Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

‘Bitch,’ Brooke muttered, then ran into the living area.

Within instants there were two, three, four guards storming into the room. By then, Brooke had already dived out of sight and was hiding behind the sofa nearest the door, clamping her damp towel over her nose and mouth as the smoke began to gather thickly. Alarms were going off all down the corridor now. The men balked at the intensity of the spreading inferno. One of them was carrying a tall extinguisher and aimed the nozzle at the flames. He had to retreat quickly as a surge in the blaze threatened to swallow him.

In the panic of the moment nobody seemed to have thought about Brooke or spotted where she was crouching. She knew she couldn’t stay there long. The heat from the blaze was becoming unbearable. Worse, any second now Serrato would come running down here in person. She had no intention of being around when he turned up.

The men were too busy spraying extinguishers at the flames to notice her slip out of the burning room. She held her breath as she darted away down the corridor, turning off every light switch she came to in the hope that semi-darkness could cover her escape. She ducked into a room as several guards came sprinting by, one of them yelling into a radio over the screech of the fire alarms.

Then it was a clear run to the stairs. Nobody had seen her. The layout of the house was so familiar now that she knew almost exactly how many paces it was to the entrance – and that number was diminishing fast as she ran. Keep moving. Keep moving. You’re going to make it.

Fresh, cool air on her face as she bolted through the main doorway, under the arch and out into the cream-coloured portico that ran alongside the house. Free!

But she still had a long way to go. She kept to the shadows. Running men passed her, too intent on the emergency to look around them. She moved away from the house, leaving behind the din of alarms and yelling voices. The stink of burning was strong in the air. Smoke was pouring from her barred windows, as well as from the windows above and either side – but unless it was so out of control that it destroyed the whole building, the extinguishers would soon tame it. She couldn’t count on her diversion working for long.

Running low, she passed the walled yard where Consuela and her daughter had been executed. Up ahead was the high side of the vehicle hangar. It seemed unattended as she approached – then suddenly a guard stepped out of nowhere and confronted her with a look of surprise that quickly turned to one of suspicion.

‘You wouldn’t turn me in, would you?’ Brooke said to him with a coy smile. ‘Look what you’ll get if you keep your mouth shut.’ She tugged the precious necklace out from the collar of her T-shirt and held it out for him to see. He stared at it, mesmerised, a glow of idiot greed dawning across his face.

‘On second thoughts, you’re not worth it,’ she said. She drew the can of hairspray from her pocket and gave him a good sustained burst of it right in the eyes.

He screamed and clapped his hands over his face, dropping his rifle. Brooke rammed a knee into his groin, grabbed him by the ears as he doubled over and wrenched him headfirst into the side wall of the hangar. She dragged his unconscious bulk into the shadows and picked up his fallen rifle. It didn’t look much different from the semi-automatic weapon she’d become familiar with on the firing range at Le Val. She racked the bolt and ran towards the rows of vehicles.

Guile wasn’t going to get her through those front gates, but something robust and heavy moving at speed might do the trick. She jumped up into the cab of the nearest four-wheel drive truck. The keys were in the ignition. She dumped the rifle on the passenger seat, fired up the engine and lights and hit the gas.

The truck went skidding out of the building with a roar. Brooke floored the pedal and went speeding right through the heart of the compound. Running groups of men scattered in her headlights. Her escape suddenly wasn’t such a secret any more.

Brooke saw the tall iron gates approach in her lights and braced herself for the collision. As she roared towards them at full throttle, four guards emerged from the gatehouse, took one look at the truck and aimed their rifles. Shots punctured the night air. The windscreen shattered. Brooke grabbed the rifle from the passenger seat and poked the barrel one-handed through the broken glass as she drove. A squeeze of the trigger; a massive eruption of noise as the thing let loose half its magazine. Bullets sparked off the iron gates. The guards dived for cover and scurried away just in time to avoid being pulverised by the truck’s impact.

The truck crashed into the gates. The huge impact threw Brooke forward against the wheel. Bits of masonry and steel bars and pieces of truck flew everywhere. The windscreen disappeared completely. She was dead.

But she wasn’t dead, she was through! The truck surged onwards, rolling over wreckage and debris in a massive cloud of dust. Suddenly she could see the road ahead in the yellow glow of her remaining headlight. Whooping with glee, she floored the throttle again and sawed at the wheel as the bouncing, careering truck sped away from the compound.

Back at the house, Ramon Serrato came tearing down from the top floor to find his men in chaos. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the nearest one and ran wildly into Brooke’s room, spraying foam in all directions at the flames.

‘Where is she?’ he shouted, his face blackened with smoke, eyes streaming. ‘Where is she?’ Nobody seemed to know. Blank looks all round, even from Vertíz and Bracca.

Over the din of the alarms came the rattle of rifle fire from across the compound. Serrato beat back the last of the flames licking around one of the living area windows, hurled the empty fire extinguisher to the floor and peered out into the night to see the truck’s red taillights disappearing down the road towards the jungle.

Chapter Forty-Eight

In her haste to get away, Brooke hadn’t checked the fuel level in the truck. As she headed down the road as fast as the heavy vehicle would take her, wind howling through the smashed windscreen, she cast a worried eye on the diesel gauge. It was less than a quarter full. How far could she get on that?

But her worst problem wasn’t running out of diesel. It was not being able to see where the hell she was going. The collision with the gates had torn away her nearside headlight and reduced the other to a candle-glow pointing cock-eyed at the verge. The bonnet was now a twisted piece of scrap that obscured her already compromised visibility with every bounce of the suspension on the badly rutted surface. The road snaked into the trees, leading Christ knew where. All she could do was keep it going as fast as possible and pray that the next violent crash over a pothole wouldn’t tear her wheels off.

She let out a cry as the tyres lost traction on a bend and the truck nearly went crunching into a giant tree. Somehow she managed to get it back under control. Slowing down was the only sane option, but she didn’t dare slacken the pressure on the accelerator. Tree trunks flashed by her side windows; overhanging branches slapped the twisted bodywork. Brooke just kept driving on and on. This road had to lead somewhere. Somewhere with people, telephones, police …

Then suddenly, far sooner than she’d expected, there they were: the lights she’d been dreading to see in the rear-view mirror, growing quickly larger and more dazzling. Four; six; ten of them, or even more: a whole convoy of vehicles in chase. In their faster Jeeps, with their knowledge of the road, they would soon catch up with her.

If Serrato got hold of her now …

Brooke’s fears dissolved into panic as the road ahead suddenly went totally dark. Her remaining headlight had stopped working.