Darkest Hour

by Jamie Garrett

  “Jackson?” He pointed his flashlight a little to the left off his friend’s face. The poor guy seemed blinded. Or drunk? “Jackson . . . what the hell?”

  “Who the fuck . . .?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Who? Tansy?” He squinted through the dark, and then his face softened. And the door opened fully and he leapt out, laughing, but awkward. His body moved with a strange stiltedness. His face, too, his smile looking a little strained as he ignored Tansy’s handshake and instead patted his shoulder. It was an odd greeting.

  “What the hell’s going on, Jack? Who’s in there?”

  “We were, uh, just waiting for you.”

  “Who?” Tansy tried looking in the car but it was too dark. “Are you with Annica?”

  “Did you get my message?”

  “Of course. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Jackson looked more confused than Tansy had ever seen. Even after the car bomb in Libya, he seemed to have his shit more together than this. “Right, right,” Jackson said before muttering something to himself. He kept looking away, at the ground, as if his brain had been working in full capacity to make sense of it. But what the hell was so confusing?

  “You really didn’t think I could find you here?” Tansy asked.

  Jackson finally looked at him, his face a little more relaxed, like he’d just given up the false pretenses of normalcy.

  Tansy laughed at his old friend. “What the fuck, man . . . You’re really up to some crazy shit here.” Tansy looked at the flashing lights of the cell tower. “You climbed that? In a storm?”

  “It was just rain. And it was clear when I went up.”

  “Well, good job getting up there, and, good job with—” Jackson’s pants were unbuckled and loose. His fly was half down. And his face looked so red. Almost sweaty. “Dude, what the fuck?”

  His hands dropped down, quickly fixing his pants. “Alright, alright, drop it.”

  “Drop what? Don’t drop your pants, man. Take care of that.” Tansy laughed, watching his group leader struggle to fit his belt through the buckle. “Jack, were you, uh, were you by any chance . . .?”

  “Interviewing,” Jackson said. “She was interviewing me.”

  God damn Jackson . . . Leave it to him to score with the girl who had so solidly rejected Tansy. It was far from the first time that it happened . . .

  “We were just going over my case,” Jackson said, looking anywhere but at Tansy’s face.

  “I bet. With a rocking car and steamed-up windows?”

  “Yeah.” Jackson was looking at the ground, now, his hand scratching at the back of his head.

  “Well, damn . . . Looks like she had some hard-hitting questions for you.”

  “Definitely.”

  Tansy laughed.

  Jackson coughed several times, straightening up his shirt, and then said, “So,” like nothing strange had just happened.

  “So anyway,” Tansy said. “Like I was saying, you did a good job with getting the information out. But it wasn’t untraceable. It wasn’t even very covert. I mean, I found you in half an hour.”

  Jackson gazed up at the cell tower. “So, not untraceable?”

  “No. Not even close.”

  Jackson was looking at all sides of the small parking lot. He spun around again to check the entrance. “So I guess we should get going then.”

  “Where?”

  “Jackson?” The other car door had opened, and out came Annica. “What’s going on?” She looked even more disheveled than Jackson. Her hair was frizzed in a big ball of static. Buttons missing in her shirt. Face as guilty and red as Jackson’s. “Who is that?”

  “It’s just Stanton,” Jackson said.

  Tansy laughed again. He really couldn’t help it. But thank fuck the guy was put together enough to remember his real name. It had been years since anyone other than civilians had called him Stanton.

  “It’s okay,” Jackson said to her. “We’re just about to leave.” He then turned to Tansy. “Where’s your car?”

  “I parked it on the access road and then walked in.”

  “Stanton?” Annica said, her voice sounding as confused as Jackson’s.

  “Hi, Annica.”

  She laughed, leaning on the back of her car. “Heyyy . . .”

  “Doing another interview?”

  She nodded.

  “Sorry I interrupted.”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said. “Me too.”

  He and Jackson had a lot to discuss, including, after the laughs and the jokes, how Tansy couldn’t help but feel a little concerned about what he’d just stumbled onto. They were in Tansy’s car, following Annica out of Make-Out Point. They’d just reached the main road when Tansy finally said it.

  “I thought you were trying to take things seriously again. I thought that’s why you came out here.”

  “You’re saying this because . . .”

  “Because of your ‘interview’.”

  “That was actually after our interview.”

  “Right.”

  “But what’s the problem?”

  Tansy had a few ideas, but said none of them.

  “What’s the real problem? You were into Annica? I totally get that, I mean, she’s hot, she’s smart, she’s—”

  “I just want to make sure you’ve got your head on straight, Jack. It’s been a long time.”

  Jackson laughed. “Since my head was on straight?”

  “Since I’ve even seen you. It’s been months, man. Maybe a year. And I know you’re going through some shit, and I know it took a lot to get you out here.”

  “So let me get acclimated, then.”

  “That’s how you get acclimated? By fucking our journalist?” Tansy had to jump on the brakes suddenly, slowing up to avoid ramming the back of her car. Despite her being right in front of him, he was having trouble paying attention.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “If it’s just jealously, then drop it.” Jackson grinned. “You had your chance first.”

  “Well, it’s a little bit of jealousy,” Tansy said, looking ahead to Annica’s car, trying to concentrate. Trying to live in the moment. But he couldn’t believe he’d just caught them like that, like two school kids, and in Make-Out Point of all places. “But I’m actually more concerned about what we’re trying to do, and how you might have just fucked it up.”

  “Well, stop being so concerned,” Jackson said. “She’s cool. We’re all cool.”

  “I saw you go and talk with her after.”

  “Yeah. It’s all good.”

  “You sure everything’s okay?”

  “She’s fine, Tansy.” Jackson said it with almost a growl, which usually signified that it would be best to change subjects. It wasn’t in his nature to pull rank, consciously. But sometimes he’d do it over things like this, whether it was on purpose or not. And Tansy, usually, was smart enough to listen.

  “So tell me about the data,” Jackson said. “Did you get a chance to look at it?”

  “I only had a few minutes with it so far. But the first thing I did was to run searches on some names. Especially McMurray and Hunwick. And we got hits on both.”

  “Jesus . . .”

  “There’s something else, too. And this was what did it for me.” He looked over to Jackson, who was giving him his full attention. “Did you know that Hunwick holds office part-time right here in Virginia Beach?”

  Jackson’s strong jaw, with the way it was suddenly pried open, almost dissolved off his face and into the dark. He said nothing, and then eased back into his chair.

  “He’s got a whole building,” Tansy said. “And it’s on the NSA campus, near the college.”

  “That’s horrible news.”

  “But it could really help us. And it pinpoints things for us.”

  “I didn’t know we were so close.”

  “Right in the underbelly.”

  The car grew quiet again. Tansy looked
over at his leader, who still looked a little pale. “You okay?”

  “I’m just thinking about Annica.”

  “You mean, you’re worried about her.”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said quietly.

  “You still think she’s in on it?” Tansy asked, already thinking how preposterous it seemed now.

  “No, no . . .”

  Tansy couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay because, you know . . .”

  “She has no idea how much danger she’s in.”

  “Well, I bet she has some idea.”

  But no one, in actuality, had any idea. Not even the slightest of clues that their world would all come crashing down at the same time. Not in Libya, and not right now, with a sudden giant flash of light in front of Tansy’s car—oncoming headlights, then an explosion, Tansy jerking the wheel and their car skidding into a shallow ditch. It happened too fast to process, the horrifying sight of a truck crossing the center line and smashing into Annica’s car. And her car and its lights completely disappearing. And now Tansy’s car hopping up and down violently through the mud and the puddles, and then finally, with another hard turn of the wheel, his car ramping up a muddy embankment and squealing back onto the pavement and to a violent, screeching, semicircled stop.

  The collision in front of them had been so loud, as was their trip through a ditch. But now, seconds later, the only noise was the sound of raindrops patting onto the windshield, a wiper blade’s occasional groan. And then Jackson, in the passenger seat, completely losing his shit.

  He was screaming, opening his door, and trying to step out. He kept lunging forward into his seatbelt, forgetting to unclip it. Tansy reached over and helped him break free. When Jackson finally scrambled out of the car, he was running back to where Annica’s car was last seen, to where she last existed on this planet before being annihilated by an errant semi truck. Tansy met him there, in a puddle of rain and glass and angry black tire marks. But where the fuck was her car?

  The truck had ended up in the ditch. Driver’s-side door hanging open. It actually didn’t look in very bad shape. Maybe even drivable. But Annica’s car . . .

  Tansy followed a track of skid marks to the other side of the road, where Jackson had already sprinted. He caught up to him, knee-deep in muddy rain water, scrambling around the twisted, broken car that used to be Annica’s green Camry. Whether it was from the accident, or the darkness, it looked black. Not green. And despite the twisted and bent-in metal, it looked empty. Tansy rushed to the opposite side of the car, facing Jackson, looking through the side windows and seeing each other’s blank faces through the battered interior. Empty.

  “What the fuck?” Jackson cried out.

  The windshield was smashed but still intact in a perfect candied-glass form. That was the good news, as it ensured that Annica’s body hadn’t been tossed out the front of the car.

  “Wait,” Tansy said. “Check her seat belt.”

  While Jackson bent inside to inspect the condition of the belts, Tansy looked around the car again, first checking the immediate surroundings. No blood. No footprints in the mud. He checked the water, but it wasn’t deep enough to conceal a body.

  “It looks like she unclipped it,” Jackson yelled. “The seat belt isn’t broken.”

  A horrible thought suddenly crossed Tansy’s mind, another idea that he’d preferred not to share with Jackson—the possibility of Annica not wearing a seat belt.

  “You check around the car here,” Tansy said, walking back up to the road. “And I’ll check the ditch all the way back to the crash scene.”

  As he walked along the road’s shoulder, he could hear Jackson cursing, his legs thrashing around in the water as he continued his morbid search. Again, Tansy was surprised at the reaction. Back in Tripoli . . .

  “She’s not fucking here!” Jackson yelled.

  Tansy made it all the way to the truck. The engine was turned off. The door was still open. He lifted himself up on the door steps and peered through a shattered window with a flashlight.

  Empty.

  Tansy felt the hair rising on the back of his neck.

  “She’s fucking gone!” Jackson kept screaming from down the road.

  Just like at Annica’s car, Tansy did his perimeter check, only to find nothing once again. But this trucker’s disappearance was even odder. Had he walked out of the wreck? And could he have walked out and over to Annica?

  No, that was impossible. Tansy and Jackson were at her car almost immediately.

  He spun around, looking at the forest which lined the highway, wondering who or what had snatched two people. He started back toward Jackson.

  “Hey, Jackson,” he said, approaching Annica’s steaming pile of car. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Jackson turned around to face him, his phone pressed against his ear. He’d already thought of it.

  “Help me out,” Jackson said. “My ear . . .”

  So they listened carefully, walking across the road to check both sides, listening, waiting, hoping to hear even the faintest ringtone that would at least indicate the location of Annica’s phone.

  Nothing.

  Damn.

  The road had become so quiet.

  13

  MATTHIAS

  They had switched seats after downloading Jackson’s data dump, Jasper wanting a turn at the wheel, and Matthais wanting a turn at the laptop. It was a good trade for all involved.

  He had been sorting through the data from Greenville to Chesapeake, piecing together the story of how Annica got onto their own little twisted Tripoli story. By the time they made it to Virginia Beach, he’d just about nailed it. He even had a timeline, beginning with Annica taking on her first-ever story which just so happened to feature military corruption. And that story just so happened to feature Hunwick, albeit in a different scandal.

  Just about the time that Matthias thought he had a good grasp of the situation, he got the call from Jackson. It was the unusually high voice from their group leader that first caught him off guard. And then his message, a breathless account of Annica’s car getting smashed by a truck, and then she and the trucker vanishing from the scene. And on top of all that, his certainty that she had been kidnapped by Hunwick’s goons.

  For the first time ever, Jackson had sounded almost scared.

  But it was only when Matthias could see him face to face that he knew the extent of the trauma. He first saw that face in the pale light of a residential garage, looking even more sickly than the dim glow. It was the garage of someone named David Rhodes. An upscale house in Virginia Beach. And their supposed safe house, for the time being. Jackson had been waiting for their car to pull into the garage. They met there, shut the big bay door, and then hugged each other.

  Shit. Had it really been over a year?

  Jackson reached his arms around Jasper, clapping him on the back, and then introduced the two of them to Mr. Rhodes, describing him as, quite possibly, their only other friend in Virginia Beach—aside from Annica.

  “I know Jackson’s father,” Mr. Rhodes said with a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. He looked to be in his sixties. A military man. Short gray hair. His body was thin but still strong.

  “I called my dad,” Jackson said. “And he called Mr. Rhodes.”

  “Jackson actually stopped by here earlier today, didn’t you, Jackson?”

  Jackson nodded sheepishly.

  “Yep. Scared the hell out of my grandson.”

  “I followed Annica here,” Jackson said, a look of pain replacing that of embarrassment. “She was working on a separate story, with Mr. Rhodes, about all the recent corruption scandals in the military. Hunwick is implicated in that, too.”

  “I came to the same conclusion,” Matthias said. “On the drive over here, I had a chance to look at the communications between Veteran’s Valor and Hunwick’s associates. Alice McMurray in particular.”

  “Birds of a feather,” Rhodes said. He motioned to a set of double doors at the end of the garage. �
��Come on, I’ll show you inside.”

  Matthias and Jasper followed Rhodes and Jackson into the giant, nautical-themed compound. It seemed more of an operations bunker than a house, but still warm, well decorated, and stylish.

  “Nice house,” Jasper said.

  “It’s actually my office.”

  “The whole thing?”

  Rhodes led them down a flight of stairs, and then a long corridor lined with black-and-white naval photography of the Pacific Campaign. Matthias, with each passing photograph, felt his respect for Mr. Rhodes grow. He seemed like a well-seasoned naval officer. And in his day, a force to be reckoned with. Matthias just hoped that he was actually on their side.

  They entered a brightly lit computer lab and Rhodes spoke. “Please, use whatever you need.”

  Tansy, of course, was already there, hunched over and working away on three monitors.

  Jackson finally spoke up. “Hey, Tansy, the guys are here.”

  Tansy turned around, pulled a headset off his ears, and smiled. But it was a troubled, subdued smile. He and Jackson must have gone through some real shit tonight.

  “I found her phone,” Tansy said.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Jackson, almost a gasp.

  “Guess where?”

  Jackson glared at him. “Just tell me.”

  “Hunwick’s building. NSA campus.”

  The groan that followed wasn’t just from Jackson, but everyone in the room—including Rhodes. It was like they’d all been collectively kicked in the balls.

  But for Jackson’s men, in particular, it felt like the second kick from a familiar, infamous boot.

  “God damn it,” Jasper muttered.

  Jackson uttered a few curse words of his own, before saying, “Well, it looks like Hunwick is all in. This could get bloody.”

  There was a silence in the room, until Rhodes, quietly and calmly, invited them to take their seats at his conference table.

  Jackson, at the head of the table, was the last to sit. When he finally did, he said, “First of all, thanks for coming here. And thanks, also, to Mr. Rhodes, whose help we really needed. Tansy and I were desperate for a friend here in Virginia Beach, and with the help of my father, we found one.”