He gasped for air as they ran, his body aching and dry mud crumbling off his clothes. Despite her shorter legs, Megan ran stronger than he did, keeping up with the children and beckoning him to hurry.
It was impossible to tell how far they had traveled in a place that had neither blocks nor mile markers, but eventually, Luiz held up his hand, and they slid to a stop at the end of a street. Luiz pointed up the side of the hill through dense jungle overgrowth toward a small shack with a rusting metal roof clinging to the side of the mountain fifty yards away. An animal track ran from the edge of the favela to this lone building, and as Wolfgang studied the mud, he noticed the imprint of narrow, singular tire marks on the trail, probably left by an off-road motorcycle.
“She is there,” Luiz’s companion said. “There are men, also.”
“Do they have weapons?” Wolfgang asked.
The girl shrugged, and Luiz waved his hand dismissively, already turning back down the hill.
“Thank you,” Wolfgang said, catching him by the shoulder and smiling.
Luiz nodded once, and a moment later he and the girl faded back into their favela.
Wolfgang turned to Megan. “Are you okay?”
Megan brushed mud off her forehead and looked up at the house. “I’m fine. Just a little dazed. We should find a phone and make contact with Edric.”
Wolfgang shook his head. “We can’t wait for Edric. Half an hour from now, this place could be a warzone. Plus, for all we know . . .” He hesitated, unwilling to finish his sentence.
“I know,” Megan said. “I hope they’re okay.”
Wolfgang licked his lips, suddenly very aware that he had drunk nothing since leaving the car. He checked the jacket pocket for the water bottle, but it was gone. “It’s still dark,” Wolfgang said. “Let’s check it out. We’ll have the element of surprise.”
They started up the trail, keeping low enough that the shack on the hill was just barely visible over the top of the undergrowth. Megan led the way, picking up a tangerine-sized rock and cupping it in her right hand like a baseball. Wolfgang felt the grip of the flare gun in his pants and desperately wished that it were an actual pistol or even a knife. A flare gun in this situation was about as useless as Megan’s rock and even less comforting. He kept close enough to the ground that the passing brush shielded him from view of the house, and he chose his steps carefully to avoid dry sticks and ruts.
The path wound and switched back on itself a few times, but eventually they closed in enough that Wolfgang saw light spilling beneath the front door. That light appeared paler now than the light of the houses in the favela, and Wolfgang realized it was because the sky was no longer perfectly black. He looked back over his shoulder toward downtown Rio and saw a lighter shade of grey on the horizon. Sunrise would be soon, and with it, more fighting in the favela. They had to hurry.
At the end of the path, the brick, metal-roof shack stood only thirty feet away, and the front tires of two dirt bikes protruded from behind it.
“Two men,” he whispered. “Should we circle the house?”
“No,” she said. “Do you see that golf club leaning against the shack? They’ve been hitting balls off the mountainside.”
“Right. So?”
“Slip up there and get the club, then circle to the front and stand next to the door. I’ll draw them out. You . . . hit some balls.”
Megan smirked as she finished the sentence, and Wolfgang rolled his eyes.
“I’m better at jokes than you are,” he said.
“I’m better at kissing than you are.”
“Ouch.”
Megan patted him on the shoulder. “Go!”
Wolfgang dashed out of the cover of the undergrowth, hurrying across the yard in a few quick bounds. He found the golf club nestled in the grass next to golf balls and empty beer cans.
They’ve been here awhile.
He picked up the club and felt its weight. Wolfgang knew nothing about golf, but this was one of those clubs with a metal end—large and wedge-shaped with a little heft.
Good enough.
He grasped the club with both hands and circled to the front deck of the house, crouching to duck below the window before he slipped up to the knob-side of the door, where he would be invisible to anybody opening it from the inside. He pressed his back against the wall and held the club up, then looked back toward the mouth of the trail.
He couldn’t see Megan but gave her a thumbs-up. A couple seconds ticked by, and Megan’s rock came sailing through the air and smacked into the front door.
Something rustled inside the house, but nothing happened. Wolfgang watched the door and counted the seconds, then another rock smacked the side of the home only inches from his shoulder. He glared at the trailhead but was immediately distracted by the sudden extinguishing of the light inside the house. Next he heard the familiar sliding sound of a pistol being chambered, and the front door creaked opened.
11
The door swung open, but nobody came out, and it was then that Wolfgang fully appreciated the training of whoever was in the house. Cutting off the lights ensured that whoever was outside couldn’t see anything when the door opened, while opening the door itself was probably a tactic to draw attention or fire away from . . . the back door.
Wolfgang crouched, lowering the club and pressing himself next to the wall. He held his breath as feet scraped against the mud to the left of the shack.
The first man appeared as a shadow, dressed in black clothing with a handgun brandished against the darkness. He worked his way toward the trailhead, stopping every few paces to sweep the muzzle of the gun in both directions, then he continued a few feet farther. He reached the edge of the clearing, where the brush rose out of the mountainside like
