by Jason Kasper
I had no reason to think any of these precautions were instituted in honor of the case chained to my wrist; it had just flown from the Dark Continent to North America with no more security than any other commercial flight would have garnered. Likewise, I had de-boarded the jet at San Antonio and been hastily escorted onto the current twin-engine plane without any sign of extraordinary protective measures. Now, at a remote location known only to those who had a reason to go there, the only possible explanation for a sudden army of protectors was the imminent arrival of a known traitor .
I vaguely wondered which threat had gotten me in the end. Was it the young woman posing as the Silver Widow, or was it Ian? Maybe the Handler’s purview extended beyond what I’d conceived and both individuals had been under his employ all along. Jais had said the Outfit was at the bottom of a very long and mysterious food chain, and he had known far more about the larger organization than I ever would. Maybe I’d just negotiated a complex web of extraordinary physical risk to obtain the case while unknowingly acting as a pawn marked for death, my destiny preordained as part of a vast and unfathomable game that I’d lost before it began .
At least I’d been successful in killing the team’s immediate betrayer before my end .
None of it would matter in a few minutes, I reminded myself. However I’d been exposed, whether by Ian or the Somali woman or some factor I wasn’t considering, upon landing I would be tortured as badly as Luka in the basement. So be it. I had no secrets to protect other than Ian, provided he wasn’t working against me in the first place. And despite his voiced concerns that he and the Indian would be hunted down and killed if I failed, I was certain that both men had taken enough precautions to ensure their own safety long before I ever traveled to Newark to make initial contact with the Outfit .
I would resist my interrogation nonetheless, my contempt absolute for the forces that reduced me to an animalistic level of day-to-day survival that began not in Africa but the moment I arrived to the Dominican Republic. I would resist them out of spite, even though I deserved every excruciating consequence of my failed attempt to infiltrate the Handler’s organization. The sum total of any torture they could conjure would represent a well-deserved and long-evaded sentence for the deaths of Karma and the team .
My body jolted as the plane’s wheels bounced hard on the runway. The engines quieted as we slowed for taxi, and I released a weary breath into the cabin as my fatigued body sagged in the seat .
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and ran through a flash flood of visualization—from meeting Boss’s team to murdering their betrayer six months later in a desolate place one hemisphere and ten time zones away .
I opened my eyes and watched the hangar door roll into view as the plane’s engines slowed to idle. And in that moment, despite my impending torture and death, my singular thought was this :
Fuck it .
I stood and shuffled to the rear door, the strain of the case’s weight once again pulling at my left arm. Opening the airstair, I lowered the steps down to the tarmac; the outside air felt aberrantly cold as it flowed inside the plane and chilled me to my core .
Taking a final breath, I defiantly emerged from the plane .
I searched the white walls of the hangar while inhaling exhaust from the plane’s engines. The ceiling was crisscrossed with metal beams that supported the weight of an enormous American flag, its drooping ripples accumulating wide arcs of dust .
An unlikely assemblage of people stood in a loose semicircle inside the hangar, their ranks punctuated by a pair of pickups with open tailgates facing me .
Sergio and Cancer were most immediately recognizable, along with a handful of faces I vaguely recognized from my previous training at the Complex. This time, there was double their number of men and women I didn’t know. Most looked like fighters by nature, with the startling exception of two unfit, academic-looking people standing awkwardly in civilian clothes—one a male with thin glasses and the other a female with frumpy long hair who could have fit in as a librarian anywhere in the world. Their eyes were fixed on the case rather than on me, their excited expressions standing out in sharp relief against the stony faces of the warriors around them .
A huge man rushed up the plane’s stairs toward me, and it took me a moment to recognize him as Viggs. I stood still and waited for him to press a pistol into my throat. This time, I knew, he would drown me for good. He would cut this thing off my arm and put me back in the steel drum .
Instead, Viggs nodded and edged around me, moving into the aircraft cabin .
The pressure mounted in my mind as I lowered myself to a knee, dropping my free hand to the floor to grasp a single nylon handle at my feet .
We shuffled down the stairs together, my balance perilous between the case hanging from my left hand and the 210-pound body bag holding Caspian that Viggs and I carried between us .
Upon reaching the concrete floor, the man I knew as Cancer approached me to accept the handle of the body bag. No sooner had I handed it off to him than Sergio stepped in front of me, placing a hand firmly on my shoulder and guiding me toward the people standing directly under the American flag .
His voice was grim. “Time to give up the case .”
I said nothing. The librarian and her counterpart rushed forward, the woman procuring a thin metal ring holding two studded steel keys .
As she inserted one into the cuff at my left wrist, my restraint popped. The man took the case from me without a word and eagerly rushed away with his compatriot. They vanished behind a row of warriors, making their way into one of the waiting pickups .
Sergio’s eyes cast a contemptuous gaze upon mine, and his tone seemed to be testing me as he said, “David, I’m sorry about Jais .”
I nodded as the pulse hammered in my brain. “So am I, Sergio. I need to shower before my debriefing. After that, do me a favor and have a bottle of Woodford and a glass delivered to Bay Six. You can bill me for it .”
He shook his head without expression. “That’s not going to happen. There has been a lot of suspicion about how you survived and Jais didn’t .”
I looked around the hangar, observing the patently unforgiving stares of the bystanders surrounding me .
Then I said, “There should be, because I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself .”
“You need to start explaining, David. I can’t help you if you’re not going to tell me the truth .”
I cast my gaze around the hangar once more. “Then I need to say something that stays between us .”
Sergio nodded curtly, his aftershave vaguely detectable over the harsh winter notes of earthy desert mixed with the dusty concrete hangar floor. “Do it quickly, because you don’t have much time .”
I leaned toward him and whispered, “I think Jais knew something that he shouldn’t have, and I’m not going to compromise it any further. The circumstances of my survival are something I will only speak of in person, directly to the Handler .”
Sergio sniffed hard, his upper lip curling as he surveyed the far wall. “You’ve got time to shower and change, but that’s it. Surely you noticed the army outside .”
“Of course. I thought it was for the case .”
“The army’s not out there for the case; it’s out there for his plane. He wants to receive your debrief in person .”
I tried to stop the grin threatening to creep across my face. “Make that two glasses .”
His severe eyes swung to mine. “This isn’t something to be flippant about, David. If you speak to him like you did in the interview room — ”
I gently touched his bicep with my left hand, noticing that my wrist was red and raw after the removal of the case that I had fought to the death to protect but would likely never see again .
Smiling, I said, “Relax, Sergio. He’s going to love me .”
THE DAVID RIVERS SERIES CONTINUES …
Book 3, DARK REDEMPTION , is available now .
Never miss a new release
- sign up for the Jason Kasper Reader List :
Join the Jason Kasper Reader List HERE
About the Author
JASON KASPER is the Amazon Bestselling author of the David Rivers series. He served in the United States Army for fifteen years, beginning as a Ranger private in 2001 and ending as a Special Forces captain and team commander in 2016. Jason is a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and was an avid marathon and ultramarathon runner, skydiver, and BASE jumper, all of which inspire his fiction .
He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Cary, North Carolina .
Visit www.base1178.com .
