Black Rain

Her head was pounding, the sounds around her were muffled, but her field of vision had begun to expand; she saw the blue sky behind the face and realized she was outside. She noticed that the man was wearing a safari jacket and that other men surrounded him, holding rifles and dressed in camouflaged fatigues. The past hour came rushing back to her and she felt a sudden onset of anger. “You’re the people who attacked us.”

“I’m afraid we are,” the man admitted, reaching toward her.

She tensed.

“Relax,” he said, reaching out again and grabbing a small black device off her belt. “You won’t be needing this.”

Her hand went to her belt. He’d grabbed her transponder, a device that each member of the NRI team carried to prevent the sensors of the defense system from alerting of them and their movement. As he tossed it to one of his men, she slid her hand down farther, to the cargo pocket of her khakis. It was empty.

Kaufman caught her. “Yes, I have them too,” he said. “Nice of you to return them to the scene of the crime.”

Danielle felt a sudden panic and wave of energy flow through her system. She tried to get up, as if she might attack him, but she became instantly light-headed and fell forward to her hands and knees.

“An effect of the drug,” he told her. “You seem to have gotten the worst of it. But it should wear off in a minute or two. Don’t worry, you’ll be tied up before that happens.”

She glared up at the man. Try as she might, she didn’t recognize him. “What the hell do you people want?”

“I think you know what I want. Care to discuss it with me?”

So these were the players who had been shadowing them, the unseen opponent who’d sent men to attack her at the harbor. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I promise you, you do not know who you’re screwing with.”

“Actually,” he said, as calmly as if he were correcting a clerical error, “I know exactly who I’m screwing with. And though you might think there is a rescue to wait on, I promise you there isn’t. I’ve blocked your communications suite, and your helicopter and pilot were shot down and left burning in the jungle, thirty miles from here.”

She looked past the man; the black NOTAR sat on the dry ground a hundred yards away. The gun pods were clearly visible.

Her captor seemed to guess her thoughts. “After what happened at the docks, I couldn’t let your friend interfere a second time.”

Danielle said nothing; she was stunned. But the bad news continued.

“I tell you this so you’ll understand the nature of your situation,” he said. “You’re beyond the reach of help now. Even from the States.”

She glanced up at him, fearing his next words.

“Arnold Moore is dead as well.”

Her reaction was instant: a sick, falling feeling and a wave of uncontrollable rage. She swung at him, but he grabbed her arm and held it. She spit at him, trying to pull away.

Still holding her arm, Kaufman calmly wiped the spit from his face, and then he slapped her, sending her back to the ground. Her cheek stung and reddened like it was on fire.

“I can be reasonable if you can,” he said sharply, putting away the handkerchief. “Or I can make your life hell. If you want to get out of here alive, along with your people, you’ll cooperate. If you’re as stubborn as I’ve been told, well, then I guess you’d rather die.”

Her mind was reeling. Hawker dead, Moore dead. What about Gibbs, why hadn’t the man mentioned Gibbs? Perhaps there was still hope. She bit her lip and kept quiet.

Taking note of her silence, he waved one of his men over. “You’ll change your mind in time.”

Across from her the NOTAR began to power up, generators first, and then the engine. Slowly the blades began to turn. She watched it with anger, until two of the armed men helped her up and led her across the clearing to a large tree at the edge of the forest. The tree was burned in places by the Chollokwan fire. A heavy chain, secured by a padlock, encircled it, and the other survivors were there, sitting with their backs to the trunk and their arms pinned behind them.

As the NOTAR lifted off and buzzed out over the forest, Kaufman’s men forced her to sit with her back to the tree, laced a pair of handcuffs through the inner side of the chain and then cuffed her wrists. The closed loop of her arms and the cuffs interlocked with the closed loop of the heavy chain like a pair of rings. She could move around freely, even slide along it, but unlike a set of magician’s rings, this connection could not be released without breaking one of the chains; a simple but effective prison.

She counted heads; McCarter and Susan were there, along with Verhoven, one of his men and Brazos, the lead porter—everyone who’d been inside the temple, including her, the lucky six. There was no sign of the others. Verhoven’s lieutenant, whose name was Roemer, bled from a bandaged wound on one arm, while Susan sobbed quietly and McCarter tried to comfort her.

As the guards walked away, McCarter glared at Danielle, the look of a man who knew he’d been misled.