Without warning

Shah shook his head, frowning gravely. ‘It is a bad business, Miss Julianne. But unavoidable. They cannot run away, not in this sea state, and they are very useful. Birendra has trained them well to load and to clear blockages. They know to keep their heads down. And Miss, remember too, they are not spoilt little brats – they are village children, from the edge of the desert. They have all worked from their earliest days, and their lives have been hard, sometimes violent. They will be scared, but I think they will endure the battle more calmly than some of the others.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I know what you’re talking about, Sergeant. I’m really worried about some of my bigger dilettantes just going to pieces.’

The deck dipped sharply as they slid over another crest. One of the kids that Birendra was teaching rolled himself into a ball and tumbled across the thick woollen carpet in the empty lounge, squealing with laughter.

‘Now roll back, roll back, little yeti!’ called out Birendra.

Jules had to admire his patience. She found the children a challenge and was more than happy to have as little to do with them as possible.

‘How long until we are intercepted?’ asked Shah.

‘Two to three hours, depending on how hard we can push the second engine. I don’t want to blow it too, though. If we get stuck without any propulsion at all, we’re royally buggered.’

‘Then I shall take all of the civilians outside for a live fire exercise,’ the Gurkha said. ‘It would be best if they hear the guns before the real shooting starts.’

‘Yes, it would be,’ agreed Jules. ‘Who knows, it might even put off our chasers.’

* * * *

It didn’t, but the live fire did give her some hope and, she supposed, her charges too. Sergeant Shah gathered everyone on the boat deck at the stern and had them fire off three rounds. One individually; one in their fire teams; and one en masse. It was the latter that gave everyone some heart. Shah had assembled quite an armoury for the yacht and the roar of so many guns firing all at once was more than impressive – it was actually frightening. The youngest children, who would be having nothing to do with the fight, as agreed, were all herded inside during the exercise, but it was still loud enough to upset them. Quite a few of the adults, too, Julianne thought.

But when the single crack of thunder had dissipated on the strong ocean breeze, what remained were forty-one people, most of whom were grinning like fools.

‘Bring it on!’ yelled Fifi, leaping onto a diving locker and waving her ass at the small dot of the pursuing vessel. ‘You want some of this? Come and get it, baby!’

The younger members of the crew laughed and grinned, and some of the Mexican village boys began smacking their own behinds and crying out ‘Brinning on, si! Brinning on!’

‘Maybe we should be the pirates,’ said the Rhino, who stood beside Jules on the pool deck, above the display. He was wearing a side arm for the first time and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark aviator glasses. His face was flushed, but Jules couldn’t smell any rum on his breath. He was smoking, of course.

‘How long, Rhino?’

‘Less than an hour.’

Julianne shaded her eyes against the sun and stared at the dark shape closing with them from astern. It was about twice the size it had been when last she checked.

* * * *

First blood went to Fifi. As the Viarsa 1, a red-hulled 2000-tonne former toothfish poacher, muscled through a seven-metre swell to put itself within a few hundred metres of the Rules, Fifi lay under a tarpaulin on the pool deck, tented to allow her spent cartridges to eject, with only the barrel of her Russian tripod-mounted machine gun poking out. Shah had deployed everyone to their fighting positions and then ordered them to remain under cover. The Aussie Rules appeared deserted as it wallowed about under reduced power.

Fifi took her time, adjusting to the relative rise and fall of the two vessels. With the Viarsa 1 coming up astern, she had a clear view of the vessel’s foredeck and bridge. She had intended to unload a magazine into the wheelhouse, hopefully cutting down some of the more important crew members, but as the distance between hunter and prey collapsed, an infinitely more tempting target presented itself. At least a dozen men, all armed, began to gather near the bow of the Viarsa, pointing at the super-yacht and occasionally firing the odd random shot.

Fifi waited in her little tent, patiently tracking the closely grouped cluster of men with her sights. Three times she imagined squeezing off a burst – but she held her fire, waiting to see what the arrhythmic dance of the two ships did to her aim. Once, as the Rules fell hard a-port into a boiling black trench, she would’ve missed completely. The second and third times, however, were fine.