Mackinlay's Samba

Paulo hated Rio during Carnival.

The crowd bounced along in the bleachers overlooking the samba runway. The cacophonous rumble of shuffling feet, wagging ass and procession echoed loudly throughout the Sambodrome.

Rio de Janeiro was fairly crazy when it wasn’t Carnival. During the season it was like the entirety of Brazil was hitched onto a crazy train. Feathers, beads and flesh pressed up against Paulo Souza as he slipped through the crowd following his target’s wake. The crowd smelled of hot sex drizzled with an organic aphrodisiac.

Paulo hated the tourists too, they were sad little sacks of baggy flesh that stank of ignorance, but they brought the money. Money brought jobs. Jobs brought more work and improvements. The improvements brought more tourists with a predilection to be parted with their money. It was a vicious cycle that Paulo understood but hated. He hated his participation in it.

The courier he was shadowing was plowing through the crowd with a determination that Paulo had rarely seen. It was as if the brute of a man was on the leading edge of a static bubble. The jubilant partiers divided at his slightest touch and regrouped around him. The courier was Moses made flesh as he made his way towards the mezzanine boxes in Sector 2.

The case containing the 300-year-old bottle of Mackinlay’s was secured to the courier’s wrist with a set of Titanium-3 handcuffs. The case itself was also secured with biometric security measures. The case, once delivered, would require the use of the recipient’s thumbprint, verbalized password and a blood sample to release hermetic seal storing the paper-wrapped bottle.

Paulo ran through the possibilities in his mind. The crowd could easily conceal any wetwork that needed to happen. The courier was likely to be skilled and heavily modified. Paulo was prepared for that inevitability. The sketchy part of the entire operation was retrieving the recipient’s thumb and the blood sample required to open the case, but that was up to another team of operatives. Paulo’s only concern was the case containing the Mackinlay’s.

Quickly, Paulo moved around the courier and placed himself in front of the huge man. Paulo waited letting the samba beat infuse his character. It was like he was a child again, before the modifications, before the choices that led him back to Rio. The samba school that was passing by was blasting out ‘Un Poquito,’ and Paulo moved with the rhythm becoming one of the thousands in the crowd.

The courier’s wake was starting to encroach upon Paulo’s position as he approached. Grabbing one of the scantily clad women in the crowd, Paulo jumped into the movement of a classic samba, making his own ripples in the sea of rhythmic flesh. Paulo put his hands on her hips and guided her movements to match his own. Her bright smile told him that she was enjoying the attention. Sadly, Paulo knew that the unspoken innuendo wouldn’t lead anywhere. She was simply a means to an end. She was a distraction at best.

Paulo felt the courier behind him as he and the topless woman bounced back through a spin. He and the courier locked eyes. The surroundings started to slow down as the synthetic organs tucked in between the natural ones released the flood of endorphins that activated his artificially enhanced reflexes. There was recognition in the courier’s eyes. The two had danced before, in Beijing.

With a quick flick of Paulo’s wrist, his perfectly sculpted companion had spun out and extended herself into the courier’s path. She never connected with the brute. The woman clad mostly in a chartreuse thong under impossibly scant and faded denim shorts had stopped mid-spin as the courier grabbed hold of her fragile arm.

Paulo felt more than heard the snapping of bones in her forearm as the courier smiled at him. In an impossibly slow instant only seen through the haze of heightened senses and artificial stimulants, Paulo watched the woman’s arm bend into an impossible angle before she was lifted and thrown out of the courier’s bubble.

Without a second thought, Paulo bent his body and jumped into a handstand and let his feet follow the natural momentum, catching the courier squarely in the chest. The impact jarred Paulo’s teeth. It was lick kicking a steel plate. Paulo pushed up from the ground and twisted, following his feet.

The crowd was at a standstill. His samba partner was still flying up in the air, her arm twisting into a gross representation of what it used to be. Unless she got medical attention, she would likely bleed out within 20 minutes.

Paulo landed with his knees on the couriers shoulders. The scarred pale face of his new dance partner hadn’t even changed. It was a mask of complete focus. There was no expression on the courier’s face as Paulo felt the reinforced knee strike his kidney. Paulo would be pissing blood for a week, but it would be worth it when he delivered the Mackinlay’s to the fence.

The force of the blow knocked Paulo forward, dislodging him. Paulo used the momentum and twirled his body, bringing his arms together to increase the spin. In practiced synchronicity, Paulo ran through flexing his calf and curling his toes to extend the heel spike implanted in his foot while simultaneously hitting the ground on his back and raising his leg upwards.

In a thought, Paulo brought his leg down, planting the heel spike deep into the courier’s forehead. The courier twitched briefly before Paulo retracted the weapon. Time was starting to speed up again. The woman was a few feet farther, her arm wagging as if it were made out of rubber.

Paulo flexed his hand to extend the hand razors and hacked and at the flesh and reinforced bone of the courier’s forearm. Three heartbeats later, Paulo had the case of holding the Mackinlay’s and was pushing back through the crowd the way he came.

Paulo hated Rio during Carnival.