The Armada Legacy

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 He’d been withdrawn and morose all day and for most of the previous one, barely speaking to anyone.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.’

‘Forget about her,’ Serrato echoed. He remained very still for a few moments. Then he reached inside his jacket. His hand came out holding a Glock. He jabbed the pistol up towards Santos and fired once.

Santos instantly collapsed to the ground with a neat round hole in the centre of his forehead.

The rest of the men had turned to stare at the sound of the shot. The bottle of spirits disappeared very quickly. Serrato stood up to face them. ‘So everyone thinks the woman is dead, is that right?’ he yelled in livid rage. So you’re all experts now, yes? You: what does a dead person look like?’

The man Serrato had singled out backed nervously away. ‘Boss, I—’

‘It’s a simple enough question,’ Serrato shouted. ‘What does a dead person look like? Does it look like that?’ He waved his gun towards the empty jungle. ‘Like a lot of trees and bushes?’

Nobody spoke.

‘No,’ Serrato screamed. ‘It doesn’t. It looks’ – pointing at the dead man oozing blood at his feet – ‘like this!’ As if to make his point, he fired four more shots into the corpse, which bucked and jolted from the bullet strikes. ‘You see? Everyone come around and see what a dead person looks like. You see him lying there?’

‘We see him, boss,’ Vertíz said quietly.

‘Good,’ Serrato yelled. ‘Now, until I see the woman dead like this in front of me, she is alive. And while she is alive, we keep searching. Any man who refuses to follow me, I will personally execute on the spot. Understood? Now, we move. Leave the Jeeps. We keep going on foot. We will search every leaf and twig of this jungle until we find her.’

It was a long, weary trek through the jungle. Serrato headed the march, the line of men weaving through the trees behind him with their weapons ready. Torch beams scanned all around as they walked. Now and then a jungle animal would take fright and go crackling through the undergrowth at their approach. There were no more secretive looks or mutinous grumbles among the men. Nobody wanted to end up like Santos. They all knew his body would be picked to the bare bones by morning.

Luis Bracca, who could slip fast and silently through the thick of the forest, scouted on in advance, looking for tracks. They’d been marching for nearly two hours and dawn was approaching when Bracca returned to report that he’d come across something up ahead – not a sign of the missing woman, but a small Indian village. ‘Maybe fifteen, twenty huts,’ Bracca told Serrato.

‘She may have taken refuge there,’ Serrato said. Bracca privately didn’t think it likely that any tribal community would offer shelter to a member of the white race that had persecuted and victimised them for centuries. He said nothing, partly because the boss was in no mood to be contradicted, and partly because he knew what would come next. Slaughtering Indians was as much fun for him as squirrel hunting was for a young boy with his first rifle.

The armed troop advanced stealthily on the village, communicating only using hand signals. The primitive huts came into view through the trees in the first glow of the morning light.

They were forty yards from the outermost dwelling when the first Indian appeared: a young girl carrying a bundle of sticks she’d been gathering from the forest floor. Her dark, lithe little form was naked except for a cloth round her middle. Her eyes flew wide open and she let out a gasp as she saw the men creeping towards the huts – a gasp that would have turned into a shrill cry of alarm, if Bracca’s strong hand hadn’t clamped over her mouth. As she kicked and struggled, he drew the big Bowie knife from its sheath and slit her throat with a grin. He held her tightly for a moment as the life gushed out of her, then let her limp body drop into the leaves.

There was a shout. An old man with a white beard and a belly that overhung his loincloth darted back behind a hut and began yelling loudly to raise the alarm. Vertíz quickly skirted the hut, found him in his rifle sights and fired. The crack of the shot rang out. The old man fell on his face and lay still.

Now the whole village was alerted. Serrato drew his Glock and began yelling ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’ as the line of men overtook him and ran among the huts, firing at everything that moved. The terrified screams of women and children were drowned by gunfire. Bodies fell to the ground left and right, bronze skin glistening with blood.

Not all the Indians tried to take flight. Some of the young male warriors put up a spirited resistance and arrows and darts from blowpipes came whistling through the air, forcing the attackers to dive for cover. Serrato heard the whoosh as an arrow flew towards him. He ducked behind a tree and the feathered shaft buried itself into the trunk with a judder. He turned to see one of his men who hadn’t moved quickly enough rolling on his back with an arrow in his belly.

Serrato shot the Indian who’d loosed the arrow and then ran to the nearest hut. Brooke wasn’t inside it. He ran to the next, then the next, his hope of finding her quickly turning sour. As he emerged from the last empty dwelling with a bitter look on his face, he could see the Indians all scattering, their feeble resistance broken by his men’s superior firepower.

‘Go after them!’ Serrato yelled as the warriors turned and disappeared into the jungle. Vertíz dropped to a crouch with his rifle, took careful aim and shot down one of the running Indians, then another.

Bracca took off into the trees, his teeth bared and his bloody knife in one fist, his gun in the other. Ahead of him, a terrified young woman had broken off from the rest of the fleeing tribe and was leaping through the undergrowth like an antelope. Her face was contorted in terror and covered in tears. The powerful Bracca was more than twice her weight, but his bloodlust drove him on with pounding speed.

They were well out of sight of the huts now. A little bit of privacy was just what he wanted. As he bore down on her his mind was filling with what he was going to do to the little bitch. Old enough to—

His thoughts exploded in a blinding white flash of pain as something solid swung out of nowhere and hit him a crashing blow across the face. The knife spun out of his fingers and the rifle went clattering to the ground. He landed hard on his back. Winded, he could taste the salty blood that was pouring from his broken nose. He tried to struggle to his feet. A hard kick to the chest knocked him back down again.

Bracca looked up. Standing over him, framed in the red dawn filtering through the jungle canopy, was the figure of a man. A white man, with blond hair and scuffed leather jacket. There was a bag over his shoulder and a scoped hunting rifle in his hands, ready to club him with the butt a second time.

The man looked down at the bone-handled Bowie knife that lay in the dirt nearby. ‘You must be Luis Bracca,’ he said.