Without warning

by John Birmingham

  ‘He had good reason,’ said Fifi, who’d recovered some of her composure. ‘Fuckin’ Jane Austen on full volume. Drives me nuts when you play those vids, Julesy.’

  Jules managed a sad smile. Fifi still held a grudge about having to sit through Sense and Sensibility with Julianne a while back. She’d thought they were seeing the sequel to Dumb and Dumber.

  ‘It’d make me go for the gun locker too. Stupid m… mo… motherfucker,’ she mumbled before lapsing back into tears.

  Jules downed her drink in one long pull and stood up unsteadily, looking for the gin bottle. ‘I’m sorry about Pete,’ she said. ‘I’ll cry myself to sleep later, but we don’t have time to wallow. This Twilight Zone rubbish is going to upset the apple cart in the worst way possible, and it’s likely to happen very quickly. I suspect Dan was simply ahead of the curve. Well, him or someone who paid him. His operation didn’t normally run to go-fast boats and hired bandidos.’

  ‘Shoeless Dan always most unimpressive,’ declared Mr Lee as he cleared away the first-aid kit. ‘First I ever hear of him was of red-headed giant trying to sell stolen dog food to Vietnam criminals. Tried to say real dog in can. Vietnam tie bag of cans to Shoeless Dan and throw him in water. Only escapes because they cannot tie knot well.’

  ‘No,’ said Jules as she handed Fifi a Tasmanian beer, ‘they probably tied those knots fine. But there were some things Dan did know well. Knots, sails, boats, tides, who’d take a bribe and who wouldn’t, the range and speed of every Coast Guard cutter in the Keys – anything to do with smuggling by sea and he was good for it. But piracy was not his gig.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he surely wasn’t worth a pinch of shit as one,’ sniffed Fifi.

  ‘So, what was the story today?’ asked Jules, as she picked a sandwich from a silver platter on the ottoman in front of her. She wasn’t really hungry. It was just something to do. Fifi had found half a turkey and a leg of Iberian ham in one of the giant double-door refrigerators down in the main galley and she’d thrown together a small feast of cold cuts and salad. She wasn’t eating either, and Jules suspected that preparing the meal was more about therapy than hunger. Long before Fifi had taken up smuggling, she had qualified as a commercial chef.

  Fresh bread rolls, slathered with melting butter, lay in a pile next to a big bowl of baby spinach leaves, walnuts and slivers of pear and Parmesan. The drugs Jules had taken had begun a slow waltz with her gin and tonic, and she let the warm waves of sleepiness wash over her.

  ‘Yeats, my friends. The story today was Yeats,’ she said, answering her own question, if somewhat impenetrably. ‘“The centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” That’s where we are right now. On the edge of anarchy.’

  * * * *

  13

  HONOLULU, HAWAII

  The early evening drive down to the Governor’s residence in downtown Honolulu was enough to convince James Ritchie that the Hawaiian islands were going to go down a tube at high speed unless someone got their act together. The curfew seemed to have had no effect and the state government no interest in enforcing it. Thousands of people were milling about the streets, many of them agitated and besieging any place where they could buy emergency supplies of food and water. Large, increasingly unstable crowds had gathered outside travel agencies and airline shopfronts, which remained open well after normal business hours. Every gas station had a trail of vehicles snaking away from its bowsers, leading Ritchie to wonder where the hell these people thought they were going to escape to in their SUVs and family sedans.

  His latest reports from Gitmo and Canada spoke of a strange glow, as if from a distant furnace, emanating from the energy wave, and as their route down to the Capitol District allowed Ritchie glimpses of the Pacific reaching away back east, he couldn’t shake the impression of a sunset that seemed denser and richer than normal. Long, slow lines of surf banked up in sets of three off the beach at Waikiki, a strong offshore breeze blowing thick foam back off the lip as they crested. The weird, almost ethereal light lent the spray a bright, burnished cherry colour, and seemed to paint the mass of surfers and body boarders bright pink as they carved up the barrels.

  The Capitol District was less crowded, probably because it offered little in the way of supplies that could be bought up and hoarded. Police and state troopers were out in force, however, and the pulsing lights of over a dozen Honolulu PD squad cars bathed the district in a rich, electric red that overwhelmed the otherworldly light Ritchie had noticed before. His BlackBerry buzzed as the staff car swung off Beretania Street and in through the gates of Washington Place. It was his wife.

  NANCY IS OK! FLEW OUT OF O’HARE THS MNG.

  IN LONDON. WILL CALL L8R.

  A hollow opened up in the admiral’s chest and filled with heat, but it subsided quickly, and he was left with a loose feeling in his bowels and a giddy, almost guilty, sense of relief. His only child had been scheduled to fly out of the US this week for a year’s travel through Europe and Asia. But Nancy was a bit of a free spirit – an ‘airhead’, he might have said were she anyone other than his own – and organisation was not her strong point. She was just as likely to miss a flight as catch one, and her trip had already been rescheduled twice for that very reason. Ritchie had spent the entire day trying to cope with the end of the world while stomping down on a feeling of utter hopelessness for his baby girl. He had spoken to nobody about it. Everyone had people somewhere back home and his first responsibility was to the nation, not to himself or even his family. But he shivered uncontrollably as tears filled his eyes, hot and stinging, and he had to hold his breath to forestall a sob.

  Damn, he cursed silently. What a time to crack up.

  ‘You all right, sir?’

  He kept his eyes shielded from the driver by pretending to stare out the window at plastic barricades that were going up around the Governor’s mansion. What the hell were they in aid of? They wouldn’t stop the Wave if it came rushing at them from over the horizon, and the populace was more likely to storm a well-stocked 7-Eleven than the state legislature.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he grunted, when he had his voice back under control. ‘It’s just a message from my wife, that’s all. Our daughter is fine. She flew out of Chicago this morning, before this business hit.’ Ritchie wasn’t sure why he felt the need to say anything. Perhaps to make it seem real to himself. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d normally discuss with anyone outside of his family, let alone a driver from the car pool.

  ‘That’s great news, sir,’ said the young sailor behind the wheel, a new guy Ritchie had met only forty minutes ago. He sounded genuinely happy and Ritchie couldn’t help but wonder where the lad hailed from and whether he had family back Stateside himself.

  ‘Thank you, son,’ he said, as they pulled up at the edge of a crowded parking lot. ‘But a lot of people weren’t as lucky as me today.’

  The lot was packed solid. Men and women in expensive-looking business wear hurried about with no apparent reason to their movements. He supposed that the civilian arm of government had gone over to emergency procedures as quickly and completely as the military. Until now, he’d been concerned only with the latter, but the Governor’s office had requested his presence at this meeting as a matter of the highest urgency and Ritchie had seen no alternative to attending. Apart from Olympia and Seattle, which were perilously close to the event horizon, and Alaska, which was sparsely populated and still largely undeveloped, Hawaii was pretty much all that was left of the United States. But while she could defend herself, given the concentration of military forces in the islands, Ritchie wasn’t sure she could feed herself for much more than a few days. And with a quarter of a million men and women to pull out of a war in the Middle East, he really didn’t need to be distracted by food riots in his own back yard.

  ‘Shall I park here, sir?’ his driver asked. ‘You don’t want to get jammed in, is all, Admiral.’

  ‘No,’ said Ritchie. ‘Good point. Take the car back out of here. Get yourse
lf something to eat, and then park somewhere in the District, but not here. This place is a mess. I’ve got your number, I’ll call you when I need you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  Ritchie was pleased to see that the sailor checked the charge on the car’s cell phone before answering. Just because he was young didn’t mean he was dumb.

  ‘I’m sorry, sailor. What’s your name? I didn’t catch it in the rush before.’

  ‘Seaman Horvath, sir.’

  ‘Okay. Good work, Horvath. Take a break. I suspect I’ll be a little while.’

  * * * *

  Stale sweat, fading perfume, and air re-breathed so many times it tasted sick and wrong. The contrast with his own headquarters couldn’t have been starker. Ritchie hit the corridors of the state capitol and ran headlong into mayhem. Spiralling turmoil seemed to be the general operating principle, the sort of witless hysteria you might expect on amateurs night at a Chechen bordello. Ritchie was buffeted by staffers and aides as they double-timed from office to office. A woman swerved to miss him, all elbows and high heels, and crashed into a copying machine that had apparently been pushed into the hallway. She spilled a couple of hundred loose-leaf pages over the carpet, cursing like a chief petty officer as she dropped to the floor to gather them up.

  Hundreds of voices competed in the cramped space as people spoke over and past each other, all of them convinced their own particular order, request or fragmented rumour was the most important piece of that moment’s puzzle. The media were everywhere, wolf packs of TV and print reporters threading through the upheaval, firing up shoulder-mounted cameras and thrusting microphones into the face of anybody who seemed remotely responsible for anything. Ritchie gripped his briefcase a little harder and pushed forwards lest -

  ‘Admiral. Yo! Admiral, is the military taking over? Is there going to be martial law?’

  And before he could dive into a side passage or broom closet, one of the packs had suddenly fallen on him. Bright white light seared the backs of his eyes, temporarily blinding him and forcing him to squint against the harsh glare.

  ‘Admiral, are you here to take over? Are you going to run the emergency response?’

  Ritchie couldn’t see who was asking the damn fool questions, but he could sense a sudden press in the crowd around him as maybe a dozen or more reporters turned their attention towards the only symbol of authority in the immediate area: a man in a short-sleeve khaki Navy uniform sporting four stars on his collar. A jabbering crush of journalists surged towards him and, without thinking, he barked out an order.

  ‘Stand back, please. Have some dignity, would you!’

  Ah, damn it… He’d reacted instinctively, allowing his dismay and surprise at the chaotic scene to get the better of him. But to his relief, it actually seemed to work. There was a noticeable lessening of the disarray immediately around him and Ritchie made an impulse decision to go with it.

  ‘First off, drop the lights, please. I’m not answering any questions standing here like a piece of roadkill in the spotlight. Secondly, hell no – I’m not here to take over. What’s up with you people? You’re not children, so stop acting like them. Governor Lingle asked me here this evening to discuss what aid the armed forces of the United States of America might render to the civil power. And that is it. I don’t declare martial law. I don’t give orders – I follow them. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to do just that.’

  Before he could step off and continue his journey, however, a small bird-like woman with enormous black hair pushed a microphone into his path. ‘What can you tell us about what’s happened on the mainland, Admiral?’ she asked. ‘Have the military been monitoring the phenomenon? What are you going to do about it?’

  Ritchie was tempted to push past her, but he couldn’t help but notice how the ambient roar that had filled the entire building just a few minutes earlier had died away completely. A flicker of colour behind the phalanx of reporters answered any questions he might have had about why. He could see himself on a television monitor in a room across the hall. This was probably going out live across the island. Possibly around the world. The urge to sit down, sigh and rub his eyes was nearly overwhelming, but these people needed leadership and certainty just as much as any bunch of kids taking fire from the enemy. In the absence of anyone to provide that leadership, the buck seemed to have fetched up at his feet for the moment. The admiral didn’t see any point in fudging the issue. He slowly bent down and carefully placed his briefcase on a desk, the black, dead eyes of the TV cameras following every move. It gave him time to compose his thoughts. When he stood up again he spoke into near silence.

  ‘Something terrible has happened back home,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me – my family is originally from New Hampshire… I can’t tell you a lot of what you need to know right now. I can’t say exactly what has happened, how or why. But you are right. We have been looking hard at this thing, throwing every asset we have at it. We’ve lost some more people in doing that, but I want to emphasise one very important point: much of our armed forces were outside of the continental US as of this morning. They remain intact and ready to make any sacrifice, to take any action necessary to protect you, the American people who are listening to this. Our friends and allies are helping us too, and with that help we will get through this. I promise you.’

  A beat of half a second’s silence followed his speech before the media pack erupted again, firing questions and demands for information at him. He was just about to wave them away when a booming Southern accent cut through the pandemonium.

  ‘That’ll be all for now, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You heard the admiral – he does have a very important meeting to get to. Governor Lingle will address you all live right after it. And no, I can’t say for sure when that will be, but you’ve definitely got a couple of hours to go get your horses fed and watered.’

  The man’s voice was so powerful, his delivery so sure, it quelled the incipient press riot almost immediately. Ritchie was grateful, but bemused. As a resident of the islands, he was familiar with some of the public faces of the state administration, even though Governor Linda Lingle had not long been in office. But this massive, roaring bear of a man was new to him, and Ritchie didn’t see how he could have missed such a figure – or a voice.

  He was impeccably, if heavily, dressed in a three-piece, blue pinstriped suit and he took Ritchie gently but firmly by the elbow and propelled him through the ruck of journalists. ‘Keep smiling,’ the man muttered. ‘Don’t let your fingers get anywhere near their mouths. And check to see if you still have your wallet and watch on the other side.’

  His self-appointed guardian operated as a gentle but unstoppable battering ram, carving a path not just through the crush of reporters and cameramen, but on through the throngs of civil servants beyond them, many of whom stood and gawped at Ritchie when he passed by, almost as if he were some kind of celebrity.

  ‘Guess I’ve had my fifteen seconds of fame,’ the admiral said.

  ‘Not if you got any more performances like that up your sleeve,’ his companion replied somewhat grimly. ‘Wish I could get a few others to turn it on like that. Jed Culver, by the way. Of the Louisiana Bar. Originally – I run a consultancy out of DC of late.’

  Ritchie awkwardly swapped his briefcase from one hand to the other and they shook. ‘Admiral James Ritchie, Mr Culver. You didn’t sound like a local boy.’

  Culver steered him around a corner and past a couple of security guards. The two uniforms were doing a good job of pissing off a dozen or more staffers who insisted they had good reason to be admitted to the inner sanctum. That’s what this part of the building felt like. It was less crowded, much quieter, and events didn’t seem to be spinning out of control quite so badly here.

  ‘I was lucky enough to be on holiday with my family,’ Culver explained. ‘My immediate family at least, thank God. Anyways, I saw the news this morning and figured I would lend a hand if they wanted. Lingle’s m
ain press handler was Stateside.’

  ‘You’ve done a lot of press management then?’

  ‘Oh yes. Real press too. Hard men like Jimmy Breslin and Chip Brown, not like these pussies. That was a great speech before, you know. Really nailed a few heads to the wall. That’s what we need right now – a big goddamn hammer and a whole bucket o’ nails to get things secured ‘fore they start flying off all over.’

  They pulled up outside a closed office door. There was an indefatigable energy to Culver that one couldn’t help liking. A lot of spare mass was expensively hidden away under that designer suit, but he looked like a man who could plough on for days at a time without a break. The island was probably lucky to have him. The heavy-set lawyer rapped on the door and waited half a beat before pushing on into an anteroom furnished with two desks, behind which sat a couple of very stressed-out young women. One had three phones clamped to her ears and was writing notes on multiple pads. The other woman was stabbing at her telephone’s keypad, listening for a second, slamming down the receiver, and repeating the process all over again.