The Terminals (19 page)

“Lovely,” Zara grumbled.

“I kind of like it,” Calliope said.

Ari found the door open and ushered them aboard. “If any of you spoke Portuguese we wouldn't have to be tourists.”

Cam climbed in as Ari took the driver's seat and located a hidden key. Cam whispered to his roommate on his way past, “Not exactly the insanely fast car we were promised, eh?”

“Hey, it's a nice bus.” Ari grabbed the intercom mic. “All passengers, take your seats, please,” he announced. “My name is Ari. I'll be your tour guide today, and this excursion is under way!”

The doors closed with a
whoosh
, and the bus lurched onto the dirt road. Rutty, packed dirt became gravel, and a right turn took them onto a paved surface.

“We're in civilization!” Jules exclaimed, clapping her hands together.

Donnie cleared his throat to get their attention. “No contact with the outside world, except for what's necessary for the mission.”

Jules looked at Cam and rolled her eyes.

“What is our mission?” Cam asked loudly. He addressed everyone, but directed it mostly to Ari.

“Our mission is to attend a soccer match,” Ari said. He grinned and offered no further explanation. Demands from the team for further details and even mild threats from Zara couldn't wrest any more info from him. “Hey, that's most of what I know,” he claimed.

After another half an hour, more cars began to appear on the road. The team chattered and pointed out the windows at passing sights. Fruit stands, vendors, and even small stores began to dot the road. Ari narrated, telling fictitious stories about the increasingly urban features whizzing by.

“Coming up on our right is the fabled Sausage Man of East wherever we are. He cooks his famous
chouriço
right there in that rusty half barrel. And, on the left, you'll see a fine example of the exotic local wildlife, a feral
bos taurus
, if I'm not mistaken.”

“A what?” Jules asked.

“A loose cow,” Cam said.

Jules was up on her knees in her seat like a third grader on a school bus, her head snapping back and forth. The others had their faces pressed to the glass too, drinking in roadside art and advertisements alike, eager for both the greater and lesser offerings of humanity after months of isolation in the forest.

“I'm going to get me one of those sausages,” Donnie said.

“Me too,” Owen echoed.

Even Cam felt a twinge of excitement. It felt like coming back to the real world from their surreal beachfront heaven. Soon they turned onto a road that was legitimately busy, and Ari quieted, concentrating on his driving. He'd obviously not trained behind the wheel of a ponderous bus, Cam decided, and the local drivers didn't seem to pay much attention to lanes of travel.

“Maybe this is a reward for the good job we did,” Jules said.

Cam nodded. “Maybe.” But Ari had said it was their second mission. He looked to Calliope, who just shrugged.

They were driving into the center of a city of some sort. Not a huge city, but not a mere village or town either.

“That sign said ‘Amazon' something,” Jules pointed out. “Are we in the Amazon?”

“It doesn't matter where we are,” Donnie said. “We're not supposed to know.”

“We're going to know as soon as we step off the bus, genius,” Zara said. “Maybe before.” She pointed to a huge billboard that featured a soccer team.

“That must be the region's football club,” Ari said. “That's who we're going to see.”

“Mystery solved, everyone!” Wally shouted from the back as another road sign appeared in the distance beyond Cam's sight. “Macapá, Brazil, one hundred kilometers.”

Ari unfolded a sheet of paper containing handwritten directions, which led them into the city. Once among the packed buildings, they wove south through surface streets in a light rain that hung in the air as though it never left. The team was looky-looing in all directions, including down on the small cars of the locals—
every bit the tourists we're playing
, Cam thought. Then Jules gasped.

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed. “Look-look! The river! Is that…?”

The Amazon
, Cam realized.
The biggest river in the world.
It could be nothing else. The vast expanse of water was not the ocean, for he could see a distant shore. Nor was it a lake—two children in a canoe drifted at surprising speed on its powerful current. They slid past in water the color of heavily creamed coffee, reminding Cam of children who paddled a boat through molten chocolate in a book he'd read in grade school.

The street leading to the stadium was named Avenida Equatorial, and Ari informed them over the intercom that the Amazon River lay almost exactly on the equator. His commentary was interrupted a few blocks before they arrived at the stadium when he received a call. Ari quickly donned a headset and pulled to the side of the road. He listened and then summoned Cam.

“Come help me with something.”

They left the bus and walked to the rainforest banner decal. Ari picked at one corner, and it began to peel off.

“Grab the other corner.”

Cam helped him peel the entire banner, and then Ari told him to flip it over. The rest of the crew watched from the windows above. The reverse side read
CALLI!
in huge pink letters. Cam cocked his head.

“Stick the decal back on, but with this side showing,” Ari instructed.

Cam did as he was told, smoothing it as he went. He didn't ask what it meant. He knew better. Ari disclosed information when he was good and ready, never before.

“Great,” Ari said. “Let's do the other side.”

“That's my name out there,” Calliope said when they returned.

“Sort of,” Zara pointed out.

“Look,” Ari said, “I honestly don't know any more than you do at this point. Pilot just called and told me to turn the decals over.”

“No other instructions yet?” Donnie asked, suspicious.

“He did say to enjoy ourselves.”

“I'm not a big soccer fan,” Donnie grumbled. “But maybe they sell sausages at the game.”

They were an hour early when Ari pulled into the section of the lot reserved for large vehicles. A dark, well-dressed Brazilian woman met the bus and waited politely for someone to step outside. Ari shrugged and exited to chat with her. Moments later, he climbed back into the bus and asked for everyone's attention.

“What's going on?” Donnie demanded.

“Apparently, we're special guests.”

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

21. PERFORMANCE ANXIETY
  

by Crush

22. HAMSTER WHEEL

by The Fluffy Bunnies

23. REVELATION

by Breathe

“Give me a moment!”

The seats were good, down low in Zeraõ Stadium's bleachers. When the game started Cam felt like he was practically on the field with the teams. He couldn't help feeling spirited. He'd root for the local team, he decided—the black-and-white-striped Amapá Clube. The raven-haired woman who'd escorted them in had led them past the food vendors, souvenir booths, and a more modern Internet kiosk to their section. She spoke English and explained that the midfield line was exactly on the equator so that each team defended one hemisphere. The stands were full, and the crowd behind Cam was raucous—an important match, it seemed, or at least a hated rival. Cam wondered if the organization had planned the outing especially for him. He was the soccer player of the group. Mere weeks earlier he wouldn't have imagined himself at a Brazilian regional match on the Amazon River. He laughed privately—he might not have gotten his fast car, but this was certainly an adequate substitute. He wondered if they sold zebra-striped replica jerseys.

Jules sat next to him, clapping along with the crowd at times, though Cam didn't think she knew much about soccer. She spent the other half of her time wandering around seeing the sights or visiting the restroom. Donnie sat one row back, polishing off his second sausage and tipping back a beer. They didn't sell sausages at the stadium, but the woman made a call, and a nearby street vendor hurried over with nine of them, which they paid for with money Pilot had given each of them. Calliope had passed, willing hers to Donnie before she disappeared with the woman, taking Ari with her to translate.

The first goal came in the twenty-third minute on a corner kick to the head of an Amapá midfielder, who drove it into the back of the net, and the crowd went crazy. Cam was pleased to see the others enjoy the moment too. Even Donnie cheered. Zara rocked back and forth to a song the crowd had taken up. And Wally was folding paper flyers into airplanes and trying to drift them out onto the field of play. Fortunately, they banked left or right and flew in slow circles instead until their short flights ended and they were trampled underfoot.

Then it was halftime.

The teams retired to the sidelines for the break, and several stadium employees hauled a platform onto the field. Next came sound equipment, quickly hooked up by scrambling young men in collared shirts with a logo on the breast. Finally, three big men wheeled a piano out onto the platform.

Donnie rose. “I'm going to go find the bathroom.”

“I gotta go too,” Owen said.

“Wait.” It was Zara. “I think you might find the halftime entertainment interesting.” She pointed down to the platform, where a woman in a long red dress was approaching the piano. She strode to the bench and slid her hips onto it in a practiced manner Cam recognized immediately.

Jules jumped out of her seat. “It's Calliope!”

Two young girls unfurled a
CALLI
banner, and then Calliope began to play. It was not the song she'd performed for Cam. Not so dark. A catchier rhythm. More accessible. Still, it was unmistakably a piece she'd written. After the upbeat piano intro, she slowed it down and began to sing. Quiet at first. The audience strained to hear, affording her the courtesy of a minute's chance to win them over and intrigued by what they couldn't quite make out yet. She pulled them in, and then, just when a murmur might have begun or the restless might have started shifting in their seats, she blasted them. Her voice rang clear—a scream drowning any conversations about finding the bathroom or stepping out for sausage. They were stunned.

After the initial shock, her voice fell back in with the steady beat of the song, and the crowd embraced the reprieve with eager relief. She gave them a clear refrain and then began another build, an implicit threat to scream again. But when she reached the song's moment of greatest tension, she didn't. She spared them, and for that they were grateful. They clapped along as she led them through a verse and back toward the refrain, and then delighted them by signing it in Portuguese.
She had to have practiced this
, Cam realized.

The song rose and fell, and rose again higher, and when she had built it to its limit and it strained for release, she pointed out at the waiting fans, and they screamed for her. She played three final, emphatic notes, and then she was done. There was a moment of silence as they made sure that she was finished, or perhaps they were simply marveling over what they'd just heard, and then the stands erupted. They didn't stop cheering until Calliope had waved two good-byes and disappeared beneath the stands. Cam looked around. The crowd nodded and smiled, still clapping. The entire Deathwing team stood, stunned.

Their phones all rang at once.

Cam hurried his headset to his ear while the others did the same. It was Pilot. He spoke to them all via conference call.

“Time to go to work,” he said. “And you need to move fast. Take the stairs to the VIP area. There is a dressing room. Calliope will be receiving a man there. He has guards with him. They are to be incapacitated when Calliope calls for you. We prefer they are not killed.”

“Prefer”?
Cam thought.

“Who is he?” Jules asked.

“There's little time. Are you moving?”

“Yes,” Donnie reported, pushing the others toward the stairs.

“Good. He is an owner of bauxite mines. An aspiring politician. Very powerful in his own country, but vulnerable here. He has a weakness for soccer and female singers. Good luck.”

Pilot hung up as they descended to the lower level. A long hallway was lined with doors. Their well-dressed hostess stood at the first door. She smiled as they passed, and she pointed halfway down the hall to where Ari was waiting. A large man stood beyond him at the far end.

“One way in, one way out,” Zara observed. “Not great.”

Ari met them midway between the woman and the man, out of earshot of both. “Four more bodyguards inside the lounge,” he said quietly. “No guns—they don't carry them in this country.”

“What are we doing?” Cam asked.

“Getting ready. Our little performer will call when she needs us. In the meantime, just look like Calli's roadies, because that seems to be what we are. She's the lead on this one, my friends.”