Black Rain: A Thriller (7 page)

“Go!” Hawker yelled, firing again.

Looking over her shoulder, Danielle aimed straight for the closed gate and continued to accelerate. With the engine roaring, she slammed it dead center. The heavy gate shuddered, bending backward at a thirty degree angle. Chunks of concrete flew out from the retaining wall and the gate’s wheels ripped clear of the tracks, but, somehow, the mangled hunk of iron held them in.

She put the transmission in drive but the engine had stalled. She threw it into neutral and twisted the key. Just as the big V-8 turned over, the windshield shattered from a hail of bullets.

As the glass rained down, she and Hawker ducked for cover. Hawker raised his arm above the dashboard
and fired back, five shots sent out blindly. In the restricted cockpit of the Rover the sound was tremendous, but the incoming bullets stopped and Danielle had enough time to shift into drive and hit the gas once again.

The Rover lunged forward for thirty feet before Danielle stomped on the brake and slammed the transmission into reverse. By now Hawker had his bearings, snapping off shots into the darkness. One man went down and then another, while the other assailants dove for cover.

The Rover thundered backward, hammering the gate a second time, blasting it from its moorings and sending it flying across the road in a shower of sparks. Danielle turned the wheel and the nose of the vehicle swung to the left, pointing in the direction of safety.

She jammed it into drive and hit the gas, accelerating away as renewed gunfire poured from the gated area. Flying lead tore into the vehicle, punching holes in the sheet metal and shattering the side and rear windows, even as Medina’s car, now driven by someone else, accelerated hard in an effort to cut them off.

Hawker targeted the driver’s area of the oncoming vehicle. As his shots hit the windshield, the sedan swerved, crashing into what remained of the gate’s retaining wall. Whether the driver was dead, injured or had just turned wildly to avoid being hit, they would never know, as the Rover accelerated away and the scene passed quickly out of view.

With the throttle wide open the big vehicle gathered speed at a surprising rate, barreling down the same road
they’d come up only minutes before. At the first corner, Danielle turned hard and the big SUV leaned over, threatening to tip then straightening out and roaring off down a long, unfamiliar street.

They sped through a dark canyon now, a narrow street running between the connected buildings on the left and the great slab walls of the warehouses on the right. The alley was unlit, except for pale swaths where other streets crossed it. Danielle watched the intersections ahead, expecting a car to block their way at any moment. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t stopping.

Behind them the headlights of two cars swung into the alleyway. “Here they come,” Hawker yelled, shouting to be heard above the noise pouring into the cabin where the windshield had been.

Danielle heard but didn’t reply. The same airflow that made it hard to hear was wreaking havoc on her eyes. She squinted against the wind, blinking away the tears. She spotted a marker: Ave de Setembro—the main road out of the harbor. She cranked the wheel over and the tires bit into the street, squealing and sliding. A moment later, they shot out onto the open road.

Danielle floored the accelerator again, but this time the Rover picked up only a little extra speed and then the engine started to labor. The needle touched a hundred twenty kph and then began an ominous slide backward.

“Fuel or air,” Hawker yelled.

“I’m thinking air,” she shouted. “Mainly because we’re not on fire.”

“Not yet anyway,” he said.

The Rover had begun chugging like an old steam
train, gaining speed for a few seconds and then faltering further. In the mirror, Danielle saw the two cars swerve onto the road a mile behind. She coaxed more speed from the vehicle by pumping the throttle, but the cars were clearly gaining. “Any thoughts?”

“Head into town,” Hawker said. “We have to find a crowd.”

Danielle took the first turn that would bring them into the heart of the city, and three blocks later turned again.

The turns had two effects: they reduced the Rover’s speed, which made it run more smoothly, and they reduced the rate at which their pursuers were gaining, as they had to slow down for the same turns.

In another minute, they were nearing the center of town, weaving in and out of calmer traffic.

“We need to ditch this thing,” Hawker said.

Danielle looked for a spot that might offer some cover. She passed two streets and an empty lot and then swerved down a narrow alleyway populated by trash cans, Dumpsters and uneven stacks of wooden pallets. She drove halfway down the alley, turned the vehicle sideways and slammed on the brakes, bringing it to a skidding halt.

Hawker bolted out the door before they’d even fully stopped, shouting at her to follow.

She jumped from the car, making her way around the vehicle as their pursuers came barreling down the road. The noise of their engines filled the alleyway and the light from their high beams climbed the walls like a specter, but the sound of screeching tires came next as
the two cars skidded to a halt. They could not fit past the Rover. They’d have to move it, back out, or follow on foot. And with the keys in Danielle’s pocket, the first choice was not really an option. She raced around the corner without looking back.

“This way,” Hawker said.

They were out on the main drag, moving along the sidewalk, mixing with the pedestrians. It was Friday night and the bars and cafés were jammed to capacity, the sidewalks teeming with the overflow. But Hawker and Danielle were dressed differently than the clubgoers in their bright, revealing outfits. After all, it was summer in Brazil. “We have to get off the street,” she said.

“I know,” Hawker replied, pressing forward, his eyes searching for something. “Keep moving. I know a place.”

Hawker pushed through the crowd with Danielle right behind him, leading her to a nightclub at the center of the district with a line of people waiting for a chance to enter. A doorman stood at the entrance, flanked by two muscular bouncers. The doorman greeted Hawker with a smile and one of the bouncers shook his hand.

In a moment, Hawker and Danielle were upstairs, seated at a private table on the club’s open-air balcony, a spot that gave them some respite from the pounding music inside and, more important, offered an excellent view of the main entrance and the crowded street below.

Danielle watched in silence for several minutes, waiting for cars filled with armed men to come flying up to the front doors. She put her hand casually to her ankle
to make sure her weapon was accessible and then slid her leg under the table and out of view.

Hawker exhaled deeply and looked right at her. “You want to tell me again about this
archaeological expedition?”

D
anielle ignored his question. She looked around. The club was not that crowded, not yet. It was certainly not as busy as the street below, but the movement was still chaotic enough that there would be little chance to spot a threat until it was right on top of them. “Why did you bring me here?”

“These guys are friends of mine,” he said.

She waited for a better explanation.

“I did a favor for the owner once,” he added grudgingly, as if that explained everything.

“What kind of favor?”

“His daughter was taken from him. I brought her back.”

Danielle went quiet, imagining the scenario and guessing that such an act would buy a good measure of loyalty. “And the men who took her?”

Hawker shook his head slowly.

“Some favor.”

“Trust me,” he said, “no one’s getting to us unannounced.”

She gazed out over the balcony once again, guessing that their attackers were not about to shoot their way
into a crowded club, even if they knew where she and Hawker had gone. She dialed the hotel on her cell phone, making sure they increased security on the NRI’s private floor, and made a mental note to move Verhoven and his people there in the morning. She turned her attention back to Hawker, realizing he had lied to her. “You said you were unarmed.”

“I did,” he admitted.

She reached for a glass of water. “Apparently, that wasn’t entirely true.”

He smiled. “You all right?”

“Deaf in one ear, but I’ll live.”

Hawker’s face grew serious. “Someone set you up. Your old partner, maybe?”

There was no way Arnold Moore would have put her in danger. They’d been too close for too long. “I don’t think so. I’m not saying it was an accident, but it wasn’t a setup from our end.”

“What, then?”

“A shakedown maybe, or a kidnapping attempt. Well-connected American disappears and gets held for ransom. Like your friend. It happens more often than you’d think down here.”

“I know all about ‘down here,’” he said. “And you’re right, it could have been anything. But it wasn’t. It was connected with this expedition.”

She didn’t want to go down this road. But if they were going to do so, she preferred for it to happen quickly. “What’s your point?” she said.

He hesitated, appearing to be put off by her directness. “I still know a few people,” he said. “And I’ve done some checking. I know your responsibilities and
your reputation. You’ve been all over the world, but that was prior to becoming a regional director.”

The words lingered. It was the promotion that had come through as part of this assignment, but in reality she was still Moore’s lieutenant. The promotion would take effect only upon successful completion of the mission. “You’re half right,” she said.

“That’s more than usual,” he replied. “And it’s enough to make me wonder what the hell is really going on here. In the Agency, big shots ride desks and read reports; they tell other people where to go and what to do.”

He sat back, looking very pleased with himself. “But then here you are,” he added. “And until your partner left a few days ago, here you both were, two high-ranking directors working the ground floor like a couple of stiff necks, dragging around a bunch of civilians who have no idea what they’re getting into.”

She glared at him. “Not my choice.”

“And yet, I’m guessing it would cause problems if I told them we’d been shot at.”

“Mostly for you,” she said coldly.

He studied her, seeming to agree. “Funny thing is, I rode shotgun on an operation like this once. We had a Chinese defector coming in through Hong Kong with a list of operatives and part of a cipher code. The only face he trusted was a pretty bank teller’s from Macau, so we brought her in, covered her seven ways from Sunday and prayed that no one got killed. Security was so tight that the Asian director of field ops met with the guy himself. No regulars around, no station involvement or paper trail. Just a couple of guys who don’t exist, a DFO
who was never there and a young woman who went back to her normal life, a little wealthier and none the wiser.”

She listened, hoping that her own team would fare as well and contemplating the concept of a man who doesn’t exist. At the very least the China operation did not appear in his file.

“Look,” he said, “I have no idea what you’re after down here, and to be honest, I really don’t care. But whatever it is, it’s big and it has to be kept quiet. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Your partner wouldn’t have been here. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have come looking for me. Not with my situation.”

His “status,” she thought. “By situation, you mean the fact that you’re wanted.”

He seemed offended. “I’m not ‘wanted,’ like some common criminal.”

“Really?” she said. “The State Department has a warrant out for you. Interpol does as well. NSA, CIA, FBI, they’d all like to have a few words with you, preferably in a locked room somewhere. How much more wanted could a man be?”

“Right,” he said. “Well, where the hell are they? Don’t you think they could find me if they tried? You did.” He shook his head. “They don’t want to find me. They just want to make sure they don’t lose track of me.”

This much she knew, though it was unclear as to why.

“Besides,” he said. “That just proves my point. You say I’m wanted, but you hired me anyway. You made a four-hour drive to the middle of nowhere to do it, when a single phone call could have brought in one of your
own. And that can mean only one thing: this operation goes beyond quiet; it has to be invisible, even to your own people. To make sure that’s the case, you hire a guy who can’t talk to anyone, a guy no one would listen to even if he did.”

“I see,” she said. “Apparently, we’re smarter than I thought.”

“I hope you are, because they’ve left you in a bad spot. They sent you to fight a war without any bullets and told you failure’s not an option.” He leaned back. “And that’s the catch, isn’t it? You don’t mind the task; you just want the equipment to get the job done. But security requires that you go it alone.”

He backed off a bit. “Okay, maybe tonight did take you by surprise. Or maybe you’ve been waiting for this since you came down here. Either way, now you know for sure: the word’s out and whatever the hell you’re after, someone else wants it too. Bad enough to kill you for it.”

That fact hadn’t escaped her. They’d begun this task secure in the knowledge that they were alone, but somewhere along the line, despite a maniacal focus on security, word had slipped.

“I’m not your enemy,” he added. “I know the position you’re in. I know it all too well. And I’m not pressing you. I’m offering to help. To
mutually agree
upon some additional responsibilities.”

Perhaps it was his new tone or the realization that there was no point in further denials, but as he used her own words from their conversation in the hangar, she couldn’t help but brighten a fraction. “What kind of responsibilities?”

“I can talk to people who would run from your shadow. I can get things done that would be impossible in your official capacity. And most important of all, I can give you cover from a direction no one would expect, because as far as anyone knows, I’m just the guy who flies the plane.”