Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8) Read online

  Dark Discovery

  DARC Ops Book 8

  Jamie Garrett

  Wild Owl Press

  Contents

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  1. Kalani

  2. Kalani

  3. Ethan

  4. Ethan

  5. Kalani

  6. Kalani

  7. Kalani

  8. Ethan

  9. Kalani

  10. Kalani

  11. Ethan

  12. Kalani

  13. Ethan

  14. Kalani

  15. Ethan

  16. Kalani

  17. Kalani

  18. Ethan

  19. Ethan

  20. Kalani

  21. Ethan

  22. Kalani

  23. Ethan

  24. Kalani

  25. Ethan

  26. Kalani

  27. Ethan

  28. Kalani

  29. Ethan

  30. Kalani

  31. Ethan

  32. Kalani

  33. Kalani

  Also by Jamie Garrett

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Jamie Garrett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. All requests should be forwarded to [email protected].

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  Cover design by The Final Wrap.

  Editing by Jennifer Harshman, Harshman Services.

  1

  Kalani

  Her body ached after hours of crouching, sitting, and then lying flat on the gravel lot behind an abandoned fertilizer plant. Her hands had gone dry and scratchy and were caked with a fine white dust. Lying there, she worried about possible residual contamination. Her right hand had gone a little numb, not from the chemicals or the discomfort crawling around over rocks, but from emptying two dozen clips of .40 caliber ammo through her Beretta.

  Kalani wanted to leave, to follow where her mind had already drifted off to. But a man’s firm voice kept telling her to stay.

  “You stay right there, all of you. This is your home now.”

  For the previous six hours, Kalani’s home had been a three-foot box spray-painted on the gravel behind a propped rectangle of plywood. The thin slab of wood was her “cover,” the painted box behind it her “shadow,” and both of them combined were her “home.” She’d become a little homesick. Sick of the current home, and sick for the idyllic countryside retreat where she’d been staying with her sister for the last two months. It was only a few miles drive away, but there was no telling how many hours she had left with the plywood.

  The voice came back again, growing through a megaphone: “I want you to eat, sleep, and breathe behind this thing.”

  Jesus . . .

  Kalani had been doing all of that already, breathing involuntarily, nodding off even more involuntarily. The granola snack, though, was certainly deliberate, and desperately needed to keep her from more of that nodding off. She needed some sort of stimulation beyond shooting and waiting to shoot. She needed sugar. Or caffeine . . . An iced coffee would have been so nice. Heck, even just water. God, she was so thirsty in this heat.

  “Now, I know,” the voice said, “that some of you want to complain to me. That some of you are tired and sore, maybe even a little sick of your home by now.”

  Yes. She was so sick of it, despite the periodic action of peering around the side of the board and firing her shots into the latest target.

  “But when you graduate,” the voice said through a bullhorn, “and when you make it into DARC SWAT, you’ll look at that piece of plywood with pride. That’s right, you’ll be taking them home with you. Each of you reunited with your cover.”

  There were a few groans through the group of a dozen or so prospective SWAT members.

  “Hang them up above the mantle,” the bullhorn said. Kalani imagined what she would really do with the plywood cover. Bring it out back behind that idyllic country home and hack it to pieces with an axe, then assemble the shards in the burn pit and watch it light up the night. She could enjoy its warm glow with some marshmallows. At the very least, its smoke would keep the bugs away.

  God, the bugs. They swarmed the home, from the deep forest that surrounded it, becoming a continual problem for her and her sister. Hawaii had its own bugs, of course, but there was something about deep West Virginia. Something about its boggy swamps and breeding grounds, and that vast darkness beyond their security lights, that made it so much worse. Chiggers were new to her, too, a little red bug that could crawl up on your skin and feed until you find it. Until the start of the most horrendous itching. There were other things, too, that she was afraid of in the woods. Another new concern which had brought an even worse creeping and crawling feeling, especially at night when things were too quiet. And when there was suddenly an unexplainable noise. The idea of a small army of men advancing slowly on to her position, surveilling her every move at the farmhouse—perhaps with thermal imaging. She was not used to the feeling of being hunted.

  In her old job as a private security guard, she was used to watching and keeping various places and people safe. Maybe here and there she would be the pursuer, but for the most part, she worked under the radar. For the most part, she was a nobody. No one cared about the nobody stiff who walked rounds around a fruit-packing plant, or kept watch over the main office entrance. But now, suddenly, they cared much more than she was comfortable with.

  “Kalani, covering fire!”

  From a crouch, with her back against the board, Kalani rotated her body to peer around the board with her Beretta, firing three shots at a speck of red in one of the distant warehouse windows. Another volley of three shots at the window below when she thought she saw the simulated flash of muzzle fire. And then she ducked back around and listened for the next command, which was made to the recruit next to her. She relaxed her body, trying to breathe evenly again. It was a bad habit to hold her breath while shooting. Did the tester notice?

  He’d noticed just about everything else today. Matthias had more of a discerning eye than she—and probably the rest of the recruits—had hoped. When he wasn’t giving orders, or giving her hell about not following them correctly, he’d be typing up notes and scores on his tablet. Kalani had checked on him after her latest fire, wondering if his input was positive or negative. Too many negatives and she’d be sent packing. He’d already sent home a handful of recruits today.

  Home. There was that word again.

  She supposed the place where she was hiding with her sister wasn’t really home at all. A stop-gap, really. Like a hotel, but with a little more privacy—not counting what her stalkers could see from the woods. A number of times she’d gone out there to do her own recon missions, an attempt to surveil the surveillance. She’d go dressed in black and armed to the teeth. But the only eyes she felt on her were those of the animals.

  She felt Matthias’ eyes on her again.

 
The next hour involved a technique called “slicing the pie.” It was a means of safely peeking through a window or doorway, an attempt to take the blindness out of a blind corner.

  “As you move through a corridor, you’ll have to clear every window this way. Take your time. Slice the pie.”

  The act of slicing was to peer around the corner in the slightest of increments, exposing more and more ground behind the barrier.

  “Manageable increments,” Matthias said. “Only take on what you can cover. Take your time here.”

  Kalani took her time. The corner she was pieing was on her right side. And because she was a right-handed shooter, a slight adjustment in the grip had to be made, gripping it with the opposite hand.

  “Keep yourself tight,” Matthias said. “Tuck in that elbow. Tuck your hands, wrists, elbow, knee, leg, everything in close to the side. Go ahead and lean a little. Increments. Get that sight picture. Good job, Kalani.”

  She wasn’t used to the compliment. It sent a wave of adrenaline through her that almost sped up the slicing.

  Slice slowly. Almost there.

  She made it through the full 90 degrees around the corner of her barrier before Matthias gave her the all clear to return behind its cover. After everyone had completed slicing, Matthias warned them again of the background going hot. A return to their simulation of being pinned down behind a narrow strip of cover. A return to their “home.”

  Really, she didn’t want to be at either of her two latest homes. Staying in the gravel one, however, was more of a favor. Since helping Jackson’s DARC team in Hawaii, and since burning every last bridge there, it was only natural for her to arrive at the selection camp. She supposed her heart was only half in the training, the possibility of joining his new SWAT team—despite how earnestly he’d asked her to try. To really, really try. The jury was still out on a lot of things: how much she’d end up trying, and how much of a coincidence it was that Jackson had placed the training ground so close to her safe house.

  Whatever it was, Kalani supposed she would keep up the illusion. At least, as long as necessary. As long as she and her sister were in danger. Jackson and his team had been good to them. He at least deserved an illusion.

  And for all the testimony her sister was willing to provide, she at least deserved to feel safe.

  The safe house . . .

  “Kalani!”

  The safe house, as well as her current cover house had suddenly evaporated in the late afternoon heat.

  “Kalani, you’re done,” Matthias barked at her through his bullhorn. “Step out, please.”

  “Huh?” she said, coughing on the tightness the test had lumped into her throat. She strained again to say, “What?”

  Matthias was talking to someone on his radio for a moment, and then squinted back to her. “You’re out. You’re dead.”

  Fuck . . .

  She really was putting in an effort. Whether or not she would ultimately accept an invitation to the team, she’d been crawling around and hiding behind that board for hours. The time and pain alone, along with her competitive nature, made her want to continue, however much it sucked. She could finish in first place and then decide what to do with the invitation. But now it was all over.

  “Come on,” Matthias said. “Grab your shit.”

  Kalani collected her things and made her way to the edge of the gravel lot. Toward Matthias, who was now typing up something on his tablet. Probably something about how badly she’d failed.

  “You did pretty good otherwise,” he said.

  “Aside from being dead?”

  “Before that. Before you died.” His eyes were back on the training scenario. “You were pretty much the front-runner.”

  She imagined he was lying. He must have been lying. The front runner? Sure, she’d popped off a few rounds in her day, but most of the other men here—and they were all men—were vets fresh from action in the Middle East.

  Kalani tried looking at his screen, at what he’d typed about her, but he rotated just enough for the sun’s reflection to obscure the view. “So, what happened?”

  “Your left shoulder was exposed. A guy in the tower saw it and radioed in.”

  “Well, I guess a little bit of arm isn’t so bad after so many hours?”

  “You’d be dead, though. That’s pretty bad.”

  “I guess,” Kalani said, her body suddenly feeling the full effect of the training. She was thoroughly drained. “I guess,” she said again. It had been a long day.

  “You did good, though. Before that.”

  She said, “Not good enough to want to bring the board home.”

  “You didn’t fail out of the whole thing,” Matthias said. “Just this exercise. You’re still in the running. Take the written test tonight, and then come back tomorrow.”

  Kalani forced out a smile. But she wasn’t sure whether to be happy or miserable.

  The day wrapped up with a seminar in a school setting, a quick multiple-choice exam on the preceding lesson. Oddly enough, it had more to do with employee safety than the hundred various ways the employee could kill the enemy. She took her test in a contractor’s trailer at the training site, which looked the part once again of a construction site when the shooting had ended. It was quiet again. In the early evening, the sun’s low reddening filtered through the four tiny windows of the trailer. She sat in the long, narrow classroom, dropping her pencil onto the scanable test page. She caught the attention of the test administrator, Matthias, who nodded back to her and then looked at the door. She got up and left, leaving her finished test facedown on the table.

  In a perfect world, she would be able to leave her life-and-death worries behind, too. Exit strategies and how to survive behind various types of cover materials. But the real life-and-death scenario would begin once she left the training site and was away from all her heavily armed and well-seasoned friends. Soon she would be alone on rural roads surrounded by miles of forest. And then back at the house, waiting. Always waiting. That was the worst part.

  She’d have arguments about that with Jackson, whom she hadn’t seen since leaving Hawaii. He’d sent a continually evolving cast of caretaker characters from DARC Ops, the latest of which was Tucker, whom she’d worked with on the big island. Every time Kalani caught herself complaining about how things were going he’d say the same thing. “Better to complain about it than be dead from it.”

  As she dropped her bags into the car trunk, she wondered what he was doing there at the house. How he was getting along with Lea today. They’d butted heads ever since they’d lain eyes on each other. And then she wondered about another friend from Hawaii, Ethan. She wondered what he was doing. And then worse, worrying about with whom he was doing it. It was amazing that he was single. But that had been months before.

  “Leaving early?”

  Kalani closed her trunk lid and then turned away from the car to see Cole lumbering down the steps from the trailer. He had a large duffel bag swung over his shoulder. A bag of deadly toys.

  “I thought we’re done for the day,” Kalani said.

  “We are. We’re done here, but not at Tonto’s. It’s Tuesday.”

  Tonto’s was the nearest restaurant, a roadhouse sports bar. Tuesday was taco night. It was a dive, but the food and drinks were priced right for the two recently unemployed vagabonds.

  “Taco Tuesday,” Cole said with a shrug.

  Kalani smiled politely. “I know, but I should really skip it. I’ve got a weird feeling about Lea.”

  “Why? Tucker’s there.”

  “That’s why it’s so weird that I feel this way.”

  “What way?” Cole said.

  “It’s just sisterly instinct, I guess.”

  “You think something’s wrong?”

  She laughed at him. He’d been good for that. “You’re quick,” she said.

  He shrugged and made his way over to her car, dropping his bag near his own, parked next to it. Both of them old and dusty Honda Civics. The
y had bought them from the same lot two months prior, after the big relocation to West Virginia. Cole thought they would blend in. But he, a tall muscle-head, and she, a dark-skinned Hawaiian, were attracting plenty of stares. Especially when lugging around their oversized bags of tactical gear.

  Cole said, “Your sisterly instinct tells you she’s in danger? Something like that?”

  “Something like that. She usually calls way before this when I’m late home.”

  “So, she checks up on you, too?”

  “Of course,” Kalani said. “But I can’t get ahold of her. It’s just weird. Probably nothing, of course. But it’s weird.”

  “Too weird for Taco Tuesday,” Cole said with a nod. “Be careful out there.”

  “I’m working on it,” she said, resting her hand on the top of her holster.

  “You can always call someone. Call me.”

  “Jackson would hate it if I used the phone unless it was an emergency. And that’s all we’ve got out there.”

  Cole sighed as he stretched his back and looked over to where they’d just been tested. “You guys should just move into that trailer. Probably the safest place in the world right there.”

  “What about after, when everyone goes home?”

  Cole shrugged. “We could leave behind some grenades for you.”

  “Not grenades,” she said. “You saw what happened on the range.” It made her shudder to think about it again, one little mistake on the grenade range that nearly blew up her team, pulling the pin precisely when and how she was instructed to, and then proceeding to fumble the grenade on the toss so that it rolled back into their foxhole. Screwing up precisely in a way that would have gotten her killed, if things had been “live.”