Dark Secret (DARC Ops Book 1) Read online

  “It's still early yet, but I might have some information about a senator working under the table to endanger US troops and allies.”

  “Might?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how 'early'?”

  “Annica, you know I wouldn’t be wasting our time with this...”

  “And you know what I said I'd do to you if you made me kill another story. You remember that, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Good boy,” she said. “Now go on.”

  “I'm in contact with a whistle-blower. One of his aids, actually.”

  “And you vetted him? He wasn’t recently fired and disgruntled and—”

  “It's a she,” Jackson interrupted.

  “Okay. And she's credible?”

  “Very.”

  “Hmm...”

  “We're working things from our own end to resolve it. But if she has to come forward, we need media coverage large enough to protect her.”

  “Large enough? Like every other paper in town?”

  Sensing the looming need for meditation, Jackson opened the lid to his Baoding balls. “You'll get exclusivity.”

  “On how many news cycles?”

  Jason’s jaw tightened. The nerve of her... nickel-and-diming a good deal like this. Then again, that was nothing new with Annica. “You're getting the scoop. Be happy.” He began rotating the metal stress balls in his hand, clockwise and then counterclockwise, and then clockwise, and then...

  “All right, Jack. But what if she doesn’t need to come forward? What if you solve it internally like you said and there's no whistle-blower to write about?”

  “You'll have a story either way. I can guarantee you that. A big story.”

  “Big enough that you're worried about her getting knocked off, huh?”

  “Pulitzer, baby.”

  “Is that my prize for protecting your latest girlfriend?”

  “It's not like that.”

  “She's not your girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “She will be.” Annica's laugh fluttered into his office. “After she thinks you rescued her, despite me doing all the work.”

  “Hey, I'll write the damn thing if you can't do the 'work'.” He meant it. He'd done it before.

  “I just want to be sure so I can start prepping the editors,” she said in a softening tone. “Just make sure it's a real story. All right?”

  Jackson sighed.

  “Jack? You okay?”

  “Yeah, I'm good. It's been a long week.”

  “I know,” she sighed too. “It's about to end in half an hour. Wanna meet for a drink somewhere to celebrate?”

  “No, but thanks. I appreciate your help here.”

  He ended the call, and then without putting down the receiver, hit the quick sequence of numbers for an internal call. “Swinies'?”

  “Why?” asked Matthias. “Mr. Davis is out of town this week.”

  “Yeah, I know... I just need a drink.”

  12

  Mira

  Her directions that night had been simple. Exit the freeway at Georgetown U, drive parallel to the Potomac river until she reached a dead end, park along the crumbly-bricked abutment of a long-demolished bridge, and then wait for Jackson to spot a not-so-candy-white 2012 Jetta with a recently missing front-left hubcap.

  Not having crossed the river in days, the outing was a nice warm up for her "healthy" return to the office the following morning. That was the irony, it taking fake sick leave for Mira to actually get sick. Something about not eating or sleeping was making her feel like a week-old bucket of dirty mop water. She should be able to handle this. All she'd done was employ an old college trick, spending her nights cross-legged on the living room floor surrounded with books, markers, and loose papers, her back bent over a laptop, her elbow propped on a box of wine. If it was good enough for college...

  She was obviously getting too old for all-nighters. At least, for three in a row.

  After parking beneath the noisy freeway, Mira rolled her windows down, cut the engine, and took a deep breath of car exhaust and Potomac seaweed. She reclined her seat until the rear entrance to the historic Potomac Boat Club was just barely above her steering wheel.

  The rower's clubhouse was a curious old Craftsman style structure. A half brick, half green and white wood-shingled building that faced out to the river. It even had a listing in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was also headquarters to one of Jackson's more athletic hobbies, one that seemed more fitting for his muscular arms than cross-wording or answering phones in a monkey suit. Her eyes drifted shut and she could almost see it in her imagination, just a few hours ago, Jackson leading a surging rowboat with his arms flexed and working hard, his body sliding forward and back rhythmically as sprays of sun-golden water pelted against his bare chest. She could see him after, maybe taking a shower in the clubhouse, with more drops of water curving around the peaks and valleys of a muscular paradise, frothy mounds of soap running smooth down the ripples of his abs.

  Maybe that was why he was taking so long. She couldn’t really blame him. If given the chance to join him, she knew exactly how much time and hot water she'd use up before letting him even think of toweling off.

  Mira was suddenly compelled to open her eyes, to focus on the dark silhouette of the clubhouse doorway. It hadn't opened once since she'd arrived. Were it not for the club's lit windows, each of them opened for the spinning blades of old-fashioned fans, Mira would have not only assumed that the building was empty, but slated for the same fate as the bridge next-door. Both structures were over a hundred years old, and through those years they'd certainly collected their share of D.C. ghosts. She hoped that Jackson wasn't one of them, that he'd make good on his word and emerge from the shadowy doorway at any moment. She waited for it, a unique shape in the dark, athletic strides carrying her flesh and blood hero to her car.

  But there was no one, rowers nor ghosts. Certainly no six-foot-four former military hero. There was not even the wall-clung scurrying of a river rat.

  Mira scanned the cramped parking lot where a few shiny luxury vehicles—hopefully one of them Jackson's—were tucked against the stone wall of the old bridge abutment. Maybe he drove up in the champagne-colored Lexus. Or perhaps something more aggressive, his SEAL background showing itself in the militancy of a black Escalade with black rims.

  And there was always option C, a troubling hypothesis which seemed more credible by the minute—a clubhouse and its parking lot which contained neither Jackson or whatever fucking car he drove that night.

  Screw it, let him find me.

  Mira closed her eyes again, but this time there was no steamy shower to sneak into, nor anyone to share it with. She was back at her uncharacteristically cluttered apartment, back with the piles of dirty laundry, the red-bottomed wine glasses lining up at her sink like swimmers waiting for the opening of a public pool. But this pool, similar to her apartment building’s public washing machine, and the possibility of Mira's life returning to normal, appeared closed for the season.

  Open for the season was a gluttony of work and wine. And compulsive mental travel. Mira's thoughts were constantly boarding round-trip flights to the various East African destinations touched by Langhorne's corruption. Even in her dreams, the perfumed sweat of Nairobi strip clubs. The desperate squalor of Dadaab's tent-cities. A bureaucrat’s air-conditioning in the capitol city of Dodoma. The blood, smoke, and dysentery of an Al-Shabaab conquest. Darfur, Sudan. Merca and Mogadishu of Somalia. The quiet, unassuming dirt-strip airport of Kilaguni. Its convenient proximity to a border concealed along hundred miles of national park wilderness. Crossing into Tanzania and trekking west into the sunset, to Shinyanga, a gold-mine town, and into the smoky back rooms of a pool hall, where—

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  She spasmed awake.

  “Especially with your windows open.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jackson.” Mira was relieved to find him
standing beside her car, his tall frame hunched over, his shadowy face lowered near the open drivers'-side window.

  “You weren’t sleeping, were you?”

  “No,” she said, still trying to catch her breath. “No, I don't sleep much anymore.”

  “Me, neither.” He smiled and rested his large hands at the bottom of the window frame.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, patting her lap to find her phone.

  “Sorry I scared you. But seriously, don't sleep with your windows down.”

  She felt along the sides of her seat. “Then don't leave me waiting so long.”

  “We didn’t.”

  “Who's we?” She reached down to the floor mat.

  “Me and Robert.”

  Mira’s hand brushed against the familiar smooth edge of her phone. She picked it up and sat back in her seat. “Who's Robert?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “I don't know... A DARC operative? Your personal driver?”

  He put his elbows up at the roof of her car, leaning his head on them. “We wanted to see who was on your tail.”

  “Yeah? So who's there?”

  “Just me.” He grinned.

  If only he'd meant that. Even though Jackson tricked her about the boat club. Even though he had been a ghost, the whole sexy shower scene becoming more of a sad apparition than fantasy.

  “I thought you said you were a rower,” she said. “You made it seem like you'd be inside the clubhouse. ”

  He gave the clubhouse a quick glance. “Yeah, I go in there sometimes.”

  Mira turned the keys over in the ignition, powering up the windows, which prompted Jackson's, “There you go, roll 'em up.” She then stepped out of her car, rounding the front to get a better look at her personal DARC operative. He wore a tight black long-sleeve shirt and black cargo pants with bulging pockets. Mira wondered what kind of spy tools he was packing. A pocket full of tracking devices? Night vision goggles? Black fuzzy handcuffs?

  Focus, Mira. Forget the shower. It’s not going to happen.

  “Thanks for coming out,” he said.

  “No problem. Where's your friend?”

  Jackson turned around and waved his arm down the road. A dark sedan that had been idling abruptly turned its engine off, its headlights fading to black.

  “So...” Mira began. “You did this just to follow me, or...?”

  “That's part of it. I was also getting a little sick of the office.” He shrugged. “And it's a nice night.”

  It was true. The weather was much more enjoyable than inside Mira's stuffy apartment. The company, too.

  “Care for a walk?” he asked.

  They began their stroll towards the bridge abutment, and then under its archway where the road turned into a jogging path through a park along the river. Their conversation running a little dry, Mira said, “It is a nice night,” for the second time. Jackson responded to each with two very similarly delivered “Yeah”s.

  In the following silence, Mira felt a mutually awkward awareness of their change in venue, of Jackson's planned escape from the professional sterility of a DARC Ops office environment. Why did he do that? Was the counter-surveillance experiment really necessary? Against her better judgment and screaming rationality, she began to wonder if Jackson just wanted her all to himself in the dark. Away from computers, cameras, and employees.

  “So, Mira...” He spoke hesitantly. Softer than the usual shoptalk tone of headquarters. “I want to apologize again about the way I doubted your, uh... your case.” It was too dark to read his expression. And then to conceal it further, he looked away, to the river, to the lights of a passing yacht. “I feel stupid, actually, about some of the things I said. I'm probably not the first.”

  “It's okay,” she said, making sure to sound neutral and unrehearsed. “We can start over again.”

  He nodded as he walked, a silent thank you, before asking, “How are you holding up?”

  “Fine. A little tired... Angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “Well, the more I learn about it...”

  “Oh, right. I can imagine. Did you get my latest about the refugees?”

  He'd been keeping her updated with reports, emails personally encrypted by Tansy which covered DARC Op's latest findings—the most recent being Langhorne's connections to some unsavory cadre of Kenyans: ex-politicians who'd been ousted by drug trade accusations. But their real hobby was using rebel groups, or "freedom fighters," to oversee the arming of Dadaab refugees.

  “So Langhorne's friends would get these guys, these provocateurs, to do their dirty work,” said Jackson, returning to his business tone. “All under the guise of a 'grassroots uprising,' of course. Something the CIA's been doing for decades. But I think the senator is flying solo on this one.”

  “So he’s a rogue senator?”

  “I hope so, at least.”

  Mira hoped so, too. The last thing she wanted was to mess around with some spook's pet project.

  “Don't worry,” said Jackson, seeing her face. “I highly doubt the CIA, or any of the alphabet soup of agencies, would entrust Langhorne with all of this.”

  “You sure? What about his connections over there?”

  “You don't think they have their own connections?”

  Mira didn’t respond. Instead she kept walking quietly, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, and trying not to think about exactly who the senator knew in Kenya. She watched Jackson out the corner of her eye as he swatted a mosquito away from his ear.

  “So... We've been working on some things,” said Jackson, swatting his ear again. “Tansy thinks he might be able to disrupt their communications. We're either going to send our own encrypted messages as misdirection, or create a virus that'll annihilate the whole thing.”

  Either strategy sounded fine to her. They were at least better than last week's vague crumbs of Jackson's "we'll look into it," though Mira felt herself siding with the kill-it-all method, despite not knowing what Jackson meant by it. “What do you mean by annihilation?” she finally asked.

  “You ever have ants?”

  “Um...”

  “It's like bait,” said Jackson. “They take it home to poison their colony.”

  She kept quiet, waiting for an elaboration.

  “Tansy makes up a document using their encryption. So it seems legit and gets forwarded through their ranks, like ant bait. It proliferates and takes control of their computers and their encryption key generators. And when we're ready, it self-destructs everything it ever touched. Get it?”

  “Got it,” she said, not completely getting it. “So did you get my update? About the Tanzanian connection?”

  “Well, yeah. The Tanzanian opposition party? Sure. Langhorne's got a lot of friends.”

  “But do you really know about them?”

  Jackson kept his head down as he walked.

  “I've been working on my own strategy,” Mira said. “Inside access.”

  “You've already got that.” Jackson said quickly and bluntly. “Almost too much of it.” His sudden shift from passive colleague to concerned friend was a surprise. He slowed his gait to walk right next to her, made sure he had eye contact, and said, “You're right in the thick of things. How much more access do you need?”

  “I don't need it,” she said.

  “Then what's going on?”

  “And I didn’t seek it out. It came to me. An aide to the Tanzanian embassy invited me to the Embassy Row Ball.”

  Jackson held Mira by the arm as they approached a bench, urging her to sit with him. As they settled into the bench, she glanced at Jackson. He was staring back at her intently. In the soft orange glow of the park lamp, a look of worry crossed his lightly stubbled face. “What did you say?”

  “I said I'd go.”

  “Why?”

  Mira laughed nervously under her breath.

  “Do you know this person?”

  “No.”

  “Then doesn’t tha
t seem odd to you? Out of the blue like that?”

  “It was a casual thing. Like, natural. Chuck introduced him to me because he wanted to hear us speak Swahili. He gets a kick out of that kind of stuff.”

  “And?”

  “And then he asked if I could come to the ball to help with the translator team. He'll pay me. So I pretended like I had this great interest in Tanzania, but really I just thought it would be a good chance to do some snooping.”

  “Sounds risky.” Jackson turned to face the water. “And too convenient. What's your gut tell you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think it's a trap?”

  “I don't think so.” Mira smiled. “But that's why you're coming along with me.”

  “What?”

  “I'm allowed to bring a date.”

  Jackson's sigh turned into groan. He was hating this. It was cute.

  “Well,” she said, nudging his arm. “Way to make a girl feel bad.”

  “This is too convenient. You set this all up just to get a date out of me. Probably hounded the Tanzanian embassy for days, hawking your talents, trying to get an invite.”

  “So are you coming or not?”

  He chuckled and looked at her, his eyes running up and down. “Sounds like I have to.”

  “You don't have to do anything.”

  “Well I have to... protect you.”

  She nudged him again. “You're becoming quite protective.”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning back to the river “I protect all my clients.”

  “Oh, right, your clients, of course.”

  “It wouldn’t look good for business if I left a trail of bodies.”

  “No, but at least they couldn’t leave bad reviews.”

  Mira chuckled, but Jackson was nodding about something else, his head looking up, searching. “This could be an interesting scenario.”

  She loved the fullness of his bottom lip, how it pressed against the top. She loved how he looked while thinking hard about their strategy to take down a big chunk of Capitol Hill corruption.

  “We could try to find out who else is involved in the deal,” he said finally.