Authors: Graham Brown
And yet he found himself in a precarious position of having to balance his natural instincts and the actions that would follow if he acted on them.
Part of him wanted to call Danielle and Hawker and authorize the use of any force necessary to get information out of their prisoner. History would surely judge him harshly if this plague hit and he’d done less than all he could.
On the other hand, it would be an illegal order anyway, perhaps just enough to cover Danielle, assuming she would even follow it, and Hawker, who most undoubtedly would.
But he had chosen to put off the decision in hopes that some other avenue would appear. In a world of black and white he was hoping for a third way. Hoping the trouble would go away on its own.
It was an uncomfortable feeling and it didn’t free him of any angst or even protect him really.
The fact was, Hawker and Danielle were holding a foreign prisoner as a hostage, torturing him in minor ways already, some of which would not pass the Geneva Convention. That they were doing it in a foreign country, violating not only American law but also the laws of Iraq, made it worse.
The NRI had no police power. They didn’t even have the wink-and-nod status that had been granted to the CIA. If the truth came out it would be disastrous. Especially for an agency with as checkered a recent past as the NRI.
Two and a half years earlier the Brazilian mission that had included Danielle and Hawker had turned into an unmitigated disaster. Later investigations showed the NRI’s then director, Stuart Gibbs, to be up to his neck in fraud, embezzling from the institute accounts, responsible for at least one murder and for attempting to kill Arnold Moore days later. Gibbs was proven to be in league with a radical billionaire who wanted to steal what the NRI was looking for and was suspected of planning to kill the entire team in some “accident” once they found it.
After the whole thing blew up, it was widely believed that the NRI would be shut down, but a last-minute reprieve put Moore in charge and kept the doors open.
Two years later Moore had been forced to break ranks with everyone in Langley and the West Wing in an attempt to avert a worldwide calamity. Disobeying direct orders, he’d gone all out to do what he believed was necessary, being proved right only at the very last moment—and after being shot and run over by the director of the CIA.
By inches, the NRI had avoided death a second time.
The current situation looked like a third fastball coming right down the pipe. They’d fouled the other two off, but miss this one and they were out. Miss this one and the whole world might be out.
Tired of running it over in his mind, Moore considered contacting the president, informing him, and letting the nation’s elected leader make the call. But as weak as Moore felt about the inability to make any choice, he felt even weaker passing the buck.
He, Danielle, and Hawker were closest to the situation. If they couldn’t decide, how could someone who saw the events only on paper make a good decision? He might as well just flip a coin, or close his eyes and swing away.
Thankfully his intercom buzzed. A time-out to interrupt his circular reasoning.
“This is Moore,” he said.
“Mr. Moore, this is Walter Yang,” the voice on the other side said. “I’ve found something odd in the virus code. I’m wondering if we have any further information from the field operatives.”
Moore had promised Yang data from Sonia’s corporation, but the hit on their lab had stopped it from coming in.
“I’m afraid not,” Moore said. “What do you have?”
“Just some patterns in the inert section that seem very odd.”
“Dangerous?”
“No,” Yang said. “They’re still inert. But they aren’t random. At least I don’t think they are.”
“Any guesses?” Moore asked, still convinced there was something in that code that mattered.
“Not yet.”
“We’re running out of time, Walter.”
As if to emphasize that fact the intercom buzzed again.
Moore’s assistant spoke. “It’s the president’s chief of staff,” she said. “Line two.”
“Get me something, Walter. Anything.”
“I’ll do the best I can.”
Moore hung up, took a deep breath, and hit the button for line two.
H
awker’s thoughts drifted back to Africa.
The quiet of a humid night was broken by the sound of thunder. It drowned out the constant buzz of crickets and cicadas.
Hawker stared out through a warped screen door made of rotting wood and mesh, held together by rusted nails and a coat of peeling and faded paint. The door never closed right, but pulled tight it kept most of the insects out.
The rain began to pour through the darkness of the night. It rattled the corrugated tin roof above, hitting so hard that it sounded more like hail than rain. A second wave of thunder rolled in from the southwest, crashing overhead and shaking the fragile house like an earthquake.
A second later a bedroom door opened behind him. A young woman of no more than twenty came running out, startled and wide-eyed. Not a touch of makeup or even a wrinkle marked her tan face. She seemed to relax when she saw Hawker.
“I dreamt that you left us,” she said, pulling her black hair back in a ponytail and sounding relieved to be wrong.
“I’m not leaving without you,” he said. “I told you that.”
“I know but if Father doesn’t …”
Before she could finish, the phone rang. The sound was peculiar, tinny and dull, as an old worn-out bell inside a rusted metal housing barely managed to function. Hawker picked up the faded plastic phone and held the receiver to his face.
“Right,” he said. “I figured that.”
Sonia looked up at the ceiling in frustration. She knew what was being said.
Hawker hung up the phone.
“He’s not coming back tonight,” she said. “Is he?”
“They’re not giving him much space,” Hawker said. “They’ll keep him at the lab as long as they can.”
“I swear he wants to stay here,” she said angrily. “He doesn’t see what’s happening.”
She looked outside at the pouring rain. Hawker followed her gaze. Somewhere out there, somewhere through all the rain and the jungle and the danger was freedom and a normal life.
Sonia wanted it. Whatever reasons she’d had for coming with her father to Africa, months as a virtual prisoner had been enough to override them. But freedom had been slipping further and further away.
If Hawker hadn’t interfered months ago, she might already be in the generals’ possession, either as a slave or a bargaining chip or both. If that wasn’t enough to fear, the generals’ men, white mercenaries and black soldiers all, looked at her as if she were some prize they might claim.
Why not? She was beautiful, young, healthy. And this was central Africa. You took what you wanted by force. No one asked questions.
Despite his efforts to protect her, Hawker knew a day would come when the general or some of his men gave up caring about repercussions. One day, in this land Sonia would face rape, imprisonment, and eventually death.
Hawker had finally beaten this truth into Ranga’s skull.
And despite Ranga’s faith in Hawker as Sonia’s bodyguard, Hawker knew that if someone important decided that day had come, all he could do was make it costly for them.
As he watched Sonia, her chest heaved and fell in a sort of controlled panic. She moved to the sink in the small kitchen.
“Everything is flooding,” she said, turning on the faucet. “The water will be no good in the morning. We should run some and boil it, so that way we have good water to drink on the journey and—”
Hawker walked up beside her and gently turned off the tap. “We have enough,” he said, putting his hand on hers and pulling it away from the spigot.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Then we should go,” she said, her voice cracking. “We can’t keep waiting. They’re going to know.”
He could hear the panic in her voice, months of living on the edge having chipped away at everyone’s calm and resolve. The last two weeks had been the worst, planning to go each night, postponing it because of the rain or the fact that Ranga was held at the lab or other reasons, including a gut feeling Hawker had that they were being watched.
Their biggest fear was that the generals would suspect their plans to leave. To avoid that suspicion Ranga kept working hard at the task they’d assigned him, and Sonia and Hawker did their best to act as if nothing was wrong. But fearing that someone was watching you had a way of making people act just differently enough to tip off those who were watching.
On previous nights, during a break in the weather, Hawker had spotted military vehicles parked on the dirt road or even patrolling where they’d never bothered to before. Like Sonia, he feared that something had been given away, but to act rashly would only tip their hand.
He’d seen no one this evening. Perhaps that was because they’d planned to keep Ranga at the lab. Or because they knew the rains were coming hard tonight.
He glanced outside. The downpour was turning the dirt road into a bed of oozing red clay. A drainage ditch Hawker had dug to funnel water away from the house was already filled and flowing like a small river.
“We can’t go yet,” he told her.
“When can we go?”
“I don’t know, but not yet. Not tonight.”
She looked away, fighting the internal struggle, shaking her head at thoughts only she knew. Her eyes were welling up, her chest heaving and falling as if panic was setting in. She looked as if she might burst into tears, but instead she grabbed the keys to their four-wheel-drive truck and ran for the door.
She bashed open the screen door, crossed the flat wood planks that served as a porch, and rushed out into the pouring rain. Hawker chased her, grabbing her as she reached the truck.
“Look at this!” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the rain. “Look at the roads. We can’t drive in this.”
“Neither can they!” she shouted back.
“We can’t ford the river if it’s flooded. So if we go now, the only way across is the bridge at Adjanta,” he said. “They’ll have a hundred men there; you know they will. The only thing we can do right now is keep it together and wait out the rain.”
“There must be another way,” she said.
He shook his head.
“There must be,” she begged, as if he could make it so.
Tears streaked her face, mixing with the rain. She pulled from Hawker’s grasp and slumped down in the mud, her back against the truck. Her face registered surrender, exhaustion, and despair.
“I don’t care what happens anymore,” she said. “I just need it to happen and be over with.”
“Sonia, just hang on,” he said, crouching beside her.
“I can’t wait any longer,” she said, sobbing. “Father will never leave. Even if we all die here. He’ll never go.”
Her hands fell heavy into her lap. The keys splashed into the mud. In some ways she was right: Twice they’d had chances to make a break for it during gaps in the weather, and twice Ranga had found some excuse why they couldn’t go just yet.
Reaching forward, Hawker put an arm under her legs and one around her back, scooping her up. She was limp, a rag doll, exhausted by an obsession and a life no twenty-year-old should have to live.
“Look at me,” he said, holding her against his chest.
She turned her eyes toward him.
“I promise you,” he said. “I promise you, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. When the rains pass we’ll go. If your father doesn’t want to come then he can stay on his own. But I’ll take you out of here, whether he comes or not.”
Her head fell heavy onto his chest, her arms wrapped weakly around his neck, and her body shook with chills and sobs. He carried her across the porch, up the two steps, and back into the house.
He brought her to the kitchen, placed her down on the counter, and brushed the wet hair off her face. He smiled at her and stretched for a towel. It was just out of reach.
“You’re going to have to let go,” he said.
“I don’t want to.”
She stared into his eyes and he sensed that calmness had returned to her. The fear was gone; she felt safe in his arms. And Hawker had to admit it felt good to have her there.
She leaned forward and kissed him. When he didn’t pull away, she pulled him closer, holding on tightly and
kissing him harder. He kissed her back, feeling the warmth of her body through their wet clothes and giving in to feelings he’d kept at bay for months. Feelings that Sonia had made clear to him but Hawker had chosen not to act on.
It wasn’t that she was too young; she wasn’t. She was twenty. He was only thirty. It wasn’t that he worked for her father. Or that they spent their days as virtual prisoners who could not let their guard down. Those reasons had never really mattered, and to whatever extent they had, they evaporated as he kissed her and pulled her close.
In the heat and the passion of lust and love and breaking away from the fear, all thoughts left him except one: The moment he got Sonia and Ranga to freedom, to some civilized part of the world, he would have to let her go. There was nowhere for this to go, nothing ahead except pain for both of them.
That thought lingered, even as they pulled off each other’s soaking wet shirts and their hands began exploring each other’s bodies.
“Take me with you,” she asked, giving voice to Hawker’s lingering fear.
“I can’t,” he said. “It won’t be good for you.”
“It can’t be worse than this,” she said.
“It’s always worse than this,” he said. Until recently, guarding her and Ranga had been like heaven. Whatever was next would be closer to hell.
“I don’t care,” she said, her eyes closed, her words breathless as she pressed the side of her face against his. “I don’t care.”
Hawker wanted not to care, but he knew in his heart that he couldn’t do that to her. Not if he loved her. Not even if he didn’t.
The door banged open behind them. Hawker turned with a start.
Two men in fatigues, one white, one black, stood there. The white man held the keys to the truck.
“You lose these?” he said.
The men had been watching. From where, Hawker didn’t know, but this was a bad sign. It may have tipped their hand.