screwing with.”
“Actually,” he said, as calmly as if he were correcting a clerical error, “I know exactly who I’m screwing with. And though you might think there is a rescue to wait on, I promise you there isn’t. I’ve blocked your communications suite, and your helicopter and pilot were shot down and left burning in the jungle, thirty miles from here.”
She looked past the man; the black NOTAR sat on the dry ground a hundred yards away. The gun pods were clearly visible.
Her captor seemed to guess her thoughts. “After what happened at the docks, I couldn’t let your friend interfere a second time.”
Danielle said nothing; she was stunned. But the bad news continued.
“I tell you this so you’ll understand the nature of your situation,” he said. “You’re beyond the reach of help now. Even from the States.”
She glanced up at him, fearing his next words.
“Arnold Moore is dead as well.”
Her reaction was instant: a sick, falling feeling and a wave of uncontrollable rage. She swung at him, but he grabbed her arm and held it. She spit at him, trying to pull away.
Still holding her arm, Kaufman calmly wiped the spit from his face, and then he slapped her, sending her back to the ground. Her cheek stung and reddened like it was on fire.
“I can be reasonable if you can,” he said sharply, putting away the handkerchief. “Or I can make your life hell. If you want to get out of here alive, along with your people, you’ll cooperate. If you’re as stubborn as I’ve been told, well, then I guess you’d rather die.”
Her mind was reeling. Hawker dead, Moore dead. What about Gibbs, why hadn’t the man mentioned Gibbs? Perhaps there was still hope. She bit her lip and kept quiet.
Taking note of her silence, he waved one of his men over. “You’ll change your mind in time.”
Across from her the NOTAR began to power up, generators first, and then the engine. Slowly the blades began to turn. She watched it with anger, until two of the armed men helped her up and led her across the clearing to a large tree at the edge of the forest. The tree was burned in places by the Chollokwan fire. A heavy chain, secured by a padlock, encircled it, and the other survivors were there, sitting with their backs to the trunk and their arms pinned behind them.
As the NOTAR lifted off and buzzed out over the forest, Kaufman’s men forced her to sit with her back to the tree, laced a pair of handcuffs through the inner side of the chain and then cuffed her wrists. The closed loop of her arms and the cuffs interlocked with the closed loop of the heavy chain like a pair of rings. She could move around freely, even slide along it, but unlike a set of magician’s rings, this connection could not be released without breaking one of the chains; a simple but effective prison.
She counted heads; McCarter and Susan were there, along with Verhoven, one of his men and Brazos, the lead porter—everyone who’d been inside the temple, including her, the lucky six. There was no sign of the others. Verhoven’s lieutenant, whose name was Roemer, bled from a bandaged wound on one arm, while Susan sobbed quietly and McCarter tried to comfort her.
As the guards walked away, McCarter glared at Danielle, the look of a man who knew he’d been misled.
“Who are these people?” he asked. “What is this all about?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“They’re mercenaries,” Verhoven explained. “Eastern European, from the sounds of their accents. I’ve heard some Croatian dialect, but mostly German. The leader is older, probably an Ex–Stasi crew chief, who had to flee when the wall came down.”
“Stasi?” McCarter asked.
“Old East German secret police. Like the KGB. Only worse.”
“What the hell are they doing out here?” McCarter demanded. He turned back to Danielle. “What the hell is going on?”
Danielle stared at him, her worst fears now realized, her mind willing him not to ask her anything else. They didn’t need that. “We need to be calm,” she told him. “We’ll find a way to get out of this.”
Whether McCarter believed her or simply sensed that this would be a bad time for a discussion, she didn’t know. But he said nothing more.
She looked around at the group. “Anyone else?”
“Only Devers,” Verhoven replied.
“Where is he?”
“With them.”
Danielle scanned the clearing, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t seen Devers during the attack. “Doing what?”
“Getting paid, would be my guess,” Verhoven said.
So Devers had sold them out. The why was easy, the how more difficult. Devers was a low-level employee from Research Division. He had little access to the technical side of things and couldn’t possibly understand what they were after. In fact, it made little sense at all, until she began to realize that Devers must have been involved with the project from a distance ever since the word go. Gibbs and Moore had consulted with him regarding the Chollokwan and other tribes as soon as they’d decided to come down to Brazil. And he’d had several extensive consultations with Dixon and his team. She doubted that Devers knew what they were after, but it didn’t take much to realize it was important. Just as Hawker had said, the presence of her and Moore working the case on the ground level was enough.
“That greedy son of a bitch,” she said.
Verhoven nodded. “He is. No doubt. And when I get my hands on him, I’ll make him bleed for every penny.”
Danielle sat back, trying to figure out a way to give Verhoven that chance, watching as the man who’d slapped her and two of his men walked toward them.
“My name is Kaufman,” he said. “I’d like to give you my apologies for what happened here this morning. It wasn’t supposed to occur like this. But from here on out, you have my word that you’ll be treated well.”
“You’d be wise to let us go,” Danielle insisted, her cheek still burning from his slap.
“Wise?” he repeated. “No, I don’t think that would be the word. But eventually, you’ll be released unharmed —as long as you cooperate. In the meantime, I need the freedom to operate unhindered. And some help from Ms. Briggs.”
As Kaufman’s soldiers moved to release Susan, McCarter became alarmed. “What do you want with her?”
The soldiers unlocked her cuffs and pulled her to her feet.
“What do you want?” she said, meekly echoing McCarter.
“You have nothing to be afraid of,” Kaufman insisted. “We just want to borrow your expertise for a moment.”
One of the soldiers took Susan by the arm and dragged her off. She looked desperately back toward McCarter, but there was nothing he could do.
Kaufman led Susan to a makeshift table in the form of an overturned crate. He offered her some food, which she refused, and then some water. She hesitated.
“It’s okay,” he insisted, taking a sip of the water himself. “It’s not Pellegrino, but it’s drinkable.”
Susan pulled back at first but then accepted. Her throat was very dry.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, his tone calm and soothing. “The events of this morning were an aberration, a mistake.” He pointed to the soldiers. “These men reacted somewhat overzealously and I wasn’t here to stop it. But now that I am, I can promise you it won’t happen again.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of this. “They killed people.”
“I know,” Kaufman acknowledged. “That’s what they do. But with the situation secure, they won’t have to make that choice again.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. “But that would make things worse for you.”
