“Yeah, but what am I looking for?” Zach asked.
“You won’t know it when you see it,” Tess said. “Not at first. There won’t be a perfectly timed eureka moment where everything slots into place. You have to build up a mental picture of what the scene was like before, and what happened next. From that, eventually, you’ll work out who committed the crime.”
“But there wasn’t a crime at that French refuelling base,” Zach said.
“Not that we know of,” Tess said. “But it’s still part of the wider crime which brought about the end of the world. When we return to Australia, there will be an inquiry with questions from parliament, and the U.N. Probably televised. Definitely published. Everyone will want to know what we’ve seen.”
“Beats doing homework, right?” Clyde said.
“I guess,” Zach said, and sounded unsure.
Tess picked up a pen, and began copying the names of the ships listed in the refuelling log onto the board.
It always took a while for the clues to slot into place. On this occasion, it had taken about thirty hours. There was a certain kind of copper, the worst kind of copper, for whom the first rule of policing was: everyone can be charged with something. That kind of rule belonged in the world her mother had escaped, and it was not going to be the foundation of the new world they were trying to create.
Avalon and Smilovitz had deliberately lied to the prime minister. That wasn’t a crime, or else every session of parliament would be held behind bars. As the Canadians’ avowed goal was to avoid production being diverted from essential logistics and medicine production, it would be ridiculous to charge them with wasting governmental resources. Treason was a possibility, though it would set a dangerous precedent if refusal to rush to production a WMD were to become an offence.
Not that she was in a position to arrest them. Not while aboard ship, when the captain and crew would ask why. She’d destroyed every entry in her diary mentioning the weapon, and was debating disposing of the rest, too. Not to cover up the crime, but to avoid any of the sailors learning the truth. The crew believed the mission was vital to constructing a weapon to end the undead, and so they’d given up a chance to head for home. Revealing the lie probably wouldn’t lead to a lynching, or even to the scientists being stranded on the first stretch of rocky shore, but it would dent cohesion when they were sailing through very troubled waters.
When they returned to Canberra, she’d have to tell Anna. The Canadians didn’t want their new society to begin with the deployment of another WMD, but she didn’t want it to begin with a conspiracy and cover-up, so she’d have to tell O.O. too. It was difficult to predict what would happen afterwards. Probably, publicly, nothing.
The outcome depended on just how dire the situation in the Pacific had become, but the scientists were too valuable not to be put to work. They had still lied. There would be consequences. Someone would be blamed. She wouldn’t let it be Zach, so she’d reassigned him, away from the scientists.
“France is gone, Europe’s gone. The north is radioactive,” Clyde said, reading from a tablet. “That was the message from the French warship, the Aconit. It’s a grim start to the report, but it sets the tone. And there’s that sub. Did it recently come south, or has it been in these waters for weeks?”
“Which sub d’you mean?” Zach asked.
“Both,” Tess said.
“Speaking of those subs,” Clyde said, “why did the Adventure want to sink the Vepr? How many ships did either submarine sink since the outbreak?”
“Write the questions up on that board,” Tess said. “We won’t answer all of them, but it’ll help keep us focused on what answers we’re looking for. Ah, this could be something. The first ship to travel through Dégrad des Cannes wrote its name, and the direction it was travelling. The others who came through copied that. So we know the Viaje Segura was going north. We don’t know where they sailed from, or when. But it’s a Spanish name.”
“It means safe journey,” Clyde said.
“I hope, for them, their journey was,” Tess said. “But a Spanish name suggests they were from a Spanish-speaking country. So not Brazil. Potentially, then, they came from Uruguay or Argentina.”
“We don’t know the ship’s range,” Clyde said. “Or where else they might have refuelled.”
“No, but we do know the coastal areas of Brazil were devastated during the nuclear war if not before,” Tess said. “We can’t draw a conclusion, not yet, but most of these ships were sailing north. We’re not likely to find a refuge in the south, but there could be another fuel supply.”
“But why didn’t they go south around the Cape?” Clyde asked.
“That’s another question to go up on our board,” Tess said.
“What does the rest of the message say?” Zach asked.
“My Spanish isn’t great,” Tess said. “But I think this means: we cannot go home, so we’ll look for a harbour in the north.”
“So if we know where they came from, we know where to avoid,” Zach said. “We could ask Doc Leo for help with the translation.”
“No, we should let the two scientists work,” Tess said.
“The message from that French warship is weird,” Zach said. “It’s not very naval. Bet their captain was dead.”
“Rule-seven in policing: leave the jumping to the kangaroos,” Tess said. “All we can say is the message probably wasn’t written by the captain. When we return this way to refuel, if the zoms are gone, we can take a look in the barracks.”
“Or search the city of Cayenne,” Clyde said. “We’d be more likely to find food there.”
“Oh, yeah, good idea,” Zach said. “Is it lunch yet?”
“Not even close,” Clyde said. “Let’s take a look at those photos of the zoms.”
“The coolest one is… here,” Zach said. “You can see two crocs each going for a different leg.”
“Strewth, mate, no,” Clyde said. “I want to look at the uniforms. See if we can piece together where they came from.”
Tess returned to the photograph of the note left by the ships’ captains. The notes were brief. Six in Spanish, four in Portuguese, and two, both from the warship, in French. She walked over to the whiteboard, and added another question: Where did the French ship go?
When she’d invented this make-work exercise, she’d expected it to be little more than a distraction for her and for the crew. Questions would produce theories they couldn’t possibly confirm, but the more she stared at the map, at the list they’d found at the French harbour, and the summary of their recent voyage, one of those theories was beginning to solidify.
One line had been repeated three times by three different crews though with a slight variation: the Atlantic was dangerous.
“This photo’s interesting,” Clyde said. “I count three uniform jackets here.”
“Do you know whose they are?” Zach asked.
“No, but someone in the crew might,” Clyde said.
“Clyde, would a sub commander have orders for what to do if satellites went down?” Zach asked.
“Yep,” Clyde said.
“So someone gave them an order to plaster South Africa and Brazil?”
“Yep,” Clyde said. “South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere. Relatively safe from fallout. Situated at the confluence of two oceans, it’s a logical hub for regrouping and re-organising.”
“But why attack it?” Zach asked.
“Because the purpose of nuclear weapons was to wipe out the species,” Clyde said. “That’s what it comes down to. Probably worth asking Leo for the details on that.”
“Not at the moment,” Tess said. “Three ships wrote that that the Atlantic was dangerous. Twice in Portuguese. Those would be ships from Brazil. If you were a ship sailing out of Natal, wouldn’t you consider going east? The Aconit was a French stealth frigate. Not quite new-out-of-the-box, but still a piece of top-ranked military hardware. They didn’t stay in Dégrad des Cannes, on either occasion,
and they didn’t go east, either.”
“Do you think it was because of the subs?” Zach asked.
“Could be,” Tess said.
The alarm rang for battle stations, even as the background engine thrum changed. “This is the captain. A wreckage field lies dead ahead, the result of a recent battle. We will look for survivors.”
“Can we go to the deck and help?” Zach asked.
“Once you’ve secured everything here,” Tess said. “But I’m going to take advantage of rank and go up to the bridge.”
The captain stood by the bridge window, surveying the wreckage. The sea’s surface was rainbow-slick from spilled oil, dotted with strips of sailcloth, split masts, and fractured fibreglass. A more intact hull was ringed by a pool of greenish-white foam.
“Was there a battle?” Tess asked.
“A massacre,” Adams said. “Those were yachts. Sailing boats. Travelling together. At least twenty so far, but likely to be around ten times that number. They were deliberately sunk, and within the last week. Probably within the last seventy-two hours. Possibly even more recently than that. I’ve sent crews to the deck to look for survivors.”
“Who would do this?” Tess asked. “Sorry, that’s the wrong question. How was it done?”
“Heavy machine gun and explosives,” Adams said. “It’s too early to be certain, but I would think a torpedo.”
“From a submarine?”
“Or from a ship,” Adams said.
Tess crossed to a console, where Mr Kane was analysing images from the ship’s cameras.
“Wait,” she said. “No, can you go back a couple of seconds?”
“Where to?” the lieutenant asked.
“I thought I saw… yes, there’s a life jacket, but without anyone inside. Captain, life jackets are marked with the name of the ship, aren’t they? Can we pick some up?”
“We can certainly get images of them.”
It took an hour to travel through the debris field. They were able to put names to fourteen different vessels either from life jackets, upturned hulls, or other floating wreckage. One of those ships was the Isabella la Bella, the last vessel to have recorded its name at Dégrad des Cannes.
3rd April
Chapter 35 - Tomorrow’s Battle
Venezuela
At midday, the appointed hour for the planning meeting, Tess stepped into the wardroom, and was surprised to find it almost empty. Only Captain Adams and Colonel Hawker were present.
“Am I early?” she asked.
“After discovering the wreckage yesterday, I decided to limit who was involved in this decision,” Adams said. “I can offer you water. We’re out of tea, even the powdered kind. We’re so low on supplies we might be forced to eat those dollar-bars you brought from Australia, though we’re not so desperate yet.”
“How does the wreckage of those yachts change our plans?” Tess asked.
“It clarifies them,” Hawker said.
“That’s an apt description,” Adams said. “When you first pitched this mission of yours, I thought we might get as far as Ascension, and find it a flooded graveyard. On deciding to cross the Atlantic, I wasn’t sure what we’d find. I didn’t expect South America to be worse than Africa. By now, I thought we’d have met some local survivors with local knowledge of what happened here. We’ve only found ghosts and echoes, without a single piece of actionable intel.”
“Does this change our destination?” Tess asked. “Are we skipping Colombia?”
“No,” Adams said. “We will still aim for the cartel’s redoubt.”
“The lack of information limits our options,” Hawker said. “I’ve been staring at this map for a week. Trying to think like these Herrera sisters. They knew what none of the rest of us did. They knew a nuclear war was coming.”
“They knew about the zombies, too,” Tess said.
“Proof if we needed it that we’re not dealing with a rational mind,” Hawker said. “We’re planning with severely limited data. We know there’s a coal mine and a runway, and there must be a water source, but the region is mostly desert.” He pointed at the regional map displayed on the wall. “Our target is Puerto Bolivar, fifty kilometres west-southwest of Punta Gallinas, the most northerly point on the continent. It’s a peninsula on a peninsula down which the border with Venezuela runs. The nearest major city is Maracaibo in Venezuela. Beyond the desert are mountains and jungle-rainforest. It’s relatively untouched, and relatively uninhabited. But across the sea is the tourist-island of Aruba. If we ignore the mountains, it’s not that far from the Venezuelan oil fields. This is not where you’d rebuild civilisation, but it’s a great place to wait for the fallout to settle.”
“The jungle, the mountains, and then the desert all create a barrier to refugees arriving by land,” Adams said. “So does the sea, of course, and the wreckage we saw yesterday tells us what happens to unarmed ships sailing through these waters.”
“You think they were attacked by the sisters?” Tess asked.
“The wreckage was too recent to have been caused by the Vepr,” Adams said. “Either it was the sisters, or there is another hostile ship in these waters.”
“The cartel had a coal mine,” Bruce said. “I’d guess that was a cover for smuggling. But a mine requires miners, and they require food. That flotilla would have contained a lot of hungry mouths. Easier to sink them than persuade them to turn around.”
“A coal mine and a water source,” Tess said. “They must have a coal turbine.”
“Probably, but they would have diesel for the ships,” Adams said. “At least one of which was capable of destroying that flotilla of refugees. Don’t think of the locals as miners. Not anymore. Think of them as conscripted soldiers. If they want to eat, they have to fight.”
“They used the coal mine as cover for shipping narcotics,” Tess said. “The limitation is you can only ship to countries which still imported coal.”
“But the narcotics are cover, too,” Hawker said. “Cover for the laboratory where they made compound-zom. But what about imports? They knew the apocalypse was coming. They’ll have brought in weapons and food to keep that army fed.”
“Weapons to sink a ship,” Tess said. “You could install a deck-mounted torpedo-system on a fishing trawler, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t buying some of those be less conspicuous than buying a warship?”
“The captain on my first posting said you should always assume the worst,” Adams said. “It isn’t always the best advice. But here it holds. Natal is the most easterly cape. Punta Gallinas is the most northerly. Let us assume the sisters fed false intel to their associates, and the destruction of Natal was an attempt to wipe out the cartel. In which case, the sisters knew that a submarine might be sent to hunt them. Yes, they would have been prepared to try to sink a sub. A fishing trawler with a torpedo might be inconspicuous enough to manage it. But we must also assume they sank that flotilla we saw yesterday.”
“That’s not the worst case,” Hawker said. “The worst case is that they’re in command of the Courageous and the Vepr, or possibly even the Adventure.”
“We’ve had no contact from that submarine since it sank the Russian boat,” Adams said. “We should assume the worst, but not weigh ourselves down with fear.”
“So what do we do?” Tess asked. “You said our choices are limited.”
“They are pirates,” Adams said. “They have to be destroyed. I’d hoped we’d find this place lightly defended, perhaps overrun with the undead, and we could gather the data the scientists needed. I dreamed we might even make use of the lab to construct a working prototype we could test locally. That recent wreckage suggests otherwise. Colonel?”
“We’ve no satellite data,” he said, walking over to the screen, “so we’ve got to make a few guesses. We know the runway and pier are on the western side of this bay. Between the harbour and the northern cape are many small bays and inlets in which a boat might shelter. The cartel rule by fear, so wouldn’t want to let
even a fishing boat get too far beyond sight. They’ll keep their fleet in the bay. It’ll consist of captured yachts and sailing ships, but with a few large diesel-powered cargo vessels. Probably the coal-haulers. Plus at least one vessel equipped with torpedoes.”
“We’ll assume they have a few fast-boats,” Adams said. “The entrance to the bay is about two kilometres wide, but we have no charts listing depth. We can’t stopper the entrance.”
“If this were me,” Hawker said, “I’d place artillery positions on either wing of the bay. These women might have engineered the end of the world, but they were still narco-barons. They’d be limited to what could be smuggled in disguised as mining machinery. Forget artillery. But they could have portable missiles. I’m assuming Russian-made Igla anti-air, with a range of five kilometres.”
“They have a runway,” Tess said. “They could have a fighter plane or an attack-copter.”
“They could,” Adams said. “But how quickly can they launch it? We’ve installed a missile strut on the Seahawk. At fifty kilometres distance, the helicopter will launch. Commander Tusitala will approach the bay from the east, identifying any battle-capable vessels they have, but with the primary goal of launching a missile at the runway. A second strike will take out the airport fuel tanks. By which time, we will have entered firing range. Our first target will be smoke from their coal power station. The helicopter will draw fire from any portable artillery guarding the bay, and perhaps the warship. That will provide us with our next targets.”
“We’re using the helicopter as bait?” Tess asked.
“Nicko and I’ll be aboard,” Hawker said. “Worst case, if we have to ditch, we’ll hike back to the coast, and paddle our way to New Zealand.”
“Why can’t we pick you up?” Tess asked.
“Because that’d mean the ship had to wait off the coast, within range of their surviving boats,” Hawker said.
“I hope we can take out their ships, the runway, any above-ground fuel storage, and their power station,” Adams said. “But we won’t neutralise any shipping outside of that bay. I’m not concerned about speedboats chasing us away, but any larger vessel patrolling nearby. If our initial strike is unsuccessful, if the helicopter is downed, we will have to retreat, south, to French Guiana where we shall refuel before our enemy has a chance of destroying those fuel tanks. If we wait for Commander Tusitala, they could beat us to French Guiana.”
Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 29