“I’m not sure if he was an assassin,” Macy said. “Maybe just a thief. I’ve been running into a few of those lately. Kinda get them confused.”
“Bad guy either way.”
“Not always.” She thought about the desperation of the average Angolan. “It’s just how it is out here.”
Tucker nodded. He looked around him, and into the mirrors before putting his foot down and accelerating into the dusty night. The wind had swept a big brown cloud into the city.
“So what was your plan?” she said.
“I came here to take you to Johannesburg.”
“To Kyle?”
“To the team,” Tucker said.
“What team?”
He looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Really?”
“I don’t know of any team in Johannesburg.”
“You never heard of DARC Ops?”
The cyber security company from Washington. The group responsible for disrupting the initial plans to kill her. She’d more than heard about them; she was grateful for their existence.
Tucker kept alternating glances between the road and his phone, thumbing through something. The screen glowed under his strong jaw. “Yeah, I thought you’d know about them.”
She watched him operate in the dark. She thought of his rental car, his technology and tactics, his skills in finding her. What could have brought him to Angola? Was it DARC Ops? “Is that why you’re here?” she said. “Are you . . .?”
“Funny how that worked out, huh?”
“I just can’t believe it. What do you know about cyber security?”
“That’s almost a front. Of course, they have experts, hackers, but a lot of our work is black ops. I started with them three months ago, just ground support for various jobs. They fly me all over.”
“Why you? I mean, how did you get involved?”
“You don’t believe me, huh?”
“I believe you.”
“You’re just amazed they picked up a bum like me?”
“No.” Aside from that, Macy didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t ready to go down memory lane. Eventually, she’d have to trudge through it with him. In the back of her mind, even well before Syria, she’d always planned on it, somehow. And here, incredibly, sitting next to him after ten years, she finally had the chance. Only she couldn’t wrap her head around it.
He continued, a grin on his face. “A reject cop like me?”
Macy turned to face him, her face feeling hot. “You don’t have to make it so obvious.”
“Make what obvious?”
“That you’re enjoying this,” Macy said. “Like the scorned girlfriend who wants to find her ex after five years, showing off her new engagement ring.”
His grin had melted away. “If I remember correctly, you’re the scorned girlfriend.”
Macy huffed and slumped back against her seat.
“Not even girlfriend,” he said. “Just scorned.”
She looked out her window. “So what’s in South Africa? Johannesburg. What’s so special about it?”
“Our team arrived yesterday morning for a mission. Completely separate from whatever this is.”
“Okay.”
“But when Kyle had news about you, your whereabouts in Luanda, I just knew I had to do something. It was my idea, this whole thing.”
Macy sat quietly, feeling, ever so slightly, like an idiot.
Tucker continued, “I left the group, took a charter jet out here. I packed my bags and flew out within an hour of hearing about your story.” His voice had softened. His face, too. There was something fragile about it, the texture of his skin, the way he held his mouth. He looked almost mournful. “Obviously I wasn’t really prepared. It was just sort of a reaction. Like an instinct.”
She studied his face through the dark. Then she looked at his hands, both of them wrapped around the wheel.
He sighed. “I didn’t even think it through. I probably should have.”
She stayed quiet, studying the road in front of their headlights.
“You know,” Tucker said. “This is as hard for me as it is for—”
The car jerked, the brakes engaging as the car lurched and then slowed to a stop behind a long queue of traffic that emerged from the dust at the last minute. Up ahead was a Luanda Police pickup truck parked to the side. It had its blue and red flashers on. An officer was outside of it, talking to each car as it rolled up beside him and stopped.
“Oh shit,” Tucker said. “What’s this?”
“Looks like a checkpoint,” she said in a calm voice.
“Yeah, but why?”
She had seen plenty of checkpoints in Luanda. Though she’d never been stuck by one yet. Macy watched the officer walk up the driver’s side of a white van, looking in, and then holding his hands on the bottom of the window frame as he talked to—or possibly interrogated—the occupants.
Tucker, his voice not as calm Macy’s, said, “Do you think they’re looking for us?”
“Aren’t they always?”
“I mean, because of the hotel.”
“I mean because of me,” Macy said. “Should we turn around?”
“No, that’d be worse. It’ll attract too much attention.”
“Well, it looks like we’re already about to have some.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Tucker said.
“You will?” It was pretty cavalier of him, to waltz into Luanda not knowing anything about the people or the street codes, not knowing what a landmine sign is or what a checkpoint meant, and to have him sit here now and “take care of it.” Take care of her.
She had become used to taking care of herself since Syria. She made it this far with that, with just her, so why change things up now?
“I feel like I’m already dragging you into trouble,” she said.
“It’s no trouble.”
They were next in line.
9
Macy
“Tucker, are you sure?”
“Yep,” he said, reaching into his pant pockets. “Just stay quiet.”
Macy was used to staying quiet. Staying quiet was how she survived for so long. What she wasn’t used to, was hearing someone else tell her when to do it. She kept her eyes on him. “Are you really sure you can—”
Tucker pulled the car up quickly and stopped next to the officer. He rolled the window down and listened to the officer’s foreign language.
“Hi,” Tucker said in reply, his voice slow and a dopey smile on his face.
“Olá,” the officer said. “Carteria?”
Tucker shook his head. “I don’t speak any Portuguese or anything. I’m a tourist.”
The officer hunched down closer, and said it louder: “Carteira, por favor.”
“What? I don’t know.”
“Your license,” Macy said. When Tucker shot her a glare, she said it again, “He wants to see your papers, Dear.”
“Oh, is that right, Sweetie?”
“Yes, Dear. Papers.” Macy looked at the officer’s bored face and smiled politely. “Isn’t that right? Papers por favor?”
“Sí, sí,” Tucker said, going back into his pockets.
“Não,” Macy said. “Sí is Spanish. Sim is Portuguese.”
“Ohhhh,” Tucker flicked open his wallet and looked inside. Macy could see a large stack of fresh American bills inside the fold.
“Sim, sim,” the officer said, watching Tucker thumb through the cash.
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” Tucker said. “No problema.”
“Problemas,” Macy said.
The officer was smiling now.
“Sim,” Tucker said, folding up a large stack of fifties and hiding it under his Virginia driver’s license. He held it out of the window and slid both into the officer’s palm. “Não problemas?”
The officer smiled and said, “Sim, não problemas.” He gave Tucker his license back without even looking at it. He pocketed the money and waved them through.
“Nice going,” Macy said.
“You were supposed to stay quiet.”
“I thought you could use the help. Would have figured it out on your own?”
“Figured what out? Bribery?” Tucker steered past a smoking, broken-down car and then brought his SUV back up to speed. “It’s the one language we can all understand.”
“It goes a long way here especially.”
“Yeah. I just hope we don’t see too many more checkpoints.”
“Why?” Macy said. “Getting low on collateral?”
“Well, I’m running out of bills. What do you have? Did your sugar momma leave you with enough for the next officer?”
“I already told you about that,” Macy said. “I’m scraping.”
“Scraping by with two hotel rooms a night. And some booze, too. I saw that, in your room. It’s like you’re having a party out here.”
“Yeah, a party. That’s exactly it. That guy you shot was just coming late. Fun stuff.”
“I know, I know . . .”
“Sure.”
Tucker took a deep breath and said, “I guess I’d be hitting the bottle, too, if I had to live like that.”
“Yeah. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Sorry.”
“So are you married now?”
Tucker went to say something, but it sounded like he choked. “What?”
“Wife and kids? Dogs? Expensive sports cars?”
“Um . . . None of those.”
“Really?
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me.”
“Well . . .”
Macy slapped his arm and said, “Landmine.”
“What?”
“Landmine.” She pointed ahead. “Look at that sign right there.”
“I can hardly see anything through this dust.”
“Whenever you see that blue-and-white sign, sometimes with a skull and bones—”
“Oh that one,” he said, rocking the weight of the car from side to side as he skillfully swerved around the small metal sign. They were leaving Luanda and entering the more rural countryside where landmines were more prevalent. Leftovers from the Cold War days when Angola had its longest and most deadly civil war. The HALO Trust Company looked after the mines, and they were still finding them up to this day. It was better they find them with their detector than some kid with his leg. Or the front left tire of Tucker’s rental car.
“I drove through a bunch of those in Iraq,” Tucker said. “Only they weren’t marked off. I was sitting in a tank once and it blew the treads right off. It wasn’t that big, but the shockwave alone gave me a concussion.”
“I tried to keep tabs on you,” she said. “On what you were up to over there.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just liked knowing where you were. That got a whole lot easier when I was in the CIA. A nosy person could really misuse the agency’s resources, their access.”
“Is that what you did? Nose around through my personal life and internet history?”
“No, that’s the NSA. I was just more interested in knowing if . . . you know . . .”
“What?” he said. “If I had a girlfriend?”
“Stop.”
“Sorry.”
“I was just making sure you were still alive over there. The action was still pretty hot by the time you were deployed. I wanted to know you were okay.”
“Would you have gone and rescued me if I wasn’t?”
“Like doing what you’re doing right now?”
“It’s okay if you say no,” Tucker said. “I almost didn’t come here.” There was something about how his words sounded, something hollow, that she couldn’t believe.
“I’m glad you did,” she said.
He looked at her. Surprised, almost.
Macy couldn’t help but smile. “There, I said it. Thanks.”
“Wow,” he chuckled. “Well, that makes the whole thing worth it. Wow,” he said again.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Tucker. Always so needy.”
“Well, you’re the needy one right now. You need my help in getting the hell out of here.”
She clutched the armrest as he turned quickly, G-force pulling her toward him. She resisted and hugged tight to her side. “You still haven’t really said anything about where you’re trying to take me, and why.”
“Johannesburg,” he said.
“What about it?
“We’re stationed there.”
“And why would I want to go there?”
“Would you rather spend another night in a Luandan hotel?”
She thought it over, the dank dreariness of another cheap night in Luanda. The smell of death that seemed to linger in every room, whether it was a leftover, or a hint of what was to come for her.
“Macy, I’m not kidnapping you.”
“I know.”
“You’re free to do whatever you want. I can pull over.”
Tucker had to slow down in front a wave of humanity and bicycles. Two men emerged from the mob, both waving crowbars at each other. No one around them seemed to care.
“I can drop you off here,” he said.
“Maybe not right here.”
Tucker sighed. “Well, where?”
“How exactly do you plan to get us to South Africa?”
“As long as you know I’m not forcing you, kidnapping you, my plan is to drive to the airport and have us board our private jet.”
“DARC Ops has its own private jet?”
“We actually do, but this one isn’t it. It’s local. Jackson put it together last minute.”
“Are you sure it can take off in this?”
“In what?”
Macy checked outside again. It was dark and without streetlights so it was hard to tell about the sky, but there seemed to be a distinct haze everywhere she looked. “It might turn into a dust storm.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“So we’ll fly to Johannesburg,” Macy said. “And then what?”
“Well, I have to help wrap up our assignment, and then—”
Tucker steered carefully around another landmine sign, this time taking the curves like a seasoned Formula One driver, like he’d anticipated it the whole time. He always had been a quick learner. Tucker laughed. “This is kinda fun, isn’t it? The two of us racing through traffic. Just like old times.”
Yeah. The old times, the good times, involved her lusting after him, her sneaking glances at Tucker’s hard body during his shirtless training for the police physical-abilities test, her needing his smile, an occasional friendly hug. A lifetime ago, before she’d seen the horrors of the world, before she had learned about the horrors inside herself. That innocent girl with a crush had died, those times gone and old. It would be very difficult now for her to slip back into it. “Yeah,” she said, mustering up the effort to make her voice sound alive. Just because the old her was dead, didn’t mean Tucker had to know it.
10
Tucker
The wind rattled against the sheet-metal walls of the small airplane hangar. It got so loud that Tucker had to move their chairs next to the Learjet in the middle of the hangar. There, at least, they could talk again. But when the opportunity finally came, they sat more quietly than before. The silence, louder than before. In that silence he could still feel her energy, a vibration tingling the hairs on his forearms. It was a familiar yet unsettling energy—one he never thought he’d feel again.
Could he say something now? Something to break the silence? But his throat was slowly closing up and choking off whatever he’d thought of asking his long-lost friend.
Could he just look at her to prove to himself that it was real, that she was real, and that they were both here in an Angolan hangar?
Tucker instead fixed his gaze straight ahead through the large open entrance, through a swirling cloud of dust to the dim orange glow of the air-control tower. It was the worst dust storm he’d seen, and he’d
seen plenty in Iraq. Now and then, the wind would catch the side of the entrance and howl there like some agonized beast. Where there was sound, there would also be sand, a small clump of it building up at the entrance with the latest gust. It swept inward with a shift of wind direction, a low wave billowing inside along the floor of the hangar like ocean water fading across a beach.
A few minutes later, a tall figure emerged from the dusty darkness outside, a man walking into the hangar carrying two large bags over his shoulders. He wore a pilot’s tan-colored overalls and loud black boots as he strolled casually out of the storm and into the hangar. “Hello!” he shouted without accent, his voice echoing in the large open space.
Tucker stood and met him halfway with a firm handshake. It was a relief to have someone else join them, especially if it was the pilot that could take them out of this mess. “Think you can fly tonight?” Tucker said.
“Huh?” The pilot cocked his head to the side. “What?” And then he smiled like it had been a ridiculous question.
Tucker said, “This storm . . .”
“What about it?”
Tucker laughed with him and then stepped aside so the pilot could get to work.
Macy had stood from her chair, pacing around to the opposite side of the plane where the pilot had gone. Over the plane, and over the wind, Tucker heard her ask, “You’re gonna fly in this?”
A mumble in response. And then another shared laugh, this time nervous-sounding laughter from Macy.
When she walked around and met Tucker by the nose of the plane, her face had gone a little pale in the dim florescent lights. “What’s wrong?” Tucker said. “Scared of flying?”
“Flying through the air is fine,” she said. “I just don’t like flying through a sand dune.”
Tucker shrugged. “They get these all the time.”
“I know,” she said. “Sand storm. A haboob.”
“Ha-what?”
“Boob,” she said.
Tucker chuckled until she finally cracked a smile and then, finally, told him to shut up. He’d missed that, her daily teasing.
They walked back to the chairs and watched the pilot run through his checklist. He stood by an open engine panel, holding a clipboard, reaching into the panel occasionally to mess with something inside. Tucker had never seen a pilot do such work on a Learjet.
Dark Lies (DARC Ops Book 6) Page 5