Black Rain

“Because he says he works for Helios.” Very rarely was Richard Kaufman at a loss for words, but for a moment, he was struck silent. Kaufman had acquired two contacts in the NRI, frustrated parties who were willing to sell out the organization for a fair price. One had been part of the first mission into the rainforest, a group that had stopped signaling and disappeared. He’d given that man a code word to be transmitted over the radio when he needed to be extracted from the jungle, after he’d stolen what the NRI group recovered. That code word was “Helios”: the Greek god of the sun. It had seemed appropriate.

“Worked for Helios?” Kaufman repeated. The right word but the wrong statement. “Are you sure those were his words?”

“Absolutely. He wanted to know who we worked for and when we didn’t tell him, he said he worked for Helios and we should know what that meant. He says he has something that might interest Helios. Something he’ll only give up in person.”

“Have you tried to persuade him otherwise?”

“As much as we could. But he is in a hospital.”

Kaufman appreciated their finesse. “All right. Keep an eye on him, and make sure he’s not an NRI plant designed to draw us out. Once you’re certain, I’ll meet with you, and then, when I’m ready, I’ll meet with him. But he goes nowhere without our approval, got it?”

Kaufman switched off the phone and glanced over at Lang, who’d turned a subtle shade of green.

“What the hell was that all about?” Lang asked.

Kaufman smiled. “Our next stop. Western Hemisphere, south of the equator.”

Lang did not look pleased, but Kaufman knew his man, he knew that Lang would follow along, chasing the carrot of his own greed as much as taking orders. All Kaufman had to do was avoid bombarding him with too much truth at once.

CHAPTER 12

Seventy-two hours after the briefing at the hotel, Danielle and the new NRI team were five hundred miles upriver, traveling aboard a diesel-powered boat called the Ocana, which was captained by a friend of Hawker’s. Known by the locals as a milk boat, because it delivered goods to the smaller settlements up and down the river, the Ocana had a wide deck, a pointed bow and plenty of fuel for the journey there and back. What it didn’t have were cabins or other accommodations, and the group stopped each night to camp along the riverside, as much to get off the claustrophobic boat as anything else.

During the day, however, they chugged upriver, spread out on the boat as best they could. The group numbered fourteen, including Pik Verhoven, his four South African mercenaries and a trio of Brazilian porters to help with supplies and equipment.

With snow white hair, a ruddy, tanned face and a scar that twisted across it like a broken strand of barbed wire, Pik Verhoven was a menacing sight. Six foot one and two hundred and forty pounds, he didn’t walk as much as lumber, allowing others ample time to clear his path. Those who stood too close might end up with a none-too-subtle glare, an awkward bump or at least tobacco juice stains on their boots as well-aimed spittle was fired from the ever-present chaw in his mouth.

Aside from Danielle, no one seemed eager to interact with either Verhoven or his men any more than necessary. Even Hawker, who knew Verhoven from his days in Africa, did little but glare at the man.

Danielle had been told Hawker and Verhoven had worked together before Hawker’s fallout with the CIA, and that bad blood lingered between them. All she could get from Verhoven on the matter was a grunt of dismissal and a statement alleging that she and the NRI must have been “scraping the bottom of the barrel” to hire Hawker.

Hawker’s response was more verbal, if no less hostile. “The man is a son of a bitch,” Hawker had explained, “and he’s sure as hell no friend of mine. But then, that’s not what you hired him for, is it?”

Her sense of Hawker’s response was that woe would befall anyone foolish enough to get in Verhoven’s way, possibly including him, but especially anyone that might attack her team. It was a fact she took comfort in, even as the unease between the two men lingered.

With this divided dynamic in place, the Ocana traveled to the northwest, branching off the Amazon and tracking the dark tannin-stained waters of the Negro, following the path that Blackjack Martin had once taken. As they moved farther into the rainforest, Danielle felt herself growing more focused. She spoke less and became suspicious of everything around her: a strange glance from one of Verhoven’s men, an aircraft that crossed almost directly above them and seemed to linger for a bit too long.

She told herself to relax; it was important that she rein in her emotions, or risk telegraphing the stress to the others. It was an effort that had worked for most of the morning, but one that was suddenly tested by a strange object floating in the river ahead of them.