The Panic Zone

22

Gannon was drowning.

Oh, Christ!

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. His head was wrapped in cloth and held underwater. His lungs were splitting, he struggled but his hands were bound behind his back.

God, please!

Mercifully, his head was pulled up. As he choked on air, he was tossed onto a mattress in a darkened room.

Who was doing this? Why? Where was he?

Someone jerked him upright, yanked the cloth hood from his head. Blinding light burned his face and a voice he didn’t recognize mocked him in accented English from the darkness.

“Jack Gannon, reporter, World Press Alliance, New York.”

Gannon coughed.

“Your card identifies you as an American reporter. Is this true?”

Gannon said nothing, then a fist smashed the side of his head. He tasted blood, gritted his teeth and was pulled to his feet.

“Answer! You are an American reporter?”

“Yes.”

“You lie. You work for police. You’re here to frame us for the bombing!”

“No, I don’t know who you are. I’ve come to learn about Maria Santo.”

A knee flattened Gannon’s groin. Lightning flashed in his eyes, and he doubled over, groaning in agony.

Gannon wheezed, “You’re making a mistake.”

“There is no mistake.”

The man barked in Portuguese. A small video player was shoved into Gannon’s face. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light.

It was a TV news report of him talking to Detective Roberto Estralla beyond the yellow tape at the crime scene of the attack on the Cafe Amaldo. The report cut to Gannon close up. The video player vanished, then newspapers were thrust before him, a flashlight haloed on the photograph of him taken with Estralla at the scene.

“Did you think you could walk into our turf and plant evidence in the home of Maria Santo?”

“No. No, you don’t understand,” Gannon said.

“We are going to send a message to your police friends that we had nothing to do with the bombing.”

A chrome-plated revolver materialized. Gannon’s captor spun its cylinder, showing the empty chambers, then he held up a bullet before sliding it into one of the chambers. He spun the cylinder then clicked it into the frame.

“Don’t. Please.”

The barrel was drilled into Gannon’s mouth, he tasted metal.

“Our message will be written on your corpse.”

Gannon’s stomach heaved, a finger squeezed the trigger. As it went back, he shut his eyes.

God help me.

Click.

Empty chamber.

Laughter filled the room.

The gun was removed, Gannon’s heart nearly burst.

“So you live a little longer. Spend the last moments of your life dreaming of your execution.”

A sudden blow to his head sent Gannon falling to the mattress and falling back through his life…

He is ten years old in the Buffalo Public Library where his big sister Cora is telling him he must read books because he’s going to be a writer…I see it in your eyes, you don’t give up…his mother, the waitress, in her white apron…his father in the rope factory, his blistered hands…his mother sobbing…they’ve lost Cora to drugs…she’s run off…they can’t find her for years…he resents Cora for the pain she’s caused…he loves Cora for his life follows the course she envisioned…he’s a news reporter with the Buffalo Sentinel…he meets Lisa Newsome on assignment from the Cleveland Plain Dealer…Lisa wants to get married and have kids…he could be cutting his lawn in suburbia, taking the kids to the mall…not him…he breaks Lisa’s heart…ghosts will haunt you…his parents keep looking for Cora…she may have children…she may have a new life…what became of Cora?… A New York State Trooper, standing at his apartment, hat in hand…a pickup driven by a drunk driver has smashed into his parents’ Ford Taurus, killing them both…he aches to get out of Buffalo but is afraid to leave… ghosts…nominated for a Pulitzer…for convincing the brother of the suicidal Russian airline pilot who plunged his jet into Lake Erie to talk…think of the dead, their ghosts will haunt you…he got what he wanted…Buffalo behind him…working for the World Press Alliance…wasn’t that what he wanted?… No one to mourn him…he was alone… Wasn’t that what he wanted?… To die in the slums of Rio de Janeiro…ghosts will haunt you…don’t ever give up, Jack…

Jack…

“Jack Gannon.”

His eyes opened then squinted.

He was on a bed in a bright room with an open window, fresh air. He had been moved. A woman was sitting near, tending to his face. She had a British accent.

“Can you hear me, Jack? I only have a few minutes.”

He turned to her, a woman in her early thirties with brown hair and dark eyes filled with worry.

“My name is Sarah Kirby. I’m Maria’s friend from the Human Rights Center, at the bottom of the favela.”

“Help me get out of here.”

“I’m trying. You must listen. You were taken by the Blue Brigade, the drug gang that controls the Ceu sobre Rio. They have places to hide people here, but everyone knows them. Bruna came for me.”

“Did they hurt her? Did they hurt Pedro or Fatima?”

“No, the narcos protect the people of the favela.”

“But how did you get in? We have to leave! Untie my hands!”

Someone outside shouted to Sarah in Portuguese and she responded, then turned back to Gannon.

“No, we have no time, listen-”

“No! They’re going to kill me! They think I’m a police informant!”

“I know. It’s Dragon, the leader of the Blues, he’s psychotic. He fears the Colombians are coming for him because of Cafe Amaldo. Dragon fears police are trying to fuel a drug gang war so that the narcos exterminate each other. He swears the Blue Brigade had no role in the bombing.”

“Great, let’s get out of here!”

“Jack, we can’t leave, you must listen, they trust me, they trusted Maria because of the work we do in the favela.”

“Well, it was Maria who came to the WPA with documents from her firm for a story.”

“I know.”

“Then for God’s sake, untie me and let’s get out of here!”

“No, listen! They’re waiting outside this door. I have negotiated for you, now listen, please!”

Gannon listened.

“Maria discovered evidence that the law firm was linked to criminal activity,” Sarah said.

“I found a few of her pages at the bomb scene. Is it about drugs?”

“We think it’s about human trafficking or the illegal adoptions of children, stolen children.”

“What?”

“Maria was working with our human-rights networks. We kept it secret. Only a few knew-we had to get the story out. Maria agreed to contact the WPA. She was so afraid and so brave.”

Someone thudded on the door, Sarah hurried.

“After the explosion those of us at the center were terrified. We didn’t know what to think. Was it a gang hit, or was Maria the target? Were corrupt police involved? How big was this illegal operation?”

“Jesus,” Gannon said. “Estralla, the cop, has my documents!”

“Listen, I have told Dragon a little about Maria’s work, her connection to WPA, the cafe. I told him that killing you was stupid. He must keep you alive so you can get the truth out through your worldwide news agency.”

“Did he buy it?”

“He’s allowed me a few minutes to get your vow that you will write the truth about the bombing, if he lets you live.”

“Dammit, that’s why I’m here. Tell him yes.”

The door strained with banging.

“Time is up,” Sarah said. “If we get out together I’ll give you copies of all of Maria’s documents and our contacts in Europe. We think this is bigger than you could imagine.”

Sarah rapped on the door, it opened and Sarah left.

Gannon was alone, unsure how much time had passed before the door opened again and several armed men entered. Blue bandannas covered their faces as they leveled their pistols and M-16s at him.

A scrappy man in his mid-twenties followed them into the room, the grip of a chrome pistol sticking out of his waistband. His eyes were sharp and icy as he inventoried Gannon.

“The woman assures me you are not with police, that you will write the truth about the cafe bombing, which is that the Blue Brigade did not do it.”

“I give my word.”

“If you fail, we will not harm you.”

Gannon was relieved but confused as Dragon nodded to a gang member who again displayed a digital recorder. The images jerked but showed Luiz walking the streets of Centro, then cut to Sally Turner, Hugh Porter and Frank Archer getting out of taxis at the bureau.

“We will kill your friends. You have two days.”

“I need more time.”

“Two days.”

Dragon nodded and a gang member pulled out a knife and sliced away Gannon’s bindings. The others surrounded him and escorted him through the house. Sarah Kirby was waiting in the living room where Gannon’s wallet and cell phone were handed back to him before the group left the building. As Gannon and Sarah began walking down the street amid Dragon’s armed posse, Gannon noticed something odd.

Life was absent from this area.

Silent and still. Too still. As if the neighborhood was holding its breath.

Not even birdsong, the echo of children playing or a dog barking. It was the kind of deathly silence Gannon knew. It was familiar to him. Realization landed on him, he felt an arm lock around his chest and a gang member had suddenly made Gannon his shield.

Gannon saw Sarah pulled close to another gang member, then he glimpsed a police sniper behind a stone wall, eye clenched behind a scope, fire flaring from his rifle muzzle.

A bullet tore through the cheek of the gangster holding Gannon as the street exploded in gunfire. Bullets whizzed in the air and ricocheted off of the stone walls, the street, sparks, dust, blood and debris flying.

Gannon turned but failed to find Sarah in the chaos. Bullets ripped through the air near his head, and he dove to the ground.

Men shouted. Police vehicles, their radios squawking, appeared from nowhere and the sky thundered with a helicopter. Gannon crawled to the shelter of a doorway, pressing his body to a low wall.

He kept his head down until the gun battle subsided.

In the dust-filled air of the aftermath Gannon saw several police officers toeing the bodies of dead gang members in the street. As radios crackled, Gannon was certain he recognized Roberto Estralla in the distance, wearing dark glasses, watching from the open door of an unmarked car.

Then Gannon heard sirens and his attention went back to the dead and wounded on the bloody street.

That’s when he found Sarah Kirby, in a puddle of blood.