34
Night Strike
The air was hot and close. The night alive with automatic gunfire cracking in the distance, as gangs cut each other to ribbons for a piece of city turf. The slums were edgy enough during the day, but at night it seemed more like a war-zone waiting to happen. Dodgy characters on every corner. The smell of a fire burning somewhere. And bodies lying in the street. Unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell.
The good news was, it was dark. Very few lights out in the barrios. But lots of shadows cast by buildings in the pale moonlight.
We stuck close to the buildings as we jogged slowly, sparing our energy. We came to a three-storey building with a metal ladder up the side.
“Up here,” Nathan said, stepping up the first few rungs, his cotton bag of bottles clinking over one should
