The Armada Legacy (32 page)

‘Two days ago I was worried about fucking frostbite,’ Nico muttered, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, going easy with the left one as the arm was bandaged to the elbow and still tender. Underneath the bandage were the dozen stitches that Ben had put into him back in Montefrio, using the little soldier-repair kit that always rattled around in the bottom of his bag. He winced.

‘You’ll live,’ Ben said.

‘You always say that. Question is, how long for?’

They were still a long way from their destination. After long delays in the cloying humidity, during which Ben changed most of his remaining cash for Peruvian nuevo sol, they boarded an internal flight to carry them the four hundred miles northwards to Chachapoyas.

The department of Amazonas was just one of Peru’s twenty-five separate regions, itself divided up into seven provinces and eighty-three districts. Chachapoyas was a city in the clouds, over seven thousand feet above sea level and surrounded by mist-shrouded mountains that made the Spanish Sierra Nevada seem like gentle hill country by comparison. Stretching out all around, the subtropical highlands of Amazonas’ rainforest looked from the air like an endless undulating blanket of green crisscrossed by tiny blue threads – the vast river system that covered thousands of square miles and fed into the mighty Amazon itself.

It was cooler in Chachapoyas, but the humidity was no less oppressive than it had been in Lima. After collecting Ben’s battered old bag, the only luggage the two travellers had between them, they managed to find a taxi to drive them along the desolate single road into the city.

‘I told you it was a backwater,’ Nico said. ‘Now what?’

Every delay, every second that went by without tangible progress was an added torment as Ben kept racing through every aspect and angle of the situation in his mind. More and more, it was a conflict between the human, emotional and very frightened part of him that wanted desperately to keep moving on, and the cool professional who knew that panic and exhaustion were two of the greatest risks facing him right now. If he didn’t do this right, it would be Brooke who’d pay the price – if she hadn’t already.

He wilfully closed his mind to those kinds of thoughts. ‘First we need to make a base here,’ he told Nico. ‘A cool shower, a hot meal and a bed are our first priority before we make another move.’

All three were available for a handful of nuevo sol at a simple hotel near the centre of the city. As Ben stood under the shower that night, he thought about what was to come. His instinct told him he was entering the final phase of his search, but what lay ahead was still deeply uncertain. He’d stopped caring whether he got out of this in one piece. All that mattered to him was that Brooke did.

Was she really here? Was she still all right? The questions haunted him deep into the night. He wondered whether she had any idea he was looking for her. Or would she be unconscious, drugged by her captors? What, if anything, was he going to find when he got there? After hours of sleepless torment, he got up and went across the dark room to the mini-bar. Only when the floor was littered with empty bottles was he able to crawl back to bed and fall into a fevered sleep.

When he awoke around dawn, he remembered Amal and realised it had been days since he’d made contact. It would be late morning in London. Ben sat on the edge of the bed and dialled the number.

Amal picked up instantly, as if he’d been hovering over the phone the entire time just waiting for Ben to call. His voice sounded croaky and distant, breaking up from the poor reception. ‘Where are you? You sound like you’re thousands of miles away.’

‘I think I know where she is,’ Ben said. ‘There’s a chance she’s still alive and I’m going in to find her.’

There was a speechless pause on the other end, followed by the sound of Amal swallowing hard. ‘Where? Tell me everyth—’ At that point the line went dead. Ben tried dialling once more, but when he couldn’t get through he didn’t try a third time. There was nothing more to say.

Feeling stiff and weary, Ben took another shower, then pulled on the last of the fresh clothes he had in his bag. He went downstairs, asked the guy in the lobby where he could get a map, and followed his directions to a newsagent’s stall down the street.

By the time Ben got back to the hotel, Nico was sitting in the bar waiting for him. He looked sombre. ‘I just tried calling Felipe again. That’s the sixth time since we left Montefrio. Still no reply.’

Ben said nothing. He was certain Morales was dead.

‘I need a coffee,’ Nico said. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ They ordered the biggest pot the kitchen could brew up, and sat at a corner table where they spread the map out between them. Tracing his finger roughly northeast from Chachapoyas, Nico indicated the rough location of the tiny river village of San Tomás, the nearest settlement to Serrato’s compound. San Tomás itself was too tiny to feature on the map, but Nico was fairly certain of his bearings and in any case, he assured Ben, the region was filled with expert guides who could take them there.

‘We follow the highway out of Chachapoyas sixty, seventy miles,’ Nico said, pointing out the directions on the map, ‘then turn off and cut across towards the Potro River, right here. There’s a river station where you can hire a floatplane pilot to take you the rest of the way to San Tomás. It’s a hell of a quicker way than by road, believe me.’

Ben could easily believe it. He nodded. ‘That’ll do us.’

‘Once we get to San Tomás we’ll need another set of wheels to get us nearer to Serrato. But unless you’re planning on driving right up to his front gates, the final approach has to be on foot, through the jungle. It ain’t exactly a walk in the park. You ever been in jungle country before?’

As a young SAS recruit years earlier, Ben had undergone the inhuman endurance test of jungle training in Belize, where he and his patrol had had to learn to move quickly and silently in near-impossible conditions, testing their navigation and survival skills to the limit. Later he’d seen active service in Sierra Leone in West Africa and a dozen other black-ops jungle combat missions in war zones, official and unofficial, across the planet. ‘A little,’ was all he replied.

‘It’s another world, man. A green hell filled with everything that crawls and bites. Giant spiders, snakes longer than a Chevy Silverado. If those critters don’t get you, the diseases will, and it’s got them all. Yellow fever, malaria, dengue, hepatitis, typhoid, tetanus, cholera, fucking rabies. They say you’ve got to be nuts to go there without inoculations.’

Back in his regiment days the medics had regularly pumped Ben full of more drugs than he cared to count. The proper courses of vaccines took time to administer; anti-typhoid injections alone had to be spaced out over six months for the protection to work. He didn’t have six months to waste, or even six more hours. ‘Yeah, well, the art of living dangerously is just not to catch anything.’

‘Like not catching a bullet, I guess,’ Nico said, looking down at his arm.

‘I told you, you don’t have to come all the way. Just show me where to go.’

‘I’ve come this far, haven’t I?’ Nico said, stung. ‘You think I don’t want to finish it?’

‘Your choice,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not going to be responsible for you. Once we’re there, you slow me down, I’ll walk away. Get lost or hurt, I won’t come back for you. I’m there for one thing and one thing only. Understand?’

‘That’s what I like about you,
Capitano
– you’re so full of fucking encouragement.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Ben said. He drained his coffee and stood up.

‘We moving?’

‘We’re moving.’

‘Then let’s get fucking moving,’ Nico said.

Chapter Forty-Three

The Toyota Hilux they rented from the place around the corner from the hotel was more rust than metal and would have been declared unroadworthy anywhere in Europe, but Ben didn’t care as long as it carried them as far as they needed. ‘Now we have some shopping to do,’ he told Nico.

For the next two hours they drove from store to store, from one end of Chachapoyas to the other gathering together the supplies they needed for jungle travel: bottled water, basic food, thick-soled boots and bush hats, heavy-duty torches and batteries, fire-making equipment, insect repellent, malaria tablets, water purifier tablets, a parang machete for chopping vegetation, and finally a pair of compact but powerful binoculars. Everything was stowed into Ben’s bag and a second lightweight rucksack, and cans of spare fuel were thrown into the back of the Toyota.

An hour after that, Chachapoyas was already far behind them as they headed rapidly northeastwards along the highway, passing by landscapes that would have blown anyone’s mind but Ben’s, totally focused as he was on his goal.

Nico seemed to have remembered the route well. After a long stretch of highway that became progressively less busy the further they got from Chachapoyas, Ben turned off onto a series of unsealed roads so potholed that it was like they had suffered artillery bombardment. On one narrow mountain pass, where nothing but the crumbling edge stood between them and a thousand-foot drop to the forest below, the road had been half swept away by an avalanche. Some way further on, as the road dropped in altitude into a verdant valley, they had to thread their way past a broken-down bus. More people than it seemed possible to cram into the dilapidated vehicle were crowding the roadside, many of them barefoot, some in rags, others in brightly-coloured and heavily embroidered tunics and ponchos. They were surrounded by luggage, children, dogs and a pair of noisily braying goats. A horde of excited nut-brown youngsters chased the Toyota as it passed by, looking as though they’d happily clamber on board and cling to the roof.

Ben drove on. The road continued to drop downwards, the mountain scenery long gone behind a screen of thick jungle. Even with the air conditioning on full blast the humidity was all-pervasive. The occasional glimpse through the endless green canopy overhead showed that the sky was darkening; clouds were gathering ominously. ‘Should be getting near the river station,’ Nico said, studying the map.

By the time they reached the boat station on the Potro River, the storm that Ben had been expecting for some time had finally been unleashed. The rain was more than torrential. It churned the ground into cascades of mud and lashed the surface of the river and the few sorry-looking craft moored up to the boat station. As they ran along the flimsy boardwalk for the shelter of a row of warped wooden huts, Nico pointed out the red-and-white single-engined floatplane bobbing unsteadily on the water by one of the jetties. ‘That’s our baby,’ he yelled over the downpour, but his words were drowned out by the rolling crash of thunder that made the water-filled air tremble.

They stood under the streaming canvas awning of the boat station and watched as the storm quickly gathered power. A violent lightning display filled the sky. The rain lashed down with ever more incredible force. The brown river water seemed to be rising before their eyes.

‘This can’t go on,’ Nico said.

Ben wasn’t so sure. Neither was the flying boat pilot they talked to half an hour later, who shook his head emphatically at the notion of taking his plane out in this weather and told them in rapid-fire Spanish that he’d lived and worked on this river man and boy and seen these storms go on for days at a stretch.

For a wild moment, Ben seriously considered offering to buy the plane so that he could fly the damn thing himself. There had to be some way to get the funds transferred, even out here, and he’d flown all types of light aircraft in the past. But even as the idea was churning over in his mind, another violent streak of lightning knifed through the clouds and struck the tall trees on the opposite bank just a quarter of a mile downriver with terrible force. He gritted his teeth. It seemed there was little choice but to sit it out.

The storm kept on. Ben was pacing the boardwalk when a young guy in worn Levi’s and a ZZ Top T-shirt appeared by the huts, apparently unaware of the torrential rain, and came over with a broad grin and an easy swagger to introduce himself in English as Pepe. Despite his youth, Pepe happened to be the proud owner-operator of what he claimed was the fastest boat in the region – and for the right price was only too happy to take them upriver to San Tomás, storm or no storm. This was nothing, he boasted with a dismissive wave at the lashing downpour. If they didn’t get hit by lightning they’d be in San Tomás in four or five hours, give or take.

Ben agreed. The deal quickly settled, Pepe ran off to bring his boat round to the boarding point.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Nico asked. ‘I’ve seen some of these river boats.’

‘It’s better than wasting time around here,’ Ben replied. But when Pepe’s vessel came into view a few moments later, he almost opted to wait for the aeroplane instead. The fifty-foot wooden river boat might have been ferrying passengers up and down the Amazonas waterways since the time of the Conquistadors. Its long, flat-bottomed hull was so patched with repairs that little of the original planking remained, and sat so low in the water that the rain streaming through the holes in the makeshift canvas roof seemed quite capable of sinking it entirely before they’d gone a mile. But Pepe’s flashing grin as he stood at the helm in the tiny wheelhouse radiated nothing but supreme confidence and he gesticulated at them to board. Ben cursed to himself, grabbed his bag and rucksack and walked out into the deluge.

The storm was still raging violently as the boat station vanished from view round the first bend in the river, and continued unabated for nearly two hours afterwards. By the time the clouds eventually parted and sunlight dappled the choppy waters, it was far too late to turn back.

For most of those long, hot hours they saw little but unbroken jungle. The air was stifling and thick with insects, a situation that was relieved only when the heavens opened for another downpour. At some points the winding river broadened to a vast lake; elsewhere the looming greenery either side of them blotted out the sky and the mud banks constricted their passage so tightly that the boat’s hull scraped its sides to get through.