Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

‘It was Bracca who chopped Forsyte’s hands off.’

‘He’d chop off his own left hand for Serrato. Fucking idolises him. You can bet Bracca’s right there with him now, watching over him like a goddamn pit bull. Oh, and the fucker’s a cannibal too. At least that’s what they said about him back in Bogotá; that he kept human heads in his freezer, ate their brains out with a spoon like ice-cream.’

‘You believed that?’

‘I’d believe most anything I heard about Luis Bracca. Let me tell you, you go up against either him or Vertíz on his own, you might stand a chance – if you’re good, and I mean very, very good. Go up against both at once, forget it. You’re a dead man. Which basically means we’re dead men.’ Nico swilled the dregs of his beer around inside the bottle. ‘At least we get a last drink, huh? More than some guys get. We going in there tonight?’ he asked after a beat.

Ben nodded.

‘So what’s the plan – you just gonna walk in there, kill everyone and get your girl back?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s what I figured.’

‘Does the idea make you nervous?’ Ben asked with a thin smile. ‘I told you, you don’t have to do this.’

‘Don’t insult me, man. You’re not the only one with a reason to be here.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Ben said.

‘There’s one thing you are forgetting, amigo. We ain’t armed.’ Nico pointed at the handle of the parang that was sticking out of Ben’s rucksack. ‘Unless you were planning on taking a knife to a gunfight.’

‘That’s where the crazy old hunter who lives in the forest comes in,’ Ben said.

Chapter Forty-Four

Twilight was falling as Ben and Nico made the long trek north from the river to find the hunter’s place. Nico led the way. The terrain climbed steadily above the river plateau until the vegetation began to thin out a little and they could see the huge red orb of the sun sinking over the endless tree line. It would be dark soon, and Ben was beginning to wonder where Nico was leading him. He couldn’t see any sign of human habitation anywhere, not even the faintest of tracks. ‘You’re sure about this place?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Nico replied over his shoulder. ‘Came this way last time.’

They trekked on a while and the shadows around them lengthened. The Colombian suddenly turned with a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Shhh. Real careful. Remember, he is one unhinged kind of dude.’ Ben peered through the dark forest in the direction Nico was pointing, and could make out the shape of a wooden cabin nestling among the foliage.

But as they got closer, it looked as though the cabin and the little cluster of plank-built sheds around it were so badly run down that nobody could possibly live there. The place was all in darkness. Nico halted and shook his head, perplexed. ‘Damn it, the place looked bad before, but not this bad. Maybe he don’t live here any more. Hell, maybe the old fucker died. He was real ancient.’

‘I’m not dead, asshole,’ said a hoarse voice behind them.

They turned to see an Indian stepping out from the bushes. He was festooned with cartridge belts crisscrossed round his shoulders and a necklace of claws hung from his wrinkly neck. His hair was long and pure white, his skin like brown leather. He was scowling at them furiously from behind the double muzzles of a sawn-off shotgun.

‘Shit,’ Nico breathed. ‘Don’t move,’ he muttered to Ben.

Ben hadn’t been planning on moving, nor was he going to let his hand stray anywhere near the hilt of the parang that hung from his belt. Not many men could have sneaked up on him from behind like that, but the old hunter was as stealthy as a panther after a lifetime of creeping close to all manner of wild jungle quarry – and the mad glint in his eye made it clear that he was perfectly comfortable with the idea of gunning down these two intruders where they stood and leaving them for the jaguars.

‘This is my land,’ the hunter rasped in his heavily-accented English, stepping towards them through the undergrowth without snapping a twig. ‘You walk on my land, I shoot you. That’s my law.’ With his gnarled right thumb he snicked back one hammer of the old shotgun, then the other.

‘Hey, man, don’t you remember me?’ Nico said, raising his arms in the air.

The hunter squinted at him over the barrels, as if deliberating whether or not to blow him in two. Then a light of recognition appeared in his wrinkled old eyes, and he lowered the gun a fraction. ‘You got more money for me, boy?’

‘That depends on what else you have to sell,’ Ben replied for Nico.

The promise of hard cash was enough to defuse the situation fairly quickly. The hunter let down the hammers of his shotgun, slung it over his shoulder and jerked his chin with a grunt towards the cabin.

As he and Nico followed, Ben spied a road, little more than a dirt track, snaking away through the trees from the hunter’s place. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the crazy old man digging the track out himself with his bare hands. But what was most interesting about it were the fresh tyre marks in the dirt – as well as the tarpaulin-covered shape in the shadows of the corrugated iron lean-to where the tyre tracks led. Ben stepped over, discreetly lifted a corner of the tarp and made out a glimmer of rust-speckled chrome.

The old hunter paused to fire up a generator. Lights flickered on in the cabin’s windows. He motioned to Ben and Nico to follow.

‘Home sweet home,’ Nico muttered under his breath as the old man ushered them through a living area filled with furniture he’d carved from forest trees, then into a scullery where skinned monkeys and unidentifiable hacked-up pieces of other animals hung from hooks. Something equally unrecognisable and smelling of glue was boiling up in a cast-iron pot on a stove. Finally he led them into an adjoining room filled with racks of weaponry.

‘Enough to fight a goddamn war,’ Nico said, eyeing the rows of rifles.

‘World War Two, maybe,’ Ben replied. Most of the guns looked as if they’d done hard service at Stalingrad. Rattly actions and shot-out bores would be the order of the day. Ben didn’t much relish the idea of a weapon that couldn’t hit a house-sized target at fifty metres. ‘Haven’t you got anything a little newer?’ he asked the hunter in Spanish.

The old man looked taken aback for a moment that the tall blond-haired gringo could speak his language, but he shrugged, grunted and opened up a steel locker. Inside stood a row of modern hunting rifles of various types and calibres.

‘What about this one?’ Ben said, and picked up a scoped bolt-action. It was a Remington Model 700 chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum – delivering up to 4000 foot pounds of muzzle energy and enough knockdown power to kill anything that walked the American continent. The rifle looked new. He drew open the bolt to see clean well-oiled steel, flipped open the protective lids over the scope lenses and peered through, aiming at the furthest spot on the wall. The scope reticle was the illuminated type with a glowing red inner circle and centre dot, offering the shooter that extra edge in limited light conditions. The illumination was strong and clear, showing that there were still a good few hours of battery life left.

That was all Ben needed. The rifle was never going to be more than an initial entry weapon, though as a medium-to-long-distance means of striking at the enemy with the surprise and aggression that they least expected in the dead of the night, it was a pretty good option. The scope wasn’t exactly military-grade night-vision optics, but it was far more than he might have dreamed of stumbling across out here in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Once he’d established his method of entry into the compound and neutralised as many targets as it took to get him inside the perimeter, he could improvise, if necessary ditching the rifle in exchange for something more appropriate to the situation.