Wolfgang continued to study the passing houses, marveling at the mixture of rundown cottages and fenced-in mansions. Occasionally, police cars zipped past, mostly without sound, but a few with their lights flashing. Other cars joined them on the highway, all crushing in as the city drew closer.
Half an hour later, the driver turned down a service road and drove another mile before stopping the Tahoe in front of an abandoned warehouse; it was small, about fifty feet square, with another similar building next to it that was already caved in and overgrown with jungle growth.
The driver grunted, and Edric passed him a roll of American twenty-dollar bills without comment. The driver accepted them, then Charlie Team exited the Tahoe and stepped back into the Brazilian warmth. The salt air was more prominent there, and Wolfgang could hear the rush and roar of the city not far away, a blend of car horns and tires on pavement.
The Tahoe drove back down the path, leaving them standing in front of the warehouse alone. Wolfgang scanned the faces of Charlie Team and felt a universal solemnness he wasn’t accustomed to—a sort of foreboding hanging over all of them like a cloud.
This won’t be like the other missions.
Edric led the way to the warehouse. Twin metal doors guarded the way inside, with a thick chain wrapped through their steel handles. But on closer inspection, the chain wasn’t actually locked. Edric snaked it out of the handles and then pushed a door open.
The inside was dark and musty, with little beams of light streaming in through holes in the metal roof. Wolfgang walked in wondering if drug gangsters or Brazilian police were waiting in the shadows, ready to spring out and apprehend or shoot them. The warehouse remained silent, and he followed the others farther into the dusty interior.
The warehouse was completely empty, save for a dilapidated Chevrolet Impala parked in the center, with a small pile of nondescript black bags on the busted concrete floor in front of it. Charlie Team gathered around the pile, and Wolfgang recognized the same sorts of duffle bags and equipment containers he was used to being outfitted with prior to leaving Saint Louis.
Kevin leaned down and tugged out a long, flat black bag about the size of an ironing board. He unzipped it and reached inside, withdrawing a matte-black FN SCAR 16S assault rifle with a red-dot optic mounted on top. Kevin held the gun, and Wolfgang noticed that his hand had stopped trembling. The muzzle of the weapon didn’t so much as twitch.
Charlie Team stood silent for a moment, then Edric grunted. “Okay. Let’s gear up.”
4
Charlie Team spread out around the pile of equipment and unpacked. Lyle quickly identified the bags and boxes he deemed to be his own, which were pretty much anything electronic in nature. He pulled these to the side and dug through them while Edric snapped together a folding table and everyone else organized equipment in piles on top of it.
Whoever had ordered their supply dump was expecting an all-out war. There were three rifles, and next to them, Wolfgang unpacked two H&K UMP submachine guns chambered in .45 ACP.
There were also five handguns, body armor for everyone, some emergency medical kits, ten fragmentation grenades, three smoke grenades, a case of water bottles, some MRE food kits, and short-wave radios with earpieces that could link up with Lyle’s computer system.
Wolfgang surveyed the stack of gear and cast an uneasy look at Edric. “This feels like a job for the Marines more than SPIRE.”
Edric unfolded a map of Rio on the floor next to the gear and beckoned for everybody to gather around it. “Lyle, where did the necklace last transmit from?”
Lyle leaned over the map, tracing the outlines of city streets into the North Zone of the city, to a point where most of the streets vanished, leaving what appeared to be vast sections of undeveloped foothills.
The favelas . . . where the roads are too random to map.
“Around about here,” Lyle said. “We’re still getting a strong signal, so we can use a handheld unit to bring us right to it.”
“I don’t like it,” Kevin said.
Wolfgang expected Edric to brush the comment off, as was his practice with vague negativity, but instead he looked up. “What’s the problem?”
“We’re dealing with somebody who wants to take out SPIRE, correct?”
Edric made a noncommittal grunt, but the question was rhetorical.
“If they know about SPIRE at all, that means we aren’t dealing with your run-of-the-mill kidnappers. These people are likely highly trained, highly informed, and know exactly who they’re messing with.”
“I wasn’t aware there were a lot of people with such résumés living in the favelas,” Lyle said.
“There probably aren’t,” Kevin said. “Whoever kidnapped Rose probably isn’t Brazilian at all. They knew she would be in Rio, and so they came here to grab her. Then they fled to the favelas because the police wouldn’t follow.”
Everybody chewed on that for a moment, then a unanimous nod circled the group.
“So, my point is,” Kevin said, “if these people are highly trained and highly informed, wouldn’t they expect Rose to be wearing some kind of tracker? Wouldn’t they have swept for that and found it?”
“It’s possible,” Lyle said. “There are devices designed to detect GPS units. They could have swept her down and found the necklace.”
“Right,” Kevin said. “But the necklace is still transmitting, which means they’re either incompetent, and
