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.’
Read on for an exclusive extract from Scott Mariani’s new novel, coming from Avon in 2014
Prologue
The Altai Mountains
Bayan-Ölgii Pro
Western Mongolia
The biting wind was starting to whip flurries of snow across the barren mountainside. Soon, Chuluun knew, the winter snowfalls would be here in earnest and it might be a long time before he could venture out this far again in search of food.
The argali herd the teenager was tracking had led him almost half a mile across bare rock from where he’d tethered his pony further down the mountain. Wolves were an ever-present concern, but the curly-horned wild sheep could sense the roving packs from a great way off, and they seemed calm enough, having paused on their trek to munch contentedly on a scrubby patch of heather, to reassure Chuluun that his pony was safe.
There was one predator too smart to let himself be noticed by the argali. Chuluun had been hunting over these mountains for six years, since the age of eleven, when his father had become too infirm to ride long distances any more, and he prided himself on his ability to sneak up on anything that lived, walked or flew. His parents and seven younger brothers and sisters depended almost entirely on him for meat, and in the harsh environment of Mongolia, meat meant survival.
Carefully staying downwind of the grazing sheep and moving with stealthy ease over the rocks, Chuluun stalked to within a hundred metres of his quarry before settling himself down at the top of a rise, in a vantage point from which his pick of the herd, a large male he estimated stood a good four feet at the shoulder, was nicely presented side-on.
Very slowly, Chuluun slid the ancient Martini-Henry into aiming position and hunkered down behind it. He opened the rifle’s breech, drew one of the long, heavy cartridges from his bandolier and slipped it silently inside. He closed the breech and flipped up the tangent rear sight. At this range he knew exactly how much elevation he needed to compensate for gravity’s pull on the trajectory of the heavy bullet.
The argali remained still, munching away, oblivious. Chuluun honoured his prey, as he honoured the spirit of the mountains. He blinked a snowflake from his eyelashes. Gently, purposefully, he curled his finger around the trigger, controlled his breathing and felt his heart slow as his concentration focused on the all-important shot. If he missed, the herd would be off and he couldn’t hope to catch up with them again today, nor this week. But Chuluun wasn’t going to miss. Tonight, his family were going to eat as they hadn’t eaten in a long while.
At the perfect moment, Chuluun squeezed the trigger.
And in that same moment, everything went insane.
The view through the rifle’s sights disappeared in a massive blurred explosion. His first confused thought was that his gun had burst on firing. But it wasn’t the gun.
Chuluun barely had time to cry out as the ground seemed to lurch away from under him and then heave him with terrifying violence into the air. He was spinning, tumbling, sliding down the mountain. His head was filled with a deafening roar. Something hit him with a hard blow and he blacked out.
When Chuluun awoke, the sky seemed to have darkened. He blinked and sat up, shivering with cold and beating the snow and dirt from his clothes, then staggered to his feet. His precious rifle lay half-buried in the landslide that had carried him down from the top of the rise. Still half-stunned, he clambered back up the rocky slope and peered, afraid to look, over the edge.
He gasped at the incredible sight below.
Chuluun was standing on the edge of a near-perfect circle of utter devastation that stretched as far as his keen young hunter’s eyes could see. Nothing remained of the patch of ground where the argali herd had been quietly grazing. The mountainside was levelled. Gigantic rocks pulverised. The pine forests completely obliterated. All gone, swept away by some unimaginable force.
His face, streaked with dirt and tears, contorted into an expression of disbelief. Chuluun gazed up at the strange glow that permeated the sky,
like nothing he’d ever seen before. Blades of lightning knifed through the rolling clouds. There was no thunder. Just a heavy, eerie pall of silence.
Suddenly filled with conviction that something unspeakably evil had just happened here, he scrambled away with a terrified moan and started fleeing down the slope towards where he’d left his pony.
Chapter 1
Paris
Seven months later
The apartment was all in shadow. It wasn’t normal for Claudine Pommier to keep her curtains tightly drawn even on a bright and sunny June afternoon.
But then, it wasn’t normal for someone to be stalking her and trying to kill her, either.
Claudine was tense as she padded barefoot down the gloomy, narrow hallway. She prayed the boards wouldn’t creak and give her away. A moment ago she’d been certain she could hear footsteps outside the triple-locked door. Now she heard them again. Holding her breath she got to the door and peered through the dirty glass peephole. The aged plasterwork and wrought iron railing of the old apartment building’s upper landing looked distorted through the fish-eye lens.
Claudine felt a flood of relief as she recognised the tiny figure of her neighbour Madame Lefort, with whom she shared the top floor. The octogenarian widow locked up her apartment and started heading for the stairs. She was carrying a shopping basket.
Claudine unlatched the security chain, slid back both bolts and the deadlock and rushed out of the door to catch her.
‘Madame Lefort? Hang on – wait!’
The old woman was fit and sprightly from decades of negotiating the five flights of winding stairs each day. She was also as deaf as a tree, and Claudine had to repeat her name three more times before she caught her attention.
‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Pommier,’ the old woman said with a yellowed smile.
‘Madame Lefort, are you going out?’ Claudine said loudly.
‘To do my shopping. Is something wrong, dear? You don’t look well.’
Claudine hadn’t slept for two nights. ‘Migraine,’ she lied. ‘Bad one. Would you post a couple of letters for me?’
Madame Lefort looked at her tenderly. ‘Of course. You poor dear. Shall I get you some aspirin too?’
‘It’s okay, thanks. Hold on a moment.’ Claudine rushed back into the apartment. The two letters were lying on the table in the salon, sealed and ready but for the stamps. Their contents were identical; their addressees half a world apart. She snatched them up and rushed back to the door to give them to Madame Lefort. ‘This one’s for Canada,’ she explained. ‘This one for Sweden.’
‘Where?’ the old woman asked, screwing up her face.
‘Just show the person at the counter,’ Claudine said as patiently as she could. ‘They’ll know. Tell them the letters have to go registered international mail, express delivery. Have you got that?’
‘Say again?’
‘Registered international mail,’ Claudine repeated more firmly. ‘It’s terribly, terribly important.’
The old woman inspected each letter in turn an inch from her nose. ‘Canada? Sweden?’ she repeated, as though they were addressed to Jupiter and Saturn.
‘That’s right.’ Claudine held out a handful of euros. ‘This should cover the postage. Keep the change. You won’t forget, will you?’
As the old woman headed off down the stairs, Claudine hurried back to her apartment and locked herself in. All she could do now was pray that Madame Lefort wouldn’t forget, or manage to lose the letters halfway to the post office. There was no other way to get word out to the only people she could trust. Two allies she knew would come to her aid.
If it wasn’t too late already.
Claudine ventured to the window. She reached out nervously and pulled the edge of the curtain back a crack. The afternoon sunlight streamed in, making her blink. Five floors below, the traffic was filtering along the narrow street. But that wasn’t what Claudine was watching.
She swallowed. The car was still there, in the same parking space at the kerbside right beneath her windows where it had been sitting since yesterday. She was completely certain it was the same black Audi with dark-tinted glass that had followed her from Laurent’s family country home two days ago.
And, before that, the same car that had tried to run her down in the street and only narrowly missed her. It still made her tremble to think of it.
She quickly drew the curtain shut again, hoping that the men inside the car hadn’t spotted her at the window. She was pretty sure there were three of them. Her instinct told her they were sitting inside it, just waiting.
After the scare and the realisation she was being followed, on her return from Laurent’s place she hadn’t intended to remain here in the apartment any longer than it took to pack a few things into a bag and get the hell out. But the car had appeared before she’d been able to escape – and now she was trapped.
Were these the men that Daniel had warned her about? If that was the case, they knew everything. Every detail of her research. And if so, they must know what she’d learned about their terrible plans. If they caught her, they wouldn’t let her live. Couldn’t let her live. Not after what she’d uncovered.
Under siege in her own apartment. How long could she hold out? She had enough tinned provisions to last about a week, if she rationed her meals. And enough vodka left in the bottle to stop her terror from driving her crazy.
Claudine spent the next half hour pacing anxiously up and down the darkened room, fretting over whether the old lady had sent her letters the way she’d asked. ‘I can’t stand this,’ she said out loud. ‘I need a drink.’
Walking into the tiny kitchen she grabbed a tumbler, took the vodka bottle from the freezer compartment and sloshed out a stiff measure. She downed the chilled drink in a couple of gulps and poured another. It wasn’t long before the alcohol had combined with her fatigue to make her head swirl. She wandered back through into the salon, lay on the couch and closed her eyes. Almost instantly, she began to drift.
When Claudine awoke with a start and opened her eyes, the room was completely dark. She must have slept for hours. Something had woken her. A sound. Her heart began to race.
That was when the bright flash from outside lit up the narrow gap between the curtains, followed a moment later by another rumble of thunder. She relaxed. It was just a storm. The howling wind was lashing the rain against the windows.
She got up from the couch and groped for the switch of the table lamp nearby. The light came on with a flicker. The ancient wiring of the apartment building threatened to black the place out every time there was a storm. The clock on the mantelpiece read 10.25. Too late to go and ask Madame Lefort if she’d posted the letters, as the old woman was always in bed by half past nine. It would have to wait until morning.
Claudine stepped over to the window and peered out of the crack in the curtains. With a gasp she saw that the car was gone.
Gone! Just an empty pool of light, glistening with rainwater, under the streetlamp where it had been parked.
She blinked. Had she just imagined the whole thing? Was nobody following her after all? Had the near-miss in the street two days ago just been a coincidence, some careless asshole not looking where he was going?
The rush of relief she felt was soon overtaken by a feeling of self-blame. If this whole thing had been just her paranoia getting the better of her, then she should never have sent those letters. She’d made a fool of herself.
Suddenly she was hoping that the old woman hadn’t posted them after all.
The storm continued outside. Claudine knew she wouldn’t get any more sleep that night. She wandered into her little bedroom, flipped on the side light and picked up her violin. One of the upsides to sharing the top floor with a deaf old woman was that she could play whenever she liked. Madame Lefort wouldn’t even have heard the thunder.
Thankful that she had something to occupy her mind, Claudine cradled the instrument under her chin, touched the bow to the strings, and went
into the opening bar of the Bach sonata she’d been trying to master for the last couple of months.
Another bright flash outside; and at that moment the lights went out. She cursed and went on playing by the red glow from the neon sign of the hotel across the street.
Then she paused, frowning. There’d been a noise. Before the roll of thunder. Like a thump. It seemed to have come from above. There was nothing above her apartment but the roof. Maybe the wind had knocked something down, she thought, or sent a piece of debris bouncing over the tiles. She went on playing.
But she hadn’t produced more than a few notes before her bow groaned to a dissonant halt on the strings. She’d heard the noise again.
There was someone inside the apartment. An intruder.
A cold sweat broke out over her brow. Her knees began to shake. She needed to arm herself with something. Thinking of the knife block on the kitchen worktop, she tossed her violin and bow down on the bed and hurried towards the doorway – then skidded to a halt on the bare boards as another violent lightning flash lit up the room and she saw the figure standing in the doorway, blocking her exit.
Too terrified to speak, Claudine retreated into the bedroom.
The intruder stepped into the room after her. She could see him outlined in the red neon glow from the hotel. He was tall and broad. Black boots, black trousers, black jacket and gloves. His hair was silver, cropped to stubble. A hard, angular face. Pale eyes narrowed to slits. Around his waist was some kind of utility belt, like builders and carpenters wore.
For one crazy, irrational moment, Claudine thought he was a workman come to carry out the much-needed repairs to the bathroom. But that idea vanished as he drew the claw hammer from his utility belt and came towards her.
She snatched the violin from the bed. Lashed wildly out with it and caught him across the brow with such force that the instrument broke apart. The splintering wood raked his flesh, drawing blood that looked as dark as treacle in the red light. He barely seemed to have felt the blow. He swung the hammer and knocked the shattered violin from her hand. She cowered away from him. ‘Please—’
The Armada Legacy bh-8 Page 35
