Acosta said, “Dr. Castro, this is the federal police. Bring back the drone or you will be shot.”
The doctor stared at us blankly, then he nodded and put the joystick down. He touched the screen of his phone with his left hand at the same time he reached below the hatch rim with his right.
Castro came up with a pistol, aimed it at us, and fired three quick times.
All three bullets went through the windshield.
Acosta roared out in pain, “I’m hit!”
Chapter 98
Dr. Castro saw the bullets strike the windshield and watched the cop in the passenger seat jerk on impact. He swung his gun toward the pilot, but the chopper pulled away hard. He shot at the rear rotor as it retreated but missed.
Castro glanced at the image from the GoPro on his phone screen; the stadium was much closer. Distance to target: 2.9 miles. ETA: eleven minutes.
He looked up, hoping to see the helicopter heading toward a hospital, but it wasn’t. The chopper was taking a wide loop around the statue, too far for him to shoot. Could he keep them at bay, circling for eleven minutes?
Castro believed he could, though he was certain he would die soon, and not from Hydra-9. He’d shot at a military police helicopter. The men in the helicopter somehow knew about the virus.
They would try to kill him to get control of the drone. But the doctor knew that was an impossibility. There was nothing they could do now to stop it. The statue was locked. They might try to land on the other arm, but no. Who would get out? Not the cop with the bullet in him. And not the pilot.
The helicopter was to Castro’s right now, some two hundred yards, searchlight off. It changed direction and closed the distance at an angle slightly to his rear, back toward the Christ’s head.
The doctor grabbed the joystick control and flung it into space, then he twisted around, swung the pistol toward the chopper, and started firing.
Chapter 99
Castro fired five times. All five bullets missed the mark, though one hit the helicopter’s landing strut and another the lower fuselage. The doctor thumbed the latch that dropped the clip. He groped for another.
“Kill him,” I said.
“I can’t,” Acosta said.
One of the doctor’s first shots had hit the lieutenant in the right shoulder. He was trying to support his quivering arm with his left hand enough so that he could get a decent sight picture on Castro.
“Gimme the gun,” I said.
The lieutenant handed it to me.
I set it in my lap, reached up, and undid the slide window.
Air rushed in. I took the control stick with my right hand and pushed the gun out the window with my left. I spun the chopper one hundred and eighty degrees and saw Castro lift his head and his gun, grinning like a madman.
The instant I had a sight picture, I shot, shot, and then shot again.
Chapter 100
The first bullet went right by Dr. Castro’s left ear.
Before he could return fire, the second slug hit him squarely just below the sternum. He bucked at the impact; it was like he’d been punched in the gut, except this punch was as hot as lava. Castro managed to squeeze off one round.
The pilot shot a third time and hit Castro high in the right chest.
The doctor was flung against the hatch frame. He swooned in shock and pain. The pistol slipped from his fingers, bounced off the statue’s arm, and fell to the terrace below.
Castro was dazed, but not confused. The doctor knew who he was and wanted to show the police that it didn’t matter what they did; he’d already won.
Castro held up the phone and with a bloody smile waved it at the helicopter and the men inside. Then he dropped it inside the arm.
It is done, he thought happily as he slumped toward death.
It is irreversible.
It is... good.
Chapter 101
We watched Castro sag against the hatch, drop the phone into the arm of the Christ, and die.
General da Silva saw him die too, said, “Now get control of that drone.”
“We can’t get control,” Acosta said. “He’s put it on autopilot. That’s why he waved his phone at us before he died.”
I hadn’t understood then, but now I agreed. If Castro had gone to this extreme, he must have had backups.
Swinging the helicopter away from the statue and accelerating north, I said, “General, evacuate that stadium.”
“The opening ceremony’s already started,” da Silva said indignantly.
“That drone’s flying right at you and forty-five thousand other people with more than a billion people watching. Your call.”
“Find the drone,” he said. “Knock it out of the sky.”
“It’s a pretty big sky, General,” Acosta said with a grunt as he got his belt around his upper arm and pulled the tourniquet tight.
“Actually, it’s not,” I said, and I took the helicopter up to one hundred and sixty miles an hour. “We know where it’s going. We’ll just get there first.”
“I’m going to have the cellular towers shut down, Jack,” da Silva said.
“What? Why?”
“That phone controls it. We’ll cut the link.”
“Don’t do it,” I said. “If you cut the link, it could go off anywhere, and we’ll never get a crack at intercepting it.”
I didn’t wait for a reply, said into the headset, “Mo-bot, are you there?”
“In the security center, Jack.”
“Patch me through to Sci,” I said as we closed on the stadium, which was glowing brilliantly.
“I’m sitting right beside her, Jack,” Kloppenberg said.
“We have a drone on autopilot heading toward the stadium with Hydra-9-infected blood on board. We have to figure out how to stop it.”
After a moment, Sci said, “How will it be dispersed?”
“I’m not sure,” I said as I dropped our airspeed over the parking lots of Maracanã and turned the chopper around. We hovered there, looking back toward the Redeemer.
Sci said, “If the drone’s navigation is on autopilot, it’s heading to a specific location. Which means that the triggering device of the delivery system has to be location-specific as well. Once the drone hits a certain GPS spot, the virus is released.”
“So if we stop it from getting to the stadium, there will be no release?”
“Unless he put redundancies in place.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Maybe if it crashes, it goes off?”
“Great,” I said, gaining altitude and turning back toward the stadium.
I flew right over the top of Maracanã and hovered there about three hundred feet up. Below us, athletes from more than one hundred countries were surrounded by troops of samba dancers shaking their stuff on raised stages. “They’re pointing at us,” Acosta said, looking out his window. “They think it’s part of the show.”
I didn’t care. I was scanning the horizon back toward the mountains. Where was it? A minute ticked by.
General da Silva said, “You’ve upset the organizers by hovering up there.”
“I don’t give a damn,” I said, still peering back to the southeast.
Where was the drone? Had it crashed? Had something gone wrong? Was the drone down? Was Hydra-9 already killing somewhere outside the—
Blip! Blip!
Glancing at the millimeter-wave radar readout, I said, “Here it comes. Six hundred and fifty yards out.”
I pushed the stick forward and we flew toward the drone.
“What do you want me to do?” Acosta said.