Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

Crack. Where his right elbow had struck painfully against the surface, a thin blue fissure had appeared. All that separated him from the freezing depths of the lake were a few inches of fragile ice. He didn’t dare move in case the crack spread any further.

He looked up. The snowmobile had somehow managed to reach the bottom of the slope without overturning. Without hesitation, the shooter steered the vehicle straight out onto the lake. Ben saw the man’s grin as the engine note soared and the craft accelerated towards him, veering madly from side to side on the slippery surface.

Suddenly much less concerned about the crack in the ice, Ben clambered to his feet and skated onwards with all the strength he could muster. Thirty-five yards to the opposite shore. Thirty. He could see the buildings clearly now. They looked derelict, but he didn’t care. All his energy was focused on reaching them.

But it was no good. The snowmobile was gaining too quickly. As it got to within a few paces, the engine note fell and it glided to a halt on the ice. Ben stopped skating. He turned slowly round to face his pursuer, and raised his hands. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

The shooter made no reply. Keeping the machine carbine pointed steadily at Ben, he tore off his goggles and tossed them into the back of the snowmobile, then climbed off the craft and took a step forwards. His face was hard, his jaw clenched, his eyes stony.

‘Where’s Cabeza?’ Ben demanded, although at this moment he wasn’t sure how much it would serve him to know the answer.

Very slowly and deliberately, the man ejected the spent magazine from the gun’s receiver and slotted in another from the pouch on his belt, then let the bolt forward with a clack and raised the butt to his shoulder.

Ben sighed. He’d come so far, only to get shot. There wasn’t much he could do about it. He thought of Brooke, and hung his head.

The shooter took aim. He seemed to be relishing the moment.

Until the first crackling sound came from the ice, and the surface gave a lurch under his feet. Ben felt it, too, and saw the web of blue-grey cracks suddenly appear and spread quickly out from underneath the snowmobile.

The vehicle’s weight was too much for the frozen lake to support.

The shooter’s aim wavered as he stared down in horror at the widening circle of unstable ice under him.

Too late. There was a slow, ripping groan, then an explosion like the crack of a rifle as the ice gave way.

The snowmobile’s front end rose sharply up in the air, then tipped over backwards into the water and was gone. The shooter staggered and let go of his weapon, windmilling his arms for balance and trying to jump towards more solid footing, but he was too slow. He fell with a splash and a cry that became a gurgle as the icy water closed over his head.

It wasn’t because Ben had once lost a close friend to an icy lake, and that he knew what a horrible death Oliver had suffered, that he felt impelled to save the man. He had to know what was going on.

The ice was breaking up alarmingly underfoot as he moved towards the edge of the ragged hole. For a moment he thought that the man had already sunk, overwhelmed by the deadly low temperature of the water – but then he saw his fingers gripping the edge of the hole, desperately trying to prevent himself from being drawn away under the ice sheet by the currents.

Ben fell into a crouch and plunged his arms into the freezing water, grasping the man by both wrists and pulling with all his might to haul him out. More cracks rippled outwards from the hole, threatening to break away the thin, unstable ledge Ben was crouching on.

The man’s head broke clear of the water, coughing and spluttering. Ben hoisted his shoulders and torso out of the lake, then laid him flat on the ice and dragged him away from the hole by the arms. The cracks were spreading everywhere. The ledge Ben had been crouching on seconds earlier suddenly gave way with a grinding creak.

Whoever this guy was, he was as tenacious as he was reckless. Even as Ben was hauling him away from danger, he was struggling like a trapped animal – but he was too winded and stunned by the shock of the icy water to put up much of a fight, or to realise that the SIG machine carbine was still hanging from his neck by its sling. Ben dragged him the last few yards to the lakeside, grappled him down firmly into the muddy snow, ripped away the weapon and tossed it aside.

‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Give it up.’

The guy wasn’t ready to stop. He lashed out wildly with his fists. Ben blocked one blow, but the next caught him across the cheek and made him see stars. He smashed the man hard in the face. Blood spurted from the man’s nose and poured down his lips and chin.

‘Where is she?’ Ben yelled. He drew his bloody fist back for another strike, but he hadn’t saved him from the lake to beat him insensible. He held back the blow. ‘Where is she?’ he repeated.

The man blinked; coughed up a gout of blood; blinked again. The expression on his face was a mixture of animal hatred and blank incomprehension.

Ben snatched up the fallen machine carbine. It was in battery and the safety was off. He thrust the muzzle hard under the man’s chin, forcing his head up. The SIG 553’s trigger would break at just under eight pounds of pressure. Ben had about six pounds on it right now and could almost feel the first bit of give before it would let go and blast the man’s brains all over the snow. It would have been so easy.

‘You tell me what you’ve done with her,’ he rasped, ‘or you die.’

The man spat red. His eyes blazed with defiance. His face was so numb with cold and his body was shuddering so badly after being soaked in the freezing lake that his voice was nearly incoherent – but not so much so that Ben couldn’t make out his words.

‘Kill me, then, motherfucker! Then go tell your fucking boss it was me who shot the bitch. Me. Nico Ramirez. You tell him!’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Ben recoiled. For a moment he was dumbstruck. ‘What did you say?’ he asked. ‘Shot who?’

Before Ramirez could answer, Ben had clubbed him over the head with the gun. Ramirez tried to cover his face with his hands. ‘What woman did you shoot?’ Ben roared, so hard he felt blood rise up in his throat. Terror was gripping his whole body. He felt as if he was on fire.

‘I shot Serrato’s bitch of a wife!’ Ramirez screamed back. ‘You tell him it was me who killed Alicia!’

Ben stopped hitting him. Breathing hard and shaking with adrenaline, he kept the gun warily trained on the man and tried to make sense of what he was hearing. He was beginning to realise that he and his attacker, this determined maniac who’d very nearly succeeded in taking him down, and whom he’d been just about to beat to a bloody pulp, were totally at cross purposes. Who the hell was Serrato?

Ben tried to focus his thoughts. The mannequin in Cabeza’s study. The music playing in the tower, loud enough to be heard by anyone approaching the house. It had been a lure. This Nico Ramirez – if that was his real name – had set a trap for someone he’d known in advance was coming to see Cabeza. Whoever that someone was, he wasn’t coming to consult the historian on a matter of scholarship. And Ramirez obviously believed that he’d caught the would-be assassin.

‘Where’s Cabeza?’ Ben demanded, just a little more gently. ‘Is he alive?’ But he could see that his prisoner was barely in a state to answer the hundred questions he wanted to ask. Blood was pouring from his nose and forehead, and he was convulsing with cold as the first stages of acute hypothermia began to take hold. Ben’s own clothes were wet through from the freezing lake and he could feel his extremities beginning to lose sensation. He slung the machine carbine over his shoulder, reached into his jacket pocket for his whisky flask and fumbled with his numb fingers to unscrew the cap. He took a gulp of the stinging whisky and then thrust the flask at Ramirez. ‘Drink some,’ he commanded.