CHAPTER 6

With his backpack over his shoulders, Bruce lowered himself from his kitchen window, down the outside of the building. His time in the gym had paid off. Before… the event… he wouldn’t have had the strength to do this.

As he descended, the door right below him opened and Martina looked out, drawn by the commotion upstairs. She gasped when she saw Bruce. He shushed her and she let him in, shutting the door behind him.

Bruce heard Cachorro stop barking up in his apartment. He hoped the commandos hadn’t hurt him. He also heard what they were saying to each other. “Target’s on the move,” one of them had reported, and then a moment later, “He’s on the ground.”

Footsteps thumped above as the commandos searched Bruce’s apartment and headed out in pursuit, assuming Bruce was on the run. He waited in Martina’s apartment, crouching by the door, until they were gone into the mazelike alleys of the favela. Below, on the street, he heard someone gunning a powerful engine. Probably a military support vehicle. This had to be an American operation, even though at least one of the voices coming from upstairs had sounded British.

When it had been quiet for a minute, Bruce nodded at Martina, and she nervously opened her front door and glanced outside. She shook her head: nothing out there.

With no time even to thank her, Bruce fled the apartment and hustled at a controlled walk down the street with the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. He took an indirect route down to the street, using the confusing alleys to his advantage. Along the way he caught a glimpse of the black van and the black-clad commando guarding it. Unfortunately the commando saw him, too. Bruce froze, just for a moment—but the suspicious reaction was all the commando needed. He started calling to the rest of his team.

Bruce broke into a sprint, turning down the street. His heart rate was rising, inching up past eighty beats per minute. He had to stay calm. Otherwise the monster would get out and everyone could be in danger.

Behind him, the commandos were in hot pursuit. Bruce doubled back away from the main street again and worked his way downhill, ducking under hanging laundry, leaping over baskets, careening across courtyards. Blonsky and his partner followed close behind, anticipating Bruce’s turns through the labyrinth of alleys.

When Bruce reached a paved street with fewer people, he bolted at full speed. He had to stop short when his path ended at a steep hillside with a sheer drop to the houses below. Bruce jumped onto the nearest roof and, jumping from one to the next, ran across the tops of the squat buildings. His feet pounded on the rusty tin, and shouts of complaint bellowed up from the occupants inside.

Blonsky and his partner reached the hillside a few seconds later, in time to see Bruce jumping from house to house. Blonsky scanned the area, looking for a faster way down. Two other commandos had a different line of pursuit. They were right on the target’s tail.

Meanwhile, the black van circled around the slum at top speed to catch Bruce if he came out the other side. Ross and Sparr stayed glued to their video monitors, watching the chaotic green-lit images of the chase.

Bruce reached an area thick with laundry, and the flapping sheets almost obscured the edge of a roof. He whipped through the cloth, his hood slipping back as he jumped down to another level of roofs.

The two commandos following him hit the same patch of clotheslines, but the taller soldier missed the blind jump. He fell hard, rolled to a standing position, and headed downhill, knowing the target had to come out on the main street sooner or later.

Bruce reached the end of the residential area and hopped down from the last roof into a party area of bars and late-night clubs. The streets here were crowded with people out for a good time; it would be easier to disappear. But he had to stop. His pulse was hammering, up toward 170, and that was monster territory. Pressing himself into a rack of empty bottles at the back of a restaurant, Bruce worked himself through a quick set of mental exercises. He knew he didn’t have much time. As soon as he got it down toward 150, he looked out—only to see one of the commandos.

The commando raised his gun and fired. Bruce heard the dart go by, too slow to be a bullet. They were trying to tranquilize him. He launched himself into the midst of the crowd, turned right, getting a step on the pursuing commandos again.

Blonsky charged after Bruce but the crowds on the narrow sidewalk slowed him down. The operation was no longer quiet, but it could still be successful. He lost visual contact and shoved through the crowds, looking for a sign of where the target might have gone.

Bruce checked his pulse monitor: 160… 165… He was in trouble. His pulse was too high, and he was really sweating now. He veered into an alley, rushed around a corner, and popped out onto a side street, almost running into the black van’s open door.

Seated inside was General Thunderbolt Ross.

Ross looked up and, for a dizzying second, he locked eyes with Bruce. It was the first time they’d seen each other in five years.

Bruce broke into motion just as fast as he stopped, and launched into another alley. Ross. He should have known.

Bruce reeled through the narrow street, breathing hard. When the alley ended, he took a hard right down a busy, wide street filled with restaurants. Bruce glanced back to see if anyone was following him, and he slammed right into a group of four men. Bruce recognized them as the tough guys from the bottling plant, led by the one who’d been harassing Martina—and he could tell from the looks on their faces that they recognized him, too. His stomach sank.

The guys were rowdy and looking for a fight. And for them, no one better than Bruce could have shown up at that exact moment. The problem was, Bruce couldn’t afford to fight. He couldn’t spare the time, or Ross’s commandos would catch him, and he couldn’t take the stress… or the monster would get out.

The leader of the group stepped up and threw a wild punch at Bruce, who saw it coming a mile away. His aikido training kicked in; he caught the guy’s sleeve and used his own momentum to send him crashing into a pile of trash.

Before the man’s friends could react, Bruce ran, skidding into another side alley. Behind him, he could hear pursuit. Now he had commandos and local dirtbags chasing him. Great.

At the end of the alleyway, Bruce found himself outside the bottling factory. With little time to think, he raced toward it.

At the same time, the commandos had narrowed their pursuit. They knew the target couldn’t be far. General Ross had just seen him, and from the van’s location, there was only one way the target could have gone without one of the team spotting him. Blonsky climbed back onto a low-hanging roof and surveyed the town. He spotted a group of locals slipping through the loosely chained back gate of a small factory. They were chasing someone, and Blonsky had a feeling he knew who.

“Where is he?” General Ross demanded over the comlink.

“Target acquired,” Blonsky reported.