VENGEANCE REAWAKENED

by Fredrick L. Stafford

  Olavo’s gleaming eyes swelled with delight. “My wife Alana and my son’s Rolando and Roberto.”

  Raziela and Molka smiled at Alana and said hello.

  Alana smiled back. “Welcome to our home.”

  Olavo motioned toward an open back door. “This way, please, ladies.”

  They followed Olavo out and onto a covered terrace with another spectacular view of the beaches. A small glass pitcher containing a light green liquid, two glasses, and a clear covered dish holding some pastries on a table waited.

  Olavo pointed at the refreshments. “Sugarcane juice and my wife’s amazing cheese pastels. The bathroom is right down the hall to the left. Enjoy.”

  Olavo went back into the apartment and spent time laughing with his family in the kitchen.

  Raziela and Molka sipped the ultra-sweet juice, and Raziela sampled a pastry. Her eyes rolled back in her head after a bite. “Mmmm…so good!” She swallowed and switched her voice to low-talk in Hebrew again. “He has a nice home and a nice family, especially for the setting, doesn’t he?”

  Molka low-talked in Hebrew again for her answer. “Yes. And those boys are adorable. About time to make the special tour request?”

  “You read my mind. But first, I need to go potty.”

  While Raziela was away, Olavo stepped back onto the patio. “I just have to compliment you ladies on your fitness. Many tourists can’t keep up after about the first twenty minutes. But you two kept right up. Pushed me along, really. Are you both athletes or personal trainers or something?”

  Molka grinned. “No, no, nothing like that. We get a spin class in once in a while.”

  Raziela returned to the patio.

  Olavo clapped his hands once. “Ok, are you ladies ready to continue?”

  “We are,” Raziela said. “But we’re a bit more adventurous than the average tourists and have a special request.”

  Olavo’s beaming smile returned. “Of course, I’m happy to accommodate special requests. What would you like to see?”

  “My friend is an artist, and she wants to see the Wall of Hopefuls. Naturally, we would include an extra-large tip for taking us to see it.”

  Olavo’s beaming smile dulled. “That wall is located right in the middle of—”

  “CV territory,” Raziela said. “Yes, we know.”

  “Not just any CV territory,” Olavo said, “it’s a part of CV territory that they, and the police, both call the Forbidden Zone because it’s the CV’s actual home base. And the Wall of Hopefuls is not really a tourist attraction. It’s more of a vanity project for a local businessman.”

  Raziela fabricated a cheery smile. “I can certainly understand if you’re too scared to go there. We can just ask one of the other favela tour guides to take us.”

  Olavo’s face took offense. “Who said I was too scared? I just wanted you to know it’s a bit of a rougher area.”

  “We understand,” Raziela said. “And you wouldn’t have a problem getting us in there and back out? As I said, we can always ask another favela guide.”

  “No other favela guide in Esperança has my good reputation.” Olavo bowed up. “I do my job and mind my business. Everyone knows and respects me for this. That’s why I can pass freely through the CV lookouts and the police checkpoints.”

  “Is that a, yes?” Raziela said.

  Olavo’s beam and gleam returned. “Just remember what you said about the extra-large tip.”

  Olavo led them back to the favela’s busy main two-way street and back uphill towards the top before making a right down a one-way street he said led to the Forbidden Zone.

  The first indication of what they headed into did not take long to emerge. A light-blue and white police car with two officers approached them from behind, passed them, and pulled onto the sidewalk to block their path.

  Olavo turned to Raziela and Molka. “Don’t worry. I know these officers. I’ll handle it. Please wait here.”

  Olavo approached the passenger side window smiling. The police officer smiled back, and Olavo put his head in the window for a brief discussion.

  The discussion ended, and the police car moved on.

  Raziela and Molka rejoined Olavo.

  “What did they say?” Raziela said.

  “They advised us not to go into the Forbidden Zone. It’s just routine.”

  Olavo led on, and the area they entered definitely appeared to be “a bit rougher,” as he’d warned: a big bit rougher. Most of the businesses looked to be closed or abandoned. And no vibrant, smiling masses walked freely. Just the occasional fast-walking individual keeping their eyes down.

  Graffiti appeared on almost every structure, and all the graffiti included the letters CV painted in green in case you didn’t know in whose territory you tread.

  They turned down an even narrower side street to see a teenage boy sitting on a curb-parked, battered white Nissan’s hood with a green bandana covering his face and a two-way radio in his hand. His other hand rested on a semi-automatic pistol tucked into his short’s waistband.

  Above him, three more teenage boys with face-covering green bandanas stood gazing down at the tourists from the roof of a three-story building. Each held an assault rifle.

  Smoked marijuana permeated the air.

  Olavo motioned for Raziela and Molka to step into a small side alley. “Wait here for a minute. I just need to let them know where we’re headed.”

  “Ok,” Raziela said.

  Molka kept her eyes on the rooftop gunmen.

  Raziela set her souvenir bag on the cement and viewed Molka with an unconcerned look. “You seem a bit nervous.”

  Molka continued to monitor the threats. “Well, anytime I walk around unarmed under several semi-automatic rifles carried by young male gang members smoking weed, I tend to get a bit nervous.”

  Raziela answered casually. “I guess that’s one way of assessing the situation.”

  Molka flashed Raziela a confused glance. “You’re not feeling even slightly anxious?”

  Raziela shrugged. “Compared to my time in Mogadishu, this seems almost—”

  Olavo returned to the alley. “Ok, we’re good. Follow me.”

  They followed Olavo to the first cross street. More semi-automatic weapons carrying young men sat around a table outside a little arcade drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and cannabis. But they paid Olavo and the tourist duo no mind. The others had probably radioed them.

  A left turn at the corner took them past a block-long scrap yard-garbage-dump behind a decaying wooden fence. The stench made Molka miss the smoked marijuana smell, and she hated the smell of marijuana. It reminded her of her annoying and irresponsible college roommate.

  The street dead-ended at a small hill covered with healthy, manicured green sod: an oddity in the concrete dominated favela. Stairs—adorned with multi-color ceramic tiles—bisected the hill from the street up to the top. Black letters on the stair’s mid-point tiles spelled out: Wall of Hopefuls. And at the stair’s end sat a three-meter high by about 20-meter-long plastered wall covered in colorful murals.

  Olavo stopped at the foot of the stairs and swept his hand toward the top of the hill. “There you are, ladies, the Wall of Hopefuls.”

  “Thank you,” Raziela said. “We’re going to take some pics and speak about the art in our native language for a bit.”

  “Not a problem.” Olavo removed his phone from his front pocket. “That will give me a chance to check in with my wife. She worries about me when I come in here.”

  Raziela grinned. “And if I could make one more request that just occurred to me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would it be possible for your cousin to meet us with the bikes just outside the Forbidden Zone and take us back to the bottom from there?”

  “Consider it done,” Olavo said.

  Raziela and Molka trotted up the stairs to the wall.

  Raziela removed her phone from her purse. “Pretend to be studying the wall and take a bunch
of pics while I get shots for the contractor.”

  A little over an hour later, Olavo and his cousin stopped their motorcycles with Raziela and Molka as passengers at the same curbside spot just outside the favela entrance where they picked them up from.

  Raziela dismounted quickly, removed and handed Olavo’s cousin the helmet, gave her thanks, said her goodbyes, pointed to the little restaurant across the street and said she needed to go “potty” again.

  Again?

  To be fair, it had been a few hours since her last pitstop. And maybe Molka was not the best judge of such things. Long missions in the helicopter conditioned her to hold it. The key was not to think about it.

  Halfway across the street, Raziela stopped, turned around, jogged back to Molka, removed a stack of folded reais from her purse, handed them to Molka, and whispered: “Increase the extra-large tip to an extra-extra-large tip.”

  She jogged back toward the restaurant.

  Molka viewed the cash stack in her hand. She had only been in Brazil a little over a day and didn’t yet know the relative value of the Brazilian real to that of the currency of her home country. So what was an extra-extra-large tip?

  Olavo’s gleaming eyes darted to the wad in Molka’s hand.

  Molka smiled at Olavo. “Thanks for the great tour and for the special request. I know that was not easy for you to make happen, even though you made it look easy.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “And now, as promised, here’s your extra-large tip.” Molka handed Olavo the entire cash stack.

  Olavo counted through the bills, and his face flashed from happiness to shock. “You know this is over 1000 reais?”

  “Is it?”

  “Are you sure you want to give me all this?”

  Molka shrugged. “Sure, why not. Buy something nice for your adorable kids too.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Olavo hugged Molka and took out his phone. “Here, let me text you my personal number. If you ever need anything in Rio, I can hook you up. My cousin is an excellent mechanic. My other cousin fixes any electronics. And my other cousin….”

  Evening descended on Ipanema Beach by the time Molka and Raziela made it back to their rental car. Across the road, the lighted beach walkway was sparely trodden, and the section of the beach beyond it unoccupied.

  Raziela unlocked the car doors, tossed her purse and souvenirs bag in the seat, and gazed out at the legendary beach. “Our work is done for the day. Come on, let’s go walk on it so we can say we’ve been there.”

  Molka tossed her purse and souvenir bag on the seat. “You were serious about that?”

  “Yes. Who knows if, or when, you’ll ever come back here, right?”

  Raziela removed her sneakers, placed them in the car, and shut her door. Molka did the same, and they crossed the street, crossed over the walkway, and padded across the soft—but hard-packed—sand toward soothing surf rolls lapping ashore about 100 meters away.

  Parked four spaces behind Raziela and Molka’s car sat the two men in their black car who had followed Raziela and Molka from the hotel parking garage to their parking spot on Ipanema Beach and then to the favela all the while reporting those movements by two-way radio to the “Major.”

  They watched the women arrive on foot back at their car, drop off their purses, shopping bags, and shoes, and head toward the beach.

  The two men exited their vehicle and followed them.

  CHAPTER 11

  Raziela and Molka reached the Atlantic.

  Raziela lifted her long dress’s hem to her knees and splashed into the still warm-ish and heavy sea scented water.

  Molka let the surf flow over her feet: a comforting massage after hours walking on the favela concrete.

  A perfect breeze came up. Perfect in that it kept the bangs out of the eyes without being annoying.

  Raziela stepped from the surf. “I know exactly what I want to do to cap off this day. Get some ice cream and then go to our hotel and sleep. You’ll be buying the ice cream, of course, since you have all our cash.”

  “Yes, about that. I—” Molka’s eyes catching two men fast-approaching from behind halted her explanation.

  The Hispanic men—one much larger in bulk than the other—both wore dark tee shirts and blue jeans and were about 75 meters away.

  Molka addressed Raziela. “Olavo was right. I think we’re about to be mugged and or assaulted in a well-known tourist area and or on one of the beautiful beaches.”

  Raziela joined Molka’s side. “They’re not displaying any weapons.”

  The men were about 65 meters away.

  Molka said, “That doesn’t mean they aren’t carrying any.”

  “Maybe they’re just coming to flirt or ask us if we’d like to go get ice cream.”

  The men were about 55 meters away.

  Molka shook her head negative. “Not with those aggressive postures. Their bodies are preparing for a confrontation.”

  “I’ll defer to your superior experience with confrontational postures. Fight or flight?”

  The men were about 45 meters away.

  “The car is too far away for flight,” Molka said. “We fight.”

  Raziela frowned. “I knew you were going to say that. But I can’t kick in this long dress. I’ll have to use hand strikes.”

  The men were about 35 meters away.

  Molka grinned. “I can kick in mine, so I’ll get infamous on them.”

  Raziela sighed. “Hand strikes aren’t my strong suit, though.”

  Molka grinned again. “Yes. I know.”

  The men were about 25 meters away.

  “Your sarcasm is cleverly passive-aggressive,” Raziela said. “But not helpful in this situation.”

  Molka’s body tensed. “No worries. I’ll take the bigger one.”

  “Molka, this is no time for foolish bravery. So I’ll let you take the bigger one.”

  The men were about 10 meters away.

  Molka whispered to Raziela. “The aggressor sets the rules.”

  Raziela whispered back. “Always.”

  The men arrived and stood before them.

  The bigger one smiled, put his hand into his front pocket, and spoke. “Good evening ladies, we’re—”

  Molka struck first.

  Her roundhouse kick impacted the bigger one’s temple.

  He dropped to the sand: unconscious.

  Half a second behind Molka’s attack, Raziela struck.

  Her hammer fist barrage pummeled the smaller one’s head.

  He staggered, dropped to a knee, and reached into his front pocket.

  Molka finished Raziela’s man with an axe kick sleep inducer to the back of his head.

  Both men lay motionless in the sand.

  Raziela gazed down at their victims. “Looks like they came to mug and or assault the wrong two girls tonight, didn’t they?”

  Molka grinned down at them. “Yes, they did.”

  “And you really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

  Molka’s grin maintained. “Yes, I did.”

  “But let’s do them a favor,” Raziela said, “and leave quickly before they wake up for round two.”

  Molka faked a frown. “Alright. If you insist.”

  Raziela and Molka jogged back across the beach toward the road.

  Raziela looked to Molka. “I’m still up for ice cream. How about you?”

  “Make mine low-fat frozen yogurt, but we’ll need to stop at a cash machine first.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain in the car.”

  Raziela and Molka reached the walkway and continued their trot across the street to their vehicle.

  Both entered, Raziela started it up, and they eased into light traffic on Vieira Souto Avenue eastbound.

  Within 30 seconds, two black SUVs blew by them on the right side, traveled for 50 meters, cut hard left—one behind the other—and stopped in the road to form a blocking position.

  Raziela locked the brak
es to avoid ramming their sides.

  She stopped less than a meter from doing so.

  A third black SUV sped from the car’s rear and stopped a meter behind the bumper to prevent escape.

  Raziela glanced in her rearview and then to Molka. “They’re professionals. We’re in trouble.”

  Before Molka could reply, two men, dressed in tee shirts and jeans, exited from the front blocking SUVs and pointed handguns at Raziela and Molka.

  One yelled: “Hands up! NOW!”

  Raziela and Molka complied.

  Another tee shirt and jeans-wearing man exited the rear blocking SUV with a pistol in his right hand and approached the car’s driver-side window.

  When he reached it, his left hand rose and displayed a gold badge with red lettering. “National Police of Brazil. Please get out of your car with your hands raised.”

  CHAPTER 12

  On a ten-minute ride from the beach into a Rio business district—while handcuffed in the lead black SUV’s backseat—Raziela and Molka’s justifications for their sudden and violent assault of the two men on the beach—they are tourist women alone in a deserted area at night and felt threatened by the men’s rapid approach—fell on deaf mouths and silent ears of the two police officers upfront.

  The second and third SUVs followed behind, and an officer trailed those driving Raziela and Molka’s car.

  The vehicles arrived and parked at a one-story warehouse-type building on a street with similar structures.

  The officers led Raziela and Molka through the building’s steel front door and down a narrow hallway to a small windowless room. It contained a scuffed-top plastic table and three scuffed wooden chairs: two chairs at the table and the other in a corner.

  The officers sat Raziela and Molka in the table seats, left the room, and closed the door.

  Raziela exhaled, anxious. “This is not a police station. So, I really hope those police IDs were legit.”

  “Me too,” Molka said. “But either way, their weapons were.”

  The door opened, and a fit, handsome-faced, Hispanic man in his 40s entered. His thick, dark hair was combed back, and he’d stylishly adorned himself in a dark blue sports coat over a black turtleneck, black dress pants, and black dress shoes. He carried Raziela and Molka’s purses and a tablet.