Black Rain

way—watching the forest day and night, easy money for a group more accustomed to hard fighting in close combat.

Verhoven and his men were mercenaries in the truest, hardest sense of the word. All five were former South African Special Forces members who had drifted abroad in the years after apartheid. Under Verhoven’s leadership they’d become a sought-after group. Their resume included places like Somalia, Angola and the Congo. They’d stormed their way into the Rwandan carnage of the mid-’90s to rescue members of the TransAfrican mining corporation. A decade later they’d fought in Liberia, pointedly searching for Charles Taylor, the nation’s faltering, maniacal leader, first on a contract to aid his escape, and then, after being stiffed on the payment, attempting to catch him and collect the million-dollar bounty that had been placed on his head.

Verhoven smiled as he remembered that particular dustup. So close, too bad it hadn’t worked out. Still, he figured they’d get their chance again someday, and when they did, he’d leave the world with one less madman, and he’d do it for free.

In the meantime, he and his men would go where the money led them, and if it meant a fight, so be it, the bloodier the better. For the right price, they would storm the gates of hell.

As Verhoven scanned the quiet jungle around him, he saw nothing that would force him to do that tonight. He’d seen no sign of danger since the body in the river; not the natives on the warpath or the competing parties that Danielle had warned him about, not even any wildlife to speak of.

Only the last part struck him as odd.

With a dearth of rainfall over the interior, the animals should have been plentiful near the streams that still flowed. This wasn’t Africa, where the herds crowded water holes until the monsoons arrived, but the principle was the same: lack of rain brought animals to the water, concentrating them in a restricted area. They should have found tracks and droppings and heard them day and night at the riverbanks and in the areas of forest around them. But the jungle had been strangely vacant and muted. Plenty of birds, along with fish in the streams and reptiles on the banks, but the animals seemed to be missing, the mammals in particular. Verhoven had seen nothing much larger than a rat. Maybe the rainforest was dying, like all the tree-huggers said. A shame if it was, but not really his problem.

Verhoven put a thermal scope to his eye and scanned the broad swath of jungle that lay ahead of him. Little blips of heat could be seen here and there in the undergrowth, phosphorescent flares in the red tint of the eyepiece; more rodents and other tiny mammals. He panned along a wide arc and saw nothing more. As he lowered the device something rustled the trees.

He brought the scope back up. Deeper in the forest, almost at eye level, he saw a spread of branches swaying in a vertical recoil, the way they did when a monkey launched itself from them. He scanned across an arc, looking up into the trees and then back down. Nothing. No sign of anything that might have bent the branches in such a manner.

He heard a sound to the right and swung in that direction, bringing his rifle up as he turned.

A figure held out a hand in warning: Hawker.

Verhoven lowered the rifle slightly, staring at his old acquaintance. He spat a shot of tobacco juice onto the dirt an inch from Hawker’s feet. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Hawker stared back at him for a long moment. “I was once.”

Verhoven lowered the rifle the rest of the way. “Walk up on me like that again and you’ll be dead for good.”

Hawker stopped a few feet from Verhoven and searched the forest himself. “Any particular reason that you’re so jumpy?”

Verhoven didn’t like the question, nor did he like the fact that Hawker was armed, carrying a black pistol: a PA-45—a big gun, forty-five caliber, fourteen shots. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Hawker nodded toward the trees. “Something didn’t feel right.”

Verhoven turned back to the forest. Hawker had always been slightly paranoid, but that sixth sense had saved him more than once. Verhoven remembered a time when he and Hawker had been targeted for a mortar round that ended up hitting the spot they’d been standing in only a minute before, a spot they’d left because of Hawker’s paranoia. “You’re hearing things again, mate. There’s nothing out there.”

“You sure about that?”

In all honesty, Verhoven wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like the question, or having Hawker poking around. He held out the scope. “Take the watch, if you want. I’ll go catch some rest.”

Hawker declined the offer and Verhoven began to wonder what Hawker was really doing out there, both in the immediate sense and in general. “So you’re with the NRI now.”

Hawker shook his head. “Hired hand, just like you.”

“Odd coincidence, that.”

“Very odd,” Hawker said. “Almost like fate.”

Verhoven believed in fate, but he knew Hawker didn’t. Do everything right and you can live forever, Hawker had once said. Verhoven disagreed. When your number’s up, it’s up. Maybe one of their numbers was about to be up, a long-standing debt about to be paid. Maybe Hawker had even recommended him for the mission in order to draw him out, to finally settle the old score. He laughed at the thought. Who sounded paranoid now?

He checked the trees and then looked back at Hawker. “So why’d you take the job, then? Find the Queen’s shilling in the bottom of your flask?”

“Something like that,” Hawker said.

Verhoven moved the ever-present tobacco wad around in his mouth, forcing it back into place and spitting out some of the excess. He looked over at Hawker. They hadn’t spoken on the boat or in the jungle for the past week, doing their jobs and ignoring each other, and it was a strange, almost surreal feeling to be holding a conversation with him now. Old friends and old enemies who’d spent two years working together in Angola a decade ago, when Hawker was with the CIA and Verhoven was still with the SASF.

The alliance had worked well, until new orders came down from the CIA, orders that Hawker had chosen not to follow. That decision divided them, setting Hawker on a collision course with everyone he knew, making enemies out of friends. Verhoven had even played a small part in Hawker’s capture, but then things had spiraled out of control, leading everyone to anguish, and eventually to what had seemed like Hawker’s death.

Not long after, he’d learned that Hawker was alive, and seeking some manner of revenge against those who had betrayed him. Quite sure his name was on that list, Verhoven never expected to see Hawker and have the moment pass without one of them ending up dead. And yet here they were, standing in the middle of the Amazon, half a world away from where they’d fought, talking and not shooting.

“Well, you couldn’t hide forever,” Verhoven said finally. “Not from what you fear.”

Hawker looked at him strangely. “And just what might that be?”

“You fear yourself, Hawk. You want to talk about destiny, you know what yours is. You can hide from it all you want, but it still comes to find you. Why else would the two of us be here?”

Hawker glared at him, as close to a look of hatred as Verhoven had ever seen in the man’s eyes. The truth did that to people.

“Our time is going to come,” Hawker said. “But not here, not now.”

So that was it, Verhoven thought. Hawker had come out to set the ground rules; fine by him. He stared at the pilot. “It’s all clear out here, Hawk. Go back to your tent.”

Hawker cut his eyes at Verhoven and then nodded out toward the trees. “Keep your eyes open,” he said. “I’m telling you, we’re not alone.”

Hawker turned to head back to the camp, but stopped as a pair of night birds whipped by, cawing as they flew overhead. The sound masked a second noise, a rustling in the trees, but both he and Verhoven sensed it.

Hawker dropped to one knee.

Verhoven scanned the jungle with the scope. He saw nothing, but again the branches were swaying. “Something moving to higher ground,” he said, trying in vain to track it.

A second later the sound of gunfire jolted the night. Shots fired to the south.

“Who’s down there?” Hawker asked.

“Bosch,” Verhoven replied. One of his men.

From that direction something was racing through the forest, coming toward them. Verhoven raised his