DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  “Ted Pratten... P-R-A-T-T-E-N.”

  He wanted to see it all over again, the shape of her body, how she walked into his office. He wanted to watch her leave. He'd join her later, the two of them walking to her car in the parking garage. He knew a security camera dead spot where they could park, just real quick, where they could lean over the middle armrest, their foreheads touching, his hand starting at her knee...

  “And that's it,” she said, smiling.

  “Oh. Already?”

  “Jackson, it was seven names...”

  “Thanks Dez. That's a wrap.” Somewhere along her list of suspects, Jackson's face had become a little flushed. He almost felt out of breath. “Wow. That's a lot of names to remember off the top of your head,” he said while fussing with his collar.

  “Not really.”

  “Oh that's right,” he chuckled. “I forgot who I'm dealing with.”

  “What do you mean?” Mira took a sip from her drink. No bubbles up her nose this time.

  Jackson moved down to his tie, straightening the knot. “You finish this week's crossword?”

  She smiled. “Yep. Last night.”

  “I'm stuck on fourteen down.”

  “Jobim.”

  No way... She was like Rain Man.

  “Antonio Carlos Jobim” she said. “You know? Girl From Ipanema?”

  “I know who she is, but... How the hell do you do that?”

  “I don't know.” Her mouth formed a devilish grin. “It's sorta like how I live-decrypted that text, huh?”

  He laughed and handed her Langhorne's book. “Yeah, maybe.”

  She didn't reach for it. “Still don't believe me?”

  Jackson drew back the book and placed it on his desk. “Put it this way, if you really want to speed things along...” He trailed off.

  “Yeah? Of course I want to speed things along, we only have a few weeks before the--”

  “And I don't want to tell you to break the law,” he said, titling his head up and speaking loudly for the 'microphones'. “Let's get that straight. All right? I'm certainly not telling Mira Swanson to somehow access the Senator's account and pull that file into a USB stick and then bring it on over here so we can play it like a crossword.”

  “And I, Mira Swanson, state for the record that I totally would never have already thought of that. After all, I'd have no use for a encrypted file because I actually can't live-decrypt, or decrypt anything at all, including crossword puzzles.”

  Jackson laughed. He enjoyed Mira's new look. Comfortable, well-rested...

  She kept going “Though I like to tell people otherwise, mainly to garner attention and to waste the time of DARC Ops employees.”

  “All right, all right, I get it.”

  She looked back to him, smiling

  “We actually should do a crossword puzzle together sometime. Ever try that?”

  “No. It sounds... annoying.”

  “Which makes it perfect for us.” Jackson handed her the book again. This time she grabbed it and stuffed it into her purse. “We'll play,” he said. “But first, you've got some homework to do.”

  10

  Mira

  Mira enjoyed watching the subtle changes in Jackson's face, the evolving sincerity of a slowly furrowing brow, the melting away of an incredulous smile since he'd plugged her USB stick into his computer. It was a smile she both loved and hated, and her goal that day was to erase it from his repertoire. Jackson's new look, born from his attempt to read Langhorne's encrypted documents, was a squint-eyed concentration plus a fidgety bottom lip. He'd been wearing this look for the last thirty excruciatingly slow seconds.

  Eagerly awaiting his response, Mira finished the last potent drops of her espresso before placing the small cup on its saucer. From her first delicious sip, she knew it had been a mistake. Her nerves had been shot to hell since leaving work with the stolen files. But she couldn’t have just sat there doing nothing. Put a cup of cyanide in-front of her and she'd probably down that, too.

  “So?” she finally said, impelling him to break his maddening silence.

  “Well...” Jackson began, still not looking up from his screen. “You definitely got my interest.”

  His interest? She didn’t risk her career for his interest.

  “But where's the original file?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t find it. But it looked just like that. The same type of encryption.”

  “Hmm.” He finally took his eyes from the screen. “I can't believe you can read this.”

  “I know you can't.”

  He went back to the file. “Okay, so how'd you get access? Did Langhorne ask you to root around his computer again?”

  “I did it from mine, actually. I know his password.”

  “Nice. I always tell my guys that the simplest way is the best way.” Jackson did something on his computer, and a few seconds later the room began to transform into a personal theater. The window blinds shut as the lights dimmed. A projector which hung from the ceiling splashed light onto a lowering white screen.

  Mira expected one of his bookshelves to slide over and reveal a dazzlingly lit, fully stocked bar. A stiff martini would've been a nice way to negate the effects of her espresso, and the jitters of her whistle-blowing on an international conspiracy. But the transformation ended with something far less glamorous: the encrypted text of Langhorne's alleged arms deal projected against Jackson's screen.

  “Ready to do your magic?” asked Jackson.

  Shit. She really could use a drink.

  Jackson highlighted the first line of text, leaned back in his chair and said, “Let's start from the beginning.”

  “You want me to read that?”

  “If you can, yes.”

  She had never live-decrypted for an audience before. Hell she’d only managed it once before, period, and that had surprised the ever loving fuck out of her. It was slightly irritating how Jackson expected her to jump right in as if it were some well-rehearsed party gag. Even her most routine translation work had been done alone and in a relatively stress-free environment, a familiar and comfortable place where her credibility as a sane human being never hinged on a single line of text.

  “Can you see it okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Can you just stop talking for a minute?” Mira took a deep breath and pushed aside her agitation. She tried focusing on the characters, her brain willing the foreign symbols to begin their transformation into something she could interpret.

  But the magic just wasn't there.

  Was she forcing it too much? Maybe it was a different encryption... Or maybe she was just a sad, delusional person claiming to have special powers at the expense of Jackson's time and Langhorne's reputation.

  No. Let's re-focus. Let's close our eyes and breathe and refocus. And try again.

  Mira tried to get as loose and care-free as her first decryption in Langhorne's office. She tried to forget about Jackson's watchful, scrutinizing eyes, and that incredulous smile that was no doubt forming in the dark.

  “Should I give you some time alone, or...?”

  “Shhh.”

  “Sorry.”

  Just when her eyes began to ache, when the room around the screen went completely dark as if Mira and its white glow were the only two things that had ever existed, she finally felt the tinges of meaning. Tinges turned to smatterings, symbols into Swahili, and then into something she could finally say to her skeptical audience: “You need to talk to your... carpenter... and teach him better manners.”

  “Carpenter?”

  “We had small... two small leaks. On our... boat... But they are gone now. We, um... We know...”

  “Wait, are you reading past the—?”

  “Be quiet,” said Mira.

  “It says be quiet?”

  “We know you have leaks, too. Consider, uh... repairing... them. For good. As for the gold, we are... in agreement. Please send more details on... exchanging... to exchange it.” Mira took a deep breath an
d turned to Jackson. “Should I keep going?”

  “Hold on.” Jackson leaned over his desk to make a phone-call. He asked for someone named Tansy to stop by his office.

  “Who's that?” she asked.

  “Tansy is... someone who works for me. He knows a thing or two about cryptography.”

  “Does he know Swahili?”

  Jackson pursed his lips together and thought for a moment. “Not that I know of.”

  “It decrypts into Swahili.”

  Jackson coughed into his fist a few times. “So, how'd you learn all these languages?”

  “Mostly through travel. My dad was a diplomat and we traveled around when he worked the different embassies. But I also picked up some languages from the people I've lived with.”

  “You mean, boyfriends?”

  “No,” Mira chuckled, watching Jackson squirm around in his seat.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t implying...uh... I dunno.”

  “What?” she asked, savoring this rare show of discomfort. “What weren’t you implying?”

  “I don't know.” Jackson coughed again. “So who were these people?”

  “My parents brought in a lot of foreign exchange students. That's how I picked up Swahili, actually. And an addiction to masala chips.” She noted his blank stare. “The Kenyan version of french fries and gravy.”

  “Your exchange students were from Kenya?”

  She nodded.

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “No. Just South Africa and Botswana. We mostly stayed in Asia.”

  “I worked in Kenya a few times. Didn’t stay long enough to learn the language, though.” He smiled. “I didn’t have ten years to spare.” Jackson paused. “Just how many languages do you know, exactly?”

  “Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Afrikaans, Swah—”

  A knock at the door interrupted Mira’s list, as well as Jackson’s growing incredulity and respect.

  “Come in,” called Jackson, as he looked above Mira's shoulder and smiled. “Tansy, meet our new code-cracking genius.”

  Mira turned around to see Tansy stroll across the room. He was clean-cut, blonde, and wore an aloof expression, plus a black hooded sweatshirt, tactical pants, and steel-toe boots. With each new introduction she kept expecting to find a stereotypical computer nerd, or at least some little speck of V-necked hipster. But the DARC Ops building was turning out to be an upscale army barracks.

  “Heard a lot about you,” said Tansy, sitting down next to her. “Is that from Langhorne's computer?”

  “Mira was just live-decrypting it for me,” said Jackson. “I figured you wouldn’t want to miss out.”

  Great... Now she'd have to build up her concentration again. And perform the parlor trick for a larger audience.

  She turned to Tansy and asked, “You’re a hacker, right?”

  Tansy seemed a little surprised. He gave a quick glance to Jackson.

  “He's one of our... technicians,” Jackson answered for him.

  “Can you decode that?” She asked Tansy, pointing to the screen.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I'll watch you first.” He smiled and crossed his arms.

  “Tansy, have you ever seen anything like that?” Jackson asked.

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  “Okay Mira,” said Jackson. “Let's continue. What line are we on?”

  Having been warmed up, it took Mira less time to find her concentration sweet-spot—despite the added distraction of Mr. Military hackerboy, Tansy. She translated the next line to “The second amount decrease if you continue to... have delays. April... 20 is... the hard date, deadline, for shipping, as we need groups organized and... mobilized and they can't go unarmed after April 20.” She stopped to check in on her audience. “Still with me?”

  “Yeah,” said Jackson. “I mean, I'm completely lost. But I'm following what you’re saying. How about you, Tansy?”

  “Hold on...” Tansy was staring hard at the screen. “Mira, can you repeat the first few words please?”

  “Uhh... The second amount decrease? Decreases?”

  “Okay. And what's the Swahili word for decrease?”

  “Kupunguza. K-U-P-U-N-G-U-Z-A. Do you see it?”

  “I don't know...” He kept staring at the screen. “What's... Kiasi?”

  “Amount.”

  “Can you keep going from the fourth line, please?”

  They worked together, decoding the rest of the text. Tansy was only able to get bits and pieces compared to Mira's almost fluent read, but he was at least able to look Jackson straight in the face at the end of it and say, “I think she's legit.”

  Although the vindication came insultingly late, it was a relief. More importantly, and since April 20 was just a few weeks away, they could now start taking some serious steps in thwarting Langhorne's plan.

  But there was Jackson, shaking his head at Tansy's assessment. He almost smirked.

  “What?” asked Tansy. “You don't believe me either?”

  “How can you be so sure? You had to use your phone to translate the damn thing.”

  “Jackson,” said Tansy. “Decrypting a code and translating a language are two separate things.” He looked to Mira. “Right?”

  “Not really,” she said. “But, technically yes. So I agree with the point you're trying to make.”

  “What point, exactly?” asked Jackson.

  “Who cares about the Swahili,” said Tansy. “It's the other conversion that's important. And for her to live-decrypt like that... I don't know. It's crazy, and I still don't know how she's doing it. But she is doing it.”

  Mira heard Jackson sigh in the darkened room. Just the sound of it made her feel like reaching over and choking the man, strangling away any chance that she'd ever hear another of his pompous sighs again.

  “What do you do again?” Tansy asked her. “You're translating for a senator? Jesus...” He turned to his boss. “Jackson, man, you gotta hire her. She's a beast.”

  She didn’t feel like a beast. She felt small, and lonely. What more did Jackson need?

  “Yeah,” Jackson said quietly.

  “Sounds like we know what they're using the weapons for,” said Tansy.

  “Do we really, though?” asked Jackson. “It was awfully vague.”

  “Vague?” Mira finally spoke up. “They’re arming rebels. They even gave a deadline of when.”

  “But who's doing it? And what rebels? Where?”

  “That airport,” Mira said. “Kilaguni. I remember reading it in that first file.”

  “Yeah, maybe” said Jackson, sounding a little disinterested.

  “Hey, what about those names?” Mira asked. “Are you doing anything on this case?”

  Without saying anything, Jackson reached over to his phone and made another call, asking for Dez, and then asking Dez if he'd checked the backgrounds of Langhorne's old hunting buddies yet.

  “I sure did,” said Dez.

  These men were Kenyan contacts made by the Senator over thirty years ago. What could they be up to now?

  “Two of them are dead,” said Dez.

  Not at good start.

  “Two are nobodies.”

  Meh...

  “Floyd Tenenbaum is a big time politician in Tanzania's opposition party. Ikenna Chidi owns a Kenyan goldmine. And Ted Pratten runs Kilaguni airport.”

  Kilaguni!?

  Jackson ended the call and looked at Mira, rather through her, his thousand-yard stare penetrating her skull and the walls behind it.

  “Langhorne's shipping guns to Kilaguni on April 20,” said Mira. “That's a fact. Are you on-board with me or not?”

  Jackson sighed again. But this time it didn’t annoy her.

  “I've been there,” Jackson said in a somber tone. He stood up and began to pace slowly. “Kilaguni, dirt runways. It's tiny, nondescript. That's why we used it. And it's right by the Tanzanian border.” He walked in-front of the projected text so tha
t the symbols moved across his troubled face. And then he disappeared back into the darkness. “You better watch yourself, Mira.”

  11

  Jackson

  The usual custom for those who dared entering Matthias' office was to wince at his incredibly loud death metal music. Jackson's custom was to go one step further, unplugging the metal-head's stereo before asking him for the thousandth time, “How the hell can you listen to this, let alone get any work done with it blaring?” To which Matthias would usually respond by keeping his head down, working away at his computer as if the music had finally deafened him completely. This response at least told Jackson that he'd been legitimately working on something. On the other hand, if Jackson had interrupted his afternoon of browsing eBay or reading through gun forums, Matthias couldn’t help wading into the losing end of an argument—which was the case today, Matthias looking at him with forced indignation.

  “It helps me concentrate.”

  “On what? Dismembering a corpse?”

  “No, no. That’s a different group.”

  Jackson chuckled and watched as Matthias scrambled to either close an eBay window, or open a work window, or both simultaneously.

  “It was Norwegian black metal,” said Matthias.

  “So, burning churches, then?”

  Matthias rolled his eyes at his computer screen. “What's the problem? Could you hear it out there?”

  “No. But that's not why I soundproofed these rooms.” Jackson had designed them to protect work-related conversations ranging from sensitive to deadly serious. Not to muffle one hundred decibels of guttural screams from some skinny, leather-clad, face-painted singer. But with the stereo safely unplugged, he no longer had to worry about Matthias' dark and deafening ambiance. Instead, there were new worries, like Matthias' college dorm pig-sty of an office. Jackson finally found a chair and brushed off the clutter from the seat, magazines and empty ammo boxes sloughing to the ground. “What are you working on?”

  “Uh, stuff...”

  “Like what?” Jackson sat next to Matthias' bookshelf of old laptops. The man kept his laptops on book shelves and his books in random stacks on the floor.