Black Rain

“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.”

CHAPTER 2

The 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.