The Armada Legacy

Chapter Twenty

‘Get out, bitch.’

Everything a terrifying whirl of impressions, the man’s fingers iron-tight round her arm as he hauled her out of the car. The unwavering gun never more than a few inches from her face. Sam’s whimpers and pleas as the three of them were bundled into the back of the van. The slamming of doors; the rocking, juddering journey inside the hard bare metal shell of the van.

‘Out. Get out.’ More guns. Being prodded and marched roughly away from the road, up a grassy slope to a dark building, echoey inside. The smell of fear and damp earth and the sound of Sam’s crying next to her and suddenly, a dazzling floodlight that made her blink. She was aware of men standing all around, just shapes behind the glare.

One in particular. He stood so close to the bright light that Brooke could hardly see more than his tall outline, but she could tell he was watching her curiously; intently.

Then he spoke, not to Brooke but to Forsyte. ‘The case, if you please.’ His English was clipped, too perfect to be native. What was that accent? Not European.

‘I told you before. It isn’t for sale.’ Forsyte, trying to master his fear and almost succeeding.

Half blinded by the light, Brooke thought she saw the tall figure motion to one of his men. Sam’s cries became shrill and then were obliterated by an explosion that pierced Brooke’s eardrums in the enclosed space.

Sam’s body sprawling lifelessly to the earth floor. The numb shock of disbelief. More screams now, Forsyte’s cries of rage turning to a screech of horror. The men closing on him, grabbing his arms, shoving him down to his knees. The glitter of the blade being drawn from its scabbard. Forsyte shouting wildly out ‘No! Please! No!’ Then the men holding his right arm down on the floor and the rise and fall of the blade. The awful meaty crunch and the inhuman wail of agony. The hand holding the case rolling away across the floor, the steel cuff still attached to the severed wrist.

Then the same again with the other arm. Forsyte’s terrible, animal scream echoing around the walls.

Brooke could feel the pistol at her head and knew it was over for her, too. Waiting … waiting … for the gunshot that was going to put her down there on the floor with Sam.

Then the voice of the tall man behind the light: ‘Not that one. I want her.’

I want her …

Brooke awoke with a sharp gasp. She was breathing hard and covered in sweat. She blinked, blinked again, disorientated by the vividness of the nightmare. Except that it had been no dream. The experience was going to stay with her for the rest of her life.

However long that might be.

As her confusion melted away, she realised she was in a bed: a massive four-poster with drapes and a canopy. The sheets felt cool and satiny to the touch. She swept them off her and saw she was wearing a silk nightdress she’d never seen before and certainly wouldn’t have worn out of choice.

Someone had undressed her. The thought made her squirm.

She sat up straight in the bed. She felt woozy and there was a bitter taste on her lips. She knew why. Whoever had brought her here, taken off her clothes and put her into this damn nightdress, had drugged her. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered, then clamped her mouth shut in case someone was listening.

She swung her legs out of the bed and got up. The floor was cool against her bare feet. She could hear the soft whisper of an air conditioning unit, and smell the scent of flowers. On the little bedside table was a glass of water and, neatly coiled up next to it, Brooke’s little gold neck-chain that someone had removed. What the hell was happening?

As she ventured away from the bed her legs felt weak and unsteady with the aftereffects of the dope. How long had the bastards kept her under? What had they done to her while she was unconscious? She was filled with helpless fury.

The room was in semi-darkness, just a line of sunlight shining round the edge of the window blinds. Brooke fumbled round for a way of opening them. They were metal and seemed to be electrically operated somehow, but she couldn’t find a switch anywhere. She turned on a lamp instead and looked around her.

The bedroom was the biggest she’d ever seen. Flowers were everywhere, orchids and heliconias and other exotic species whose names she could only guess at, spilling from vases and filling the room with their colour and perfume. The furniture was antique, the floor was white marble inlaid with lapis lazuli. On a beautiful ornate table had been left a neat stack of books, together with a collection of the latest fashion magazines and some CDs, all classical.

How thoughtful of her kidnappers to provide entertainment. She furiously dashed the lot on the floor, then overturned the table. The effort made her dizzy.

At each end of the room was a gleaming white door. Forcing herself to walk straight, Brooke stormed over to one of them and wrenched it open. It led to an enormous luxury bathroom that smelled of lavender, shelf upon shelf stocked with an absurd array of beauty products and perfumes. Gold-plated toilet roll holder, she thought. Great.

She slammed that door, crossed the room to the other and stepped through into a living room. Like the bedroom, it was shaded by metallic window blinds with no obvious means of opening them. She turned on a light switch.

The living room looked like something out of the grandest kind of hotel. Plush armchairs and sofas, rich Persian rugs, framed oil paintings on the walls. A bowl of fruit, a variety of gourmet snacks and a carafe of iced lemon water had been left for her on one of the two massive antique sideboards while she was asleep. Her eye was drawn to the ornate clock on the marble mantelpiece. Its hands read eight-forty. In the morning, she supposed. How long had she been here?

There was a set of double doors at the far end of the living room. She tried them: locked, naturally. She pounded on the doors and yelled a few times, but there was no response from outside. She raced to the nearest window and tried once more to find the switch for the blind. Nothing seemed to make them open – nothing, until she grabbed a heavy brass table lamp from one of the sideboards, smashed the shade away, ripped the wire from the wall and used the lamp like a hatchet to strike the blind repeatedly with all her strength until it finally came away from its mountings and crashed to the floor at her feet.

Golden light streamed into the room, making her blink. She shielded her eyes from the glare and looked out.

It wasn’t the freshly-painted black iron bars on the other side of the thick glass of the window that made her gasp. It was the landscape that lay beyond them.

‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed.

It damn sure wasn’t Ireland. And it wasn’t London, either. She’d never seen a place like this before, not for real.

Beyond a sweep of white buildings, gardens, hangars and roadways, all contained within the same high stone-walled perimeter, the tropical jungle stretched away to a seemingly infinite and lushly verdant horizon. Large birds more colourful than the flowers in her room wheeled and squawked against the unbroken expanse of pure, deep blue sky.

Brooke watched in amazement as one of them glided down to land on the roof of one the buildings just fifty feet from her window, folded its broad red and yellow wings and strutted along the ridge of terracotta tiles to scrape at a piece of moss with its huge nutcracker beak. It was a macaw.

‘I’m in South America,’ Brooke murmured to herself.