DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  3

  Cole

  They would be waiting for him at Hilo Harbor. He expected this. And he expected they’d want to have “the talk.” The management had been going over Cole’s coworkers in similar fashion, each of the security guards being invited into the meat freezer for what they said were “wifi” reasons. Then they’d slam shut the heavy metal door, and the fans would kick on, and they’d be “safe” to have a private conversation. Cole had heard about it all the way from the mainland, how cold it could get in there.

  There were other rumors, too, about men who’d end up staying in the freezer indefinitely. Working as muscle for Blackwoods Security Corp meant that Cole was literally a piece of meat for them. He was treated and paid as such, and for the most part, he was fine with it. But living like a piece of meat and going out like one were two entirely different things.

  Before stepping into that freezer, he wanted to be damn sure which outcome was more likely.

  He’d start off by slipping away from the cargo ship, and Port Hilo, the second his feet touched the steady ground of Hawaii. Too many people knew his face at the harbor. Even from a distance, his lumbering walk screamed “Cole.” So he’d disguised himself the best he could with big aviator sunglasses and a LA Dodgers hat pulled close. But there was nothing he could do about that walk. When he tried, he felt utterly stupid and more exposed than before. He moved slower, his strides unnaturally shortened, his hips tucked awkwardly. Halfway through the harbor compound was as far as he could go without drawing too much attention—or pulling a hamstring. The rest of the way was flat-out Cole, as fast as he could, past the gates and into one of the curbside taxis.

  He ordered the driver to take him five blocks away, quickly, to a seedy dive bar on the outskirts of the tourist sector.

  “I was gonna offer you a lei,” the driver said, stuffing a neon pink garland back with the rest in his glove compartment. He didn’t explain the change of heart, but Cole knew it had something to do with how he’d talked to the driver, and where he’d asked to be dropped off. It wasn’t exactly the tourist vibe. That bit of exuberance had worn off years ago, along with the rest of his old naiveties about the world and the shipping industry that made it go around.

  He stepped out of the cab without a lei and without knowing exactly what to expect inside the Crow’s Nest, except its typical darkness. It was midday and they already had the neon going, the karaoke playing without a singer. Just the background tune to a song he might have heard a thousand times. Something he’d known from grocery stores and 1-800 numbers, only wordless and in the background to his conversation with Tai, a sixty-year old Vietnamese hustler who looked half his age. He grinned over the bar at Cole. One gold tooth shone in the bar light.

  “Hey, Sailor,” Tai said, laughing.

  “What did I say about calling me Sailor?” Cole pulled out a stool from under the lip of the bar and sat opposite the cagey bartender. “I’m not even a sailor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s that all from, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cole reached over the bar and grabbed a little square napkin. He dropped it in front of him and said, “Any of the guys come in here today?”

  “Your guys? No. Not yet.”

  A minute later, a rum and coke sat sweating on Cole’s napkin. He picked up the glass, with the napkin still clinging to it, and took a long sip while watching the blurry shape of Tai getting another glass ready. “No,” Cole said. “I just have time for one.”

  “Just checking on your guys?”

  “Yeah. I’ll check back a little later.”

  “I’m not sure if they’ll be here today,” Tai said.

  “I thought you just said they would.”

  Tai leaned against the bar, leaning in close to Cole. He spoke quietly. “You sure you don’t want another?”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  Tai was still close. Still quiet. “Everything alright with you, Cole?”

  Cole shrugged.

  “Because I heard it’s not.”

  “What’s not?”

  “They saying you’re quitting or something? Is that it?”

  Cole wasn’t surprised at how fast the news had traveled. It was erroneous news, but news nonetheless. “What else are they saying?” he asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Am I quitting? No. Fuck no, I’m not quitting. Who said that?”

  He started pouring Cole another drink. “I’m telling you this because I like you.”

  “I like you, too, Tai.”

  “Ice?”

  “No thanks. Who’s been talking to you?”

  “They’re all talking,” Tai said. “They say you’re flaking out.”

  Cole could only chuckle at that. He reached for his new drink.

  “Are you flaking out?”

  “I wouldn’t be in here if I were,” Cole said.

  “I have no idea what you would or wouldn’t do. I know you like rum and cokes.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. I feel like whatever I say here’s gonna get around before the day’s out.”

  Tai frowned. “I said I liked you.”

  “Then let’s just keep things quiet for a while.” He stared at his bartender, offering a little smile when the next song came on. Soft rock made even more bland by its wordlessness.

  Tai seemed immune to it. He’d probably heard it all before: the karaoke and Cole. “Is there someone after you?” he said finally. “Someone I can look out for?”

  “Sounds like they’re all after me.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Tai said. “Will you still try to work?”

  “Yeah, if I can.”

  “They think you went nuts or something. That’s all.”

  “You sure?”

  Tai shrugged and said, “Sure. We all go a little nuts. I’m nuts.”

  Cole threw a few bills on the bar top. “Do me a favor?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me know if anyone comes around for me.”

  “Want me to call you?”

  “I want you to call me.” Tai drew someone a small glass of beer.

  When Tai returned, he asked, “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, stop watering your drinks so much or you’ll make me switch to beer.”

  “You can’t do that, Sailor. There’s no profits in beer.”

  “You’re probably watering that down, too.” Cole turned around to scan the exit, making sure no one had followed him in last minute. The music was still playing. The stage, lit up but empty. “And what’s with the karaoke? Someone come by and repossess the PA system?”

  “Microphone’s dead.”

  “That’s not all that’s dead in here.”

  “Yeah,” Tai said. “You’re next.”

  When Cole turned back to the bar, he saw that Tai’s face was unsmiling. Almost cold. He nodded sharply in reply. “See you around.”

  As he walked out of the bar, Cole wondered about the probability of getting out of his latest jam—which seemed to get worse by the minute. The plan was to sneak into Hawaii undetected, or at least have his latest personal turmoil go undetected by his bosses at Blackwoods Security. But as he walked down the alley next to the Crow’s Nest, with the particular sensation of being followed, he knew that he’d failed at both.

  Cole was back in Hawaii. Loud and clear. And yes, he’d had an episode on board the Batchewana. He hadn’t done himself any favors with that one. The guys at Blackwoods Security, already on the third month of their internal investigation, had been snooping closer and closer to Cole. It was clear that they’d already suspected him due to some ill-timed utterances and his sloppier work pattern. But this ordeal on the boat could have sealed his fate.

  He was probably better off sealing it himself, going through with it, taking that last leap off the railing.

  4

  Annica

  The alley didn’t provide much cover. Annica would have to wait some time after he
set out before she could follow behind, a long way off. She hoped she was not so far back that she might lose him around a quick corner. The way he moved seemed to suggest that he’d break out in evasive action at any moment, that he knew he was being followed. Normally she was able to tail someone without being detected. Jackson at least had been good for something.

  She clung to the midday shadows like a determined predator, stalking her prey along the walls of this narrow back alley. It was also a tactic of a determined reporter, hot on the trails of an important story. Only she wasn’t sure what was waiting for her at the end of the alley, if it would end up being a story at all. A dead end, maybe. A waste of time, leaving the cargo ship and taking a chance on this strange man.

  They called him Sharky. A nickname from the boat, something she learned onboard after the rumors began to swirl with the swirling seas of the storm. It didn’t match anything in her contacts. Nor did it seem to make any outward sense. Sharky. What the hell kind of name was Sharky?

  She supposed it was fitting of someone who worked the high seas.

  It its uniqueness, it was also fitting.

  She’d first seen him on the ship, hanging over the railing, a look of calm on his face, while his shipmates tried desperately to drag him back in. His actions in the last two days, even his face when she was lucky enough to catch a glance, screamed story. It screamed follow me. It appealed to her instincts as an investigator. And as a woman. His eyes, him, screaming: help.

  It could be debated whether stalking him down an alley would be of any help to him. So far, it was definitely of no help to her or her purpose for being in Hawaii. She was supposed to meet with Jackson a half hour ago. He wanted his update. But not having much of an update to speak of made it all the easier for Annica to abandon the meeting. The mystery man helped this, too. Cole had never showed, and so Jackson and his meetings could wait. But this man, and whatever story he had to tell, couldn’t.

  Neither could she lag back in this alley. Annica suddenly realized that she had slipped back too far, playing it too conservatively. Sharky had opened up almost a block between them, far too much of a lead. So much that when he finally took a turn, leaving the alley to connect back with the streets, she was forced into a run.

  As she huffed over the uneven surface, her heart thumped loudly, almost in her throat. Part excitement and part poor conditioning. She tried to swallow it all back, push the pain of her lungs out of her mind. What she really needed was to inject some energy into her legs. They’d become lifeless, atrophied from five straight days of sea travel. Of mostly sitting. Sea legs all wobbly on land.

  Come on and run!

  She took off, finally, past the pallets and dumpsters and the row of smoking cooks on break. From what Annica could tell, she was a whole thirty seconds behind her target. It felt like a lifetime, him having a lifetime of choices since turning the corner and disappearing from view. He could have already made his way into one of the buildings, maybe even the restaurant of the smoking cooks.

  Her worries were temporarily silenced, and then amplified—at the buzzing sensation along her thigh. It wasn’t some struggling artery or muscle ready to explode, but her phone’s silenced ring. It would have to wait. The call kept vibrating as she turned the corner, as she looked up at a sign above the first door. Japanese letters. A ramen restaurant. She looked back to street level, further down the sidewalk through throngs of pedestrians. Tourists. Human traffic getting in the way of her story. Fuck. Where was he?

  She couldn’t afford to lose him, not after her blown meeting and her sudden and surprising emotional attachment to this stranger. This diversion. But in her heart, she knew he had something to do with the smuggling scandal.

  She started moving again, a little slower this time. She needed her vision to be steady and sharp. She needed to see him. But there was nothing down the sidewalk to suggest a fleeing man. No tall shoulders looming over the heads of pedestrians as he marched on to God knows where. She looked to the other side of the street, her gaze sweeping across, and then down the block, until she finally spotted him at the last second. He’d become a distant flicker of a shape, a split-second ghost image racing inside one of the buildings. She picked up her pace and followed after him, whoever he was and wherever he’d gone.

  She arrived below a nondescript office building with a small and ineffectual magenta-and-green logo above the door. There were no words, nor any other signage. The building itself looked old, all-brick in the otherwise modern-looking downtown. It was a little unnerving, with how cold and industrial his destination looked up close. Something emanated from the walls, deathly vibes seeping from the place as if it were some type of urban slaughterhouse. Even the smell of it. Death. She’d known that from an old animal rights story she’d reported on for her college paper, the younger and more innocent Annica barely able to enter the security gates of a West Virginia pork-processing center. This place, in comparison, was too centrally located, unless it was the disguised final destination for the captured wild boar of Hawaii. Or nosy reporters.

  But she wasn’t a reporter. Annica kept telling herself that. She was a business prospect coming in off the street.

  She could bullshit at least a few minutes worth of snooping. Annica brushed the bangs off her eyes and then strolled through the door like she owned the place. That was the trick, to be in a rush, and always half annoyed.

  But there was no one at the front desk she could probe for information. No questions asked of her, no discerning faces. Instead, the lobby was empty and deadly silent. Not even office space muzak rang through it—a blessing in any other circumstance.

  She walked by the long reception desk, tempted to drag a finger through the dust. How long had this place been empty? It was odd for such a centrally located property. It stank to hell of a false front for some illegal enterprise. So much so that she wondered if she really wanted to find out what was behind the facade. That thought left as soon as it arrived. As with Sharky, she wanted answers. But she also knew they might come with a price. She would have to be smart about how she stalked around his “office,” first scanning the exits, noting them in case she’d have to leave in a hurry. There was a door behind the front desk, and another behind her to the outside street. Her only options, then, were to go deeper inside, or to just leave it altogether.

  It wasn’t too late to leave. She could just walk out and refocus on her actual job here in Hawaii. No one would have to know about it, especially Jackson. Not even the man she’d been following. It could be a good, safe little non-story. But something in her needed to stay, to solve the mystery. If she could just solve it, then she’d be satisfied. Then she could move on.

  The tactical part of Annica’s brain re-engaged with her surroundings, analyzing the space. It was still empty and safe. But if that changed, there were a few helpful barriers to use for cover. A large planter she could run and duck behind. Even better, a stack of cubicle partitions in the near corner. It was the first thing she thought of when she heard the muffled thuds of footsteps. The sound of the approach, like a shock wave, pushed her across the room without her even having to think, her body safely concealed behind the particleboard. Between segments, there was a small crack she could peer through, and after the door opened, she could follow him across the room.

  It wasn’t Sharky, but another tall and brooding figure. The place was beginning to seem more like a slaughterhouse than real estate. This man here, with his huge, Neanderthal-like bald head, could surely offer better advice on how to kill things than how to maximize third quarter profits for your small business. She watched him lumber over to the main doorway, leaving the way she’d come in.

  Alone again. It was time to make her move. She sneaked back around the partitions and made her way behind the desk, hoping the doorknob would be unlocked. Annica let out a small sigh of relief when it turned in her hand. She opened the door and walked into the darkness behind it. She pushed forward, ready to have an indignant response to
anyone who’d confront her. Again, she felt the rightful trespasser. Just another day, coming in to work. Only she really had no idea what the work was all about. Looking around at her options, she had several closed doors at the start of a long and dim hallway. Maybe if she moved forward, there would be some open doors to peer through. Maybe she would find him inside one of them sitting at a desk just waiting for her.

  But what the hell would she say?

  Crap. She hadn’t thought that far. Her original goal was just to see where he had gone. Now that she was inside his destination, would she really approach him?

  For once, the usually prepared and cerebral Annica was blazing a trail without a map, leading the story instead of following close behind. She was making the news, herself. She just hoped that the story would appear on the front page rather than the obituary section. That creeping sensation of death inched through her spine again, moving as slowly as she did through the hall. A cold blast of air-conditioning washed down onto her from the ceiling. Still, the smell of something pungent, a rotten, acidic smell. Rotting fruit and gasoline the further she went inside the building. Annica turned the corner, almost not wanting to, preparing herself to crash into whatever was behind it. A door. A locked door, her hand struggling with the knob.

  Panic set in, icy and swift.

  First, she rushed back to the original door, hoping it wasn’t similarly locked. Fuck it, it definitely was. She was trapped in a small L-shaped hallway with the cold, stinking air blasting down on to her.

  She zipped along the hall, trying every door along the way, all of them similarly locked, all the way until she realized where she really was: her trap. Here was the kill zone she’d been worrying about, and she’d stepped right into it like a hog going to slaughter. And like a cornered animal, she panicked, whirling around in a frenzy looking for an escape that wasn’t there. No doors were open to her. No way out.