“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 staine
d 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 like 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?”
“He’s on his way here,” Grimsby said looking down at his shoes now.
“I’ve played rugby,” the general said. “I know concussions. If he can still walk straight and see straight, then we should have no problems.”
“Sir,” said someone from the back. “Van Allen is in two hours.”
“What’s Van Allen?” Tucker asked.
“Browning and his top men are scheduled into a meeting with us,” the general said. “It’ll be a nice, long meeting.”
“Long enough to smuggle out some uranium?”
“We’re not smuggling, gentleman,” said general. “Let’s be clear on this. We are still the ruling party, and this is still a lawful act. Furthermore, it’s an act not only done as a favor to the United States, but for peace and safety around the world.” The general paused and smiled, posing for one more internal PR photograph. “So while they’re busy with us in the meeting, we expect you to be busy down at the storage facility.” He turned to Grimsby and said, “Do we have the truck ready?”
“You’re going to truck it?” Tucker said.
“Excuse me,” Macy said. “But could we fly it?” But out the corner of her eye, she saw Tucker’s wide eyes again. She suddenly felt foolish.
The general laughed and said, “You want to air transport 250 tons of uranium over the heads of 50 million people? Are you seriously asking me this?”
“No,” she said. “Maybe I’m not.”
Tucker stepped in and said, “We don’t need her for her brains, gentlemen.”
“Yes,” the general said, his eyes burning into her. “I can see that.”
“And not that either,” Tucker said. “She can break your neck with her bare hands.”
Macy wanted to wrap those hands around the general’s throat, but she kept them safely in her pockets instead.
“Sir,” Grimsby said. “Should we mobilize?”
Tucker turned to Macy. “Ready to mobilize?”
She was ready to get the hell out of that room and get on with whatever business they had in store for her. The assassins this morning were just warm-up. Breakfast.
“Good,” the general said. “I’m glad she’s so feisty. She might need it. I want her to do some counterintelligence tracking. Something with—”
Tucker cut him off. “With all due respect, sir, I was given orders to only assist in the transport. If you want to play cops and robbers, that’s up to you and your own resources.”
She didn�
��t want to play cops and robbers, period. It had been a long time since St. Louis, but the whole thing had left a sour taste in her mouth, a time when the cops became the robbers. She had crossed lines herself, too, big ones, and she was never going back there again. There was no way she was getting mixed up in someone else’s pissing match again. She was just interested in survival, and in getting the hell out of Africa.
Another decoy room, this time set up by someone else. Not her. Not even a fake name. She’d gotten used to the routine, the feeling of waiting, like a hunter in a blind. She’d gotten used to being a lure, attracting all sorts of journeymen assassins across the continent. Now, in the cramped operations building next to the uranium storage bay, she would be watching and waiting again. Only this time she herself was the decoy.
Tucker seemed to have forgotten to mention to the general that she had been attracting all manner of hit men from across Africa—as if their plan needed more attention. Macy pushed it out of her mind, like everything else. She’d gotten used to doing that, working with a clear mind regardless of how fucked up things were. The only problem, and perhaps a good problem, was Tucker.
When he returned to the room to check on her, the expression on his face had gone from sympathetic to what could only be described as annoyance. She knew Tucker wasn’t particularly a fan of her joining the mission. In his own words: the heat was already on her enough. As they’d walked out of the ops room, he’d asked her a question. “Don’t you want a vacation? Just one weekend off?”
But the truth of it was that Macy could never have any time off. She would never feel safe as long as she wasn’t in her country and surrounded by people she trusted. Hell, if she ever got there again, maybe that would be shot to shit now, too. Whatever happened, she was sure she’d never be completely safe again unless one of the people around her was Tucker. It was nice to have him back, despite the complications between them. Despite the odd shape of what could now be described as a smile when he said, “Want to take a walk?”
Dark Lies (DARC Ops Book 6) Page 11
