The Armada Legacy

Chapter Sixty

Nobody moved or breathed. In the unnatural silence they heard the crackle of a footstep through the trees. A man, moving stealthily, slowly, towards the edge of the village.

Then another, a few degrees to the east. The attackers had seen the glow of the village fire. They were splitting up and approaching from all angles.

A twig snapped. A branch rustled.

The length of twine leading to the second tripwire alarm gave a soft twang, and two more glass bottles jangled together.

‘Ben?’ Brooke whispered. Her eyes were wide and shining in the darkness.

Ben said nothing. Calmly, slowly, he walked towards the huts. Paused near a gap and then felt in his jacket pocket for the Zippo lighter and the wrinkled pack containing his last Gauloise.

‘Ben …’

He put the cigarette to his lips. Thumbed the striker wheel of the lighter, played the flickering flame against the end of the Gauloise. Clanged the Zippo shut and took a deep draw. The cigarette tip glowed brightly orange. He couldn’t remember the last time one had tasted so good, or the last time he’d felt more alive and alert.

He was ready.

‘Fuck it,’ he murmured. With a final puff, he took the cigarette from his lips and flicked it to the ground in a tiny shower of sparks. The burning tobacco and paper landed at his feet.

And ignited the primary powder trail that led off between the huts. The white flame snaked rapidly away towards the trees, sputtering and spitting like a living thing.

Ben turned to the others and spoke fast. ‘Stay near to me, Brooke. Whatever happens. Everyone else – you know what to do.’

The burning powder trail raced away through the trees, where it instantly set off the secondary trails that Ben and the others had carefully laid along little dug-out tracks branching out all around the periphery of the village. Each secondary trail split up several more ways. Within seconds, the dark vegetation everywhere was lit with the bright glow of the flaring gunpowder.

And then the hush of the jungle was shattered by the first series of gigantic explosions. They detonated in such quick succession that they sounded like one continuous ear-splitting roll of thunder.

M18A1, Scally had said. The old soldier had guessed correctly. That was the US military’s designation for their Claymore anti-personnel mine, a weapon so fearsomely effective that armies all over the world had devised their own versions of it.

And Ben had copied it too, here deep in the heart of the Peruvian rainforest with nothing at his disposal but a few primitive tools, a few metres of homespun twine, some hollowed-out branches and a cache of ancient black powder passed down through generations of Sapaki and hidden for centuries.

Each blazing powder trail terminated at a tree. Lashed at chest height with twine to each trunk, connected to the ground via a hollow branch filled with more powder, was a keg of the stuff mixed with hundreds of big lead musket balls and razor-sharp arrowheads. And there were over eighty of Ben’s improvised Claymores scattered at key tactical points all round the village, with carefully-hacked paths through the foliage to lure the unwary into their range.

Their combined effect rocked the jungle. Rolling fireballs mushroomed upwards amid clouds of white smoke that blotted out the stars. Trees were severed in half by the storm of missiles blowing outwards in a sixty-degree arc covering everything between the huts and the river.

A moment earlier, Serrato’s men had been making their stealthy, confident approach on an Indian village that looked for all the world as though it was asleep and unsuspecting – now suddenly the shocking wave of violence cut a swathe right through them. Body parts flew. Blood showered the foliage like rain. Many of those who weren’t instantly chopped to pieces were terribly maimed. Others fell back in terror. But before they could recover their wits, a second rolling detonation filled the air and a dozen more intersecting fields of fire levelled the jungle around them.

Then, silence, apart from the screams of the dying. Flames flickered through the smoke. The stench of sulphur was choking.

Ramon Serrato stood up shakily from behind the fallen tree where he’d taken cover. His face was spattered with the blood of the man next to him, who’d been too slow to duck at the sound of the first explosion and had been cut almost in half.

Serrato couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Indians didn’t do this. They didn’t fight back. It was unthinkable. He snatched up the fallen man’s rifle and spare magazine.

The time for stealth was over. Screaming at his few remaining men to follow him, Serrato dashed through the carnage of shattered bodies and torn vegetation towards the village. He could barely see through the gunpowder fog.

Suddenly he was in the midst of the huts. Two of them were on fire from the explosions, flames leaping through the smoke. ‘Come on!’ he screamed at his men. Piero Vertíz appeared at his side, ready for murder. Two others came up behind them.

Whoosh … an arrow whistled through the night air and thudded into the chest of the man behind Vertíz. Dim figures flitted between the huts. Another arrow whizzed past Serrato’s ear.

‘Kill them!’ he yelled. He jammed back the trigger of his rifle and held it there, spraying the huts with bullets until his magazine was empty. He released it, slammed in the spare and went on loosing off rounds in all directions. Vertíz and the others did the same. The firestorm tore through the huts, ripped branches off the trees. One or two of the shadowy figures went down, but most simply vanished away into the night. It was like trying to kill an invisible enemy.

Ben had lost sight of Nico in the confusion. A number of Indians had been shot, including Waskar the red commander, killed while leading a group of his warriors into the attack. Tupaq, Father Scally, Pepe and the other warriors were still firing from the trees. Their volleys of arrows zipped between the huts, taking down more of Serrato’s men.

Ben kept an iron grip on Brooke’s arm and pulled her to the ground as bullets ripped through the hut next to them, showering them with shredded tufts of thatch. Telling her to stay down, he darted out from behind cover and fitted an arrow to his own bow. From where he was standing he could clearly see Ramon Serrato firing off shots like a madman from the centre of the village. Ben drew the bowstring taut and loosed his arrow.

His target wasn’t Serrato, but the big guy next to him. The arrow flew straight and drove deep into the man’s heart, knocking him backwards off his feet.

‘Come on!’ Ben dropped the bow and took Brooke’s hand. They started running back to where he’d hidden the loaded musket.

Serrato looked round to see Piero Vertíz lying motionless in the dirt with an arrow sticking up out of his chest. He was suddenly all alone. His rifle was empty. He drew the Glock pistol from his pocket and fired wildly into the darkness, screaming with fury. At the twelfth squeeze of the trigger, the Glock was empty as well.

And at that moment, for the first time since he could recall, Ramon Serrato was afraid. He dashed through the village, searching for the rest of his men. All he could see were arrow-skewered bodies littering the ground.

Then he skidded to a halt. Standing in the glow of the burning huts up ahead was Brooke. His Brooke.

Serrato was filled with wild rage at the sight of her – and of the man she was with. It was the blond-haired man whose picture had been in her purse. The man she’d assured him was nobody to her. ‘You lied to me!’ he seethed.

‘You shouldn’t have tried to find me, Ramon,’ Brooke said.

Serrato raised the Glock, then remembered it was empty with the slide locked back. With his other hand he fumbled in his pocket for another magazine. ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch!’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said. He picked up the Brown Bess from where it was propped against a hut wall. The musket was loaded with eighty grains of powder behind a musket ball wrapped in a small square patch of homespun Sapaki cotton, rammed down tightly inside the three-quarter-inch bore. Ben clicked the hammer back on full cock, hefted the long, heavy weapon and peered down the barrel at the lone figure of Ramon Serrato.

Serrato found the magazine in his pocket.

‘Shoot him, Ben!’ Brooke urged.

Ben took his finger off the trigger and lowered the musket. He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t shoot him.’

‘Ha! What did you expect, trying to kill me with that thing?’ Serrato laughed. In less of a hurry now, he began slotting the magazine into his pistol.

‘I can’t shoot him, because I made a promise,’ Ben said.

Serrato’s laughter died. ‘What promise?’

‘One to a friend,’ Ben told him.

Nico had emerged limping from the shadows. His face was covered in blood from where a bullet had creased his scalp. His eyes burned with a hotter fire than the blazing huts in the background.

Ben tossed Nico the Brown Bess.

Nico advanced. Serrato backed away, staring at him. ‘You!’ He raised his pistol. Too slow.

‘Adios, motherfucker,’ Nico said. He shouldered the musket and fired. There was a bright flash as the striking flint ignited the powder in the pan. A fraction of a second later the gun erupted with an ear-shattering blast.

Serrato was blown off his feet. He landed on his back with a fist-sized hole gaping in his chest, twitched twice, and then lay still.

Nico dropped the musket and fell to his knees. Now that they were avenged, he was finally able to weep for his dead children, and tears rolled down his bloody face.

It was over. Ben and Brooke left Nico alone and walked away, hand in hand.

‘We wrecked their village,’ he said sadly, surveying the devastation. The white pall of smoke was drifting high over the jungle, red-lit by the fires.

‘And saved half a million acres of forest from being destroyed forever,’ Brooke said, hugging him tightly.

The Sapaki people were re-emerging from the forest. There were cries of grief over the fallen, but before long they were lost in the victory chant of Tupaq and his warriors. Father Scally, Tica and Kusi began attending to the wounded. Come morning, the villagers would commence the task of rebuilding.

Ben stroked Brooke’s hair. He kissed her face. ‘You ready to go home now?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, Ben. I’m ready.’