Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

By the agitated expressions of two young women who passed him a few minutes later, Urso knew for sure gangsters were up there collecting tolls, or worse. He reached around under his loose shirt and removed an old but well-cared-for .45-caliber Remington Model 1911 pistol. It was a heavy thing, but effective.

The Bear reached into his pants pocket and got out a crude, homemade suppressor, which he screwed onto the threaded muzzle. Even though the police rarely came into the jungle, he didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention.

Urso slid the suppressed gun into the front of his pants and let his loose shirt drape over it. He walked on confidently into the pinch point, eyes straight ahead but picking up movement on the slope above. He exited the narrow chute and found a kid, maybe seventeen or eighteen, standing there in the path. Two others, one above, and one below, revealed themselves.

“What are you doing here, man?” the one on the trail asked.

“Taking a walk,” Urso said. “Seeing old friends up in Rocinha.”

“What’s in the knapsack?” asked the one above and to his right.

“Groceries,” Urso said. “We’re having dinner.”

“Let’s see,” said the one below and to his left.

None of them displayed weapons, but the Bear knew they had them.

“Can’t we just make this a cash-and-go thing?” he asked. “I’d hate to see unwanted and unnecessary bloodshed.”

A long moment of silence unfolded, during which Urso’s decision was made for him. Catching a flicker of the uphill man’s hands, he dropped to one knee, drew the gun, and shot the man high in the chest. Then the Bear twisted and put one through the downhill man’s throat. He had the kid in the trail in his sights before the boy could even tug his old revolver out.

“No, Senhor,” the kid said. “Please. I was just following orders.”

Urso considered leniency, but in this case it just wouldn’t do. He shot the kid in the face.

It was so steep there by the ravine that it took the Bear less than two minutes to drag the dead bodies over and push them off the side. He watched them tumble, fall, and disappear into the jungle below.

There’d be a stench at some point, and birds circling and rodents gnawing, and maybe they’d find bones. But as Urso picked up his spent bullet casings, he knew there’d be nothing to connect him to the deaths.

An hour later, the Bear emerged from the jungle in the Rocinha favela. He nodded to the gangsters watching this end of the trail. They would think of him when their friends did not reappear, but by then it wouldn’t matter.

He wandered with purpose through the Rocinha slum, still a ridiculously dangerous place, as the sun began to set. He spotted the ruins of a mansion that a drug lord had built and that the BOPE had firebombed. He passed through the saddle on the west flank of the Two Brothers and dropped downhill toward the tony enclave of Leblon.

The new top 1 percent of the 1 percent — Russians, Chinese, Europeans, and the odd American — lived down there in flats that cost sixteen million dollars U.S. and more. With the great wealth of Rio below him, the Bear cut back to the eastern edge of the slum and started once more into the jungle. Monkeys scattered. Parrots going to roost scolded him.

Two hundred yards in, a thousand vertical feet below the cliffy north end of the mountains, Urso heard the hum of a generator before spotting a gathering of shacks hidden in the trees at the top of a small clearing, less than an acre. On the roof of the largest building was a satellite dish. That was not an uncommon sight in Rio, except this dish was joined by two others, and all three pointed in different directions.

The Bear saw the shadows of men to either side of the largest shack but went confidently to the door and knocked twice. The door soon opened.

The woman who called herself Rayssa stood there.

“Any trouble?” she asked.

“A little,” Urso admitted before handing over the knapsack. “But nothing to be worried about.”

Rayssa looked doubtful but took the pack and stood aside. The Bear entered the shack, saw fourteen-year-old Alou sitting in front of a desk made from a door turned flat. On top of the desk were three large iMac screens and a keyboard. Alou finished typing something in and hit Return. The two screens on the outside began to play the evening news. The center one showed the websites of the local papers. After watching several minutes of coverage focused on the upcoming Olympic Games, now just days away, Rayssa said, “The police, the Wises, and Private have kept it out of the news.”

Urso gestured with his chin at the knapsack, said, “Let’s change that.”

Rayssa nodded. She said to Alou, “Be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“The security’s strong, right?” the Bear asked.

Alou looked insulted, said, “It goes out in bursts, with corrupted and misleading metadata.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Rayssa said, “Don’t worry about it. He’s tested it. It works. Not even Private was able to track us.”

Urso chewed at the inside of his lip, said, “Where’s Wise?”

“Next door,” Alou said.

They went out the back of the shack and crossed a narrow gap to a smaller, tin-roofed structure. One of the Bear’s men stood at the door. He wordlessly moved aside and let them in.

Andrew Wise was dressed in another blue workman’s coverall, now with a black hood over his head. Straps held his chest, arms, and legs to a sturdy chair. The American billionaire heard them come in, turned his head their way, and tried to say something through his gag.

Rayssa ignored him. She went to a tripod mounted about three feet in front of Wise. She removed a recently stolen Canon HD camera from the knapsack, checked the SIM card, then attached the camera to the tripod and aimed it at her hostage.

Rayssa handed a black hood to the Bear and put on the primitive mask she’d used during the ransom demands for the Wise sisters.

“Okay, then,” Rayssa said, walking toward the billionaire. “It’s time to get down to it. The real reason you were brought here, Mr. Wise.”

i heard three sharp knocks on my door at the Marriott. Despite the disaster of the previous evening, I’d been in desperate need of sleep, and around ten that morning I had gone there rather than to Tavia’s flat.

The knocking came again. I groaned, forced my eyes open, and looked at the clock. Six thirty p.m. I’d slept eight solid hours, the longest stretch I’d gotten in a month.

“Jack?” Cherie Wise called through the door. “Are you there?”

“Two seconds, Cherie,” I yelled back.

After throwing on sweatpants and a hoodie, I went to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw Cherie standing there, trembling, still wearing her clothes from the night before. I yanked the door open. “Cherie?”

“What am I going to do?” she asked, and burst into tears.

“Come inside,” I said, taking her by the elbow. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” she blubbered. “That’s the point. They’ve had him more than twelve hours and nothing!”

“Andy’s a big coup, and they know it,” I said, leading her to a seat. “They’re going to be extra careful before they contact us. And after the gunfire, they have to know there are federal police involved too. You’ve got to take a lot of deep breaths. Live in the moment until we know more.”

Wiping at her tears, Cherie said, “I’m sorry, Jack, I’ve just never been through anything remotely like this.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “Anybody in your boots has the right to cry.”

“Not very Jackie O. of me.”