“Oh, my…!” Paul started to say and then he caught his breath. “They wouldn’t dare! The international repercussions! It could mean war! It’s so incredible that they would even think of doing something so hideous!”
She leaned closer to the Skype view. “Out in the desert, in the test area, there were pieces of burnt wood and melted aluminum tubing. I think that they built a few bleachers there, as part of the test, to see what the blast would do to them. Bleachers like those in the Olympic stadium. And remember, we are talking Errabêlu, remember? No regard for Normals, right?”
Paul swallowed what he was about to say and closed his eyes. “You’re right. This is probably an effort toward some larger goal of theirs. Heaven only knows what that might be. You’ve done excellent work. I take back everything I said when you started this investigation. Now I need to make up for my lost time. I’m not sure, but I think the Olympics opening ceremony is tomorrow night. I’ll leave immediately for Rio. For all we know, the bomb might already be in place at the sports stadium there.”
“That’s a good idea,” Capie said, with a grimace. “While you do that, I’ll go directly to Sao Paulo and try to track the detonators. If I can find how they plan to deliver the bomb, that will help us stop them.”
Paul reached out, holding his hand in sign language, thumb, pinkie and index fingers extended, middle fingers folder over. “I love you, dear, with all of my heart,” he said longingly. “You be careful. Take your satellite phone with you—”
She grimaced distastefully. “I haven’t had time to figure out how it works yet.”
He grinned. “Remember the ten percent rule, dear. You have to be—”
“Ten percent as smart as the device you are trying to operate,” she interrupted him with a glower. “You’ve said that before.”
“And remember to keep it charged. I love you.”
“You be careful too, Dom. And I love you,” she told him with a slow shake of her head and the hint of a smile.
• • • •
Paul was forced to admit it, with all eight Oni talismans strapped on him, he looked pretty odd. Three armbands on his arms, two overly large belt buckles and three heavy medallion pendants hanging around his neck not only looked weird, it was awkward to carry or even to walk around in a normal fashion. But there was little choice. Even all eight talismans barely provided the power of McDougall’s talisman (or that of any other wizard of Errabêlu). He thought it highly likely that he would need that power of those talismans too, heading into what could very well be a battle situation.
Now the groundwork. Where in Rio would the Olympics be held specifically? And what would be the schedule? Would there be, like in years past, an opening ceremony? If so, when and where would that be?
There was a lot to learn and, he strongly suspected, very little time left in which to learn it.
• • • •
Forgoing sleep, and also throwing caution to the winds, Capie portaled westward, straight across the North African Sahara desert, and out into the Atlantic not far north of Cape Verde.
From there she turned south-westward, lengthening her stride and paralleling the eastern coast of Brazil. She passed to the south of the city of Rio de Janeiro, approaching the coastal city of Santos at nearly the same time that Paul was nearing the Marianã Stadium in Rio.
Just north of Santos, she made her last portal jump, now airborne and flying to the northwest over rugged country, on a direct bearing towards the Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. Her first stop, once she got there, would be to find the Gol Airlines computer network and hack into it. Then she would need to check the Olympics schedule, to find out how much time she had in order to stop this vile plot.
• • • •
In the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Paul hitch-hiked on top of a tractor-trailer riding east on the Via Dutra, approaching the city center from the west. The ride was bumpy and noisy and he didn’t care much for the smell either. However, the truck did obligingly change over to the 101 freeway and take him nearly all the way downtown, to within two miles of the Maracanã Stadium.
The sun was low in the western horizon. According to the Internet, sunset would occur locally at 5:24 p.m. And the opening ceremony would start at 6 p.m. That wouldn’t leave him much time once he actually reached the stadium to search for the bomb. He flew off when the truck reached the cloverleaf near the waterfront, landing lightly on the asphalt of a side avenue, the Monsenhor Manuel Gomes Road.
And then he leaned forward, dropping into a fast run.
“Steve Austin, eat your heart out,” he muttered, casting an internal spell to increase the flow of O2 into his blood stream, and the purging of CO2 and lactic acid from his muscles. He ramped up his speed to thirty miles per hour. He could have gone faster, but the pedestrians and vehicle traffic kept getting in his way.
Maneuvering through the city streets took him to and then through the grounds of the Museu Nacional. Past that, he tap danced over several sets of railroad tracks and a divided highway.
And up to an eight foot tall fence which, with a little additional assistance from another spell, he leapt over.
Into the stadium parking lot. Well, one of them anyway. And full too.
The opening ceremonies started in just two hours. Two hours to search the largest stadium in Brazil, the second largest in all of South America, with a seating capacity of over 78,800 spectators. Just thinking of all of the places to search in a facility of this size seemed daunting.
On the other hand, like a dog trained to sniff out explosives, the first thing he planned to try was an aerial detection spell of ethylene oxide. Trotting over to the nearest emergency exit door, he unlocked it with a flick of the fingers and ducked inside.
• • • •
According to the cargo records of the Gol Airlines, the single crate in question had been offloaded from Flight 408 from Caracas and then shipped to the business address of a Usinagem de Precisão (Precision Machining) in the nearby city of Jundiai, a little over thirty miles away. A quick check of the Internet revealed the address to be located at the Comte Rolim Adolfo Amaro-Jundiai State Airport, apparently at a hangar not far from the flight line. She was headed there now, as fast as she could fly. Her watch told her it was 4:34 p.m. local time.
• • • •
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. El zippo. Nichts. Ninguna cosa. Rien. A big fat zero.
There was a chance that he had missed it, obviously. His search wasn’t as complete and as thorough as he would have liked it to be. On the other hand, he was assuming that this bomb (or bombs, plural?) would be massive, weighing a thousand pounds or more, and that they would be placed in a location to inflict the greatest amount of damage and causalities. And be placed in a spot without it being obvious what it was and also escaping the notice of the hundreds of security personnel and police wandering around on a regular basis.
That sort of cut down on the possibilities. And he had examined all of them.
And nothing.
It wasn’t here. For a few moments, he considered the possibility that he and his wife had jumped to the wrong conclusion. They could be totally mistaken about the whole chain of events. But Paul dismissed the thought. He would go back over the stadium all over again. And again, if need be. There were just too many lives at stake. If he and Capie were wrong, then they would know that in just a couple of hours. Then they could laugh about it and go home. One way or another, it would be over with. At that time, he could quit looking and take a rest. But not until then.
Nervously, he checked his watch. It was 5:12 p.m. He cast a spell in an attempt to calm himself.
He headed back to the place where he had started the first search and began a second one.
• • • •
She touched down lightly in front of a small hanger to the east of the airstrip and walked over to a small side door. The knob was locked and there was a padlocked hasp too. The two locks hardly slowed her down at all and she strod
e through the entryway into the building. However, there was nothing to see. The building’s interior was completely deserted except for some paper litter scattered around on the floor.
“Quem é você? O que você está fazendo aqui? O que você quer? (Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?)” demanded a voice from behind her at the doorway.
She spun around. The voice belonged to a middle-aged man wearing dirty mechanics overalls, with heavy jowls and a short black crew cut. With a rapid snap of her fingers, she immediately froze him in place.
“I don’t have time to be courteous about this,” she snarled. “Forgive me for being rude.” With another snap of her fingers, she created an avatar of the guy. At the appearance of a duplicate of himself, the eyes of the man grew incredibly wide and beads of sweat instantly arose on his forehead.
Capie turned to the avatar. “How long has this hangar been empty?”
“Only an hour or so,” the avatar replied in Portuguese. The mechanic groaned, his eyes darting back and forth in panic. Capie ignored him.
“Tell me about this place,” Capie gruffly commanded of the avatar. “Who was here? What did they do? What happened to them and the stuff that was here?”
“Four men, I think, moved in a month ago. The sign they hung up said ‘Precision Machining’ but I never saw any customers and the doors were usually locked. I don’t know what they did. A few trucks came here, making deliveries. Then, this morning, I come in early, to work on engine on bosses’ plane, two hangars over. I get here at sunrise, just in time to see a huge plane land here. A big four engine one, with a rear cargo ramp. Looked North American. Even though runway here is only 1,400 meters long, big plane has no problem landing, with room to spare. Taxied over here and the rear ramp, she drops open. Two men get out. The big hanger doors here opened up and a fork lift loaded two large pallets covered with tarps on board. After that, the ramp, she goes up, the two men get in and the plane takes off. A beautiful sight, that. Didn’t need the whole runway then either. Then the four men, they are still here. An hour ago, they load the forklift onto a trailer and drive off in two big trucks. They left the hangar all locked up. That’s all I know.”
She shook her head in amazement. Of course. All the pieces fit together nicely now. The bomb in Iran hadn’t been detonated on the ground. It had been dropped from a plane! And that’s how they planned to attack the Olympics, by plane, from the air.
They had left early this morning, with more than enough time to get to Rio before even the opening ceremony. So where had the plane gone? Was it just circling around in midair somewhere? Or was it on the ground at another small airstrip someplace, waiting to take off again?
Those answers she didn’t have. But one she did. If she and Paul didn’t stop that plane, nearly everyone inside the stadium would die horribly in the fireball of a gigantic thermobaric fuel air explosion.
She dug the satellite phone from a pocket and stepped outside to get a clear shot at the satellite. It was time to call Paul.
THIRTEEN
Maracanã Stadium
Av. Maracanã
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
August
Friday 5:35 p.m. BRT
Paul’s satellite phone ‘rang,’ playing the invisible monster sound effects from the film Forbidden Planet.
He was hovering ten feet over the roof of the stadium, doing another visual inspection of the structure’s exterior and still not finding anything out of place or suspicious. He quickly dug the satellite phone from a pants pocket and answered it.
“Dear, I was just about to call you.”
“Uh, huh. I bet,” Capie responded with more than a little sarcasm. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the Maracanã Stadium. I’ve just about finished the second sweep of the place. No dice. No bomb here.”
“And I’m in Jundiai, a small city thirty miles northwest of Sao Paulo,” she told him. “The bombs, and there are two of them, were assembled here, at a small airport. They left on a large four engine prop plane of some type, early this morning, not long after dawn. I’m told it looked North American.”
“Probably a Hercules C-130,” Paul responded automatically. “They’re all over the world. Even the smaller countries have one or two of them stashed away somewhere. So, the $64,000 question, where is the plane now?”
“Not far from Rio is my guess,” Capie said quickly. “Since it’s only, what, twenty-five minutes to the opening ceremony.”
“Let’s waste no more time then. You start an air search from your end. I’ll stay here and stand guard in case it shows up. Call me if you spot it. And good luck.”
• • • •
The time element was really starting to bother Paul and he couldn’t stop fretting about it. If the attack wasn’t supposed to happen until 6 p.m., then why had the Hercules aircraft left Jundiai so early in the morning? Why not wait until an hour before the opening ceremony started and then takeoff? An hour is all they needed in a C-130 to fly from Sao Paulo to Rio. And where were they now? Flying around somewhere in the interior of Brazil? Or out at sea? That made no sense. Maybe they needed to pick up something or somebody else at some other airport? But where?
A quick check of Wikipedia told him that the C-130 only needed a runway 3,600 feet in length even when fully loaded. That got him to thinking. Even the shortest of local runways was probably longer than that.
He levitated higher in the air, climbing to 200 feet, running another 360 degree visual scan of the horizon. It was getting late and the sun had already set behind the Mantiqueira Mountains, and even twilight was fading away fast. Beneath him, he could hear the roar of the crowds through the open roof of the stadium. The opening ceremonies had already started. No surprise there since his watch told him the time here was 6:10 p.m.
“Uncle Sam, please.”
The simulacrum appeared, hovering beside Paul.
“Where do you think their plane is?” Paul asked. “Best guess.”
“A local airport,” the image answered firmly without hesitation. “The Iranians will want to be out of sight until their attack but they will also want to be nearby, to increase the odds in their favor of a successful outcome under nighttime conditions.”
Paul nodded in agreement. It made sense. For them, a short flight also lessened the time that local authorities could intercept the Hercules as well.
He called up a map of southeast Brazil on an internet display and started looking for local airports. There were at least a dozen of them. With a quick spell, he opened up a microportal, the other end of which was ten miles overhead. Then he created a second display, greatly magnifying the image through the microportal. It was almost like looking down at the Earth through Google or Bing maps, except, now that the sun had set and dusk was fading, it was getting hard to make out details. A light amplification spell solved that problem.
He started searching at the closest airport, the Galeão International. The C-130 was unlikely to be there. Too public a place, too out in the open. But it was the closest. If not there, then he would check the Santos Airport next.
• • • •
Capie was flying along at 5,000 feet on a general heading to the east northeast, more or less in Rio’s direction, as she carefully scanned the airspace and terrain around her, looking for any planes at all. She saw more than a dozen airliners heading either toward or out of Sao Paulo. Nothing else.
She was thinking pretty much along the same lines as her husband and wondering where to look for the terrorist plane. Her watch said the time was now 6:15 p.m.
She kept scanning, the frustration building up inside her with each passing minute.
• • • •
Just as he thought. There were no C-130’s parked out in the open at Galeão International.
The time was 6:45 p.m.
He pulled out the cell phone and called Capie.
“Seen them yet?” she asked.
“No,” he replied in a frustrated ton
e. “Nothing on your end either, huh?”
“No.”
“I’m starting to wonder about that,” Paul admitted. “We’ve been assuming that they would attack at the start of the opening ceremony. What if we are wrong? I mean, here it is almost 7 p.m. and there’s no sign of them. What if they picked a different time?”
“I know that tone of voice,” she said uneasily, her posture suddenly rigid. “What are you thinking?”
“You know how the opening ceremony goes,” he said in a cold sweat. “There are speeches, presentations and such, followed by the Parade of Nations where they introduce the athletes by country, in alphabetical order. The Iranians might wait until—”
“Until the Israeli athletes come out on the field!” Capie hissed.
“My thought exactly.”
“What a political statement that would make!” she growled as she clenched and unclenched her left hand repeatedly in anger. “The Taliban got off easy compared to what will happen to Iran if they succeed.”
“Ah, but we aren’t going to let them succeed, now are we, dear?” he declared. “I’m scanning the local airports from near space, in case they are parked at one of them.”
“I’m only fifty miles west of you now,” she informed him. “But it’s slow going. It’s more difficult searching in the dark.”
“Tell me about it,” he commented sarcastically.
“I’ll be there in another hour or so, at this rate.”
“I’ll let you know if they show up before then,” he promised as he hung up the call and started a search at the Santos Airport.
• • • •
Not at Santos either, which was also a fairly sizeable airport and too public a place. The next closest was Jacarepagua, a few miles to the southwest of Rio. It was much smaller, consisting only of a single runway. A quick visual search up the length of the tarmac there was conclusive. Not there either.
It was 7:28 p.m. and fully dark now. And still no plane.
Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Page 16