by Mark Dawson
“I—”
Paulo didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence. The man reversed the rifle and crashed the butt into his face. He fell forward, onto his knees, unable to defend himself as a second jarring blow connected with the side of his head. Paulo toppled over to the side, darkness rushing up to meet him.
78
Milton replaced the monocle as he climbed the stairs and looked through it with his left eye as the glowing green wash descended over everything. He reached the room at the top with the bodies of the two men that he had shot. Their bodies were where they had fallen. He hadn’t noticed that there was a skylight overhead, and the clouds that had obscured the moon had passed while he had been downstairs. It was still dark, but he could tell from the way the girl gasped that there was enough dim light for her to see them. He cursed himself as the girl bumped up against his legs. He pulled the door closed a little, but he knew that it was too late.
He flipped the monocle up, turned to her, and smiled. “It’s all right,” he said, trying to reassure her. “They were bad men. They can’t hurt you now.”
She bit her lip.
“Come on,” Milton said, beckoning her forward.
She shook her head.
Milton cursed himself for his own stupidity. He should have moved the bodies out of sight, but he had wanted to move quickly.
“Shut your eyes,” he said, smiling and pointing up at his own eyes as he closed them to demonstrate what he wanted her to do.
He lowered the monocle again, pushed the door with his foot, and made his way through the room. The girl was holding his hand. He couldn’t see if she had her eyes closed, but there was nothing he could do about that now.
He reached the door at the other side of the room and took a moment to collect himself. The headache was worse now, and his vision flickered with distortion every now and again. He waited until it cleared, then reached down and used the heel of his right hand to push the door handle down. He nudged the door open, allowing it to swing out into the dark space beyond.
He looked through the monocle and saw two men: Paulo was on the ground with another man standing close by.
The lights came back on.
Milton was blinded. He blinked his eyes, trying to rid himself of the flare that had flashed across his retina as the monocle amplified the light.
He heard the clatter of a rifle and felt the impacts like three hard punches to his chest.
He staggered back, the wind knocked out of his lungs.
The girl screamed.
Still blind, Milton clasped Alícia tightly and bundled her back into the office.
79
Paulo groaned. His head was ringing, and he could feel the warm sensation of blood running down the side of his face. He heard a buzz of electricity and opened his eyes. The lights had come back on. The man who had struck him gaped. He raised his weapon and pulled the trigger. The gun roared, sending a fusillade across the loading bay.
Paulo blinked furiously until he could see a little better. The second man came out of the door. “What the fuck?”
“There’s someone in the office. They came for the kid.”
“You get him?”
“I think so. Go over there and cover the door. We need to check.”
The man raised his rifle and scuttled around the wall. They were both aiming at the door; if Milton and Alícia were in there, they were trapped.
“Come out,” the man called in Portuguese. “You’re hurt. You got nowhere to go.”
Paulo couldn’t see Milton. Had he been shot? He thought of Alícia. The girl was in that room; maybe she was on her own.
The first man was creeping ahead, his attention fixed on the office door. There was a crowbar resting against the wall a few paces to Paulo’s right. He pushed himself up and took a step, fighting back the dizziness. He took another, reaching down and lacing his fingers around the cold iron.
“Come out!” the man yelled across the room.
He didn’t notice Paulo as he took an uncertain step toward him, nor did he see as he gripped the crowbar in both hands. Paulo drew the bar back and—like a batter taking a swipe at an inbound fastball—he stepped into a swing that terminated against the side of the man’s head. He was unconscious before he hit the floor, his body sprawling out limply across the concrete and his AK slipping from his grip. Paulo grabbed the rifle. He had never held one before, let alone fired one, but he had seen how the others held theirs; it couldn’t be that difficult. He cupped his left hand beneath the forestock, slid the index finger of his right hand through the trigger guard, aimed at the second man, and pulled the trigger. The rounds sailed high above the head of his target, drilling the concrete wall.
The man ducked down instinctively, then spun in Paulo’s direction, bringing his own AK to bear.
He saw the blur of movement in the doorway to the office. Milton was there, stepping out of cover, his rifle raised as he took aim at the second man. The two of them fired at almost the same time: Milton was a fraction earlier, two rounds slamming into the man’s chest a moment before he pulled the trigger. Paulo flinched as a volley of bullets streaked just to the side of his head, cracking into the wall behind him and sprinkling him with brick dust.
Milton stepped out of the office, his rifle aimed at the man he had just shot.
“Paulo,” he called out, “are you okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m all right. What about you?”
“All good,” he said, and Paulo saw the black sleeveless ballistic jacket that Milton was wearing.
Alícia came out of the office behind Milton. She saw Paulo and, before Milton could stop her, she sprinted toward him. Paulo picked her up in his arms and lifted her off the floor. She burrowed her head into the notch between his shoulder and chin and held on as tightly as she could.
“Your head,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s okay,” Paulo whispered to her. “I’m fine. Are you all right?”
“I’m scared.”
“I’m scared, too. But that’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”
80
Milton checked that Paulo was okay; he had received a nasty blow to the side of the head and was unsteady on his feet. Milton would have preferred to give him a moment to get his balance back, but they didn’t have the luxury of time; they had to get on the move. Milton could have carried the girl, but she would have slowed him down, and it would have made him a sitting duck. He was happy to hand her over to Paulo, and he could see that she was happier that way, too. That suited him very well.
He went outside first, telling Paulo to stay back with the girl until he was happy that the way ahead was clear. There was enough light from the moon and stars in the clear sky overhead that he didn’t need the monocle, and he removed it and put it in the pack. Paulo found the SIG that Milton had given him and, at Milton’s request, he picked it up and handed it back. Milton put the assault rifle back into his pack, too, put his arms through the straps, and adjusted it so that it was comfortable. He checked that the SIG was ready to fire.
There was no indication that there were any other traficantes in the neighbourhood, although Milton was acutely aware that there were plenty of places where it would have been easy enough to hide. He had already been luckier than he deserved; the vest had stopped the three rounds that had found their mark, arresting their momentum before they could blast into his chest. His ribs and sternum were sore from the impacts, and he knew from experience that he was going to have another collection of bruises to commemorate his good fortune.
“Come on,” Milton said. “We need to hurry.”
Paulo moved forward with him, carrying Alícia in his arms. The girl wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her legs around his waist, her head buried in Paulo’s neck. She had seen things that a child should never see; it had given Milton fresh motivation to get her as far away from this place as possible.
“Stay close behind me,” Milton s
aid.
“You don’t know the way as well as I do,” Paulo said.
“You guide me. But stay back.”
Paulo nodded. Milton saw the young man in a different light now. He had been fearful before, and, while Milton could see that he was still afraid, he also showed resilience. He had shown selflessness beyond what Milton had expected, and Milton might never have made it out of the warehouse if it hadn’t been for Paulo’s bravery in taking the crowbar to the shooter. He could have made a run for it, and he had not. Milton wouldn’t forget that.
“Ready?”
Paulo put his arm around the girl’s shoulders and held her a little more tightly. He inclined his head.
Another fusillade of fireworks shot up from halfway down the Hill and exploded high overhead. The distraction that the celebrations provided might have been fortunate, Milton thought; the gunshots could easily be mistaken for firecrackers. It might be the reason why they had not seen any more traficantes. It didn’t matter; Milton was not interested in analysing his good fortune, only in taking full advantage of it. He set off, the SIG held in both hands, the muzzle angled down to the ground, ready to bring it up and fire should the need present itself.
He started by retracing his steps. The passages and alleyways were quiet, but they were also very similar to one another, and Milton was quickly unsure if he had drifted away from his previous route. It was easy enough to know that they were going in the right direction—they just needed to make their way down the Hill—but Milton knew that there would be areas that it was best to avoid. They turned into a narrow alley that descended by way of a flight of stone steps. A lattice of electrical cables had been strung above, and one of the walls was painted with graffiti in support of the Brazilian football team. The steps were slick with grime, and Milton proceeded carefully, the muzzle of the SIG pointing ahead.
The steps levelled out and deposited them at a junction where two other alleys joined this one.
“Go right,” Paulo said.
Milton waited a moment, confirmed that the other two passages were clear, and then made his way into the alley on the right. It continued on a downward slope and quickly passed between the flanks of more substantial buildings than the shacks that they had passed nearer to the top of the Hill. They passed a church, with a colourful mural of Jesus with a dove perched on his outstretched hand. There was trash everywhere, and a trench along the wall ran with sewage that the residents had poured out of buckets from the windows above.
Milton saw the shape of a person coming toward them. It was a middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt and shorts, weaving left and right as he slowly climbed the Hill. He was drunk, but Milton hid the pistol against his leg until the man had navigated around them and continued on his way. Milton waited. He could hear the sound of a crowd from not too far ahead and, over that, the throb of bass.
“Where are we?” Milton asked.
“Halfway down. Rua Um is ahead. We have to take it.”
Milton remembered the baile funk that he had passed through on his way up the Hill. The crowd might not be such a bad thing now.
Milton took off the ballistic vest and dumped it into the industrial bin that they had just passed. There was a bottle of water in the pack; he poured it over his face and scrubbed as much of the paint away as he could. He shoved the SIG into the waistband of his jeans and arranged his jacket so that it fell over the butt of the pistol, hiding it from sight.
“Nice and close,” he said.
Milton took a breath, clenched and unclenched fingers that itched with tension and latent violence, and continued toward the sound of the music.
81
The crowds were as thick as when Milton had climbed the Hill, and they provided excellent cover as they followed the road back to its base. They reached the junction with Estrada da Gávea where Milton had arranged to meet Marks, but there was no sign of the old man’s BMW.
Milton took out his phone and dialled Marks’s number.
It rang and rang, but Marks didn’t pick up.
“Shit,” Milton said under his breath.
“What is it?” Paulo asked.
Milton ignored him. He activated the tracking app. The dot that represented Marks’s phone was moving away from them, heading west. Milton cursed again. He was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this.
“We can’t wait here,” Paulo said. “We’re too close.”
Marks wouldn’t have left them. There was no way, and that left only one possibility: he had been compromised.
“Milton,” Paulo hissed urgently, “look.”
Milton turned and looked up the Estrada da Gávea. There was a large blue-painted building just before the road turned left, and there were two cars just in front of it. They were bullying their way through the crowds, and, as the lead car made its way down the slope and drew a little closer, Milton could see that there were shirtless men leaning out of the windows hooting and hollering for the men and women slowing their passage to clear the road. The men were wielding rifles and, as Milton watched, the man leaning out of the passenger window fired a round into the air to encourage the crowd to part a little more quickly.
“That’s them,” Paulo said.
Milton made a quick assessment. If the traficantes had taken Marks, it was possible that they had come to the conclusion that he was there to make a rendezvous with Milton. The thought occurred to Milton just before he noticed a man with a white T-shirt loom out of the crowd around them and reach for the butt of the pistol he had pushed into the waistband of his dirty jeans. Milton leapt for him, grabbed the man’s wrist, and bent it up. The man was strong, but Milton had leverage on him and, with a firm yank, he pulled back on the man’s fingers and heard the snap as he broke them. The man yelped with pain and hopped back; Milton let go of his mangled hand, reached around for the SIG, and shot him point blank in the chest.
The man’s shirt was suffused with blood as he stumbled back into a group of men and women who were queuing for food from a mobile cart. He toppled into the cart, overturning it. A woman screamed, and the crowd scattered in sudden terror.
Milton spun. There was a Renault behind them, the driver penned in by the panicking crowd. He raised the SIG and aimed it at the driver, skirting the car until he was able to open the door. He reached in, grabbed the driver, hauled him out, and dumped him on the asphalt.
There was a loud blare as the traficantes sounded the horn of their car, and then another rattle of automatic gunfire.
Milton opened the rear door and reached for Alícia. The girl was rigid with fear.
“You drive,” Milton yelled to Paulo. “Get us out of here.”
82
Paulo didn’t need to be asked twice. He shoved the Renault into reverse, spun the wheel all the way around, and stamped down on the accelerator. The people who had been gathered around the food cart had scattered, spooked after watching Milton shoot the traficante and then fleeing out of the path of the fast-approaching cars with the gun-toting hoodlums hanging out of the windows. The car juddered as the rear wheel ran over the torso of the man Milton had shot, and then bumped into the raised wall that demarked the left-hand side of the road. Paulo changed into first, and the car shot forward, racing down the Hill toward a sharp left-hand turn. Paulo kept the accelerator pressed down to the floor, the car just holding its line and narrowly avoiding a parked truck.
They completed the turn and raced toward a parked bus that was pointed down the Hill and another truck headed in the opposite direction.
“Hold on,” Paulo yelled.
There was a narrow gap between the bus and the truck. Paulo nudged the wheel, changing course just a fraction and sending them straight down the middle of the road. It didn’t look as if there would be enough space for the three vehicles to fit on the road, but Paulo was confident in his judgement. The Renault raced ahead, the right wing mirror striking the side of the bus and the denuded stump drawing sparks as it carved a track down the flank of the vehicle
. The gap narrowed, and the other mirror was knocked off, the mount scratching against the truck and the metallic scrape competing with the roar of the engine.
Paulo glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that the traficante’s car had also forced its way through the gap. Milton was looking back through the window, too. He had his arm around Alícia, holding her close to his body.
“Faster, Paulo,” he yelled out.
This part of the road was straight and reasonably quiet save for the men and women who idled along the sidewalk. Paulo changed up to second and then third, the speedometer showing fifty as he shot around the left-hand side of a slow-moving bus and then swerved back again just in time to avoid the moped that was struggling up the Hill.
The road was jammed up ahead. Paulo stomped on the brakes but, just as he thought that they were trapped, he saw that the sidewalk to the left was clear. There was a stall selling T-shirts beneath a green awning, but there were no customers, and the owner was leaning back against the wall as she stared at the phone in her hand. Paulo turned the wheel to the left, mounted the pavement and then straightened out. The car careened through the wooden pillar that supported the awning and slammed through the table that held a selection of flip-flops. The tarpaulin and the disturbed T-shirts fell on the windscreen, blinding Paulo as he yanked the wheel and left the sidewalk just before he would have struck the group of men in Flamengo tops who were walking up the Hill. They regaled him with furious hoots and hollers as he straightened up, the tarpaulin catching the breeze and sailing away from the car to drift back down to earth behind them.
Paulo looked up into the mirror again; he couldn’t see the traficantes.
“Go!” Milton yelled. “Go, go, go!”
Paulo swerved left into Avenida Niemeyer, leaving the clutter of the favela for the wider, emptier streets that he knew from racing. He changed up to fourth, the car racing up to sixty as he headed east toward Vidigal.