Brazil: Criminal Empire - Chapter 113: A Gang’s Strength Gives Its Members Confidence (Patreon)

Rock had made a substantial profit from this operation, so he generously set aside several million reais for the two special operations squads to divide among themselves.

His generosity immediately drew cheers from every squad member.

Why had they risked their lives to join a gang in the first place?

To make money.

And Rock had kept the promise he made when they joined him. This really was a job with a very profitable future.

In only a few days, they had already earned hundreds of thousands of reais.

Compared with the difficult lives they had been living back home or in other cities, it was an enormous difference.

Add in the increasingly sophisticated weapons they now carried, and to Cassiano and the others, Rio de Janeiro practically felt like paradise.

Battle Angels was a home they had come to love.

When it came to rewards, nothing made a stronger impression than cold, hard cash.

With thick bundles of bills stuffed into their pockets, every member of the special operations squads was grinning.

At Rock’s request, Ciro arrived at the Stone River favela with two cargo vans to haul away the weapons and ammunition.

Rivaldo and Death No. 2 stayed close to Rock as security.

Rock rode his motorcycle and led Ciro and the vans around the Stone River favela.

At the Nightingale Bar and the car wash, Rock brought out portions of the weapons and ammunition he had stored away.

The men Ciro had brought were all full members of Battle Angels.

Even though they were only there to load and carry equipment, every one of them had a smile on his face.

Their gang leader, the powerful Boss Locke, had taken a little over a dozen men and a group of formidable instructors into a favela and conquered it without suffering a single casualty.

The strength of a gang’s leader determined how far the gang could go.

Showing that strength also gave the ordinary members confidence in their organization.

Rock had done exactly that.

The corpses scattered through several strongholds in the Stone River favela once again showed the Battle Angels members just how formidable their gang had become.

Rock gave each member who came to move the weapons and ammunition a 2,000-real bonus.

That small windfall made the young men even more enthusiastic.

There was no doubt that the next time Battle Angels launched an expansion operation, these men would be fighting for the chance to take part.

Ciro stared at the two cargo vans packed to the brim and could not help being impressed by the combat power of the two special operations squads under Rock.

He had been the first prisoner Rock captured on the first territory he ever seized.

Because Ciro had useful professional skills and had never done anything particularly heinous in his daily life, Rock had eventually brought him over to his side.

Since then, Ciro had worked diligently and handled every task entrusted to him extremely well.

By now, he had become one of Rock’s more trusted subordinates.

Just as Rock had always believed, as long as he remained strong, the loyalty of the people beneath him would remain secure.

Rock did not spend his time simply waiting around.

He sent the Ghost Squad out to survey the entire Stone River favela, mapping its terrain and important positions.

He had no plans to occupy the territory for now, but there was no harm in learning the layout thoroughly.

There might come a day when he had another opportunity to return and pick up another shipment of supplies.

Rock was not excessively greedy when it came to territory.

For now, his most stable territory was still the Great Rock Wall Favela.

Because of its location, there were no other favelas directly connected to it, leaving it relatively isolated.

At present, there were no serious threats from neighboring gangs.

In reality, the greatest potential problem for the Great Rock Wall Favela lay in the area below it.

That section had previously been cleared by BOPE and was now under UPP control.

It was also the part of the favela where the convenience store Fatima had once worked at was located.

More than once, Rock had received complaints from his men about merchants in that area asking Battle Angels to take complete control of the neighborhood.

The Rio police stationed at the local UPP post were, in some ways, even more aggressive than the gangs.

They forced merchants to pay protection money and regularly found excuses to extort both shop owners and residents.

Yet whenever anything serious actually happened, they rarely intervened.

When Moraes had sent men down the mountain to abduct people and ended up fighting Rock, the police had done nothing more than arrange for the bodies to be removed afterward.

That had been the end of it.

Among the merchants at the foot of the hill, resentment toward the UPP officers had been building for a long time.

But Rock was not going to start thinking of himself as some kind of savior just because they asked for help.

He needed the right opportunity before making a move.

No matter how corrupt those officers were, they still represented Rio de Janeiro’s official authority.

Rock could not give the Rio state government an excuse to send BOPE into the Great Rock Wall Favela for a full-scale sweep.

The cost would be far too high.

So for now, Rock intended to preserve the current balance around the Great Rock Wall Favela.

He would maintain a degree of mutual noninterference with the corrupt UPP officers below.

The territory on the upper slopes of the Great Rock Wall Favela was off-limits to them.

The favela at the foot of the hill belonged to the UPP officers during the day and to Battle Angels at night.

The situation in the Slope favela was also locked in a temporary stalemate.

Rock currently controlled 21st Street, 20th Street, 19th Street, and most of 23rd Street.

There was no conflict with Cavallero’s territory to the east for the time being.

Rock had even had Carlos complete an arms deal worth more than a million reais with him, so there was little need to devote much manpower to guarding that border.

To the north, Barros had been badly weakened.

Rock had no intention of continuing the attack, while Barros lacked the strength to push into Rock’s territory.

The two sides remained locked in a standoff on 23rd Street, relying on barricades that were gradually being turned into permanent defensive positions.

As for Quintana to the northeast, only a handful of narrow alleys connected their territories.

A few concrete walls built across the alley entrances were enough to seal those routes almost completely.

Rock had learned from Jairo that Quintana had been the one behind the attack on 23rd Street in the Slope favela.

Once Rock’s strength grew further, he would find a way to settle that score.

Perhaps because of the kind of fighting common in Rio, Rock had already taken a great deal of territory and captured numerous gang strongholds.

He had seized a huge quantity of firearms and ammunition in the process.

Yet powerful explosives were surprisingly rare in these gang bases.

The strongest explosive he had encountered so far was the M67 grenade.

He had not seen so much as a gram of TNT.

That was somewhat frustrating, considering Rock possessed an Advanced Explosives skill.

One of the assault troopers in the special operations squads, a former member of the Parachute Brigade, also possessed explosives expertise.

That meant the two squads had two explosives specialists between them.

In a high-intensity battle, those skills could prove extremely useful.

Something else would have to be added to the shopping list for Paraguay.

Still, judging from the way gang wars were fought in Rio de Janeiro, Rock suspected that powerful explosives might be one of the Rio state government’s red lines.

If weapons capable of causing massive destruction began appearing in gang conflicts, the response might no longer be limited to Rio de Janeiro’s police forces.

Brazil’s federal military forces might become involved as well.

So Rock’s immediate priority remained the same.

Build up his strength and properly train the members of Battle Angels.

For now, though, Crazy Train still had not sent anyone to negotiate.

Instead, an entirely unexpected group appeared outside Prado’s stronghold.