‘Twelve years, ma’am,’ replied the short but powerful-looking man who acted as the group leader. His accent was quite polished, for a sergeant from Nepal. ‘Four years as a private soldier. Eight as a non-commissioned officer.’
‘A sergeant?’
‘For the last six, yes, ma’am.’
Jules nodded as she scanned the employment history of the five men. The minimum any of them had served was six years. Shah had the longest stretch, at twelve. He was the only one who’d risen above corporal, making him the natural leader, even though they no longer took Her Majesty’s coin. Jules was thankful for that last point – it made negotiating with them a simpler affair.
She leaned back in the old wooden chair behind a scarred table on which sat a small pile of papers, the men’s resumes, and a loaded handgun within easy reach. A big shiny Mac 10, unsafed and set to full auto, for which she had traded away her former skipper’s beloved yacht, the Diamantina. The beautiful wooden cruiser had been worth the gun, a thousand rounds of ammunition, two Mexican Army M16s, one crate of 5.56 mm reloads, and a half-pallet of rice, milk biscuits and flour, all packed tightly into bags stamped A Gift from the People of America – US AID. The guns and stores were secured in a cage behind the Gurkhas. She would’ve preferred to have transferred them to the super-yacht, but had decided with Fifi and Mr Lee that hiring reliable security was their first priority.
‘Do you mind if I ask why you left the Cunard Line?’ she asked. The men had all been employed by the premier British cruise liner, and some had even worked on the QE2. In her admittedly biased opinion, signing on with the Florida-based party-boat operators, Carnival, was not the first step on the happy staircase to success.
‘Downsizing,’ said Shah. Coming from him, the western technobabble sounded almost alien. ‘The labour hire firm that subcontracted our services to Cunard was bought out by P amp;O, who were taken over by Carnival a year later. We were transferred to their Caribbean operations a fortnight ago. We were to pick up our next berth here at Acapulco.’ The former sergeant shrugged as a way of finishing his explanation.
Jules sighed. ‘Say no more.’
The dockside warehouse she’d hired was a long way from the resort town’s tourist centre, but she could make out the beachfront apartments and hotels through a greasy, unwashed window to her right. One of the bigger towers was ablaze, with flames leaping high over the top floor. It was a moot point whether anybody was trying to put it out. Most likely not. The lower floors were probably being looted as she sat there.
‘Well, Mr Shah. My father would have been impressed with your regimental connections. He was a Navy man, but he didn’t hold with all that inter-service rubbish. And he thought very highly of Cunard. It’s a pity you got shafted like that.’
She didn’t mention that the old rogue had been banned by Cunard for cheating at cards on a cruise through the Med ten years earlier, and how only a swift return by his lordship of the swindled funds and an abject apology to his victims had kept the rozzers from becoming involved. Shah looked like the sort of chap who’d throw card cheats over the side.
Instead she continued: ‘I’d be very keen to take on you and your men, Mr Shah, but there are two issues we need to settle. One I don’t see causing much difficulty; the other, however, we’ll have to see.’
Julianne spoke directly and forcefully, never taking her eyes off the man she was addressing. Behind him, his companions remained as immobile as stone dogs.
‘Firstly, this won’t be a pleasure cruise. My ship – which, you should know straight off, we boarded and took over after the original crew disappeared behind the event horizon last week – has already been attacked once. My captain was killed, and in turn we killed every one of the pirates attempting to seize the vessel. I do not expect that will be the last trouble we see. I cannot guarantee anyone’s safety, quite the contrary, but we will endeavour to avoid whatever hazards we can.’ She gestured back over his shoulder to the view of downtown Acapulco. ‘I probably don’t need to tell you that things are going to get worse, do I?’
‘No,’ agreed Shah. ‘The risks are acceptable. And your second point?’
‘Payment,’ she said. ‘And length of contract. Without a stable currency in which to negotiate, we are stuck with bartering for your services. As a minimum I promise free passage to the port of your choosing in Asia, at which point our business together will be deemed complete. Right now, I cannot give you a schedule. We might get there in a few weeks, it could be six months. Over and above passage, you’ll require payment. I’m happy to hear any suggestions you might have about how we calculate a reasonable figure.’
Shah nodded slowly, his eyes peering into an unknowable future. She noted he didn’t consult his men.
‘Gold,’ he said at last. ‘We shall settle on an amount of gold, the value to be calculated at the end of the cruise, based on an equivalent pay scale to that which we would have earned with Carnival, plus hazard pay at current regimental rates, for each day spent in combat. The pay of any man killed or totally and permanently disabled to be delivered to his family by those surviving, along with a compensation payment to the value of his entire contracted fee. As to length of service, we would insist on an end to the contract within twelve months of its commencement.’
It was Jules’s turn to nod sagely and give the impression of hard thought. She quickly toted up what she was getting into and figured it to be worth about half of their current liquid assets. A lot, in other words. On the other hand, there would doubtless be ample opportunity for ‘salvage’ in the near future. And, if she could just get to the Caymans before everything turned completely pear-shaped, she might be able to access her own accounts, and maybe even Pete’s. Beyond that broad-brush plan to cash up and lay in stores, she wasn’t sure what they would do. Lee was no more interested in returning to his home village than she was in heading for England, where there were still warrants out for her arrest on charges relating to the money her father had sent her. As for Fifi, whatever sorry excuse for home and hearth she’d once had was now lost behind the energy wave. It was possible they might well end up going with Pete’s original plan and heading for Tasmania. It was far enough from everywhere to be safe, surely, and he’d insisted it was one of the few places in the world that would still be able to feed itself following a core meltdown of the old world order.
After a moment’s consideration she glanced at the men behind Shah. ‘Do you mind if I talk to your men?’ she asked him.
‘No. Ask them what you will.’
‘Are you men okay with that offer? Do you need to discuss it?’
The briefest of nonverbal conferences took place, with each man quickly exchanging glances, shrugs and nods with each other.
‘That will be acceptable,’ replied the man standing nearest to Mr Shah. Jules was pretty certain it was the former corporal, Birendra. His first name was as long as a Himalayan mountain path, and just as difficult to negotiate.