Black Rain

Hawker eyed the empty pier. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but couldn’t you meet this guy during normal business hours?”

“It’s all part of that low-profile thing.”

A few minutes went by with no sign of Medina.

Hawker adjusted his mirror to see behind him and then tilted his seat back a bit.

He seemed calm, relaxed enough to take a nap. She fiddled with a pen, clicking it repeatedly. Something didn’t feel right to her. “Are you armed?” she asked.

“No,” he said, quietly. “But you are.”

“Good of you to notice.”

He laughed softly. “You either need a smaller gun or bell-bottoms.”

She smiled in the darkness, half angry, half amused. “This guy isn’t my contact. He’s my old partner’s. I’m not sure what to make of him yet.”

Hawker nodded and the interior of the Rover grew quiet as the two of them sca

Hawker straightened up.

The sedan slowed as it approached them, stopping under a streetlight ninety feet away. A man stepped out of the car, squinted in their direction and then waved. When they didn’t respond fast enough, he reached through the driver’s window, flashed the headlights and leaned on the horn for a couple of long blasts.

“So much for the low profile,” Hawker said.

Danielle smiled and flashed her lights. As the man walked over, she put her window down.

“Señora Laidlaw?” the man said. “I am Medina, at your service.”

Danielle introduced herself and then pointed to Hawker. “He’s our transportation specialist. He’ll be doing the inspection.”

Medina seemed unconcerned. “Isso bom,” he said. “That’s cool.” He waved his hand toward his sedan. “Ride with me. I’ll take you over.”

“Just show us the way,” Danielle said. “We’ll follow.”

“Okay,” Medina said. “No problem. Stay close, then—there are many streets but not enough signs, you know? Easy to get lost.”

Danielle assured him that she would stay close and Medina began walking back to his sedan.

“When did I become the transportation specialist?” Hawker asked.

“Just now,” she said. “You’ve been promoted. I hope you know something about boats.”

“They go in the water, right?”

She smiled and started the engine while Hawker watched Medina.

As the man climbed back into his car, Hawker scowled. “He’s not alone.”

Danielle had sca

“He looked into the back when he opened the door. A brief pause as he made eye contact with someone.”

The headlights of Medina’s car came on and it began to move, making a wide circle, swinging close to them and then heading back the way it had come.

“Do you think that’s a problem?” she asked.

“I don’t think it’s good. Then again, you didn’t come alone either. Maybe he’s afraid of you.”

She took her foot off the brake. “He wouldn’t be the first.”

Hawker glanced at her. “Or the last, I’ll bet.”

Danielle followed Medina through the narrow maze of streets. In a few minutes they had passed by the Puerto Flutante, the floating harbor built by the British in 1902, with its amazing system of docks and jetties that rose and fell with the level of the river. From their vantage point the docks appeared low, near the limit of their downward travel, the result of a rainy season now a month overdue.

Farther on, they reached the oldest section of the waterfront. Here the jetties were little more than a tangle of crooked, wooden fingers. The small boats crowded them from all directions, like worker bees surrounding their queen. Two, three, even four rows deep, so many boats that some could not even find space on the dock for a rope and had to tie off to other vessels. Danielle imagined the congestion in the morning, the chaos of an aquatic rush hour that she and her team would slip away in.

Medina made a right turn, away from the crowded edge and down a patchy, uneven road that led inland. A half mile later, he stopped beside a black steel gate, waiting as it slid backward along a greased metal track. When it had retracted far enough Medina drove through.

Danielle moved the Rover up to the track.

She looked around. The area was cluttered with vehicles and pieces of construction equipment. Stacks of oil drums vied with containers and other bits of junk for space. “A lot more commercial than I’d have guessed.”

Down at the waterline, a group of men worked beside a small boat, beneath the glare of two floodlights. “I guess that’s your boat,” Hawker said.

“And if we want it, we have to go inside.” She took her foot off the brake and, with two bumps, they eased across the track and the steel gate began to close behind them.

Medina, now out of his car, directed them across the lot to park near an old white pickup truck. Danielle pulled in next to the truck. She turned toward Hawker to speak, but didn’t get the chance.

With his left arm Hawker reached out and slammed her back against her seat. His right hand came up, a heavy black pistol in his grasp, swinging toward her face. She turned away and shut her eyes. In that split second of darkness she heard an explosion and felt a flash of heat across the side of her face.

She opened her eyes to see a man falling away from the Rover, an Uzi machine pistol in his hand, a fedora hat falling to the ground behind him. Stu

“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.