Darkest Hour

by Jamie Garrett

  “Use the cell tower?” She looked as apprehensive about it as she’d sounded.

  “I might be able to piggyback off its signal. I doubt anyone will look there.”

  “Okay, um . . .” She shrugged it away, and then laughed. “Can I help with anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then, can I finally interview you?”

  “Yeah.” Jackson grabbed the laptop and opened the door. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Right now?” she asked from inside the car. “Outside?”

  “It’s stopped raining.” Jackson took a few steps across the crushed-stone lot, happy to be in the fresh, moist air. Happy to be away from his hotel, and from Baltimore, and from the alleys around Veterans’ Valor. He felt good and alone there, with Annica. “It’s actually a beautiful night,” he said, loving how the rain had cleared away his dour mood. He felt so freed up and easy, and so willing now to finally talk to someone, even about Tripoli, and even to someone who’d just recently been a stranger. If this mood continued, she wouldn’t be a stranger for long.

  She hopped out of the car and took the first few steps toward him. The way she walked, the way her hips moved like a lapping tide, it drove him wild.

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

  He laughed, and then said, “You afraid of heights?”

  She looked a little confused, maybe scared. Maybe afraid of heights. But she smiled and said, “No.”

  “I’ll have to climb up there.” Jackson watched her smile disappear. “You can climb with me, and do the interview up there if you want.”

  “That’s not even funny.”

  Jackson opened his tool bag and grabbed some gloves and a USB cord.

  “You’re seriously going up there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Won’t you get electrocuted?”

  “It’s actually the radiation I’ll have to look out for.”

  She was staring up at it again. “I’m not going anywhere near that fucking thing.”

  “Fine,” he said with a grin. “But can you help me suit up?” He placed the bag straps around his shoulders and wore it like a backpack. “Can you slide the laptop in there, and leave that cord dangling over my shoulder through this little hook?”

  While Annica zipped the backpack up around the laptop, Jackson worked on his phone, going into the settings panel, and then going beyond that, to a secret command screen that only a few people outside of the phone’s developers even knew about. That was the benefit of having someone like Tansy for a friend—a hacker, but one of the good guys. Mostly.

  “Be careful,” Annica said. “With whatever you’re doing up there.”

  “Thanks. But don’t worry, it’s really nothing.”

  “I just want to make sure you survive for our interview.”

  Jackson grinned at her. “I’ll be down in a few minutes. Get your voice recorder all cued up.”

  He wanted her to wait in the safety of the car, but she insisted on following him up to the small fenced-off square underneath the cell tower. There she watched, quietly, as he scaled the fence. He glanced back. Her cute little fingers were poking through the holes of the fence. She was leaning against it, her face close, and on it, a look of concern.

  “You sure you’ve done this before?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Jackson said, staring up at the ninety-foot-tall tower. He shivered a little, though it wasn’t so cold outside anymore. And though he wasn’t afraid of heights, the way the moon’s glare shimmered off the white metal beams, and the feet and hand steps of the ladder all covered in rain . . . It wasn’t exactly as easy a maneuver as he’d made it out to be. But he’d rather keep that a secret. He had scared her enough tonight.

  “You’re sure you’ve done this before?”

  “All I’m really doing is climbing a ladder.”

  “A really tall fucking ladder,” she said.

  But there was more to it than that. He’d have to climb up to the top and then somehow, while not falling off, he’d have to find the USB outlet that the workers used when they got up there. That was how he’d access the tower’s signal. With that, he’d run a line from the laptop to his phone, and to the tower.

  “I’ll see you back on earth in ten minutes,” he said, trying to laugh.

  “Yeah, hopefully on your feet.”

  He looked back at her.

  “I mean, don’t fall. Please.” She was looking so soft and sweet. He wanted badly to touch her, even just through the fence, his fingers entwining with hers.

  “Hey,” he said, returning to the fence. “For good luck?” He’d placed his fist to the fence, where she met his, a silly little fist bump through the metal. A perfectly platonic thing to do. A perfect excuse to at least sort of touch her. But then he started thinking about what he’d like to do if that fence wasn’t there.

  But he should really just be thinking about getting up there. And not falling.

  10

  JASPER

  It had been four years since he’d seen Matthias last, a meeting he’d remembered exactly. But there was nothing remarkable about his remembering. Back then, they were sitting at the same table, the long head table on the stage, sitting next to each other just a few spaces away from the bride and groom. The lovely new couple: Matthias’ sister, Beth; Jasper and Kyle’s best friend, Will. And it was a lovely night for everyone—including Matthias and Jasper. It was only after the wedding, much after, that things became decidedly not-so-lovely.

  “It was all bullshit.”

  “I know.”

  Jasper looked at his long-lost friend who was sitting behind the wheel, who had rays of headlights washing over his face from the oncoming traffic of the two-lane highway. A line of trucks rumbled by the car, shaking it, the air of the traffic swaying them away from the center line.

  “Damn it,” muttered Matthias. “I hate driving these kinds of roads at night.”

  “Like I said about the interstate, we could have taken 95 to 58, and then—”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. Forget about it.”

  The oncoming traffic had passed and his face was once again covered in shadows. Through the darkness, Jasper wasn’t able to gauge the expression on the driver’s face, how upset he really was about—

  “Everything’s fine,” Matthias said. “I mean it.”

  “Everything?”

  Matthias’ arm shot through the darkness and switched off the radio. It had been playing quietly underneath their sparse and sometimes intense conversation, the channels cycling through on shuffle for the hundredth shuffle since Jasper had climbed aboard in Spring Lake, a town just north of Fayetteville and close to Fort Bragg.

  They sat in silence for a moment until Jasper said, “Maybe if we’d have talked in the last year, we wouldn’t have let it get this far.”

  There was no other way around that fact. If they’d kept being friends, or at least maintained some kind of contact, Will and Kyle might have already taken a ticket home from the Middle East. They would have put all the facts together. They would have known. And they would have had their sister and brother-in-law, and brother, together. Everyone alive and happy, including Matthias’ crazy little nephew.

  “But you’re right,” Jasper said. “The past doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t help us any.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  Jasper nodded. “Alright. So let’s just focus on the future.”

  “Okay,” Matthias said. “So how much time do you think we have until Will and Kyle’s mission departure? Beth tells me she thinks it’s less than two weeks.”

  “I talked to Kyle this morning,” Jasper said. “Things got bumped up.”

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s almost like they can tell there’s some suspicion about it.”

  “Well, how does he feel about it?” Matthias asked.

  “Who? Kyle?”

  “Him and his men. Are they questioning anything?”

  “
Definitely,” Jasper said, thinking of his last discussion, hearing again the fear in his brother’s voice. “And it’s not just through us. There’s some real serious rumors swirling around, even at their camp.”

  “I wonder if that’ll get them to pull the plug.”

  “He tells me that they all had meetings yesterday. Individual meetings, with a lawyer.”

  “Fuck,” Matthias said again. He’d been swearing more often than usual since leaving Spring Lake. The headlights brightened on his face and Matthias cursed again under his breath.

  “Do you need to pull over?” Jasper asked.

  “No.”

  “We can stop somewhere, a hotel or something, if you need to—”

  “I’m good, I’m good. Just haven’t been getting much sleep, but I guess I should be accustomed to that.”

  Since the business with Jackson’s dog, Jasper hadn’t been getting much sleep, either. And then came the latest conversation with his brother, a long-distance call from North Africa at three in the morning. He hated how scared Kyle sounded. It was the kind of fear he knew Kyle was trying to swallow up and hide, but it came out in the smallest of ways. The little throat clearing, a hard swallow. A quaver in his voice when he’d lied and said he was doing good and everything was fine, and for him to say Hi to “the guys.” If only he knew what “the guys” were really up to, halfway across the world.

  “Tell me more about this meeting,” Matthias said. “Kyle and a military lawyer?”

  “Yeah, it sounded just like our prep for Tripoli. They even flew everyone out to an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. USS Waldorf.”

  “Jesus Christ . . .”

  It sounded so reminiscent. And so brazen that those bastards wouldn’t do a thing to change up their approach. A group of six Americans training a small hit squad made up of local paramilitary rogues. An unknown political target. An oath to secrecy.

  “Let me guess,” Matthias said. “Hunwick was there, and he made them all swear an oath and sign papers?”

  “Hunwick wasn’t there. But it sounds like the whole thing has his fingerprints all over it. The same bullshit, the oath, everything.”

  It was that damned oath to secrecy that had caused the worst of their lingering problems, the reason why it was so hard to even lift a finger in attempt to clear their names or to tell their story. And it was also the reason why a majority of them, Jackson especially, were scared for their lives to talk to a journalist. If caught, prison would be the best outcome. Assassination perhaps the most likely.

  “Did you tell him he’d be better off going AWOL?” Matthias asked.

  “He doesn’t understand it. They have him brainwashed pretty good out there. That was one thing they didn’t do with us.”

  “How do you know?” Matthias chuckled disgustedly under his breath.

  “Kyle was only selected for this because he volunteered for this experiment. They offered him a hundred measly dollars.”

  “To brainwash him?”

  “They put him in a sensory deprivation chamber for twelve hours,” Jasper said. “Well, they told him twelve hours, but he said it felt more like a week.”

  “Sounds like some real MK-ULTRA type shit. Manchurian candidate.”

  “Whatever it was, I think it fucked him up. And it made it easier for people like Hunwick to fuck with him.”

  “You would think he’d stay away from you,” Matthias said. “You know, like, your last name, your brother. It’s pretty crazy, and brazen, that he’d want to agitate you like this.”

  Jasper needed to stop talking about it. He clicked on the radio, not letting it shuffle but just sticking to the first clear channel. Some boring eighties song that everyone’s heard a thousand times. “So what’s the plan with Jackson?” he asked. “We’re gonna stage an intervention? Make sure he talks with Annica?”

  “We really should.”

  “Is that what this is, then?”

  “He needs our help.”

  Jasper thought of that broken man he’d found back in Baltimore, and that hole he’d filled in his backyard. The deep, empty holes where his eyes used to sparkle and burn. He needed more than help.

  “Well, what about this Annica chick?” Matthias asked. “You talked with her. What’s she like? Is she genuine?”

  “She seems a little naive.”

  “She must be, to attempt what she is.”

  “So I’ll take that as a good sign,” Jasper said, struggling to stay comfortable in Matthias’ passenger seat. “I think it’s worth a shot. It’s a risk. A big one, but time is running out for Kyle, for Will. And even for us. Things aren’t getting any better for any of us. Even if we hold on to this secret, there’s no end. No closure.”

  “And they can still just off us at any time. Don’t forget that.”

  “You think I can forget about that?” Jasper laughed quietly like a crazy person. “It’s driving me nuts. Jackson, too.”

  “Obviously.”

  “When I got to his house last week, I found him out front mostly naked, waving a gun around. Some kid tried breaking into his garage and he thought it was an assassin.”

  “Jesus.” Matthias chuckled a little. “Did the kid make it out of there?”

  “Just barely.”

  “Lucky kid.”

  “He left with a dog chip implanted in his shoulder.”

  “A what?” Matthias was still laughing.

  “A tracking device.”

  “Jesus Christ . . . Pretty soon he’s gonna start doing that to us, too.”

  “Booze and paranoia . . .”

  “Well, let’s just hope that this will get him off that,” Matthias said. “It’s what he needs, to take some action. To do something.”

  “I think that’s true for all of us.” Jasper looked down the road and saw the faint outline of a person.

  “What the hell is that?” Matthias asked.

  As their car approached, the headlights illuminated what appeared to be a man in army fatigues standing by the side of the highway.

  “A hitchhiker?” Jasper said.

  “A pretty stupid one, with those fatigues. What’s he trying to blend in for? So we can hit him?”

  Matthias had been slowing the car, coasting, and now braking.

  “What are you doing?” Jasper said.

  “I don’t know. Stopping?”

  “I don’t know about that . . .” Jasper didn’t like how he felt about stopping for some random stranger, especially on this important trip to Virginia Beach. It was silly, feeling this way. But it was real. It was fear.

  “I used to always pick up hitchhikers,” Matthias said.

  “Really?”

  “What’s wrong? You feel weird about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Jasper said, trying to get a read on the man’s face. How old was he? Twenty?

  “You feel paranoid?” Matthias asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Matthias stepped on the gas and brought the car back up to speed, the hitchhiker and his outstretched arm and thumb blurring by in a rush as they continued on through the night. Jasper reached for the radio and turned up the volume. And for a while after, neither of them said a word.

  And then Jasper’s phone vibrated, startling him at first. But it was a relief just to have some sort of distraction.

  He pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the screen.

  An incoming file transfer.

  A huge one, almost a terabyte, way too big for a phone.

  Client: Unknown.

  Source: Virginia Beach.

  “I think it’s Jackson,” Jasper said.

  “What is it?”

  “Files. A giant data dump from Virginia Beach.”

  “He said he’d be trying to get Annica’s files.”

  “It’s got an urgent code on it. And there’s a note.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Not on this phone. I�
��ll have to transfer the signal to an external hard drive and then start the process. Whatever it is, he probably wants us to start working on it ASAP.”

  “So what should we do?” Matthias asked. “Pull over? Get a hotel and break down the info?”

  “Maybe we should just keep driving. We’ll be there in a few hours.” Jasper looked up from the phone. “Where the hell are we again?”

  11

  JACKSON

  They were sitting beyond the guard rail, on a rock ledge that overlooked a moonlit beach, waves lapping in from the vast blackness of the Atlantic, the occasional low blast of a ship’s foghorn. The mist had broken up a little, and there were little red and green lights bobbing up and down at the almost imperceptible horizon.

  Jackson had finally closed the lid on his laptop, smiling at a job well done. He’d just come down off the cell tower, safely, from his perch where he’d linked into the unit and used its signal to transmit the files to Jasper, Matthias, and Tansy. He wasn’t sure how long it would take to hear back from them. But for the moment, he had his own little audience. When he’d climbed back down, she was still waiting at the fence. She hadn’t said a word the whole time. No teasing or joking. No words of warning. Just a calm and quiet patience until they made eye contact again, until she smiled and watched him climb over that last barrier between them: a snipped barbed-wire fence. And then it was that eight-foot drop through the darkness, against the hard ground, then Jackson stumbling back into Annica’s arms as she offered them, holding them out against his back, propping him up until his balance returned, and then holding him there until they both broke out in childish laughter.

  They had since made their way down a small path to a lookout spot, perhaps the most prime real estate that Make-Out Point had to offer. This information was not lost on Jackson, who looked at his new friend with a wry smile, asking if she’d ever seen the beach before from this vantage point.

  “It’s a nice view,” she said.

  He chuckled. “You actually saw the view?”

  With an eye roll, and with her fingers on the rock, she flicked a few pebbles at Jackson’s leg, some of them rolling off him and the rock, and then rolling and falling down the steep drop to the beach below.