The Games (Private #11)(66)

“General da Silva?” I said.

“You’re done, Jack. You’ve cost the lives of ten men.”

“I called for an abort. It was ignored! Tell the helicopters above me to train their spotlights where the chopper went into the jungle. Now.”

After a long pause, da Silva said, “Done.”

“Tavia!” I yelled. “Tavia, answer me!”

The acrid stench of burned helicopter fuel was everywhere, a caustic fog that singed my nostrils and lungs. Throwing my arm across my mouth and nose, I scrambled lower and diagonally across the slope so the cut and burned trees were right there below me.

The helicopters circling above had gotten their orders from da Silva. Six wide and powerful spotlight beams played on the debris field. A long chunk of helicopter blade stuck out of the side of one tree like a giant machete. A strut hung off another like a Christmas ornament.

Some fifty yards from where the chopper had slashed into the jungle, what remained of the fuselage still burned and threw up a foul, black smoke. Here and there, I saw what might be body parts.

“Tavia?” I called. “Are you there?”

No answer.

Tears began to well in my eyes, and I brushed them away hard and went closer. One of the choppers above me adjusted its beam, revealing a scorched tree at the far lower edge of the crash path. The tree had been split almost lengthwise, with the front piece gone and the rest of the trunk sticking up like a church spire half sheared off.

At the base of that tree, Tavia lay facedown.

I ran to her, begging God to let her be alive.

But when I reached her side and started to turn her over, I knew by the slack in her neck that it was broken and she was gone.





Chapter 80

Friday, August 5, 2016

2:00 a.m.

Seventeen Hours Before the Olympic Games Open



LIEUTENANT BRUNO ACOSTA led me into Private Rio’s offices. The entire staff was there waiting, anxious and somber. I’d texted them all and asked them to assemble for some difficult news. Cherie Wise and her daughters were there as well, all of them clearly frantic with worry.

The second they saw Lieutenant Acosta, they all sprang to their feet.

“What’s happened?” Cherie cried. “No one will tell us what happened after the camera died.”

Acosta bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wise, to be the bearer of tragic news, but…I’m so sorry…”

The billionaire’s wife stared at the police lieutenant in disbelief and growing horror. “No,” she said. “No, that’s…”

Cherie began to waver on her feet. Natalie grabbed her arm, held her up, whimpering, “Mom? Please say it’s not…”

“It’s not right.” Alicia sobbed and held tight to her mother.

Cherie sagged down into a chair, jaw slack, eyes fixed on a future that looked black and void. I moved, and she focused on me.

“You said you’d save him,” she said in a devastated voice. “You and Tavia assured me he would not die.”

Before I could reply, Lieutenant Acosta held his palm up to her and said, “Mr. Morgan put his life on the line to save your husband, Mrs. Wise. Octavia Reynaldo gave her life trying to save your husband.”

Gasps went up all around the room. Cherie looked even more distraught. Seeing that and the shock on the faces of the good people of Private Rio threw me back into utter misery and it took every bit of strength I had not to break down.

“No,” Natalie said, holding her stomach and bursting into tears. “No. No.”

Her sister put her face in her hands and continued weeping.

“It wasn’t…” Alicia choked. “He wasn’t…Rayssa said…”

Lieutenant Acosta stepped toward her, said, “Ms. Wise?”

Alicia raised her head, peered at him with tortured eyes.

Natalie looked at her sister in terror. “No.”

Alicia’s jaw quivered and her skin flushed before she glared at Natalie and shrieked, “It’s all about money! That’s what you told me! She was just going to scare him and take his money.”

“That’s what she told me!” Natalie screamed back.

In the stunned silence that followed, I watched their poor mother. I saw every tic and tragic bit of Cherie’s terrible path to understanding.

She gaped at them in bewilderment. “You knew? You were a part of…”

“Mom,” Alicia said in a terrified voice. “Amelia showed us how Dad’s company screwed the poor people of Brazil. She told us we could begin to right that, that Dad deserved some punishment, and it would help the poor.”

Natalie said, “Mom, she made it sound like a good thing, a rebalancing.”

Cherie looked at her daughters like they were alien creatures.

“You betrayed your father because he made too much money?” she said. “You played judge and jury with your own dad? Sent him to his death?”

“No!” Natalie cried. “It wasn’t like that.”

Cherie lunged up and out of her chair. She slapped Natalie and backhanded Alicia. Lieutenant Acosta stepped in and restrained her. She went hysterical in his arms.

“It’s over,” she wept. “Everything is over.”

“Cherie, it’s not over.”