Life Goes On by Tayell, Frank (large ebook reader txt) 📗

“Hands, Pete,” Olivia said briskly. “Nice to meet you, Ms Qwong.”

“How many hostiles are here?” Tess asked.

“Forty-three, yesterday,” Corrie said instantly. “There are five other prisoners. Locals. I don’t know where they’re keeping them, but last time we saw them, they were in a really bad way.”

These three, by contrast, were not. They were dirty, bruised, exhausted, but had no obvious cuts or broken bones.

“Commish!” Clyde called.

Tess spun, and saw Clyde pointing north, but with his hand rather than a gun. Two figures sprinted towards them: Hawker and Oakes.

“There are five more prisoners, plus you three?” Tess asked. “Is anyone else on this island friendly?”

“Not even a little,” Corrie said.

“Bruce, there’s forty-three hostiles,” Tess said as the colonel ran into earshot.

“Not now there’s not,” Hawker said.

“You own the battleship, right?” Pete asked.

“A couple of days ago, their plane spotted a navy warship to the south, near their Colombian fuel-base,” Corrie explained. “They had some weapon in the hangar they were going to use to kill you.”

“Bruce, that’s probably the VX,” Tess said.

“They won’t fly anything out of here now,” Hawker said.

“But it might be rigged to blow,” Clyde said. “That’d be a good way to ensure we wouldn’t follow them. You said it was in the hangar over there? I’ll go check it out.”

“Nicko, time to earn our pay,” Hawker said. “Tess, hold this house. If there’s an explosion, get inside, close the windows and doors, and stay inside until the dust has settled.”

While the three soldiers jogged across the road, to the runway and toward the hangar beyond, Tess leaned against the car, taking a moment to allow her brain to catch up with events. “Pete and Corrie Guinn. Of all the places in the world, of all the people, I find you here. And you found Olivia, Pete. Good on ya, but how?”

“Accident,” Pete said.

“Destiny,” Corrie said.

“A little of both,” Olivia said. “How is it you’re here, Inspector?”

“Essentially, we’ve been hunting the cartel,” she said. “I’m a commissioner now. Corrie, do you remember Anna Dodson? She’s the deputy prime minister in Canberra. We’ve had a…” She trailed off, turning towards a mosquito-whine rising in volume to diamond-drill. An engine. Two engines: a lime-green Kawasaki speed-bike that could have outraced a plane during take-off, and a bright red Ferrari-convertible as old as Mick.

The biker raised a pistol. The first shot was a close one, whistling past her ear and slamming into a wooden window shutter, but the recoil threw off the biker’s balance. The bike weaved. The biker’s second two shots went wide. So did Tess’s first, but not her second. The bullet clipped the man’s shoulder, sending up a haze of blood which hovered in the air as the bike tumbled to the verge. The rider rolled across the road, and into the path of the old Ferrari. The rider hit the splitter, rolled up the bumper, and onto the hood, before the car swerved, shaking the corpse off, and ruining the aim of the woman with the submachine gun in the back. Bullets sprayed everywhere, but mostly at the sky. Tess fired back, but though the car was trailing sparks as well as dust, it kept on speeding south. Towards the pier. Towards Zach and Mackay.

“Hold this position!” she yelled, running to the fallen motorbike. Holstering her gun, she pulled the bike upright.

So this is war, she thought as she rode off, it’s just another chase.

The bike wanted to race. She didn’t let it, keeping her speed low as she followed the settling cloud back to the pier. Above the engine’s burr, it was hard to hear anything, until she heard gunfire. Growing in volume.

At the pier, the Ferrari had to slow to drive around the stalled truck, but it didn’t stop. Zach was shooting from inside the bar. The car’s rear-passenger emptied her submachine gun’s magazine. But the car was weaving, and Tess was nearing.

The convertible burst onto the concrete pier, accelerating, then braking just as swiftly, stopping by the icebreaker.

Tess braked, stopping by Hernando’s increasingly battered truck, waving at the bar in the hope for recognition more than as a signal. She drew her pistol as someone by the stopped convertible opened fire. Single shots, and so ill-aimed, Tess couldn’t tell if the woman was shooting at her or at the bar. Using the truck as cover, Tess returned fire, emptying her magazine before ducking down, moving to the other end of the truck as she reloaded. She heard two cracking retorts, but only a single thud of a bullet slamming into the vehicle’s bodywork.

The situation wasn’t ideal: three hostiles, armed, boarding an icebreaker which had a hull as thick as armour. It wouldn’t be as fast as the warship, but the warship was engaged with boats in the north. Plane, boats, icebreaker, all departing from different directions. Scattering. Making it impossible for everyone to be captured. But this icebreaker had been kept until last. It was Hernando’s boat. Mikael’s boat. The leaders’ boat. A shot hit her truck. A burst hit the bar.

She sprang up and fired at the man climbing up the ship’s side. He made for an easy target. Her bullet took him in the side. As he fell, he twisted, turned, so he hit the jetty head-first. It was a high enough fall to knock him out, but probably not to kill him, except that the ship had drifted half a metre from the pier. The man’s legs and waist were over the edge. Slowly, he slid down into the water, already foaming as the engines increased their tempo. The ship was already prepped for departure. That was why Hernando, if not Mikael, had come to the pier. Another burst, poorly aimed, ripped through the vegetation behind her.

She sprang from cover again, but couldn’t see any