triggers than the other guy. Dan was handing them some serious fucking grief, and it pissed Pete off mightily. He hadn’t been allowed to enjoy a single day as the master of Greg Norman’s super-yacht before some skanky barefoot shit-eater in a Carrot Top fright wig came along and ruined everything by poking holes in his beautiful new boat with a ridiculous amount of automatic gunfire. He had no idea how Dan had come to be out here – probably he’d just loaded up and headed out looking for targets of opportunity as soon as his tiny peabrain had realised that the federales and the USN were desaparecidos permanentemente. Frankly, Pete couldn’t have given a shit. He’d happily have had Dan along as a sidekick, had they been able to berth unmolested at Acapulco, and so long as Dan agreed to a rigid schedule of foot-powder treatments. But this – he emerged onto a forward deck and immediately ducked beneath a couple of rounds from something heavy and unpleasant, a.45 most likely – this was bullshit, a total liberty, and tantamount to taking the fucking piss.

  He kept low and swapped out the mag that Jules had been using. The sun was in the last stage of a long dive in the west, which gave him a momentary advantage as the go-fast sped out of the yacht’s long shadow. He saw half of Dan’s crew suddenly throw their hands up to shade their eyes from the burnt-orange brilliance of the sun’s rays. This was it. Slowly and with infinitely more calm than he actually felt, Pete Holder stood up, knees bent slightly to allow him to adjust to the movement of the deck. He took careful aim and squeezed off an entire clip in four discrete bursts, forcing himself to drop the iron sight back on the cockpit after each salvo.

  ‘Excuse me, Daniel,’ he said to himself. ‘But cheeky little fuckers sometimes need a good smack on the arse.’

  The effect of taking the time to aim properly rather than just banging away was devastating. The first round stitched up Shoeless Dan, raking a line of fire up his fat belly, punching him backwards out of the boat. The last that Pete saw of him was a pair of blackened, swollen feet as they spun up and over the side. The next two bursts cut down all of the remaining men, bar one, who had the presence of mind to duck out of sight. The yacht climbed up a small wave while he was hiding, but Pete bent loose at the knees, keeping the gun sight on the cockpit of the cigarette boat the whole time. His stomach clenched tightly, and he could feel his anus puckering in fear, but he maintained the stance, even as a couple of rounds strayed up from the battle at the stern of the ship.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘just pop your ugly mug up and…’

  He’d fired before making any conscious decision to do so. The last surviving Mexican in Shoeless Dan’s boat suddenly leapt up and tried to snap off a couple of shots while grabbing the steering wheel and spooling up the engines. It was a hopeless, desperate thing to do, and it killed him. Pete sent at least half-a-dozen rounds down-range, and while only three intersected the target, they hit him in the back of the neck, tearing through bone and meat with enough force to sever the head. The body was jerked upright and tossed over the side. The head appeared to drop to the floor of the boat.

  Nausea and revulsion boiled up inside him, but Pete sucked in a mouthful of air. It reeked of smoke and gunpowder, which didn’t really help, but there was nothing for it. He had to push on. He turned to run for the stern, just in time to see a line of white smoke snake out from the deck above him.

  ‘Eat the worm, motherfuckers!’ It was Fifi, yelling from somewhere up on the pool deck.

  His eyes instinctively followed the path of the rocket down through the air and into the side of the second go-fast boat, which blew apart as the warhead speared into her, just above the water-line behind the cabin area. Pete ducked as debris and shrapnel flew out from the point of impact with enough speed to kill anyone who happened to be in the way. Unfortunately, that described his situation precisely. His old knees weren’t as quick or as flexible as they’d once been, and a fist-sized chunk of red-hot steel neatly took off the top third of his head.

  Pete staggered back a few steps before his knees buckled underneath him and he fell to the deck, vaguely aware in his last moments of life that he had, after all, been fucked by the fickle finger of fate.

  ‘Bugger…’ he croaked with his last breath.

  * * * *

  The disinfectant stung, but it was the least of Jules’s myriad hurts. She seemed to exist within a tornado of pain, of dull aches, and sharp, shooting agonies of bruised muscle and tortured bone. Apart from Mr Lee, who was smiling as he dabbed at the deep cut on her cheek, they had all taken damage during the fight with Shoeless Dan’s mob. Fifi had one arm in a sling and was limping from a flesh wound to her thigh.

  The Chinaman finished up by gently pressing a thick bandage in place high on her wounded cheek and handing her a couple of blue capsules. The small pharmacy on the yacht had given up a treasure trove of sedatives and balms. ‘For the pain, Miss Julianne,’ he explained.

  ‘Thanks, Lee,’ she replied in a dry, cracked voice. Jules popped her pills and washed them down with a mouthful of gin and tonic, prepared for her by Fifi. ‘Would it be churlish, at this point, to remind everyone that a couple of hours ago Pete had Shoeless Dan tagged as a reliable chap and potential crew-mate?’

  Fifi sniffed and shook her head. ‘He was always a fucking softie, was Pete. I loved him so much.’ Her face crumpled and she let herself go, releasing a high-pitched keening sound that turned into a series of wails and sobs.

  ‘It would be ungracious and beneath a lady of your breeding, Miss Julianne,’ said Lee, whose own face was a mask, carved from ancient teak.

  Darkness had fallen outside, or a sort of darkness. It glowed with a noticeable red hue thrown off by the energy wave, which was now eighty nautical miles to their north, but still visible. The three survivors had bathed and changed after cleaning up the worst of the damage and bloodshed. While they were at it, they’d got rid of the remains of the former crew members too. It hadn’t been such a bad job, all things considered, compared to washing away the carnage of battle.

  They’d wrapped Pete’s body in a blanket and stored him in one of the galley’s huge freez
er units. He had once told Jules that if he ever bought it, he’d want his ashes scattered at an awesome surf break somewhere. Wouldn’t matter which one. Mavericks, Pipe, Margaret River… they were all good. Just as long as it was pumping when he took his last ride.

  They had gathered in the upper salon, one of the magnificent yacht’s cosier, less formal spaces. A couple of olive-green two-seater lounges, hugely overstuffed and obscenely comfortable, sat around two sides of a giant brown ottoman. A pair of white single-seaters took up another side, where floor-to-ceiling bi-fold windows offered an expansive view of the sea far below. Jules had bathed and showered for two hours, to rid herself of the stink of the man she’d killed and the irrational guilt she felt at living when Pete hadn’t. A couple of hundred dollars’ worth of French toiletries had helped a little with the former, although she still felt as if some corruption had worked its way under her skin. And she knew she was going to be down about Pete for weeks. It was harsh, but she was more affected by his death than by the weird shit happening to the north.

  She sipped at her drink, feeling lonely and abandoned, as she stretched out on the lounge and burrowed deeper into the waffle-weave bathrobe she’d found in one of the cabins. ‘You know what,’ she sighed, ‘Dan was always a bit of a maddy, but even he wouldn’t start a fight like that without good reason.’