Kaufman wanted to throw a few more shots at Danielle, enough to start her worrying about the lack of candor shown to her charges, enough to set the groundwork for a deal. And this was the time for it, but as he looked into Hawker’s burning eyes, he realized the man was unlikely to let him go on for long. He chose to proceed, hoping that Hawker’s response would not be fatal or otherwise permanent.

“Just pawns in the game, Ms. Laidlaw?”

Even before the last syllable had escaped his mouth, Hawker’s knee came crashing into his gut. Kaufman crumpled to the ground. As he rolled on the floor, mute and in pain, his eyes focused on Danielle.

She returned his stare, unblinking, and then turned toward the flashing screen of the laptop. The perimeter alarm had begun sounding once again.

CHAPTER 34

The NRI survivors spent the night crowded around the defense console, watching the perimeter for trouble. They had only two rifles and Hawker’s pistol for defense, but no one wanted to go out into the darkness to retrieve the weapons carried by the fallen men.

During the balance of the night the alarm went off a dozen times. Each time, the dogs howled, Verhoven brought the lights up and Hawker fired a handful of shots in the direction of the targets. Sometimes the targets scattered and other times they lingered, drifting slowly backward into the clutter of the forest until they disappeared from the screen; their true nature, as animal or man, went unrevealed.

No one slept and few words were spoken. As the hours wore on, a type of fear began to seep into every heart. Until eventually the sky’s black hue began to change. When the sun finally rose it brought with it a palpable sense of relief—as if it had physically banished the danger to some other realm, along with the darkness and the Mayan Lords of the Night. In that moment, McCarter felt an instant kinship with the ancient peoples he had long studied. He understood now, on a primal level, why so many of them had worshipped the sun.

Beside him, Hawker stood. “I need someone’s help.”

Danielle answered, “For what? Where are you going?”

Hawker pointed to the clearing. “We have to look for survivors.”

Danielle narrowed her gaze. “Do you think there are any?”

“We need their guns,” he explained. “And we need to be sure that they’re dead. And if any of them happen to be alive … then we need to help them … if we can.”

To McCarter, the absurdity of the situation was plain in Hawker’s voice. He and Verhoven had spent the night doing all they could to kill these men, to make certain there were no survivors. They had shot most of them in the back in a surprise attack, without the option of mercy or surrender. Now, to the extent they might have failed, they would turn around and do what they could to help anyone who might have survived.

His own heart heavy with the carnage, McCarter volunteered to join the search. He and Hawker moved across the clearing from foxhole to foxhole, recovering eleven German-made Hechler-Koch rifles, a dozen crates of ammunition and their own forfeited Kalashnikovs.

McCarter watched as Hawker checked the fallen men for signs of life, then silently pulled dog tags and ID packets from those who carried them. There was sadness in Hawker’s actions, as if the dead had been comrades of his rather than enemies. McCarter wondered what Hawker would do with the items he’d taken. Perhaps he’d send them to some authority or to the governments of the nations that might be listed on their papers.

“I guess even mercenaries have families,” he whispered.

If Hawker heard him, he did not respond.

In the last foxhole they found a survivor, a blond-haired man with a reddish beard, who was minimally conscious and highly disoriented. The left side of his face was caked with dried blood, and judging from the gash and the bruising, either a bullet had caught the edge of his face or a ricochet had hit him square with enough force to knock him out and yet leave him alive. He put one hand up weakly, signaling his surrender.

“Do you speak English?” Hawker asked.

The man shook his head. “Deutsch.”

“Wie nennen sie Sie?” Hawker asked. What do they call you?

“Eric,” the man replied.

Hawker checked him for weapons and then helped him walk to where the others waited. While Danielle tended to him, Hawker and McCarter dragged the dead men to the bunker farthest downwind and buried the bodies with the soil that had been excavated from it.

When they returned to the group McCarter asked the question on all of their minds. “What do we do now?”

“We get the hell out of here,” Hawker said. “Before anything else happens. See if you can find our shortwave or any type of radio that these guys might have brought in.” He pointed to Kaufman. “Take him with you, he could probably tell you where to look. If he causes you any trouble, shoot him.”

“I’ll do that part,” Verhoven volunteered.

Kaufman stood, silent and seething. With his hands still taped together, he led McCarter and Verhoven toward another section of the camp.

As they departed, Hawker stepped away, wandering out among the ruins of the camp, looking for room to think. Before long, he came across a loose pile of mud-covered equipment, items that Kaufman’s people had picked up on their metal detectors and summarily unearthed. The equipment was modern, untouched by rust and disturbingly familiar.

He crouched to examine one particular piece, scraping at the mud caked on its side. As clumps flaked off, the stamping became visible. TSC: Texas Sounding Corp. He shook his head in disgust. TSC was an NRI contracted supplier of equipment. Some of the equipment he’d flown in for Danielle and McCarter bore the same label.

“Of course,” he said.

“I wanted to thank you,” a voice said from behind him, one he recognized as Danielle’s.

“For what?”

“For coming back to get us. For shutting Kaufman up last night.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said, turning. “I already knew what he was going to say.”

He noticed her eyes, locked onto the device he held. “How much did they know?” he asked. “As much as we do? Less, maybe?”

“How much did who know?”

“The group you sent out before us,” he said. “The ones who left this behind.”

She was silent.

“This is an ultrasound receiver,” he said. “I loaded one just like it the other day. Brought it out for McCarter. It didn’t work right, but it’s the same exact piece of gear, the same manufacturer. Direct from the NRI equipment list.”

He held the receiver up. “This is how you knew to bring an army with you,” he explained. “You had another team out here before us. And you lost them.”

She folded her arms across her chest. At least she wasn’t denying it. That was a step in the right direction. “You should have told me.”

“What difference would it have made?” she said.

“You lose a group in the field and it raises the threat level.”

She arched her brow. “People shooting at us, dead bodies in the river; that wasn’t enough for you?”

She was right, it should have been. He hated everything that had happened, all that had been lost. His heart wanted someone else to blame, but he knew the part he’d played. “What happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They stopped reporting about fifty miles from here. And they weren’t headed in this direction at the time.” She looked eastward, the direction she’d led the team in from. “They didn’t know about the Wall of Skulls, they didn’t have the information we had, so how the hell they found this place is beyond me. But apparently they did. After that …” She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The natives … those animals … I don’t know.”

Hawker looked around at the carnage, thinking of the men he’d just buried. He hadn’t even counted up their own dead yet. “How many have we lost?”