Camilla answered quickly.
“Elena’s a good person, at least to people like us.
She inherited this territory from her father.
The streets farther up used to belong to him too…”
As they made their way through the alleys, Camilla quietly explained Elena’s situation to Rock.
Elena was a perfect example of a daughter following in her father’s footsteps.
Her father had once been quite powerful.
He controlled five streets in this area and, at his peak, commanded more than a hundred gunmen.
Later, however, he became embroiled in a major conflict with the neighboring gang led by Fat Barros.
In the end, Barros joined forces with Quintana and attacked him.
The combined forces of the two gangs quickly overwhelmed Elena’s father’s gunmen.
He fought while retreating, losing street after street until Slope 21 was all that remained of his original five.
His men managed to hold the street only through a desperate counterattack.
During the fighting, however, a bullet pierced his lung.
He handed the territory over to Elena and died soon afterward.
Of the four streets they lost, three were taken by Fat Barros and one by Quintana.
Elena had always wanted to build up enough strength to reclaim them, but she lacked the resources.
The main reason was that the sale of rock sugar, flour, and leaves was forbidden on her turf.
That put her at a natural disadvantage in terms of revenue compared with Fat Barros and Quintana.
She also lacked the money to purchase more powerful firearms.
That was why any gunman who wanted to settle on Slope 21 had to turn over at least one gun.
Elena did not prevent outside gunmen from entering the area, but she required them to cooperate with her operations when necessary.
In effect, they served as auxiliary gunmen for her gang and received extra payment whenever they took part in an operation.
Elena’s strict ban on drugs left her short of cash.
However, it also had an upside.
Her stance had kept Slope 21 free of addicts.
Both her regular gunmen and her auxiliary gunmen were ordinary people who hated seeing the favelas controlled by drug dealers.
That gradually attracted people who wanted to live somewhere without drugs in the surrounding area.
Although drugs were commonplace in Brazil’s favelas, some people still wanted to avoid raising their families in neighborhoods dominated by them.
As a result, Elena’s Slope 21 had become something of a haven within the favela.
Many poor families moved there after hearing about it.
As the population grew, basic economic activity increased with it.
The economy on Slope 21 was noticeably livelier than on the surrounding streets, allowing Elena to collect more management fees and taxes.
In the favelas, taxes were traditionally paid to the gangs rather than the state.
Rio had a population of more than six million, with over 1.4 million people living in favelas, more than twenty percent of the total.
The relevant authorities in Rio de Janeiro had great difficulty collecting taxes from that part of the population.
Now, Rock and Camilla were on their way to meet this unusual gang leader.
According to Camilla, Elena was only twenty-two.
She had still been in college when her father was defeated, but after the incident, she dropped out and returned to take over the gang.
Several years had passed since then, and she had managed to stabilize her territory.
The two followed Carlos “The Mustache” as he wound through the maze of alleys.
The neighborhood was not large, but its layout was extremely complicated because the buildings had been put up haphazardly.
That was one reason the Brazilian police struggled to conduct effective sweeps through the favelas.
Terrain like this was a nightmare for urban combat.
After climbing several narrow staircases, they turned a corner and found their path blocked by two burly men.
“Hand over all your guns, ammunition, and knives.
You’ll get them back when you leave.”
One of the men, whose body was covered in tattoos, held out a cardboard box and looked at Rock.
“Locke, dear, trust them.”
At Camilla’s urging, Rock pulled the Glock from beneath his shirt and placed it in the box.
As for Camilla, her light, revealing outfit offered nowhere to conceal a gun.
After Rock was frisked, Carlos led them farther upward.
They rounded two more corners before finally reaching the roof of a building.
“Olá.
I’m Elena.
Welcome.”
A fit young woman stood on the rooftop.
She had sun-kissed skin and wore a tactical vest, denim hot pants, and a Nike baseball cap.
She held an HK416 and smiled at Rock and Camilla.
Without the rifle, Elena would have looked like a sexy girl next door.
“Olá!”
Rock and Camilla replied in unison.
They still did not know why the female gang leader had summoned them, but judging by what they had seen so far and Elena’s reputation, she did not appear to mean them any harm.
“Camilla, I know who you are.
I heard Ricardo’s men are still searching for you at every intersection.”
“Yes.
I saw Ricardo’s men trading goods on Copacabana Beach, but I swear I didn’t mean to see anything.”
Camilla blurted out the words, visibly agitated.
“Hey, sweetie, calm down.
Ricardo’s men may be dangerous, but they wouldn’t dare come into the Slopes looking for someone.”
Elena calmly reassured her.
“Thank you.
They’ve tried to kill us several times.
Without Locke, I would’ve been shot dead by now.”
Camilla gave Elena an honest account of Rock’s exploits.
“Whoa.
You’re seriously impressive, kid.”
After hearing the story, Elena looked Rock up and down in amazement.
Taking down three men armed with Glocks while unarmed was something even a special forces soldier could not guarantee.
Elena was delighted that such a formidable gunman had arrived on her turf.
The two AR-15s and the Glock Rock had turned over were all in good condition, adding to the reserves in Elena’s arsenal.
She had assumed that if the guns he surrendered were that good, the weapons he kept for himself had to be even better.
After listening to Camilla, however, she realized that Rock’s greatest asset was not merely his high-quality weapons, but his astonishing combat ability.
Elena had every reason to believe that, with enough ammunition, Rock could wipe out a twelve-man armed squad by himself.
For someone already short on manpower, he was exactly the kind of talent she needed most.
Elena might not have known expressions like “one man against a hundred,” “one man holding a pass against ten thousand,” or “a warrior worth ten thousand men.”
But if Camilla was telling the truth, Elena knew Rock could function as an entire squad of gunmen by himself.
“Locke, look over there.”
Elena pointed into the distance.
Rock followed her finger and saw nothing but a dense cluster of houses.
“Do you see the roof covered in flowers?
My father built that especially for me.”
Nostalgia filled Elena’s face.
Out of politeness, Rock did not interrupt her while she was lost in her memories.
Otherwise, he might have said, “What does something you can’t forget have to do with me?”
“Locke, the next time war breaks out, help me take that neighborhood back, and I’ll make you one of the gang’s leaders.”
Rock took a rough look.
The house was more than a kilometer from the rooftop, with the two buildings positioned on opposite sides of a steep cliff.
Based on what Camilla had told him, it was probably part of the four streets Elena’s father had lost.
As for Elena’s promise to make him a gang leader, it was nothing more than an offer for the future.
He could ignore it until it became real.
Elena held her phone out in front of Rock.