everything.
“Is that him?” Jason asked after the CID unit was loaded up.
“Yes,” Kristen said. “Manuel Pereira, former Brazilian army commando, GAMMA second in command. His family lives somewhere in this shantytown. I assume that’s his son—he’s supposed to have at least one son around that age.”
“Who was trying to kill him?”
“The men in uniform are PME officers,” Kristen replied. “Manuel Pereira is wanted by the PME—more accurately, he’s wanted by TransGlobal Energy, and that’s good enough for the Brazilian government.” She motioned toward an unidentified man in civilian clothing lying unconscious on the wharf. “But these guys, the ones not in uniform and the one who fired that LAWS rocket and drove you into the drink—I don’t know who they are. They might be Atividade de Inteligencia do Brasil, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, which reports to the President of Brazil, or maybe they’re CIA.”
“That’s easy enough to check,” Jefferson said, pulling out his cell phone.
Jason, Kristen, and her crew went over to Pereira. “Fala Ingles, Manuel?”
“Um pouco. A little.”
“Quem o atacou? Who attacked you?” Pereira paused, still ethnically and morally hesitant to rat on anyone even after everything that had happened. Kristen motioned to the boy and asked in broken Portuguese, “Quem atacou seu filho, Manuel?”
Rephrasing the question to include his son changed everything—one look down at his son’s deeply scarred, blood-covered face, and the hesitation was gone. “Captain Pavel Khalimov,” Pereira said. “He is soldier with Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov, GAMMA’s second in command.”
“I thought you were second in command of GAMMA?”
“No more. Zakharov is military leader now.”
“What about Jorge Ruiz?”
“I think Zakharov in charge now,” Pereira said. “Jorge want only to warn of poluicao, of corrupcao—Zakharov, nao. He is violencia, guerra, poder. GAMMA is no more.”
Kristen looked at Jason in surprise; then, after making sure her cameras were rolling, asked, “Did Zakharov have something to do with Kingman City, Manuel? Did Yegor Zakharov plan and carry out the nuclear attack in the United States?”
Pereira closed his eyes, lowered his head, then nodded. “Sim,” he said. “Terrivel. Desventurado. He must be stopped. He is very powerful, importante.” He swallowed hard, then looked away. “Desculpe. I am sorry. Zakharov is not GAMMA, GAMMA is not Zakharov. Jorge wants only paz, respeito, esperanca. Zakharov wants only violencia. I never trust Zakharov. Jorge only trust him.”
“Onde e Zakharov agora?”
“Nao sabe,” Pereira replied. “After we attack Repressa Kingman, we hide, move around.”
“Pode falar Jorge Ruiz?”
Pereira’s eyes returned to Kristen’s. “Sim,” he replied. “I can call. Telefone segredo.”
“Does Zakharov know this secret phone number?”
“Sim,” Pereira said. “We must hurry. Pressa.Jorgeestanoperigogrande.”
Pereira, his son, wife, and baby were taken away with Richter, Vega, Skyy, her film crew, and Jefferson into their waiting PME armored van. As they sped off to their waiting helicopter at Sao Paulo International Airport, Pereira called their secret drop number. “Nao resposta,” he said. “Eu comecei somente sua maquina da mensagem. He will call this number when he receives my message.”
“If Zakharov doesn’t get to him first,” Jefferson said. “His assassin Khalimov found Pereira—Zakharov might know where Jorge is hiding.”
“Onde esta Jorge Ruiz?” Kristen asked Pereira.
“Hiding. We move many times.”
“But do you know where he might be most of the time?”
Pereira hesitated, then nodded. “Sua quinta, his farm, em Abaete, Minas Gerais,” he said finally.
“I know where it is,” Kristen said excitedly. “I covered Ruiz during one of his human rights rallies there. Abaete is where GAMMA was started. It’s less than two hours north of here by jet.”
“The government seize his farm, move his family’s gravesite, and sold it, but the new owners allow him to visit and hide there. He…como voce diz…torna-se re-energizado…strong, refreshed, there. Maybe he go there.”
“We need to get there as quickly as possible, Sergeant Major…”
“We’re going to need authorization to operate outside Sao Paulo state first,” Jefferson said. “I’m not going to start a war down here.”
“We’re working with the PME to…”
“Don’t even go there, Major,” Jefferson said. “I’ve seen how the PME operates: each officer hires himself out to the highest bidder, and no one even thinks twice about switching sides whenever it suits them. I was authorized to travel to Brazil to assist the authorities to capture and question Manuel Pereira, not to fly around the entire country getting into gunfights with government troops. We’re not going anywhere else except back to the States.”
“But Jorge Ruiz will be dead by then.”
“From what Pereira has said, he might be dead already—and even if he’s not, his organization has been corrupted and taken over by this Zakharov guy,” Jefferson said. “I’m not going to risk the future of Task Force TALON chasing after a guy who might not be a factor in the attacks in the United States.” He glanced back at the van following them, the one carrying Richter’s and Vega’s CID unit. “Besides, Major, Doctor, you two have some repairs to do. Or did you forget that your robot back there had to be pulled off the bottom of the harbor with a crane?”
“Then send Task Force TALON, Sergeant Major,” Jason said. “You’ve got a platoon of top-notch troops back at Cannon ready to go—why not get clearance for them to deploy? We can act as their advance team and scout Ruiz’s farm in Abaete. They can bring CID Two along with some real weapons.” He made a quick mental calculation in his head; then: “They can be here by dawn. We can be in Abaete and scope out the farm at night and brief the team before they go in.”
Jefferson thought for a few moments, then nodded and opened his phone. “I’ll request the clearances and get the rest of the team loaded up and moving south,” he said. “But we don’t do anything until we get permission from the White House. We were authorized to fly to Sao Paulo, period. We stay here, or we head back to the States.”
Over Kingman City, Texas
A short time later
“My God,” the President breathed. “I can’t believe it…I simply can’t believe it.” He sat back in his seat in a Marine Corps UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, one of three orbiting over the blast site in a sort of aerial “shell game” to confuse any attackers that might want to shoot the President’s helicopter down. None of the helicopters had any presidential markings—they resembled the military helicopters that had been orbiting the area since shortly after the blast occurred. He shook his head numbly. “A nuclear terrorist attack on American soil. It’s simply incredible.”
“I think we’ve seen enough,” the President’s chief of staff, Victoria Collins, said, taking an apprehensive glance outside. “Perhaps we should head back, Mr. President,” she said nervously.
“Suck it up, Vicki,” they heard, just barely audible above the roar of the helicopter’s rotors.
Collins turned angrily to the third passenger in the President’s compartment. “What did you say, Chamberlain?”
“I said, ‘Suck it up, Vicki,’ ” National Security Adviser Robert Chamberlain said in an exasperated voice. “It means, we’re here to gather information and get a firsthand sense of the destruction here, not to soothe your sensibilities. It means as bad as you feel now, there are thousands of Americans down there who are suffering. So suck it up, Vicki!”
“How dare you talk to me like that?”
“I dare, Miss Collins, because you want to cut this important inspection short because your delicate little tummy can’t stand the sight of a nuclear blast just a few thousand meters away. I dare, Miss Collins, because
