Ballistic

ONE

Outside Quito, the manhunter had come close. He’d even called in a kill team, but they’d gone wanting for a target. Foolish of him, a false start could dull their fervor the next time; he would not cry wolf again. He’d caught fresh wind of the target in northern Chile and a hint of him farther down the Pacific coast, but then he’d lost the scent in Punta Arenas.

Until Rio and a lucky break. A visiting jujitsu student from Denmark had seen an Interpol Wanted poster while in his embassy filing for a lost passport. He’d run into another white student at a dojo in the favelas. Nothing to that, but the Dane knew his art, and the white man’s fighting style showed hints of other disciplines: hard, brutal, warrior tendencies that he tried to hide from those around him. The Dane recalled the Wanted poster. It was no obvious match, but he felt compelled to contact the authorities. Something about the man in the dojo had uneased him. A look, an edge, the hint of suspicion on the part of the white student, as if he knew that the Dane was sizing him up for some reason.

The manhunter got word of the sighting, arrived on a private jet mere hours later. The suspect did not show for class that day, or the next. The manhunter brought in local reinforcements for the legwork; dozens of men combed the favelas with photos and cash. Many of the crew were roughed up or threatened on the mean streets of the lawless slums, one man even relieved of his wallet and knifed in the arm. But the canvass paid off: someone talked; someone pointed a finger; someone whispered an address.

The manhunter went to have a look. He was not a shooter himself, he hadn’t fired a weapon since his days in the Royal Netherlands Army, fighting the Angolans in the 1970s. But he did not want to spin up his gunmen-in-waiting on another wild-goose chase, so he left eight armed men up the street as he went on with only two. A horrid, run-down neighborhood, a shit-stained building, a piss-scented thirdfloor hall with a darkened doorway at the end of it. The manhunter’s hands shook as he used another border’s key and crept inside, his gunners just behind him.

A human form moved in a blur off a top bunk bed; the manhunter’s life flashed before his eyes. Then a backpack heaved upon the blur’s shoulder, and the blur was out a window, a full two stories down. The manhunter rushed behind him; the gunmen fired their weapons, tearing up the bed and the wall and the window frame in the blur’s wake. The men reloaded as the manhunter reached the window, watched the target land and roll onto another rooftop, float across an alleyway to another building like a flying squirrel, and then leap and roll down to ground level, the explosions of small-caliber rounds chasing after him down the street as the two gunmen belatedly returned to the fight.

The target was gone. The bunk he vacated left no clues but the warmth on his tattered blanket.

That was ten weeks ago.

Last Sunday a call came from Fonte Boa, hundreds of miles north on the Amazon River. The manhunter had made lists of possible professions in which the target might find work. There were hundreds, from sheet metal worker to legionnaire. Somewhere down the list marine salvage had been noted, due to his experience in diving and his raw courage. A small operation along a remote Amazonian tributary had employed a walk-up foreign white man, a queer occurrence in the Brazilian jungle to be sure. So the manhunter had flown to Fonte Boa and shown a photo to the boatman who delivered dry goods upriver to the settlements.

And now the manhunter was here.

He fingered the radio between his knees. One call and two fat helicopters full of gunmen would descend and fan out; they’d planned their attack with satellite photos and a grease board in the watcher’s hotel room in Fonte Boa. One call would turn the pristine jungle to fire and end the target the Dutch manhunter had been after for these seven long months.

But first he must make certain.

A howler monkey splashed from a tree into the water, scampered back onto the bank, and disappeared into the thick growth.

Seconds later, the launch slowed and bumped against the rubber tires tied to the dockside. The canoe’s owner made to turn off the outboard.

“No,” said the manhunter. “Leave it running. I will only be a moment.”

“Wastes gas, sir,” said the local. Some sort of Indian savage. “I can start it again in five seconds.”

“I said leave it running.” The white man climbed ashore, started up the dirt hill towards a man idling by a shack raised on narrow stilts. The Dutchman would get some verification that this was the place, and then he would not wait around for the fireworks. He carried an ancient Webley Top-Break Revolver in a shoulder holster, but that was really just for show out here amongst the savages of the jungle. Killing was not his job. He’d use his radio, and then his job would be done. He’d head back upriver to Fonte Boa to wait at the hotel.

Mauro sat in the shade, waiting for his father to return with the morning’s catch. At ten years old Mauro normally went out with his father to collect the nets, but today he’d stayed behind to help his uncle with some chores and had only just arrived at the dock when the canoe with the white man appeared. He watched the old man make his way up the hill, stop in front of the drunkard, and engage the man in conversation. The white man pulled a white paper from his breast pocket and showed it to the drunk, then handed him some cash.

Mauro stood slowly. Hesitated.

The white man nodded, headed back to the canoe, and pulled a radio up to his mouth.

Young Mauro walked towards a narrow trail that led away from the docks, away from his village. Once inside the dark protection of the jungle canopy, the boy began to run as fast as his calloused bare feet would take him.