Without warning

by John Birmingham

  It was a wonder that gunplay hadn’t broken out, but then in contrast with the day before, Roberto’s men were all armed with clubs and axe handles. The pistols with which they’d manned the roadblock were nowhere in evidence. As Julianne elbowed and squeezed through the crush, she began to attend to the snatches of conversation she heard.

  ‘They’re picking us up here. Coast Guard or something…’

  ‘It’s the Marines, man – that’s what I heard.’

  ‘We’re going to Seattle.’

  ‘No way. It’s Sydney.’

  Oh no, thought Jules. I have a very bad feeling about this.

  She decided to skirt around the heart of the mob, pushing out towards the edges and finally getting free of them about a hundred metres further down the road near the resort’s tennis courts. Then, after cutting through a dense forest of artfully arranged palm trees, she looped around the rear of a large apartment complex and emerged near one of the half-dozen swimming pools. They were all deserted today, even the bars at the edge of the water, but over by the artificial lagoon, on the terrace of the Chula Vista restaurant, she found her passengers, their minder Pieraro, and his family. All fifteen of them.

  The vaquero looked furious, but not nearly as angry as Jules. She stormed over, fists clenching and unclenching. Everyone but Pieraro flinched and shuffled aside.

  ‘What the fuck is going on out there? And who the hell are these people, Miguel?’ she demanded to know. ‘You told me you had a wife and three kids. But now you’ve brought half the fucking village with you!’

  The Mexican’s extended family looked to him, with more than a little fear. Jules assumed the woman holding a toddler and clinging to his arm was the wife, and the girls crowded around her were their daughters, but the rest had to be a grab bag of aunts, uncles and grandparents – and possibly the village drunk, the village idiot and the village’s drunken idiotic mayor all thrown in for good measure. None of them looked to have a fucking peso between them.

  Pieraro disentangled himself from them and moved forward to intercept Julianne as she bulldozed her way through the tables and chairs overlooking the lagoon, knocking one over with a resounding crash. Normally the terrace would have been crowded with guests taking a late breakfast at this time, but the restaurant was closed and seemingly abandoned. She guessed that very few staff had bothered to show up.

  ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ she hissed at him. ‘I don’t know what that balls-up out the front is about, but there are a thousand dumb-jock college students out there who seem to think they’ll be hitching a ride out of here with us. But they won’t, will they, because you’ve brought half the fucking village of el Shithole del Diablo with you!’

  Pieraro didn’t flare up or push back, instead replying in a steady voice, ‘There is no need to be offensive, Miss Julianne. I am not responsible for the crowd out the front. That was Cesky’s doing.’

  ‘That putty-nosed toad. What the hell did -’

  ‘It’s true,’ called out Phoebe, the trust-fund bimbo, looking appreciably less sure of herself than yesterday. ‘He was so pissed off with you for cutting him out that he marched off yesterday and started telling everyone about the escape plan. It spread. I got three text messages about it.’

  She held up a cell phone as if to explain. Jules was surprised it still worked. Hers had cut out days ago. She sighed inwardly. The rich - they always had a way. Her other five-star refugees all nodded glumly.

  ‘Right,’ said Jules, barely able to contain her exasperation. ‘Well, we’ve still got to get you away from here. There’s another lynch party back at the marina, waiting to do you all in for a ticket out of this madhouse, so listen up. You do exactly as I say or you will be left behind… Miguel? Transport. That was your job…’

  ‘I have two buses,’ he told her. ‘They will take everyone.’

  ‘Yeah, and how are they going to get out through that mob in front? I’ve got Sergeant Shah parked down on the beach waiting for us. There’s no way your buses’ll run on soft sand.’

  ‘No. But I have not parked them here,’ he said. ‘When Miss St John’ – he indicated Phoebe – ‘warned me what had happened with Cesky, I hid them down the beach, at the Alberca Heritage. I know the security chief there. A good man.’

  ‘How much did that cost?’ asked Jules, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘A hundred gallons of gasoline. He is leaving with his family this evening.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘And the mob out the front?’

  ‘Roberto will hold them there. He has arranged with reception for a number of minibuses from the Fairmont. Everyone thinks they are the escape vehicles.’

  ‘And he wants passage too?’

  ‘No. He sees opportunities here,’ Pieraro replied. ‘Mostly he wants me gone. But some payment was involved.’

  Jules closed her eyes. ‘How much?’

  The merchant banker, the one with the silicone-enhanced mistress, suddenly spoke up. ‘It was nothing. Now can we get the hell out of here?’

  Jules struggled for his name. Denby… Denby… Moorhouse. ‘So you paid off Roberto, the coke-dealing paramilitary fascist?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Oh well, that’ll turn out fine, I’m sure. He won’t be back for another bite of the cherry, will he! I mean, do any of you actually need me? Everything seems to be running tickety fucking boo without my input. Perhaps I should just piss off and leave you to get on with it.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Moorhouse, stepping forward. He was a short man with all of the attendant psychological problems. Jules estimated that standing face to face with his girlfriend, he’d be smothered by her breast implants. His features were flushed and he was sweating profusely. ‘We have had a very stressful morning here. Those people began arriving before dawn. The hotel has been locked down for hours by security men. We were stuck in our rooms, no air-conditioning, no cable, no idea what was happening. If it took a couple of trinkets and baubles to get that Colombian thug to run interference for us, that was well worth it. Now, I suggest you start earning your money and get us the hell out of Acapulco.’

  Tempted to pistol-whip him, Jules merely nodded silently. She then turned her attention back to the vaquero. ‘Miguel, can I talk to you? Privately. For two minutes. Do we have two minutes?’

  The background roar was building, but not in a way that that made her think a boilover was imminent. Pieraro patted his wife on the shoulder and gently rubbed the head of his youngest child, a little boy, who was crying silently. He bent down to whisper a few words in his ear before kissing his forehead. With the child settled, for the moment, he and Jules walked off to the other side of the terrace.

  ‘This conga line of relatives and… whatever,’ she began, ‘have you planned on provisions and stores for them? Because I haven’t. We had an agreement – your wife and children. I don’t recall agreeing to take all the supporting cast from Three Amigos.’

  Pieraro looked physically pained. His next words came out like teeth extracted one after the other. ‘If you cannot take them, you cannot. I will explain.’

  The man’s discomfort was so palpable, so deeply etched into the fissures of his sunburnt face, that Jules had to look away. She covered the moment of weakness by pretending to scan the hotel grounds for trouble. Unfortunately, standing right in her line of view were his family, the sorriest, most bedraggled-looking losers she’d seen in a long time. The crowd at the hotel gates were young, middle-class white people with a leavening of upper-echelon Mexicans; they were frightened, but still well fed and used to having their own way. Miguel’s family looked like they’d turn around at one word from her and slouch off to their fate.

  Jules risked a quick glance at her paying customers. They seemed entirely nonplussed, and she supposed they had no reason to question the arrival of the Pieraro clan. The vaquero had clearly established himself as a powerful figure in their eyes only yesterday. If that power meant he could drag along his extended family, they would probably ac
cept that. After all, they were all too used to the privileges of power themselves.

  The crowd noise intensified noticeably, spilling over and around the Fairmont’s centrepiece architectural statement, the main hotel built in the form of a giant Aztec pyramid. She could see dozens of other guests on their balconies, hiding from the disturbance outside, and too many of them were pointing at her little group. Time to go.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘This isn’t over, not by a fucking long shot. I cannot take all those people you’ve brought. I don’t have stores for them and they won’t be allowed off the boat at the other end – not to mention the trouble it’s going to cause with everyone who actually paid for their passage. But, we don’t have time to get into this now. We need to get away from this city. It’s going under. Right now. I’ll take your extras on today – take them a safe distance down the coast, away from the city. That’s where it’s going to be worst. But then they will have to get off, Miguel. Do you understand? You need to talk to them about where that might be. I’m sure they have relatives somewhere, in some stagnant backwater, who’ll take them in. Probably be glad of the extra pairs of hands come bean-harvest time. But I can’t take them.’ She held Pieraro’s eyes this time, not flinching away from the falling man she saw in there.

  ‘Because they cannot pay,’ he said at last, with an air of injured dignity.

  ‘If you want to make me the bitch, okay – because they cannot pay. Nobody is going to fuel and provision me if I cannot pay. That’s the only reason I’m taking those rich arseholes anywhere. They’re buying my fuel, my food, my arms and ammunition, and surely even you can see that, right now, nothing trumps that.’

  ‘My family, they have brought their own food,’ Pieraro reasoned, in a dry, flat voice. ‘Beans. Dried meat. Flour. They will not be a burden.’

  ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. You are not an idiot, Miguel. You know how things are, you know what’s coming… Fuck, you know it’s already here.’

  ‘They are my family, Miss Julianne. Mi familia. Do you not have a family of your own?’

  His attempt at guilting her out produced only a short, bitter laugh. ‘Oh Miguel, that is so not a road to go down with me. Look, we have to move. Now. Get everyone down to the… the Heritage, was it? Get them onto the buses. We have to get around to the bay, to a big jetty up the beach from the Hyatt – do you know it? Good. Fifi and Thapa will be waiting there. It is going to be a very crowded trip out to the Rules.’

  Pieraro closed his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as if in prayer.

  ‘But we’re dropping them off, Miguel. Somewhere. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. Somewhere safe.’

  The crackle of gunfire started up, muted by distance and smothered by the sudden roar of an enraged, terrified mob.

  ‘I think Roberto has taken off his smiley face,’ said Jules. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  * * * *

  33

  ACAPULCO BAY, ACAPULCO

  ‘Jeez, Julesy. We taking a mariachi band with us? Cool.’

  Fifi had switched over to a Larry the Cable Guy camouflage baseball cap, with the trademark fish-hook in the bill. Jules ignored the hat, especially the Confederate flag.

  ‘Don’t start, Fifi. Just get them on board.’

  The bus trip around the south-east headland of Acapulco Bay had not been entirely uneventful. Shah and Julianne had been forced to open fire on a couple of makeshift roadblocks, which had not been there an hour earlier, when they’d run into would-be car-jackers. At least, she assumed they were car-jackers.

  Her passengers, paying and non-paying, poured out of the two beaten-up school buses Pieraro had obtained from God only knew where, and stood blinking in the harsh light, on a massive baking-hot slab of cracked concrete, an empty car park overlooking the water. They were all upset, and some of the Americans looked positively ill. The Aussie Rules’ largest sport fisher bobbed slowly up and down at the end of the pier, which jutted out more than a hundred metres into the bay. No other craft were moored there, and one look out over the water told her why. A huge number of vessels, from small aluminium dinghies to ocean-going mega-yachts, were on the move, heading away towards the wide mouth of Acapulco Bay. Only the slightest puff of breeze ruffled the ubiquitous palms on shore, but out on the bay the enormous flotilla had churned up a mass of white water.

  ‘Any trouble getting away from the marina?’ asked Jules.

  ‘Some,’ admitted Fifi, who was dressed in a denim micro-skirt and distressed red tee-shirt emblazoned with the legend Zombie Squad – We can handle it from here. We’ve talked about this on the internet. A Marlboro dangled from her lips. Jules wondered what her friend would do when she finally ran out. ‘But we got her done,’ Fifi added, shifting up her PKM for effect.

  Jules winced. ‘You didn’t kill anyone, did you?’

  The other woman rolled her eyes. ‘Just a few rounds down-range. Jeez, who died and made you Captain Sensible?’

  Jules stared past her, into a place she wasn’t even sure existed.

  Fifi caught the hint. ‘Oh, yeah. Pete… Uh, sorry.’

  ‘Right,’ said Julianne, throwing up her hands. ‘Let’s just get them all on board before we draw another crowd, shall we?’

  She could see cars had started to pull over to the side of the freeway on the hill up above them. Small groups of people were already picking their way down through the scrub, doubtless hoping to clamber onto the boat with them. To her west, across the confusion of the bay, the centre of Acapulco was a disaster movie. Fires blazed at so many locations that Jules couldn’t count them, but it was eerily quiet, like watching TV with the sound down. After a second she realised why: no sirens, anywhere. The absence was chilling.

  ‘Come on, move your arses!’ she called out to the dawdling travellers. Phoebe had actually stopped to take pictures with a small digital camera. ‘Excuse me, the fucking tour bus is leaving!’ cried Jules in frustration. ‘Move!’

  Shah and Thapa started herding everyone towards the dock, occasionally glancing up towards the roadway behind them. A few more vehicles had pulled over. Pieraro spoke to an old man amongst his people, who nodded before firing off a scorching fusillade of native oaths and curses and clouting a teenaged boy, who’d stopped dead, transfixed by Fifi’s tee-shirt. The Mexicans, all hauling heavy sacks of food by the looks of them, began to run awkwardly down the pier. The Americans, dropping some of their luggage as they went, followed suit as Thapa chivvied them along. ‘If you would be so kind as to be hurrying your arses up now,’ he said with some urgency.

  ‘Mr Shah?’ Jules called out. ‘My gun, if you please.’

  The Gurkha sergeant produced her shotgun from the cabin of the SUV, which they’d parked close to the start of the long pier. He racked a round into the chamber before handing it over to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jules. She fired three shots into the air over the heads of the people swarming down the hillside towards them. It had a salutary effect on her own charges as well, speeding their passage down the jetty to a sprint.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ enthused Fifi. ‘Time for a little redneck persuasion.’ She let rip with a short, snarling burst from her heavy Russian machine-gun, firing into the windows of an abandoned building that overlooked the car park, shattering a dozen panes of glass. The sound was scarifying and the small horde descending the slopes stopped and dropped immediately.

  ‘Go, go!’ said Shah, waving the two women off towards the boat, where Thapa and Pieraro were hurriedly helping everyone aboard – in some cases by throwing them bodily over the side.

  The girls didn’t wait to be told twice. They set off at a sprint. Moments later, Jules heard the vehicle start up again, and looking back over her shoulder, she saw the former soldier driving it onto the jetty. He followed them, stopping halfway down, before turning the wheel to create a barrier across the pier.

  ‘They’ll just crawl over it,’ said Fifi, levelling the PKM on the m
akeshift blockade.

  ‘They won’t,’ promised Jules.

  Shah climbed out, tossed something into the cabin and ran as quickly as she’d ever seen a short, refrigerator-shaped man run. A few seconds later, as the first of their desperate pursuers made it to the start of the pier, the grenade exploded, lifting the vehicle a few inches off the deck, but not moving it far enough to topple it into the water. Everyone ducked. When Jules straightened up, access from the shore was blocked by the burning wreckage.