Dark Redemption (David Rivers Book 3) Page 14

  But the others didn’t follow.

  I had hoped to pick off a trailing member of the kill team, preferably Agustin—if I could slay only one man in the coming confrontation, I’d make sure it was him. But the point man was alone. He wasn’t leading the formation; instead, he was trying to draw fire in a setting where someone could hide a few meters in any direction amid the urban sprawl. That meant the other four shooters were far enough back to maneuver on me the moment I compromised my position.

  The point man didn’t move straight to the church—he knew that to be a trap. My public seizure of it had been too obvious, so he circled the surrounding area instead, passing in and out of alleys and footpaths off the open space surrounding the building. He was looking for the ambush position he knew waited for him, not appearing too concerned about getting shot in the meantime.

  It was an offensive form of reverse ambush, but one that I couldn’t pass up. If I didn’t take the shot, he was as likely as not to find me first. I had only seconds before he either saw me or disappeared from my view. My plan was about to evaporate, leaving me with a moment-by-moment reaction to an unfolding firefight against overwhelming odds. The only end would be my death or that of the kill team, one of which would occur in the next ninety seconds.

  The man’s figure passed within the dull black ring of my MP5’s front sight, and I centered the vertical spike of the sight post on his femurs before squeezing the trigger. My 9mm rounds and iron sights were woefully insubstantial for precision fire at that distance, so I blasted six rounds from the submachine gun in the hope that at least one would hit its mark.

  After the deathly quiet that had befallen the favela, each gunshot sounded like a mini nuclear blast. The point man fell in place. I’d hoped to leave him alive and screaming, letting one or more of his teammates cross into my sights as they tried to save him.

  But after falling he fought through the pain, scanning the buildings around him as he spoke into a radio hand mic on his shoulder. Though lying with a probable broken femur and his lifeblood flowing into the vile sludge beneath him, he kept a single-minded focus on spotting my position to vector in his team.

  His eyes fell upon my vantage point, where I was curled into a tight sitting position with a knee in my left armpit, support arm braced against my shin. I sat atop a flimsy dining room table situated three feet away from the open window through which I fired three more rounds. The trio of bullets found his head before he could transmit over his radio again.

  The kill team’s number was reduced to four.

  My last shot faded to the snapping of incoming rounds hitting the interior wall beside me. I fell from the table in the kind of unscripted movement that only occurs in gunfights—a burst of animal momentum that propelled me sideways and down with the spontaneity of a startled cat. Crashing onto the kitchen’s slick vinyl flooring, I registered that the return fire had come from a direction opposite the point man.

  The kill team hadn’t moved straight to the church, I realized at once; they had surrounded it from afar and sent one man in to force my hand. Their bid had worked.

  I shot upright and bolted through a door leading to the stairwell outside. As I reached it, I could already hear men thundering toward me from below, racing to halt my escape. I leapt up the stairs three at a time, crossing onto the third floor and darting to a short ladder leading to a square opening in the roof.

  Scrambling up it, I pulled myself onto the roof’s surface, but my blast of relief was halted by the MP5 stock snagging on the opening. The process of moving it and wedging myself through cost me precious seconds marked by the rising fear that I’d get shot in the ass before I succeeded.

  And then, with a final clawing pull, I was atop the roof.

  I’d barely cleared the opening when the sharp hiss of bullets zipped through it and into the sky. I broke into a run between two cylindrical water tanks. Under perfect circumstances, I could have hidden behind them and fired on my pursuers when they climbed atop the ladder; but the clumsy snag of my submachine gun let them get too close, and now my footsteps were chased by the plunk of bullets piercing the corrugated iron below me.

  With a frantic quickening of pace, I darted between the water tanks. Reaching the end of the roof, I accelerated my run into a final hard step and jumped.

  I only had to clear a few horizontal meters in order to reach an adjacent rooftop set ten feet lower—a feat I could have achieved drunk on any other day. But a sudden, crippling return of pain in my right knee caused it to nearly buckle at the moment of my launch. As a result, my body tumbled through the air, barely clearing a drooping power line strung between buildings.

  I managed a pitiful crash landing at the very edge of the church roof, rolling to a near-stop that ended as I began crawling to the hatch that I’d left ajar. If I didn’t make it inside before the shooters behind me reached the edge, I’d make a remarkably easy target for them.

  But as I pulled myself through the roof hatch and slid down a few interior stairs, I heard no incoming gunfire. Seizing on the opportunity to clamber down the rest of the stairs, I reached the second-floor landing within the church’s living area.

  This was it, I thought; the culmination of my effort, of pulling danger away from Parvaneh so that I could assume it myself, of preventing the favela invasion and innocent deaths through an act of lunacy, or suicide, or both. This was what I did, the one thing I excelled at if nothing else. I readied the MP5 across my chest and took a few panting breaths as I waited for their next move. They could either leap onto the church roof and assault downward or hit the ground floor and fight their way up.

  To my horror, they did both.

  An explosion on the ground floor rattled the building, its blast so loud within the confined space that I couldn’t tell whether it was a grenade or a breaching charge on the front door. I didn’t have time to consider it further as a man smashed against the roof.

  I pivoted up the stairs and toward the roof hatch with the MP5, hoping to shoot the jumper before he had time to recover from the impact. But his partner on the opposite roof was covering the hatch, and the zipping impact of incoming bullets slicing through the roof and into the stairwell forced me down onto the second floor, where I could hear men crashing through the front door and past my barricade of chairs.

  Looking up to the ceiling, I knew that the first man would now cover the hatch as the second jumped onto the roof. I was trapped between two-man assault teams, one above and one below.

  I put the MP5 on fully automatic, elevating its barrel to the ceiling.

  I had about twenty rounds remaining in the magazine, and as the clatter of a second man hitting the roof echoed above me, I aimed at the noise and unleashed all of them.

  A man cried out and then went silent by the end of my burst. Before I could reload, the hatch was darkened by the shadow of the first man, who began firing down the stairs and into the second floor.

  I threw my back against the wall under the stairs as bullets darted through the space. Grabbing the slung shotgun, I turned and cast its barrel upward at the hatch. The roar of the first 12-gauge blast erupted, and the flame from the shot receded to a view of a mangled human ankle on the top stair. Pumping the shotgun, I whirled toward a shadow racing up the stairway and fired into the wall to halt his progress. Another pump of the shotgun as I spun to face the man from the roof, now sliding down the stairs on one functional leg with a strange expression of composure as he fought for control of his M4.

  Bringing the shotgun to his face, I fired at near point-blank range.

  Without waiting to see the effect, I faced the stairs and charged the shotgun again, this time firing my final shell to momentarily prevent the last two men from assaulting upward.

  A man shot his M4 wildly around the corner of the stairs—if the kill team had previously cared about taking me alive, I’d since goaded them out of it. The neatly painted walls around me were suddenly marred with the thwacking slice of incoming bullets. The pa
ir of men assaulting from the ground knew their teammates were out of the fight and decided to fire everything they had around the corner.

  I couldn’t make it to the roof without getting shot, so instead I grabbed the dead man from the stairs and pulled him to the floor. Leaping on his back and grabbing his shoulders, I rolled him atop me and hoisted us into a semi-seated position against the wall.

  Rounds were ricocheting everywhere now, both my shotgun and MP5 empty. I reached for the M4 slung across the dead body in front of me, but its sling was pinned between us and I couldn’t force the barrel upward.

  I dropped the rifle and fumbled across his chest from behind, feeling across pouches until I found the spherical mass I was looking for.

  Tearing the pouch open, I withdrew a fragmentation grenade, pulled the pin, and let the spoon fly off. After letting another second of suppressed gunfire elapse, I hurled the grenade down the stairs.

  The gunfire ended with a man’s shrill scream cut short by the grenade blast. The reverberating howl of the explosion receded to the sound of running footsteps below.

  A final man had survived the detonation, racing down the stairs and out the front door. My sudden turn of fate had brought with it the onslaught of euphoria that followed unlikely victory over death. This time, however, that rush came with an overwhelming sense of omnipotence, of immortality taking hold in a split-second fractal of time.

  Effortlessly flinging the dead man’s bulk off my body, I grabbed his M4 sling and tore it over the bloody mass of his mangled head. My right knee burned as I moved up the steps with a speed that I shouldn’t have been capable of. My two slung weapons clattered at my side as I emerged on the roof, covered in the slick of another man’s blood, giving no consideration to his partner that I’d shot through the ceiling and whether he may be alive and aiming at me. A preternatural sense of confidence assured me he was dead—they all were, save one that I was about to kill in my final act of dominion over this impossible combat engagement.

  Nothing could stop me now. I’d singlehandedly pulled a looming danger away from Parvaneh, had faced death at every turn, and yet saved both her and the little girl I’d encountered in the interim. I’d gone to the dark center of the favela to clash with a monster of overwhelming proportions and won. I’d been drowned and returned to life, had reached my current position in the Outfit for a reason. This reminder brought with it the words of the psychologist who spoke to me after my resurrection: I think you’ll go far in this business, if they let you in.

  And upon my return to North America, I would kill the Handler.

  I neared the edge of the roof in seconds, sighting the fleeing figure of the last man and taking aim at once. He had almost vanished into a darkened alleyway by the time the rifle optic had met my line of sight, and for the briefest of moments I thought I saw him pairing with a sixth man in the shadows. Both figures instantly disappeared in the muzzle blast of my M4 as I emptied the remaining rounds in the magazine with rapid single shots.

  When the weapon ran out of ammo, I focused through the optic to see the prize due to me, the visual gratification of bodies and blood that I knew waited beyond.

  There was nothing.

  They were gone.

  “FUCK YOU!” I yelled, savagely throwing the empty M4 down beside me.

  The fifth man had escaped, possibly with a sixth, and I felt a desperate pang of urgency to learn whether one of them was Agustin. I spun and moved to the other man on the roof, his body lying face down.

  I’d fired close to twenty rounds through the corrugated iron ceiling in the hope that one would find a kill shot. I’d succeeded with two—one that exited the base of his brain, and another that crested the top of his head, scalping him and allowing an ooze of fluid to pour onto the metal roof and drain into the nearest trio of bullet holes.

  I rolled his body over, hoping to see Agustin’s face, but found a clean-shaven jaw with a sideways entry wound instead.

  Releasing the body in disgust, I stood and made for the stairs, descending them unarmed and past the dead man I had used for cover from the incoming bullets. I had seen his face in the second before I blasted it with the shotgun and knew he wasn’t the man I met outside Ribeiro’s office.

  I’d watched the point man closely before shooting him, so that left a single grenade victim on the stairs for me to check. All my rage in that moment was directed against Agustin, and I felt an irrational desire to confirm his death. It wasn’t that he tried to kill me—that much was fair play. But the intimate conversation he’d held with me, getting to know his quarry before the police ambush and ultimate pursuit through the favela, left me wanting him dead as much as anyone I’d felt wrath for in the past.

  I stormed down the stairs completely unarmed, two useless weapons at my side, driven to the point of senselessness. A billowing fog of smoke and incinerated clay brick flowed, stinking and choking, up the stairs and toward the roof hatch. Taking a breath and holding it as I plunged into the cloud, I found the last body just around the corner of the stairs, his firing position becoming the last place he’d occupied in life.

  The back of his head was remarkably unscathed, torso intact between twin plates of body armor. But the grenade had bounced off the brick walls and detonated behind him, leaving his body from the waist down an indistinguishable mass of scorched flesh.

  Grabbing his hair and pulling his head up, I saw a lifeless stranger staring back at me through the haze.

  I released him, my head suddenly pounding with exertion. Taking a desperate breath, I coughed stinking lungfuls of air thick with explosive residue and brick dust and smoking human flesh.

  Climbing the stairs back to the landing, I was overcome with a sudden insatiable thirst for water. I fell to my hands and knees beneath the fog of destruction that billowed overhead.

  In that moment, the entire mass of my troubled existence descended on me at once: Boss’s team and Karma and Caspian, Remy’s face before I killed him, the pain I’d endured before and after wars both military and criminal, the deception of life lived as a lie. My suicide forestalled, for anyone else a symbol of hope but for me a meaningless achievement that resulted in the deaths of so many others.

  And for what?

  A mental image of the psychologist’s bulging, ice-blue eyes upon me after my drowning. You’re here for a reason, son. And you need to remind yourself of that reason every day of your life.

  And then the pastor.

  May you deliver him from sin, and find him worthy to conquer a greater evil.

  I threw up a bitter stream of bile and then slid to a semi-collapsed position beside it, keeping below the smoke to take sobbing breaths of air. Rolling over to my side, I felt my hand hit the man I’d blasted in the face with the shotgun. He was on his stomach now, the back of his body armor revealing the rows of pouches I’d glimpsed while hiding in the cabinet of the favela kitchen.

  One of them formed a perfect rectangular shape, sharp edges ending in the stubby protrusion of a short-whip radio antenna.

  6

  From behind the mountains a ruby glow descended, pulling a veil of darkness in its wake.

  I should have been running. The sunset was imminent now, and with it an Outfit invasion. Every encroaching inch of darkness decreased my likelihood of linking up with Micah and the helicopter’s ability to spot us amid the rooftops of a million sprawling shanties. But between the weight of my backpack bouncing like a pendulum and the burning pain in my right knee, my gait had settled into a shuffling jog.

  The people of the favela parted before me. I couldn’t imagine how insane I looked to them—a blood-soaked gringo going on thirty-six hours awake, plummeting down the hill in the excruciating clutch of an adrenaline hangover. If someone started shooting at me, all pain would be lifted, and I’d once again gain the superhuman abilities of speed and coherence under duress. Until then, I grunted through the full gamut of joints and muscles strained too hard for too long in the fight for survival.

&
nbsp; I’d performed a hasty search of the kill team, who had far more equipment than I could carry in my small backpack. I took the essential items in pairs, my bag becoming an ark for twin radios and GPS, along with spare magazines. Then I took two M4s, slinging one over my shoulder for Micah and carrying the other in my hands. I was beyond the need or even ability to conceal weapons, and the shotgun and MP5 had been left behind in lieu of superior firepower.

  The outskirts of the favela that had initially struck me as the pit of destitution now appeared comparatively luxurious after escaping the dense area surrounding the church. I passed a few barren trees rising from patches of dirt between slabs of asphalt, the sight a paragon of natural wonder. Even the phone and power lines converging like spider webs across mildew-caked buildings that had seemed so imposing upon our arrival now appeared comforting symbols of familiarity.

  As the sunlight waned, I cursed Micah for not telling me the emergency frequency that the Outfit would monitor. But fearing my capture, he had adamantly protected it. Even his link-up plan was fraught with precaution for Parvaneh. I was to carry my weapon left-handed if being followed or proceeding under duress, right-handed if not, as I traveled down the favela’s equivalent of a parking lot, where the partially paved road bore cars and motorcycles crammed into every possible space.

  A sharp whistle to my right stopped me dead in my tracks. Whirling toward the noise, I ducked between people and approached a makeshift storefront with a closed roll-up door. Then I heard the whistle again, softer this time. I followed the noise to a footpath between structures, where Micah stepped out from the shadows.

  The short protrusion of an MP5 barrel halted my progress as he leveled it at my chest. His eyes were ablaze, certain that the kill team would plunge into the space after me. Sending me out and moving his primary involved a catastrophic degree of risk, second only to bringing me back in proximity to her.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I held my palms up to him. “I’ve got radios. There’s still one man from the kill team out there, maybe two.”