“What intelligence team can track us? And take a right here, so we can connect back with the—”
“I’m going left,” Jasper said. “I’m going to Pretoria.”
“After we grab her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. It’ll be my ass. Do you get it? I’ll be the one taking the heat if—”
“Well then fuck it,” Tucker said, interrupting him.
“What?”
“Fuck it. Drop me off.”
Jasper said nothing as he yanked the wheel and stabbed the gas pedal angrily.
“Go ahead,” Tucker said. “Stop the car.”
When Jasper pulled the car to a stop along the curb, he kept his gaze straight ahead. Tucker waited for eye contact, wanting to at least say something to his face before he left the car. It wasn’t how he wanted to leave things, but he was damned if he was leaving the city with Macy still alone at the hotel.
But there was nothing. Jasper, still gripping the wheel, waited silently in front of what looked to be a museum of modern art with a few strange subcultures dotting the entrance.
Tucker grabbed his laptop bag from the back seat and leapt out of the car. He spun around and, before closing the door said, “It’ll be alright. I’ll see you at the headquarters, with Macy. And we’ll work as a team.”
“Clock’s ticking,” Jasper said, still not looking in his direction.
But perhaps if he would have looked in Tucker’s direction, the DARC Ops squad leader would have noticed the large transport truck barreling down on them. Tucker only heard it, the throaty roar of its diesel engine. He didn’t expect it to actually keep driving. But then he turned around and saw it barreling straight for their car.
“Jasper! Incoming!” Tucker barely had enough time to climb up onto a giant concrete embankment, a square slab that was meant to be some minimalist artwork. He pulled himself up onto it and then turned, hoping to see Jasper not too far behind— at least Jasper away from their car in time for the collision. And while Tucker was happy to not see him still in the car, he couldn’t see him anywhere. Before he could scan the area, the deafening crunch of metal came, a heavy and deadly velocity slamming into their Mercedes rental car and flattening it against the embankment, the shock wave of the impact knocking Tucker off his feet.
He lay flat on his stomach, his head arching around to look through the dust and smoke, squinting, straining for any sign of his comrade. His mind hadn’t yet begun to process what had just happened, and why. The only thing that mattered right now was finding Jasper and then getting to Macy. A wave of relief crashed through him when Tucker first spotted that single hand reaching up to the lip of the embankment. He rushed over to the hand, not knowing whether it was Jasper’s or the truck driver’s, but he needed to help either way. Despite how their morning started with the car-jacking, Tucker couldn’t be sure that this again was another intentional attack. It could have just been a simple accident. It was possible.
Or maybe not. He peered down at the twisted metal and billowing smoke erupting from below. And then the hand, badly cut up from shards of glass. Tucker reached down to lift the man out of the smoking debris. Fuck, it was Jasper. His face was bloody, but he was in one piece, as Tucker pulled him safely up and out of the carnage.
“Jasper, can you hear me?”
He had Jasper up on the concrete, dragging him away from the increasing heat of the wreck, when the first shots rang out.
At first Tucker thought it was the tires popping or something exploding inside the truck engine. The flying shards of concrete as bullets skipped off the artwork made his mistake obvious. He dragged Jasper across the top of the concrete until he teetered off the edge on the opposite side. Tucker jumped down first, and then reached back up to pull Jasper down by his ankles. The heavy, limp weight of his C.O. fell into his arms, nearly knocking him over until he leaned forward and rested Jasper against the side of the slap. They were protected there behind ten feet of concrete, both of them huddled there. He almost felt bullets impacting through the concrete when Jasper’s eyes flickered open. Eyes that finally locked onto his. Jasper was awake, and coherent.
He even smiled a little when he turned to Tucker and said, “Just another accident, huh? Another coincidence?”
He shook his head, running his hands over Jasper’s arms and torso. “Maybe not. Where are you hurt?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Are you armed?” Tucker already had his weapon drawn, shoving another clip inside and smacking it up with his palm, locking it in as another round of fire strafed against the concrete.
“Not armed.” Jasper said, wincing as he raised his hand to his forehead. “I left it back in the . . .”
“What?”
“Fuck.” Jasper’s eyes looked more focused. His face changed, too, as if he’d just woken up from a bad dream to a living nightmare. “We’re fucking pinned, aren’t we?”
Tucker had already scoped and planned out multiple exits. Always have two exits, a backup plan. They indeed had two. The only problem was that one of them faced out into the smoking wreckage.
“We could retreat and find cover on the other side of the museum.”
“But we need covering fire,” Jasper said. “Can you lay down some suppressing fire and we’ll—?”
“Can you run?” Tucker interrupted him. “Suppressing fire won’t mean shit if you’re limping along.”
“I’m fine.”
Tucker looked over his friend’s body again, his ripped and bloodstained clothes. “How are your legs?”
“Bleeding,” Jasper said.
“No shit. Can you walk?”
He was wincing again. Through the blood on his face, Jasper’s face paled further and sweat dotted his forehead. Shit. He was going into shock. At least, Tucker hoped it was just shock and not a more severe symptom of massive internal blood loss. “How do you feel?”
“How the fuck do you think I feel?”
“I can carry you.”
“No,” Jasper said. “Let’s move.”
“Should we radio in to—”
“—Tucker, let’s move. You ready to fire?”
Tucker gripped the gun.
“Start laying it down to the right . . .” Jasper seemed to be getting sleepy again. “Go and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Jasper, I’ll fireman carry you.”
“Just lay it down, Tucker,” Jasper said, his chin almost slumping down to his chest.
Tucker scrambled forward, scoping the area around the concrete corner. He aimed his gun across the street at a human shape of olive drab military fatigues crouching behind a tree. He readied himself to let off a barrage of shots that might cover their attempt to flee the kill zone, given a small miracle. He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. “Fuck!”
“Come on, Soldier,” Jasper said. “Lay it down!”
“I’ve got a jam.”
“Clear it.”
Tucker struggled with the gun, flipping the metal back and forth, but nothing. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing.
“Can you clear it?” Jasper asked.
“Negative.”
Jasper groaned as he crawled around the other side of the barrier, moving past Tucker and then peeking his head out the side. He didn’t take long to peel his head back, his face even paler from the effort. “They’re coming.”
Strangely, Tucker felt only a mild sense of panic building up. They were unarmed and stuck. Jasper was wounded. And the only other direction of escape would be through the now-flaming wreckage. “Should we go through the wreck?” Tucker asked.
Jasper didn’t say anything. But the look on his face made it clear that he did not want to revisit the wreck and its flames. His hair was singed, his clothes even more bloody than his face. Either way, it really was going to take a fucking miracle to survive. They were sitting ducks.
Tucker took one last look around the corner. A man was approaching, crossing the street. He was in green
fatigues, and armed with what looked like an AK-47. Tucker turned back to Jasper. “I think we’re fucked.”
“Yeah, getting it from both ends.”
Tucker kept trying to clear the jam, rattling the gun, the synapses in his brain firing away as he tried conjuring up an escape plan. He’d try anything, an idea offering even the slightest possibility of surviving—and doing it unarmed. But he kept coming up with blanks. Duds, just like his Glock. “If one of them gets here,” Tucker said, “I’ll charge him, just go for it, while you get away.”
Jasper shrugged almost imperceptibly, his face looking serene. The calm before the storm.
“I’m not sure what else we could do,” Tucker said.
Jasper was looking down now, his head slumping like a heroin addict. He nodded, but couldn’t be bothered with saying anything in particular. It was in that eerie quiet that Tucker realized he was alone. Alone and about to die.
He looked back around the corner. The man was still approaching slowly, gun drawn. He watched his killer approach. And then he watched something blow through the man’s body, some great force, a gust of wind kicking up the edges of his clothing and smearing a look of shock across his face.
18
Macy
She watched her shots, a tight pattern of lead from a triple tap, land right into the back of whomever was trying to kill Tucker. A rippling of army fatigues and then a buckling of knees. She could see all this from her crouched cover behind an open car door. She had parked across the street after seeing the crash. And she’d taken up her position after seeing the gunfire.
Using a handgun from her distance was somewhat of a risk and required some lucky shooting. But all through her shooting career, she’d been more good than lucky. Maybe Tucker and his DARC Ops boys would see that now, especially with how their attacker fell to his knees, holding his chest, and then, not holding anything anymore, rolled flat onto his back. His chest unmoving. There was nothing left for him to hold in, blood or life, and he’d gone still almost immediately.
Macy checked back at the driver who was still in the truck, the windshield cracked just above where his head must have struck. She yelled out across the street, “There’s still one in the seat!” Her voice echoed through the otherwise quiet streets, a heavy silence dropping over the entire field after she dropped the asshole.
All she’d seen was the wreck and the fire, and then this guy raining fire against a large concrete block. When he began crossing the road, it had been time to take action. Her next action would be to neutralize any additional threats, and in this case it was the driver—whatever state of consciousness or bodily harm she found him in.
She rushed out into the street, feeling a little safer now that the gunman hadn’t moved once since landing on the street. Approaching the truck, Macy curled around to see through the driver’s window, and through the smoke, she spotted a figure slumped inside. She ran up and climbed the step, holding on to the door and looking inside, gun-first. The driver was covered with blood, his face almost unrecognizable. There was so much red, she couldn’t tell if he was a white or black man. She could tell, however, that he was dead. No sounds, no breathing, his chest perfectly still. A dead calm at sea, the neighborhood returning to its calm quiet since the shooting ended. An odd quiet for such a location. There were no sirens, no screaming pedestrians—although she’d seen several rush out of sight when the whole thing began. A few drivers had been preparing to stop and assist with the accident. That was, until gunshots rang out. In the silence, she called out for her men—Tucker and Jasper. Yes, Tucker especially was already hers, had already in just a day snuck past all her defenses she’d built over years. She just hoped they were still conscious enough to hear her.
She waited for a few silent, scary seconds. And then, around the corner of the concrete block, she saw Tucker’s wide eyes, and then a mouth hung open in amazement. She called out his name, wailing with it, but his response was muffled by the thudding of her own running steps across the street as she rushed over to him.
Tucker was still in one piece, and with hardly any blood on him. When he walked, he moved fluidly, with no signs of limp or even pain. How he’d survived such an impact without any bodily damage was incredible.
“I thought I told you to stay put at the hotel,” he said, smiling like nothing had happened.
Macy couldn’t smile. “I thought I told you that you needed my help.”
Tucker waved her back around the barrier. “You were right about that.” Their banter died at the sight of Jasper huddled against the concrete, pale where he wasn’t stained red with blood.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” Tucker said. He was no longer smiling.
“I’m fine,” Jasper muttered, his voice sounding far away and muffled.
“You don’t look fine, Pal,” Tucker said.
“It’s just blood,” Jasper mumbled. “Superficial wounds from the glass.
“Are you sure?” Tucker inspected his face carefully. “Are you cut anywhere major?”
“I bet he has a concussion,” Macy said, crouching next to him. “Jasper, can you hear me?”
Jasper’s face soured. “Of course I can hear you.”
“Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Do you have a headache?”
He shrugged.
“Alright, Buddy,” Tucker said, reaching down and holding him under his arms so that he was standing. “You ready to get out of here?”
“Where are we going?” Macy asked. “The hospital?”
“No,” Jasper said quickly. “I’m fine, I’m good.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I just got my bell rung,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m good. Well I mean, I will be good in a few hours.”
“You sure?” Macy asked.
“Of course he’s sure,” Tucker said, rolling his eyes. “He’s our medic.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve had worse. Played football in high school.” He already seemed more refreshed, dusting off some shards of glass from his clothing now and saying with a laugh to Tucker, “I’ll let you drive, though.”
“Drive what?” Tucker looked over to the wreckage.
Jasper turned his head toward Macy. “How did you get here?”
And then Tucker: “And how did you find us?”
“You’re not too hard to track down,” she said.
Tucker was looking out over the scene. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“Plus, I’ve spent the last two years trying to escape people. So I guess I’ve learned a few tricks in finding them.”
“Shit,” Jasper said. “We’re late.”
Tucker smiled at Macy and said, “He’s feeling better, the anal type-A personality reemerging from its shell.”
“Shall we go, then?” Macy said. “We can use my car.” She asked Tucker, who had just turned away from her to watch Jasper trying to do something on his phone.
“He’s definitely feeling better,” Tucker said.
19
Macy
“And this is Macy Chandler,” Tucker said, grinning at her and then turning back to the long conference-room table lined with military men and bureaucrats. Despite Tucker’s cheeriness, they all wore long faces. They hardly said a word to Macy. Evidently, the morning’s events weren’t going very well. Tucker kept up the false front. “She’s really surprised us in the last few days with her resourcefulness, and her courage. And we think that she’ll make a great addition to the assignment.”
“What can she do?” asked one of them.
“Excuse me?”
One of the generals, a tall man with the bald and shiny head, crossed his arms. “What can she do for us?
“Well, considering that she just saved my life an hour ago, I would say that the possibilities are . . . endless?”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Clarkson, the DARC Ops liaison. “But I should apologize for my associate’s tone. We just don’t lik
e CIA very much.”
“Don’t apologize for my tone, Clarkson.”
Clarkson looked on and said, “We had a microchip facility down here that the CIA meddled with. It’s caused some hard feelings.”
“They did more than meddle,” the general said.
“Well,” Macy said with a forced smile, “I don’t like them very much, either.”
The two large double doors swung open and a man in a gray military uniform strolled in. He was holding a digital tablet in his hands and wearing a headset over his ears. He dropped both on the tabletop and said, “We have an update.”
“Well, go on with it, Grimsby. We’re on a bit of a time crunch,” the general said, waving his hand in a forward motion.
Grimsby cleared his throat. “Our initial findings suggest that both attacks had nothing to do with Browning or his associates, or in fact, anyone else in their party.”
“All of his associates? You know the terrorists are his associates, too, Mr. Grimsby?”
Macy could only assume that they were discussing the men that had just attacked Tucker and Jasper. How many more attacks had there been that morning? Guilt suddenly swamped over her. Had it all been her fault? If everything was locked down as tightly as this meeting had suggested, how had a couple of mercs for hire known where to find them? Instead, had these attackers just been the usual suspects trailing her for years? Had she dragged them all the way to Johannesburg with her, contaminating yet another country with her problems?
“If your government wants this shipment,” the general said, “then we’ll have to move on this immediately.” A general rumble of assent filled the room. The general looked directly at Tucker. “Is that understood?”
“It’s understood,” Tucker said.
The general’s face remained still and expressionless, hard as stone. “More importantly, is it possible?”
“I’m waiting on Jasper to be medically cleared,” Tucker said.
“He’s cleared,” Grimsby said.
The general turned to the liaison and said, “And you think you could have mentioned that earlier, Mr. Grimsby?”
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 115