Black Sun: A Thriller Read online

  In the heart of the African village, Hawker stared coldly at Arnold Moore. He knew Moore from a mission he’d taken with the NRI two years earlier, the same expedition to the Amazon that had involved Danielle Laidlaw and Professor McCarter. Hawker had been promised a certain type of absolution for his efforts, but in the aftermath that followed, the deal had fallen through.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Looking for you,” Moore said.

  “You’re not exactly dressed for the bush.”

  “No,” Moore said in agreement. “Our intel had you in Kinshasa, drinking and spending money like you’d printed it yourself. But after three days of looking it became clear that you weren’t there. I almost went home. But then I heard about a firefight going on up here, where the bad guys were getting the worst of it for once.”

  “Sometimes bad things happen to the right people,” Hawker said.

  “And sometimes to the wrong ones,” Moore replied cryptically. “I need your help.”

  Hawker studied Moore, acutely aware of their differences. Moore was an important piece for one side of the world. Not the white king, perhaps, but a bishop at the least. A mover of pawns and a shrewd one at that. Hawker had once been a part of that side, but no longer. In fact, he wasn’t part of any side at this point in his life. In some strange, surreal way he’d become a type of third player, a red knight on a board of black and white. He had no alliances, no one to answer to, and thus no real limits. Reaching out to him could mean only one thing. Moore had a job no white piece could do.

  “The last time I worked for the NRI it didn’t turn out so well,” Hawker said. “In case you forgot, you guys never came through on your end. Though you seem to have set yourself up pretty good.”

  “The CIA got involved,” Moore said. “They think you still owe them a few chits.”

  “They must. They sent a couple of thugs out to try and collect.”

  Moore nodded, grinning. “Yes, well … once you put those men in the hospital, I lost any say in the matter.”

  “You also lost the right to ask me—”

  “It’s Danielle,” Moore said, stopping Hawker mid-sentence and speaking bluntly, like a man running out of time. “She’s been abducted. I know who took her and where she is, but she’s out of my reach.”

  Hawker stared at Moore as if he’d been punched. He and Danielle had initially clashed in Brazil. But as things had gone from bad to worse, he’d watched her change from a win-at-all-costs alpha female to a person who cared more about her team than she did about herself. At the darkest moment of their journey, she’d even been willing to sacrifice herself to give the others a chance at survival.

  Going through that had created a bond he could still feel when he thought of her. Enough that not getting a chance to see her again had been the worst part of how things ended.

  “I heard she’d quit,” Hawker said angrily.

  “She did. But she came back to help a friend.”

  “You?”

  “No,” Moore told him. “McCarter.”

  “McCarter?” Hawker’s mind reeled. Danielle returning to the NRI was one thing, but Professor McCarter? His gaze sharpened, focusing on Moore like a laser. He understood.

  “You’re looking for more of what we found in Brazil.”

  Moore nodded. “And who else could I possibly send?”

  Of course, Hawker thought. Moore needed to keep his secrets. A theory called containment symmetry held that it was best to send agents who already knew those secrets, perhaps especially with what they’d found down there.

  “McCarter is still missing,” Moore added. “He’s injured but he escaped and has gone into hiding. I have teams looking for him and we’ll find him, but Danielle is beyond my grasp. And she will die where she is, but not quickly.”

  Hawker clenched his jaw. “Who took her?”

  “A Chinese billionaire named Kang,” Moore said.

  “And he’s untouchable?”

  “So goes the order,” Moore said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I had to come in person. This is not an institute mission, it’s a private one, a deal between you and me, to help someone we both care for.”

  Hawker studied Moore. If there was a redeeming quality to the man, it was that he cared for those who worked under him, especially Danielle. Coming to Africa to solicit help for her was a desperate act, one that could not only end his career but see him off to Leavenworth for the rest of his life. A pariah in the making. Hawker suddenly found new respect for the man.

  “You should know, a big part of why she quit the NRI was our inability or unwillingness to help you,” Moore told him.

  “You don’t have to sell me,” Hawker said.

  “I’m not,” Moore insisted. “I just want you to know it was my decision not to press that fight, and she took issue, strongly.”

  It was good to hear. Hawker couldn’t deny that.

  “I’ve set up an account,” Moore said. “I’ve transferred all the money I could lay my hands on into it. Use it, go to Hong Kong, and get her back.”

  “It won’t be that easy,” Hawker replied.

  “It never is,” Moore said quickly. “You didn’t do this because it was easy. You did it because it needed to be done. Because no one else would do it. And somewhere deep inside, that pisses you off more than anything else. Danielle’s situation is the same. If you don’t help her, no one will.”

  Voices could be heard in the distance, singing and joking. The villagers were coming back from the fields they’d spent the day planting. Hawker had already made up his mind, but he didn’t want to leave the village undefended. He hadn’t thought about it much beforehand, but now it seemed vital. One flower in the barren garden.

  “You protect these people. I don’t care how you do it. You get word to the right men that they’re not to be touched.”

  Moore nodded. “I can do that. Just find Danielle and get her away from Kang.”

  Hawker would do what he could, but he wondered if it would be enough. “And if I’m too late?”

  Moore did not blink. “Then you find that son of a bitch, Kang, and you kill him. Even if you have to burn down the whole damn island to do it.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Professor McCarter lay flat on his back staring at a ceiling made of thatch and sticks. He was a guest in Oco’s Chiapas Indian village, thirty miles from the base of Mount Pulimundo.

  With Oco’s help he had made it back to the village but it had taken several days and his condition had grown worse each day. The bullet wound in his leg had become infected and neither the prayers of the local shaman nor his potions had helped.

  Fearing such treatment might hasten his demise, McCarter had asked Oco to get him a proper doctor or at least a treatment of antibiotics. The young man had run off for the next town, but the village was so remote that it would take him two or three days to make the roundtrip. McCarter wondered if he would last that long. And when his hosts moved him to the shaman’s hut, he hoped it was not for last rites of some kind.

  A wood fire crackled somewhere to the left of him, but he couldn’t turn toward it. Since the shooting and his collision with the tree, his body had grown stiff, as if a metal rod had been run up through his spine. Any attempts to twist or bend caused ripping pains and he found it best to lay still.

  He stretched his left hand down to his thigh, where a swollen wound marked the entry point of the bullet that had hit him. But he was fortunate: The jacketed bullet had gone right through.

  He’d doused the wound with antiseptic and bandaged it on the shore of the island, but the infection had taken hold anyway. Beneath the bandage, the swelling had grown and become heated. McCarter drew his hand back and remained still, blinking the sweat from his eyes.

  How had it come to this? The thought ran through his head as if he didn’t know the answer, as if it were all the result of some unforeseen event. But he knew exactly how it had come to this. It was a situation o
f his own making.

  A year and a half ago, long before he’d been reunited with Danielle and the NRI, before he had even begun to consider such a course, he’d crawled out of bed on one of many sleepless nights and gone to his study. His notes from the Brazilian expedition were sitting untouched on a shelf. He’d pulled them down and begun leafing through them.

  There were so many unanswered questions related to what they’d found down there. Given the chance he would have stayed in the Amazon, but in the wake of so much violence, death, and destruction, there hadn’t been the opportunity.

  Initially they had been looking for a site the Mayan people called Tulan Zuyua, a place associated with their creation myth, similar to the Garden of Eden. Whether that was what they’d found he couldn’t say. Nor had he much thought to ask in the final days of that madness. Survival had become all that mattered.

  But sitting in a robe, sipping tea in his study, McCarter began to wonder. He was able to study his notes and consider them with more insight. And that had led him to something unexpected.

  There were glyphs in the Brazilian temple that spoke of sacrifice. Nothing unusual about that—it was everywhere in the Mayan culture—but this particular set of glyphs described it differently, not as an act or a ritual but as if the sacrifice were a thing. Sacrifice of the Heart was one description.

  And then he remembered the item they had finally recovered down there, the stone that seemed to generate power. The natives had called it the Heart of Zipacna, named for a mythical Mayan beast.

  If the stone they’d found in Brazil was Sacrifice of the Heart, then what was he to make of other glyphs referencing the Sacrifice of the Mind, of the Soul, and of the Body? Were there three others like it?

  Intrigued, McCarter had begun going over the rest of his notes, thinking and working through the night. Knowing what he did about the origin of the Brazil stone, McCarter found himself ascribing great purpose to it and any of its brethren that might exist. This was how it had begun.

  Reviewing other notes and even photographs that had been taken, McCarter came to believe that these four stones had been separated by long journeys, one remaining in Brazil, two traveling over land, and the last out over the sea.

  The record ended there. It seemed something had befallen the rulers of this Brazilian temple, an uprising or some type of disaster, but the subjects and the artisans and the builders had vanished. McCarter suspected that most had traveled west and then north into Central America. And he tried to pick up the trail there.

  Searching the record for anything similar, McCarter settled on the stories of the earliest Mayan people carrying their gods with them in special stones. A carving at an ancient temple south of Tikal told of two stones traveling by land and one sent over the sea. The remnants of a mural there showed a stylized view of the world, nothing that could be called a map or globe, but because he believed that was exactly what he was looking at, his deduction yielded a stunning possibility. Two stones had been taken farther north to the Yucatan and one had been placed on a continent across the sea, in what could only be northern China or southern Siberia.

  The fact that this dispersion had taken place here, hundreds of years later than the description in the Brazilian temple, told him it had been planned. There was a purpose to it, a reason. It was more than a simple inheritance or a division of spoils. The act had to have a meaning to it, a greater intention in the grand scheme of things.

  At that very moment, McCarter had felt the urge—no, it had been a need—to look for these stones. He had gone to those who could help him: Arnold Moore and the NRI.

  It all seemed so foolish now. Not the theory but his pursuit of the proof. Who did he think he was? Some spy, some agent of change for the world? It had ended so badly, he wished it had never begun. And yet even in such despair, some part of him knew that if he managed to get healthy he would continue on.

  At the sound of someone entering the room McCarter tried to look up.

  “Oco?” he asked.

  A different voice answered. “Oco has not returned from Xihua.”

  McCarter saw a younger man who spoke English and who had acted as an interpreter between McCarter and his primary caregiver. Right behind him stood the shaman himself, in full regalia.

  “When will Oco return?” McCarter asked.

  “Tomorrow, maybe,” the interpreter said. “But we cannot wait. The poison of the blood is spreading.”

  McCarter looked around, desperate to see what preparations might be under way. “What are you going to do?”

  “The shaman say, he now understands why you are sick,” the interpreter said.

  “I’m sick because someone shot me,” McCarter managed to say. “I have an infection.”

  Apparently the shaman disagreed.

  “He say, you are looking for something,” the interpreter said. “But you not admit to yourself what it is you want to find. He say, you fear it will be taken from you. And your spirit fights against that truth.”

  Great, McCarter thought. Now he was getting his horoscope and medical treatment all from the same person. Not his idea of comprehensive medical.

  He laid his head back, the strain on his neck too much to bear. He found the shaman’s statements utterly confusing, but he lacked the energy to ask anything more. At another time he would have enjoyed speaking with them, exchanging words and concepts and trying to gain an insight into their unique view of the world. But at the moment, he couldn’t have cared less.

  The shaman spoke some words over him. “The poison blood has brought bad spirits to you,” the interpreter said. “They control you in your sleep, bringing the dark dreams. The healer is going to force the spirits to leave and then the medicine will be able to work properly.”

  At that, McCarter heard the fire being stirred, felt another wave of heat, and heard the shaman begin to chant. The interpreter was grinding some type of medicine in a cup, mixing it with goat’s milk. Seconds later McCarter was drinking it.

  The taste was bitter enough to make him close his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, he felt dizzy once again and quickly the room began to blur.

  Around him, the chanting continued as the shaman fanned the flames of the fire. The room began to spin and McCarter felt his head growing heavy. It felt as if the sounds had become distorted. He heard voices: the shaman chanting, the interpreter as well. And then, he thought, another voice.

  “Oco?” he said hopefully.

  The voice reached him again. A woman’s voice, though he couldn’t make out the words. They were just whispers. Hidden.

  The shaman passed through his field of vision, casting ash into the air. The fine dust floated down, catching the light of the fire. In it McCarter saw a face.

  He tried to focus but the shaman waved a hand through it and the dust scattered on the current.

  “What have you given me?” he asked weakly.

  The young man answered. “The potion is to calm the dark ones, to make them unaware.”

  McCarter could not follow anymore or even pay attention. He felt less pain, that was for sure, but he was more certain than ever that he was on the way to the great beyond.

  He thought of his wife, who had died from cancer several years earlier. There were people in this life that made it seem worth all the trouble, made it feel like things would always get better no matter how bad they were. McCarter’s wife had been one of those people.

  As college students in the mid-1960s, they had endured racial slurs and threats together. And of the two of them, it had been she who’d insisted that minds would change. When their first child had been deathly sick with pneumonia, she’d promised him that their son would be fine, and he grew up to be a strong young man. And even when she’d lain dying herself and McCarter had stood at her bedside, she had been the one to comfort him.

  “If this is my time,” he whispered, “then let me find you.”

  The shaman moved past, chanting and whirling like a dervish, shaking
some feathery wand. It was all a blur.

  McCarter ignored him now. “Let me see you again,” he said aloud to his wife. “If it’s time, bring me to you.”

  The shaman was over him now, gazing through the smoke and the haze into McCarter’s eyes. There was something in his hand.

  McCarter looked past him. “Bring me to you,” he said again, and then he heard the woman’s voice. It was his wife. She whispered back to him.

  “No,” she said. “Bring me … to you.”

  And then the shaman raised a cast-iron rod from the glowing embers of the fire and plunged it downward. The molten tip burrowed into McCarter’s open wound; his head tilted back and he screamed.

  CHAPTER 9

  Lantau Island, three miles east of Hong Kong, December 2012

  Hawker arrived at Chep Lap Kok Airport shortly after midnight. He stepped off a cargo flight from Nairobi dressed as a member of the crew and helped to supervise the unloading.

  Then, instead of reboarding the aircraft or entering the brightly lit passenger terminal, he traveled with the freight to the huge warehouse at the edge of the ramp.

  The whole thing had been prearranged, the night foreman and a customs officer dutifully taking their bribes and hiding him. A new set of clothing was handed over, along with travel papers and a stamped passport. Thirty minutes later Hawker was streetside with the rest of the second-shift crew, stepping onto a bus that would take him to Hong Kong’s central district.

  At two o’clock in the morning, the city was ablaze with lights, skyscrapers outlined in white and yellow, others up-lit by colored floods, while the ever-present glow of the orange halogen bulbs reflected on the layer of clouds that hung over the city. Though not quite deserted, the streets were quiet, at least by Hong Kong standards.

  Hawker wandered around the district for twenty minutes or so, getting his bearings, stopping for an English language newspaper and a bite to eat: Cantonese chicken and a cup of green tea.

  In many ways Hong Kong was the same as Hawker remembered, the same neon face for the world to see, the same subconscious buzzing of energy, even at night. It even smelled the same; food cooking and salt air mixed with the exhaust of idling traffic.