Without warning

She recognised Pieraro’s second in charge, Roberto, the Colombian guy, standing atop a stone wall, looking splendid in black combat pants and a matching wife-beater. His eyes were hidden behind silver sunglasses and he was sporting some fabulous new bling, but there was no mistaking the brute arrogance and cruelty of the man. He seemed to be enjoying himself, sooling small packs of his men onto the gringos whenever they threatened to push too far into the complex – although his goons seemed less enthusiastic about tangling with the mob of drunken, fired-up college jocks who had armed themselves with the sporting kit. They were pretty evenly matched.

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.’