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By Root 867 0

Paulinia fires were still raging. On the way to the airport the night before, they’d heard on the news that firefighters and rescue workers in the area had changed their strategy, focusing not on extinguishing the refinery inferno but on evacuation and containment. Ethanol had stopped spewing from the pipeline within an hour of the initial explosion, but in that time some ten thousand gallons of fuel had spilled into the refinery, and while some of that was still burning, it was now the dozens upon dozens of blending and storage tanks that were involved. The conflagration would eventually burn out, but experts both in Brazil and in the United States disagreed on how long that would take. Some predicted four days, others two weeks or more. What no one disagreed on, however, was the environmental toll the disaster was taking. Already oil soot was blanketing fields and homes as far south as Colombo. Emergency rooms were overflowing with patients complaining of respiratory problems.

“If that’s not hell on earth, I don’t know what is,” Dominic said, staring out the window.

“No argument there. How you feelin’?” While Ding had dozed on and off for much of the flight, Dominic had been dead to the world until an hour ago.

“Better, I think. I was ass-kicked.”

“In more ways than one, mano. I know I already said this, but sorry about Brian. He was a good troop.”

“Thanks. So when we touch down, what’s the plan?”

“Call home and check the news stations to see if Hadi’s information has hit the airwaves. If it has, we go hunting. If not, we hunker down and wait.”

Once off the plane and cleared through customs, they went straight to the Avis desk and checked in. Ten minutes later, they were standing at the curb, waiting for their Hyundai Sonata to be brought around. “Air-conditioning?” Dominic asked.

“Yeah, but manual transmission. Can’t have everything.”

The dark green Sonata came around the corner. The attendant climbed out, had Chavez sign a form, then nodded and walked away. They got in and pulled out. Dominic retrieved his sat phone from his carry-on and dialed The Campus.

“We’re down,” he told Hendley, and turned on the phone’s speaker.

“Good. You’re on speakerphone. Sam and Rick are here, too. Biery’s on his way up.” Dominic heard a door open, then the creaking of a chair. Biery said, “Dom, you there?”

“Yeah, both of us.”

“We’re in business. We cycled through ten online storage sites before we got a hit. He’s using a site called filecuda.com. Just like Jack figured, Hadi was using a variation of his e-mail for the log-in. The password we cracked in ten minutes. There’s nothing in the account’s inbox right now.”

Rick Bell said, “We’ve put together a message we think will get Hadi moving in our direction. Sam will give you the details.”

Granger came on. “We’re a little worried that the news leak will really spook Hadi, so we’re going to go with baby steps, move him from one place to another. He’ll be on guard, so we figure if he moves to the first spot and doesn’t get ambushed, he’ll start getting more comfortable with the idea. Once we think we’ve got him hooked, we’re going to tell him to meet a contact in the Rocinha—”

“The what?”

Ding answered. “It’s Portuguese. It means ‘Little Ranch.’ Down here, slums are called favelas, and the Rocinha’s the biggest one in Rio.”

“We figure we’ll move him two, maybe three, times before sending him to the Rocinha. Depends on the tone of his responses. I’ll e-mail you a list and timetable.”

“Why there?”

“The Rio police don’t go in there unless they absolutely have to. Be easier for you to operate.”

Dominic asked, “When are you dropping the dime on Hadi?”

“In about forty minutes, by fax to Record News. We put together our own sketch and description—hopefully, close enough that Hadi’ll recognize himself but vague enough that he won’t get nabbed right away.”

“How sure are we they’ll use it?” Chavez asked.

Hendley said, “Survival of the fittest. They’re a news channel, and they’re fighting for market share during the biggest disaster in Brazilian history. They’ll take the