The Games (Private #11)(80)

I decided I couldn’t do this with finesse. I was going to have to swoop in, dive at it, and, hopefully, hook it.

We were three hundred yards from the stadium when I made a nifty move with the control stick, came in at a steep angle, and missed snagging the drone by inches.

“It’s almost here!” General da Silva cried as I spiraled up and away from the drone, getting in position for one last try.

“Jack told you to evacuate the stadium, General,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “You wouldn’t listen to him.”

I ignored all of it, searched for the drone, and spotted it ten yards from entering the airspace right above the stadium and dropping altitude fast. I hit the throttle and dove the chopper once more, tilting the bird almost on its side so I could watch the strut knife right at the drone.

I missed again.

But a foot peg on the strut support about two feet back hooked the mesh hammock.

The drone now dangled upside down below the hammock with its five propellers spinning wildly.

“Got it,” I said, and I pulled away from the stadium.

Ten voices started hooting and cheering in my headphones.

“Well done, Jack!” General da Silva roared.

“Perfectly executed,” Sci said.

“Almost perfectly,” I said, exhaling long and low. “But we’ll take it. Any idea where we should bring the virus?”

“Take it to Castro’s lab,” Sci said. “The clean room is still up. It can be contained and dealt with there.”

Before da Silva could comment, Justine’s voice came over my headset.

“Jack, I’m looking at your camera feed. I can see the drone hanging there, and there’s something flashing green in that hammock thing.”

I looked down and through the lower door window and saw a small digital readout blinking in bright green: 00:60, 00:59, 00:58, 00:57…





Chapter 103



“JACK, IT’S A TIMER!” Justine said. “It’s going off in—”

“Fifty-four seconds,” I said, gritting my teeth, gaining altitude, and wondering what in God’s name I was going to do.

In far less than a minute, Castro’s biological weapon of mass destruction was going to trigger about three feet below me. The tanks were full of Hydra-9 virus. Those hoses and airbrushes were going to let loose a mist of death over Rio de Janeiro.

“Jack,” Lieutenant Acosta said, truly frightened. “Are we going to—”

I swung the helicopter in a tight three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, scanning, looking, trying to figure out where to go.

“Forty-five seconds, forty-four…” Justine said.

I ignored her, and when the chopper’s nose came around to the east-northeast, I saw the cruise ships docked around the Pier Mauá and others moored in a small cove of Guanabara Bay toward the commercial piers at Caju.

“Thirty-eight,” Justine said. “Thirty-seven, thirty-six…”

“Hold on,” I said and accelerated the helicopter straight at that cove.

“Twenty-five, twenty-four…”

We roared over throngs of people partying in the streets of Gamboa, celebrating Rio and the Olympic Games, blissfully unaware of the danger flying above them.

“Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen…”

I dropped altitude fast as I came over the crowded central bus station. The spire of Santo Cristo church flashed by.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“Hold on!” I shouted at Acosta as we flew fifty feet over traffic-jammed Kubitschek Avenue and the sea wall that holds back the bay.

“Six, five, four…”

We barely cleared the top of a cruise ship moored there.

“Three…”

I drove the stick down.

“Two…”

We dropped like a stone the final thirty feet.

The last thing I remember before impact was the inky surface of the bay coming up fast and Justine saying, “One…”





Chapter 104



“JACK?”

I heard someone call my name from far down a long, dark tunnel.

“Jack, can you hear me?”

I recognized the voice as Justine’s, took a deep breath that hurt like hell, and forced open my eyes. At first it was all blurry and nothing made sense. Then things came more into focus.

I was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by monitors. Justine sat in a chair next to me. She was holding my left hand with both of her hands and grinning at me with watery eyes.

“Welcome back to the living,” Justine said. “God answered our prayers.”

My head swam. “How long have I…”

“Four days,” she said, taking away one hand to wipe away her tears. “In addition to a broken sternum, you sustained a head injury in the crash. You had some brain bleeding and swelling. They kept you in a medically induced coma until they could drill holes in your skull to relieve the pressure. That was two days ago.”

“What a difference two days make,” I said, and laughed, which made my chest hurt and started a clanging in my head.

I must have moaned because Justine stood up from the chair all worried and said, “You shouldn’t move a lot.”