Black Rain: A Thriller

by Graham Brown

  “What evidence do you have suggesting Tulan Zuyua actually exists—let alone down here?”

  “We have a chain of artifacts, none conclusive but all suggestive. We believe they show evidence of Mayan writing in a more ancient hieroglyphic style than found at the classic sites in Central America. An older culture with a single starting point, and we intend to find it.”

  She noticed McCarter lean a little closer as she spoke. His interest seemed piqued.

  “I’d share the details with you tonight,” she added, “but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  He frowned and leaned back. “Well, then,” he said, as if making some tough decision, “I choose not to pry, though I must say I’d like to.”

  “A gentleman,” she said. “As I’d been told to expect.”

  “I admit, it does sound interesting,” he said. “At least to someone like me. But what’s your interest in all this? I thought NRI was a big lab of some kind, a research house working with all the high-tech companies.”

  She nodded. “We are. We do industrial design and tech research, for the most part. But we also grant endowments to other sciences. And we do a lot of PR work, things that all our member corporations can claim to be part of.” The words slid from her mouth with ease, unforced and completely believable. She’d said them before in different forms, different places. Neither McCarter or the others would ever know where the money really came from, or what it was for.

  “So this is a PR job?” he asked. “I suppose that means we’ll end up with Nike logos on our equipment and a Budweiser sign over our camp.”

  “Nothing that drastic,” she said. “Though you may have to dress up as a giant cheeseburger for a series of interviews with the BBC.”

  He laughed.

  “Honestly,” she said, “there are no strings attached. Except that you do the best you can. And in that vein, I’ll tell you all that I know tomorrow. It’ll be up to you to take us from there.”

  McCarter promised not to be late and Danielle said good night before walking off toward the elevators.

  As he watched her go, McCarter had to admit that she’d somehow brought out the optimist in him—a quality he wasn’t sure he still possessed. He turned back to the bar and put his hand on the tumbler, tilting it toward him until the ice swirled to the low point. He was fairly certain that the NRI’s crazy theory would be nothing but a gigantic bust, but what the hell, even proving that could be a great deal of fun.

  After leaving McCarter, Danielle returned to her hotel room, where the message light on her phone blinked silently in the darkness. A man named Medina had called; another name from Arnold Moore’s inexhaustible supply of contacts. Medina captained a small riverboat and it had been Moore’s intention to meet with him and secure the charter prior to leaving for Washington. But Medina had been delayed and Moore had left without getting the chance.

  Danielle dialed and a voice answered on the first ring. “Hello, Medina speaking.”

  “Señor Medina, this is Danielle Laidlaw. I work with Mr. Moore.”

  “Yes, hello,” Medina said. His English was heavily accented. “I was told to contact you. Señor Moore has gone back to the States, then?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’ll be your contact now.”

  “Okay, no problem,” the man said. “Señor Moore wanted to inspect the boat before we go out. Will you be wanting to see it?”

  “Yes, of course. When would be a good time to look it over?”

  “Tonight is okay,” he said.

  Danielle almost laughed; it was nearly midnight. “Tonight is not okay,” she said. “How about tomorrow, around noon?”

  “No good,” Medina said. “We go back out very early. Best to do it now.”

  Danielle had no desire to make a late-night trip to the waterfront, especially after what had been a long and grueling day. Before she answered, Medina made another suggestion. “Or we could do it in three days, when we return.”

  That wasn’t going to work. If the boat proved to be inadequate, she would be delayed further while they found a replacement. “It’ll have to be tonight, then.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’re on the west side of the harbor, in the old section, beyond the Puerta Flutante. There are no numbers out there, but we are closest to the dezenove: pier nineteen. If you meet me there, I take you to the boat.”

  “I can be there in forty-five minutes,” she said. “Is that soon enough?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll still be unloading then, so I’ll wait for you.”

  “Forty-five minutes,” she repeated. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Buena,” he said. “Ciao.”

  The dial tone returned.

  “Ciao,” Danielle muttered, unhappy at the options ahead of her.

  She walked to the balcony and looked out over the city. Manaus was gorgeous at night, with the city lights blazing. But the danger remained, lying out there hidden in the shadows. This trip to the waterfront would expose her to it. She thought of calling Medina back and canceling, but it would quickly reach Gibbs, and that would just give additional ammunition to her detractors.

  The hell with it, she was going. But proving yourself and being foolish were two different things; she would bring help. Verhoven or one of his men seemed a natural choice, but they were bunked down on the north side of the city near the airstrip they’d flown into, too far away to reach her in time. Besides, she’d barely met them and didn’t feel any level of trust there yet. Another face came to mind.

  She grabbed her cell phone and dialed. An American voice answered.

  “Hawker, this is Danielle. How fast can you be at the hotel?”

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Not yet,” she said, hoping that the status quo wouldn’t change. “But I have to meet with someone and I’m not interested in doing it alone.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”

  Danielle hung up, took a last look at the city lights and walked back into her room. She changed into dark slacks and a black sweater, then opened the safe in her closet. From beneath some papers she retrieved a Smith & Wesson revolver. Out of habit, she opened the chamber to make sure it was loaded, then snapped it shut and slid it into a trim holster strapped around her right ankle. If trouble came, whoever brought it would find out just how nice a girl she was.

  CHAPTER 6

  Hawker arrived in the lobby dressed in black from head to toe, just as she was. “I assumed this would be something formal,” he joked.

  She glanced at him for a moment and then signaled for the valet, trying not to appreciate how well he cleaned up. For certain he looked a damn sight better than he had in the sweaty hangar in Marejo.

  As they drove off together Danielle thought about the meeting. A friend of a friend of someone who owes me a favor. That’s how Moore had described Medina. The thought made her smile; in all their travels, she couldn’t recall a place they’d ever been to where Moore didn’t have a friend of a friend of someone who owed him a favor.

  She turned to Hawker. “How well do you know the waterfront?”

  “Is that where we’re headed?”

  “We’re going to see a man about a boat. Our charter, actually.”

  “And you’re expecting trouble?” he said.

  “Just being cautious. The guy is docked at one of the smaller jetties, out near the old harbor somewhere, but we’re meeting him at pier nineteen and following him back.”

  Hawker grew quiet for a moment. “Nineteen’s one of the big commercial docks at the west end. It’s a cargo pier, pretty wide open, but just up from there everything gets cluttered. Narrow alleys and blind corners. A lot of small buildings. The locals tie up over there, fishermen mostly, and some of the ferries. If this guy’s a local, that’s where he’d be.”

  Danielle had expected as much.

  It took twenty minutes to get from the hotel to the harbor, and another five to
find their way to pier nineteen. But even so, they arrived on site ten minutes earlier than Danielle had promised. She pulled up against the wall of a massive warehouse that ran along the waterfront.

  At this hour of the night there was little activity. A few slips down, a Liberian-flagged tanker was offloading a shipment of crude, while out in the channel, a blue-hulled cargo vessel sat idle but making steam, its decks stacked high with multi-colored containers, its crew waiting patiently for a river pilot to come aboard.

  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 scanned the surroundings for any sign of the contact or trouble. Several minutes later, headlights appeared in the distance, moving toward them along the wide frontage at the water’s edge.

  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 scanned the car earlier, but there was no way to see through the darkened windows. “Are you sure?”

  “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. Stunned and immobile, she heard Hawker shouting at her through the fog. He fired at another target and she grabbed the gearshift, threw it into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal. The wheels spun and the Rover shot backward.

  “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?”