Without warning

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 accept 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?’