Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

And if it wasn’t so …

If his darkest fears were proved right …

Somebody was going to pay a very dear price.

They would anyway.

The perimeter wall stood a hundred metres distant across a stretch of close-cropped stubble. The span of buildings beyond shone creamy-white in the lights from its windows and the strong floodlamps that stood on masts around its edges. To the left, some three hundred metres from where Ben and Nico were hiding in the trees, they could make out the line of the single road that led up to the gates.

They dumped their packs on the ground. Ben unzipped the compartment of his rucksack containing the rifle ammo, and loaded as many rounds as he could comfortably carry into his pockets. While Nico was doing the same for himself, Ben reached for the binoculars, scanned the visible section of road and lingered carefully for a few moments on the compound entrance. ‘You said there were how many guards on the gate?’ he asked Nico.

‘Enough to stop the US Marines from getting through,’ Nico muttered. He was breathing heavily as the adrenaline accumulated in his system.

Ben passed him the binocs without saying anything more. Nico put them up to his eyes, and a moment later snatched them away and stared at Ben in bewilderment. ‘There’s nobody manning the fucking gates,’ he said in a hoarse whisper. ‘They’re just hanging wide open.’

Ben took the binocs back from him, ran his gaze past the top of the perimeter wall and slowly scanned the breadth of the buildings from left to right.

‘Well?’ Nico whispered tensely.

Ben said nothing. The magnified image showed that the main building was in fact a fine-looking house, large and sprawling on several floors, modern in design with hacienda-style arches and balconies. The rest of the buildings clustered around it were more basic and workmanlike, but painted the same pale colour, which gave the whole the appearance of a little Mediterranean village which had sprung up incongruously in the middle of the endless jungle. Ben was looking for movement in the lit-up windows, but saw none. Then he paused, backtracked a little way and looked again at what he’d just noticed on the upper floor of the main house.

The fact that the three windows were grilled over with thick iron bars bolted to the outside wall would have been enough to get his attention. He’d seen enough remote kidnappers’ strongholds in his day to know what a well-appointed captivity room looked like.

But what made his eyes narrow to slits and his breathing stop for a long moment were the black soot marks all over the walls where thick billows of smoke had recently been pouring from the barred windows, as well as two other windows either side and two more above.

There had been a fire inside the house. A serious, major fire – and from what Ben could tell, at its heart had been the room with the barred windows. Even after the flames were extinguished, the gutted rooms would have gone on smoking for a long time. He could see no smoke at all coming from the windows. Which meant the fire had happened many hours ago.

Still not breathing, Ben darted the binoculars’ field of vision downwards to where he could make out part of the courtyard between the buildings. He could still see no movement. There wasn’t a sound except the chirruping of the insects.

The house and surrounding compound appeared completely deserted.

‘Something’s wrong here,’ he murmured to Nico. ‘Something’s happened.’

Chapter Forty-Six

No alarm was raised as Ben and Nico crossed the open ground to the compound gates. No guards appeared to challenge them. Up close, they could see that the tall iron gates were buckled and bent, as though they’d been rammed violently open from the inside. There was nothing to stop anyone walking straight in.

Ben worked the bolt on his rifle, but even as he chambered the round he knew he wouldn’t be needing it. Not here, not now.

‘It’s weird,’ Nico muttered. ‘Last time I was here, this place crawled like a fucking rats’ lair. Where’d they all go?’

Ben said nothing. He would almost rather have been shot at. Every step nearer the cluster of buildings deepened his conviction that something terrible had happened here: something that his instincts told him was connected with Brooke.

The acrid stink of the burned-out section of the house wafted across the compound on the warm breeze. He knelt, examining the vehicle tracks on the hard-packed earth. There were dozens of them, made by knobbly all-terrain tyres and dug in hard, leaving furrows, as though one four-wheel drive after another after another had gone speeding out of the gates in such a tearing hurry that nobody had bothered closing the place up behind them, or even leaving anyone to guard it. The tyre tracks all led out of a large square building with doors like those of an aircraft hangar. The doors gaped open. Ben shone his light inside. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight. He tried to imagine the kind of emergency situation that would make a high-security fortress like this empty itself so completely. Possibilities filled his head. None of them was reassuring.

Through an archway and along a short path flanked by flowerbeds, and they were at the grand entrance of the main house. It too was hanging open, as unguarded as the front gates. Ben tensed, darting his gaze all around him. Was he walking straight into a trap here? Had Serrato somehow been alerted that they were coming?

But if it was a trap, it was taking a long time to spring. Nico muttered something in Spanish as they walked into the huge marble-floored entrance hall. Ornamental plants and colourful flowers spilled from decorative urns. Paintings adorned the walls. The hallway was surrounded by doors. Ben stepped across to one of them, his rifle ready, and pushed it open. He switched on the light and found himself staring into a large empty salon with a grand piano at the far end.

Across the hallway, Nico called softly, ‘I think you need to see this, man.’ Ben shut the salon door and stepped over to see what Nico wanted to show him. He was pointing inside another empty room, one that was decked out with wood panels and leather furniture.

‘The picture,’ Nico said.

Ben looked where he was pointing, and saw with a cold shiver the gilt-framed oil portrait of the woman he’d instantly have taken for Brooke if he hadn’t known better by now.

‘Alicia,’ he murmured.

‘I told you, man. She’s like a sick fantasy for him.’

And that sick fantasy was the only thing keeping Brooke Marcel alive. But where was she? Ben raced through the ground floor, flinging open door after door, flipping lights on in room after room with his finger on the trigger.

Nothing. Between them they combed methodically through the house as far as the sweeping crimson-carpeted staircase. Nico motioned towards it with a questioning look. Ben nodded. The two of them started making their way upwards, barely breathing, listening hard for any tiny sound and hearing nothing. There seemed to be no sign of life – but Ben would open every door in the whole damn place before he’d be satisfied there was nothing here to find. ‘Split up,’ he whispered to Nico. ‘Yell if you find anything.’

‘I find anything, you’ll hear more than yells,’ Nico said, brandishing the revolver.

‘Be careful. Meet you back here in five minutes.’

Alone, Ben followed his nose through the opulent passageways towards the source of the burnt stink, so much stronger up here. Within minutes, he’d found it.

The suite of rooms had clearly been a luxurious one before the fire had ravaged it and turned it into a blackened shell. It had taken several fire extinguishers, their empty canisters discarded about the floor, to quell the blaze. The worst of it seemed to have been concentrated in the bedroom, where he found the charred remains of a four-poster bed. The curtains had been burned away from the open windows. The steel bars bolted to the outside were covered with soot.