Black Rain

came from the closest one,” he pointed. “Which might leave only one man there.”

The radio crackled again and Hawker grabbed it. He caught only part of the call, but it was orders, not questions. The man talking wasn’t looking for a response.

The clearing remained lit by the red flare up above, but it had drifted lower and southward on the wind, floating out beyond the tree line and over the forest. The angle of light left the prisoners in the shadows, but thirty yards out those shadows ended. There was too much light for a sneak attack and not enough time to wait for the flare to go out. “We’ll get only one shot at this,” he said. “Wait here.”

Hawker put on the dead soldier’s coat and the man’s distinctive foreign legion-style cap. He threw the rifle over his shoulder, straightened the coat.

“You must be mad,” Verhoven said.

Hawker didn’t reply. He’d already started into the clearing.

As he moved, a call came over the radio asking him what he was doing. Why was he coming back? Hawker put the radio to his mouth and clicked the switch on and off as he replied in his best German. It was a bad bluff, but he had no choice.

The calls from the other Germans stopped momentarily and Hawker continued toward the foxhole. A figure there waved at him to hurry up and he broke into a jog.

With the flare sinking low behind him, Hawker knew the mercenaries could only see his silhouette. He hoped they’d see their fellow soldier.

Thirty feet from the bunker, Hawker slowed. There were two soldiers in the foxhole, not one as Verhoven had guessed. Both had rifles in hand.

CHAPTER 32

Surprised, Hawker continued forward. To turn around would be suicide. His eyes went from one soldier to the next and then to the tools they’d used to dig the ditch.

As he approached the edge, Hawker held up the radio, shaking it, hoping to reinforce the thought that it was broken and to draw their eyes away from his face. He tossed it to the closer of the two soldiers and then jumped into the bunker, landing beside a large shovel. He grabbed it with both hands, spinning around and swinging hard. The edged smashed into the bridge of the first man’s nose, killing him instantly.

The other soldier jumped back, finding himself in the awkward position of offering a new radio to a man who was trying to kill him. He dropped the radio and tried to bring his rifle to bear, but before he could get off a shot, Hawker landed a blow with the shovel, knocking him down. A strike to the side of the head finished him off.

Hawker dropped down into the bunker and slumped against the crude dirt wall. Seconds later, the flare above burned out and the clearing went dark once again.

————

Back at the tree Verhoven watched intently. He’d seen part of the struggle in the light of the flare and then nothing, no signal, no shooting, no sign of Hawker.

Beside him, McCarter had begun to escape the trance that he’d fallen into. Danielle fidgeted, trying to see. “What happened?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” Verhoven said.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing, he’s out of sight.”

Verhoven kept watching and the longer Hawker stayed down, the more Verhoven feared he might have been killed or badly injured. If that was the case, Verhoven would try to reach him and bring him back, a suicide mission if Kaufman’s men spotted him. But Hawker had come back for them and Verhoven wouldn’t let him die out there alone.

Finally, a pinprick of light hit his eyes, flashing on and off, tapping out a message in Morse code. Move your ass! It had to come from Hawker.

Without the flare, the darkness was complete, but their enemies had night scopes and he’d still make an easy target if he was spotted crossing the field.

Verhoven looked across to the center of camp. He could see the flashing of the defense console but nothing else. He guessed that each foxhole had a zone to cover, a distinct section of forest to watch. Under such conditions, a soldier’s eyes were unlikely to stray. He ran, hoping this zone was the responsibility of the foxhole Hawker had taken.

As he jumped into the ditch, Verhoven took a quick look around. “Do they have the keys?”

“No keys,” Hawker said. “But plenty of our stuff.” Hawker held out a familiar set of night-vision goggles, NRI equipment.

“They ransacked everything when they took over,” Verhoven said.

“Looking for something?”

“Seemed that way.”

Hawker put the goggles up to his eyes and surveyed the camp. The foxholes were indeed set up in a circular pattern, just as Verhoven had described. He could see most of the soldiers in the other holes, scanning the perimeter and clutching their rifles. Each of them focused on a different zone.

“They don’t know we’re here,” he guessed.

Beside them, the radio came to life, and in the same instant gunfire rang out from several rifles. The two men dove for cover.

“You sure about that?” Verhoven asked, looking up from the floor of the bunker.

The gunfire continued, but the sound wasn’t right. The German guns were firing away from them. Verhoven poked his head above the edge of the pit cautiously. “Maybe they’re trying to flush you out. I’m guessing that you set those flares, right?”

“I thought it would be helpful if they were looking for a target in the wrong direction.”

“How’d you get past the sensors?” Verhoven asked.

“I still have my transponder,” Hawker said. “Once I realized they were using our system. I just walked right through.”

“Smart,” Verhoven said. “And lucky.”

Hawker nodded. “We could use a little bit of both right now.”

Another order to fire came over the radio and the rifles lit up a section to the north. Hawker and Verhoven took cover again, but less severely this time.

“What the hell are they shooting at now?” Verhoven said.

“I have no idea,” Hawker admitted. “But we better do something. Before they kill us by accident.”

“We need to go forward,” Verhoven said. “Take the command center. From there we can see all of them, and we’ll be at their backs.”

Hawker looked toward the center of the camp. “That’s a long way.”

Verhoven glanced at his hand and then across the open space. It was about seventy yards to the command center; he knew he wouldn’t be able to fire an accurate shot across such a distance, not with a pistol, not in the dark. “Looks like this is my run.”

Hawker nodded.

“When they open fire again,” Verhoven said.

Hawker braced the rifle for a shot. “Stay to the right of my line.”

Verhoven got in position to run, and the two men waited in silence for the mercenaries to fire again. A full minute ticked by and then another, but the radio and the German guns remained idle.

“Come on,” Hawker whispered.

“Maybe they’re done,” Verhoven said.

That was a possibility Hawker didn’t want to consider. He tightened his grip on the rifle, and squinted through the scope. The figures at the defense console were close to the screen, leaning into it, examining it carefully. He could hit them with ease, but in the silence of the night that would have given them away.

The silence lingered and Verhoven shook his head. “We’re going to need a new plan.”

“Like what?”