The Armada Legacy (33 page)

Over the constant chatter and screech of birds and monkeys, the hypnotic burble of the engine, the soft rush of water along the hull, came the sound of Pepe’s voice. He talked incessantly in the same cheerful tone as he steered the boat, apparently delighting in regaling his clients with tales of the dangers of the river. He didn’t much seem to care whether anyone was listening to him or not. He was a quarter Quechua Indian from his mother’s side and had been navigating these waters since the age of eleven. This had been his grandfather’s boat, then his father’s, until the mean old bastard had fallen overboard eight years ago and been eaten up by a caiman.

The caiman story had Nico glancing nervously at the river banks, where clusters of the reptiles eyed them lazily from the mud, occasionally slipping into the water at their approach and disappearing into the murky depths, or floating like logs with just their eyes and scaly backs above the surface.

Encouraged, Pepe laughed and pressed on with an obviously favourite anecdote of a Dutch missionary he’d once ferried down this stretch of river, who heedless of all warnings had fallen prey to the dreaded willy fish while taking a piss in waist-deep water.

‘The willy fish?’ Nico asked with a frown. Pepe explained how the tiny fish, a kind of eel called a
candirú
that was invisible underwater, liked to take advantage of careless urinators by swimming counter-current up their urethra and hooking itself inside with its sharp spines so that it could feast, vampire-like, on their blood.

When this fate had befallen the Dutchman they’d been so far upriver from civilization, let alone a doctor, that the only way to prevent fatal infection, shock or a burst bladder was for three fellow passengers to hold the screaming victim down on the deck with his trousers and underpants round his ankles while Pepe himself hacked off the blocked organ with a machete. Pepe chuckled at the memory, and pointed at the deep score-mark the machete’s blade had left on the deck planking.

‘Holy Mother,’ Nico muttered, gazing aghast at the river and all the unseen horrors lurking under its surface.

In the middle of the unlikely tale, Ben had settled into a hammock at the stern and closed his eyes, trying to let the gentle motion of the boat relax his aching, tense muscles. He drifted for a while. When he opened his eyes some time later, Pepe had finally gone silent at the wheel. The river had narrowed again. Foliage was hanging low over the water and almost brushing the wheelhouse as it passed underneath. Suddenly feeling he was being watched, Ben looked up from under the canvas and saw a long-tailed monkey with startlingly thoughtful amber eyes and the face of an old man studying him from a branch.

Recovered now from Pepe’s stories, Nico found a battered old guitar in the back of the boat and sat down with it, creaked its tuning pegs for a few moments and began singing quietly to himself in Spanish as he picked out some chords. It was a sad song about lost love. Ben listened to him for a while, surprised by the softness of Nico’s voice and the sensitivity of his playing; then his mind began to wander again, lulled by the monotone of the engine and the whisper of the river.

His thoughts lapsed back to a time in France – it seemed like so long ago now – when he and Brooke had been alone in his room on a stormy spring evening at Le Val, just them and a crackling fire and a plate of homemade chocolate cake. It had been just before their relationship had begun; a time when he’d been falling in love with her without even realising it.

‘You must eat some of this,’ she’d said, holding a forkful of cake to his lips. ‘It’s a secret family recipe. People round here have gone to war for it. To have it offered to you and not eat it is a sacrilege. An insult to the gods.’

‘Okay, you persuaded me,’ he’d said. ‘It wouldn’t do to offend the gods.’

‘Definitely not,’ she’d murmured, feeding the piece of cake into his open mouth.

‘You’re right,’ he’d said with his mouth full. ‘It is pretty damn good.’

‘Have another bit,’ she’d said. ‘It’s the ultimate in comfort eating.’

‘In that case, maybe just another bit.’

‘Let’s just chocolate ourselves to death,’ she’d said. ‘Right here, right now.’

He’d thrown up his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Fuck it. Why not?’

After eating the rest of the cake they’d sat watching the fire, sharing that comfortable silence that only people who are very close can. Noticing a little fleck of cream at the corner of her mouth, he’d tenderly wiped it away with his fingertip, then carried it back to his own mouth and licked his finger.

He could still taste it, both the cream and the moment. And he could still feel her presence, smell her subtle perfume and the fresh apple scent of shampoo when her hair brushed near his face. It had always made him think of sunshine and summer meadows; pleasant things that seemed to belong in some inaccessible parallel world …

Ben’s daydream ended abruptly as another rolling peal of thunder crashed above the trees. Pepe grinned back at them from the wheelhouse, as if nothing could make his day more than a violent storm and the imminent prospect of the boat taking a direct lightning hit or being crushed and driven to the bottom of the river by a stricken tree. ‘Be in San Tomás in ’bout another thirty minutes, gentlemen,’ he called out.

The next thirty or so minutes managed to pass without the boat being destroyed or sunk. Rounding a corner at a point where the river had broadened to its widest point since setting off from the Potro boat station, the wooden quays and jetties and buildings beyond them came into view. ‘Looks like this is our stop,’ Nico said, standing up.

Pepe expertly steered the boat up to the dock and bumped it gently against its mooring point. ‘How are you fixed for work the next few days?’ Ben asked him, and Pepe shrugged with a grin as he tethered up the boat. ‘You want me to stick around, chief? Anything’s possible. How long?’

‘I can’t say.’ Ben pressed an extra few notes into Pepe’s hand. ‘We good for a while?’

‘We good. You doing the tourist thing, huh?’

‘Something like that,’ Ben replied, grabbing his things and jumping up onto the fragile-looking jetty.

After so long on the boat it felt strange to be walking on solid ground again. Ben and Nico shouldered their heavy packs and walked from the quay into the village of San Tomás. In such heat and humidity even the slightest exertion brought on a full body sweat. Insects filled the air. The streets were made of hard-packed clay that was russety red, almost orange in colour. The thick greenery seemed to encroach on the edges of the village faster than it could be chopped back, as if the jungle had a mind of its own and wanted to claim the land back from the humans.

They walked on. Nearly every building stood off the ground on thick wooden stilts to protect it when the river was at full flood. Many of the houses looked dangerously makeshift, with walls that looked as though they could blow down in the next storm and roofs made of corrugated iron or reed thatch. There were only a few battered, dusty vehicles in the street. People here still used mules for transport and haulage, those who could afford them. Most inhabitants of San Tomás didn’t exactly seem affluent, judging by the number of them sitting around morosely on steps and porches as Ben and Nico walked by. Hardly anyone even glanced at them.

A little way further down the street, Nico pointed out a rusty-roofed building with a lopsided sign hanging over the door. ‘That’s the bar where I met Roberto, right there. You want to grab some food and a beer?’

Roberto wasn’t there, and nor was anyone else except for the barman, a big guy in a loose shirt damp with sweat. Nothing moved except for the clattering fans and the flies that buzzed and crawled everywhere. It was almost as unbearably hot in there as it was outside, but by some miracle the beer was ice-cold. They sat at a table by the window to share a large platter of fried beans and rice, gazing through the dusty glass at the still street as they ate. After three chilled beers apiece they could feel the sweat drying on them. They spoke in monosyllables. Ben could sense that the Colombian was thinking the same thing as him. They were close now, walking into extreme danger from which they both knew they might not return.

‘Is there anything more you can tell me about Serrato’s men?’ Ben asked Nico when they’d finished eating, casting a glance at the barman in case the guy might be inclined to listen in. He was more interested in stamping on some bug that was scuttling about behind the bar.

‘Like what?’

‘Like anything that can give us an edge. Where does he recruit them from, what’s their level of training, how loyal are they to him?’

Nico shrugged. ‘Back in the day he was always surrounded by the same gang of hardline motherfuckers that he kept real close. Jaime de Soto was one of them, until Laura Garcia put a twelve-gauge Brenneke slug in his ass. He wasn’t the worst, though. The worst were Piero Vertíz and Luis Bracca. Both Colombian ex-military. Vertíz is a trained sniper, thousand-yard-plus tack driver. Bracca loves knives, likes to cut people up with a bone-handled Bowie. You remember I told you about the poor bitch they sliced like a kebab? That was his work. He’s an animal.’

‘It was Bracca who chopped Forsyte’s hands off.’

‘He’d chop off his own left hand for Serrato. Fucking idolises him. You can bet Bracca’s right there with him now, watching over him like a goddamn pit bull. Oh, and the fucker’s a cannibal too. At least that’s what they said about him back in Bogotá; that he kept human heads in his freezer, ate their brains out with a spoon like ice-cream.’

‘You believed that?’

‘I’d believe most anything I heard about Luis Bracca. Let me tell you, you go up against either him or Vertíz on his own, you might stand a chance –
if
you’re good, and I mean very, very good. Go up against both at once, forget it. You’re a dead man. Which basically means we’re dead men.’ Nico swilled the dregs of his beer around inside the bottle. ‘At least we get a last drink, huh? More than some guys get. We going in there tonight?’ he asked after a beat.

Ben nodded.

‘So what’s the plan – you just gonna walk in there, kill everyone and get your girl back?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s what I figured.’

‘Does the idea make you nervous?’ Ben asked with a thin smile. ‘I told you, you don’t have to do this.’

‘Don’t insult me, man. You’re not the only one with a reason to be here.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Ben said.

‘There’s one thing you
are
forgetting, amigo. We ain’t armed.’ Nico pointed at the handle of the parang that was sticking out of Ben’s rucksack. ‘Unless you were planning on taking a knife to a gunfight.’

‘That’s where the crazy old hunter who lives in the forest comes in,’ Ben said.

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.