Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

They were still a long way from their destination. After long delays in the cloying humidity, during which Ben changed most of his remaining cash for Peruvian nuevo sol, they boarded an internal flight to carry them the four hundred miles northwards to Chachapoyas.

The department of Amazonas was just one of Peru’s twenty-five separate regions, itself divided up into seven provinces and eighty-three districts. Chachapoyas was a city in the clouds, over seven thousand feet above sea level and surrounded by mist-shrouded mountains that made the Spanish Sierra Nevada seem like gentle hill country by comparison. Stretching out all around, the subtropical highlands of Amazonas’ rainforest looked from the air like an endless undulating blanket of green crisscrossed by tiny blue threads – the vast river system that covered thousands of square miles and fed into the mighty Amazon itself.

It was cooler in Chachapoyas, but the humidity was no less oppressive than it had been in Lima. After collecting Ben’s battered old bag, the only luggage the two travellers had between them, they managed to find a taxi to drive them along the desolate single road into the city.

‘I told you it was a backwater,’ Nico said. ‘Now what?’

Every delay, every second that went by without tangible progress was an added torment as Ben kept racing through every aspect and angle of the situation in his mind. More and more, it was a conflict between the human, emotional and very frightened part of him that wanted desperately to keep moving on, and the cool professional who knew that panic and exhaustion were two of the greatest risks facing him right now. If he didn’t do this right, it would be Brooke who’d pay the price – if she hadn’t already.

He wilfully closed his mind to those kinds of thoughts. ‘First we need to make a base here,’ he told Nico. ‘A cool shower, a hot meal and a bed are our first priority before we make another move.’

All three were available for a handful of nuevo sol at a simple hotel near the centre of the city. As Ben stood under the shower that night, he thought about what was to come. His instinct told him he was entering the final phase of his search, but what lay ahead was still deeply uncertain. He’d stopped caring whether he got out of this in one piece. All that mattered to him was that Brooke did.

Was she really here? Was she still all right? The questions haunted him deep into the night. He wondered whether she had any idea he was looking for her. Or would she be unconscious, drugged by her captors? What, if anything, was he going to find when he got there? After hours of sleepless torment, he got up and went across the dark room to the mini-bar. Only when the floor was littered with empty bottles was he able to crawl back to bed and fall into a fevered sleep.

When he awoke around dawn, he remembered Amal and realised it had been days since he’d made contact. It would be late morning in London. Ben sat on the edge of the bed and dialled the number.

Amal picked up instantly, as if he’d been hovering over the phone the entire time just waiting for Ben to call. His voice sounded croaky and distant, breaking up from the poor reception. ‘Where are you? You sound like you’re thousands of miles away.’

‘I think I know where she is,’ Ben said. ‘There’s a chance she’s still alive and I’m going in to find her.’

There was a speechless pause on the other end, followed by the sound of Amal swallowing hard. ‘Where? Tell me everyth—’ At that point the line went dead. Ben tried dialling once more, but when he couldn’t get through he didn’t try a third time. There was nothing more to say.

Feeling stiff and weary, Ben took another shower, then pulled on the last of the fresh clothes he had in his bag. He went downstairs, asked the guy in the lobby where he could get a map, and followed his directions to a newsagent’s stall down the street.

By the time Ben got back to the hotel, Nico was sitting in the bar waiting for him. He looked sombre. ‘I just tried calling Felipe again. That’s the sixth time since we left Montefrio. Still no reply.’

Ben said nothing. He was certain Morales was dead.

‘I need a coffee,’ Nico said. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ They ordered the biggest pot the kitchen could brew up, and sat at a corner table where they spread the map out between them. Tracing his finger roughly northeast from Chachapoyas, Nico indicated the rough location of the tiny river village of San Tomás, the nearest settlement to Serrato’s compound. San Tomás itself was too tiny to feature on the map, but Nico was fairly certain of his bearings and in any case, he assured Ben, the region was filled with expert guides who could take them there.

‘We follow the highway out of Chachapoyas sixty, seventy miles,’ Nico said, pointing out the directions on the map, ‘then turn off and cut across towards the Potro River, right here. There’s a river station where you can hire a floatplane pilot to take you the rest of the way to San Tomás. It’s a hell of a quicker way than by road, believe me.’

Ben could easily believe it. He nodded. ‘That’ll do us.’

‘Once we get to San Tomás we’ll need another set of wheels to get us nearer to Serrato. But unless you’re planning on driving right up to his front gates, the final approach has to be on foot, through the jungle. It ain’t exactly a walk in the park. You ever been in jungle country before?’

As a young SAS recruit years earlier, Ben had undergone the inhuman endurance test of jungle training in Belize, where he and his patrol had had to learn to move quickly and silently in near-impossible conditions, testing their navigation and survival skills to the limit. Later he’d seen active service in Sierra Leone in West Africa and a dozen other black-ops jungle combat missions in war zones, official and unofficial, across the planet. ‘A little,’ was all he replied.

‘It’s another world, man. A green hell filled with everything that crawls and bites. Giant spiders, snakes longer than a Chevy Silverado. If those critters don’t get you, the diseases will, and it’s got them all. Yellow fever, malaria, dengue, hepatitis, typhoid, tetanus, cholera, fucking rabies. They say you’ve got to be nuts to go there without inoculations.’

Back in his regiment days the medics had regularly pumped Ben full of more drugs than he cared to count. The proper courses of vaccines took time to administer; anti-typhoid injections alone had to be spaced out over six months for the protection to work. He didn’t have six months to waste, or even six more hours. ‘Yeah, well, the art of living dangerously is just not to catch anything.’

‘Like not catching a bullet, I guess,’ Nico said, looking down at his arm.

‘I told you, you don’t have to come all the way. Just show me where to go.’

‘I’ve come this far, haven’t I?’ Nico said, stung. ‘You think I don’t want to finish it?’

‘Your choice,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not going to be responsible for you. Once we’re there, you slow me down, I’ll walk away. Get lost or hurt, I won’t come back for you. I’m there for one thing and one thing only. Understand?’

‘That’s what I like about you, Capitano – you’re so full of fucking encouragement.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Ben said. He drained his coffee and stood up.

‘We moving?’

‘We’re moving.’

‘Then let’s get fucking moving,’ Nico said.

Chapter Forty-Three

The Toyota Hilux they rented from the place around the corner from the hotel was more rust than metal and would have been declared unroadworthy anywhere in Europe, but Ben didn’t care as long as it carried them as far as they needed. ‘Now we have some shopping to do,’ he told Nico.