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She keyed the molar mic with her tongue. “Omega, this is Beta team. We have an injured man, and we’ve got a bunch of angry drug dealers on our tail. Need a little help with directions.”
“I’ve got our resident guide on the line,” Juan said on the other end, meaning Mark Murphy. “What can we do?”
“How about a traffic tie-up?”
“You’re clear all the way to the bridge,” Murph said.
“No, I want to find a traffic tie-up,” Raven said. “We can at least lose the SUV that way.”
“Gotcha,” Murph said. “No jams near you on the main roads.”
“Then get us onto a side road. A narrow one.”
Raven knew Murph was monitoring their position using the GPS on their phones.
“I’ve got a new route,” he said. “At the next street, turn right.”
“Turning,” she replied. As she leaned into the turn, a bullet ricocheted off the BMW’s fender, barely missing the tire. Linc was right behind her and fired off three shots in return.
?
??Getting low on ammo,” he said.
“At the end of this street,” Murph said, “there is a canal perpendicular to you. You’re going to cross it.”
“How does that help?” Raven asked.
“It’s a pedestrian bridge. Too small for the SUV. It’s only ten feet wide and has steel barrier posts, according to the online street view. Do you have the backpack on?”
“Ready to deploy,” Linc said.
“After you cross the pedestrian bridge, you can turn left and it’s a straight shot to the Rio–Niterói.”
“Got it,” Raven said.
She could see the pedestrian bridge ahead. There were five steps up to it.
“Hold on,” she yelled to López. He tried to tighten his grip, but his arm was weak.
She jerked the handlebars back, gunned the engine, and popped up on her rear wheel to climb the stairs.
Linc followed, and they raced across the thankfully empty bridge.
“Deploying,” Linc said.
That meant he was releasing the drawstring on his backpack like a ripcord on a parachute. The pack was filled with four hundred caltrops. Shaped like jacks, the small steel weapons had four needle-sharp spikes, one of which poked straight up no matter how the caltrop landed. During the time of the Roman Empire, they’d been used to hobble horses and camels. Now they worked just as effectively on pneumatic tires.
When Linc pulled the ripcord, the caltrops spilled out and scattered across the pedestrian bridge behind him.
As Raven turned, she glanced to the side and saw the motorcyclists launch themselves up the steps. They ignored the tiny items falling onto the bridge surface and roared across.
The moment the tires hit the spikes, they blew out. One rider went tumbling across the remaining caltrops while the other flipped his bike into the canal.
The Porsche SUV skidded to a stop at the metal barriers, but it wasn’t giving up. It backed up and began to follow them on the other side of the canal.
Raven gunned her engine. She and Linc accelerated much more quickly than the SUV could and left it trailing far behind.
Still, it had to be obvious to their pursuers where they were headed. The entrance to the Rio–Niterói Bridge was only a mile ahead.
