It’s the only way anything will change here.
As these thoughts weaved through her head, Rayssa rested her elbows on top of the wall and looked through a pair of high-dollar Zeiss binoculars. It was late on a Brazilian winter day, the sun already behind the towering mountains to the west, and the shadows lengthened with every moment. But from her position, Rayssa still had a sweeping, panoramic view of the favela, all six hills, all six aerial gondola stations, many of the alleys, many of the broader pathways, a few of the little markets and stores, the ditches that funneled raw sewage downhill, the roof of the police station on the far, far hill, and the new school the government liked to tout.
To anyone who’d not grown up in a favela, this was a hellish existence, devoid of culture or enriching experience. But Rayssa loved the favelas, their vibrancy, their music, their art, the close-knit fabric of life. Favelas didn’t just exist. They pulsed, and Rayssa loved each throb and each cry.
She moved the binoculars, paused, and held them on a group of church volunteers standing on what passed for a playground at the school, distributing clothes and food. She studied the line of slum dwellers awaiting their handouts as well as the knot of young, foreign do-gooders doling out the contributions. Two girls, roughly nineteen, pretty, fair-skinned Caucasians, stood out. She watched them for a long time, seeing how tense and uncomfortable they were. Then Rayssa panned beyond the girls to two beefy guys watching over the whole scene.
Rayssa studied them for fifteen or twenty seconds before lifting her eyes from the binoculars and looking up at the sky. It was already dusk. Within minutes it would deepen into the time when jaguars hunted.
A fourteen-year-old boy came padding up to her. “They’re ready.”
“Get ready to disappear, Alou,” she said.
“Like smoke in the wind. The binoculars good?”
“The best,” she said. “Good steal.”
Alou grinned. “Lightest fingers in the city.”
Rayssa picked up a cell phone, sent a group text: Set.
She brought up the binoculars again. Lights were starting to blink on in shacks all around the slum. She peered toward the police station just over a mile away, scanned the paths and alleys below it. No men in SWAT gear. Just the good people of the favela going home after a day of backbreaking work.
Rayssa lowered the binoculars. She looked at the school with her naked eye now, gauging the deepening gloom. You didn’t want to go too early because the element of chaos and surprise would be reduced. You didn’t want to go too late because the chaos and surprise might be too much and it would all be for—
She snatched up the phone, texted Now.
Rayssa had just enough time to grab the binoculars before two rifle shots barked and echoed over the slum. Two bullets hit the beefy guys watching over the church group, one in each man’s head, dropping them in their tracks a split second before a thudding explosion lit up a street two miles away.
Every light in the favela died.
“Go, Alou!” Rayssa whispered, and she heard the boy leap up and run.
Under cover of night, Rayssa stood there a moment, hearing shouting and yelling far below her near the school, none of the words clear or distinguishable from that distance, just panicked voices all melding together and sounding to her like the throaty, hissing-whip roars of one very pissed-off jaguar.
Chapter 11
DARKNESS WAS STARTING to fall over Botafogo Harbor, ending the splendor we’d been watching from the spectacular table that recently promoted General Mateus da Silva had gotten us at Porc?o, a restaurant that boasted dramatic views of the harbor and Sugarloaf Mountain.
Porc?o offered Brazilian churrasco, with guys walking around carrying big skewers of freshly braised meat that they sliced off for you at your table. Tavia and I had eaten and drunk enough that we waved off a chance for more excellent rib eye, and I held my hand over my glass when da Silva attempted to fill it again.
“You don’t think there’s even a chance of a terrorist act at this Olympics?” I asked incredulously.
The general looked annoyed, poured more wine for Tavia, and said, “It’s not something I stay awake thinking about, my friend, and I’ll tell you why.”
I sat back, tried not to cross my arms, said, “I’m listening.”
“Do you think a foreign terrorist could mount some kind of action in Rio without help from the locals?” da Silva asked.
“I’m not following you,” Tavia said.
“Black September attacked at the Munich Olympics,” da Silva replied. “They were all Palestinians, but they had help, people in Germany who believed in their cause. But in Brazil, you will not find people to help foreign terrorists, just as you will not find homegrown terrorists here.”