“We’ve got a situation, Charlie Eye. Where are the bogies?”
Lyle didn’t answer.
Wolfgang dug his fingers into the arm of the jacket and ripped it off the body of the garment, then quickly wound it around the child’s leg as tightly as he could manage. She shook and gritted her teeth, but to her credit, she didn’t scream.
Wolfgang looked up at the boy and saw the knife shaking in one hand. “Your sister?” Wolfgang asked. The boy said nothing, and Wolfgang motioned to Megan. “Take that knife before he falls on it.”
Megan spoke soft words to the boy and gently took his weapon as he cried. Wolfgang turned back to the girl and slid his arm beneath her skin-and-bones torso. He lifted, taking the pressure off her leg, but the movement jarred her ankle, and a shrill scream broke from her lips.
“Shh. Don’t scream,” Wolfgang said.
Megan leaned in, helping to support her body as Wolfgang laid his hands around her shattered ankle and tugged just a little.
The girl screamed again.
“Cover her mouth,” Wolfgang said. “I’m gonna pull.”
Megan slid one hand over the girl’s mouth, then Wolfgang twisted the foot and pulled in one motion. The girl writhed and shrieked in Megan’s arms, but the foot came free. The three of them fell back against the second shack, shoulders slamming into sheet metal with a loud clang. Megan’s hand fell away from the girl’s mouth, and she screamed again as loud and panicked as a dying animal.
“ . . . Charlie . . . bogies . . . inbound, inbound!”
Lyle’s warning cleared the radio only a split second before Wolfgang heard shouts from the far end of the alley. The voices spoke Portuguese, and he looked up and saw two men carrying assault rifles and pressing their way into the opening of the alley fifty feet away. They wore dirty clothes and sported red headbands wrapped around shaved heads.
The Red Command.
Before Wolfgang could move or even speak, both men raised their weapons and pointed them down the alley.
7
Gunshots filled the alley so close to Wolfgang’s ears that his head pounded with each blast. Both gunmen jerked and stumbled backward, then fell to the ground riddled with .45-caliber holes from Megan’s UMP.
“Let’s move!” Megan shouted.
She pulled Wolfgang to his feet as he cradled the girl, then the four of them twisted in the narrow space and hurried back the way they had come. Moments later, they broke out of the alley and into the street.
The girl lay next to Wolfgang’s chest, still shaking. The warm stickiness of her blood saturated his shirt, and he placed a hand on her leg and squeezed, trying to block the flow. He’d lost his UMP back in the alley, but right then, speed was more important than firepower. The roar of battle filled his ears as the eye of the storm rolled their way.
“Which way?” Wolfgang said. His earpiece continued to crackle, but he couldn’t hear Lyle. The signal was almost completely lost, leaving nothing but the rush of static.
Megan motioned to the left and started to run, but the boy shook his head and grabbed her by the hand, gesturing to the north and rattling off a string of panicked Portuguese.
“What’s he saying?” Wolfgang demanded.
“Hell if I know! I don’t understand you, kid.”
The boy repeated his monologue, gesturing frantically and pulling Megan toward the north.
“Trust him,” Wolfgang said. “He knows this place.”
They followed the boy deeper into the favela. There, the streets all but vanished, leaving behind them a maze of twisting foot tracks that were barely wide enough to traverse. Some of them shot rapidly upward before diving again, so slick with mud that Wolfgang stumbled and crashed between the neighboring shacks.
All the houses were empty. No signs of life, whether animal or human, graced the decaying shantytown. It was so dark that Wolfgang frequently couldn’t see more than a couple feet ahead, but Megan led the way with his flashlight, and he trusted her to alert him of any impending dangers before he slipped and met the same fate as the trembling girl in his arms.
The girl didn’t make a sound, shaking from head to toe, but she kept her lips clamped shut as he hurtled forward. At first glance, she’d seemed so small he thought she couldn’t be older than eight, but now that he looked closer, he realized she could well be the boy’s twin. Malnourishment kept her small and frail.
The boy hurtled on, taking each turn with no apparent hesitation or calculation. Wolfgang figured he either knew this part of the favela well, or else he was just running as far as he could from the sound of the battle, in which case, he was no more help to them than their own judgment. Either way, the gunfire grew slightly more distant, even if the favela matched that peace with a haunted emptiness that Wolfgang found altogether unsettling.
Suddenly the boy stopped at the mouth of a narrow street, holding up his hand and looking both ways into the inky blackness. He motioned for Megan to extinguish the flashlight, then took a hesitant step onto the street.
A gunshot cracked from someplace to their left, and dirt exploded only inches from the boy’s foot. He danced back as a burst joined the first gunshot, and bullets slammed into the shack right next to Wolfgang’s face. The four of them retreated into the shadows, but the cat was out of the bag. Voices shouted from up the street, and feet pounded toward them. Wolfgang turned back the way they had come, but ground to a halt when he heard the sounds of more fighters storming toward them from that direction.
“Where now, kid?” he said, searching frantically for a way out of the alley.
The boy beckoned toward the left, and they turned the corner onto yet another narrow footpath. It led down a hillside with houses pressing in on every side. The boy scampered in that direction like a goat, dancing over potholes and exposed bits of
