Wolfgang bent down and hurried up the street, panting a little as he closed the gap between himself and Edric. His legs burned, but he was focused enough to ignore the discomfort.
“Building identified,” Edric said. “Charlie Eye, what do you have on-screen?”
“All clear, Charlie Lead. The favela is quiet.”
Wolfgang slid to a stop behind a stack of worn-out car tires, kneeling on the concrete and peering ahead down the streets. Directly ahead was some sort of square, but not an official community center by any means. Six or eight buildings were gathered around an intersection of dirt tracks with some kind of animal pen in the middle. Several of the shacks facing the pen featured awnings that covered stalls. The stalls were boarded up and locked with rusting chains, but Wolfgang could imagine them open with tables covered in merchandise and produce.
It’s a market.
Between two of the shacks, the dirt street they now traveled continued up a hill, and two shacks farther in, Wolfgang saw a block building with a red metal roof. It stuck out from the rest—a little taller with black windows and a door that leaned downward, suspended on only one hinge.
Edric knelt in the dirt about thirty yards ahead on the left side of the street. Kevin wasn’t visible, but Wolfgang assumed he was close by. Waiting behind the tires, breathing between dry lips, Wolfgang couldn’t help noticing again how quiet it was. This place didn’t feel like a marketplace or a neighborhood. It felt like a graveyard.
“We’ve got a visual on the building,” Edric said. “Charlie One and Three, are you in position?”
“Copy that,” Megan said. She knelt on the other side of a pile of rotting garbage heaped up against the side of another shack.
Wolfgang acknowledged his position to Edric, then slid the UMP out from beneath his coat and pulled the charging handle.
“Okay, moving in,” Edric said. He emerged from the shadows and rushed across the square, leaning close to the ground and keeping his rifle held into his shoulder.
Kevin followed, moving with a little more tactical precision as he dodged from cover to cover, only yards behind Edric. Within seconds they were on the other side of the square and closing in on the building with the red roof.
Then Wolfgang saw it. From the top of a structure, four shacks to the left of the target building, a head appeared, followed by a rifle barrel. Only a split second later, another head appeared next to it with another rifle.
Then heads popped up everywhere, and rifles bristled from the rooftops. Wolfgang dove back behind the tires, raising his weapon and screaming into the mic. “Take cover!”
6
Wolfgang heard his own words crackle through his earpiece. He’d forgotten to hum, and the mic caught only the last half of his transmission. He had no time to repeat it as the first gunshots rang out from the rooftops. A flickering light show of orange flashes illuminated the night sky as bullets slammed into the street, peppering the square and ripping through the shacks. Wolfgang peered around the base of his tire stack, searching for Megan. She huddled behind the garbage pile, keeping her head low and directing her rifle toward the rooftops, but she didn’t fire.
“Charlie Lead, do you copy?” Megan shouted.
The radio crackled, but Wolfgang couldn’t hear the response. He stuck his head around the base of a tire and searched the street ahead, but neither Edric nor Kevin were visible.
Then Lyle’s voice burst over the headset. “Charlie Team, you’ve got two armored vehicles and about fifty Brazilian troops moving in from the north! ETA, sixty seconds!”
Wolfgang’s mind spun as a nearby favela shack shuddered under a raking blast of bullets. It was only then that he realized that the shooters on top of the shacks weren’t there for Charlie Team.
We’ve stumbled into a war.
“Charlie . . . radio . . .” Edric’s voice faded as Wolfgang’s heart pounded.
The thunder of automatic rifle fire on all sides was overwhelming—too much to let him process what Edric was trying to say. He stumbled to his knees and bolted across the street, sliding in behind the garbage pile like a baseball player sliding onto home base.
Megan huddled close to the dirt, her breaths quick but controlled.
“Can you hear Edric?” Wolfgang said.
Megan shook her head. “Charlie Eye! What do you have?”
Lyle’s voice was a great deal less calm than Megan’s. “They’re all around you, Charlie One! Shooters on the roof, in the alleys, and moving in on the square. More Brazilian police are closing up the hill with a third armored vehicle.”
“They’re taking the favela,” Wolfgang said. “This must have something to do with that criminal organization you mentioned. The Red Guard?”
“Red Command,” Megan said. She leaned out from the garbage pile, looking up the street. “Charlie Lead! What’s your position?”
No answer. She tried again, then Lyle interrupted.
“Charlie Lead and Charlie Two are inside the target structure. I think the roof is disrupting the radio somehow. Charlie One, you’ve got to move. I’ve got armed militants closing in behind you.”
Wolfgang looked over his shoulder but couldn’t yet see the gunmen Lyle had seen. Maybe they were just around the corner rushing up to defend the square against the imposing threat of the Brazilian military.
“We’ve got to move south,” Wolfgang said. “Circle around and rendezvous with Edric on the other side.”
Megan shook her head. “No, that’ll lead us deeper into the favela. The Red Command will reinforce from that direction.”
A string of random gunshots ripped down the street from behind. Wolfgang looked over his shoulder again to see five or six militants moving up the mountainside from the direction Charlie Team had come, closing in rapidly. The bullets didn’t appear to be directed at him and Megan, and as far as he could tell, the militants had yet to see either of them, but it was only a matter of time.
“Stop arguing,” Wolfgang snapped. “Let’s go!”
He yanked Megan up by one hand, and they dashed between two
