The going was tough as the storm intensified. Icy needles of rain pelted any exposed skin, though the sturdy craft rode the waves well. When they reached the spot where the stealth ship had been hit, they found a debris field encircled by a slick of diesel fuel that was rapidly breaking up. Cabrillo ran the RHIB to one of the largest pieces of flotsam, a section of composite material that looked as if it had been part of the ship’s pointed prow. He and Eddie Seng lifted the lightweight chunk of debris into the RHIB and lashed it to the deck so they could examine it back on the Oregon.
“What do you think?” Eddie asked.
“I think when that shell hit, the boat blew apart like a grenade. Whatever powered the magnetic pulse generator had to be very unstable.”
“You think when the field failed it cratered the ship?”
“That’s my guess. I’ll run the idea past Murph and Stone to get their opinion, but I think I’m right.”
“What about the rendezvous ship?”
Juan looked around the darkened sea. “Gone the instant they figured out what happened to their buddies here.” He added grimly, “If we can’t get the Oregon running in the next hour or two, we’ve lost them.”
They headed back home.
When the civilian radar finally came back online, the seas around them were empty, as Cabrillo predicted. The military radar came up a short time later, and its extended range showed a pair of ships, but neither was traveling in the right direction to be the rendezvous vessel. They were approaching, not fleeing. The main engines were finally refired five hours after the EMP blast. As chief engineer, Max insisted that they be brought up to full power in slow, carefully monitored increments.
As satisfied as Cabrillo was that the stealth ship had been destroyed, he was equally bitter that the trail was now going to go cold. With the damage they’d sustained, Hanley recommended some time in port so they could sort out all the problems and do a thorough systems check. Juan reluctantly agreed, and a day later they tied up at Hamilton Harbour’s commercial pier. What stores they needed for repairs that couldn’t be bought in Bermuda could easily be flown in from the States. Max would see to that.
Cabrillo’s job was to find two men who most definitely didn’t want to be found.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They were called favelas. The slums of Rio de Janeiro were world famous. No one was quite sure why, but some had even become tourist destinations for the wealthy of the world to stare, agape, at the misery of others. While some of the slums clinging to the hillsides surrounding Brazil’s second-most-populous city had been gentrified to an extent with running water and electricity, many of them had not and were still little more than clusters of shipping containers with crude mud tracks between them. These favelas, especially, were the homes of criminal gangs, usually drug dealers and professional kidnappers who would snatch people off the streets and hold them for ransom.
One such slum spilled off a hill like so much trash flung from a giant’s hand. It was home to thirty thousand people crammed into a space not much larger than three city blocks. Dogs and half-naked children meandered the dirt paths that wound around the buildings. There were only a few of any permanence, cinder-block structures erected by one aid agency or other, with the intent of housing a few hundred people in tiny apartments. Instead, several thousand called each one home, many living in staircases or hallways or in tin and plywood shacks atop the roof.
Sewage ran in channels along the roads, and only occasionally would one of the cars lining the streets move. Most had been stolen and abandoned here and were stripped down to their shells, like the carapaces of dead beetles eaten by ants. The stink and squalor were appalling. It was a place of gray hopelessness where even Rio’s perfect weather could not give joy to the inhabitants. It was also a place of oppressive fear of the drug gang that ran the favela with an iron fist. The police never ventured into the slum, and not once had the government tried to intervene in the region’s internal affairs. Its leader was called Amo, which meant “boss.” Nothing happened in his territory that he didn’t know about.
The stranger looked like any of the thousands of peasants who flocked into the city from the countryside searching for work. He wore frayed tan pants and a simple cotton shirt. His sandals were soled with the tread of a truck tire. On his head he wore a hat made from woven palm leaves. No one paid him any attention as he moved slowly up the hill, weaving between heaps of trash and kids roughhousing in the streets.
Finally, two young men with slicked-back hair and predatory eyes lifted themselves from the five-gallon buckets they were using as stools. One adjusted his shirt so the taped butt of an ancient revolver was visible. His partner hefted a baseball bat.
They approached the stranger and called out, “What’s your business here?”
They could see the man was in his sixties and had a dim look in his eyes. He muttered a response that neither man understood.
“I think you should head back down the mountain, old man,” the leader of the two thugs suggested. “There is nothing but trouble for you here.”
It was obvious the old man had nothing of value, so there was no sense robbing him, and letting him linger would mean one more beggar clogging the streets. Better to send him packing now than disposing of his corpse later when he died of starvation or dysentery.
“I want no trouble,” the man said in Spanish.
“He ain’t even Brazilian, man,” the young thug complained. “We can’t feed ourselves, and some Bolivian expects to live off our charity.”
The kid with the gun spat angrily. “Not your lucky day, pal.”
He grabbed the old man by the arm while his partner got him by the other, and they quickly marshaled him into a tight alley between two shipping containers that served as homes for dozens. A cat had been sunning itself on a tire pile at the entrance of the alley, but its primal sense of trouble sent it fleeing. The ground was oil soaked and packed as hard as cement.
They tossed the man into the side of one of the containers, but he turned so that he hit it with his back and not his face as they had intended. If either street tough realized how deftly the old man had moved, things might have ended differently. The space was too narrow to swing the bat properly, so the thug used its butt end like a ram aimed at the old man’s stomach. He wasn’t a big kid, and perpetual hunger did little to give him superior strength, but the blow would be enough to drop the old man to the ground with his lungs emptied of air.
The wooden bat hit the side of the container with an echoing thump. The man had dodged the bat, and then he went on the offense. He snatched the gun out of the leader’s waistband before the man realized he’d moved and used it like a pair of brass knuckles. His punch broke the kid’s cheekbone and flayed open the skin so that blood poured from the wound.
He howled in pain and outrage even as the old man turned his attention to the youth with the bat. He was still numbed from the unexpected hit against the unyielding container, so he could do nothing to defend himself as the pistol smashed into his nose, breaking it with the kind of force even the world’s greatest plastic surgeon would have trouble repairing. He dropped to his knees, clutching at the wound. He keened like a siren, high then low. Next to him, the leader of the little duo of Amo’s sentries was out cold.
The stranger finally took the time to notice the gun wasn’t even loaded. When he’d first seen it, his instincts had been right not to try to fire it. He hadn’t thought it was empty, just that it would probably explode in his hand if he’d pulled the trigger. He pocketed the gun for later disposal and hauled the still-conscious kid to his feet.