The Armada Legacy

Chapter Forty-Four

Twilight was falling as Ben and Nico made the long trek north from the river to find the hunter’s place. Nico led the way. The terrain climbed steadily above the river plateau until the vegetation began to thin out a little and they could see the huge red orb of the sun sinking over the endless tree line. It would be dark soon, and Ben was beginning to wonder where Nico was leading him. He couldn’t see any sign of human habitation anywhere, not even the faintest of tracks. ‘You’re sure about this place?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Nico replied over his shoulder. ‘Came this way last time.’

They trekked on a while and the shadows around them lengthened. The Colombian suddenly turned with a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Shhh. Real careful. Remember, he is one unhinged kind of dude.’ Ben peered through the dark forest in the direction Nico was pointing, and could make out the shape of a wooden cabin nestling among the foliage.

But as they got closer, it looked as though the cabin and the little cluster of plank-built sheds around it were so badly run down that nobody could possibly live there. The place was all in darkness. Nico halted and shook his head, perplexed. ‘Damn it, the place looked bad before, but not this bad. Maybe he don’t live here any more. Hell, maybe the old fucker died. He was real ancient.’

‘I’m not dead, asshole,’ said a hoarse voice behind them.

They turned to see an Indian stepping out from the bushes. He was festooned with cartridge belts crisscrossed round his shoulders and a necklace of claws hung from his wrinkly neck. His hair was long and pure white, his skin like brown leather. He was scowling at them furiously from behind the double muzzles of a sawn-off shotgun.

‘Shit,’ Nico breathed. ‘Don’t move,’ he muttered to Ben.

Ben hadn’t been planning on moving, nor was he going to let his hand stray anywhere near the hilt of the parang that hung from his belt. Not many men could have sneaked up on him from behind like that, but the old hunter was as stealthy as a panther after a lifetime of creeping close to all manner of wild jungle quarry – and the mad glint in his eye made it clear that he was perfectly comfortable with the idea of gunning down these two intruders where they stood and leaving them for the jaguars.

‘This is my land,’ the hunter rasped in his heavily-accented English, stepping towards them through the undergrowth without snapping a twig. ‘You walk on my land, I shoot you. That’s my law.’ With his gnarled right thumb he snicked back one hammer of the old shotgun, then the other.

‘Hey, man, don’t you remember me?’ Nico said, raising his arms in the air.

The hunter squinted at him over the barrels, as if deliberating whether or not to blow him in two. Then a light of recognition appeared in his wrinkled old eyes, and he lowered the gun a fraction. ‘You got more money for me, boy?’

‘That depends on what else you have to sell,’ Ben replied for Nico.

The promise of hard cash was enough to defuse the situation fairly quickly. The hunter let down the hammers of his shotgun, slung it over his shoulder and jerked his chin with a grunt towards the cabin.

As he and Nico followed, Ben spied a road, little more than a dirt track, snaking away through the trees from the hunter’s place. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the crazy old man digging the track out himself with his bare hands. But what was most interesting about it were the fresh tyre marks in the dirt – as well as the tarpaulin-covered shape in the shadows of the corrugated iron lean-to where the tyre tracks led. Ben stepped over, discreetly lifted a corner of the tarp and made out a glimmer of rust-speckled chrome.

The old hunter paused to fire up a generator. Lights flickered on in the cabin’s windows. He motioned to Ben and Nico to follow.

‘Home sweet home,’ Nico muttered under his breath as the old man ushered them through a living area filled with furniture he’d carved from forest trees, then into a scullery where skinned monkeys and unidentifiable hacked-up pieces of other animals hung from hooks. Something equally unrecognisable and smelling of glue was boiling up in a cast-iron pot on a stove. Finally he led them into an adjoining room filled with racks of weaponry.

‘Enough to fight a goddamn war,’ Nico said, eyeing the rows of rifles.

‘World War Two, maybe,’ Ben replied. Most of the guns looked as if they’d done hard service at Stalingrad. Rattly actions and shot-out bores would be the order of the day. Ben didn’t much relish the idea of a weapon that couldn’t hit a house-sized target at fifty metres. ‘Haven’t you got anything a little newer?’ he asked the hunter in Spanish.

The old man looked taken aback for a moment that the tall blond-haired gringo could speak his language, but he shrugged, grunted and opened up a steel locker. Inside stood a row of modern hunting rifles of various types and calibres.

‘What about this one?’ Ben said, and picked up a scoped bolt-action. It was a Remington Model 700 chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum – delivering up to 4000 foot pounds of muzzle energy and enough knockdown power to kill anything that walked the American continent. The rifle looked new. He drew open the bolt to see clean well-oiled steel, flipped open the protective lids over the scope lenses and peered through, aiming at the furthest spot on the wall. The scope reticle was the illuminated type with a glowing red inner circle and centre dot, offering the shooter that extra edge in limited light conditions. The illumination was strong and clear, showing that there were still a good few hours of battery life left.

That was all Ben needed. The rifle was never going to be more than an initial entry weapon, though as a medium-to-long-distance means of striking at the enemy with the surprise and aggression that they least expected in the dead of the night, it was a pretty good option. The scope wasn’t exactly military-grade night-vision optics, but it was far more than he might have dreamed of stumbling across out here in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Once he’d established his method of entry into the compound and neutralised as many targets as it took to get him inside the perimeter, he could improvise, if necessary ditching the rifle in exchange for something more appropriate to the situation.

‘I’ll take this,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ the hunter protested. That one was his main personal hunting rifle, and it wasn’t for sale. Definitely, absolutely not. It wasn’t until Ben took out his wallet and started thumbing through notes that he relented and seemed to decide that maybe it was for sale after all, as long as Ben agreed to buy every last round of ammunition he had for it.

‘And this one for my friend here,’ Ben said, picking out a Savage in .223 calibre. ‘You have cartridges for this?’

‘I ain’t gonna shoot a rifle any more,’ Nico insisted with a sour look. ‘Not after what happened last time.’

Ben looked at him. ‘I don’t seem to recall you holding back on emptying a magazine or two at me, just a couple of days ago.’

‘That was different,’ Nico replied. To the hunter he said, ‘You got any kind of handgun? I’d be happier with a handgun.’

The hunter hesitated, then glanced again at Ben’s wallet and threw open another cabinet. ‘Holy shit, this old timer’s got more guns and ammo than Cabela’s,’ Nico muttered, looking down at an assortment of pistols and hundreds of boxed cartridges. ‘Let me see that Colt Python there. Okay,’ he said, inspecting the heavy revolver. ‘I’m happy.’

‘You’re going to take a six-shooter into a fight with Serrato’s whole army?’ Ben asked, staring.

‘Way I see it, if I can’t get up close and personal enough to use this on him I’m dead anyway,’ Nico said.

‘Just don’t expect me to look out for you all the time.’

‘Yeah, and don’t cry to me when you have to tote that goddamn shoulder cannon miles through the jungle.’

‘As long as I don’t have to lug your Colombian arse along behind me, I’ll manage fine.’ Ben turned to the old hunter, who had been following their exchange with growing confusion. ‘Two hundred for the rifle and another hundred for the pistol, ammo included,’ he said in Spanish.

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ the hunter rasped indignantly. ‘Four-fifty for the two, plus another fifty for the ammo.’

‘Four hundred’s nearly all I have,’ Ben said, showing him the open wallet. ‘It’s yours if you throw in the loan of that truck you have out there. That’s if it still has an engine in it.’

A loan for how long, the hunter wanted to know. Ben assured him it wouldn’t be for more than a couple of days.

‘If it don’t get all shot to pieces,’ Nico muttered.

‘I’m not the one who shoots cars to pieces,’ Ben said. ‘Deal?’ he asked the hunter, switching back to Spanish.

It was. The old Indian grabbed his wad of money and counted it suspiciously while Ben and Nico carried their weaponry outside, yanked the tarpaulin off the faded red late seventies Ford F-150 pickup under the lean-to and saw about getting it started. The engine fired up second time with a throaty roar and a cloud of smoke.

‘That’s good enough.’ Ben flicked a switch on the dash and the row of four grille-mounted lamps blazed into life. He let the motor run while he jammed the bags behind the seats, then loaded up his rifle from the munitions supply the hunter had sold him and stowed the weapon in the rack in the back of the cab. ‘I’ll drive,’ he said to Nico. ‘You navigate.’

Nico clambered up into the passenger’s side with a look of grim determination. ‘You ready to go?’ Ben said, getting in behind the wheel. He gunned the engine.

‘I’ve been ready to go for seven years,’ Nico said.