Redeemer Read Free Page B

bodies on the ground. Two weren’t moving, their legs and arms contorted, red patches the size of coffee mugs on their chests. They were wearing the beige slacks of the state police. The third man coughed, shook his head and, spotting Gardner, began crawling towards him, digging his nails into the pockmarked concrete and dragging his rag-order legs behind him.
    Gardner heard voices. Shouting. Single-burst shots.
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    His instinct was to help the cop. But he was unarmed and knew he wouldn’t be able to get to him in time. The shots were close, and all Gardner would achieve by rushing to the guy’s aid would be to fuck both of them.
    There were so many exits out from the street Gardner needed to take five just to get his bearings straight. Fucking hell, he thought, navigating here is tougher than the jungle.
    Four exits from the market square. One to his six o’clock, the one he’d emerged from. Two open stairways to his left, twenty metres away. The fourth escape route was an alleyway opposite, partially obscured behind the torched car, where the tin-roofed buildings were so tightly bunched a man on a bike would have a hard time squeezing through. All he could make out was an endless warren of stairways, pavements and dirt tracks.
    He looked for a reference point. The Jesus statue poked out above the shanty huts on the horizon, atop the Corcovado mountain to the north-east.
    ‘My Troop times forty north. Your Troop times twenty west,’ he remembered.
    Gardner headed for a north-leading alleyway. He paused a few metres into the alley mouth, edged up to a grey wall with a half-washed portrait of Pablo Escobar along its length, hunkered down by the corner and peered back down the street. Though hidden, he was north-east from the van and saw a gang of six kids, none of them looking old enough to be on the Special Brew, springing out from the far alleyway. Red scarves covered the lower halves of their faces and they brandished their squaddie-proof AK-47s like they were water pistols, pointing them at each other when they spoke and waving them in the air. Careful to stay behind cover, Gardner looked on, wishing he had a juicy .50-cal heavy machine-gun to wallop these fuckers.
    One of the kids shouted excitedly in Portuguese, pointing to the wounded cop. The brats laughed as they closed in on the poor sod. He moved on his hands and knees towards the car.
    The tallest kid took out a fourteen-inch machete and slashed the guy’s back with it twice, crossways, in an ‘X’.
    The cop screamed and reached down to his hip for a holstered pistol. Bad move. Two of the other kids pounced on him and pinned his arm down. The tall kid went to work. Using the rusted machete he began sawing through the wrist. Gardner shuddered as he heard the blade grind against bone. Blood spewed.
    With a high-pitched scream the guy begged him to stop. He cursed. He cried.
    But the kid kept on hacking away.
    Halfway through, the guy gave up his squealing. When the kid was done playing surgeon for the day, he taunted the man by slapping his face with his own severed wank paddle. Another kid produced an old-school sawn-off and shot up the cops arms and legs. Each time a subsonic
boom
accompanied the blast and the body spasmed, as though 10,000 volts were surging through him. The kids cheered. Then one urinated on him.
    The tallest kid put the cop out of his misery. Holding a sledgehammer, he instructed the others to turn the man over so he was lying on his back. The guy tried to protest. But the kid wasn’t interested. He raised the hammer with both hands.
    And swung the black metal head down.
    Gardner heard the shattering of the cranium from behind the steps, thirty metres away.
    Staying behind the wall, he waited. The posse marched east, playing football with the dead cop’s hand.
    Keep heading north.
    Get to Bald’s location – before the kids do.
    He U-turned. Went to climb the steps.
    Found himself face to face with the business