The Games (Private #11)(78)

The Brazilian military helicopter had a millimeter-wave radar system and optical and infrared cameras mounted below the nose.

I turned them on and immediately heard blip!

I took my eyes off the statue and glanced at the screen. Blip! Blip! It was small, moving slowly right along the tops of the trees. It vanished then, and I figured it for a big bird of some kind.

“I can’t see any rocket,” Lieutenant Acosta said, drawing me off the radar screen.

“Has he already launched it?” General da Silva asked.

“No, we would have seen it take off,” I said, picking up speed, turning on the spotlight beam, and flying straight at Christ the Redeemer.

I slowed the chopper and hovered one hundred feet from the outstretched arms of the Christ. Even with the gray outfit and the matching paint on his face, you couldn’t miss Castro’s head, shoulders, and torso sticking up out of the arm.

He wasn’t looking our way. His head was down. His hands were busy.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

Pistol drawn and in his lap, Acosta peered through the binoculars. “He’s looking at a large iPhone on the arm in front of him, and he’s using a control of some sort with a joystick.”

I thought of the blips back there on the radar. Small. Slow speed. Right at the treetops. I felt sick.

“It’s not a rocket,” I said. “He’s flying a drone.”

“Shoot him,” General da Silva said over our headsets.

“General?”

“Put a bullet in his head,” da Silva said. “Then get control of that goddamned drone.”

I had a handful of reasons why I thought that killing Castro wasn’t the best idea. I angled the spotlight directly on the doctor before handing the microphone to Lieutenant Acosta. “Call him by name. Tell him to bring the drone back and surrender.”

Acosta said, “Dr. Castro, this is the federal police. Bring back the drone or you will be shot.”

The doctor stared at us blankly, then he nodded and put the joystick down. He touched the screen of his phone with his left hand at the same time he reached below the hatch rim with his right.



Castro came up with a pistol, aimed it at us, and fired three quick times.

All three bullets went through the windshield.

Acosta roared out in pain, “I’m hit!”





Chapter 98



DR. CASTRO SAW the bullets strike the windshield and watched the cop in the passenger seat jerk on impact. He swung his gun toward the pilot, but the chopper pulled away hard. He shot at the rear rotor as it retreated but missed.

Castro glanced at the image from the GoPro on his phone screen; the stadium was much closer. Distance to target: 2.9 miles. ETA: eleven minutes.

He looked up, hoping to see the helicopter heading toward a hospital, but it wasn’t. The chopper was taking a wide loop around the statue, too far for him to shoot. Could he keep them at bay, circling for eleven minutes?

Castro believed he could, though he was certain he would die soon, and not from Hydra-9. He’d shot at a military police helicopter. The men in the helicopter somehow knew about the virus.

They would try to kill him to get control of the drone. But the doctor knew that was an impossibility. There was nothing they could do now to stop it. The statue was locked. They might try to land on the other arm, but no. Who would get out? Not the cop with the bullet in him. And not the pilot.

The helicopter was to Castro’s right now, some two hundred yards, searchlight off. It changed direction and closed the distance at an angle slightly to his rear, back toward the Christ’s head.

The doctor grabbed the joystick control and flung it into space, then he twisted around, swung the pistol toward the chopper, and started firing.





Chapter 99



CASTRO FIRED FIVE times. All five bullets missed the mark, though one hit the helicopter’s landing strut and another the lower fuselage. The doctor thumbed the latch that dropped the clip. He groped for another.

“Kill him,” I said.

“I can’t,” Acosta said.

One of the doctor’s first shots had hit the lieutenant in the right shoulder. He was trying to support his quivering arm with his left hand enough so that he could get a decent sight picture on Castro.

“Gimme the gun,” I said.

The lieutenant handed it to me.

I set it in my lap, reached up, and undid the slide window.

Air rushed in. I took the control stick with my right hand and pushed the gun out the window with my left. I spun the chopper one hundred and eighty degrees and saw Castro lift his head and his gun, grinning like a madman.

The instant I had a sight picture, I shot, shot, and then shot again.





Chapter 100



THE FIRST BULLET went right by Dr. Castro’s left ear.

Before he could return fire, the second slug hit him squarely just below the sternum. He bucked at the impact; it was like he’d been punched in the gut, except this punch was as hot as lava. Castro managed to squeeze off one round.

The pilot shot a third time and hit Castro high in the right chest.

The doctor was flung against the hatch frame. He swooned in shock and pain. The pistol slipped from his fingers, bounced off the statue’s arm, and fell to the terrace below.