Black Rain

“Officially, Roche was under my command,” Verhoven said. “In reality, he took orders from someone in Pretoria. It seems my people and I had been involved with Hawker for too long to be trusted with the real job of catching him. So Roche and his special team came out to do the job, but for the better part of a year Hawker made them look like fools, hiding, moving, even getting away from a sting Roche had set up with the weapons and the money. As it looked, Roche was about to be replaced when he finally succeeded.”

Verhoven sucked at his teeth and his voice turned. “The first time I saw Hawker after Roche caught him, I barely recognized him. They’d beat him to a bloody mess.”

“You couldn’t stop it?” she asked.

Verhoven glared at her coldly. “I told you, Roche didn’t answer to me.”

Danielle leaned back, taking a deep breath and scuffing the dirt at the bottom of the foxhole with her boot.

On Verhoven’s side another shell went into the clip, another shot of tobacco juice into the dirt.

“How did it go down?” she asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “I heard a shot and when I came in I found Hawker on the ground bleeding from the chest. Roche was standing there with his pistol, babbling something about Hawker escaping, but Hawker was still chained to the bloody rail. I almost killed Roche right there and then. As it was, I beat him half-senseless with his own gun—and I would have finished the job too, but one of his people came in and stopped me. Apparently there was a more pressing issue—the CIA had someone on the way out to collect Hawker that very afternoon. I think Roche expected them to let Hawker off and he couldn’t stand the thought. So he snapped.”

Verhoven shook his head recalling the events. “I checked Hawker myself and he was dead. I mean, he was blue and without a pulse. You know? We couldn’t turn him over to the Americans like that, so we put him in the back of a jeep, drove him out a couple of miles into the scrub and dumped him there. We told the American counsel he’d escaped.”

A smile crept onto Verhoven’s craggy face. “The irony was, Roche couldn’t tell anyone he’d shot Hawker or they’d have hung him. So he had to pretend that Hawker had beaten him to a pulp and escaped once again. It drove him mad.”

“How did Hawker survive?”

Verhoven shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t know he had for a while. A couple months later I started hearing rumors of an American working the arms trade on the West African coast. Not too many whites out there, even fewer Americans. A few months after that, the CIA sent me a surveillance photo to examine. It had been taken the week before in Liberia. It was Hawker, clear as day.”

Danielle grinned. “What did you do?”

“What the hell could I do?” he said. “I smiled actually, and then I cringed. By that time I was on my way out anyhow. My country had gone through its change a few years before and things were different. The truth squad was coming my way, you know?”

Danielle nodded, remembering the history of post-apartheid South Africa. “What happened to Roche?”

“A few years later, he took a walk off the top of a skyscraper in downtown Johannesburg.” Verhoven raised his eyebrows. “Twenty-story kiss to the concrete.”

“Hawker?”

Verhoven shrugged. “Roche had a lot of enemies,” he said. “By then, he’d joined the trade himself, but he was known as a skimmer; always looking to leave a few men behind just to up his share of the take. So maybe it wasn’t Hawker—or maybe it was, doing the rest of us a favor.”

Verhoven looked out toward Hawker in the distance. “All I know for sure is that everyone involved in that mess has died in one bloody way or another—shot and killed or blown to hell. Every one of those sons of bitches that Roche used, they’re all dead now.”

Verhoven turned back toward Danielle. “So, thinking what Hawk thinks, and knowing that I dumped him in the desert, I’d expect he’s got a bullet in that gun for me, somewhere.” He shoved one last cartridge into the clip he was loading. “And who knows, maybe I’ve got one for him too.”

Silence hung in the air, with Danielle and Verhoven staring at each other, until the radio squawked beside them. “Anyone awake back there?”

Danielle grabbed it. “Go ahead, Hawker. What have you got?”

“Missing bodies. Looks like those things dug up the men we buried. So much for putting on their uniforms.”

Danielle made a sour face. “Wasn’t really looking forward to that anyway.”

“Yeah, me neither. Looks like they took the animal I killed too.”

“Scavengers as well as predators.”

“Seems that way. Listen, we’re almost to the trees. Before we get in there I want to make sure the area’s clear.”

Danielle checked the laptop screen one more time; some of the pixels were beginning to drop out. “There’s nothing on the screen,” she said. “For whatever that’s worth.”