The Paradise Prophecy (16 page)

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Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy
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Checking the GPS, she moved to the far end of the alley and took a right. But the map couldn’t tell her what she’d find here, and directly ahead of her was a barrier—a huge, makeshift wall, cobbled together out of plywood and rope and corrugated sheeting.
A crude mural was spray-painted on the wall, featuring a stark landscape that was dominated by a large, rotting tree. The blackened fruit of the tree lay on the ground around it, amidst a litter of human bones.
Four words were spray-painted across the wall in English:
Welcome to Paradise City
 
Callahan’s unease deepened as she stood there, staring at the mural. There was a gap in the middle of the tree, a hole in the wall, and she wondered if she should go through it or find another way in.
No point in wasting time.
Stepping forward, she angled her body sideways and squeezed through the gap, only to discover that the wall was much thicker than it looked. This was actually a kind of tunnel, formed by tightly packed piles of debris, and for a moment she found herself enveloped by near darkness.
She emerged on the other side to a narrow, pockmarked street crowded with yet more shacks made of cheap wood and corrugated aluminum.
To her surprise, however, the street was nearly empty. The only sign of life was a lone girl, about ten years old, who stood in a doorway several yards away, a cigarette burning in one hand, a sawed-off autoloader in the other.
The girl took a drag on the cigarette and looked at Callahan with hard, defiant eyes.
Come on
, they said,
try and fuck with me.
Callahan had no intention of taking her up on the invitation, but she knew this meant she was getting close to de Souza.
Moving to her left, she stepped into a narrow passageway between two shacks, hoping to pass through to the adjoining street. But the moment she entered, she slowed her pace.
Ahead and to the right was an open doorway, nothing but blackness beyond, and Callahan couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or some
thing—
was watching her from inside, waiting for her to get close.
There was no rational reason to believe this, but her scalp started tingling and her body instinctively shifted into survival mode. What she felt wasn’t fear, exactly, but was certainly something akin to it. A gutlevel awareness that all wasn’t right here, and she should proceed with extreme caution.
Pulling her backpack off her shoulder, she unzipped a pocket and reached in, wrapping her fingers around a Glock 20. She’d found it and a backup waiting for her in her hotel room yesterday afternoon.
A gift from Section.
Keeping her hand on the grip, she continued forward, feeling the skin on the back of her neck prickle in anticipation with each new step, her heart thumping a few beats faster than normal.
Then a voice behind her said, “You’re here because of us.”
Callahan hitched a breath and whirled, dropping her backpack as she yanked the Glock free.
She froze the moment she saw who it was.
The little girl. The ten-year-old.
The girl stood about seven yards away, her cigarette gone, the autoloader held loosely at her side. Her gaze remained defiant, but there was something strange about her eyes now. A vague, amber luminosity to them that deepened Callahan’s unease.
“You’re part of Michael’s army,” she said. “He sent you here to spy on us.”
She was speaking English, and Callahan had no idea what to make of this. In fact, now that she thought about it, the girl didn’t even
look
like a
favelado
. She didn’t look
Brazilian
, for that matter.
Why hadn’t she noticed this before?
Callahan wasn’t exactly comfortable pointing her Glock at a ten-year-old, but she had no intention of lowering it. Not with that shotgun in the kid’s hand.
“Easy now. I don’t mean you any harm.”
“You
are
with Michael, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know anyone named Michael.”
“He thinks he can save us. Bring us to God. But he’s wrong. There’s no saving us now.”
The girl lifted the autoloader, and Callahan did what she knew she shouldn’t—she hesitated, didn’t engage, fully aware it could well mean the difference between walking away from this and landing facedown in the dirt.
But something about this little girl held her back.
She looked so . . . familiar.
Then the girl surprised her. Instead of pointing the weapon at Callahan, she pressed its two barrels against her own temple, her eyes softening now, the amber tint fading.
“There’s no saving any of us,” she said wistfully.
And as the realization of what she was about to do sank in, true fear thudded in Callahan’s chest.
“No!” she shouted, and sprang forward—
—as the girl wrapped her finger around the trigger and pulled.
15
 
T
here was no gunshot.
No exploding ten-year-old head. No falling body. No blood.
Instead, Callahan blinked twice and opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the girl had completely vanished and that she, herself, was no longer standing between the two dilapidated shacks.
She sat on the floor of yet another alley. Her backpack was slung over her shoulder, her Glock safely tucked away inside, and she still held her phone in her hand, the GPS receiver showing that she was three streets away from where she’d stood only a split second ago.
What the
hell
?
Lifting her free hand, Callahan stared at it. It was shaking uncontrollably. Much more than a tremor now.
Had she fallen
asleep
, for Christ’s sake?
Right in the middle of a mission?
Had that whole episode with the girl been a hallucination? Some kind of bizarre, somnambulistic nightmare?
What else could it be?
Leaning back against a dilapidated, graffiti-covered fence—a fence she had no idea how she’d wound up sitting in front of—Callahan closed her eyes again, trying to find her bearings, trying to will the tremors away. Get them under control.
It’s okay, she told herself. Just a little glitch in the hardware. Nothing to worry about.
But who was she kidding?
This was no goddamn glitch. This was a sign of some very serious mental distress. Her problems with sleep depravation had just gone from a solid five to a record-breaking one hundred fifty in about two seconds flat. And if she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t get some fucking shut-eye
soon
, she might well wind up on a slab at the morgue.
She could still see the little girl’s face in her mind. Those defiant, amber-tinged eyes. And she was certain she’d seen the girl before.
But where?
There’s no saving us now. There’s no saving any of us.
Then it hit her.
Callahan could see herself sitting in her bedroom in her childhood home, years after her father had died, staring into the vanity mirror above her dresser, hating what she saw, hating her life, hating that Dad had shot himself and left her behind with the Wicked Witch of the West. Wanting more than anything to join him in heaven.
There’s no saving us now.
The little girl in the alley was
her
. At ten years old.
As the realization of this wormed its way into her brain and lodged there, sucking away her self-confidence, Callahan tried to pull herself together.
This was no time to be having a panic attack or nervous breakdown or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. She needed to man up, right now, no excuses.
No. Fucking. Excuses.
Wishing there was a coffee hut nearby so she could order a double espresso with a shot of Red Bull—and knowing that was probably the
last
thing she needed—she did her best to center herself. She was, after all, sitting in the middle of a hell on earth, and as inconvenient as that might be at the moment, she had a job to do.
She got to her feet. Took several deep cleansing breaths, telling herself to let it go, that this would pass, that everything would be just fine from here on out—and knowing full well that it wouldn’t be. But that was okay. She’d gotten through a number of tough situations on a lie.
Like her entire life.
The trick now was to
pretend
everything was back to normal and keep plunging forward.
Purging the face in the mirror from her mind, she consulted her GPS again, then took another deep breath and continued on her way.
She just hoped she wouldn’t wind up shirtless in a gutter somewhere with flies buzzing around her head.
 
 
D
e Souza’s compound sat on the side of a hill, a large, squat windowless gray building that had about as much personality as a World War II bunker. Several teenage boys formed a loose barricade out front, each carrying an automatic firearm.
Several others stood on the rooftop, their weapons ready.
They seemed to be waiting for her.
As she approached, keeping her hands at her sides, one of the older boys gave her the once-over and grinned, pleased by what he saw.
Another, younger boy, said, “This is not part of the tour, senhorita.”
“I’m here to see José de Souza.”
All the kids laughed, as if this were the most hilarious thing they’d ever heard. The older one had drawn closer now, still leering at her, and without even a hint of hesitation, he reached out and grabbed for her ass.
His hand was less than an inch away when Callahan caught hold of his wrist and twisted, pulling his arm behind his back as she quickly relieved him of his weapon and forced him to his knees.
Pointing the gun at his head, she said to the others, “De Souza. Tell him it’s about Gabriela Zuada.”
 
 
C
alling José de Souza’s home a rat trap was being generous.
It was a tad less filthy than the rest of Paradise City, but that wasn’t saying much, and Callahan had to wonder why someone who was reportedly the highest-ranking drug lord in the area would be content to live in such squalor.
Despite a kind of dingy darkness to the place, there were some creature comforts in evidence. A sixty-inch plasma television played softly in a corner of the room, showing the never-ending news footage of Gabriela’s ongoing wake. Another corner sported an enclosed toilet, its door hanging open, the room surprisingly free of offensive smells. And a doorway to the left revealed a king-size bed, a couple dozen half-melted candles of various sizes lining a shelf directly above it.
A naked woman, with flawless, cocoa skin, lay fast asleep atop the mattress, her legs splayed out in front of her, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Spray-painted on the wall above the candles were yet more symbols—a pentagram, Lorraine cross, the now familiar
A
inside the circle, and others that Callahan wasn’t as familiar with. They hadn’t gotten there by accident, and only confirmed what she had already been told.
De Souza was a practicing Satanist.
But while the presence of these signs was certainly enough to raise her suspicions, it wasn’t proof that he’d had anything to do with Gabriela’s death.
Standing behind and to either side of Callahan were three of de Souza’s teenaged bodyguards, weapons in hand but pointed at the floor.
For now.
De Souza himself sat a few feet away from her, slumped in a battered armchair near the one and only window, which was really nothing more than a ragged rectangular hole in the wall that overlooked the
favela
and the jumble of high-rises beyond.
“I only agreed to see you out of curiosity,” he said.
He was a lanky guy, much younger than she had expected, with dark, curly hair and a wispy black goatee on his angular face. He wore only bright red boxers, and several nasty knife scars were visible on his chest and abdomen.
“About what?” she asked.
“Why you would assume I know anything about Gabriela Zuada?”
Callahan saw no reason to beat around the bush. “There are people who think you may be responsible for her death.”
His eyebrows raised. “Are you one of these people?”
Callahan shrugged. “Let’s just say I have more questions than answers.”
“I have a question myself. Why is the U.S. State Department so interested in something that happened on Brazilian soil?”
Callahan had brought her credentials with her, just in case, and de Souza’s bodyguards had found them when they searched her backpack. They’d also found her Glock 20 and immediately took possession of it.

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