The midnight hour had long since passed and Musso was back in his office, enjoying the chill of the air-conditioning and the absence of pests. He nursed a precious cup of coffee. At least in this part of the world, it was still plentiful, if hard to get. Colonel Pileggi sat across from him, just outside the cone of light thrown down by his desk lamp, half hidden in the gloom, with an old-fashioned clipboard on her knee as she ticked off items on her checklist. Behind her, the waters of the bay twinkled under a bright moon and dozens of civilian craft of all sizes lay quietly at anchor, awaiting the departure of the final convoy for the Pacific.
A few small lighters still plied a path between them, distributing stores, collecting passenger lists, and handing out information on convoy protocols. In contrast with the first few crazed days of his time at Gitmo, a skeleton crew was on deck at the headquarters building. The base slumbered out in the darkness.
‘So we can expect the escorts here tomorrow?’ she asked doubtfully. There had been problems recently transiting the Canal. With the Panamanian Government’s collapse, Pearl had finally put in a Brigade Combat Team to control the locks, but they were being pressed by an unknown number of criminal syndicates. Not a day went by without one or two casualties among the Americans. On the upside, though, the rules of engagement for the Canal Zone were robust. Anybody approaching the American-controlled locks was immediately engaged and destroyed without warning.
Musso nodded. ‘It should be cool. Principal escort’s French, coming up from Guyana. It’s an F-70-class frigate, although it’s big enough that we’d call it a destroyer. I spoke with their guy when he flew in late this afternoon from Cayenne. It won’t have to transit the Canal until the convoy gets there and it has enough firepower to muscle through any parts we can’t provide cover for. And a solid detachment of Marine infantry, for good measure. Our guys will pick them up on the other side. Then the French will split off with a smaller group for New Caledonia.’
Pileggi raised one eyebrow but remained silent.
Musso picked up on her reaction and shrugged to show his own. ‘I know, I know. Surprised me too. I thought the French were too busy tearing each other apart to bother with helping anyone else, but Sarkozy’s faction has been looking real hard at their Pacific territories. You want my opinion, there’s going to be a lot of Frenchies opting out of food riots and ethnic cleansing for grass skirts and Gilligan’s Island any day now.’
‘Damn,’ muttered Pileggi. ‘Is that the good dope you’re smoking? Straight from Pearl?’
‘Yeah,’ said Musso. ‘There have been talks, apparently. Very quiet talks. This consular guy confirmed as much. We may be in business as a transit point in the future – assuming Sarkozy wins, of course.’
‘That’s quite an assumption from what I’ve read, General.’ A new worry now etched itself into the deep lines of Pileggi’s face, shadows pooled under her eyes. ‘I’ve got a lot of my refugees bunking down in the French colonies. What’s going to happen to them?’
‘No idea. I guess there’ll be more talks. Things are already pretty crowded in French Polynesia. For now, our problems are all here. We’ve got nigh on a hundred vessels to get out of the harbour and through the Panama Canal – are they going to be finished provisioning? You were having some trouble with supplies, as I recall.’
Pileggi tapped the clipboard with her pen. ‘Those two big container ships that came in early this morning from Port-au-Spain declared a lot of stuff we could use. So I requisitioned their cargo. My guys are going to check them out in the morning and begin redistribution.’
‘Uh-uh,’ grunted Musso. ‘How were the captains about that?’
She waved the question off with a hand gesture. ‘Relaxed. They even sent over a complete cargo manifest to help out. They’re Panamanian-flagged, with mostly Russian and Indian crews. The shipping line’s gone out of business. They say they’ll need some fuel and an escort to Australia, so I’d guess they’re going to sell what they can in Sydney. The Indians will want to go home from there, the Russians will probably jump ship and try to disappear into the crowd.’
‘Well, the crowd would be big enough, I imagine. Must be nearly two million displaced down there now.’
‘Passed that last week,’ the colonel replied, shaking her head. ‘They’re up to two point two, as of close of business yesterday. Two and a half if you count New Zealand. Mostly ours, but a fair number of Europeans too. Clean-shaven and fair-skinned, of course,’ she added dryly. ‘Don’t bother knocking if your name is Mohammed.’
Musso felt instinctive disapproval stirring in his gut, just as he disapproved of the British Government’s mass internment and deportation policies. It was ethnic cleansing by another name, or ethnic filtering perhaps Down Under. Racism cloaked as necessity, when you got right down to it. But it was hardly the worst thing happening in the world today. And the Aussies had taken anyone with an American passport, regardless of background. While their motives were almost entirely selfish – just look at how much remnant US military power had been redeployed down there to protect America’s most precious asset, its remaining people – you couldn’t argue with the result. Refugee allocations to southern-hemisphere locations were among the most precious things in the world at the moment, the ecological catastrophe of the Disappearance being mostly confined to the northern latitudes. Nobody in their right mind wanted to go into the tribal slaughterhouse that was Africa. And with so many South American countries succumbing to the contagion of anarchy or military takeover, slots in the Australia and New Zealand programs were the most avidly sought. Fortunes in trade goods were being made smuggling people in there.
The Marine Corps lawyer was about to ask Pileggi for a rundown on the civilian flights out of Soto Cano in Honduras, the other leg of her role in Operation Uplift, when he suddenly blinked in shock. A freighter, moored near the old fuelling station down in the bay, exploded. There was no warning. It simply lifted a few feet out of the water – a small dense blossom of white light cracking it amidships before flowering into a dark, oily orange ball of flame that lit up the entire harbour. The sundered bow and stern thumped back down, throwing up huge fantails of water, before the vessel keeled over and started to sink.
‘Motherfuck!’ cried Musso.
Pileggi spun around in her chair, half raising herself as she did so.
Musso didn’t bother with the formalities of ending the meeting. They were both already heading for the door when a navy lieutenant appeared, blocking their exit. She was holding a sheaf of paper and appeared goggle-eyed with surprise.
‘General Musso, there’s a message for you, sir. From President Chavez.’
‘What?’ He was tired, worn slick, and not firing on all cylinders.
She handed the message across as more explosions ripped through the night, muted by distance. A crackle of small-arms fire resolved itself from the rolling thunder.