The only remaining problem was how to gain swift access to Casa do Diabo with minimal risk of drawing attention to himself once the charges were set. And the answer occurred to him as he gazed over his balcony at the homeless drunks being carted away by the São Paulo police.
“Come on now! Get a move on!”
The parade of drunks flowed toward the jail door in a wavering stream. In the back, inevitably, a single laggard needed to be prodded on by one of the São Paulo policemen. In the front, just as inevitably, one would stagger and force those behind him to smack together like bumper cars in an amusement park.
“You there, where do you think you’re going?”
Blaine McCracken was lumbering about at the periphery of the small mass, the illusion created that he had once been a part of it and was seeking to separate himself. He felt a pair of angry hands grasp him at the shoulders and shove him sideways, to be absorbed by the group.
“Bastard!” exclaimed the officer.
The pace and surface of São Paulo cannot hide the truth of the awesome poverty and unemployment that fills the city. Many of Brazil’s poor have flocked there in search of what the countryside failed to give them, only to find that the city offers them no better. Accordingly, the drinking problem in the poorer sections of São Paulo and its outskirts is extreme. When confined, the problem is generally ignored. But every night, drunkards venture into the more respectable downtown sectors and are hauled away en masse to sleep off their troubles in the nearest jail.
Casa do Diabo.
The roundups started midevening and continued through the night, providing Blaine with the simplest means to enter the building unnoticed. He had pulled his stolen Ford off the road a quarter-mile from the jail and abandoned it. By a stroke of fortune, he discovered a main power junction on top of a pole halfway to the jail, and planted his first charge there before pressing on. He reached the fence that enclosed the complex and chose the darkest spot to make his climb. He used wire cutters to strip away the barbed wire at the top, then dropped effortlessly to the ground, his sack fastened tight to his back.
He stayed low and crept to the asphalt parking lot at the building’s front. With uncharacteristic deliberateness he approached various cars in the lot and worked into place the remaining dozen homemade explosives he had fashioned that day. The best place to plant them was not near the fuel tank or engine, but beneath the fuel line itself. That way, when detonation came, the fumes would ignite and spread the fury throughout the engine.
Starting at midnight. Show time.
McCracken spread his work throughout the lot instead of focusing in a single sector. Unlike the plastic explosives he was more used to dealing with, his children’s clay facsimiles did not readily adhere to the vehicles’ steel undersides. A roll of duct tape was necessary, and he was careful to make sure the timing mechanism was wedged home tight and set before pressing on.
When midnight came, the explosive clay would spew its roofing nail contents outward and puncture the steel about it. The sheer force would then join the fumes and available gas in the line to create a fireball where a car had been just seconds before. Lots of noise and light. Those inside the jail would think they were under attack.
The parade of drunks was mounting the steps now. Blaine let himself be swept up in the flow, eyes kept low and shoulders hunched. He had covered his clothes with dirt and cheap rum for the desired effect. His thick hair was disheveled and pulled down over his forehead. He had disarranged his beard back at the hotel to give it an equally unkempt look. But he kept his head down on the chance one of the policemen might notice his piercing black eyes. A dead giveaway to a man with experience, a reason for suspicion for a man without.
Once inside the building, the mass did not pause at the front desk for booking. In fact, that station was bypassed altogether in favor of a door leading to the basement section of Casa do Diabo. The officer at the front jammed a key into the lock and then swung it open. A second officer led the way; when all the arrested drunks were through it, the first rebolted the door and brought up the rear.
Just two to overcome. Blaine couldn’t have asked for any better luck.
The staircase was dank and cold, lit only by a single bulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling. The mass walked pressed against the side wall for balance. The descent leveled into a wide hall that was more hard-packed dirt than surface stone. Blaine could hear the whimpers and wails of those already incarcerated up ahead. The smell of urine and sweat grew stronger by the step. The raw night dampness down in the jail’s bowels was bone-chilling, the walls shiny with accumulated moisture and layered with patches of green mildew.
When he could see the cells flickering in the dim light ahead, McCracken began to ease his way forward through the drunks. Just six to pass by before reaching the lead officer. He moved gently, unnoticeably, quickened his pace at the last to bring the officer into range. Cells were clearly in view now, hands stretched between the bars, angry or desperate pleas shouted outward in Portuguese.
Blaine threw himself into a lunging stagger that engulfed the lead officer’s legs and took him down. The whole throng reeled backward in a whiplash effect, some tumbling.
The officer was in the process of shouting out when McCracken’s iron fingers found his throat to silence him. With no time to be subtle, he slammed the man’s head against the hard floor to knock him out. The officer at the rear was storming forward by this point. He struck a meaty hand downward to yank McCracken up. Blaine let him, went with the motion, and came up with fists flying. The first blow to the solar plexus doubled the officer over with a violent expulsion of breath. The man was still slumping when Blaine slammed a knee under his chin. Impact lifted the officer off his feet; he slumped down against steel bars infested with curious hands forcing their way out toward him.
The drunks still awake in the cells had gone quiet for the brief duration of Blaine’s work, but now were snouting and cheering as if they expected to be freed. The new lot that had shielded him had begun to back their way down the rank corridor when McCracken showed the gun he’d lifted off the first guard. In his other hand was a wad of keys.
The drunks slowed, then halted, disappointment obvious on their features. Blaine opened the less crowded of the two cells and herded them in. His original plan had been to throw the downed officers in here as well, but the mad eyes of the occupants dictated otherwise. There was a third cell, unoccupied for the moment, and he quickly dragged them into it after locating the proper key. Stripping the clothes off the larger of the two officers and donning them in place of his own was next on the list. The drunks had bunched close together in both cells to capture angles that let them watch. Those with the best view cheered Blaine when he stripped off his clothes and booed him when he put the guard’s on instead. By far the loudest reaction he got came when he exited the third cell tightening his gun belt and moved back down the corridor. The drunks shouted their anger at his not releasing them, then busied themselves with seeing if they could probe through the bars of the third cell to find purchase on the downed policemen.