The Armada Legacy (22 page)

All that was visible of the chair’s occupant were the top of his head and his zip-up tan leather ankle boots. His fair hair was unkempt. He was completely still and looked from behind as if he were gazing dreamily out of the window, so taken up with the soaring orchestral music that he was oblivious of anything else going on around him.

‘Professor Cabeza?’ Ben said.

No response.

‘Are you Juan Fernando Cabeza?’ he asked again, more loudly. Still nothing.

The Beethoven was blaring from a powerful little stereo system in a cabinet. Ben had had enough of it. He stepped across and turned the music abruptly off.

Silence flooded the room like cold water. Ben looked back across at the leather chair, expecting Cabeza to react. What that reaction would be, he’d no idea – outrage, indignation, terror, maybe; as long as the guy didn’t keel over with sudden heart failure, Ben was sure he could get him talking with more or less gentle persuasion and find out whether coming all this way was going to prove a wild goose chase or bring him any closer to finding Brooke.

But Cabeza didn’t so much as twitch at the sudden stopping of the music. Was he asleep? Comatose from drink or drugs? Dead? Ben edged closer, moving round the chair so that he could see the tip of the man’s left shoulder and his legs as well as the top of his head. He was wearing a beige fleece jacket and brown corduroys.

Ben was about to reach out and shake the back of the chair when something moved on Cabeza’s desk.

It was only a minute movement, and Ben only registered it for a tiny fraction of a second before he realised what it was and how he needed to respond to it.

The desk lamp was a metal Anglepoise, chrome-plated to a mirror finish. What Ben had seen was a reflection in the lampshade.

The reflection of something behind him, moving fast towards him.

The reflection of a man with a gun.

Chapter Thirty

Ben wheeled round to see the man striding across the room, headed right for him. He’d been hiding behind the door as Ben came in – a powerfully-built man of thirty-five or forty with short dark hair and a look of animal ferocity on his face. He wore black combat trousers and a military-style jacket.

The gun in his hands was one that Ben recognised instantly. It was a SIG SG 553 carbine: stubby, black. Special Forces and tactical law enforcement personnel termed it a primary intervention weapon; everyone else in the world would call it a machine gun. Seven pounds one ounce of lethal Swiss efficiency, mounted with laser and optical sights and handled by someone who seemed to know disconcertingly well what he was doing as he pointed it directly at Ben’s chest. He wore the weapon’s black nylon tactical sling round his neck and shoulder like a man who’d been trained in combat. The expression in his eye told Ben he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

A quarter of a second later, Ben was proved right. But by the time the room erupted with deafening gunfire and the flurry of high-velocity 5.56mm bullets was in midair, Ben was already flying over the desk for cover. The windows shattered. Plaster exploded in chunks from the wall, showering Ben with white dust as he crashed to the floor on the other side of the desk, bringing it down with him and colliding hard against the side of the leather chair, knocking it over.

Out of the corner of his eye Ben saw the body of Juan Fernando Cabeza spill out of the fallen chair, his head rolling off his shoulders and falling down separately to split open into a liquid mush on the carpet.

Except that it wasn’t a real man – it was a mannequin. The beige fleece jacket and corduroys had been stuffed with towels. The head was an overripe pumpkin topped with a straw-coloured wig. The hems of the trousers had been carefully draped over the empty ankle boots, which stayed where they were as the rest of him fell apart.

Ben wasn’t able to gape at the fallen dummy for more than an instant before the man with the gun opened fire again. Bullets thunked into the top of the overturned desk. It wasn’t much of a shield against the potent assault weapon. The gunman rattled off another string of fully-automatic fire that whipped up a storm of splinters from the rapidly disintegrating desk.

Ben was aware there could only be one reason why the shooter hadn’t just walked right up to him, pointed his weapon over the top of the desk and shot him to pieces. He must think that Ben was armed.

And if that was the case, it wouldn’t be long before he sussed out that he wasn’t. Which meant Ben had to get out of this trap, and fast. There was only one way he was going to do that. He flung himself out from behind the desk and made a dive for the smashed window.

Broken glass raked his arms and sides as he went crashing through what was left of the window pane. He dropped through empty space for what seemed several seconds, cold air whistling in his ears, arms and legs outflung. Then the impact of the pine branch below the window drove the air out of his body. He let out a grunt of pain, bounced away from the branch, dropped a few more feet and felt another crash into his ribs. His fingers raked twigs and branches but he was falling too fast to get a purchase on anything solid. His vision became a spinning kaleidoscope of green foliage and gnarly bark and the white snow below as he tumbled, ripping and crackling, through the foliage of the tree. The white ground rushed up to meet him. Then suddenly he was buried, blinded, coughing and choking and groping frantically to claw his way out of the deep snowdrift that the wind had piled up at the base of the tower.

Ben burst out of the snow and struggled to his feet, ignoring the crippling pain of dozens of minor cuts and bruises. Looking up, he saw the shooter appear at the smashed window high above. The spent magazine from the SIG dropped into the snow as the man discarded it with professional cool and slammed in another. Before he could release the bolt and resume firing, Ben took off at a stumbling sprint through the snow, heading between the trees in the direction of the car and running in a wild zigzag to make himself a harder target.

The shooter opened fire again. Single shots now, let off in rapid succession with deliberate, surgical precision. A bullet thwacked off a pine trunk just inches from Ben’s head.

Who was this guy? A soldier? He acted like one.

Ben sprinted on towards the car, reaching into his pocket as he went for the ignition key, praying it hadn’t fallen out during his tumble from the window and muttering a quick thanks when his fingers closed on the cold metal key ring. He’d reached the fallen tree now. He hurdled over the top of it, snow flying in his wake, and hit the ground running. The Volkswagen was just a few yards further.

The shooter wasn’t about to let him get there. The car’s windscreen and side windows disintegrated into a thousand fragments. A line of holes punched through the metal of the bonnet. Another burst took out the lights and shattered the front grille. The perforated bonnet flew open. Liquid spewed out of the destroyed radiator. The VW wasn’t going anywhere.

Ben veered away and changed course, heading deeper into the forest. The bursts of gunfire were following close behind, and gaining. A snow-laden pine branch exploded into a hail of ice fragments a foot from his head. Then suddenly the terrain was with him as the ground sloped away from the house, putting him out of sight of the shooter.

He kept running. Silence from the house now; the only sound the rasping of his own breath in his ears and the crunch of his boots on the snow. He knew the gunman faced a choice: either to leap out of the smashed window after him and take his chances with the tree and the snowdrift below, or else to run back down the spiral staircase, through the house, out the door and down the steps after him. Ben didn’t think the guy would be crazy enough to choose the former. Which gave him a time advantage, albeit a slight one.

A hundred and fifty or so yards from the house, the hillside was sloping more and more steeply downwards. Ben took a diagonal line down the incline, nimbly avoiding jutting tree roots that could hook and break a running man’s ankle. He had no idea where he was going. He could only hope that the slope wouldn’t lead him to the edge of a sheer drop, cutting off his escape. He leaped over the black, rotted trunk of a fallen pine, misjudged the depth of the snow beyond it, stumbled and fell, his arms disappearing up to the elbow. He cursed, staggered upright and kept moving.

Then he stopped, listening hard, suddenly aware of the buzz of a chainsaw in the distance. There was somebody else in the forest.

Or was it a chainsaw? As the wavering two-stroke engine note grew rapidly louder, he realised that it was coming from the direction of the house. It was the sound of a snowmobile, and it was getting closer very quickly. The shooter was coming after him.

Chapter Thirty-One

Ben ran faster down the wooded hillside, sliding and stumbling through the snow, knowing that one trip would send him tumbling down the slope in a fall that would probably break his neck. He could hear the snowmobile catching up. He glanced over his shoulder and saw it clear the top of the slope, sending up a white spray from its skids, the rider steering wildly with one hand and pointing his machine carbine over the top of the windscreen with the other. Ben caught a glimpse of the shooter’s face. His teeth were bared in rage. The eyes behind the plastic goggles were burning with hatred.

Flame crackled from the muzzle of the weapon. Snow flurried up at Ben’s feet a fraction of a second before he heard the shot. The shooter let off another round; something went
crack
just a few inches away, bark flew from the trunk of the nearest tree and Ben felt a glancing blow strike his arm. The ricochet had left a deep sear in the sleeve of his jacket. He might not be so lucky next time.

The snowmobile kept coming. It was forty yards behind now, careering crazily down the slope, totally out of control, slamming off trees and exploding through bushes, its engine note screeching. Ben could see the rider clinging on like a berserker.

Ben moved faster. Ducking to avoid another blast of gunfire, he tripped over a root, lost his footing and felt himself go. He reached out to check his fall by grabbing a nearby branch. It snapped off in his hand.

There was nothing he could do to save himself from tumbling down on his face. He felt himself sliding and rolling helplessly, over and over. A blinding avalanche of snow slid down the hillside with him as he went. Certain that he was about to smash into a tree or a rock at any instant, he braced himself for the bone-crunching impact and tried to plan a way to scramble away to safety, like a wounded animal escaping a predator.

But the impact didn’t come. He felt himself slide to a halt. He brushed the snow and dirt out of his eyes and blinked them open to see that he’d reached the bottom of the slope. The ground under him felt strangely hard; as hard and cold as sheet steel.

When he scrambled to his feet, he understood why. At the bottom of the hillside was a frozen lake, and he was standing right on it. The opposite shore was a good hundred yards away, flanked by thick bushes and pines. Just visible through the trees were some buildings – a little chalet or cottage with a barn, offering cover and maybe, just maybe, some kind of improvised weapon that could help even Ben’s odds at closer range against his pursuer. Even a rusty pitchfork or a loose brick were better than nothing. And nothing was exactly what Ben had right now.

All he had to do was make it across a hundred yards of open lake before the shooter caught up with him.

Ben set out across the ice. The surface was smooth and glassy under just a thin layer of powder snow, too slick for the heavily-ribbed soles of his boots to get any purchase. He couldn’t run without falling on his face, so he skated, sliding one foot forward and then the other, arms outstretched to keep his balance. It was tough going, but he’d been able to cover about sixty yards by the time he heard the buzzing roar of the snowmobile catching up with him again.

He snatched a glance over his shoulder, lost his balance and fell hard on the ice. He used his elbows rather than his hands to break his fall, because he knew from experience that bare flesh could stick to ice on contact. He didn’t feel like leaving half the skin from his palms behind.

Crack.
Where his right elbow had struck painfully against the surface, a thin blue fissure had appeared. All that separated him from the freezing depths of the lake were a few inches of fragile ice. He didn’t dare move in case the crack spread any further.

He looked up. The snowmobile had somehow managed to reach the bottom of the slope without overturning. Without hesitation, the shooter steered the vehicle straight out onto the lake. Ben saw the man’s grin as the engine note soared and the craft accelerated towards him, veering madly from side to side on the slippery surface.

Suddenly much less concerned about the crack in the ice, Ben clambered to his feet and skated onwards with all the strength he could muster. Thirty-five yards to the opposite shore. Thirty. He could see the buildings clearly now. They looked derelict, but he didn’t care. All his energy was focused on reaching them.

But it was no good. The snowmobile was gaining too quickly. As it got to within a few paces, the engine note fell and it glided to a halt on the ice. Ben stopped skating. He turned slowly round to face his pursuer, and raised his hands. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

The shooter made no reply. Keeping the machine carbine pointed steadily at Ben, he tore off his goggles and tossed them into the back of the snowmobile, then climbed off the craft and took a step forwards. His face was hard, his jaw clenched, his eyes stony.

‘Where’s Cabeza?’ Ben demanded, although at this moment he wasn’t sure how much it would serve him to know the answer.

Very slowly and deliberately, the man ejected the spent magazine from the gun’s receiver and slotted in another from the pouch on his belt, then let the bolt forward with a
clack
and raised the butt to his shoulder.

Ben sighed. He’d come so far, only to get shot. There wasn’t much he could do about it. He thought of Brooke, and hung his head.