A burst of automatic gunfire ripped through the air, and bullets hissed through sheet metal in the alley they just exited. Wolfgang ran, heedless of the uneven ground beneath him, the girl bouncing in his arms. His heart thundered, and the surge of adrenaline he felt was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It was blinding—driving him to get out by any means possible. Megan kept close behind him, and they made it down the hill to a bend in the road, where Wolfgang slid through the turn and stumbled for balance.
An open street stretched out in front of them, with huts stacked on top of each other on either side, and fifty yards ahead, another group of armed men charged up the hill. Wolfgang shouted and spun around, driving the others back into the alley as more bullets skipped off the street behind them. Everywhere, the shout of voices and blaze of rifles thundered in a constant, maddening crescendo. It was like they were trapped inside a cave with fireworks going off on every side. Everything distorted into a blur as they piled in between the buildings, and Wolfgang looked back up the hill they had just descended to see their original pursuers bursting out from between the shacks.
“Okay, kid. Time for a miracle!”
The boy tugged at his arm, then motioned to the ground as he rattled off another string of Portuguese. Wolfgang followed his gestures to the base of the houses that clustered near the bottom of the hill. Unlike most of the houses they had passed, these shacks weren’t built on concrete or wood foundations that rested directly against the earth. Instead, they stood on stilts that allowed for the passage of runoff water as it ran down the mountainside. A gap of about twelve inches opened between the bottom of the nearest house and the muddy ditch beneath it, and the boy dropped to his knees and wriggled in, still beckoning.
“I can’t fit,” Wolfgang said.
“Give him the girl,” Megan said. She ripped off her own jacket, then laid it on the ground. Wolfgang lowered the girl onto the jacket, then held out the arm of the garment to the boy. The boy’s hand appeared from beneath the house to accept it, then he pulled the girl beneath the house with a few passionate tugs. She grimaced and moaned as her back rolled over loose rocks strewn over the alley floor, but she met Wolfgang’s gaze and forced a smile only a moment before she disappeared beneath the shack.
Wolfgang pulled himself back to his feet and grabbed Megan’s hand. The two turned back out of the alley as gunshots popped from the hillside only a little way behind them. They rounded the corner, breaking into a run and crashing directly into the arms of another party of combatants.
Wolfgang toppled to the mud as a rifle butt crashed into his side. Megan’s hand was ripped out of his, and the air flooded with gruff Portuguese shouts. Wolfgang struggled to reach his Berretta, but then a foot crashed into his jaw and sent his head snapping backward. Rough hands jerked his arms away from the gun, then his holster was stripped from his body.
“A white woman!” somebody said in English. “You from California, white woman?”
Wolfgang jerked at the hands that pinned him to the ground. Megan thrashed in the mud a few feet away, a knot of men leaning over her. Two of them pinned her arms and legs to the ground while a third ripped at her shirt. Buttons snapped off, and she screamed, then the third man delivered a lightning punch to her gut. She gasped and twisted, her face turning blue as another punch smacked home directly over her navel.
“Megan!” Wolfgang shouted. “Get off her, you bastards!”
A boot crashed into Wolfgang’s exposed ribcage, sending the wind shooting through his teeth as a blinding surge of pain overcame his senses. He twisted and pulled his elbows in to deflect another kick, but a rifle butt crashed into his stomach, then another slammed his shoulder.
Laughter filled the air, and a barrage of kicks rained against his arms and legs. Megan screamed from the background, and several of the men chanted something amid further laughs. Wolfgang’s head spun, and the black sky faded in and out of view. He saw Edric’s face set in hard lines of disgust, then heard his boss chiding him from the other side of a fish tank.
“I counted on you!”
Another boot struck home, this time on the top of Wolfgang’s head. Edric’s face vanished from his mind, replaced instantly by the face of a child, small and skinny, not unlike the girl he’d just rescued from the alleyway, except this girl was white with dark hair. Her features were narrow, and the skin clung to her bones in a sickly shade of chalky white that spoke to the sickness that consumed her body.
“Don’t leave me, ‘Icky!”
Wolfgang screamed and yanked his right arm free. With a Herculean effort, he swung his fist into the ribcage of the first assailant he could reach, then kicked a leg free and flailed with all his strength. The chants and laughs turned to angry shouts, followed by the metallic rolling sound of a rifle being chambered.
A long string of automatic gunfire echoed off the metal walls of the shacks. The men around Wolfgang stumbled backward, and a sudden stillness fell over the small crowd. He slumped back into the mud, gasping for air as pain radiated from every extremity of his body. Megan didn’t scream anymore, and the voices of the men around him fell as silent as a funeral procession. Wolfgang wheezed and lifted himself up on one elbow, looking down the dirt road for the source of the sudden calm.
A short, stocky Brazilian stood ten feet away, a smoking AK-47 held upright in one hand and a black bandanna wrapped around a bald head that sat atop almost no neck.
