War Lord (26 page)

Delaney translated and got a grin and a burst of Portuguese from Robredo. Delaney said, ‘Adauto says it won’t be needed, and he says he’s got enough men to handle any situation that might arise.’

‘How many men?’

‘Ten, includin’ himself and the driver.’

Meanwhile, Petinski, fiddling with her pack, had extracted her iPad. She fired it up, presented the screen to the sergeant and said to Delaney, ‘Inform the sergeant we have a camera in the favela. It’ll allow us to check out what’s going on in there when we get closer.’

From his smile, Robredo was either enthusiastic about this, or her – I couldn’t tell.

Petinski seemed pleased that he was pleased.

I would be pleased to inform him that there was a chance she could do the splits. Maybe later.

‘Please, for you to get in truck now,’ Robredo said haltingly.

Yeah, pretty much everyone seemed pleased.

Delaney locked his vehicle with the remote and we followed the sergeant to the rear of the truck. As he opened the door, a wave of body odor and gun oil rolled out over us. Inside, men in helmets and body armor with FN FAL 7.62mm assault rifles between their knees were pressed together like black-clad sardines. The sergeant barked an order and room was made for us somehow.

Petinski stepped up first, followed by me, then Delaney.

‘
Agent
Petinski, now, is it?’ I asked her behind. It chose not to reply.

Petinski got to her seat, shaking everyone’s hand along the way. The door closed and red light flooded the darkness, illuminating all manner of equipment on the walls of the truck, from axes to climbing gear. The truck shuddered as it got underway, the smell of diesel exhaust leaking into the cabin. We accelerated up the hill, everyone swaying from side to side, then lurched around a corner. The incline got steeper and the corners sharper, but that didn’t seem to slow the truck at all. Either Robredo and his driver were in a hurry, or they didn’t care to be a slow-moving target.

I heard Petinski’s iPad chime. Its screen came to life and the men beside her turned their faces away quickly to preserve their night vision. After a few seconds, she glanced at me then back to the screen, a scowl on her face. Something wasn’t pleasing her.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘The camera.’ She handed over the device. ‘Press rewind.’

I touched the arrow and the white noise in the frame became the picture of a lanky man in loose clothing pointing a handgun at the camera from the street below, holstering the gun in the front of his pants, then walking backward out of view, into blackness. I ran it forward and watched the lanky guy in loose clothing walk out of the blackness, take a gun out of the front of his pants and point it at the camera. An instant later, white noise.

‘They got the camera,’ she observed.

Fuck. Who finds a tiny camera nestled into a darkened corner at four thirty-five in the morning, for fuck’s sake? I let Delaney know that we’d lost the camera.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he reassured me. ‘These guys know what they’re doin’.’

I needed reassuring.

Petinski stuffed the tablet into her pack as the truck came to a stop and the handbrake ratcheted on. External speakers squawked, and Robredo’s voice boomed into the night.

The truck’s back door burst open and Petinski, Delaney and I were almost pushed out by the eagerness of the men to get their boots on the ground.

‘What’s he saying?’ Petinski asked Delaney as the PA gave the night a good shake.

The CIA deputy yelled over feedback, ‘He’s sayin’ that if anyone makes any trouble, his men will bring hell into their beds.’

Seemed like the perfect segue into a joke about my ex-wife, but there wasn’t time. Meanwhile, the men had formed up in a line in front of the truck. Petinski, Delaney and I stayed behind them, mist that was more like steam drifting around us. About fifty yards farther up the hill, the floodlights on the compound’s wall illuminated the night. Due to a narrowing of the street, the truck could get no closer, at least not without bulldozing through someone’s front steps. It was a still, windless night. Nothing moved, other than the mist. Maybe Robredo’s threat worked. Speaking of the man, he got out of the truck and joined us. Delaney had a quick word with him then informed us, ‘I told him about the camera. He said it didn’t matter.’

I wouldn’t have expected him to say anything different and I should have felt the same way; so why didn’t I?

Robredo barked a command and the unit advanced up the street in a line abreast, Delaney, Petinski and I bringing up the rear. But then a sudden boom split the night and the man in front of me fell backward, splashing me with warm wet fluid. I looked down on his face and saw that there wasn’t much of it left, explaining the warm wetness, the remains of his steaming skull reminding me of a large half-eaten Easter egg full of strawberry ice-cream. I turned to look for Petinski and a round cracked like a dry stick as it zipped past my ear, the boom from the rifle that fired it following an instant later.

Jesus!
I ducked. Robredo’s men had split up and run for cover. I was alone with the body spread-eagled on the road. I grabbed the man’s rifle in one hand and his collar in the other and dragged him back behind the truck as Robredo’s men began returning fire. I patted down the dead man and located four mags for the FN in his ammo rack along with a Ka-Bar knife. I stuffed all of these into various pockets and relieved him of his rifle. Then the body at my feet began to shake, the heels of his boots tapping a random beat against the ground.

I ran back up the street, hugging the shadows. Accurate single shots . . . there was a sniper up ahead somewhere. There were plenty of towers up inside that fortress, perfect hides for a shooter. The dead man had been right in front of me. If he’d moved a couple of inches to the left or right, it would be me doing a tap dance on the pavement. And if I hadn’t turned my head to look for Petinski . . .

Robredo had taken a knee behind a rough retaining wall and was shouting into his cell phone. His men were on the move, teams of two leapfrogging each other, closing the distance to the compound, using whatever cover presented, shooting as they went.

‘Cooper! Here!’ Petinski. I scuttled up to her position and found Delaney beside her, Glock drawn, eyes wide.

‘Thanks,’ I told her.

‘What for?’

‘Being here.’

Muzzle flashes sparkled just inside the compound’s main entrance. Full automatic fire from a belt-fed light machine gun. Red fluorescent pencils of light lanced through the night and skipped off the road beside us, and shouting filled the blackness along with gunfire. Lights, weak incandescent lights, went on here and there as the people of Céu Cidade woke up to the gun battle. Ahead, the searchlights on the compound wall snapped off. The world went dark but for the little multicolored floaters that hung in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see for shit. Shots rang out from somewhere in our rear. We were being cut off, the situation deteriorating fast.

Robredo’s men began retreating, not firing, unsure where the attacks were coming from. Two of the men were wounded, being helped along by their buddies. The sergeant joined us and spoke rapidly with Delaney.

‘Another two units are on the way,’ said Delaney, passing along Robredo’s news. ‘And there’s a chopper inbound.’

I hoped it had a minigun. Failing that, sharp shooters in the doors. I tapped Petinski on the shoulder. ‘Follow me. Stay close.’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the reinforcements?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Petinski hesitated, but then changed her mind. ‘You’re impulsive, you know that, Cooper?’

I made a dash for the truck, giving Petinski no choice but to follow. Impulsiveness had nothing to do with it. I just didn’t want to arrive too late to find another person I knew – Shilling – killed.

The truck wasn’t far, and we made it in a handful of seconds. I jerked open the back door, Robredo’s men swearing and shouting around us, pissed at being pushed back, and helped myself to a coil of rope, a pair of flashlights and a tomahawk. I ditched the rifle, threw the coil over my shoulder, handed Petinski one of the flashlights and we went off to find the alley reconnoitered the previous night.

We broke into a run. This time, Petinski was half a yard ahead. I pulled the NVGs from my rucksack and juggled them with the tomahawk as the path zigzagged up the hill. We soon came out of it into the open intersection, the golden lights of the favela I’d seen away in the distance the night before now glowing a dirty yellow behind a veil of fog rising up the valley.

‘What’re you going to do?’ Petinski asked, adjusting her NVGs before fitting the straps over her head. ‘Wait a minute . . . you don’t know, but that never stopped you before, right?’

‘We’re going over the wall, hence the rope.’ I gave it a pat while I considered the details.

‘And the tomahawk?’ she asked.

‘Scalps,’ I replied.

The passage at the base of the compound wall was as dark as a drain. I slipped the NVGs’ double lenses over my head and the world became the familiar Kermit green. I scoped out the intersection and found what I’d hoped to find – a nest of densely tangled electrical wiring feeding into a large drum: a substation. A cluster of those wires disappeared over the compound wall. I pulled the Walther and shot three rounds into the drum. A section of the internal compound went dark. That should do it. Now that the lights were off, I didn’t want them being turned back on.

‘This way,’ I said, and jogged down the lane, stopping twenty yards or so from the dwelling Petinski vaulted into on our last visit.

‘Again?’ she asked and took off the NVGs before I could answer. She handed them to me. ‘Can’t climb with these on.’

Sucking in a few deep breaths, one foot forward, she bobbed back and forth, judging distances and heights, getting her balance sorted out. And then she was running at the wall and I saw a blur as she scaled it. I jogged to the front door and waited. Something inside came crashing down. Then a heavy thump. I put my ear to the door. Nothing. I tried the handle. Locked. Petinski was taking her time. I heard a bang, not a gunshot.

The lock gave on the fourth swing of the tomahawk. I kicked the door in and raced up the stairs into some kind of storeroom. Three males were slumped on the floor, broken shelving and various cans and other items around them. A fourth man had Petinski in a headlock, her feet off the ground. They’d been making so much noise that they hadn’t heard me. Petinski was in a chokehold and was starting to go into convulsions. I swung the axe backhand at her assailant’s neck and the blade bit deep into his spinal column and stuck there. He collapsed to the right, his legs falling away like a wall with its foundations sapped. He didn’t cry out. He wouldn’t need an MRI to tell him he was now a quadriplegic. Still, somehow the guy’s left hand went for a weapon tucked into his belt. I had no choice and put the toe of my boot into the tomahawk’s head, pushing the blade all the way through into his esophagus. The guy stopped going for his gun.

Petinski propped herself up on one elbow beside him and hacked a few dry, choking coughs. ‘Thanks,’ she croaked. ‘I got three of them. Fourth one jumped me. Didn’t see him.’

Ambush. They knew we were coming and baked us a cake.

‘What’s that smell?’ I said, but I knew exactly what it was – the unmistakable funk of corpse.

‘Out there,’ she said, motioning at the veranda.

I went to have a look and the smell got worse as I went out into the open. Lying on his back, a black male, one-eighty pounds, maybe five ten. The eyes were empty, death having repossessed everything. His throat had been cut and a curve of blood spatter arced across the plastic sheeting that hung from the guttering. Blood pooled under the body’s neck and shoulders. I could hear a few flies buzzing around the corpse. Petinski walked out of the storeroom, rubbing her throat with both hands. I lifted the arm a little and the whole body moved: rigor had set in. I wanted to know when he’d been murdered. A corpse loses roughly two degrees Celsius every hour. A thermometer up the bunghole would’ve been the correct method to check the core temperature, but as I had no thermometer, I placed two fingers in the crease of the armpit. Though it was still vaguely warm in there, his sweat was cold.

‘How long’s he been dead?’ asked Petinski.

‘A few hours.’

‘Perhaps the folks over the wall thought he helped us plant the camera.’

Or maybe he played loud music once too often. We had no time to mourn the guy. And offering an apology for perhaps getting him killed wasn’t going to help him at all. I stood up, pushed the plastic sheet aside, grabbed the mattress and repeated the procedure from the night before. Once the plank was in place, I secured one end of the rope around the pipes under the sink, and threw the coil up and over the mattress.

‘Me first,’ Petinski demanded, climbing up onto the plank. She refitted her NVGs, took the rope in one hand, and sprang up to the mattress. Then she turned to face me, the rope around her back and shoulders, and was gone in an instant.

I didn’t get it done quite so elegantly but the result was the same, and a minute later I dropped beside her at the base of the wall inside the compound. No alarm was raised. No shout. In fact there was no movement anywhere that I could see. The shooting had stopped. Outside, sirens were
whoop-whooping
but here inside the wall all was quiet except for a humming sound. It was a large generator. Emergency power. I went over and had a look at it. The lights throughout the compound were now all off, and while the place seemed deserted, power was still being used somewhere. I levered open the control panel with the Ka-Bar, hit the kill switch and the motor died instantly.

Scanning the area I saw a window about fifteen feet up, some kind of retaining wall beside it. I pointed it out and we ran at a crouch toward it. ‘Me first this time.’ I said as we paused to catch our breath.

Petinski nodded and rested her hand on my arm, so I rested a hand on her sports bra.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Cashing in my brownie points for saving you back there. They dissolve unless you use them quickly.’