Ruthless Page 7

  The cafe was even busier than usual. Lots of people had crammed inside because armed police had arrived in the street and nobody wanted to be close to them. A stressed-out waiter shouted above the noise: anybody who didn’t want to buy something should leave. Everyone ignored him, and they certainly paid no attention to Pepe as he squeezed through the crowd. He had been into this cafe many times before and he knew that the door at the back, next to the toilets, led to the first floor. He opened it, unnoticed. He was in a shabby corridor. To the left, the kitchens. To the right, the staircase. He ran up the stairs, two at a time, to a ramshackle landing. The stairs continued upwards, but at the end of the landing a door opened onto the room at the front.

  Pepe stared, his mouth agape, holding his football to his chest. A figure was at the window. It was a gunman, crouched and hunched, ready to fire at his house!

  He wanted to do something. To distract the gunman. To stop him from firing. But he was too shocked and scared. All he could do was stand there and stare.

  His body jolted as the gunman fired a single shot.

  There was no time to warn him. Angel flung out her left arm so that it connected sharply with Woody’s chest. Then she pushed herself and Woody backwards. Their chairs fell over. At the same time, a shot rang out. Angel’s sudden movement must have distracted the sniper. His bullet flew through the window and smashed through the laptop screen before flying across the room and slamming into the wall. Bits of plastic and screen burst into the air, but Woody and Angel were already rolling off their chairs and removing their 9mm pistols from their chest holsters.

  ‘How the hell does anyone know we’re here?’ Woody demanded. Then he immediately answered his own question. ‘Pepe. Has he come back?’

  ‘No,’ Angel said. ‘The rest of the family are upstairs.’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Woody said. ‘Unless we can get them out of here.’

  ‘That sniper’s not on his own,’ Angel said. ‘There’ll be armed men at the entrance.’

  ‘Do we fight back?’

  ‘We don’t know what we’re up against,’ Angel said. ‘Hold them back.’ She nodded at the stairs leading to the floor above. ‘I’m going up.’

  Pepe didn’t know what to do. His eyes had filled with tears. Who had the man shot? Was his family okay?

  You end up paying the penalty.

  The gunman didn’t move. Perhaps, Pepe thought, he should run up and dislodge him from his position, to stop him shooting again. But he was too scared. He wanted to cry. He wanted to run. He wanted to be anywhere but here.

  Most of all, he wanted his mum.

  He turned and was about to run downstairs again when he heard shouting from the ground floor. In his panic, he headed back upstairs, his feet making almost no noise. He burst through a door at the top of the stairs and found himself on the roof of the building, next to a blue plastic rainwater collector. He was alone. He could see across the street to the roof of his own house. There was a small ledge at the front. Not knowing what else to do, Pepe crouched down behind the ledge and made himself as small as possible.

  He started to cry.

  Woody moved over to the entrance, brandishing his weapon in both hands. As Angel ran to the stairs, he kicked the door open and released two rounds in quick succession: a warning to anyone outside. He knelt on one knee in the firing position as Angel raced up the stairs. She burst into the second-floor room. There was one double bed here and three single mattresses. Manuel was lifting one of the mattresses, clearly about to cover the door with it. Marta, Leonardo and Verissimo huddled on the bed, their faces a picture of terror.

  ‘What is happening?’ Manuel demanded.

  Angel didn’t answer. She was too busy looking around the room. There were no windows here. No other exits. Then she looked up. There was a hatch in the ceiling above the bed. It had a small ring pull on it. ‘Does that open out onto the roof?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Manuel said.

  Angel jumped onto the bed and yanked open the hatch. Grit and plaster fell from the ceiling, but Angel could see the open sky and the emerging stars. ‘Tell your family to let me help them up there,’ Angel instructed.

  Manuel nodded and started speaking urgent, panicked Portuguese. His wife and children said nothing. They were clearly too scared. Angel grabbed Verissimo first, pulling her roughly up by her arm. There was no time to lose. Once the girl was on her feet, Angel knelt down, wrapped her arms around her knees and lifted her as high as she could. Verissimo grabbed the edge of the opening and struggled through onto the roof. Angel immediately turned to Leonardo. He was heavier, but Angel was strong and fit and easily able to lift him through the hatch to the roof.

  Marta was crying. Then there was the sound of gunfire from downstairs. Her sobs became more intense. Angel felt a surge of panic. She could tell from the sound – a burst of fire rather than single pistol shots – that the gunfire had not been Woody’s. He was under attack. She hauled Marta to her feet and lifted her up through the hatch, where her children helped to pull her onto the roof.

  Which left Manuel. He was a big guy, but Angel didn’t blink. As another burst of fire exploded below them, she gestured at him to get on the bed. He did as he was told and allowed her to grab his legs and push him up. Angel was sweating badly and she had to use all her strength, but she managed to get him up through the hatch. She ran to the door and called down to Woody. ‘We can exit by the roof!’

  ‘Roger that!’ Woody shouted. Angel heard him fire a couple of shots. ‘I’m on my way!’

  Angel dashed back to the bed. Manuel was leaning over the hatch. His face was sweating and alarmed. ‘Come!’ he said ‘Quickly.’ He held out an arm. Angel jumped, grabbed it and allowed him to pull her up onto the roof.

  Breathlessly, she took in her surroundings. It was a flat roof with a large puddle in one corner. The building was joined to another on one side, and there was a gap where the alley they’d used to enter separated them from the building on the other side. To jump over that gap would be too risky, because there might be gunmen below. The back wall was separated from the building behind by a much larger gap. Too far, and anyway, Angel knew if she looked down, she would see the courtyard by which they’d entered.

  There was only one option. Behind the adjoining building was another roof, a few metres lower. To get to it meant jumping a metre, but that was manageable. From that roof the family could get to several other buildings, and maybe find a way down. Angel pointed at it. ‘Take your family that way,’ she told Manuel. ‘Don’t stop, don’t look back – get out of the favela if you can. Go to the British Consulate. They’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘What about Pepe?’

  ‘We’ll find him, I swear to you.’

  ‘What about you?’ Manuel asked. His face was wet with sweat.

  ‘I’ll follow. I need to get my friend. Go! Now!’

  Even as she spoke, there was another burst of fire from down below. Angel turned her back on the others and threw herself back into the building, landing expertly on the bed and almost bouncing over to the staircase that led down to the main room. She pulled her weapon, cocked it and took a couple of deep breaths to calm her racing pulse.

  Then she headed down.

  Pepe’s face was wet with tears. His body was shaking. He didn’t even dare to lift his face because he was scared of what he might see. He knew the gunfire was coming from his house. Terrible thoughts crossed his mind. His family, dead.

  Then he heard a voice. A woman’s voice. He recognised it.

  ‘Go! Now!’

  Gingerly, Pepe raised his head and looked over the ledge. His eyes widened. He could see his mum and dad, his brother and sister. They were on the roof of their house and the English woman who had arrived earlier, the one with the red hair, was urging them to escape across the rooftops. Pepe wanted to shout out to his family, but something stopped him. If he did that, they might delay their escape, and the armed police in the street might hear and see him. So h
e kept quiet, and watched.

  The English woman disappeared. Pepe knew she must have jumped down the hatch into the bedroom. He watched his family move to the next roof along and then jump to the building behind and out of sight. He was trembling and breathless, and had no idea what to do.

  At the bottom of the staircase, Angel stopped. Everything was quiet. No gunfire. No voices. Angel raised her weapon and moved her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger.

  She turned silently into the room, ready to use her sharpshooting skills to fire quickly on any enemy target that presented themselves.

  She froze.

  Woody was face down on the floor. His hands were on the back of his head. Two armed policemen in body armour and balaclavas were pointing assault rifles at him. Three more police officers, similarly dressed, aimed their weapons at Angel.

  Nobody moved. Angel’s handgun remained engaged. But she knew it was hopeless. Even if she took out one of the police officers, the others would shoot her.

  Very slowly, she lowered her weapon, uncocked it and laid it on the floor in front of her. She kicked it further into the room, then raised her hands.

  The officers were rough. Two of them grabbed her and threw her to the floor. A third ran past her, up the stairs and into the second-floor room. Angel prayed that the family had escaped. The officer returned in less than thirty seconds. He spoke to the others, shaking his head, and Angel knew that, for now at least, the family were safe.

  Unlike the Watchers.

  Angel felt the barrel of an assault rifle against the back of her head. A knee in the small of her back. Rough hands grabbed her wrists and bound them with plastic cable ties, pulling so tightly that she could feel the blood throbbing in her veins. The same hands grabbed her hair and dragged her to her feet. Woody was already standing. His face was a mess. A swollen cheek. A split lip. A black eye. Blood dripped from one nostril. None of this seemed to bother him. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Angel. She understood what he was asking: are the family safe? She nodded. Relief flooded over his bruised and battered face.

  One of the police officers collected up the remains of the laptop, but it was useless. The bullet from the sniper rifle had destroyed it completely. Woody and Angel were roughly ushered to the exit. At the top of the external staircase, Angel felt a boot in the small of her back and tripped. She barely managed to remain on her feet. They were forced back down the alleyway, where they could see the flashing neon lights of a police vehicle. The armed officers forced them into the street. The police car – a black SUV with tinted glass and heavy bumpers – was parked in the middle of the road, its doors open and its lights flashing. There were perhaps fifty or sixty people watching from a safe distance, but they looked ready to run if the situation deteriorated.

  The police bundled Angel and Woody into the back of the SUV. One officer took the wheel. Two sat either side of the prisoners. The remaining two marched up to the crowd and bellowed at them to disperse.

  Woody and Angel remained silent. They couldn’t be sure that their captors didn’t speak English, and it was important not to say anything that would compromise the cadets or their operation. Angel thought fast. They had been captured by the BOPE, who they knew were in the pay of Blue Command. And if Blue Command knew about Woody and Angel, there was a high chance they knew about Max, Sami, Abby, Lili and Lukas. Woody and Angel knew that the cadets had always been walking into danger. Now that danger had increased tenfold.

  Angel evaluated their options. Could they attack their guards? No. The guards outnumbered them and were too heavily armed. Could they demand to see the British consul? Again, no. The BOPE were in the pockets of Blue Command. They had broken any number of laws already. They were hardly likely to hand Angel and Woody over to the British authorities on request. She doubted they would even be taken to a genuine police station.

  So their prospects – and the cadets’ – looked grim.

  She glanced at Woody. His stern face suggested he was having similar thoughts.

  Angel drew a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, the SUV had started to move. Crowds of pedestrians parted up ahead and, in the rear-view mirror, she could see them taking to the street again once the police vehicle was safely out of the way. Nobody wanted to be close to the BOPE.

  With one exception.

  Angel frowned. A young boy was running after the police car. His hair was dishevelled, his face fierce with concentration. He had a leather football under one arm. She recognised him of course. It was Pepe.

  She glanced sidelong at Woody. He nodded almost imperceptibly and Angel knew that he’d seen Pepe too. Their BOPE guards, however, showed no sign of having noticed him.

  Why would they? He was just a kid after all.

  Angel and Woody sat quietly. The police vehicle continued through the favela.

  Pepe followed.

  10

  Lili’s Lie

  This part of the favela had a different vibe. The houses still looked like they had been built on top of each other. Their walls were still graffitied and bullet-marked. But it was shabbier and more poverty-stricken. There were more wooden shacks than before, constructed from pallets and sheets of corrugated iron. The piles of debris were more numerous and there was a definite stench of rotting rubbish in the air. They passed streets that were completely overgrown with dense foliage. Hundreds of waste pipes led into the greenery, which smelled so bad that Lili had to hold her breath. There were fewer people here. They congregated in groups of five or six, or walked quickly with their heads down, taking care not to catch anyone’s eye. Not all of them wore Blue Command bandanas, but they were almost all young. It was as if adults were banned from the streets – and for the first time, Lili understood why this really was a job for the cadets. With their street-kid clothes and blue bandanas, they attracted little attention.

  ‘People are scared,’ Sami said. He was walking alongside her, and spoke quietly. He was right, Lili thought. Faces looked down on the street from first-floor windows, drawing back into the darkness when they caught her eye. Pedestrians crossed the road to avoid them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sami said with his usual earnestness. ‘Woody and Angel know where we are.’

  ‘Hope so,’ Lili said. But she didn’t say what she was thinking: that they had already been caught in the middle of a fierce firefight and the Watchers were nowhere to be seen.

  At the next street corner, a teen with a blue bandana like the cadets’ leaned against the wall. His eyes locked with Lili’s and he nodded in recognition. Lili nodded confidently in return. The kid became distracted as an older man, very thin and with a pronounced limp, staggered up to him. Some kind of exchange occurred. Max couldn’t see exactly what, because the old man had his back to him. ‘Drugs,’ Lili heard Abby saying to him. They were walking in front of her and Sami.

  Was it Lili’s imagination, or was Abby spending most of her time with Max? She hoped they weren’t getting too close. Surely that could only end badly …

  Abby’s voice was disapproving. ‘Where I was brought up, you saw it every day. Never ends well.’

  Lili remembered that Abby had been born in a rough Northern Ireland prison.

  ‘I guess that’s what Tommy came here for in the first place,’ Abby continued.

  ‘Yeah,’ Max said. ‘I guess.’

  In the stress of the firefight, Lili had almost forgotten about the ambassador’s son – the reason they were here. They still didn’t know where he was, and seemed no closer to finding out.

  They turned a corner and stopped. The scene that presented itself almost took Lili’s breath away – not with wonder, but with anxiety. They were at the top of a flight of wide concrete steps that led down into a large square. It looked to Lili almost like a pit. It was surrounded by three- and four-storey buildings and was perhaps the width of a football pitch. There were a couple of hundred people there, most the cadets’ age, some younger. Loud music pumped from some of
the surrounding houses. Three fires burned in metal braziers dotted around the square. The kids were in small groups, and there was a definite air of aggression. Some of them brandished handguns as casually as ordinary teenagers might carry a mobile phone. Many wore Blue Command bandanas. Others didn’t, but Lili could tell this would be a dangerous place for the wrong person to enter.

  She turned to the others. ‘I’m going to go down there and talk to someone,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not safe,’ Max told her.

  Lili smiled. ‘You don’t say. How about we quit the favela and check out the beach, if we want safe?’

  ‘You know what I mean, Lili. What if they get spooked by the fact that they don’t recognise you?’

  ‘Look, we need information. We’re not going to get it by hanging around and hoping we overhear someone talking about where they’re keeping a young British hostage. We need to talk to the right people and I’m the only one of us who speaks the language. It has to be me.’

  Nobody could argue with that.

  ‘We should position ourselves around the square,’ Lukas said. ‘Two of us at either end. If you get into trouble, we’ll be there.’

  ‘I’ll stick with Max,’ Abby said quickly. ‘You go with Sami.’

  Lukas nodded.

  ‘Wait,’ Sami said. ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. Nobody’s going to tell you where the ambassador’s son is, just because you ask them. They probably don’t even know.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Lili said. She didn’t want to tell them what it was, because she was afraid they might try to talk her out of it. ‘I’m going to pick someone to talk to. Once I’ve spoken to them, watch them. They’ll leave the square and we need to follow them.’

  ‘Lili –’ Abby started to say.

  But Lili raised a finger to hush her. Before anybody else could raise an objection, she strode off and hurried down the steps into the square.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Lukas said as Lili walked away. ‘This whole place is crawling with gang members. Trust me, I know how these people think. They get nervous when they don’t recognise someone.’