Black Rain

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 ma

“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 sca

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 rifle.

Two natives burst through the undergrowth, eyes wide with shock at ru

Verhoven went to fire, but as he did Hawker shoved the barrel of his rifle aside. The shells tore into the loose earth.

The natives dashed off.

“Damn you,” Verhoven shouted.

Hawker was up and ru

Furious, Verhoven followed, charging through the forest. “Where the hell are you going?”

“We need to talk to them,” Hawker shouted back.

Ducking around a tree, barely keeping Hawker in sight, Verhoven yelled, “What the hell for?”

Hawker again shouted to him but didn’t slow, and Verhoven couldn’t make out the words. He heard the natives ahead, crashing through the branches. He caught sight of Hawker for a second. And then he was gone.

Before he could stop, Verhoven met the same fate; the ground suddenly gone from underneath his feet, he fell through the darkness. He slammed into a musty wall of earth and then crashed backward with a splash, landing in three feet of mud and water.

He looked around but could see nothing; the blackness was complete. The only light he saw came from thirty feet above, a thin veil of a lighter black in the shape of a rectangle.

He’d fallen into a pit of some kind: a trap. He stood awkwardly, the mud squishing under his feet, the cold muck dripping off him. The fetid water stank, but it had probably saved his life.

“Hawk!” he shouted. “Are you down here?”

Sounding as if he was in a certain amount of pain, Hawker replied, “Unfortunately.”

Verhoven turned toward the sound of Hawker’s voice, the water swirling just above knees. “Better hope it stays dark, mate. Because if I see you I’m go

“For what?”

“For bringing me down here.”

He heard the sound of water sloshing as Hawker moved around in the darkness. “If you hadn’t tried to shoot the son of bitch, we might have been able to talk to him.”

“A bloke charges you like that, you shoot first, ask questions later.”

“He wasn’t charging,” Hawker replied. “He was looking up in the trees, hunting something. He just found us by accident.”

Verhoven paused, realizing that Hawker was right. He moved to his right, bumping against something. He touched it with his hand, and realized it was the carcass of a dead animal. He pulled back. “Looks like we’re not the only ones to fall in this …”

The words died on Verhoven’s lips and he went still. He thought he’d heard something moving around in the pit, in the opposite direction from where Hawker’s voice came. He turned slightly, stirring the water.