God, whatever happens, don’t let her be hurt.
Lyle approached from his computer and handed out an array of radios and earpieces. They weren’t like the micro-units Charlie Team usually wore—tiny devices that slid into the ear canal and disappeared from view. These more robust units reminded Wolfgang of what he saw the Secret Service wear in movies. Each one featured a coiled wire that circled behind the ear and dropped beneath a jacket and to the user’s belt, where a radio clipped into place.
“They engage with a hum,” Lyle said. “They aren’t constantly active like the ear canal pieces.”
“What does that mean?” Wolfgang asked.
“It means you have to hum, dimwit,” Kevin snapped. “Hmmm!”
Wolfgang ignored the aggression and hummed until he heard the radio click on through his earpiece.
“Testing,” Wolfgang said.
Everybody nodded, and Wolfgang heard the radio click off again.
Edric started toward the car, but as Wolfgang moved to follow, he noticed Lyle motioning him to the side. He stepped close to Lyle’s operational table, scanning the impressive collection of linked laptops. Even in a pinch, Lyle could put together a heck of an operations center.
Lyle passed Wolfgang a bright orange flare gun with a plastic grip.
“If something goes wrong,” Lyle said softly enough that the radio didn’t engage, “shoot this into the air. I’ll catch it on the satellite, and you know . . . do what I can.”
Wolfgang rotated the gun in his hand, studying the warning label and feeling the heft of the device. It looked just like the flare guns kept in boats or airplanes. He looked up and frowned, and Lyle shook his head, indicating that Wolfgang should not ask questions.
Wolfgang slid the gun into his jacket pocket and turned to the car. Edric had already taken the driver’s seat, with Kevin sitting beside him. Wolfgang figured he’d have more legroom behind Edric, and he slid inside. As the car rolled forward, Wolfgang noticed Lyle watching them. There was something in the tech’s face he hadn’t seen before—a dark foreboding that reflected the mood of the entire car.
5
If Rio was beautiful from a distance, it was enchanting up close. By the time Charlie Team reached the main highway and turned toward the core of the city, the sun had vanished behind the mountains, allowing Rio to come to life in a pattern of bright lights. Downtown sparkled next to the bay, and tall towers were framed in shadow against the water, while the condominiums along the coast gleamed in a half dozen different colors.
The favelas were shrouded in darkness. They faded into the shadows of the hillsides, only illuminated by the occasional glimmering light that escaped through a window or an open door. Wolfgang couldn’t make out the details of the shantytowns, but the vast swaths of black between Rio’s wealthier districts told him all he needed to know about how truly impoverished these people must be. They literally couldn’t keep the lights on.
Edric drove while Kevin navigated, holding an iPad housed in an industrial case that featured a GPS navigation app leading them toward Rose’s still-transmitting beacon. Every few minutes, Kevin would direct Edric to change lanes or take a turn, and slowly they worked their way outside the heart of Rio and toward the North Zone. The car creaked and rattled the whole way, the engine straining with every acceleration as if it were on the verge of explosion.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Megan asked.
Wolfgang turned to see her staring out her window, focused on the bright lights of downtown. He watched the city for a moment, then found himself watching her instead. She sat forward to allow room for the oversized body armor to ride up on her torso, the UMP cradled between her knees, and her hair held back in a ponytail.
He saw the lights of the city reflecting in her eyes, twinkling like a million stars, and he swallowed. “Yes . . . it’s stunning.”
The Impala lurched over a pothole, and Wolfgang’s head slammed into the roof of the car. He grunted and rubbed it. “Nice driving, Grandpa.”
Edric ignored the comment, but Kevin smirked. It was the first sign of relaxation from him in two hours, and it gave Wolfgang a little gratification. He didn’t like seeing Kevin this strained. It made him feel like whatever was about to happen was even worse than Edric wanted him to believe.
The car rattled down a side street, and as quickly as the lights of Rio came, they vanished. What was once a paved four-lane quickly diminished into a narrow, unpaved two-lane with more holes and ruts. The incline also grew steep, the nose of the car rising as Edric powered upward and away from the civilized part of the city.
Then they reached the favelas. It happened in a flash. One moment Wolfgang saw open spaces and empty skyline, and then they were surrounded by shanty shacks on all sides. Constructed of pallets, concrete blocks, and makeshift carpentry with metal roofs, the little huts rose out of the mountainside as if they grew out of the dirt. They were crammed so close together that in many cases, there wasn’t enough space between them for a chicken to run. Other houses were built off the roofs of the structures below them, stair-stepping up the side of the mountain in a colorful display of desperate ingenuity.
Wolfgang leaned closer to the window, peering upward at the dimly lit community in unabashed awe. Occasional pedestrians stood next to the streets, watching the Impala approach with suspicious eyes, and every couple minutes, Edric had to navigate around a parked car, many of which were far more dilapidated than the Impala. Occasional lights shone through the narrow gaps in the covered windows of the shacks, twinkling like the stars of downtown far below. Wolfgang twisted his head and looked up to see a spiderweb of wires running between the houses, as tangled as the power lines of a first-world nation after a hurricane.
A slow smile spread across his face as he
