Serrato opened his clenched fist. The gems of the necklace and bracelet that they’d taken from this Indian sparkled in the torchlight. ‘Tell him we only want the white woman who is being harboured by his tribe. If he helps us, he and his little girl can go free, and he has my word that none of his people will be harmed. But if he refuses, he’ll watch her die before he does.’
Rumi listened in stark horror as the grinning Bujanda translated. Chaska struggled and tried to scream, but the man holding her wouldn’t let her budge an inch.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Rumi sobbed. ‘Please!’ There was only one thing he could do. ‘I’ll tell you how to get there. It’s not very far.’
‘You believe a lying Indian, boss?’ Vertíz asked Serrato.
‘I believe any father who wishes to protect his child,’ Serrato replied. ‘Get him to point out the exact location of the village on the map,’ he ordered Bujanda. ‘Then kill them both.’
A few minutes later, two shots rang out over the river. Rumi’s last scream was cut short. Serrato watched as the bodies were dumped in the bushes, then ordered his men back to their boats.
The long search was finally over. ‘Check your weapons,’ he commanded. ‘Full magazines. Whatever we find there, we kill.’
‘The woman too?’ Vertíz asked.
‘Her most especially,’ Serrato said. ‘But nobody touches her except me. Is that understood?’
The outboard motors revved. White foam churned from the propellers. The speedboats pulled away from the bank and took off in formation up the river.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
‘It was Rumi who had the jewellery,’ Brooke was saying. ‘If Serrato found it when he captured him, you can be sure he’s on his way here to find me.’
‘These people are tough as old boots,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t know that Rumi would have told them anything.’
‘I do know Serrato,’ Brooke answered. ‘Better than you, Ben. I’ve seen the things he’s capable of.’
‘She’s right, man,’ Nico said. ‘If Serrato got him, he talked. No question. Forget all your interrogation resistance bullshit. Nobody holds out. Not even the toughest.’
The three of them were grouped together with Pepe at the far end of the sick bay. At the other end, Father Scally was lying on the bed that had been Brooke’s. He was asleep, completely worn out from his sprint through the jungle. Tica and Kusi were sitting with him. Tica was sobbing quietly in mourning for Uchu and her missing friend Chaska. It wasn’t generally expected that she or her father would ever return.
‘And that means he’s on his way,’ Brooke said. ‘In fast boats, with all his men. I counted about thirty of them. Could be more. And they could be here any minute.’
Pepe shook his head. ‘Maybe not that soon. I know this river. Look.’ He crouched down and used the tip of his machete to trace a curving line on the earth floor. ‘See how the river bends? This is us’ – marking the spot with his finger –‘and this is more or less where the preacher said the attack happened. Get what I’m saying?’
‘It’s a lot farther round by river than by land,’ Ben said.
‘Miles and miles farther. And these guys don’t know the terrain the way the preacher does,’ Pepe added. ‘By cutting cross-country he gained a whole lot of time on them. I’d say that even if it didn’t take the fuckers long to get Rumi to talk, we still have at least an hour before they get here. Maybe two. The landing place ain’t exactly easy to find.’
‘You’d better move your boat upriver a way and make sure it’s well hidden,’ Ben advised him.
‘An hour or two still ain’t long,’ Nico said. ‘And time isn’t all we don’t have. What are we supposed to fight with, bows and arrows?’
Ben thought for a moment. ‘I need to go and see Tupaq.’
The chief was alone in his hut when Ben was shown inside by the surly Waskar. Pepe, Nico, Brooke and a crowd of other tribespeople filtered in behind him until the hut was teeming with bodies. The Sapaki people were all looking to Ben and Pepe in hushed anticipation.
‘War is coming,’ Ben said to Tupaq. ‘You asked for my help against these men. Now you have it. But without weapons, there’s little we can do to resist them. You understand?’
‘We have weapons,’ was Tupaq’s response after Pepe had translated for him.
Ben shook his head. He pointed at an ornate blowpipe that hung from the hut wall. ‘I respect your traditions. But these things your people have used for centuries, they’re useless against automatic rifles.’
‘I don’t think they have a word for “automatic rifles”,’ Pepe said.
‘That kind of sums up the whole fucking problem we’re facing here,’ Nico grunted.
‘Ask him if he has any other weapons in the village,’ Ben told Pepe. ‘Any kind of gun at all.’
Tupaq reflected solemnly with his lips pursed. After some deliberation he pressed his hands to his knees, slowly rose from his seat and motioned for them to follow him out into the night. A few steps away was another hut, longer and narrower than the normal tribal dwellings. As the chief led them inside, Ben saw that that was because the hut wasn’t for habitation, but a private storeroom for the village’s head man.
Tupaq spent a few moments bustling about, shifting things from place to place. Then he gave a grunt and beckoned Ben over to his side. He was standing over a wooden box, battered and aged, over five feet from end to end, less than a foot deep or wide.
Pepe translated as Tupaq talked: ‘Uh, he says it was his father’s, and his father’s before him, going back and back.’
The box was decorated in tribal style, but Ben could instantly tell that it hadn’t been made here in Peru, or anywhere else in South America. It was a British Royal Navy ordnance crate dating back some two centuries.
Tupaq lifted the box’s lid. Inside was a five-foot-long slender object wrapped in cloth. He lifted it out and set one end of it on the ground with a heavy ‘clunk’. It was almost as tall as he was. He looked at Ben, then unwrapped the cloth and handed it to him.
Ben blinked. He remembered something he’d once read: how during the struggle for Peruvian independence in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, British military and naval intelligence had been involved in a complex web of intrigue aimed at helping to loosen the ages-old grip of the Spanish on the country. Royal Navy frigates had landed on the east coast of South America around 1815 – and what he was holding in his hands was one of the relics left over from that time. God alone knew how it had found its way out here into the jungle, but it had.
It was a flintlock musket. The flint was sharp, the action was tight, with the date 1801 engraved on its pitted lockplate; a weapon that in its day had been the standard-issue longarm of soldiers and sailors throughout the whole British Empire, known as the Brown Bess. It fired a one-ounce lead ball that could take off a man’s leg at two hundred yards. In volley fire, the Brown Bess could mow down an infantry division like weeds. Rudyard Kipling had even written a poem about it.
But …
Ben was lost for words.
Nico found them for him. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. What’re we supposed to do with that piece of antique crap? Throw it at the fuckers?’
‘This is no good to us,’ Ben said with a sinking heart. ‘Maybe if we had fifty more of these, with enough powder and ball and the time to train up a militia of Sapaki men to use them, it would help even the odds a little. But this is hopeless.’
Tupaq’s look of pride had faded to a frown as he sensed the negativity of their reaction. He made an impatient gesture and snapped a few words at Pepe.
‘Uh, he says to come and look over here,’ Pepe said. Ben handed him the musket and followed Tupaq to the back of the hut, where layers of old blankets and animal hides were draped over something stacked against the wall. By the light of a burning torch held by one of the warriors Tupaq wrenched one of the hides aside. Ben peered underneath, and his eyes opened wide when he saw the rows upon rows of open kegs. ‘J
esus Christ,’ he muttered.
He was mightily glad he hadn’t chosen that moment to light up his one and only remaining Gauloise. Because if he had, the whole hut – the entire village – might have blown sky-high, leaving nothing but a giant crater in the jungle. ‘Get that flame away from here,’ he said quickly.
He dipped his hand into one of the kegs and let the fistful of coarse black powder trickle through his fingers. The grains were as dry as the day they’d been made. ‘You know what this is, Tupaq?’
Tupaq replied, miming the action of tossing a pinch of the stuff. ‘He says it makes the fire go well,’ Pepe translated.
‘I’ll bet it does,’ Ben said. ‘This is gunpowder. Boom. Explosive.’
Tupaq drew aside another few blankets to reveal barrels filled with shiny grey-black balls. Ben picked one out and rolled it between his fingers. The loose ammunition for the Brown Bess. Pure lead. Three quarters of an inch in diameter. There were thousands and thousands of them.
And now he was thinking. Thinking hard and fast.
‘Nico,’ he said. ‘Listen to me.’ Away from the others, he spoke quietly in the Colombian’s ear.
Brooke pushed forward through the crowd of Sapaki people, trying to hear. ‘What is it, Ben?’
Nico shook his head and grinned. ‘Oh, boy. You really are one crazy motherfucker. But yeah. It might work. It might just work, if there’s still time.’
‘Then we have none to lose,’ Ben said.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
It was the dead of night. There was a stillness in the surrounding jungle that Ben had never known before. It was as if the creatures of the forest somehow sensed what was coming and had retreated to a safe distance, waiting for the storm to do its worst and pass on by.
Meanwhile, the Sapaki village was anything but still. There was a great deal to prepare, and the seconds were ticking by. The tribespeople who weren’t actively helping watched in bewilderment as Ben and Nico worked fast by torchlight to get things ready. Most of the Sapaki still had little idea of what the blond-haired stranger was planning to do with the kegs of black grainy stuff that he had the warriors carrying out of the storage hut by the dozen and placing all around the village perimeter along with bundles of twine and other odd items. But they knew that both the white preacher and their chief had placed their trust in Ben, and that was good enough for them.
Pepe had gone to move his boat, under strict orders from Ben to steer well clear of the village at the slightest sign of anything suspicious. Father Scally, woken by the activity, had emerged from the sick bay to see what was happening. When Ben hurriedly explained to him what they were expecting to happen, possibly within the next hour or two, the priest was adamant that he wanted to be a part of it. He disappeared into his hut and reappeared a moment later with a hunting bow and a clutch of arrows.
‘You just tell me where to position myself,’ he said to Ben. ‘I’m ready for those bastards.’
‘I thought you were a man of peace.’
‘Shame on the shepherd who runs and hides when wolves are coming to harm his flock,’ the Irishman said, sticking out his chin.
‘There’s something else you can do for me, Father,’ Ben told him. ‘Once we’re done preparing everything, the village needs to be evacuated, and fast. I want every woman, child and noncombatant man outside a zone at least three hundred metres wide, so that they’re well clear when things kick off. It’s best that Tupaq hears it from you.’
Scally hurried off to talk to the chief. Within minutes, the Sapaki women and children, along with the elder men, were slipping out of the village and disappearing into the dark forest. ‘Tupaq insists on staying,’ Scally told Ben on his return, ‘along with Waskar and his best warriors. They’ve been making as many arrows as they can.’
‘How many arrowheads do we have?’ Ben asked.
‘You mean just the loose heads? A group of the women go about finding stones most days and shaping them for the hunters to fit to their shafts. I’d say we have hundreds, if not more. Why’d you ask?’
‘Gather up as many as you can find,’ Ben told him.
Scally thought for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I know what it is you’re up to. M18A1?’
‘Something like that,’ Ben said.
‘It’s diabolical.’
‘It’s worse,’ Ben said. ‘Oh, and Father, bring me all the empty poteen bottles you’ve got, too.’
The work party intensified to a frenzy until everything was finally in place. By then, Pepe had returned safely. Ben found him with Nico and a group of the warriors snatching a moment’s rest near the dying fire in the centre of the village. Nico was clutching a weapon borrowed from Waskar, a knobbly wooden club embedded with jaguar claws. Waskar himself, the chief and the rest of the fifty or so warriors were turned out nearby in full fighting trim, their quivers bristling with sharp-tipped arrows.
Ben could smell their tension. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. They surely didn’t have long to wait now. ‘Everyone okay?’ he asked.
‘Ready to rock and roll, man,’ Nico said.
‘Me too,’ said a tall black figure, stepping out from behind a hut. It was a couple of moments before Ben recognised Father Scally. The priest had daubed himself all over with the vegetable dye the Indians used to colour their skin. He barely looked human. ‘War paint,’ he explained.
‘You’ll scare them to death,’ Ben said. ‘Where’s Brooke?’
‘She’s helping get the last of the women and children into the safe zone.’
‘That’s where she’s going, too,’ Ben said.
‘Oh no, she isn’t,’ said a voice. Ben turned. Brooke was standing there with her hands on her hips. ‘I’m staying right here with you men.’
‘Don’t do this to me, Brooke.’
‘These people saved my life,’ Brooke said firmly.
He shook his head. ‘How’s this marriage going to work if you don’t do what I say?’
‘You watch yourself, Ben Hope.’
At that moment, the sound of tinkling bottles came from beyond the huts.
The first tripwire alarm. Something – or someone – was approaching through the trees from the direction of the river.
‘They’re here,’ Nico said.
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 thr
ough 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.