Black Rain: A Thriller (3 page)

“You know damn well I won’t quit,” she said. “But I’ll promise you this, when I get back to Washington with this thing in my hand, I’m going to march into Gibbs’ office and shove it down his damn throat.”

He smiled. “Just make sure I’m sitting ringside.”

Moore played the good soldier to the best of his abilities, but Danielle could sense his anger and frustration. He clearly hated being moved aside. Not too far down the road, a bigger move was coming: forced retirement. At that point she’d be his legacy. It made her even more determined not to let him down.

As she steeled herself for the work ahead, Moore’s face grew serious. “You must know,” he said, “things have gotten more dangerous. And not just because you’ll be leading on your own. There’s another party involved now, an outside player.”

She listened intently.

“We lost our transportation this morning,” he said. “The guy took another charter. I offered to beat whatever they were paying, but he didn’t want anything to do with us. That makes our porters and our transportation all in one week.”

Danielle thought about the men who’d backed out. At least one of the porters they’d hired had been assaulted and badly beaten, while the rest of the group had just disappeared.

“Not a coincidence,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” Moore said, sliding his glasses into a jacket pocket. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Gibbs was going to replace them. He’s got a hand-picked crew coming in, and they’re not locals either.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Private security first, led by a man named Verhoven, a South African mercenary. Well thought of, from what I hear. He’ll be arriving the day after tomorrow, along with his crew. Then there’s a pilot Gibbs wants you to
meet: an American who goes by the name of Hawker. He’s known in Manaus but he spends much of the year crop-dusting for the owners of a coffee plantation a few hours drive from here.”

“What’s he doing down here?”

“Ex-CIA,” he said. “Black-flagged, apparently.”

“Then why are we using him?” she asked.

Moore smiled like a jackal but he didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.

“Has it really come to that?”

“Gibbs doesn’t trust anyone now. He’s convinced we have a leak and he wants people with no connection to the Institute. He thinks that should make them clean—and he’s right, at least to begin with. It doesn’t mean someone can’t get to them later, but it gives you some insulation.”

As Moore took a sip of water, Danielle realized he’d slipped back into the role of mentor. This was it, she guessed, the last words of advice she’d receive for a while.

“What’s their cover?”

“No cover,” he said. “Hawker’s already here and Verhoven and his group are coming over the fence, not through it.”

“And their clearance?”

Moore shook his head. “No one’s cleared to know what you know,” he said. “Not them or the civilians. They can know about the stones, the ruins, the city you’re looking for. Everything that’s obvious. But beyond that they stay in the dark.”

And that was the rub—the burden of leadership on
this particular expedition. They were ostensibly planning to follow Blackjack Martin’s tracks into the rainforest in search of what would be an astounding discovery, a branch of the Mayan race living in the Amazon, thousands of miles from the rest of Mayan civilization; but there was more to it than that, a goal that coincided with the search, one that the others would never be informed of.

“And if I run into trouble?” she asked.

“You’re not to contact the Brazilian authorities under any circumstances,” he said bluntly. “In the case of abduction, coercion or other scenarios which might force your hand, the loss of the entire team is considered preferable to any disclosure.” That was the order in writing. Moore added his own clarification: “If something happens, do what you can. But if there’s no other choice, then you get the hell out of there and leave them behind.”

She listened to the directive, one she’d known was coming ever since Gibbs started jamming the civilians down their throats. She had little doubt that Moore shared her revulsion at the order, but they had a job to do.

As if sensing her hesitation, he said,“I don’t have to remind you how important this thing is.”

“How important Gibbs
thinks
it is,” she corrected. “If he’s right.”

“He is,” Moore said, bluntly. “One way or another, he’s right about this. You’ve been asked to take it on faith so far, but since you’re now in charge … The test results on the Martin crystals were unequivocal. They
confirmed the presence of tritium gas sequestered in the quartz lattice.”

Tritium was a radioactive by-product, one that could only form during a nuclear reaction of some kind. Its presence could mean only one thing.

Moore explained. “Somewhere along the line, those crystals were involved in a low-level nuclear reaction. Cold fusion, almost certainly.”

“And the source of that reaction?” she asked. “Do we have any new thoughts on that?”

Moore squinted into the distance, his blue eyes lit up by the setting sun. “I’ve come to believe that what we’re looking for is out there,” he said finally. “I couldn’t explain how or why, but I believe it exists. And if we can find it—if
you
can find it—then we have a chance to literally change the world.”

T
he rusting aircraft hangar stood at the end of a seldom-used airfield just outside the small mountain town of Marejo. Weeds grew unchecked around its edges and pigeons nested in the roof, giving it the appearance of an abandoned hulk, but the structure, and the concrete airstrip it served, still had a few sporadic users.

One of those was a dark-haired, forty-year-old American, owner and operator of a weather-beaten, olive-drab helicopter—a Bell UH-1, commonly called a Huey, a craft that currently absorbed both his admiration and scorn.

Three hours of work in the sweltering hangar had left him concerned about the Huey’s state of airworthiness. In truth, he marveled that it was still operating at all. And as his eyes flashed from one section of the craft to the next, he wondered just how many things he could patch together and still continue to fly. Grimly amused at the thought, he guessed he’d find out soon enough.

As he moved to put away a case of tools, the open mouth of the hangar doors caught the sound of an
approaching vehicle, a well-tuned, expensive engine, completely out of place in a town like Marejo.

Glad for any excuse to move toward the fresh air, he walked to the entrance, wiping the grease from his hands with a tattered rag. Across the tarmac, a dust-covered Land Rover approached, moving slowly down the access road. He guessed this would be a follow-up to the call he’d taken the night before, an offer he had turned down without hesitation.

So they’d come to talk in person now. They must really want something this time
.

The black SUV swung toward him and parked at the edge of the tarmac. The door opened. To his surprise, a woman stepped out. Attractive and fashionably dressed, she slammed the door with more than a little edge and strode toward the hangar, her eyes hidden beneath tortoiseshell sunglasses. There was something confrontational in her gait, like a tiger spoiling for a fight.

As she approached, Hawker considered his own grubby appearance, covered in grease and sweat and three days of unshaven stubble. “Great,” he mumbled to himself, then stepped back inside, where he could at least splash some water on his face.

Leaning over the sink, he heard the soles of her boots clicking on the concrete floor.

“Com licença,”
she said in Portuguese. “Excuse me; I’m looking for a pilot named Hawker. I was told I could find him here.”

He shut off the water, dried his face with a towel and looked in the tarnished mirror; a marginal improvement. He turned. “You speak Portuguese,” he said.

“And you speak English,” she replied. “American
English. You must be Hawker.” She put out her hand. “My name’s Danielle Laidlaw, I’m with the NRI—the National Research Institute—from the States.”

He shook her hand cautiously. “The NRI?”

“We’re a federally funded research house,” she said. “We do a lot of high-tech work in partnership with universities and corporations. Though that’s not exactly why I’m here.”

He’d heard rumors about the NRI in the past. And however unreliable those sources might have been, there was more to the Institute than her little sound bite let on. “You people are persistent. I’ll give you that.”

“You should be flattered,” she said, smiling.

“‘Flattered’ is not quite the word,” he said, though he couldn’t help but smile back. “I turned your friend down on the phone. Apparently you didn’t get
that
word.”

She removed her sunglasses. “I did, actually. But from what I heard, our men didn’t get a chance to make an offer.”

He threw the towel in the sink. “There was a reason for that.”

“Look,” she said, “I’m not exactly thrilled to be out here myself. Four hours on a dirt road is not my way of enjoying an afternoon. But I’ve come a long way to see you. The least you could do is hear me out. How much could that hurt?”

He stared at her. She was a bold, attractive woman, working for a questionable branch of the U.S. government and about to offer him a contract that would undoubtedly involve some type of covert, illegal or otherwise
dangerous activity. And she wanted to know how much it could hurt?

Still, he didn’t want to send her away. “You thirsty?” he asked. “Because I am.”

She nodded and Hawker led her to the side of the hangar, where a dingy refrigerator stood beside a table with a coffeepot. He scooped some ice from the freezer and poured a cup of black coffee over it. “This or water?”

She looked suspiciously at the scratched glass and the dark liquid within it. “I’ll take the coffee.”

“You’re brave,” he said, placing the glass in front of her and pouring himself a drink of water. “And you have come a long way,” he added, taking a seat across from her. “Up from Manaus, I’m guessing, since that’s where your friend wanted me to go. Apparently you have gainful employment to offer. So let’s hear it, tell me about this job.”

She took a sip and her expression did not change. He was impressed; the coffee was absurdly bitter.

“The NRI is funding an expedition into a remote area of the western Amazon,” she said. “The final site hasn’t been determined yet, but we’re pretty certain it’ll be accessible only by river or air. We’re looking for a pilot and helicopter for up to twenty weeks, with an option for next season as well. You’ll be paid for flying, local knowledge and any other duties that would be mutually agreed upon.”

His eyebrows went up. “Mutually agreed upon,” he said. “I like the sound of that.”

“I thought you would.”

“What’s the cargo?”

“Standard field supplies,” she said. “Staff from our Research Division and some university-level experts.”

He had to stop himself from laughing. “Doesn’t sound so bad. What are you leaving out?”

“Nothing of importance.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

A perfect pause, practiced. “I don’t follow you.”

He felt certain that she did, in fact, follow him. “What are you doing all the way up here when you could have hired someone in Manaus? Why the long journey to see me? Why the midnight phone call from the man with no name?”

The response was deliberate, with gravity in her voice that he recognized from his past. “We’re interested in maintaining a low profile, a vision local hires don’t always seem to embrace. We’re looking for someone who won’t ask questions and won’t answer them if they come his way.” She shrugged. “As for the phone call. Well, we needed to make sure that you were in fact
you.”

The call had included a lot of questions, questions he’d chosen not to answer. That had probably been enough.

Calls like that, or inquiries by other means, had been common over the past ten years, especially during his exile in Africa, after his separation from the CIA. They came from rebel elements, foreign governments and from corporations and proxies of the same Western interests he’d supposedly been excommunicated from. When a man is listed as a threat by his own country, he is presumed to be open to offers from all sides.

Depending on who was asking, the questions took different forms. The dictators, generals and warlords
were refreshingly, if disturbingly, direct. The agents of the various Western governments were far less clear, their words always couched in the hypothetical.
If this individual were to disappear, then the killing in this region might stop. If this man were to fall into our hands … if this party were to receive these weapons … then funds might be placed into this numbered account
. For years he’d listened to these proposals, picking and choosing from a litany of offers up and down the West African coast and into parts of Asia.

He told himself that he’d rejected all those that might be patently evil, but in places that reeked of madness it was often hard to tell the difference. Guns begat guns; one dead warlord was replaced by two with a blood feud between them; an oil terminal that gave money to a mad dictator also gave jobs and food to people who worked on and around it—was it moral or immoral to blow such a thing up? Finally, he couldn’t tell anymore. He’d left Africa and arrived in Brazil, ready to vanish forever. It seemed for a while that he had, but the call had come anyway. Apparently some people were not allowed to disappear.

Hawker stared at the woman across from him, realizing, at least, that her offer had not been phrased in the hypothetical. “You have security issues.”

“Anonymous threats and a break-in at our hotel. Items were taken, others destroyed. Things of little value, but the message was clear: someone doesn’t want us going out there.”

“Any candidates?”

“Plenty of them,” she said. “From radical environmentalists who think we’re out to destroy the rainforest,
to mining and logging concerns who think we’re trying to stop them from destroying the rainforest.” She paused. “But we have reason to believe it goes deeper than that.”