BRASILIA MECHANICS 1-3 CHAPTERS YA/CROSSVER SCI-FI AND ADVENTURE…

CHAPTER 1

URCA, RIO DE JANEIRO

1.30am.

It’s just finished raining. The road glistens. Headlights fade away.

A mild breeze pulls through the streets of Urca, Rio de Janeiro that juts out in a picturesque peninsula into the Guanabara Bay. The summer’s air has a bitter edge even as it carries a continuing heat. The famous Pão de Açucar (Sugarloaf Mountain), a high-rise rock formation intrudes into the diamond blue bay. The shadowy rock faces the famous Christ Redeemer statue. Below, the peaceful residential villas of the wealthy community and glittering outside pools reflect a million stars above.

The neighborhood is one of the safest areas in Rio, but not at this precise time—

Whispering voices. Sudden movement. Footsteps. Crunching twigs. Leaves rustle against other leaves.

A group of shapes. Arms. Legs, forming into figures emerge from the door of one such villa and—hotfoot—to a white VW Campervan waiting by the kerbside. The two figures carry a third. Behind, an intruder alarm blares. The sound is high, loud enough to wake the inhabitants of the slumbering street, loud enough to wake the dead too. Curtains open. Mumbles of residents’ irritation begin. A pampered Chihuahua starts to yap. A Mastiff begins to bark—a warning, loud enough to draw the security guards attention 300 yards away.

Outside the van, keys jiggle in the lock. Someone drops them, and someone says, “Shit. Why you lock the door?” No answer. The keys are back in the lock. Jiggle. Turn. Door slides open, nearly rocks of its hinges, and a body slides into the vehicles empty belly.

One of the figures looks up and sees a twinkle of light, in the distance. Flashlight. The beam erratically dances from side to side like strobe lights at a rave. Two. No. Three lights are approaching.

They need to stay calm.

Bang, bang: two gunshots crack the morning air like a lion tamers whip in quick succession. A coil of pain fizzes through the morning breeze.

“I’ve been hit!” someone says.

Another voice explodes: “Get in the van, amigo.” He reaches for a weapon. The automatic sound of gunfire returns fire across freshly mown lawns and marble water features. Doors open. The engine revs, the van starts, and the figures are leaving the neighborhood behind in a whirlwind of dirty diesel smoke and tires squealing.

CHAPTER 2

THE STREETS OF LEBLON

The black military SUV punches a path through the narrow streets of the favela with ease. The uniformed driver assured and steady—gunning every turn, every corner with ease. It’s four trained occupants have strict orders: save the child.

Up ahead, the engine of the dirty VW van pulses at an incredible rate as the heavily inked driver (a Vin Diesel impersonator crossed with the wrestler dude that makes action flicks and sometimes, romcoms), floors the gas. That’s the key; versatility and the vehicle swings another corner, zooming through the narrow streets of Leblon. A side mirror shears away as the van hits a parked pickup truck, and a hunk of broken curb spits up like a Cobra spitting venom.

The driver hears a voice, and a few seconds later realizes it’s his own: “Ya kay, amigo?” (His accent is thick; English is his second language.) “You hit badly? Need a doctor?”

His friend, from the passenger seat: “I’m fine. A flesh wound only.”

The driver snorts. “Meus Deus—My God! Sure?”

“Sim—Yes.” The passenger barks. But the pain is back—evident in his voice. “Just drive. We need to throw these wolves’ off our scent before we hit the safety of our home patch.” He’s slouching forward—blood seeping through his white vest and under the strap that holds his gun holster in place. “It’s only a flesh wound,” the passenger adds—seeing his friends’ uncertain frown grow. It is a good lie; he almost buys it.

His friend doesn’t though.

The driver—glances in the rearview. Street lights illuminate the cramped dwellings behind like a bright labyrinth that lights the way for the pursuing vehicle with ease. Now he sees the thundering military SUV swinging violently around the corner picking up momentum with another assured gear change. He looks over, sees his friend clutching his upper arm—that’s where he got hit.

The passenger grits his teeth. “Meus Deus—My God!” He shouts and sucks in a hard breath through his nose. “Watch the flamin’ road, Filipe. You wanna get us killed?”

The Vin Diesel look-alike makes these angry, exasperated chuffs, then leans forwards and sees a turn up ahead—he needs to slow down, the speed they’re currently traveling at will take them head-on into a building. C’mon baby. C’mon. You can do it for, papa! If they wreck now. That’s it. They’ll be too far away from help, too close to the—enemy. (The VW was a famously former economic export but was a useless getaway vehicle), yet, the driver is used to these speeds. Used to driving the favelas streets with simplicity. He jams the wheel, hits the brakes, and the van front ends another corner with ease—righting itself a moment later and veers away like a wild stallion.

They’re hurtling down another side street.

Outside, screams and gunshots elope—the City of God—in a blanket of fear. Just everyday life in the broken districts of the former Olympic city. It was becoming scarier. Muggings. Shootings, stabbings, executions, robberies, and kidnappings—a jump back in time to the notorious 90s.

Tonight was no exception.

The passenger cuts a nervous look over his shoulder, sees the pursuers gaining on them with a dazzling, brightness of headlights and firepower, and thinks: With carefully laid plans there’s always a bit of risk involved.

The black SUV is like a stealth jet, quiet and quick, faster than the VW. The passenger shouts obscenities at their pursuers. The driver joins in. They’re eyes, open and glassy. Both men picturing an escape route.

“Meus Deus—My God! These damn, gringos don’t give up the chase, huh, amigo?” the driver says, alternating between his native Portuguese and English at every possible opportunity like a newly arrived immigrant speaking the native language: trying to fit in at every occasion.

“True. The situation is bad. Not how I expected it to unfold,” the passenger says. “But we have an important job to finish.” His heart is punching his ribcage like a ‘Chestburster’ ready to escape into the outside world. “How easily little distractions sideline us?” he adds.

The big driver looks across at his friend, chuckles. “You’re not kiddin’, amigo,” and shifts his focus back to the road. From behind, flashes of gunfire bursts like firecrackers on the 4th July. “Why in the hell we choose the VW as an escape vehicle, amigo?” he ponders, almost jokingly.

“God knows. Felt like an excellent idea at the time.”

Vin Diesel grins big.

The passenger strips a piece of fabric from his vest and bandages his wound—stemming the flow of blood. The pain of the lodged ammo casing sears through his body like a red-hot poker. A fond souvenir to be made into a keepsake at a later date.

“What the hell we got ourselves into?”

“We looked too hard. Too close,” the passenger replies. Then he presses one hand on the dashboard and wheezes heavily. Sucking in pain, he maneuvers around on the seat—finds his precious cargo—body arched on the dusty floor (a black-haired teenage boy: gagged, tied, sedated and hooded). The boy is still breathing. Good. He thinks. The kid has to survive so we all can survive.

“We need to be smart?” The driver says. “Not about what just happened but what happens next, amigo? What we do if we can’t shake these hyenas off our tail before we hit our home turf? What we do with the kid?”

The passenger feels himself take an unconscious step back earlier in the night.

Metallic pods filled with thick, green liquid surrounded bodies lined side-by-side, inside of an enormous underground bunker. The sheer size of space, easily several thousand feet. (Like an Ikea store, except without the ready-to-assemble furniture and the astonishing amount of traditional Swedish meatballs on offer.) The passenger knew then, what had to be done to stop the company from continuing their program. Knew his actions would cause a ripple effect. Knew he had but one chance to make a difference.

“We took the kid for collateral!” he says with no regrets. “The kid’s father is in charge of the whole operation. We will give him no other choice other to cease with those unholy experiments.”

Vin Diesel offers a strangled smile; his brow furrowed, his dark sideburns rising: “You sure abducting the kid is the only way?”

He steals another sharp glance back over his shoulder (a scar ropes up the back of his neck and trails behind his right ear, another sign of past dark deeds) until he sees small holes of light filtering through the VW’s side where bullets had entered. Then he drops his sight to where the boy lay sleeping.

“Sim—Yes. God has spoken, and this is the only way the plan will work. Our only hope is to keep heading the same course?”

The driver grunts a reply; navigating the streets of Leblon with comfortable ease.

Ting, ting, ting: three gunshots in quick succession.

The muscled driver allows one firm hand to unwrap from the steering wheel and holds up a high-five to his partner. A mirrored gesture returns. “They want to stop us real bad, hey, amigo?” he says. On the back of his knuckles—LOVE—is inked in stunning purple and black italics.

“They gotta catch us first!”

Vin Diesel laughs and slaps his sweaty palm back across the wheel; love coming with it like an inspiring 60’s symbol and leans over the wheel. A Chinese dragon tattoo creeps silently around his neck; rich, red blood drips from its claws while symbols and shapes make up the body of the fabled creature. His keen, experienced eyes pick out the path ahead. (They were several miles to their patch. Nearly home.) It’s early morning, yet still, little bright lights flicker ominously on, like the communities that form the favelas around Rio.

The driver begins talking in a thick, Portuguese ghetto-esque growl, when—

Something flares through the dirty front window of the campervan.

“Ter Cuidado—Watch out! Car!”

Vin Diesel spins the wheel and pulls the van hard left—narrowly avoiding a rusted silver Mercedes slide right across their path. He turns the wheel back in the opposite direction, negotiating the VW Campervan around the rear of the passing vehicle—mainly with luck, and years of precision driving skills.

Two more gunshots. The back window explodes. A rattle and patter of glass.

The passenger grabs the plaid interior of the passenger seat and tugs himself upright. “Lose em’, Filipe!” he shouts. “Quickly! Go. Go. Go!” and pulls a pistol—launches towards the side-window, ready to return fire.

There’s a Thum, Thum, Thum, like a drum roll in a marching band, and the side windows form a spiderweb effect before exploding, filling the vehicle with the burning smell of lead. The high caliber weapon fires again from the pursuing military SUV, and the passenger feels one of those bullets go whizzing by, narrowly missing his skull.

He jerks his head left. “Look. Look, watch out—”

They both see it too late.

A car from nowhere veers into the VWs side; crumbles the carriage like a styrofoam cup. The vehicle goes one way. They go another. It slams into a bank of steps. The VW clips the side of a crumbling building and propels the backend into a freestyle whirl, which sends the occupants into a swirling haze of dizziness, slamming into each other, crashing together like schmucks riding shopping trolleys late at night in a carpark.

Behind, the military SUV slows to a halt, as the van careers over a blip in the street, demolishing a brick wall and smashing through three homes. Bricks crack. Tin sheets shred.

BOOM—

A gas canister explodes somewhere close-by and forms a terrific heat that engulfs the van-sized holes—reassembling the former homes into oversized pizza ovens from hell.

The passenger awakes to blackened surroundings and rolls over to his side. A spasm of pain scrambles through his bicep. He’s outside of the VW Campervan too. He feels the heat, sees wreckage and flames everywhere. “Ah, Jesus Christ!” he growls, grabs his injured shoulder and finally pulls himself up onto his knees and towards the wreck. His head hurts. Every other muscle throbs with pain.

For a moment, he stands motionless, details of why, and how—are wiped away?

All around him, fire roars in the walls of the house—a red-hot supernova of heat. Thick black smoke fans the ceiling. The tin melts away like a pan-fried cheese toastie.

Then he remembers, looks around and hears commotion in the distance. He’s not sure if it’s the angered Moradores da favela (the inhabitants of the sprawling slum) or the armed soldiers closing in around him? Either way, he doesn’t want to find out. He reaches down. His gun holster—empty, and a flurry of extremities escapes his lips.

Finally, he limps towards the front of the carriage and finds his friend sprawled awkwardly over the lip of the missing windshield.

No movement.

“Meus Deus—My God! Filipe. You kay?” he calls and maneuvers himself through the doorway. “Answer me, amigo?” He feels for a pulse.

Vin Diesel is dead.

His jaw hardens in disgust. He crisscrosses his chest for his fallen comrade, but can’t rest: not yet. He steers himself into the back of the van. Clusters of glass pools around a body. The boy lays drugged on the dirty floor; his body curved in a graceful arc.

He searches for a pulse, finds one. “Thank God! You’re still alive, kid.” Then he turns and swings a kick at the side-door, and the rickety catch gives away—the door rolls away with a suspended judder.

Eventually, he pulls himself out and then the boy.

From a distance through the ring of fire: shouts. Military orders. Gunshots. He knows the soldiers aren’t able to cross the ring of fire; and with the added influence of the local cartels entering the frame sooner (he hoped, rather than later) knows the pursuing soldiers didn’t have long before they had to make a hasty retreat.

Shuffling the boy over his good shoulder, he follows a trail through the decrepit tin house towards a door and hopes it’s all clear on the other side. With one final glance back towards the smoking campervan, he wishes his former friend all the best in the ‘afterlife’ and unleashes a thundering kick. The door flies open. And he disappears into the frantic darkness.

CHAPTER 3

LEBLON, FOLLOWING MORNING

The tall man in the tactical ballistic vest stands atop the hill, a small-caliber handgun dangling from his upper thigh, and watches as a body bag gets loaded into the waiting chopper. Below, thick black smoke drifts from the hundred make-shift houses that had made-up part of the slum. Two dozen figures armed with standard automatic rifles and side-arms ringed the area in a protective stance, looking on idly as the intense morning heat sucker-punched the fierce noon heat.

The man dials a number on his mobile as a plume of dirty smoke blows gently in the wind and reaches his nostrils. He gazes at the corpse for a second longer before the line answers. “One body of interest to report, sir,” he says in a thick, Afrikaans voice. “It seems that ‘El Crispy’ was an employee of yours. The insignia on his garbs matches the companies.” The corpse reminded him more of a piece of charred bratwurst than a body.

“That is a shame,” a nervous voice says from a far away location. “Just the one body?”

Above, the standard black chopper departs the devastating scene that had engulfed the favela the night before; the cautious man brings his eyes back towards the burnt-out shell of a VW Campervan. It’s nestled uncomfortably in the middle of a former local home. “Unfortunately, I’m sure,” he says. “The body is on its way to the facility. Should be with you shortly, sir.”

“Mike?” the voice on the phone says. “I want you to find his accomplices. And locate the boy! If he’s not found, then the whole operation is over. We cannot afford any more… misdemeanors. We want to keep this situation contained. Exactly as Panama. You understand me, Mike?”

Panama! He thinks that was a balls up of an operation.

“No need to worry, sir. My unit takes terrorism, kidnapping and such, very seriously. I assure you, I have my best men on the case.”

The line goes dead for a few seconds.

“Just make sure you find the boy, Mike. Alive if possible for the benefit of his father. We cannot afford to have him out of the endgame for the foreseeable future. Dr. Jones needs to be on his tippy toes for the next stage of the project and not pestering me by trying to involve the Federal Police or the British embassy.” There’s a moment’s pause before the line floods with the distant voice. “Mike… dead is plausible for the boy if another outcome cannot be sorted in time. I’ll start on a replacement protocol as soon as possible.”

“Understood loud and clear. Hopefully, the situation will not build to that outcome, sir.” The man with the protective vest replies.

“There is no hope if you can’t locate the ‘son’ in the next day or so.” The voice flatly says. “Just make sure you are gone from the area before BOPE decides to spearhead an intervention. Shootouts… are not on my agenda today.”

“That won’t be a problem, sir. We have what we need, and by the time BOPE shows up with their shiny batons dangling between their legs—we will be long gone.”

“Good to hear. That’s why I always rated you, Mike. You are clinical to the last detail on any mission you are assigned to.”

“Sir. You have to be in a job like mine,” Mike replies. There is a short, sharp, laugh on the other end of the line before it eventually goes dead.

Mike gazes over the top of multi-colored roofs crawling up the hill below to where BOPE, the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, Rio de Janeiro’s elite police battalion, was slowly making their way to where his men stood. (The unit came to arrest or drive out gang leaders, which were believed to have caused last night’s horrendous inferno).

It’s standard protocol for Mike’s talented communication team to feed false information to the region’s TV and News broadcasters; for any unforeseen complications that may ‘occur’ or disrupt a current assignment. The response was always the same by the local authorities and ‘came through official channels.’ They sent in the specialized crack military unit.

In Rio… it was no different. Nicknamed the Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad) who specialized in urban warfare and counterterrorism.

Mike thinks: The government has sent in the big boys to clean up my employer’s mess! He makes out their insignia: skull, dagger and crossed pistols emblem on the doors. It looks more like a gang-patch than a police unit.

Heavy armored trucks with 50mm-caliber rifles and armor-piercing ammo, flashing lights moved together up the tight streets, furiously, fruitlessly. Firefights immediately escalate from surrounding buildings.

Mike gazes on appreciatively as about twenty troops, in their black uniforms, some with German shepherds dispersed into the lanes of the favela. Better trained than ordinary police units, they had a reputation as some of the most capable and lethal units in the world. (The soldiers had the firepower to rival the gangs’ and weren’t afraid of a ruck.) But luckily the local cartels had turned out and were making it a difficult task for the specialists to reach Mike’s standing position, and a wet smile broadens across his grizzled jaw.

Mike’s features were that of a seasoned rugby player; big and muscular, a brute of an intelligent monster. Wrong side of 50. Divorced. Kids. Somewhere? In retrospect, he had been a Captain in South Africa’s apartheid-era security forces and was a veteran behind the Boko Harem rout that helped to end the six-year reign of terror in northern Nigeria. To his men, he’s a quiet, hard-working, just in his discipline and a generous supporter of the greater good.

“Oh, I’m superb at my job!” he announces to the surrounding hot breeze.

Mike sets off down the stony footpath to herd his clean-up team into the three remaining choppers that would ferry them the short distance back to the checkpoint. Lifting a single digit, he makes a lasso action above his head and summons the pilots to start their engines. A whirring sound fills the vicinity as dark blades begin to spin to a Black Swan rhythm, and his team makes their last checks around the area and sweep towards their departing flight.

Mike pulls the small-caliber handgun from his holster and unloads five shots into randomly placed metallic barrels. (Each explodes in a haze of smoke and fire, instantly causing mayhem in the skirmishes at the bottom of the hill.) Gazing the ground in a satisfied fashion towards his waiting flock, Mike loads himself into the cockpit next to the pilot.

“Take us home,” he orders, and the instructions are relayed to the other waiting pilots.

In a whirl of combat engines, gunfire, and smoke-induced mayhem, Mike and his team enjoy the unfolding show below (minus popcorn and fizzy drinks). Soon, though, they would have another mission—to find Dr. Jones’ son: dead or alive.