Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

‘I never saw that movie,’ he said, ‘but that looks like a pork pie hat to me.’

‘That’s Cabeza’s hat, all right,’ Nico breathed. ‘Then he did come up here.’

‘Not alone,’ Ben said, glancing down the hill at the Audi parked near the trees. ‘Looks like there are four men after him. Maybe your safe house wasn’t so safe after all.’

‘But how—?’

‘You might want to call your friend Morales in Bogotá,’ Ben said. ‘Check to see if he’s still answering his phone. If he isn’t, you’d better hope Serrato’s people don’t have him.’

Nico suddenly looked anxious. ‘I left the SIG back at the house. Think I oughtta go back for it?’

‘No time for that now,’ Ben said.

They ran on. The last glow of the sun was far below the western hills and the darkness was gathering fast, making it impossible to spot anything more in the way of tracks on the firmer ground approaching the top of the slope. The dark church walls were fully in view now, surrounded by what little of the Moorish castle its Christian conquerors had left standing. Ben led the way through the craggy remains and up to the church entrance. The heavy door lay wide open.

Ben stepped inside. The air felt chill. Only the faintest of light was shining into the church through the doorway and the few small arched windows, just enough to make out the shapes of alcoves and columns and the great curving vaulted ceiling high overhead. Pools of black shadow lay everywhere and seemed to be spreading and deepening with every passing second. He wished he had the mini-Maglite with him, and cursed himself for leaving it in his bag at the house.

He advanced slowly, with Nico behind. Their footsteps rang softly off the stone floor. Ben nudged Nico’s arm and put a finger to his lips. Nico nodded. They moved deeper into the shadows, treading lightly. Gradually, as their eyes became used to the darkness, Ben could make out more detail. It had been a long, long time since the church had been used for worship. What looked like a small museum exhibit sat to one side. Other than that, the place was completely empty.

‘There’s nobody here,’ Nico whispered impatiently.

‘Shh.’ Ben thought he’d heard something moving, but it was hard to pinpoint where the sound had come from in the shadows.

‘Come on, man,’ Nico said in his normal voice. ‘Let’s g—’

His words were cut short by an explosion of noise far above their heads, a furious beating sound that echoed dizzyingly all round the walls. ‘Jesus!’ Nico said, flinching and covering his head with his hands.

But as Ben looked up and saw the flapping shape in the dim light of a high window he realised the noise was a startled pigeon trapped in the dome of the ceiling and trying to find a way out. ‘It’s just a bird,’ he said. But was that all he’d heard a moment ago?

Nico breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Scared the crap out of me. Look, we need to get out of— hey! ’

Ben hadn’t lowered his gaze from the ceiling, or he wouldn’t have seen the dark shape tumbling down from a great height. It was much larger than a pigeon, and it was plummeting straight towards them. Just in time, he hauled Nico backwards out of the way.

The falling object landed at their feet with a crunch that resounded through the church. Ben had heard the stomach-churning sound of cracking human bones before. The dark gleaming mess that had suddenly covered the floor was blood, and the shapeless heap lying in the middle of it was a corpse.

Ben took out his Zippo lighter, thumbed the flint striker and crouched down to shine the flickering orange flame over the dead man’s face.

‘Cabeza,’ Nico said after a beat.

Chapter Forty

Ben only needed a brief second to tell that the historian’s skull was crushed by its impact against the flagstones. In the same instant he also knew that it hadn’t been the fall that had killed him. No fall could produce such a razor-straight gash from ear to ear. Someone had sliced his throat, and not long ago.

Ben quickly shut the lighter, snuffing out its telltale flame – but too late, because whoever had killed Cabeza and punted his body off some ledge high above them already knew he and Nico were there.

The proof came with the pistol shot that filled the church like a thunderclap a second later. Ben caught a momentary glimpse of the orange-white muzzle flash overhead: in almost pitch darkness the jet of exploding gases lit up a section of wall and the stone stairway leading up to an arched alcove and what looked like a way through to the bell tower.

Nico let out a yell of pain. Stone chips exploded from the floor between their feet. Ben yanked him close in to the wall, where they were directly below the gunman and out of his field of fire – at least for the moment.

‘It’s just a graze,’ Nico muttered, clutching his arm. ‘I’m okay.’ Even in the semi-darkness Ben could see how much blood was welling out from between his fingers. He quickly slipped off his belt and wrapped it round Nico’s arm. ‘Hold it tight. Keep your arm bent.’

Nico drew in a sharp, sudden breath, and Ben thought it was a wince of pain until he realised the Colombian had seen something. Before Ben had time to react, a blinding light was shining on them both. He turned, shielding his eyes from the dazzling glare. He could just about discern a pair of figures behind the light. Two beams shining in his eyes, not one, each from the frame-mounted tactical torch of a pistol.

Above them, the trapped pigeon was still flailing wildly around the dome of the ceiling. A voice snapped out harshly in Spanish, ‘Up against the wall and get your hands in the air.’

Ben didn’t move. Footsteps were echoing down the bell tower stairway: the men who’d sliced Cabeza’s throat and pitched him from the alcove were coming to join their two colleagues on the ground. Three, four. In a matter of seconds the odds were going to double.

‘You. I said get against that wall,’ said the voice behind the light.

Ben could focus better now on the shapes of the two men in front of him, their outlines visible if not their features. ‘What do you reckon, Nico?’ he said quietly, not taking his eyes off them.

‘I say fuck them,’ Nico replied in a savage undertone.

Ben nodded. ‘That’s what I say too. I’m sick of getting shot at today.’ Then in one movement that was too fluid and fast for the men to register, he reached under his jacket, grasped the butt of the revolver that was stuck into his waistband behind the right hip, wrenched it out and squeezed the trigger without aiming.

When he’d come across the handgun in the dresser drawer back at La Catalina, he’d guessed it was the one Nico had procured from the drug dealer in Granada. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, he’d thought, and slipped it quietly into his jeans. The short-barrelled .44 Magnum revolver was even scabbier and more beaten-up than the Colt he’d got hold of in Belfast; and if it hadn’t been for the scorch marks on the cylinder from the two rounds Nico had already put into Serrato’s hired killer, Ben wouldn’t have been so sure he could rely on it. But as the hammer dropped on the next chamber in line, the gun went off like a grenade in his hand and the muzzle recoiled high in the air, haloed in white flame.

The bullet caught the nearest man in the chest and cannoned him into his companion. Ben’s hearing was suddenly drowned in a high-pitched whine. The man he’d shot dropped his weapon and its light beam flew around to point at the wall. The other was staggering off balance, his gun-torch shining wildly all over the place. Ben pointed the Magnum blindly at a point somewhere above and to the side of the light source, pulled the trigger again and once more the world seemed to erupt in a wall of sound. The hand-filling wooden butt of the revolver kicked back at him like a jab from a heavyweight boxer. Blood flew in the light from the bullet strike. The second man went crashing down on his side and rolled over, his body spread-eagled.