Black Rain

With no way of determining who had attacked them, he focused on why.

Obviously, they wanted whatever Danielle and the NRI were after, but what that was he still didn’t know. It had to be related to the temple. His first thought was the artifacts they’d been uncovering and preserving.

McCarter had warned them that the trade in ancient artifacts was a fairly profitable enterprise, rife with theft, smuggling and a thriving black market. But how much could such things really be worth? Thousands? Tens of thousands, maybe. Not enough for what he’d seen. A knife in the back, perhaps, or a couple of leg-breakers in a dark alley, but not a purpose-built weapons platform like the NOTAR. The gun pods alone would run a million dollars.

What, then? Diamonds? Gold? Could they really be after something so base? He jammed the shovel downward again. It didn’t make sense. The NRI was a strategic organization. They would only be here after something important on a political or worldly level. And the only thing that still generated that type of need was oil.

While the price of a barrel continued to fluctuate, it escaped no one that the Middle East was just a few bombs from utter chaos. A big strike in a friendly, democratic nation would be welcome. And at times sulfur could be a geologic clue to oil deposits, but for all the criteria that particular guess happened to fit, it was still a square peg in a round hole.

To begin with, the Brazilians didn’t need the NRI to find their oil for them, and the NRI certainly couldn’t pump it out in secret if they did. For that matter, nor could any adversary. So what would be the point?

No, he decided, this was not a race to stake some kind of claim; it was a burglary, a smash-and-grab job. Two thieves fighting over the jewels in someone else’s house. Whatever the two groups were after, it would be portable and a non-commodity, something that had value merely by being possessed.

Hawker stood up straight, wiped the sweat from his eyes and conceded that the answer was beyond him. He couldn’t guess the who or the why of the incident—but as his eyes fell to the man he was about to bury he suddenly became clear on the how.

To Hawker and Polaski and everyone else at the NRI base camp, the flight had been an unscheduled one, a last-minute errand that had become necessary only upon learning of the tragedy in Washington. But to someone somewhere else, the flight had been more than expected. It had been planned with meticulous precision, designed to put Hawker and Polaski in exactly the right place at exactly the wrong time.

There was no other logical explanation. The NOTAR had to have come from a good distance away. To make the intercept, its pilot would need to know precisely when Hawker and Polaski would be transiting the area. A change of ten minutes in either direction would have blown it.

But of course there hadn’t been ten minutes to wait. In order to get Polaski to Washington in time they’d had to leave the jungle immediately. That was the setup; the accident involving Polaski’s daughter was only the trigger.

There was a chance that the accident involving Polaski’s daughter had been a hoax; it made the details of the situation and the message somewhat easier to control. Then again, such a bluff came with its own problems, problems of veracity or confirmation that might expose the truth and rule it out.

If there was one thing he’d learned over the past decade, it was how evil men could be to their fellow man. Not just violent or in conflict but utterly evil in the pursuit of their own goals. Such men might easily destroy a whole family just to move one piece on the chessboard.

Putting the shovel aside, Hawker ground his teeth. Whether the accident was real or not, Polaski had died thinking his only daughter was near death herself. A man destroyed or an entire family. And in ways both direct and indirect, Hawker had played a part.

Racked with guilt, Hawker laid Polaski gently in the shallow grave, folding the man’s arms neatly across his chest. As he began to cover Polaski’s body with earth, the weight of the man’s death pressed down on him. He recalled his gleeful bargain with Danielle. In fact, he remembered it was he who had suggested the deal, offering his silence and loyalty for her assistance, arrogantly believing he could protect those who had come along for the ride without apprising them of the danger. His silence had become part of the chain of events that had gotten Polaski killed, and perhaps Polaski’s daughter as well. It had helped convince the others that they were safe.

The others …

Hawker began to wonder what had become of them. If their enemy knew Hawker and Polaski’s route across the jungle, it meant they had to know where it originated: the closely guarded location of the temple. Surely they would not wait long before moving in on the clearing. In all likelihood the attacks had come simultaneously or nearly so.