The Armada Legacy

Chapter Fifty-One

The day was already more than half gone. Dark clouds hung over San Tomás. As Ben wandered aimlessly through the town, the first patter of rain quickly ramped up to become another of the region’s unimaginable deluges, until mud rivers ran through the streets and everyone but the blond-haired stranger was driven under cover.

For the last several hours Nico had been under the care of the kindly Dr Rocha, who operated the struggling one-roomed clinic in San Tomás, the only medical facility for miles up and down the river, with his sister Graça. By the time Ben had delivered him into their hands, Nico had lost a great deal of blood and was in a virtual coma. The doctor had found the knife blade’s razor-sharp edge pressing right up against Nico’s femoral artery. Another millimetre of pressure and it could have ruptured. Nico would have bled to death in minutes.

Removing the knife and patching up the deep wound had been a long job that had used up most of the clinic’s medical supplies and left Dr Rocha looking almost as spent as his patient. Graça had changed the dressing on Nico’s arm, frowning a little at Ben’s stitching job but asking no questions. Ben had sat with Nico a while as he slept, then wandered outside to try to get some air and pull his thoughts together. He ambled through the streets, soaked to the skin by the hammering rain. There were a few drops left in his whisky flask. He gulped them down and barely even felt them.

Never before in his career rescuing kidnap victims had he resorted to calling in help from the authorities. It went against all his experience and judgement – but this time he couldn’t see any other way. It was going to take a large-scale operation, both on the ground and in the air, to comb an area of the size he was dealing with.

But then there was Ramon Serrato to consider. If half the things Nico had told Ben were true, the former drug lord had connections at the highest levels of government here. What if a well-organised mass search did succeed in finding Brooke alive? Ben had seen corruption in action plenty of times before, and South America was even more notorious for it than the most volatile and dangerous parts of Africa and the Middle East. He knew how easy it would be for a man of Serrato’s influence to arrange for someone to put a bullet in her head before she ever left the jungle. And Ben’s, too, if he tried to stand in the way. There was a decent chance that if he called in the authorities, he was signing her death warrant. He had to balance that against the virtual certainty that if he didn’t, the end result would be the same. A lose-lose situation.

And all that was assuming she wasn’t dead already.

The rain was pounding more heavily than ever. Ben slowed his pace and came to a standstill in four inches of muddy water. It was the sight of the corrugated-iron shed, San Tomás’s only bar just across the street, that had stopped him. He paused briefly, then headed towards it. He needed something more than those last few drops from his flask to blunt the edge of his anxiety.

The place was almost as empty as it had been before. The same barman was cleaning up using the same dirty cloth. Two drunks were talking loudly in Spanish at a table in the corner. Ben didn’t glance at them as he walked up to the bar and ordered whatever was the strongest drink they had. The barman served him up a fingerprint-covered glass of something that looked like vodka but was about twice as fiery. Ben drained it and asked for another. A double this time.

‘Hey!’ one of the drunks called from across the room. ‘Chief, it’s you! Thought maybe you’d got ate up by a croc.’

Ben turned from the bar and realised that it was Pepe, the riverboat pilot. He and his drinking companion, who looked to be a full-blooded Indian, had been there long enough to amass a large collection of empty beer bottles. Both seemed pretty far gone. Ben was intent on going the same route, and he could do it in a quarter of the time with whatever this clear stuff was in his glass.

‘Come on over, chief,’ Pepe slurred. ‘Have a drink with me and my cousin Cayo here.’

Ben didn’t feel like company. Besides, he could see that both Cayo and Pepe were plainly upset about something. He just smiled and raised his glass, then turned his back and returned to his own thoughts. Talking to the British Embassy in Lima might not be easy with the limited communications from San Tomás. The best way might be to call Jeff Dekker, fill him in on the situation and get him to liaise with them. Amal would have to be told, too …

As Ben struggled with his plans, the inebriated Spanish conversation between Pepe and Cayo went on in the background.

‘This is fucking bad,’ Pepe muttered.

‘Like I said,’ Cayo slurred in between gulps of beer, ‘I’m only telling you what my buddy Angel told me. Word’s spreading up and down the river since this morning.’

Pepe shook his head. ‘Fuck. How many dead they reckon?’

‘Angel says twenty, maybe more. Reckons they were Sapaki people.’

‘Angel’s Murunahua, ain’t he? Then how’d he figure that?’

Cayo shrugged. ‘’Cause a bunch of Sapaki people turned up at his village this morning talking about their relations that’d been killed. Warned the Murunahuas about what’s happening. Whole region’s shit scared.’

‘Fuck,’ Pepe said again. ‘Someone’s got to act, man.’

Cayo gave a snort. ‘Yeah, sure. But who? Cops? Ministry? Forget it, man. Just the way it is. Been going on forever, keep going on forever. Who gonna give a shit about a buncha dead Indians? We ain’t nothing to nobody.’

Pepe stabbed his finger on the table. ‘Fuck that shit, man, there’s gotta be something someone can do. Can’t just take it up the ass like that, it ain’t right.’

‘Indians been taking it up the ass for generations, man,’ Cayo said morosely. ‘What else is there to do, start a war?’

‘They got shotguns, don’t they?’

‘Not these guys, they don’t. Sapaki don’t have nothing to do with that shit. All they got is bows and arrows and blowpipes and shit.’

‘No wonder they got fucked over, man,’ Pepe insisted. ‘Some marauding asshole walks into a faceful of buckshot, he’s gonna think twice before he comes onto your patch again. Darts and arrows? Ain’t gonna cut it. This isn’t the fucking Inca Kingdom no more. You gotta get with the times.’

His cousin made a resigned gesture. ‘So what’s changed? Same old, same old. Oil guys gonna take it all away in the end, just like the Spanish did back in the day. And if it ain’t the oil guys it gonna be the loggers, the beefburger ranchers, whatever. Can’t stop the tide, cuz.’

‘That’s fucked,’ Pepe said, shaking his head. There was a pause as they both reached for their beers. ‘So what’re the Sapaki doing calling on the Murunahuas, anyhow? My father knew some of ’em, said they didn’t like to mix with no-one. I ain’t never heard of them coming that far down the river.’

‘Came to get serum. That’s what Angel told me, leastways.’

‘Snakebite?’

‘No, man, spider. The white preacher, he sent ’em for it in his boat. They’s in a real hurry, too, Angel said.’

‘The preacher? That dried-up old fart still alive?’ Pepe chuckled, and they shared a brief laugh. ‘Since when the Sapaki need serum for a bite? Their own cures don’t work no more?’

‘Sure they work,’ Cayo said. ‘They just don’t reckon on they work for a white person, is all. Goes against their beliefs.’

‘You saying it was the preacher got bit?’

‘Nah, man, nothing bite that old iron-butt motherfucker and live. White woman got bit.’

‘Preacher got a woman now? You kidding me, right?’

‘Nah, man, preacher ain’t got no woman. Talking about the woman they found.’

‘Like a tourist?’

Cayo shrugged. ‘I never asked, Angel never said. All I know is, they found her.’

‘She dead?’

‘Wasn’t dead this morning when they came for the serum, I guess.’

Pepe nodded solemnly. ‘Guess that figures.’

Both of them turned and looked up, suddenly aware of the presence by their table. Neither had noticed Ben leave the bar and cross the room. He was standing there, staring at them.

‘Hey, chief,’ Pepe said with a beaming smile. ‘You come to join us after all?