Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

Ben returned the woman’s gaze. Something about her was oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t her face – he’d have remembered exactly where he’d seen a face like that before. It was something else; a strange kind of déjà vu .

‘Somebody better start talking pretty soon,’ Nico warned them, thumbing back the hammer of his Colt. The simple-minded kid was suddenly beginning to understand the situation and his lip had started to quiver.

That was when Ben realised with a shock what it was that was familiar about the woman. It wasn’t her. It was what she was wearing. Round her thick neck was a little gold chain, simple and plain and yet distinctive enough to him that he’d have recognised it anywhere, even on this ugly brute. It was the same little neck chain that Brooke had chosen in the jeweller’s shop in Paris – the one she always wore.

So Brooke had been here after all.

Feeling suddenly weak at the knees he lowered the rifle and reached out with his left hand to grab hold of the neck chain. ‘Where did you get this?’ The woman protested, tried to wriggle away and snatch the chain out of his fingers. ‘That doesn’t belong to you,’ he said. ‘You stole it, didn’t you? You took it from the woman who was here. Give it to me.’

The woman hesitated, then reluctantly took off the chain and thrust it into Ben’s hand. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

One of the cooks finally found his tongue. ‘ Desaparecido ,’ he said. Gone. El jefe , the boss, had gone too. It had been after the fire.

Ben reached into his pocket, flipped open his wallet and took out the photo of Brooke. ‘Is this her?’ he asked.

The two cooks and the young servant girl all nodded in unison. ‘ Si, si ,’ the simple-minded kid blurted out in his slurred voice. ‘ La Señora Alicia! ’ The young servant woman shook her head wistfully at the mention of the name. ‘ No, Guillermo, la Señora Alicia está muerta! ’

Under pressure, the servants explained between them that the fire had started the night before last. The rumour was that the woman had stolen a truck and made her escape while the men were putting it out. Not long afterwards, the boss had gone after her, taking everyone with him except a handful of poor staff. How could they cope on their own? The boss had been gone nearly two whole days. What would happen to them if he never returned?

Ben slipped Brooke’s photo back in his wallet with a shaking hand. Now he knew for sure. He’d found her, but he’d been too late. Forty-eight hours too late.

Instantly he started blaming himself. Thinking of how he’d wasted time over Cabeza in Montefrio, how he’d needlessly delayed in Chachapoyas, how he could have saved time by waiting for the storm to end and taking the floatplane from the Potro boat station.

‘Where did she go?’ Nico asked the servants. ‘Where’d your boss go after her?’

Shrugs, blank expressions. ‘Out there,’ said one of the cooks, waving at the dark window.

Nico looked at Ben. ‘How in hell could she have escaped? These guys are more tooled up than the Peruvian army.’

‘I found a smashed perfume bottle in the room where they were keeping her. That stuff’s highly flammable.’

‘You mean she set the place alight herself? ’

‘That would be just like her.’

‘Holy shit.’ Nico shook his head. ‘Hate to say it, man, but if she’s out there all alone in that jungle, she doesn’t stand a chance.’

‘She wouldn’t have escaped without some kind of plan in mind,’ Ben said, thinking hard.

‘Need to be one hell of a smart plan if she wants to get away from Ramon Serrato and his whole hunting party. It’s been forty-eight hours. If he finds her, man, you know what he’s gonna do. She’s worse than dead.’

Ben felt his resolve tighten like a fist. ‘Not if I find her first,’ he said.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Forty-eight hours earlier

‘Put on,’ Hatchet Face said again, holding up the negligee. ‘Señor Serrato not wait long. He get mucho enfadado .’ She shook her head in warning.

Brooke stared at the flimsy garment and at the suspenders and stockings the woman had brought her to wear. She closed her eyes. Heaved a deep, shaky sigh. This is it , she thought. This is the moment .

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll put them on.’

Hatchet Face seemed strangely contented as she returned into the living area to wait as Brooke changed. Brooke shut the bedroom door. Took a couple more deep breaths and then moved quickly. She slipped a CD into the stereo system and turned the volume up high. To the strains of Brahms she tore the drapes of mosquito netting from the bed and grabbed the training shoes from underneath, as well as the bag containing the comfortable clothes Consuela had provided for her. She emptied out the clothing, stripped off her white cotton dress and pulled on the tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt, then quickly laced up the shoes.

Hatchet Face rapped on the door. ‘You hurry,’ came her stern voice from outside.

‘Don’t come in,’ Brooke yelled. ‘I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’

She ran into the bathroom. Snatched two towels from the rail and dampened one of them with water. She stuffed the dry one into the clothes bag, along with a tub of talcum powder, the mineral water bottle that she’d refilled from the tap and the packet of cold meats left over from dinner that she’d hidden in the shower cubicle. She grabbed a tall can of hairspray and jammed it into her pocket, then picked up all the perfume bottles and carried them into the bedroom with the damp towel over her shoulder.

Brooke had been aware from the start that if she wanted to escape from this place she wouldn’t get very far without money, and she didn’t have a penny. But Serrato’s jewels were worth countless thousands. If she could trade them for a ride or a night’s shelter, even a phone call to the outside world for help, that’d be good enough for her. Chucking all of the perfume bottles on the bed she grabbed the jewellery from the bedside table. She slipped the bracelet over her wrist and put on the heavy necklace underneath her T-shirt.

She was as ready as she’d ever be. She was breathing hard with tension. What would Ben have said in a moment like this?

‘Fuck it,’ she muttered. Then she picked up one of the Chanel bottles and dashed it as hard as she could against the solid wooden bedpost. It shattered, broken glass and perfume showering everywhere. She grabbed another, and another, smashing them into pieces.

Suddenly the whole room was filled with the choking reek of perfume. The carpet was saturated with the stuff. Any second now, Hatchet Face would be sure to smell it and come storming in to see what was happening. Seconds counted.

Brooke retrieved the stolen cigarette lighter from its hiding place under the mattress. She snatched up the negligee. ‘Here’s what I think of your pervy outfit, Ramon,’ she said as she offered the flame up to the material. It caught light instantly. She threw the burning garment down onto the perfume-saturated carpet.

The fire leaped up instantly and aggressively with a breathy whumph . Suddenly everything was ablaze – the floor, the bedclothes, the four-poster’s drapes, its canopy. Even sooner than Brooke had expected there was a wall of fire licking its way hungrily to the ceiling and spreading outwards to engulf the whole room. Smoke alarms began to screech.

Brooke leaped back from the fierce heat, grabbed the bulging clothes bag and sprinted for the bathroom door shouting ‘ Fuego! Fuego! ’

The door flew open. Hatchet Face gaped in bewildered horror at the flames and opened her mouth to yell something. Before she could get the words out, Brooke had thrown all her strength and momentum into a punch that sent the woman crashing down on her back. Hatchet Face looked pretty strong and tough, and Brooke had no desire to get into a blow-for-blow fight with her, not even after the few lessons in unarmed combat she’d had with Jeff Dekker at Le Val. A swift kick to the head knocked her out cold.