Darkest Hour Read online

  The weapons had arrived that morning and, the last time they looked, were still sitting on a pallet by a roll of plastic wrap. They were in a large cardboard box, hard cases that needed Matthias’ key to open. If everything had gone to plan, the weapons would not be necessary. And at first, Matthias really wished he didn’t have to use the key. But by the time he reached the shipping area, he’d wished he’d done this task a lot earlier. It would be nice, especially while he was on his way to see who or what the truck had just dropped off, to be armed with something a little heavier than his pistol.

  He arrived to the shipping bay and was relieved to see his important luggage. But there was something else. Another wooden pallet had been dropped next to it.

  Matthias grabbed his radio. “I see a newly arrived . . . box.”

  “You’re clear,” Tansy replied. “Open it.”

  Matthias grabbed a box cutter from a nearby shelf and began to open the box, expecting to find some everyday office item. A photocopier, perhaps. But inside was a large metal case, much like their weapons case. His curiosity piqued, he cut a straight line down the side of the box so that he could unwrap the cardboard and slide it off. Although the building seemed empty, he tried his best to move around the large piece of cardboard as quietly as possible. He then turned to face the box, finding a small handle at the bottom. He tried opening it. It was locked.

  He and Jackson might not have had their whole arsenal of weapons, but they did have their utility belts, which included a very handy lock pick. Matthias fished it out and began twisting it gently into the lock, flicking the piece of metal as softly as he could, rotating, picking, until he heard that gratifying click. The lid popped open a half inch, and Matthias immediately drew it fully open.

  What he saw didn’t make sense at first. It couldn’t be comprehended, the coils of wires running around bundles of large tubes, batteries, liquid, the LED display with a timer. A countdown.

  “What’s inside?” his radio crackled.

  But he could barely hear it. His eyes were stuck on the flashing red numbers, the countdown at 15:00, and then 14:59, and then—

  “It’s a bomb!” he cried into his radio, forgetting that he was supposed to be covert and quiet, forgetting that he wasn’t exactly a bomb expert and perhaps had no business describing it as such. It looked almost comical, the cliché bomb in cheesy eighties action flicks. The clock interface. It even had red and blue wires. Was this part of their drill? Was this some kind of prop?

  “Matthias, can you repeat that?”

  18

  JACKSON

  Jackson’s radio garbled on at the same time as when he thought he heard someone’s voice. It was a distant, echoing sound that had brought him into what appeared to be an underground jail. First were the interrogation rooms, two compartmented rooms divided by one-way glass. And then he started seeing the bars. He wondered what kind of people they’d had down there, who was unlucky enough to be behind the bars. And then he thought of Annica.

  He heard the voice again.

  A woman’s voice.

  He was too anxious, too busy, to hear the radio messages that were currently volleying back and forth. He kept following the sound of what might have been someone weeping . . . Jesus Christ.

  Could it really play out this way? Would he really find Annica tied to a chair? It was how his inner five-year-old had envisioned finding her, but in reality, he’d never expected it to go down this way. He rushed down a narrow hallway, past the holding cells and the interrogation rooms, and then into a new hallway which lead to a dead end. Only there was a square cut into the floor. And a ladder hanging beneath that, dropping down to a second, deeper, darker basement level.

  Jackson stuck his foot down and landed on one of the metal steps with a soft clunk. Before he could shift his weight fully, his radio crackled on again. It was Matthias, sounding almost hysterical now.

  “Jackson, come in! We need to evacuate now!”

  Jackson froze on the ladder, halfway between the two floors. And then he heard that frightened wailing again, the distinct sound of a woman crying somewhere on the lower floor. And then the radio again, this time Tansy.

  “Jackson, come in.”

  And Matthias. “Jackson!”

  More wailing.

  He descended into the darkness.

  19

  MATTHIAS

  Tansy had somehow convinced him to wait in the shipping area. But with the timer ticking down, Matthias was feeling more than a little nervous. Tansy, the only member of their group who knew anything about deactivating a bomb, was on the wrong side of the shipping bay door.

  “How much longer will you be?” he asked.

  “Damn it,” Tansy said. “The doors are all locked. Check the shipping doors. Can you open one for me?”

  Two minutes earlier, Tansy had sounded very confident in his bomb deactivation skills. That, plus the fact that Jackson had reported hearing a woman’s voice in the basement, meant that Matthias would have to just wait there next to a ticking bomb. He tried not to just stare at the numbers as they ticked by. But it was mesmerizing, the red LED lights burning little holes in his mind. He could almost feel the time slipping away, his life slipping away, everything in the room darkening around those little red lights.

  He felt faint.

  It was almost like the blackout he’d experienced in the back of a fighter jet, all the G-force squeezing his blood into his head until his eyes were blinded with it.

  “Check the doors!” Tansy cried.

  He’d already checked them. They were locked.

  His mind was busy racing through scenarios of how he could get Tansy in the building, and how he could do it in time. But he couldn’t help but feel the panic coming on, wondering about how he would get himself out. Jump through a window?

  “How much time left?” Jackson asked.

  “Ten minutes,” Matthias said, eyeing a forklift parked in the corner of the warehouse. And he suddenly felt a little optimistic. Maybe he could use that as a battering ram. Matthias turned to his radio. “Tansy, come over to the shipping side. I might be able to make a door for you.”

  Tansy didn’t respond, but Matthias got to it anyway. He hopped in the forklift, found the key in the ignition, turned it on, and began swooping around in a long arch, so that it was pointed toward the door. He parked and left it running while he ran around in search of something heavy for the gas pedal.

  He checked back at the timer.

  08:16

  Fuck!

  A cinder block. Perfect. He hefted the large brick over to the forklift and then dropped it onto the gas pedal so that the cart shot off like a rocket, gaining speed as it approached the large door. It slammed into the door with a horrible, thunderous thud. There was a screeching of metal as the sliding door gave way, as the wheels of the forklift kept turning and muscling their way through the door. And off it came, slamming down to the side in a loud clatter and the forklift speeding off into the bright daylight of the parking lot.

  “Tansy, your door’s ready.”

  20

  JACKSON

  “Annica!”

  He found her in a fucking cage. Stripped to her underwear, and thrashing. She screamed at Jackson, for him to come and help and get her the fuck out there, her eyes wide and wild like an animal’s. The sight of it, and the sound of it, was possibly the worst thing Jackson had seen. He’d looked death in the face—his and many other’s—as a SEAL, but he’d never felt like this before in his career. The reaction was worse than any battle cry or death rattle, worse than the sight of eighteen slaughtered Kurdish peasants who never had a chance, but who’d never formed a relationship with him. It was different, knowing the person behind the pain and the screaming, knowing that they were innocent. That their only crime was being with him. There had been a bond, and her pain was his.

  “Jackson!”

  What was he doing? Why was he just standing there?

  How the hell could he hel
p?

  “Jackson, help!”

  “Okay,” he said. “I got you.” But what could he do? Was there a door? He looked on the cage for some type of exit.

  “They put me in a fucking cage.” She was crying now, giving up with the thrashing and just collapsing at the sight of his hands approaching the bars. “They put me in a fucking cage.”

  He kept thinking of the bomb, an exploded building caving in on top of Annica, her slow death trapped in the smoke and the smoldering rubble. Fucking trapped. In a cage. How could he get her out?

  He started analyzing how the structure was designed, all while making a solemn promise to himself that if he couldn’t get her out, he would die trying.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “I’m thinking,” he said, reaching for his lock pick.

  “What!?” She was growing more hysterical, despite not even knowing about the ticking bomb.

  “I’m getting you out.”

  But it wasn’t that simple. He’d been trying for what felt like an hour, wiggling the pick inside the lock, but to no avail.

  “It’s not working?”

  He kept trying.

  “Do you have a gun?” she asked. “Can’t you just shoot it open?”

  There was always that option. Though he’d actually never done that before.

  “Hang back,” he said, drawing a handgun from his covert holster. “And cover your ears.”

  Although he doubted that the caliber was big enough to open the lock, he steadied the gun, aimed, and fired.

  And then fired two more times.

  But the lock only swung around from the force. Three little useless indents into the metal.

  “Fuck . . .”

  “Keep trying,” she said.

  But it was pointless. He’d have to get something with a bigger kick. He picked up his radio and called for Matthias.

  21

  TANSY

  When Tansy climbed through the busted-up doorway of the loading dock, he heard Jackson’s voice on the radio, asking very calmly and politely for a bigger fucking gun. And then he saw Matthias rushing in and heading straight for their weapons box, sorting through the various tools and then pulling out a 12-gauge tactical shotgun.

  Tansy turned to a much larger weapon, one that might potentially destroy the building and all of its stores of potentially incriminating evidence. And Annica, too, if Jackson kept having trouble with the cage. He almost admired the plan of their enemy, while he inspected the bomb, how efficient and sinister the whole thing was. Lure them all into a trap with Annica as the bait. And then destroy everyone who knew the truth about Tripoli—including some nosy journalist—as well as the papers, computers, and anything else that needed to be hidden from the eventual investigation if Annica and her story survived the day.

  He checked the timer.

  04:03

  God damn it. He wanted more time. He needed more than the hour.

  He looked back at the wires, how they connected to batteries and tubes of liquid. Was it just a matter of snipping the right wire? Did they still make bombs like that?

  He wasn’t an expert by any means, but he knew how electronics worked. If the signal could be interrupted with an electromagnetic pulse, then there would be no need for a bomb expert. That was it! He wouldn’t defuse it, but hack it.

  Jasper’s voice came over the radio. “Tansy, what do you think?”

  “I think . . .” He was still studying the bomb very carefully, trying to ignore the urgency of the countdown’s blinking red lights. “I think I’ll have to try plan B.”

  “Stop thinking and do something,” Jasper said. “We don’t have that much time.”

  Tansy looked at the timer again.

  02:30

  22

  JACKSON

  Jackson held the shotgun three feet away from the lock. “Okay,” he said to her. “This will be a lot louder.”

  “I know. Just do it.”

  He pulled the trigger and the room filled with a flash of light and a boom loud enough to make his ears ring. But it also made the lock open and fall to the ground, the chunk of metal flattened and split unrecognizably.

  Jackson looked back at Annica through the bars. “Are you okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he started unlatching the door, and opening it, and leading her by her shaky hand out of captivity.

  She held on to him, her arms holding tight around his body, her heart racing. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been through, what they had done to her. He didn’t let himself wonder too much about it. Instead, he just said, “Okay. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  They rushed out of the room together, but she wasn’t moving fast enough. She was barefoot and disoriented.

  “Hurry,” Jackson called to her. “There’s a bomb.”

  She had no reaction to this revelation, except for her pace speeding up, her bare feet slapping skin and bone against concrete. But it still wasn’t fast enough.

  “I got you,” he said. He swept her up into his arms.

  23

  TANSY

  Tansy reached into his courier bag and pulled out a mini homemade EMP generator. He’d made it out of old disposable camera parts he’d bargained from secondhand stores: the camera circuit, capacitor, the flash, a battery pack. It had worked in various hobby experiments. But he’d never used it to deactivate a bomb, or to save lives.

  He glanced at the timer.

  00:50

  After quickly attaching the power-source wire, he aimed the device at the electrical console of the bomb and pressed the button.

  There was a quiet popping sound from the generator. No sound at all from the bomb. But the number screen went blank.

  He’d find out if it had worked soon enough, if he’d disrupted more than just a number screen. But when Jackson yelled down the hall, asking if he’d disarmed it, Tansy gave him the all-clear whistle.

  But really, what difference would it make had he been wrong? They might as well go out with a bit of optimism. One last little cheer, a false victory.

  Another of those victories was Annica. Jackson had her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, her legs bouncing up and down with each of his strides. Tansy moved to the door, showing him the way out of the God-damned place. He and Annica were first through and Tansy could see her face now, looking back up at the compound as they climbed the loading ramp back to the parking lot. She looked sickly pale, maybe even half conscious. Clumsily, she grabbed a tighter hold on Jackson and let her head fall back down as he rag-dolled her to the idling van.

  Jasper opened the door, looking almost as sick as Annica.

  24

  JASPER

  As soon as he had Annica in the van, where she became his patient, Jasper was able to calm his nerves and focus on his training. She was in rough shape. Severely dehydrated. Raw wounds around her ankles and wrists where she must have, at some point in her abduction, been shackled down. It was his job to ask about any other possible violations to her, but the van offered little privacy. “Where else are you hurt?” he asked softly.

  Through dry and cracked lips she said, “That’s it.”

  Jasper nodded.

  “Just from the chains,” she said, inspecting the damage to her wrist.

  “We’ll take care of that.” Jasper prepared an IV bag, slipping in the tube, moving a needle to her wrist, and then waiting there as the van slowed to a stop. “First we’ll get you rehydrated. You’ll feel a little pinch here.”

  Annica held still as the needle slipped in. And as the van accelerated, she stayed quiet, closing her eyes and leaning back into the headrest.

  “We’ll take care of everything,” he said, propping her arm with a cushion.

  Jackson crawled over, nodding to Jasper, and then sitting on the floor next to Annica. He placed his hand on her knee, patting it. Her hand dropped onto his.

  “How’s she doing, Doc?” he asked Jasper.

  “She’s doing great.”r />
  Jasper looked over at Jackson in the low light of the van’s cargo hold. He was doing great, too. It was a little odd, the timing, to see his friend looking as strong as he’d been in years. He’d been through something. And he’d conquered it. Maybe that was all it took.

  25

  JACKSON

  He finally saw that smile on her face. It took several weeks for it to appear, a harrowing month of intense grilling by the FBI, and an even worse witch hunt by the media. It was her first time, being on the opposite end of the news and having its full glare spotlighted on her. But with Annica, it was the first for almost everything. The abduction, of course, but also the fallout from her and Jackson’s bombshell revelations. There were hearings, lawyers, more journalists, but through it all they had only one constant.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “You didn’t have to come today.”

  Jackson had a rare day off from the circus. But he took it to see her. And it was so worth it, that smile of hers, and he told her so, and they continued walking through the crowded hallway outside the special prosecutor’s office where she’d just been delivering yet another three hours of testimony.

  “You look good,” Jackson said. “Well rested today.”

  “It was all from that run last night.”

  “That’s good.”

  Annica wiped her brow. She looked warm from the questioning, the scrutiny, and all the bullshit that had been lumped onto her since taking on someone as high a profile as Hunwick. “Thank God you got me doing that,” she said. “These days, if I’m not physically exhausted, my mind just keeps me up all night.”

  There was part of him that wanted to physically exhaust her in other ways, and there had been times he perhaps could have done so. But since the day of her rescue, those types of desires had been fading steadily. She was safe, from death anyway, and from him. Leave it to an ongoing legal mess to snuff out the spark.