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Comments welcome, sorry for the shorter chapter. Too much going on today :)

Chapter VI - Snares

Too fucking quiet.

Arlen tried to keep his mind clear as Shield team moved straight down the street of the Rocinha favela. On all sides, crumbling concrete and corrugated metal shacks surrounded them and towered above, the 'street' an expanse of winding dirt filled with garbage and running slowly uphill as they moved to follow the GPS tracker's indicator.

Behind him, Rangefinder team, all one of them present, was on the radio with his two other teammates.

"Rangefinder two, Rangefinder three, get the chopper to exfiltration point six. I'm expecting to need a quick exit. You have twenty minutes. Respond if you copy."

Buck had his rifle out, a modified AR-15 with a hundred-round drum and laser sight, and had it held in both arms but pointed towards the ground as he used the radio headset, hoping to hell that the favela's twisting maze of metal and concrete wouldn't jam out their signal.

With a crackle of static, the grizzled combat veteran stag got a response while signaling with his right paw for Sword team to advance a bit farther back, in case of grenades.

"This is *fsht* two, we co*fsht* with interference...*fshtttt* rendezvous six, over?"

Buck's normal resting posture, at least for his face, was a scowl. It turned into a glaring grimace that made most of what few of the favela-dwellers were brave enough to look in the first place move back from their windows.

"Good copy. Out."

With that, he slowed, as Arlen and Sato stopped and crouched, the silver wolf using a mirror on a stick to look around a corner in the maze of flop houses.

Sato quirked an eyebrow, and made hand signals back to the Captain, as Arlen put a paw on the wolf's shoulder to lean in and look at the mirror, while holding his own AR-15 shouldered, wishing he'd thought to slip on the flashlight attachment or even a red dot. The ACOG scope was just a damn stupid idea, in these closed quarters.

Buck responded to the hand signals by gesturing that the two should continue forward.

No sign of hostiles. What the fuck?

Buck chewed his lip with flat herbivore teeth and glanced behind him to confirm that Sword team were paying attention to the odd situation. Sure enough, their leader, with his M-60 held in ready position, was looking around with a perplexed frown.

Sato shifted around the corner, his UMP braced against his shoulder and ready to dump 25 rounds of..45 ACP rounds into anyone dumb enough to give them trouble. Shortly behind him came the black tiger with his longer rifle, scanning rooftops and signaling the rest of the team to move up once they saw the street was clear. Though deserted might be a better term.

Maybe the locals just know better. God knows they see enough violence around here to know the fucking drill.

Two more turns, and another pair of kilometers, Shield team mirror-checked another corner and stopped. Sato put a paw to his headset mic, and spoke in a bare whisper to prevent being overheard.

"Captain, you need to see this. Capybara, hood over his head, bound to a chair just inside a two-story structure down the street from us."

Moments later, Arlen leaned his back against the building they were using as cover so that Buck could take the hand mirror. Sure enough, in its spotless glass, he could see the man, clearly breathing, alive, and...Alone?

"Sword team, we are moving up to check a probable trap. Take cover in the rubble middle of street and give us cover from there. We are moving up in ten seconds."

The Gecko Company squad moved to follow the orders, as Arlen grimaced and glanced around the corner to see with his own eyes. Sure enough, an empty street, a two-story crumbling concrete structure in the center with a bound and hooded capybara. It was either an obvious trap or the best luck ever. Still, they had to check it out. The tracker showed Tamra was likely in that building or nearby behind it, and he showed that to the Captain by holding it up over his shoulder while pulling back around the corner again.

Buck just gave it a nod, and tapped Arlen's shoulder, who in turn patted Sato's to signal time to move.

The silver wolf tipped his head around the corner quickly, scanned, then pulled back before making a countdown with his upheld fingers. When all that was left was a fist, he moved forward with Arlen just behind him, both of them sweeping different angles and rooftops in a coordinated fashion born as much of knowing one another than training. Behind them, the stag moved low, keeping his drum-fed rifle facing straight forward, selection switch on its "full auto" option.

Adrenaline pumped low in Arlen's system. If they were attacked here in the street, he knew just what he would have to do. Either dash straight ahead into a building that was likely occupied, or dodge to the side and crash into buildings he couldn't see inside of. If the trap was laid well enough, these buildings would be full of hostiles. Then again they would have heard something by now. That many people, no matter who they were, could remain silent that long. Especially not the kind of gun-waving idiots that would be belched out by a favela drug gang.

When Sato reached the open doorway, he paused to check for trip wires, and seeing none, checked the rest of the room visually. It was a simple place, maybe fifteen feet across by ten feet deep, windows covered with ill-fitting loose pieces of scrap, and with no front door. Not even hinges, those having been long since been taken off for some other use. Towards the rear wall, a bare-sided concrete stair case was slowly crumbling away to nothingness, and everything was covered in stains the color of either rusty water or dried blood.

In the center of the room was the capybara, on a chair with uneven legs, and he was doing a bit of a dance with his feet, like he had to take a leak and badly. The fur's jungle pants and vest were sweat-stained and stank enough that the wolf only refrained from wrinkling his nose because it would look unprofessional.

With a nod of satisfaction, he gave a paw sign for 'room clear' and moved in, Arlen at his back, as the Captain turned around to cover the door, ducking behind the door frame for some kind of concealment.

The capybara sniffed at the wolf, ears tilting forward.

Arlen heard a quick exchange in Portuguese, of which he caught just enough to understand that the capy was confused, and that Sato had asked for the fur's name and gotten just a grin in response.

With that, Sato pulled off the hood, revealing the scraggle-toothed creature they had all seen in photographs. The silver wolf brought up his UMP, pointing it at the rodent's left eye as Sato moved to the stairs, leaning out to look up.

"Captain, target confirmed visually. Your call."

Buck was watching out the window, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the empty buildings.

"Ask him where Tamra is."

The wolf opened his mouth to speak, and the capybara cut him off with a guttural laugh, and belched forth words in badly-accented English.

"Bitch-cat is upstairs. Is my debt paid now?"

Sato gave him a momentarily blank look, as his mind whirled with the implications of that.

"Captain?"

Arlen heard all he had to, and was up the crunching steps in a few careful paces.

The first thing she felt was nausea. Roiling waves of it, though they seemed to come from her skull rather than her stomach. She felt hot, all over her body, and her face felt like a mass of hamburger coated in throat-burning gut-wrenching pain.

What seemed like an eternity later, blurry whiteish light slashed across her vision, causing her to wince and spasm as her guts suddenly revolted, cutting off her breath as she vomited violently, unable even to curl up around her suddenly burning gut thanks to something or someone holding all four of her limbs together.

The hot, gloppy liquid pooled around the side of her face, making her feel like the lava that was burning inside her skull was leaking out her ears. Maybe to join the children on their way to church, if the cacophony of bells was any indicator.

She considered what dress to wear, as the white light slowly turned towards a muddy, awful, red-streaked brown. One eye couldn't see anything, and burned more than the other, and after a second she realized that eye was closest to the floor and half-covered in puke.

The very thought made her wretch again, the pink color frightening her into wondering if she was spitting up blood...Or strawberry daiquiri.

About then, a black shape moved into her vision. It was some kind of...Half-ball sticking up out of the floor, like a mole needing to be whacked with a mallet. Then it got larger, longer, and was moving very suddenly.

Garbled sounds...Words? She blinked, and winced, and sniffled back what she was sure weren't tears. Couldn't be. Way too tough for tears, or so she thought. Then, probing touches were moving around her neck and head, causing her to wince and cry out.

The sharp stab of pain brought everything into sharp relief, blasting away the hallucinated half-dream state she'd been comforted by. She was in a shitty flop house in the favela of Sao Paolo, hog-tied...Naked? She shifted her thighs, and felt fur rub on fur, rather than a layer of cloth in between. Yep. Naked.

The big black-on-black blur above her started sharpening up too, and she realized she was staring into Arlen's very worried, pretty sweaty face. His breath smelled of Sato's favorite strawberry gum.

"Tamra? Tamra, can you hear me? Let me know if you understand what I'm saying."

Then, before she could respond, he yelled back down the stairs.

"Sato, get up here! She's strapped with some kind of device!"

Moving with his usual calm, graceful speed, the silver wolf made his way into the room and walked right past Tamra without so much as meeting her eyes, digging out a pair of pliers as he went.

A few moments of rummaging, and a tug on her restraints let her know that they were wire...Steel, biting into her flesh through her all-too-thin fur.

"Captain? What is Sword team doing?"

Buck raised a brow, realizing Sato shared his sense of unknown impending trouble, and gave the other team a glance. The four were all in position at the rubble heap, though for some reason not checking sectors. When one of them raised a cell phone, his eyes widened.

"Detonator!"

Sato didn't even have the time to curse. He just grabbed the device, snipped the bundle of slender wires binding the calico, and hurled a package of what looked like beaded clay right out the window.

Sword four finished typing in a number, and hit "send" half a second after the device flew through the glass-less window. Then his eyes widened, in the two seconds that the signal carried through towers not jammed against his own phone...

Buck opened up with his drum-fed AR-15 half an instant before the world exploded, chunks of street flying in all directions as everything went white.