by Andrew Mayne
He's looking back at me, grinning, at the end of the street while they wait to cross the intersection.
I grab a rock, hurl it and shout, "Big words for somebody riding bitch!"
The rock hits him in the arm as he raises his hands to protect himself. His partner guns the moped at the wrong moment, off-balancing him, and the rock thrower falls off the back of the bike.
I race towards him and kick him in the chest before he can get up. He falls back down and I put a foot so far into his balls he'll have to see an oral surgeon. "That's for being a homophobe."
His friend turns the moped around and drives it straight at me – which would be a great move if he was riding something with more horsepower than a riding lawnmower.
I grab the handle bars like they're steer horns and twist the bike to the side. He has to stick a leg outwards to keep himself from falling over.
I kick him in the knee, buckling his leg, and he falls down, with his moped landing hard on his inner thigh.
"Give me your pants!" I yell at him.
He looks up at me, terrified. I'm not sure if he understands English, but I can tell he knows the man his friend just called a homosexual is now demanding that he take off his clothes.
I'd be scared shitless too.
"Now!" I shout, shoving a foot into his chest.
He starts unbuckling his jeans and sliding them off.
"Your zappos too!" I demand.
His friend is holding his nuts and crying. I walk over and grab the hem of his soccer jersey and whip it over his head.
He raises his hands and wails, "Não mais!"
The driver starts to get up to make a run for it, but I throw an arm around his neck and slam him into the pavement before he can get three feet with his falling pants.
He takes them off and I let him run away. I put them on, then slide his shoes on my feet. They're loose-fitting Adidas, but a better fit than the rubber boots.
Rock thrower is struggling to get up, so I help him and take his wallet and phone from his pocket then kick him in the ass, sending him into a concrete wall.
I realize I'm being observed as I spot a mother holding the hand of her little girl watching the whole fracas.
I point to the crying teenager and say, "Bandidos."
The woman gives me a hesitant nod then walks the other way.
I pick the moped off the ground and take off down the street in the general direction of Maracanã stadium.
I'd feel like a bad ass if it wasn't for the fact that neither one of my assailants was older than eighteen or weighed more than 130 pounds. I just beat up children and robbed them.
Fuck it. They started this with an attempted hate crime. Better it happened to me than some poor kid who decided to dress a little different or be himself.
It just so happened that I needed a reason to steal, and those two assholes gave it to me.
21
PARANOIA
I DRIVE another mile in the general direction of the stadium then turn into a small alley so I can take a look at what I stole from the teenagers on the moped.
Both phones are crappy generics and have screen locks in place. I should have beaten their pin codes out of them. Next time. Still, on one I can spot two thick ketchup stains over the virtual buttons for 5 and 9.
When a company like iCosmos hires you to take a billion-dollar piece of technology into space, they make damn sure you’re not going to screw things up by using dumb passwords or malware infected thumb drives that let the competition know vital secrets. You’re forced to endure endless seminars on security from in-house specialists and researchers they bring in. Sometimes I listened.
I remember a woman explaining that 20% of four-digit pin codes were couplets – two digits that repeated. Like, 1212 or 3030.
I’m going to hazard a guess that the genius who decided to throw a rock at me immediately before coming to a stop at a busy intersection probably slept through all the security seminars they sent him to at asshole school.
5959
Nothing.
Three more attempts before lock out….
9595
Click. I’m in.
Yikes. There’s a photo on his home screen that could be considered another layer of security. I can’t tell if it’s his mother or his girlfriend. No wonder he’s throwing rocks at strangers.
Focus, David. Now that we have a working phone, what are we going to do with it?
Capricorn said something about Twitter…
Check @CapricornZero.
I manage to make my way through the Portuguese menus and pull up a browser and direct it at Twitter.com/CapricornZero.
There is one and only one tweet there:
Proceed to the destination.
Thanks for that wonderful bit of helpful advice. Nothing about enemies trying to kill me. No mention of who the hell I’m supposed to look for.
More importantly, there’s nothing telling me if I can trust this mysterious voice.
Out of curiosity, I go to CNN.com to see if this made the news.
Uh, yeah.
BREAKING: Russian Officials Claim US Astronaut Shot Two Onboard K1 Station
Scattered reports indicate that a US astronaut working for iCosmos may have killed two of his crew members with a gun smuggled onboard the Russian K1 space station. Even more bizarre, reports are coming in that the astronaut, believed to be named David William Dixon, may have stolen a space capsule and killed another crew member in a rapid ejection procedure and is now in orbit or at large.
Jesus Christ! How can things possibly get any worse? And the page just refreshed…
BREAKING: Stolen iCosmos Spacecraft Spotted Making Emergency Landing in Brazil near Rio de Janeiro.
There’s photo and video of the Unicorn firing the thrusters in the middle of the bay and then launching back into the sky over the city.
That was minutes ago.
I’m so screwed.
Oh lord.
I feel my stomach tightening into a knot that’s about to condense into a neutron star. I want to throw up.
None of my training prepared me for this kind of crisis.
My instinct is to call a lawyer. That would be great advice if I just walked into the kitchen and saw a pool of blood and my wife was missing.
That’s probably a horrible idea if Russian kill squads are out to get you and there’s supposed to be some highly-placed mole in the US government that will rendition you to oblivion.
Lawyers are great for figuring out legal maneuverings. My primary concern is predator drones and snipers.
I look up at the sound of rotors and see a white helicopter flying overhead towards where I’d just came from. It’s a Eurocopter EC 155 – the same make and model I saw right after I landed.
It’s got to be the same one. That’s not good. It means somebody is really interested in the neighborhood I just came from. I need to get going.
I do a quick count of the cash in the wallets. There’s a few hundred Reals. I have no idea what that will buy me here. There’s also two credit cards with different names. If they’re still valid, that might be helpful.
I take the moped out of the alley and head towards the highway that will get me to the stadium as quickly as possible.
But before I get there, I need some kind of plan. Capricorn could just be waiting for me to show up with the black square and then murder me on the spot.
As much as I want to believe I’ll be met with open arms and told everything is going to be okay a few minutes after the truth of the matter is told to the world, I have no reason to believe that.
I’m skeptical that Capricorn’s contact is even going to let me survive the encounter. Whoever went through this much shady shit to pull this off might want to keep their tracks covered.
If this McGuffin is as important as they say it is, and could cost thousands of lives because, um, because, then maybe I need to be very careful who I hand it over to.
More important, is prote
cting this life. I have to ensure that David Dixon, most wanted man in the world and in space, doesn’t meet a quick death in the parking lot of a soccer stadium.
I’m a guy that goes fast and lets people do stupid things to my body. I’m not a spy. I’m not a cop. All I know is from watching movies and I’m pretty sure if my life depends on doing parkour across rooftops, I’ll be a bloodstain on a sidewalk before the bad guys even have to draw a weapon.
What I do know is fear and how to manage it. I know how to think on my feet and not do something stupid.
Walking into a dangerous situation, not knowing what’s in store for me, is the height of stupidity.
22
HIGH GROUND
I DO my fourth pass down the street that runs next to the stadium. At the north end there's a small parking lot. It's nothing like the vast acres of pavement that surround most American sports complexes.
However, there's a massive walkway that connects the stadium to a train station on the other side of a highway. I assume that's what everybody uses when they go see a game.
Right now, there's not a lot of "everybody." The parking lot has a dozen school buses and I see some high school-aged kids in soccer uniforms walking back and forth, but other than that, the stadium is kind of dead.
While that should make it easier for Capricorn's contact to find me, it also makes it a cinch for anyone else. With my name and face all over the news, a thin crowd is probably worse than a dense one.
I park the moped next to a row of motorcycles at the west end of the street.
I'm getting an even more anxious feeling than my already impossibly-high level of anxiety. Walking straight into the parking lot feels like a bad idea.
I don't know who or what I should be on the lookout for or how to spot a Russian sniper from a Brazilian giving me a longing look across the street.
Survival training didn't prepare me for any of this. I can use the fishing line in the crash kit to make a rabbit snare or catch a salmon, but I don't know how to garrote someone's neck or tell if I'm about to step on a booby-trap. That's why I need to take it slow and stupid.
The guard at the west gate doesn't even ask me for a ticket and just waves me through.
I'm not quite sure what his job is, other than to keep out anything on more than two legs.
Instead of going straight to the parking lot, I get the sudden inspiration to take a look at things from higher ground.
I take an elevator all the way to the top deck, glad I don't have to make my way up or down the ramp when ten thousand soccer fans are flooding in.
The top section is a ring that opens to the outside on one side and the massive open-air stadium on the other.
The players on the huge green field look like miniatures from all the way up here, but it's still pretty easy to follow the ball as it's being kicked across the field by high school teams. The first few sections are filled with other teenagers cheering them on.
An announcer is calling the game over the PA as if it were a major sporting event, adding to the excitement.
There's a near miss and everyone is on their feet screaming and cheering like only Brazilians can do. Even from here it seems pretty thrilling.
I leave the seats and head towards the far end of the level that overlooks the parking lot. Maybe from here I can spot my contact in a trench coat pretending to read a newspaper as they look out from under their fedora.
There's a long wall in this area with a few closed food stands and some doors leading to the stadium and others to closed sections. Even out here, the announcer and the roaring kids still manage to echo all the way through the corridor.
But other than the noise from the stadium, everything is dead. The only other person is a workman on a break leaning on the railing looking at the ground below.
The announcer lets out a scream in Portuguese as something very riveting must have happened and gives an energetic play-by-play of the game in progress.
I'm kind of worried about my life right now, but he seemed to make it sound like this was the play of the millennium, causing me to turn and look towards the nearest set of doors.
Curiously, the workman doesn't move.
He doesn't even flinch at the sound of the announcer's yelling.
He keeps his gaze on the outside of the stadium.
To be more precise, he's watching the parking lot.
Sometimes you have to make a split second decision. It's better to look a fool later than not be looked upon at all.
I turn on my heel and walk the other way.
Probably too quickly.
I make a bee-line for the nearest set of doors and enter the stadium.
Okay, David, you're probably just overreacting. Don't be a racist, not everyone in South America loves soccer.
Hah, who am I kidding? Of course they do.
I walk down to the landing and make a sharp left on the next deck and keep going until I reach the ring that separates the upper and lower levels.
I drop into a chair and try to look as inconspicuous as a man can when he's the only person in a sea of eighty-thousand empty seats.
I glance back towards the entrance and see the workman – who is probably not a workman – stepping into the stadium and looking for someone.
Looking for me.
Part of me wants to think this man is Capricorn's contact and we're only minutes away from drinking a couple of cold cervejas together in a bar before calling a press conference and explaining that it was all a misunderstanding.
One look at his face tells me otherwise. It's unflinching, serious, and staring right at me.
If this was Capricorn's contact I think I would have been greeted by a smile or a wave.
Not this man. He eyes me then checks to see if there's anybody else nearby.
I'm at the lowest part of the upper deck and have nowhere to go. If the man is about to pull anything other than a sandwich or a set of binoculars out of his suspiciously tactical-looking backpack that I should have noticed before, I'm fucked. Seriously fucked.
There's no place to run.
23
IMPULSE CONTROL
WE LOCK eyes and then something strange happens. The man's grim expression flashes in an instant to a smile. "David!" he says, pronouncing it a little more like "Da-veed," than "Da-vid."
If he'd met me with the smile a second ago I'd think this was Capricorn's man, or Capricorn himself. Instead, he waited too long. He checked to see if I was alone and realized that even though the stadium is almost empty, the two of us stand out up here.
He starts to walk down the stairs towards me, holding up a friendly finger, telling me to give him a second.
I freeze, not because I believe him, but because I have no idea what else I should do.
His backpack slips from his shoulders and he makes an "oops" face as he kneels down to pick it up.
Your misdirection needs some serious work, pal.
I hazard a guess this is his attempt to draw a gun on me, so I don't wait to find out.
To live a long life as a pilot, sometimes you have to just go with your impulse and do the thing logic tells you is a horrible idea.
I grab the railing and leap over.
I do not look down.
I do not aim.
I don't hang there like some kitten in a motivational poster.
I jump into the fucking air over the edge.
It's a twelve foot drop to hard concrete.
I should have hung over the edge like that goddamn kitten.
BAM!!! My feet hit the ground so hard the echo reverberates across the stadium.
I'd like to thank my parachute instructor for teaching me how to not break my ankles on a hard landing. But, HOLY SHIT this hurts.
I bend into the fall and my ass touches my heels.
As painful as that was, the upside is the noise attracted everyone's attention.
I bounce back up into the air like a Whack-A-Mole that refuses to be whacked.
&
nbsp; I don't stop to see if Workman is following me. I race towards the next set of steps and start leaping down half a floor at a time, using the railing to keep me from falling on my ass when I lose my balance.
I've attracted a bit of attention as people are starting to watch from the lower sections.
Who the hell is this maniac that just jumped an entire level and is now running towards the field?
A security guard in a yellow vest starts to jog towards the end of the row I'm leapfrogging down. He's obviously concerned that I'm about to do something stupid on the field.
And he's right.
BANG!!! I watch as the corner of a blue seat to my left disintegrates.
Workman is probably on the rail with a gun aimed at me.
On a gut impulse, I flatten myself on the steps.
BANG!!! A seat five feet away gets a hole punched straight through it.
He's behind me, firing at an angle. That means if I lay flat he can't shoot me until he changes position.
The trick is knowing when he's about to give up his sniper position to run to a new firing spot.
I watch the security guard, who for some mysterious reason, has had a sudden change of heart about trying to intercept me.
He's standing on the field, cowering a little and watching the section above me. His head moves to the right as he tracks something.
Workman is on the move.
I jet out of my cower into a slightly less-cowardly jog that probably only makes my spine that much more easy of a target.
I take row after row of steps in great leaps and get a flash of inspiration to try to jack-rabbit it by not moving in a straight line.
BANG!!! A seat shatters fifteen feet in front of me. Workman doesn't have his gun rest yet and is firing from the hip.
I reach the last row before the field and do a dive over the barrier.
BANG!!! I hear the hit of the bullet right behind me.
Referees are blowing their whistles and the announcer is somehow yelling even more excitedly into the microphone, telling the players to clear the field.
Which I guess is the smart thing to do, but doesn't really help me out all that much.