checkerboard of melted linoleum tiles, charred plywood, and open holes, through which they could see the lower floors.
“Sit down,” Chavez ordered them.
“Where?” Lancia snapped.
“Anywhere that isn’t a hole. Sit.”
They complied.
Dominic said, “I’m gonna have a look around.”
Chavez sat down across from their prisoners, listening as Dominic rummaged through the other rooms. He came back with a tarnished kerosene lantern. He gave it a shake; fluid sloshed inside. He set it down in the corner and lit it. Hissing yellow light filled the room.
Chavez looked over to Dom and shrugged. Dominic said, “You’re the boss; your show.”
Chavez got up, walked closer to Lancia and Hadi, then knelt down again. “I’m gonna talk for a little bit. I want you to listen. Closely. I ain’t gonna bullshit you, and I don’t want you to bullshit me. If we get along, you two stand a much better chance of seeing sunrise. What’re your names?”
Neither man answered.
“Come on, just first names, so we can talk.”
“Hadi.”
The other one hesitated, his lips pressed tightly together. Finally he said, “Ibrahim.”
“Good, thanks. Listen, we know you two, and your two dead friends, did the Paulinia refinery. We know this, so let’s not talk about that again. We’re not cops, and we’re not here to arrest you for the refinery.”
“Then who are you?” Hadi asked.
“Someone else.”
“What makes you think we were involved with that place?” Ibrahim asked.
“How do you think?” This Chavez said with a half-smile and a fleeting glance at Hadi.
“Why do you look at me?”
To Ibrahim, Chavez asked, “Why were you chasing Hadi?” Ibrahim didn’t answer, so Chavez continued: “I’m going to take a wild guess at something: You did the refinery job but didn’t count on the smoke closing down the Sao Paulo airport, so you went to plan B-come to Rio. You get here, then things go bad. Hadi goes on the run; Ibrahim, you chase after him. Why?”
“Why don’t you care about the refinery?” Ibrahim pressed.
“Not our country, not our problem. Why were you chasing him?”
“He’s a traitor.”
Hadi snapped, “You’re a liar. You’re the traitor. You, or Ahmed, or Fa’ad. You leaked the sketch.”
“What sketch?”
“The one on the television. I saw it; it looked like me. Who else could have given it to them?”
“Who told you all this?”
“The Em-when I saw the sketch, I made contact. There was a message waiting. It said you’d betrayed me and that I had to run.”
“You were tricked.”
“I authenticated it. It was genuine.”
Ibrahim was shaking his head. “No, you’re wrong. We didn’t betray you.”
Chavez said, “So you and your friends just wanted to catch up with him and chat, is that it?”
“Yes.”
Chavez leaned closer to Hadi. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Whether that message was real or not, all they knew was you were running. Probably to the police. They weren’t going to take that chance. You know it’s true.”
Hadi said nothing.
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Chavez said. “As far as we’re concerned-”
“We still don’t know who you are.”
“Don’t our accents tell you something?”
“Americans.”
“Right. As far as we’re concerned, the refinery is off the table. What we want to know is who’s operating in the U.S. How many cells, where they’re located… All that.”
“Fuck you,” said Ibrahim.
Chavez heard Dominic standing up behind him. He turned to see him walking into the kitchen. He turned back to Hadi. “How about you? Just give us-”
He heard Dominic’s footsteps returning, but at a faster pace and with purpose. He turned. His gun wrapped in a mold-encrusted dish towel, Dominic walked up to Ibrahim, put the gun against his left knee, and pulled the trigger. The towel muffled the shot to a muted pop. Ibrahim screamed. Dominic stuffed a second towel in his mouth.
Chavez said, “Dom, Jesus…”
Dominic shifted the gun again and fired a round into Ibrahim’s right knee. Ibrahim thrashed, screaming into the towel, his head banging against the wall behind him. Dominic crouched down beside him and slapped his face hard, once, twice, then a third time. Ibrahim went quiet. Tears streamed down his face. Hadi had shrunk away from his partner, trying to slide himself down the wall.
Chavez pointed at him. “Not another inch.” He grabbed Dominic’s arm and tried to stand him up. Dominic didn’t budge but just crouched there, slump-shouldered beside Ibrahim, staring into his face.
“Dom! Get up.”
Dominic tore his eyes off Ibrahim and stood up. Chavez pulled him into the kitchen. “What the fuck was that?”
“The talk therapy wasn’t working, Ding.”
“Not your call to make. Christ, get ahold of yourself. He’s useless to us now. A bullet in each knee… we’ll be lucky if he can string two words together.”
Dominic shrugged. “Hadi’s our guy anyway. He was a courier. Ibrahim is a cell leader. He knows Paulinia and that’s it.”
“We don’t know that. Let me do it my way?”
“Okay, sure.”
“You hearing me?”
“Yeah, dammit, I said I was.”
Chavez walked back into the room and knelt down again. To Ibrahim he said, “I’m going to take the towel out. If you scream, it goes back in.”
Ibrahim nodded. His face was slick with sweat. Beneath each of his knees, Frisbee-sized puddles of blood were soaking into the plywood.
Dominic removed the towel. Ibrahim gasped but snapped his jaw shut and went quiet. His lower lip trembled. “My friend’s a little touchy today. Sorry. Let’s talk about the U.S.; give us something, and we’ll get you to a hospital.”
Ibrahim shook his head.
To Hadi: “How about you? Give us what we’re looking for and we won’t take you back with us.”
Ibrahim rasped, “Don’t, Shasif…”
Dominic walked over and knelt beside Chavez, gesturing
“No, I don’t think so.”
“So who knew what you looked like? Who could have leaked the sketch? Either Ibrahim or someone higher up. No one else.”
“But why?”
“Loose ends. Maybe somebody thought you were unreliable. Think about it. Ibrahim gets the order from the higher-ups to kill you; the sketch and message gets you to run. Ibrahim uses that to convince the other two to join the hunt. Otherwise, Ibrahim has to convince them to kill their friend for no good reason. Which is easier?”
Hadi considered this for a few moments, then glanced sideways at Ibrahim, who was shaking his head. Saliva leaked from the corners of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. “It’s not true.”
