Ruthless

by Chris Ryan

  18

  Murder Hole

  Abby’s body felt ice-cold. The bullet wound in her arm was throbbing. She was dizzy. At any other time, she would have been irritated by somebody like Tommy putting his arm around her shoulders and quietly and calmly telling her to breathe deeply. Right now he was a comfort.

  She was only vaguely aware of what was happening on the roof. The ladder was lying next to her. Sami was somewhere behind. Lukas and Lili were in front of her, each at one corner of the building. They held their weapons high and pointing downwards, as though preparing to fire at whoever was on the ground.

  A wave of nausea passed over her. She drew a deep breath and looked up. She could see the stars, bright and numerous. They were beautiful. Much more beautiful than this stinking favela. Had they really only spent a night here? It felt like much longer than that. Days. Weeks. She was so tired. Perhaps she should just lie down here, look at the stars and fall asleep.

  ‘Wake up!’ Tommy said, and he shook her. There was gunfire. That, more than Tommy’s encouragement, forced Abby to rouse herself. She looked around sharply. Everything was spinning.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Tommy said ‘Abby, are you okay?’

  She nodded woozily. She could hear someone shouting. It was Lili.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ Abby mumbled.

  Lukas was at the front left corner of the building, Lili at the front right.

  There was a low wall around the perimeter of the roof, about a foot high. There were square holes in it, no bigger than a hardback book. They were just large enough for the barrel of an assault rifle to poke through and for the user to see the street below through the weapon’s sights.

  ‘Murder holes,’ Sami had said moments before. ‘Holes in buildings to point guns through. In Syria, they were everywhere.’

  Lukas and Lili lay on their fronts, their weapons pointing through the murder holes.

  There were about fifteen Blue Command gang members at the front of the warehouse now. They were keeping their distance from the main entrance, and shouting at each other. As Lukas watched, he saw three of them approach the door.

  Lukas wasn’t certain how many rounds he had left. He would have to use them sparingly. He switched his weapon to the semi-automatic setting and released a single warning shot onto the ground between the gang members and the front entrance. The three gang members scampered back. The others melted into the shadow of a building opposite. A couple of them raised their own weapons, but there was nothing to shoot at: Lukas and Lili were invisible, protected by the wall around the perimeter of the roof.

  If Max wants time, Lukas thought, he gets time.

  But that wasn’t all he wanted.

  ‘Lili,’ Lukas called, ‘you need to call down to them in Portuguese.’

  ‘And say what?’

  ‘Say that we need Guzman and the Jackal. Say that if they come, we’ll give ourselves up.’

  Lili hesitated. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Since you ask,’ Lukas said, ‘I think it’s a terrible idea. But our only other choice is to get off this rooftop and leave Max to his fate.’ He looked back over his shoulder at Abby. ‘And Max isn’t the only one who might not make it,’ he muttered before shouting across at Lili. ‘Can you do it?’

  Lili didn’t reply immediately, then she shouted something at the Blue Command guys down below. Lukas could only make out the words ‘Guzman’ and ‘BOPE’. He watched the gang members carefully through the sights of his weapon. At first they looked surprised. Then a couple of them grinned. It looked to Lukas as though they thought Lili’s request was the height of stupidity. One of them gave an instruction, and four gang members scurried off into the darkness.

  ‘What now?’ Lili called.

  ‘Now we wait,’ Lukas said. ‘And we hope Max knows what he’s doing.’ He looked over his shoulder again. ‘Whatever it is, buddy,’ he muttered to himself, ‘do it fast. Abby can’t last much longer.’

  Beatriz was incredible to watch. Despite being limited by the chain attached to the ceiling, she moved around the warehouse quickly and efficiently. Occasionally she would give Max an instruction: ‘Move that camera over here.’ ‘Pass me the soldering iron.’ Otherwise, she worked in speedy silence, rewiring cables and soldering components, a pencil behind her ear and a screwdriver between her teeth.

  When he wasn’t needed, Max kept his rifle trained on the entrance to the warehouse. He trusted the other cadets to keep Blue Command away from the door. When he heard a bark of gunfire from above, he knew they would be doing exactly that. But he had seen the BOPE at work. He knew that when they arrived, they might have armoured vehicles and bulletproof riot shields. They would gain access to this warehouse in an instant, even though it was locked from the inside. The cadets on the roof, and Max with his solitary firearm, would be in no position to stop them.

  ‘How long’s it going to take?’ Max said.

  ‘Longer than it needs to, if you keep asking me questions,’ Beatriz replied.

  ‘A ballpark would be good. It’s not like we have all the time in the world here.’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Beatriz said. She glanced at him in a way that made Max decide it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask if she could shave a few minutes off that. He went back to watching the door.

  ‘Hey, Max,’ she said as she unscrewed a panel in the side of the video camera. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘We were sent to rescue Tommy. He wouldn’t leave without you.’

  She stopped what she was doing. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. Beatriz, you need to keep working, otherwise –’

  ‘I’m doing it, I’m doing it.’ She continued to unscrew the panel. ‘He risked his life for me? A poor girl from the favela? I knew he wasn’t like other boys. I’ll make it up to him when we get out of here.’

  A thunder of gunfire outside.

  ‘Let’s hope you get the chance,’ Max muttered, and as he spoke he heard a voice from above. It was Sami calling down to him.

  Max looked up.

  ‘It’s Abby,’ Sami called. ‘She’s in a bad way. She’s losing a lot of blood.’

  Max glanced at the door, then down at his weapon. He knew that what he was about to try was incredibly risky. At some point in the next few minutes, he would have to tell the other cadets to flee the rooftop. Because there was no point in them all dying.

  ‘Use the ladder to get away from the roof,’ he called up. ‘Get out of the area then switch your phones on again so the Watchers can locate you. Get to the pick-up point and contact Hector.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ Max called. Then he muttered to himself, ‘Probably.’ He could feel the heat of Sami’s stare from above. He looked up and did his best to smile. ‘Hey, Sami,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look after Abby for me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell her …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Just look after her.’

  Sami nodded, then was gone.

  It was very clear to Sami that Lukas didn’t like the plan. It smacked of leaving a friend in trouble, and the cadets had been trained not to do that. But Max had been clear and Sami trusted him.

  Besides, if Abby was going to get off this roof, it had to be now. Her eyes were rolling and she looked like she was about to lose consciousness.

  ‘Sort out the ladder,’ Lukas said. ‘We’ll hold them back as much as possible.’ And to ensure that the Blue Command personnel kept their distance, he attempted to fire a round between them and the warehouse. His weapon clicked uselessly. Lukas swore under his breath. ‘I’m out of ammunition,’ he said.

  ‘Leave your weapon where it is,’ Sami said. ‘If they see it pointing at them, it will be enough to hold them back. Come and help me with the ladder.’

  Lukas nodded. Carefully he propped the rifle so its barrel still poked through the murder hole. Then, bending
low, he and Sami retreated to the centre of the roof. Abby was there, shaking terribly. Tommy had one arm around her.

  ‘We have to leave,’ Sami told the English boy.

  ‘What about Beatriz?’

  ‘Max will get her out.’

  ‘How?’

  Sami fixed him with a serious stare. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? We can’t just leave without any idea of what’s happening. I came here to rescue Beatriz!’

  ‘And that’s what we’re doing, I promise you. We have to trust Max.’

  ‘Trust him? I don’t even know him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lukas cut in. ‘And he doesn’t even know you, or your girlfriend. So ask yourself what he’s doing down there, risking his life.’

  Tommy had no answer.

  ‘Trust him now?’ Lukas muttered, and Tommy nodded.

  The ladder was lying alongside them. Lukas and Sami took an end each. They turned it so it was parallel to the long side of the warehouse. Sami checked that Lili was still at her murder hole, then he and Lukas lifted one end of the ladder and fed it through their hands so that it bridged the gap between the warehouse and the roof of the building next to it. The adjoining building was just a little higher, which meant that the ladder sloped upwards as it rested against the edge of the neighbouring roof. The ground below was deserted – none of the Blue Command personnel at the front of the warehouse dared head this way because of the cadets’ rooftop firing points. Sami ran over to the front corner of the roof, where Lili was still in position.

  ‘I’m out of ammunition too,’ she said.

  ‘Leave your weapon there,’ Sami said. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  She nodded, glanced nervously over at the hole in the roof, then propped up her weapon and scampered back to the ladder with Sami.

  They only had one live weapon now: Sami’s. He covered the side street below the ladder while Lukas crossed on all fours. The ladder bowed precariously under his weight, but he reached the opposite roof in a few seconds, then turned quickly and held out a hand to indicate that someone else should cross.

  ‘You go,’ Sami urged Tommy.

  Tommy nodded, clearly nervous. He moved across the ladder much more slowly than Lukas had. Halfway across, his right foot slipped between the rungs. For a horrific moment, Sami thought Tommy was going to fall. But he regained his balance and crossed, shaken but unharmed, to the other side.

  Lili had managed to get Abby to her feet. Abby was deathly pale, but she managed to stagger towards the ladder and, with Lili’s help, get down on all fours. Lili put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I can’t take you across,’ she said. ‘The ladder won’t hold us both. Will you be okay?’

  Abby didn’t answer. Sami wasn’t even sure she’d heard what Lili said. An expression of grim concentration crossed her face. She winced as she stretched out her wounded hand. The ladder wobbled badly. Sami and Lili exchanged a worried look, but all they could do was trust in Abby’s ability.

  She moved forward. Then she stopped. Sami couldn’t see her face now, but her shoulders were trembling. She was breathing heavily.

  And then he heard voices.

  He realised he had taken his attention away from the side street down below. Nobody had approached from the front of the warehouse, but at the back end of the street were three children. They weren’t armed, nor did they wear Blue Command bandanas. But they were drawing attention to Abby on the ladder …

  Sami raised his weapon. He didn’t want to scare the kids, but he had no option. He fired a single round onto the road safely in front of them. They scampered away, but one of them loitered at the end of the street and Sami had to fire a second round.

  Only he couldn’t. The weapon clicked uselessly. He too was out of ammo.

  Abby was halfway across. The boy below, realising he was safe, flew along the side street towards the front of the warehouse. Lukas stretched his arm out, desperately reaching for Abby, but she had stalled, her head low, her whole body shaking.

  ‘You can do it!’ Sami shouted. And then, not knowing quite why, he added, ‘Think of Max!’

  It did the trick. Abby raised her head and moved forward. The ladder wobbled again, but she was suddenly within Lukas’s grasp. He took hold of her good arm and, gently but powerfully, helped her onto the opposite rooftop, where she collapsed in exhaustion.

  Lili went next. Cat-like, she was over the ladder in seconds. Sami slung his weapon across his back. He might be out of ammo, but it could still act as a deterrent if somebody saw him with it. Clambering onto the ladder, he started to crawl. But he was only halfway across when, looking left, he saw the kid who had run around to the front. He was standing at the end of the street, pointing up at Sami and shouting to someone out of Sami’s sight. Sami crawled fast across the ladder. As he reached the next building, out of the corner of his eye he saw a gunman appear. He hurled himself onto the roof just in time: a hail of bullets flew through the air and hit the ladder, which exploded and fell noisily onto the street below.

  Breathlessly, Sami looked at the others, who were crouching low, ready to receive him. ‘They know we’ve left the roof,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to stop them advancing on Max!’

  Abby was clutching her wound. More blood was seeping through her fingertips. ‘We have to help him,’ she whispered.

  Lukas shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We have to trust him. He told us to get to the pick-up point. That’s what we’re going to do.’

  And painful though it was, Sami had to agree. He looked across the rooftops. There were several buildings very close to each other, their roofs jumpable, if they gave Abby a lot of help. The favela glowed in the night, illuminated by moonlight.

  ‘Turn your phones on, everyone,’ he said. ‘And let’s move.’

  19

  Exit Wound

  Max heard the gunfire outside, and could figure out what it meant. The Blue Command personnel at the front must have seen the cadets escaping the roof. They knew there was no longer any fire support from the top of the warehouse.

  And that meant it was only a matter of time before they came for Max and Beatriz.

  ‘How much longer?’ he demanded.

  ‘Four minutes.’ Beatriz was sweating heavily and her skin was smeared with dirt. ‘What’s happening out there?’

  There was shouting outside. It was close. Too close.

  ‘I think Blue Command are getting ready to breach the warehouse,’ he said.

  ‘You must stop them!’ Beatriz said.

  ‘Working on it,’ Max muttered. He knelt down and aimed his weapon at the door, just above head height. He fired. A bullet hole appeared. More shouting. Max had the impression that whoever was outside the door was retreating. He held his position, his finger resting lightly on the trigger of his weapon. ‘We don’t have four minutes!’ he shouted.

  ‘I’m doing my best, okay?’ Beatriz’s voice was tense. Max could sense her moving about quickly behind him. From the front, another clamour of shouting and the echo of something banging against the front door to the warehouse. Max released another round. The bullet drilled into the front wall just to the left of the first one. Another bullet hole appeared. Again the shouting receded.

  But there was a new sound. A mechanical sound. A low, dirty noise. Max couldn’t see what vehicle was approaching but he thought he recognised the sound from earlier in the evening, when the BOPE’s armoured vehicle had advanced towards the blockade.

  ‘They’re here!’ he yelled. They only had a few seconds before the BOPE would storm the warehouse. Max decided to release one more round to buy them as much time as possible, but as his finger squeezed the trigger, there was an empty clicking. He was out of ammo.

  ‘Ready!’ Beatriz shouted.

  Max jumped to his feet and ran back to where Beatriz was standing amid the cables and the cameras, the junction boxes and the TV screens.

  He checked everything was in position. Halfway betwe
en Beatriz’s working area and the entrance to the warehouse, pointing at an angle towards the door, sat a video camera on a tripod, unconnected to anything else. It was set to record, and a red light blinked on the front. Two large TV screens faced the entrance. They were switched off. There were more cameras behind each of the spotlights in the corners of the warehouse. These had cables snaking into Beatriz’s complex communications arrangement, but nothing to indicate that they were recording.

  Yet.

  Max ran to the door and raised the beam of wood that locked the door from the inside. Then he retreated. ‘Kill the lights,’ he said.

  Beatriz flicked a switch to her right. It was only as the bright spotlight in each corner of the room dimmed that Max realised what an electrical hum there had been in the warehouse. The hum faded. Darkness engulfed them, broken only by two beams of light leaking in through the two bullet holes in the front wall. The beams were bright and sharp. There was clearly a strong light source in front of the warehouse. It had to be the armoured vehicle.

  ‘Get ready,’ Max whispered. ‘This is going to be noisy.’ He stood behind Beatriz, put his left arm around her neck and awkwardly held the rifle to her head with his right hand. ‘Do exactly what I say.’

  He didn’t hear Beatriz’s reply, because at that moment there was a deafening crash.

  The door burst open. The laser beams of light shifted as the end wall of the warehouse buckled and the door crashed open. Max shaded his eyes as the armoured vehicle’s lights flooded in through the open door. The vehicle reversed a few metres, then battered the building again. It was more for effect, Max realised, than to create a larger entrance. As it reversed a second time, he saw the silhouettes of several BOPE personnel spill out of their vehicle and rush through the door with bulletproof riot shields. They formed a protective line in front of the entrance while more armed personnel entered and took up firing positions behind them. Max estimated that there were sixteen armed men in total. The headlights flooding through the damaged doorway threw long shadows across the warehouse.