by Chris Ryan
‘What have you got?’ Falcon shouted, discharging his Taurus at the middle target. ‘Show me what you fucking got!’
His aim was wild, the rounds sparking off the brick walls, like a dozen firecrackers going off. Glass on the classroom windows cascaded. The air thickened with mortar dust.
The target was twenty metres away, fifteen now, and Gardner fought to maintain his composure. Some guys went batshit in the middle of a firefight. Others, like him, seemed to reach a new plane of calm.
Deep intake of breath, exhale, loosen your shoulder, he told himself.
The target’s face disappeared behind a carmine mist as the bullet erased his eyes, nose and mouth.
Falcon pumped four rounds in quick succession at the third target. The 9x19mm Parabellum chopped the guy in half, unzipping his guts. He stopped, dropped his PP-2000 and dumbly tried to shove his intestines back inside his stomach. Too late: Falcon dropped him with a neck shot, blood spraying across the kids’ drawings adorning the walls.
‘That’s what happens, bitches. That’s what fucking happens!’
‘Cool it, Rafa. Two more at the twelve.’
Gardner felt a pain sear the point between his neck and jaw. He raised a hand to the wound. Blood seeped from his ear; a bullet had grazed him, slicing off the lower tip of his ear, and dear God, it fucking stung.
In a frenzy now, Falcon pummelled bullets at the two Messengers. Five shots in each. He shot the second guy long after he’d dropped, rounds shredding his arms and legs, swearing at him in Portuguese.
‘Through the exit,’ Gardner shouted. ‘While we’ve got the chance.’
‘You see that asshole die?’ Falcon asked as they ventured out the back, into a playground of bleached grass, swings and roundabouts. ‘He took it real good, you know?’
‘Button it. I’m not interested. Just tell me the quickest way to the jungle.’
Falcon nodded left, like he was in a silent movie. To a small row of shacks to the left and up from the school. A low cattle fence separated the shacks from the flourishing undergrowth.
Almost there, Gardner thought.
Voices. Danger close. He peered around the corner. Four Messengers, forty metres away. Led by a guy with pecs the size of boxing gloves and biceps that looked as if he’d plugged his veins with cannonballs.
The sky bellowed a faint whup-whup.
‘What is it?’ Falcon said, seeing Gardner back-pedalling.
‘They’re outflanking us, mate. Head in the other direction.’
Gardner rushed to the opposite corner. Three Messengers appeared from that direction.
‘Pincer,’ he said, kneeling to unload a burst against the three targets. ‘Fuckers are coming at us around the sides. Rafa, take the left.’
The whup-whup grew louder. Incessant.
Gardner chopped down two of the Messengers, but the third had lined up his PP-2000. No time left to put down another burst. The guy released the catch.
Thwack!
Blood arced out of the Messenger’s chest, spraying Gardner in the face. Warm, salty fluid splattered his lips. His vision was dotted red. The Messenger sank to his knees, pawing at his throat. Gardner saw a Bell Ranger 206 helicopter, thirty metres off the ground, and a sniper tied to a lanyard, buzzing like an F1 car around a racetrack.
BOPE had arrived.
Gunshots to his six. He spun around. The Bell Ranger was chewing up the four Messengers attacking from the other flank. They fell like fucking skittles.
Gardner hauled Falcon to his feet.
‘Looks like your mates arrived in the nick of time. Let’s go and find a medic, get you patched up.’
‘I’ll be OK.’
‘Cheer up. They came back for you. Another few minutes and you – fuck it, we – would’ve been royally fucked. We owe them all a pint. Besides’ – he gestured to the ankle – ‘if you don’t tend to that, it’ll turn septic. Then you’ll be in a world of shit.’
Gardner scooped up his Colt Commando and escorted Falcon around the side of the building, the weapon aimed ahead in case any Messengers were desperate to get some.
The Bell Ranger circled the school building, sniper walloping Messengers in the back as they ran for cover. Three Big Skulls roared into the street, disgorging a dozen BOPE operators. They wasted no time putting rounds down, kicking in the doors of nearby houses. From inside each one Gardner heard the shriek of women and the crackle of gunshots. Across the street, two kids, thirteen or fourteen, unarmed, attempted to run into an alleyway. A BOPE operator unloaded his Heckler & Koch G3 sub-machine-gun, taking chunks out of the kids’ heads. When he approached them he kicked their bodies.
The Messengers moved back a hundred metres. A few stragglers sought cover behind bollards and on the rooftops.
Then Gardner looked on as a neat line of schoolchildren, dressed in pristine white shirts, pressed navy-blue shorts and polished shoes, brown satchels draped over their shoulders, walked through the street from sixty metres away.
‘Sponsored schoolchildren,’ Falcon said. ‘Their parents work as nannies or housekeepers for the rich people in Rio. Schooling is divided by address of residence, you see.’ He winced, trying to relieve pressure on his ankle. ‘These children are sponsored to go to school outside the favela.’
An eerie silence followed. Gardner realized that BOPE and the Messengers were participating in some sort of unspoken ceasefire. No one dared engage while the kids walked past, oblivious to the bloodshed and the Bell Ranger and the spent cartridges.
‘I need to sit down,’ Falcon said. He hobbled over to rest by the roadside. Gardner watched the surreal progress of schoolchildren along the street until it curved to the left ninety metres up, and they disappeared.
Once the kids had departed, the gunfire resumed.
Gardner spotted an ambulance bringing up the rear of the BOPE train. He turned to his left – and stopped in his tracks.
Falcon was gone.
12
1341 hours.
The pain was not so bad, Weiss thought. He had read somewhere that a man’s pain threshold was greater than a woman’s, despite the fact women had to experience childbirth. His ability to endure, he believed, was greater than most. As they pulled out his toenails one by one, he thought about how good it would feel to kill them.
He examined the tips of his nine surviving toes. Curly, hair-like matrixes remained, looking like the roots of upturned plants. They had rinsed him thoroughly: his toenails, the sliced left ear where his outer lobe had been sawn off, and the soft, moist ruptures in his mouth, which, an hour ago, housed four sets of perfectly good molars.
‘Not so tough now, huh, Mr Needle Man?’
Roulette sat on the metal chair, cupping a Swisher Sweet cigarillo between his hands. A spicy aroma wafted through the stale air.
‘Would you care for one?’
‘I don’t smoke,’ Weiss replied.
Roulette turned to the two goons. Lakers clutched a box cutter, Rolex a pair of tempered steel snips. Weiss wondered which one was next, as Roulette’s phone sparked up. He read the message, grinned and nodded to Rolex.
‘I’ve got some business to take care of,’ Roulette said. ‘Go with the snips first. Big Teeth says use it on his testicles.’ He nodded to Lakers. ‘While I’m busy you can go fetch the saw. Big Teeth wants his head by sundown.’
He blew smoke out his nostrils, then stood up.
‘Enjoy it, Needle Man,’ he said, and left, Lakers in tow.
‘Just you and me,’ Rolex said. He practised with the snips. ‘I’ll give you a choice. Fingers or toes?’
‘Let me think about it,’ Weiss replied.
Twenty years ago, when he was a fresh-faced contract killer, Weiss had made an almost fatal error. A mark he was trailing hired a bunch of thugs to pounce on him, and he had found himself bound up in a basement. Only a friend’s quick thinking saved him that day. Ever since, Weiss had taken precautions against being captured. He carried a four-inch blade tucked into
the buckle on his belt.
But it was out of reach.
‘So, what’s it gonna be?’
‘Your friend did my toe already,’ Weiss said. ‘How about a finger to match.’
Rolex did a head-shake smile. ‘You’re one crazy motherfucker.’
Weiss had no other get-out clause, no alternative exit plan. He wished he was in a James Bond movie, then he’d have some ridiculous gadget secreted on his body somewhere; maybe a poisonous spray screwed inside his watch.
But he had nothing. Just his statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She’d delivered him safely through six hundred murders. Weiss had evaded hundreds of cops, other contract killers, violent gangs and vengeful relatives. Now he’d got caught again. Perhaps he was getting too old for this line of work. Just as well that this was his last mission. He consoled himself with the thought that the pain was bad, but the reward – all thirty million of it – would more than make up for it.
Rolex stepped towards Weiss. ‘Shit, amigo. Looks like you puked up real bad. You’ve ruined your shirt.’ Acidic yellow and brown chunks were sprayed down Weiss’s shirt front. Rolex paraded around to the back of him and stopped. The plastic cord was fastened so tight around Weiss’s hands that the blood supply was constricted and his fingers were bloated.
‘Jeez, these fucking fingers… We tied you up tight,’ said Rolex. ‘Might take a couple of tries before I cut one off.’
‘This is your last chance,’ Weiss told him, trying to sound confident, in control of the situation. ‘If you let me go now, I’ll spare your family. I can’t promise your life, but your brothers and sisters and parents, they don’t have to suffer.’
Rolex laughed as he examined Weiss’s fingers.
‘I don’t got no family, man. How about this one?’ He isolated Weiss’s right index digit. ‘The trigger finger, amigo. Or in your case, needle.’
The touch of Rolex’s hand was replaced by something cold and metallic.
Weiss caught the sound of feet on the treads. The goons returning. He’d counted the stairs when they first dragged him up. There were twelve steps, he knew. They’d already cleared six.
‘Just a minute,’ Rolex shouted to the door, snips clamped loosely around Weiss’s finger.
‘I’m about to make a deal happen,’ Weiss said. ‘Thirty million. Work with me on it. Fifty-fifty split. Fifteen million dollars apiece.’ Pride prevented him from begging – he was always disgusted by those victims who broke down into a whimpering mess. But he thought that a gang kid low down the food chain, as Rolex undoubtedly was, might bite at such a big offer.
Rolex clicked his tongue. ‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s true, I swear. Why the fuck else would I be here?’
He paused.
The footsteps stopped.
‘Eighty-twenty, my favour.’
The door opened.
‘Fifty-fifty or nothing—’
Gun reports blasted Weiss’s ears. The snips fell away from his finger and he felt something warm and moist splash up against the nape of his neck, then trickle down his back. A distant clatter of gunfire, at the bottom of the stairs. Women, men, their voices cut short by the staccato bursts from automatic rifles.
BOPE operators flooded the room. Weiss counted four of them. Finding no one else inside the building, they turned to leave. Weiss’s hands suddenly sprang free and he let them flop by his sides. His arms were numb below the elbow. He felt the blood rushing through constricted veins, like a tunnel flooding. The operator who’d freed him knelt down beside him. He was wearing a handkerchief to disguise his identity; some BOPE operators, Weiss knew, also lived in the favelas.
‘Are you OK?’ The eyes were green, the forehead copper.
‘Yes, yes,’ Weiss replied in perfect Portuguese. He didn’t want to sound foreign, because an out-of-towner wandering around the favela would make the operator suspicious. Gang torture, though – that was common enough.
‘He’s dead, now. The others too.’
‘So… I’m free to go?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I fix cars, that’s all.’
‘Then I suggest you leave. You want my advice, stay clear of the school area. There’s a bunch of Messengers up there, and they’re not giving up without a fight.’
Weiss stood up. He was unsteady. He turned around to see Rolex holding his hands to his face. Melted eyeball seeped between his fingers, like fried egg white. Warm blood spewed out of a fist-sized puncture in his neck. The bullet had sliced the jugular vein. He was still alive, sucking in tiny breaths of air that flowed back out of the exposed wound.
‘Goodbye, my friend.’
Weiss picked up his coat and slipped on his boots. The right quickly became squidgy inside, as his big toe oozed blood.
He made for the stairs.
The living room had been turned into a shooting gallery. An obese women lay slumped on the armchair next to the TV. Both equally shot to shit. Weiss had to watch his step on the stairs, where Lakers sprawled face down. The BOPE operators seemed to ignore Weiss. And why wouldn’t they? As far as they were concerned, the Messengers were the only targets in town.
Weiss seized up as he made for the front door, raised a hand to his temple. An enormous pressure throbbed between his ears, as if a family of spiders was scuttling around his skull. He closed his eyes for a second and the spell seemed to clear.
His mind on the $30 million bounty, he said a prayer of thanks to the Virgin Mary. Once again, she’d come good for him. And he afforded himself a little smile, thinking how BOPE hadn’t just let a contract killer slip through their midst, but had actually helped him with his mission.
He followed the path to the school.
13
1405 hours.
Gardner cleared the low fence bordering the shacks, using its wooden posts as a lever to swing his body clear of the barbed wire. A smell of manure and ginger gagged him, watering his eyes.
The fence gave way to a thin line of caroba trees, piassava palms and khaki bushes. Gardner steered between their lone, prickly branches and pushed into the thicker vegetation. The buzzing of the Bell Ranger hushed, replaced by the squawks of macaws and parakeets. He felt the air swell with oxygen, prising open his lungs. Vine thickets shut out the light. His palms sweated, he could feel fear rising in him. The fear of a tight, dark space.
At last he emerged into a dome of secondary jungle. He wiped grime away from his eyes and, taking a look over his left shoulder, got his bearings. He’d entered the jungle at the north-west tip of Barbosa favela. When he’d inserted into the slum, he recalled, the jungle tapered north-west up a steep mountain to a summit several hundred metres above sea level. Six hundred metres to the south lay Corcovado mountain, its hunchback shape jutting against the skyline. If he adjusted his route westward and carried on for a couple of hundred metres, he’d be in line with the coded coordinates Bald had given him.
Fuck, Gardner thought. That phone call seemed like a year ago.
His stomach echoed like a cave. He hadn’t touched a morsel of grub since the previous night, but, juiced up with the knowledge he was nearly upon Bald, he got a second wind. He turned down the volume on the hunger, forgot about the aches and pains in his calves, and pounded on through the understory of the jungle.
He didn’t make as much progress as he would have liked, his pace hindered by the fact that the jungle floor was a dense mess of overgrown weeds, thorns, ferns, canes and shrubs. In primary jungle and deciduous forest, where tall canopies cut out much of the sunlight, the undergrowth is limited. But in this secondary jungle, where the canopies had been chopped down, sunlight had a clear run to the ground, and the vegetation flourished into a greasy tangle, as if the plants were knotted at the roots, forcing Gardner to concentrate on his every step. He wished he had a knife to hack through the overhanging vines and thickets. He just had to use the stock of his Colt to push aside spiky bushes.
In a way, Falcon had done Gardner a favour with his disapp
earing act. He’d served his purpose in leading him to the edge of the jungle. Still, something ate at him. Why the hell was Falcon so desperate to avoid his BOPE muckers?
Another thought scratched at the base of his skull: who kitted out the Messengers with hi-tech PP-2000s? The Russian-manufactured sub-machine-gun was the darling of elite forces and special police units, not the kind of firearm that was easy to buy on the black market – and he doubted they came cheap whatever the source.
Gardner stopped. He’d managed to get himself hooked up on the edges of a rattan bush, known in the Regiment as the ‘wait-a-while’ bush, on account of how long it took to free yourself from one. All I fucking need, he thought, as he began to work loose the needles from his clothing. Millions of the fuckers, it seemed.
No sooner had he untangled himself than his ears pricked. He paused.
A campfire crackled. Thirty metres ahead, the thick vegetation retreated, giving way to a small clearing. A sweet smell greeted him, fruity and toasted. He instantly recognized that smell as belonging to the Cohiba cigars Bald was so fond of smoking.
I’ve found him!
Gardner stared ahead at the camp, and saw that, although he’d come out to Rio to help the mucker who’d once saved his life, this had also been a personal mission. About proving a point to the pen-pushers in Whitehall: that he still had the skills and the balls to be a Blade. They’d given him the boot because of his injuries. Flying here, negotiating the favela, rescuing his mate: he could still cut it.
His bowels roiled. He approached the clearing, listening and looking out for any signs of human habitation. John might be there, he reasoned, but a Messenger might have trailed him and could be lying in wait.
Ten metres from the clearing, he planted a boot in front of him and felt something squelch underneath and hiss like a deflating car tyre. His eyes shot down – and he jumped back. Boa constrictor. The snake’s head shot forward, mouth wide open, teeth snapping at his ankle. Darting to the left to avoid its bite, he paced around the side of the vicious fucker, all seven feet of it. It hissed at him again, its blue tongue tasting the air, and slithered on.