by Chris Ryan
‘We can’t go after her now,’ Abby said. ‘We’ll draw too much attention to ourselves.’
‘She’s right,’ Max said. ‘Let’s put ourselves in surveillance positions. Lukas, Sami, you take three o’clock. Me and Abby will take nine o’clock. If Lili looks like she’s in trouble, we move in, right?’
The others nodded grimly.
Max and Abby waited while Lukas and Sami moved to the right-hand side of the square, taking care to avoid contact with anyone else. They looked like they were deep in conversation, even arguing. It was a good act, and it stopped anybody else approaching them.
‘I guess we should get moving,’ Abby said. To Max’s surprise, she took his hand.
He gave her an inquisitive look.
‘It’s good cover,’ Abby said. ‘People are less likely to interrupt us if they think we’re – you know …’ She blushed.
Max didn’t argue. Cover was good, and Abby’s hand felt warm in his. They set off across the square. Max was careful to avoid catching anybody’s eye. The air throbbed with music and a babble of Portuguese. People were shouting at each other, sometimes amicably, sometimes not. There was a thick herbal smell. Max noticed that quite a few of the youngsters were smoking joints. He held his breath, not wanting to become lightheaded from the smoke.
At the far side of the square was another set of steps. Max and Abby sat about halfway up. Abby nudged close to Max. They could see Lukas and Sami, facing each other and talking animatedly. Nobody was paying them any attention. Max tried to pick out Lili. He couldn’t see her among the crowd in the square and felt a sudden pang of panic. Then he caught a glimpse of her face. She was weaving her way through the crowd. Her head was down, but even from a distance Max could tell how alert she was. Like a cat, prowling.
‘Look out,’ Abby whispered.
Max’s attention snapped back to the area around them. Nearby, three people were watching him and Abby. They looked a couple of years younger than Max, though their expressions were curiously old, as if they had seen things children shouldn’t see. One of them started walking towards them. The other two followed. Max clocked the bulges under their tops: they were carrying concealed weapons. It was clear to Max that they were going to challenge him and Abby. He was about to stand up so they could move away when Abby grabbed him by the arm, leaned in and pressed her lips to his.
Max’s eyes widened in surprise. Abby wrapped her arms around him and held him. Awkwardly, he put his arms around her. As Abby continued what seemed to Max to be turning into a very long kiss, it crossed his mind that this was something the Watchers had not prepared him for. Jumping out of aeroplanes, no problem. Negotiating firefights with live ammunition, fine. Kissing Abby? This was uncharted territory. Frankly, he didn’t know what to do.
He glanced to the left. The three youngsters looked curiously embarrassed and, after a few seconds, they dispersed into the crowd. Max glanced back at Abby. Her eyes were closed.
‘I, er …’ Max started to say, but the words came out as gobbledegook because they were still mid-kiss.
Abby opened her eyes and pulled away from him. ‘Did you say something?’ she asked.
‘I think they’ve gone,’ Max tried to say, but his voice was squeaky and he had to say it again. ‘I think they’ve gone,’ he repeated.
‘Oh,’ Abby replied. She still had her arms around him and didn’t appear to be in a hurry to let go. ‘Shame.’
‘We should check out what Lili’s doing,’ Max said.
‘I guess,’ Abby replied. She unwound her arms. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Max, but there’s a bit of room for improvement there. Technique-wise, you know?’
Max blushed furiously, but Abby seemed calm. Focused, even. She nodded towards the centre of the square. ‘Look,’ she said quietly. ‘Lili’s talking to someone.’
Every time somebody looked at Lili, she felt as if their gaze was burning her skin. She tried to appear nonchalant. To blend in. It was difficult, not just because of her Chinese features but because she felt as if everybody was looking at her with suspicion. And because she knew that, at some point she would have to make contact with people in the square.
She saw Lukas and Sami. They were pretending to have an in-depth conversation. If their plan was to stop people engaging with them, it seemed to be working. She looked to the other end of the square and saw –
Lili shook her head.
Were Abby and Max kissing? Actually kissing? They were. Max looked kind of awkward, but Abby was really going for it. Despite everything, Lili found herself grinning.
‘Hey! Look where you’re going!’
Lili instantly refocused. She had almost walked into a group of three teens. They were sitting cross-legged on the ground, two boys and a girl. Each of them wore a Blue Command bandana. The girl and one of the boys were smoking a cigarette. Lili hated the stench of the smoke and the way it caught the back of her throat, but she pretended not to. She didn’t apologise for her clumsiness. Instead, she maintained a severe expression. ‘Anyone got a cigarette?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said the girl, with a sneer that suggested this was a ridiculous request.
Lili shrugged. She looked around casually. Abby and Max had stopped kissing. Abby looked very relaxed. Max’s back was ramrod-straight and he looked shaken up. She turned back to the three gang kids. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she said.
The kids’ expressions didn’t change. ‘What news?’ said the girl.
Lili made a show of assessing them before shaking her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Guzman doesn’t want people to know. I’ll catch you later.’
She started to walk away, but the girl jumped to her feet. ‘Wait,’ she said. Lili turned to see that the girl was offering her a cigarette.
‘Thought you didn’t have any,’ Lili said.
The girl shrugged.
Coolly, Lili took the cigarette and stashed it behind her ear.
‘So?’ the girl said.
‘So what?’
‘So … what doesn’t Guzman want people to know?’
The girl was asking Lili questions now, rather than the other way around. Lili smiled inwardly. That was exactly the way she wanted it. She was in control of the conversation. Her lie would be much easier to deliver. She tried to sound dismissive. ‘You probably don’t even know about the British boy,’ she said.
Clearly hungry for gossip, the girl nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do. The one who came to the favela. The one they kidnapped. We heard the older kids talking about it.’
Lili shrugged, as if reluctant to admit that the girl knew what she was talking about. She considered asking the girl if she knew where the hostage was being held, but decided that if she started asking the girl questions, the balance of power in this conversation would change. So instead she said, ‘I heard they’re moving him tonight.’ She looked around conspiratorially. ‘The cartel,’ she said. ‘From Mexico. They’re flying in by helicopter.’
The girl’s eyes widened. This was clearly very juicy gossip. The two boys stood up. They looked as intrigued as the girls.
‘Hey,’ Lili said. ‘Keep it to yourself. Guzman doesn’t want it to be common knowledge. I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘Sure,’ said the girl. She held up her fist. Lili clenched hers and they touched knuckles. Then she walked on. Only when she’d gone a safe distance and reached a telegraph pole did she risk looking back. She leaned against the post and watched the boy and two girls. They were deep in conversation. Were they talking about what Lili had just said? Were they, as she had calculated, thrilled by the prospect of seeing a Mexican cartel swoop into the favela to airlift Tommy out? Would they know that Lili had lied to them in an attempt to make them lead the cadets to the place where Tommy was being held?
Lili didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. But she knew this: the three gang members were on the move. In a conspiratorial huddle, they walked across the square. She looked over at L
ukas and Sami. They were moving too, their conversation still in full flow. She checked on Max and Abby. They were following, hand in hand.
Lili took the cigarette from behind her ear and discreetly crushed it before dropping the remnants on the ground.
Then she followed.
11
Leapfrog
There were techniques to following a target in an urban environment. The cadets understood them well. The Watchers had drilled the rules of surveillance into them until they were almost second nature.
Rule one: stay clear of the target’s field of vision. This didn’t just mean walking behind your target. It meant anticipating their movements. Were they likely to look left and right when they came to a busy road? What would happen to their field of vision if they turned ninety degrees? Might there be obstacles in your path that could offer you a moment of cover if you needed it?
The streets that the three gang members hurried along, however, were straight and narrow. The cadets had no option but to remain almost directly behind them. Apart from the occasional parked car, there were few obstacles, and most of the houses and shops along the way were closed and locked. Worst of all, the targets were jumpy. They kept stopping and looking back. It made it ten times more difficult to follow them.
Rule two: blend in, and change clothes as often as you can. Surveillance targets were more likely to remember clothes and distinguishing features rather than faces. Change a red T-shirt to a green one, or put on a baseball cap or some sunglasses, and you’ve effectively given yourself a new identity.
But there was no time to change clothes, even if the cadets had had them. The trio were moving quickly and with purpose. It was everything the cadets could do to keep up with them, let alone take steps to alter their appearance.
Rule three: use windows and mirrors wherever possible. If you can survey someone from behind a shop window, they’re unlikely to notice you. Even better, get ahead of them and use the side mirrors of parked cars to watch them. It might breach rule one, but nobody expects to be followed from the front.
Rule three was no good to the cadets. It was dark, there were few shops here and none of them were open. Parked cars were few and far between.
Rule four: carry items that give you an excuse for stopping if the target stops moving. A book, a newspaper, a bag of sweets. If you’re standing still but occupied, you don’t stand out.
But there was no chance of this. The targets were moving quickly and constantly.
Bottom line: the rules of surveillance were no good to them tonight.
Max had no idea what Lili had said to the three gang members who had hurried from the square and were now leading them deeper into the heart of the favela. All he knew was that they wanted to get somewhere fast. And as the cadets could not employ the usual rules of surveillance, they had to rely on their wits.
It was crucial that the trio didn’t look back and see Lili. They would surely recognise her in an instant. And as the cadets couldn’t change their appearance, they had to change which of them was the lead surveillance person.
They didn’t discuss it. They didn’t have to. It was almost as if they were thinking like one being. Max went first. He let go of Abby’s hand and strode after the trio as they headed uphill. There were plenty of people here, mostly young, many walking with an aggressive swagger, tinny music blaring from their phones. Max avoided looking at them, and went out of his way to walk around any groups of youths. Learn to be the Grey Man, he remembered Hector telling them. Unremarkable. Instantly forgettable. It will get you further than any amount of military know-how or unarmed combat techniques.
Bearing this in mind, Max tried to look confident, but not too confident. He kept a safe distance from the targets and took care not to look back over his shoulder, but to trust that the other cadets were following, again at a safe distance. He managed to follow them for four or five minutes before the road suddenly turned left and one of the boys he was following happened to look back. Their eyes met. Did he look suspicious? Did the boy think he was being followed? Max ignored him and walked straight past the trio, knowing this would stop them from thinking they were being tailed. Up ahead he ducked into a side street. He saw the trio pass and then, a few seconds later, Lukas followed them. There was a twenty-second pause before Abby and Sami walked past. He let them go and joined Lili, who trailed behind them.
The leapfrogging continued. When Lukas was spotted, Sami took over. He managed a full ten minutes before Abby had to take his place. By this time, the trio had reached the top of a hill in the heart of the favela. Here, as if there was some invisible cordon, the crowds melted away. It meant that following would be much more difficult. Fortunately, Abby’s stint was not a long one. Two minutes later, the trio came to a halt.
A full moon glowed overhead. The road had turned to the left. Max, Lili, Lukas and Sami peered around the corner. They saw an open-air basketball court with a high perimeter fence. A door in the fence swung open, but nobody was playing basketball. Beyond the court was a concrete building, three storeys high but strangely squat. It was larger than the others the cadets had seen so far in the favela and was in better repair, although the buildings around were in a worse state than any Max had yet seen. To Max, it looked like it might once have been an administrative building. It didn’t look like a place where people lived. It was heavily guarded. At the main entrance, which was about thirty metres from where Max stood with Lili, Sami and Lukas, stood four older gang members, maybe in their early twenties, openly carrying assault rifles. The ground-floor windows were boarded up with steel sheets. Along the edge of the flat roof were rolls of razor wire, silhouetted against the moon and the clear, inky sky. To the left, Max could see over the jumbled-up rooftops of the favela. In the distance were the twinkling lights of central Rio. He turned away from them as Lili spoke. ‘I think that’s where they’re holding Tommy,’ she said quietly.
It certainly looked likely. Why else would it be so heavily guarded? The three gang members they’d been following were making an effort to keep out of sight of the gunmen. They huddled in the shadows against a wall to the right of the basketball court. It looked to Max as if they had lost their nerve. They seemed to be arguing with each other, very quietly of course. A moment later, they moved further along the wall, down an alleyway and out of sight.
‘Maybe they didn’t like the look of the guards,’ Sami said. ‘I don’t like the look of them either. I think they will try to kill us if we get too close.’
‘You think?’ Lukas growled. Trust Sami to say it as it was. ‘What’s Abby doing?’
Unlike the trio, Abby was making no attempt to remain hidden. She was on the far side of the basketball court, by the perimeter fence. She had bent down, ostensibly to tie her shoelaces. But it was clear to Max that she was checking out the guards. The guards had noticed her. How could they not? A couple of them were talking to each other and looking over at Abby. But they didn’t seem to be too concerned by her presence: a teenager, and a girl to boot. They turned away and went back to guarding their posts.
Max, though, knew better. When he looked closer, he could see that Abby was not tying her shoelaces. She was groping for something on the ground. She looked back over her shoulder, caught his eye and nodded.
‘She’s about to do something,’ Max said.
‘She is going to put herself in danger,’ Sami agreed.
Max felt a surge of anxiety at the thought, but Lili didn’t allow them time to worry. She grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back the way they’d come. ‘Follow me,’ she told the others. ‘Quickly!’
Max just had time to see what Abby was doing. She was standing up and her arm had swung back, ready to throw something, Max didn’t know what. A stone, probably. But he saw it fly through the air and connect sharply with the head of one of the guards. Abby had a second stone. She threw it. It just missed a second guard. By that time, Abby had turned and was sprinting back to the cadets.
Then Lili h
ad dragged them out of sight. ‘Follow me!’ she said. ‘Run!’
There was no time to ask what was going on. It was almost as if Lili and Abby had a telepathic link: one seemed to know what the other was doing. All Max, Sami and Lukas could do was trust them. They ran back down the deserted road and followed Lili as she swung a right down a dark side street. As they turned, Max looked over his shoulder. Abby was running after them.
As soon as they had turned the corner, Lili and the boys stopped. Lili quickly removed her rucksack and pulled a full loop of paracord from it. Suddenly, Max realised what the girls had been planning. Lili unrolled the paracord, took one end and gave the other to Max. They stood on opposite sides of the street and held the paracord taut, about ten centimetres from the ground.
Then Abby came hurtling around the corner. For a second, Max worried that she wasn’t aware of the paracord stretched out at ankle height. It was dark, and the cord was difficult to see. But she clearly knew to expect something. Just when Max thought she was going to stumble, she hurtled over the cord like an athlete doing the long jump, then stopped, turned and gestured to Lukas and Sami to join her in the middle of the street. They were facing back the way they’d come when three of the guards came after them.
They were plainly not expecting a trap. They showed no sign of noticing Max and Lili crouching on either side of the street, and they certainly didn’t notice the paracord. All their attention seemed to be focused on Abby, and on Sami and Lukas, who were standing either side of her. Their weapons were slung across their chests, but as they ran they raised their rifles into the firing position, preparing to take a shot.
They didn’t get the chance.
All three men tripped over the paracord and fell heavily to the ground. In an instant, Abby, Sami and Lukas were on them. They jumped onto the men’s backs, preventing them from getting up or accessing their weapons, which were trapped underneath them. Lili was grabbing something else from her rucksack – cable ties to bind their wrists. But as she did that, Abby called, ‘Max!’