War Lord

Twenty-two

I swallowed hard. Just then, a key fumbled in the front door lock.

Jeb Delaney strode in. ‘That’s twenty minutes. Time’s up, y’all. Let’s go.’

‘Give me a minute,’ said Shilling. She put her glass down and went to find the bathroom.

I was still thinking about her little bedroom admission.

‘In the confusion, we made sure Vee Dubyah and a couple of his flunkies got caught up with the anti-terror cops,’ Delaney reported. ‘We separated him from one of his bodyguards so it wouldn’t look too suspicious. Ms Shilling couldn’t be the only one of his people to get cut from the herd. Just got word they had to let Vee Dubyah go a couple of minutes ago. The guy was screaming for his attornies.’

The British agent walked back into the main room off the kitchen, her hair and makeup fine-tuned.

‘You hear that?’ I asked her.

‘Yes.’

‘We’d best get you back soonest, ma’am,’ Delaney told her.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘What about Petinski?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, they stalled her too,’ Delaney said. ‘Got caught up in a group of about a hundred people with Vee Dubyah and co. ID checks and so forth. The local boys put on a good show. Looked completely legit.’

‘How do you want to handle the return?’ I asked Shilling.

‘Get me to a place where I can catch a cab,’ she said, walking to the door. ‘I’ll take it from there.’

‘How do I contact you?’ In fact, what I wanted was to stop her returning to von Weiss’s snake pit, but there was no way I could make that happen. And I had a suspicion Shilling wouldn’t allow it even if I could. She was doing what she was trained to do, the total professional.

‘You don’t, Cooper. I do the contacting. If something happens and I need to get hold of you, I’ll find a way.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing?’ Petinski asked when I walked back into our room at the Palace.

‘Me? I didn’t do anything,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t tell you about the bomb scare because I didn’t know there was going to be one. I called Delaney up from the bathroom at the restaurant and asked if he could cause a diversion, something that would give us some time with Shilling, on account of we couldn’t get near her. The bomb scare was what he came up with.’

‘I turned around when we got outside and you were gone.’

‘Same,’ I said.

‘What did you get out of her?’

I took the card from my pocket and handed it to her. ‘The guy we saw poolside this morning with the Whites, the man von Weiss has been entertaining. His name is Gamal Abdul-Jabbar. He’s a Somali pirate, as well as being a hit-man. He likes to shoot Italians.’

‘I know,’ she said and turned her iPad around to face me. Abdul-Jabbar’s mug shot and rap sheet were up on screen. A CIA logo was in the bottom right-hand corner. ‘He’s working for this man.’ She pressed a key on her laptop and another rap sheet came up.

The face on screen was the color of an oil spill, black and shiny, with a cheekbone that had been broken at some stage of his life and poorly reset. Slap this guy on the back and one of his yellow eyes might pop out.

‘His name is Mohammed Ali-Bakr al Mohammed,’ she continued. ‘A former Al-Shabab, an Islamist who’s decided he prefers money and power to achieving martyrdom. He’s set his sights on being Somalia’s number-one war lord, and he’s a real charmer. There’s an unverified story that he took human heads after a battle against a rival gang and used them in a bowling tournament with his lieutenants. Over the last few years, he’s had several piracy operations thwarted by American warships. Word has it he’s vowed revenge on us.’

‘I’m trembling,’ I said.

‘She tell you anything about Randy?’

‘No, nothing further. But she has placed Ed Dyson with von Weiss,’ I said. ‘Ty Morrow, too. Shilling positively identified both of them. That’s a breakthrough.’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

The way she said it suggested a problem. ‘What?’

Petinski took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Langley doesn’t think von Weiss is the man we should be chasing.’

I blinked, mock-stunned. ‘That’s Langley, as in the CIA?’

‘Yes, Cooper, I’m a Company employee. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.’

She had that right. ‘So why the subterfuge?’

‘Thank your supervisor.’

‘Arlen?’

‘He said you wouldn’t be so keen to work with the Company. It was his idea to keep up the NTSB cover and then switch to some other federal agency. The DCIS just seemed to work best.’

‘And the sudden burst of honesty is because…?’

‘Because we’re done here, washed up. As I just told you, Langley’s shifted focus.’

‘That is bullshit, Petinski. We—’

She held up her hand to stop me going any further. ‘You know there are other teams on this case. Stronger leads have been chased up, other suspects. Top of the list is some one star and a colonel, both of whom were formerly at Bragg and are now in the DoD. Imagine that, seems Mr Big and his pal were right under everyone’s noses.’

‘What about that lecture I got from you about having a murder suspect that you’re sure has done the crime, blah blah?’

She shook her head.

‘And what about Ed Dyson — weatherman, nuclear fallout expert — hanging out with O Magnifico? We’ve got that confirmed now.’

‘Forget it, Cooper. The people who pay my salary have changed their minds. I’m off the case.’

‘Then what are we chasing here in Rio if it’s not a nuke?’ I asked.

‘What you started out with in the first place, probably — weapons stolen from US bases and sold to the highest bidder. That’s von Weiss’s operation. It’s just not the Company’s priority right now — understandably.’

‘I’m sure you’d agree that Langley has gotten it wrong before once or twice.’

Petinski was unmoved.

‘What about the severed hand with Randy’s ring and the damn ransom note? What about that whole “trigger” shit you were so fired up about? What about the deadline?’ My voice was raised.

She saw mine and raised her own. ‘Jesus, Cooper, none of it has taken us anywhere! We’ve got no leads — nothing except a few air miles. And the deadline… No one’s buying it anymore.’

‘What about Randy, Petinski? You turning your back on him too?’

Petinski jumped up, fists clenched. ‘Fuck you, Cooper! Jesus!’

I took some breaths, got my heart rate under control and waited for Petinski’s anger to come off the boil. ‘So what now?’ I asked as she turned her back on me and walked a circuit of the room. ‘Put your feet up?’

‘You want me to tell you again what I think you can go do, Cooper? I head home and get rebriefed. More than likely I’ll get reassigned.’ I caught a glimpse of her face as she snatched open the door to the bathroom. Plump tears were rolling down her cheeks. She went in and slammed the door behind her. A few seconds later, I heard the shower running.

So that was that. Case unsatisfactorily closed. Nothing more to do than pour a couple of Glenfiddich minis into a tumbler with ice and bitch about my employer. I got up, went to the minibar. As it looked like this was my last night in the Palace, I figured I might as well drink like a king. With a glass in hand, I sat at Petinski’s command station set up on the desk and fiddled, pulling up the footage feeding through from the camera in the favela. It was still doing its job, unlike Petinski and me, its motion sensor kicking it into life whenever something moved within view. I watched twenty-four hours of footage compressed into minutes: a dozen or so changing of the guards at the front gate and the arrival and departure of a number of motorcycles, the time code jumping forward with each cut. Nothing exciting. I switched the view to real time. It was now after one a.m. and the activity had dropped to zero. For something to do, I changed the program’s preferences so that the computer chimed when the camera began rolling. The bell went off almost immediately and a small box on the computer screen opened to show two bikes leaving through the main entrance, a pillion passenger on one of them waving a machete around his head. Then the box on the screen closed and the security system went back to sleep. Maybe I should do the same. I yawned, and took a gulp of single malt.

The water in the shower had stopped running for a while, though I’d only been vaguely conscious of that. The bathroom door opened and Petinski came out in a hotel toweling bathrobe, her hair up and her face covered in some kind of shiny goop. She turned her back on me and put pajamas on under the robe before tossing it onto a chair.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she announced as she climbed between the sheets. ‘You’re still on the couch.’ She reached over and turned out her bedside lamp.

Damn, if Petinski wasn’t starting to remind me of my ex-wife…

‘Cooper, wake up for Christ’s sake…!’

I came awake to Petinski shaking my shoulder like she’d tried doing it gentle but gentle hadn’t worked.

‘Okay already,’ I snarled. I had a Glenfiddich hangover, which is to say a quality hangover aged in the cask for twelve years. My body was locked solid in the seating position facing the various blinking and winking standby lights of the electronics gear assembled on the desk in front of me. I pulled myself out of the cramp, stretched out, leaned forward then back, the odd bone cracking.

‘Have some water.’ Petinski handed me a bottle of chilled Evian from the now almost empty mini fridge. ‘Why didn’t you go to bed?’

‘I forgot,’ I said, drinking the Evian, enjoying the feeling of ten or so chilled US dollars sliding down my throat.

Petinski checked the minibar drawer. Empty. ‘Jesus, Cooper…’

I was too hung over to care.

‘Here,’ she said, putting a couple of Advils into my hand. I threw them back, which wasn’t the best idea, my head pounding with the movement.

‘Did you wake me for a reason?’ I asked her, my voice croaky.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Get dressed.’

I looked down and realized I was in my undershorts. I also noticed at this point that Petinski’s pajama bottoms had been replaced by pants. Her boots were on. She leaned across me and tapped the keyboard, and the screen brightened with a frozen frame from the security camera. ‘This woke me. Look,’ she said, motioning at the screen.

She tapped the space bar and the recording from the security camera played, the time code beginning at 03:37:42. What followed sobered me up good and proper. The black Mercedes SUV, the one I’d seen coming and going from von Weiss-owned territory, arrived inside Céu Cidade’s main gate. All four doors opened and those Aryan bodyguards spilled out. Two of them went to the rear of the vehicle, opened the tailgate and hauled out a person whose head was covered with a hood: a woman. Her hands were tied behind her back and she wore a t-shirt and brief underpants.

The extra-big one — Dolph — put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried her out of view. The hood slipped a little and blonde hair fell out. The screen froze on the last frame. Thirty-one seconds of footage.

‘That was Shilling,’ I said unnecessarily, aware of the cold sweat on my back.

‘I’ve called Delaney. He’s going to meet us at the Céu Cidade post office.’

‘Is he bringing a tank?’

‘No, a unit of BOPE, the local anti-terror people.’

‘Those guys? You’re filling me with confidence.’ I got up and found my pants, crumpled on the floor. ‘Maybe we should just get Salvadore’s number from von Weiss and let him know we’re coming.’

‘Can you please hurry?’ she asked.

‘Can you slave the camera feed to your iPad?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then set it up and bring it along. Some real-time intelligence might be helpful.’

We were in a cab five minutes later, speeding across town in a tropical downpour, water filling the gutters, water vapor steaming up the windows. The Advils had done the trick, clearing my head, and twenty minutes later we pulled up in the warehouse area below the favela and let the cab go. It was a five-minute jog to the rendezvous, fog drifting slowly across the slick roads.

‘Where you been?’ Delaney asked when we arrived.

‘Sleeping,’ I said.

‘You carrying?’

I showed him the Walther.

‘Where’d you get that?’ he asked, but then thought better of it. ‘Actually, I don’t want to know. Kim?’

‘No.’

‘Here,’ he said, passing her a Glock 23 and three mags.

She said thanks, checked the weapon over, pocketed the mags, then secured the pistol in the back of her belt.

Delaney went back into a dirty old white Hyundai. ‘Here, put these on,’ he said, and producing two urban black armor vests and Kevlar helmets from the back seat.

A black truck lumbered around the corner and came to a stop behind us with a squeal of brakes.

‘I see you passed on my suggestion about the tank,’ I said to Petinski. She looked at me and adjusted her armor.

The tank was actually more like a security vehicle, only with a top-mounted machine-gun turret. A door opened and a squat, bull-necked man climbed out of the front passenger seat and jumped onto the road.

‘Hola,’ Delaney said, raising his hand, and went to meet him. A rapid-fire conversation in Portuguese followed between the two men as they walked slowly back toward us. ‘This is Sergeant Adauto Robredo of the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais,’ Delaney announced when they were close enough.

Petinski and I introduced ourselves, shook hands. Robredo’s was warm, hard and a glossy gunmetal black. His arms and neck appeared to be made from the same material. A short, coarse beard covered his face and followed the contours of his cheeks and neck. His coveralls were black, the only color being the emblem on his shoulder, a white skull impaled on a dagger with two crossed flintlock pistols behind it.

‘The sarge’s English ain’t so good,’ Delaney explained, ‘so he asked me to tell you not to worry that he and his men haven’t been in this favela before.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ I said, and gestured at the turret on the truck. ‘It looks like they’re expecting trouble, or is this standard practice?’

Delaney translated and got a grin and a burst of Portuguese from Robredo. Delaney said, ‘Adauto says it won’t be needed, and he says he’s got enough men to handle any situation that might arise.’

‘How many men?’

‘Ten, includin’ himself and the driver.’

Meanwhile, Petinski, fiddling with her pack, had extracted her iPad. She fired it up, presented the screen to the sergeant and said to Delaney, ‘Inform the sergeant we have a camera in the favela. It’ll allow us to check out what’s going on in there when we get closer.’

From his smile, Robredo was either enthusiastic about this, or her — I couldn’t tell.

Petinski seemed pleased that he was pleased.

I would be pleased to inform him that there was a chance she could do the splits. Maybe later.

‘Please, for you to get in truck now,’ Robredo said haltingly.

Yeah, pretty much everyone seemed pleased.

Delaney locked his vehicle with the remote and we followed the sergeant to the rear of the truck. As he opened the door, a wave of body odor and gun oil rolled out over us. Inside, men in helmets and body armor with FN FAL 7.62mm assault rifles between their knees were pressed together like black-clad sardines. The sergeant barked an order and room was made for us somehow.

Petinski stepped up first, followed by me, then Delaney.

‘Agent Petinski, now, is it?’ I asked her behind. It chose not to reply.

Petinski got to her seat, shaking everyone’s hand along the way. The door closed and red light flooded the darkness, illuminating all manner of equipment on the walls of the truck, from axes to climbing gear. The truck shuddered as it got underway, the smell of diesel exhaust leaking into the cabin. We accelerated up the hill, everyone swaying from side to side, then lurched around a corner. The incline got steeper and the corners sharper, but that didn’t seem to slow the truck at all. Either Robredo and his driver were in a hurry, or they didn’t care to be a slow-moving target.

I heard Petinski’s iPad chime. Its screen came to life and the men beside her turned their faces away quickly to preserve their night vision. After a few seconds, she glanced at me then back to the screen, a scowl on her face. Something wasn’t pleasing her.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘The camera.’ She handed over the device. ‘Press rewind.’

I touched the arrow and the white noise in the frame became the picture of a lanky man in loose clothing pointing a handgun at the camera from the street below, holstering the gun in the front of his pants, then walking backward out of view, into blackness. I ran it forward and watched the lanky guy in loose clothing walk out of the blackness, take a gun out of the front of his pants and point it at the camera. An instant later, white noise.

‘They got the camera,’ she observed.

Fuck. Who finds a tiny camera nestled into a darkened corner at four thirty-five in the morning, for fuck’s sake? I let Delaney know that we’d lost the camera.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he reassured me. ‘These guys know what they’re doin’.’

I needed reassuring.

Petinski stuffed the tablet into her pack as the truck came to a stop and the handbrake ratcheted on. External speakers squawked, and Robredo’s voice boomed into the night.

The truck’s back door burst open and Petinski, Delaney and I were almost pushed out by the eagerness of the men to get their boots on the ground.

‘What’s he saying?’ Petinski asked Delaney as the PA gave the night a good shake.

The CIA deputy yelled over feedback, ‘He’s sayin’ that if anyone makes any trouble, his men will bring hell into their beds.’

Seemed like the perfect segue into a joke about my ex-wife, but there wasn’t time. Meanwhile, the men had formed up in a line in front of the truck. Petinski, Delaney and I stayed behind them, mist that was more like steam drifting around us. About fifty yards farther up the hill, the floodlights on the compound’s wall illuminated the night. Due to a narrowing of the street, the truck could get no closer, at least not without bulldozing through someone’s front steps. It was a still, windless night. Nothing moved, other than the mist. Maybe Robredo’s threat worked. Speaking of the man, he got out of the truck and joined us. Delaney had a quick word with him then informed us, ‘I told him about the camera. He said it didn’t matter.’

I wouldn’t have expected him to say anything different and I should have felt the same way; so why didn’t I?

Robredo barked a command and the unit advanced up the street in a line abreast, Delaney, Petinski and I bringing up the rear. But then a sudden boom split the night and the man in front of me fell backward, splashing me with warm wet fluid. I looked down on his face and saw that there wasn’t much of it left, explaining the warm wetness, the remains of his steaming skull reminding me of a large half-eaten Easter egg full of strawberry ice-cream. I turned to look for Petinski and a round cracked like a dry stick as it zipped past my ear, the boom from the rifle that fired it following an instant later.

Jesus! I ducked. Robredo’s men had split up and run for cover. I was alone with the body spread-eagled on the road. I grabbed the man’s rifle in one hand and his collar in the other and dragged him back behind the truck as Robredo’s men began returning fire. I patted down the dead man and located four mags for the FN in his ammo rack along with a Ka-Bar knife. I stuffed all of these into various pockets and relieved him of his rifle. Then the body at my feet began to shake, the heels of his boots tapping a random beat against the ground.

I ran back up the street, hugging the shadows. Accurate single shots… there was a sniper up ahead somewhere. There were plenty of towers up inside that fortress, perfect hides for a shooter. The dead man had been right in front of me. If he’d moved a couple of inches to the left or right, it would be me doing a tap dance on the pavement. And if I hadn’t turned my head to look for Petinski…

Robredo had taken a knee behind a rough retaining wall and was shouting into his cell phone. His men were on the move, teams of two leapfrogging each other, closing the distance to the compound, using whatever cover presented, shooting as they went.

‘Cooper! Here!’ Petinski. I scuttled up to her position and found Delaney beside her, Glock drawn, eyes wide.

‘Thanks,’ I told her.

‘What for?’

‘Being here.’

Muzzle flashes sparkled just inside the compound’s main entrance. Full automatic fire from a belt-fed light machine gun. Red fluorescent pencils of light lanced through the night and skipped off the road beside us, and shouting filled the blackness along with gunfire. Lights, weak incandescent lights, went on here and there as the people of Céu Cidade woke up to the gun battle. Ahead, the searchlights on the compound wall snapped off. The world went dark but for the little multicolored floaters that hung in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see for shit. Shots rang out from somewhere in our rear. We were being cut off, the situation deteriorating fast.

Robredo’s men began retreating, not firing, unsure where the attacks were coming from. Two of the men were wounded, being helped along by their buddies. The sergeant joined us and spoke rapidly with Delaney.

‘Another two units are on the way,’ said Delaney, passing along Robredo’s news. ‘And there’s a chopper inbound.’

I hoped it had a minigun. Failing that, sharp shooters in the doors. I tapped Petinski on the shoulder. ‘Follow me. Stay close.’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the reinforcements?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Petinski hesitated, but then changed her mind. ‘You’re impulsive, you know that, Cooper?’

I made a dash for the truck, giving Petinski no choice but to follow. Impulsiveness had nothing to do with it. I just didn’t want to arrive too late to find another person I knew — Shilling — killed.

The truck wasn’t far, and we made it in a handful of seconds. I jerked open the back door, Robredo’s men swearing and shouting around us, pissed at being pushed back, and helped myself to a coil of rope, a pair of flashlights and a tomahawk. I ditched the rifle, threw the coil over my shoulder, handed Petinski one of the flashlights and we went off to find the alley reconnoitered the previous night.

We broke into a run. This time, Petinski was half a yard ahead. I pulled the NVGs from my rucksack and juggled them with the tomahawk as the path zigzagged up the hill. We soon came out of it into the open intersection, the golden lights of the favela I’d seen away in the distance the night before now glowing a dirty yellow behind a veil of fog rising up the valley.

‘What’re you going to do?’ Petinski asked, adjusting her NVGs before fitting the straps over her head. ‘Wait a minute… you don’t know, but that never stopped you before, right?’

‘We’re going over the wall, hence the rope.’ I gave it a pat while I considered the details.

‘And the tomahawk?’ she asked.

‘Scalps,’ I replied.

The passage at the base of the compound wall was as dark as a drain. I slipped the NVGs’ double lenses over my head and the world became the familiar Kermit green. I scoped out the intersection and found what I’d hoped to find — a nest of densely tangled electrical wiring feeding into a large drum: a substation. A cluster of those wires disappeared over the compound wall. I pulled the Walther and shot three rounds into the drum. A section of the internal compound went dark. That should do it. Now that the lights were off, I didn’t want them being turned back on.

‘This way,’ I said, and jogged down the lane, stopping twenty yards or so from the dwelling Petinski vaulted into on our last visit.

‘Again?’ she asked and took off the NVGs before I could answer. She handed them to me. ‘Can’t climb with these on.’

Sucking in a few deep breaths, one foot forward, she bobbed back and forth, judging distances and heights, getting her balance sorted out. And then she was running at the wall and I saw a blur as she scaled it. I jogged to the front door and waited. Something inside came crashing down. Then a heavy thump. I put my ear to the door. Nothing. I tried the handle. Locked. Petinski was taking her time. I heard a bang, not a gunshot.

The lock gave on the fourth swing of the tomahawk. I kicked the door in and raced up the stairs into some kind of storeroom. Three males were slumped on the floor, broken shelving and various cans and other items around them. A fourth man had Petinski in a headlock, her feet off the ground. They’d been making so much noise that they hadn’t heard me. Petinski was in a chokehold and was starting to go into convulsions. I swung the axe backhand at her assailant’s neck and the blade bit deep into his spinal column and stuck there. He collapsed to the right, his legs falling away like a wall with its foundations sapped. He didn’t cry out. He wouldn’t need an MRI to tell him he was now a quadriplegic. Still, somehow the guy’s left hand went for a weapon tucked into his belt. I had no choice and put the toe of my boot into the tomahawk’s head, pushing the blade all the way through into his esophagus. The guy stopped going for his gun.

Petinski propped herself up on one elbow beside him and hacked a few dry, choking coughs. ‘Thanks,’ she croaked. ‘I got three of them. Fourth one jumped me. Didn’t see him.’

Ambush. They knew we were coming and baked us a cake.

‘What’s that smell?’ I said, but I knew exactly what it was — the unmistakable funk of corpse.

‘Out there,’ she said, motioning at the veranda.

I went to have a look and the smell got worse as I went out into the open. Lying on his back, a black male, one-eighty pounds, maybe five ten. The eyes were empty, death having repossessed everything. His throat had been cut and a curve of blood spatter arced across the plastic sheeting that hung from the guttering. Blood pooled under the body’s neck and shoulders. I could hear a few flies buzzing around the corpse. Petinski walked out of the storeroom, rubbing her throat with both hands. I lifted the arm a little and the whole body moved: rigor had set in. I wanted to know when he’d been murdered. A corpse loses roughly two degrees Celsius every hour. A thermometer up the bunghole would’ve been the correct method to check the core temperature, but as I had no thermometer, I placed two fingers in the crease of the armpit. Though it was still vaguely warm in there, his sweat was cold.

‘How long’s he been dead?’ asked Petinski.

‘A few hours.’

‘Perhaps the folks over the wall thought he helped us plant the camera.’

Or maybe he played loud music once too often. We had no time to mourn the guy. And offering an apology for perhaps getting him killed wasn’t going to help him at all. I stood up, pushed the plastic sheet aside, grabbed the mattress and repeated the procedure from the night before. Once the plank was in place, I secured one end of the rope around the pipes under the sink, and threw the coil up and over the mattress.

‘Me first,’ Petinski demanded, climbing up onto the plank. She refitted her NVGs, took the rope in one hand, and sprang up to the mattress. Then she turned to face me, the rope around her back and shoulders, and was gone in an instant.

I didn’t get it done quite so elegantly but the result was the same, and a minute later I dropped beside her at the base of the wall inside the compound. No alarm was raised. No shout. In fact there was no movement anywhere that I could see. The shooting had stopped. Outside, sirens were whoop-whooping but here inside the wall all was quiet except for a humming sound. It was a large generator. Emergency power. I went over and had a look at it. The lights throughout the compound were now all off, and while the place seemed deserted, power was still being used somewhere. I levered open the control panel with the Ka-Bar, hit the kill switch and the motor died instantly.

Scanning the area I saw a window about fifteen feet up, some kind of retaining wall beside it. I pointed it out and we ran at a crouch toward it. ‘Me first this time.’ I said as we paused to catch our breath.

Petinski nodded and rested her hand on my arm, so I rested a hand on her sports bra.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Cashing in my brownie points for saving you back there. They dissolve unless you use them quickly.’

‘You want to keep that hand?’

I removed it and told her to wait until I gave the all clear. Shinnying up the wall, I then scooted along a top edge that stepped up several times. The window was open, a leap of three feet or so to reach it. I jumped out, my fingers finding the ledge, and pulled myself up with a grunt, re-bruising my forearm. A last effort and I was inside, panting. Petinski was inside too, sitting on a chair at a small table, waiting.

‘I found a door and used the stairs,’ she said with a shrug.

‘Thanks for telling me.’

Another shrug. ‘The place feels like a morgue. There’s no one around.’

Proving her wrong, a gun battle erupted somewhere close, a large volume of automatic fire.

‘Call Delaney,’ I said, squeezing past her into a stairwell. ‘Get him in here. I’m gonna see if I can locate the shooter’s hide.’

Around fifteen minutes later, after getting lost in this deserted rat’s nest several times, I stumbled on a circular staircase to a room with a trapdoor in its low ceiling. Using a chair I opened the door, lifted myself up and found a 7.62mm sniper rifle with a night scope set up on a table, its bipod and wood stock resting on sandbags. Half a dozen casings were on the floor. The window had a view down the hill, which was swarming with fifty or so BOPE troops, the gunfire now sporadic, a chopper roaring in a hover overhead while its spotlight quivered over the compound’s entrance.

‘Cooper,’ Petinski yelled out from somewhere below. ‘You up there?’ Her head came up through the hole in the floor. ‘Been looking for you. Come down. There’s something you need to see.’