Scott Mariani - The Armada Legacy

Brooke’s fingers found a rotted piece of branch on the ground. She swung it at the spider. ‘Go on, piss off and leave me alone!’ she yelled.

And the spider attacked her.

She couldn’t have moved out of the way in time. It scuttled straight at her and she felt a sharp pain in her left forearm, like a hornet’s sting. She screamed and lashed out again with the branch. The spider crawled unharmed into the shadows to wait for its prey to die. Or to wait for the next victim to come along. It didn’t care either way.

Brooke dropped the branch and staggered dizzily to her feet. Was it exhaustion and dehydration making her feel so sick, or was it the spider’s bite already taking effect? She whimpered in terror and clutched her forearm. Two puncture marks in the soft flesh of its underside were rapidly swelling and burning terribly.

‘Oh no,’ she groaned. ‘No, please, no.’ She managed to gather up her things. She had to keep moving. No choice now.

The jungle seemed to be laughing at her as she staggered away through the night. She was crying from the pain of the bite on her arm. It was dark. Getting darker. She could hardly see any more …

Then she could see nothing at all as her knees gave way under her and she collapsed into the foliage. She rolled over on her back, tried to call for Ben. Then the darkness swallowed her up completely.

Some time afterwards – it might have been moments, or weeks – she sensed movement. Consciousness filtered back. Her first panicked thought was that it was the spider. The spider was coming after her again.

But no, it wasn’t the spider, she realised; the movement was hers. A gentle swaying motion. She understood. She was being gently carried.

She opened her eyes to the hazy grey light of pre-dawn. The face that looked down at her was like nothing she’d ever seen before. The man’s dark skin was adorned with swirls and daubs of colour. Brooke only saw it for an instant before she passed out again.

When she reopened her eyes, the sun was blazing brightly above her. Into the blinding light came another face. A Caucasian face, with blue eyes that gazed down at her with care and concern.

‘Ben?’ she mumbled, trying to reach out to him. ‘Ben, is that …’

‘Shush, child,’ said the man.

Chapter Forty-Nine

The hunt was into its third night now.

The column of open Jeeps and assorted four-wheel drives slowly made its rocking, bouncing way along the track through the dark forest, the growl of their engines reverberating off the dense foliage. The swarming insects drifted like dust particles in the beams of their headlamps. The vehicles were filled with men and weaponry, badly overloaded now that two Jeeps and one of the trucks had run out of fuel miles back and their occupants had had to clamber aboard wherever they could find room, to avoid being left behind in the green wilderness. Ramon Serrato wasn’t about to let anyone or anything slow down his hunt for his missing prize.

Sitting in the front passenger seat of the lead Jeep with Luis Bracca driving, Serrato was deathly pale, his hair all awry and pasted to his brow. The silk suit that he hadn’t bothered to change out of in his hurry to leave the compound was damp with humidity and sweat, stained with jungle dirt and spray from the wheels of the open Jeep. He’d been withdrawn and morose all day and for most of the previous one, barely speaking to anyone. Those men who knew him best could see the simmering fury in his eyes, even now, more than forty-eight hours since the fire at the compound and the woman’s humiliating escape. They could only whistle, shake their heads and muse over the kind of fate he must have in store for her when he caught up with her again.

But after all these interminable hours of searching through rainstorms and murderous heat they’d still found nothing but empty jungle – not since two nights ago, when less than three miles into the chase they’d come across the tyre marks where the truck she’d stolen had come off the road and gone crashing down the steep hillside below. Serrato had halted the convoy and personally led a squad of twelve men, with Vertíz and Bracca, on foot down to the ravaged area of river bank where the vehicle had ploughed into the water. But the truck itself had vanished, along with its driver.

None of the men had dared to voice the thought that passed through most of their minds: the woman was dead, either killed in the crash or drowned in the fast-moving river. Not even Vertíz and Bracca, who enjoyed more leeway from their master than anyone else who’d ever worked for him, had been inclined to question his order that they return to the Jeeps and continue their search by road. ‘I know her,’ he’d insisted. ‘She is smarter than that. This is an obvious feint to throw us off the track. She put that truck over the edge deliberately, but she wasn’t in it any longer.’

But if it was true that she was still on the road somewhere ahead, she was almost ghostlike in her ability to elude them. Two whole days of exhaustively scouring every route, down to the smallest boggy, swampy track, were beginning to take their toll on the men. Their only food and water were the scant provisions they’d managed to snatch from their quarters in between helping to put out the last of the fire and being scrambled for action. They’d had no sleep other than the few short breaks they’d been allowed as Serrato drove them mercilessly on, combing an ever-increasing area of jungle to no avail. It was futile.

Still nobody spoke a word of complaint. Many of them knew from experience what Serrato could be like when he was upset – but not one of them had ever seen him in a state like this one before.

It was after two in the morning when Serrato finally signalled the convoy to halt and rest for a while. The weary men left their vehicles and limped and stretched their way over to a small clearing near the narrow track. Weapons were stacked against trees. Sticks were gathered, a fire was lit. A bottle of aguardiente surreptitiously did the rounds, quick slugs of the strong liquor taken with a nervous glance over to where the boss was sitting on a fallen tree away from the group. A few of the men exchanged dark, resentful mutterings. Nobody was very happy with the situation.

Serrato was too wrapped up in his own brooding thoughts to take notice of their mood. He looked up sharply as Vertíz and two others, Alva and the new guy Santos, approached. ‘What is it?’

Vertíz showed him the small GPS navigation device he was holding. ‘Boss, we’re going round in circles. We’ve come all this way and we’re still only a few miles from base. The jungle’s playing tricks on us.’

‘It’s impossible,’ Serrato snapped – but when he snatched the GPS from Vertíz and looked at the small lit-up screen, he could see it was true. They weren’t even that far from the road. He clenched his teeth and sat with his face cupped in his hands.

Santos, encouraged now that Vertíz had finally spoken up, stepped forward and said, ‘Señor Serrato, many of us believe that the woman was inside the truck when it went into the river. Some of the men are saying …’

Serrato turned to look at him. ‘Yes?’

Santos should have heard the dangerous edge in his boss’s voice, but he made the mistake of going on. ‘They are saying we should give up this search and go back to base. Most likely, she is dead.’

‘I don’t know you,’ Serrato said. ‘You haven’t been working long for me, have you?’

‘No, boss. Carlo Santos.’

‘Do you also take that view, Carlo?’ Serrato asked with a tight smile.

Shut up, Santos, Vertíz was thinking.

Santos shrugged. ‘Even if she did not die in the river, how could a white woman survive alone in the jungle? Forgive me, Señor, but the bitch is dead. We should forget about her.’