DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “I think I’ve already answered enough,” she said. “More than enough.”

  “You’re not trying to hold us here, are you?” Annica said. Cole hid a smile. His woman was smart. His woman. The phrase slid through his mind with no resistance.

  The other woman didn’t say anything. He kept searching for the man’s identity, checking his wet and darkened clothes. He checked his pockets, ignoring the blood. No wallet or ID.

  “I already checked him for weapons,” the woman said.

  Cole looked at his face again, wondering how he could open the man’s mouth. Tommy has a chipped front tooth.

  The face alone, though, the shape of it, was Tommy. He was dark and red and disfigured, and still breathing. Would he really be here? Why?

  Was it really Tommy?

  Cole whispered his name into the man’s ear.

  The woman with the gun moved toward him. “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing,” Cole said, cringing as he slid his fingertips between the man’s wet, loose lips.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He peeled the man’s top lip back . . .

  “Why are you doing that?”

  . . . exposing a set of teeth with a large chip missing from the front left one.

  Cole recoiled, his breath flooding out in one quick and loud whoosh.

  Tommy.

  Why Tommy?

  Was he trying to help him?

  “I’m guessing you know him?” the woman said, leaning against a tree now, several feet back, uphill.

  “He’s losing blood?” Cole said, his mind reeling out of control. “Is that it? What else?”

  “I don’t think he drowned,” she said. “He was conscious when I found him. But weak.”

  Cole put the back of his hand in front of Tommy’s nose and felt a weak current of air.

  “He couldn’t move,” the woman said. “I was worried to mess with him in case of his injuries, but I didn’t want another wave to come over him.”

  “No,” Cole said, not feeling particularly relieved that Tommy been “rescued.” What the hell had he been doing?

  “He wouldn’t survive another wave,” she said.

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “So you’re working for Jackson, right?” Annica said. “You’ve been watching over the house?” The woman didn’t answer. “And he sent you out to track this guy down?”

  “His name is Tommy,” Cole said.

  “How do you know him?” Annica asked.

  “We rent a house together,” Cole said. “I warned him to pack up and lay low for a few days. And I guess he was . . . I don’t know.”

  “He was trying to kill you,” the woman said.

  Cole didn’t hear it right. He couldn’t have.

  “I thought you couldn’t tell us anything,” Cole said, suddenly wishing that she was the one on the ground unconscious and covered in blood. “And what if the roles were really reversed? What if you were the intruder and he was the . . . security guard?”

  Was she smiling? She was fucking smiling.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

  “Do you have a radio? How are you communicating with your boss?”

  “I lost it. But I’m wearing a transponder.”

  Cole turned to Annica. She shrugged. “Does that sound like Jackson?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Annica said. “It sort of does. I think she’s telling the truth.”

  “No,” Cole said.

  “I know it might be hard to hear it.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense.” Cole looked back at the pathetic pile of Tommy. No. He couldn’t have been out here stalking him and Annica. Helping, maybe. Cole, feeling an all new rush of stupid rage, said to her, “How do you know he wasn’t just . . . How do you know he was up to no good?”

  There was a soft thudding sound of someone walking down the trail, from the top. From the road. And then a man’s voice cut through the strewn foliage, answering, “Because we had him under surveillance.”

  Cole could see the shape coming down, closer.

  “Oh, my God,” Annica said. “It’s Jackson.”

  “Kalani,” Jackson said, “it’s okay. You can ease up.”

  Immediately, the woman, Kalani, holstered the gun, slipping it somewhere inside the waistband of her shorts. Cole looked back up to the path and saw Jackson, followed by Macy.

  “Are you guys hurt?” Jackson asked. “We saw what happened.”

  “We got roughed up a little bit,” Annica said. “But we’re okay.”

  Kalani said, “He’s not doing so well,” motioning to Tommy.

  “Drowned?” Jackson asked.

  “Blood loss,” Kalani said. “I found him in the rocks. Lava rocks.”

  “I’ve got my truck just up on the road,” Jackson said, stepping down to Tommy. He placed a hand on Cole’s shoulder. “You alright? Can you carry him with me?”

  “He knows him,” Annica said to Jackson.

  “He’s my friend,” Cole said. “Housemates.”

  “I know,” Jackson said. “That’s where we followed him from. I’m not sure if he was ever your friend, though. Come on, grab his legs.”

  Cole was frozen.

  “Come on,” Jackson said. “Either way, we need to at least get him medical attention. Right?”

  He was slow to start moving to Tommy’s legs, his hands grasping the man’s ankles and lifting while his brain sluggishly accepted the possibility that his friend may have been tracking him through Hilo, and now through the darkness of the jungle. And damn it, through the waves and into the lava rocks that might have possibly killed him.

  Through the jungle again now, uphill, with Tommy’s legs bundled under Cole’s arms. They carried him up to the road, limp and bouncing until they slid him in the back bed of a pickup truck. Someone shined a flashlight and Cole wished they hadn’t.

  “Oh, God,” came a woman’s voice. Annica’s. Cole felt her at his side, holding on to his arm and saying softer, “I’m sorry.”

  He shook her off and immediately felt badly about it. He also felt badly about Tommy and whatever had happened to him.

  Another soft female voice came from nearby. From Kalani. “I tried to help,” she said.

  Cole looked at her and nodded. “Thanks.” He didn’t know a thing about her. But if Jackson was cool with her . . .

  Tucker was behind the wheel. He stuck his head out and told everyone to hop in or stay the hell away from the truck. Macy took up shotgun while Jackson and Kalani crawled up into the bed of the truck. That left Cole and Annica, and his dirt bike.

  “I’ll meet you at the house,” Cole told him before turning to Annica. “You okay?”

  “Are you?”

  The truck tires squealed a chunk out of the road, engine roaring. Taillights shrinking. Annica shrinking in Cole’s embrace.

  22

  Annica

  One relief in all of this was that Ethan could be kept occupied. He had a story to cover now. And there was also a juicy subplot for him—or so he’d probably like to think. Annica could tell, watching him sitting close and serious with Kalani, Ethan taking notes without breaking eye contact with the young security guard. Annica could tell things were quickly becoming personal for him. Better Kalani than her.

  “Looks like Ethan has a new angle,” Jackson said, holding a towel. “The water’s back and running again.”

  Annica turned to him and took the towel into her arms. It felt warm and clean. She was careful not to let it touch too much of her beach-covered body. She was warm and most definitely not clean.

  Jackson said, “Maybe she’ll take the heat off you?”

  “I thought the tsunami would have done that,” she said. “But he’s tenacious.”

  “In hunting down a story?”

  “And other things,” Annica said. “Where did you get her?”

  “From the island.”

  “I
mean, how? You put an ad in the paper?”

  “Wherever I go, I’ve always got my feelers out for extra help. It’s rare that someone passes all the tests, but when they do, I give them a call. Normally it’s just to see them in person, to see if they’re qualified. But this time, we actually needed the help, and we needed it in a hurry.”

  “I’m not sure if Cole thinks she’s qualified.”

  Jackson shrugged and said, “I heard there were some pleasantries.”

  “He doesn’t trust her.”

  “It’s understandable. But I don’t trust his friend, this Tommy person. I was happy to just dump him off at the hospital.”

  “Cole wants to go.”

  “He can’t,” Jackson said. “And we can’t let him.”

  She tried to imagine a world where Cole would ask for that sort of permission, where they would be in charge of letting or not letting him do whatever his mind made up. A world like that didn’t exist.

  “What’s wrong?” Jackson said. “Worried you can’t convince him for us?”

  Annica shrugged. There was a joke to be made, but she didn’t go for it. She looked at how nice and clean the towel looked. A shower was so needed . . .

  “He’ll believe us,” Jackson said, “when we can show him the proof. When it’s all said and done.”

  “But how can you believe this girl so easily?”

  “Kalani? We’ve vetted her. Background checks.”

  “In hours?”

  “Days. Her sister works at the Khan facility. There’s a personal connection.”

  “Isn’t that a risk, too?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s different. She’s the good sheep. Her sister, on the other hand . . . well, she’s the secretary of the captain. We all know what that entails.”

  Annica didn’t. Well, she had a clue, but nothing made much sense. She also wasn’t curious. For the first time in her investigative career, she was happy to not know. “So, background checks?”

  “We’ve also had Sam take a look at her,” Jackson said. “You know about Sam, right?”

  She knew about Sam. Also known as the human lie-detector.

  “We got her in a video call with him,” Jackson said. “Little did she know her vitals were also being monitored. She’s clean.”

  “You gave her a drug test, too?”

  “No,” Jackson said with a laugh. “But she’s no liar. Cole’s friend, on the other hand . . .”

  “I’ll talk to him tonight.”

  Jackson was smiling at her.

  “What?” Annica said.

  “Nothing. I was going to talk about it to Cole in my little speech, but maybe I’ll just leave that up to you. I think you speak his language.”

  Annica thought so, too. At least she hoped she still did. In the events of the last hour, so much had changed. She hoped the way he felt about her wasn’t one of them.

  She sat beside Cole during the briefing, careful not to let her hand wander to his body, to his leg, or into his hand. She wanted to feel him again, to let him know she was there. That she was more than just a briefing attendee, or even a teammate. But she settled for holding the towel that sat in her lap. After the proceedings, she would take a shower and then find her guest room outside. She thought of the bed there, clean and warm and in the safety of a mosquito net. And in the safety of Jackson’s defense team. She thought of sharing the bed with Cole. Her mind drifted in and out as Jackson spoke.

  “. . . concluded that it was a very small earthquake. Well, an event big enough to shift all that water. But small for Hawaii. The tsunami, too. It actually hit our beach the hardest because of how steep the local ocean shelf is. But as you can see, it hardly made it a few feet up the cliffs. I’m sure the homeowner here would be happy to hear that. I know he won’t be too happy about his guests, how many of us, and what we do for a living. But hopefully this will be all wrapped up soon. Hopefully we can . . .”

  She hoped it would wrap up and set her free. Free with Cole. Free to explore the possibilities.

  “. . . moving away from the phone mission. In fact, we’re dropping that completely. We don’t have time for it, to sit back and wait for the data to come trickling in. I’ve talked to Cole about this, and he’s willing to step up for us, to breach enemy lies and come away with one of the captain’s laptops. That’s huge. We’re also in a rush because our intel has picked up on some emerging threats. Not threats to us, but to the facility. A rival operation is plotting some sort of attack, most likely with explosives blended into a shipment. It can be any shipment, at any time. And speaking of any time . . . USGS is saying that earthquake was just an appetizer. So who knows what’s coming our way. Earthquakes, tsunamis, bombs . . . At least we know we got our own weapon on the job. Take a bow, Cole.”

  There was a quiet round of applause for Cole. Golf claps filling the room. Annica nudged him playfully until he smiled in return. Cole, finally, with an aww-shucks face, said, “Thanks, guys. It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Jackson said. “It’s only the basis for this whole offensive here. You and Annica, combined. I didn’t like it at the time, but I’m seeing how well you guys work together. And I think tonight proved that.”

  Another round of cheers.

  “My only question is,” Jackson said, “will you be ready to go tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” Cole said. “What else would I be doing?”

  “And how about you, Kalani?”

  Like Cole and Annica, Kalani had slipped into a change of clothes. She’d already had her shower. She’d already had her meet-and-greet with the rest of the team. And apparently she’d already had her background check. All that was left now was for her to join the mission tomorrow in the last offensive.

  “I didn’t want to say anything before you did,” Jackson said. “About your sister.”

  Kalani turned directly to Cole and said, “You know her. She’s . . . the secretary.”

  Cole nodded, a sad look on his face.

  Jackson said, “In a lot of ways, tomorrow is a rescue mission.”

  Now it was Kalani’s turn to nod solemnly.

  “So we need all hands on deck.”

  “Jackson,” Ethan said, “I was going to bring it up with you privately, but . . . well, it seems appropriate now.”

  Jackson waited for him to continue.

  Ethan said, “I’m ready.”

  “You’re ready?”

  “I’m tired of just sitting around and watching the action.”

  “I can see that,” Jackson said.

  “I’m tired of writing about it after the fact.”

  Annica understood the feeling. Though she herself felt a little done with making news. Unlike Ethan, she wouldn’t mind taking a back seat, but she was proud of him for this, for standing up like this. And it was more than just foolish, youthful hunger for attention. The look in his eyes. The glare. The concentration. He was ready.

  Jackson asked, “So what are you proposing?”

  “I want to make the story.”

  “How?”

  “Any way I can. Any way I can help.”

  Jackson nodded.

  “He’s already vetted,” Annica said with a smile. “No need to have Sam talk to him or anything else. I’ve seen his true character already. I’ve worked with him in the trenches.”

  “The trenches of journalism is a little different than DARC,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve been in those trenches, too,” Ethan said. “Maybe not DARC Ops, but it was with a gun and body armor.”

  “I believe you,” Jackson said. “No Sam necessary.”

  “No tryout?”

  Jackson smiled and said, “You’ve already had your trial, Soldier.”

  Annica hadn’t noticed, but through fatigue or attraction or an extra helping of both, she had slowly let her head lower down until it was resting against Cole’s shoulder. He hadn’t moved away. She stayed there, working to have some control over a growing smile.

  23<
br />
  Cole

  Gentlemen last. He waited for the last shower, when the hot water had run out and it was just the hard-breathing frigidity of a cold shower. He didn’t mind. He made it quick and efficient, thinking of Annica the whole time. Had it been a warm shower, and had he been still thinking of Annica—which would have been a guarantee—he would have perhaps wasted all the hot water himself. Taking a little too long, in her memory, on the dirtiest parts.

  He could have used the release. He felt that now, the impending doom of his horniness returning as he crept back into the darkened guest house. He watched as a sliver of light spilled onto the bed, onto Annica. She had been waiting there for him. On top of the sheets, her back turned. Knees tucked up to chest. Was she sleeping?

  Oh, God, he could have used the release . . .

  It felt like he was bringing a loaded gun into bed with them. As if his gun had magically appeared from the Pacific. A different, softer kind. A harder kind. One they could both use. He crept over with that feeling already starting up in his shorts, the warming and tingling sensation of awoken desires, of anticipation . . . But for what?

  She was sleeping.

  She needed her sleep.

  He might have needed something else.

  Cole opened the mosquito netting and crept in, tying the mesh behind him without a sound. He even tried breathing quietly to not disturb her any further.

  He took a moment before resting a knee on the large air mattress, still standing at the foot of the bed, watching her sleep in Mira’s clothes. A big T-shirt. Small pair of shorts. No sheets. He watched the movement of her breathing, her shoulder rising and falling. Hair draped over. He looked down to her firm backside. How could he get any sleep next to that?

  It might be his most difficult mission yet. Certainly his hardest.

  Before he could climb into bed, Annica turned around. She was smiling, relaxed as if she’d been expecting him there.

  She brushed her hair to the side. “I don’t care what they think anymore.”

  “Think about what?”

  “About us.”

  He liked hearing that word come out of her mouth. Us. They indeed were an “us.” The details were still unclear as to just how much of an “us” they really were. But Cole was glad to start there. Together.