The Games (Private #11)(65)

“I didn’t say that,” Wise said.

“The world just heard you say that,” Amelia said, turning back to the camera. “Sixty-three million votes. Final tally in the case against Andrew Wise. For hash tag WiseGuilty: twenty-nine million. For hash tag PayTheBillion: eleven million.

“But hash tag WiseDecision? Only twenty-three million votes in favor of the accused and now convicted Mr. Wise.”

She paused, then turned her thumb up, then turned it down. “Forty million people thought Mr. Wise should pay the billion-dollar penalty. But is a billion enough when a man has so many billions? Shouldn’t we exact some greater punishment for his deeds?”

Amelia reached around behind her and came up with a pistol. “Shouldn’t Andrew Wise pay for his greed in a much more permanent way?”

She aimed the pistol at Wise’s head, said, “Any last words?”

Wise looked frightened for the first time. He glanced at her and said, “Forty million people said I should pay a billion dollars to the poor. I get that, but they never said a thing about killing—”

He stopped his defense at the sound of a helicopter coming hard.





Chapter 78



I HEARD THE BOPE’s helicopter coming too. So did one of Urso’s men, who roared out an alarm. Things started going downhill fast from there.

The armed guy went to the pickpocket, said, “We’re going, Alou!”

Then he looked through the window and saw me, tried to swing his gun my way. I shot him twice in the chest and then aimed at the boy.

“Where are they?”

Terrified, he pointed toward the second shack.

“Stay there,” I said and I was turning to run that way when I saw movement beyond the boy and caught a fleeting glimpse of someone running out the front door carrying something that turned my blood cold.



Bolting to my right, I shouted, “Abort the landing, General! Repeat, abort the landing! They’ve got a—”

A man holding a machine gun appeared, started firing wildly in my direction. Tracers ripped past me like shooting stars as I sprinted around the corner of the shack.

The helicopter was close now. I could see the bays open, crowded with men in SWAT gear, even as more gunfire erupted. They weren’t aborting.

I heard several shots.

“I’m engaged,” Tavia said.

“Shoot Urso! He’s got a rocket grenade!”

I came around the front of the shack. Caught in the spotlight, the Bear was on one knee and already aiming. Tavia shot and I shot, and we both hit Urso, but not before he triggered the surface-to-air missile.

With a thud, the rocket fired and flame blew out the back of the launcher. The recoil tore it from Urso’s grasp and he began to crumple as a thin plume of fire trailed the missile into the crowded hold of the police chopper. The warhead exploded in a boom and a brilliant flash that engulfed the bay.

The bird made a metallic groan that I knew all too well. The helicopter listed, shuddered, and tumbled from the sky. It struck ground and cartwheeled across the slope into a tree before rupturing in a churning ball of blinding fire.

For a second I was so shocked I just stood there. Then I charged the second shack, hearing shooting to my right and bullets behind me.

When I hit the front porch, I fired two shots to my right and then threw my shoulder into the door. The door frame splintered. I hit it again and it gave way. I stepped into a short passage that led to a black curtain rimmed in bright light.

“Hear them coming?” I heard Wise say. “You can’t win.”

“No, rich man,” Amelia said. “It’s you who can’t win. It’s you who won’t win. No matter what happens to me, I want you to know who helped me. I want you to know the tragedy of your f*cking life.”

I stepped through the drape, accidentally kicking over the tripod and camera as I aimed the Glock at Amelia Lopes from eight feet away. Amelia had dropped the mask. She had the pistol to Wise’s head and was whispering something in his ear.

“Drop the gun!” I said as she started to turn. “Now!”

“No,” she said, a split second before the gunshots that ended it all.





Chapter 79



I WALKED OUT of the shack minutes later feeling like a zombie. The air stank of burned fuel. Several helicopters circled overhead, beaming multiple spotlights on the clearing and the carnage left in the downed chopper’s wake.

There was a deep gash in the mountainside where the police helicopter had hit first. Where it had struck the slope again and again during the cartwheels, the ground looked speared and slashed like so many dots and dashes. Crash debris littered the tree line.

The chopper left a trail into the jungle that was also unmistakable. The trees and all the vegetation there had been lopped off above twenty feet, leaving bare, scorched trunks that looked like spent and broken matchsticks set upright in black sand.

I stared at that gaping scar of the battle dumbly, wondering at the meaning of it all, and then fear seized my throat like a constricting snake.

I triggered my microphone, said hoarsely, “Tavia?”

I spotted a flashlight still burning on the ground, grabbed it, and began to run, praying for her voice to come back to me.

“Tavia? Answer?”

I sprinted across the slope, telling myself everything was fine, that her radio must have gone out.