Dark Escape (DARC Ops Book 10) Read online

  “Please don’t bother,” she told him, again avoiding his attention. “One of the other drivers can take me. They’re waiting outside.”

  Sajad nodded, frowning with disappointment. Sophia didn’t linger, but thanked him once more then stumbled past several goodbyes and handshakes with several of the people she’d been introduced to and spoken with that evening. Too tired to inquire more about Abbas, about the kind of work he was doing, and planned to do. Certainly too tired to look at any more art.

  Too tired, in general, of Afghanistan. Sophia was glad she’d be leaving the next day on an early flight to Spain. She walked through the door opened by one of Abbas’ staff and then carefully made her way down the steps toward the circular driveway. She blinked hard to clear her vision as she walked toward the cars parked in front, drivers waiting patiently. She headed for the first one and pulled the car door handle.

  “No, no, I’ve got that,” said the driver, rushing around the car to open the door for her.

  She slid in the cool darkness of the car, resting her head back, feeling a migraine coming on. Her head throbbed. She saw white flashes in her vision, and her lips and fingertips tingled. It felt as if she’d been up all night drinking. Flashbacks of college and getting dizzily into the backseats of cabs began to swirl around her head. And when the driver’s car began moving, she felt the sickness creep in her. Car sick. Sea sick. Tea sick?

  By the time the driver pulled up to her hotel, she felt weak and shaky, so much so that it took an effort to open the door, stumble out, and make her way into the hotel and through the foyer. The concierge frowned at her, likely assuming she was drunk. She immediately straightened her shoulders and focused on placing one foot steadily in front of the other, her vision swimming until she made it into the elevator. The moment the doors swished closed, she leaned precariously against the wall. Third floor. Ten more seconds.

  Ding! The doors swished open and she stepped out, her gaze purposely focused on her door near the end of the hallway. She felt lucky just to reach her room. When she plopped down on the bed, everything was spinning. Her thoughts, too, her worries, the idea that she was perhaps about to pay for her spycraft. She wasn’t fucking ready for this.

  Sophia rolled over twice, trying not to vomit, reaching for the phone on the bedside table. She paused. Should she make an emergency call? To the hospital? Her father?

  No, he couldn’t know. She could tough it out.

  Perhaps it was just something she ate, plus the general fatigue of the day. A belated heatstroke. A city girl, an esthete, out of her element.

  Who would not be out of their element in Kabul? Despite the “cityiness” of its infrastructure, the culture, the supposed newfound safety, it was still a dangerous place. Danger everywhere. She felt it now with every breath. With every move of her head, tossing it to the side of the pillow, barely keeping herself from revisiting the food she’d just eaten.

  Thank God she was getting tired again

  Thank God for sleep. She welcomed it. Just sleep it off, baby . . .

  Sleep it off . . .

  2

  Declan

  Jackson turned the room lights back up and walked away from the projector screen that had previously displayed more maps than a travel bureau. Every inch of Tora Bora accounted for. Every grain of sand. He hoped they’d also find some insurgents along the way.

  For the first half of the week, DARC Ops SWAT was able to keep up the facade. To outside eyes, their camp was nothing more than a simple training exercise in a desert scenario. Perhaps a big waste of money, loading up a quarter of Jackson’s company on a C-130 and flying halfway across the world. Perhaps overkill. But as long as no one aside from cardboard cutout targets were killed, what could be said about them?

  “I have to be honest, Jackson,” Declan said. “With our patrols out through here, the likelihood of us getting in some live enemy contact . . .”

  “Yes?” Jackson said, “What about it?”

  “Well, so much for the facade of training.”

  “Worst case scenario,” the DARC Ops leader said, “is they find out we’re doing intelligence gathering.”

  “Not live fire exercises?”

  “Innocent, harmless intelligence,” Jackson said.

  Unofficially, and as always top secret, their main mission was to learn about what was happening in Afghanistan with insurgents threatening to launch more attacks along trade and patrol routes. A DARC associate back in D.C. had also uncovered some increased activity on the dark web commodity market. A recent influx of lithium and other rare metals had pointed to Afghanistan and suggested illegal mining with the help of someone who has access to the newest technology. Tomorrow would be a reconnaissance mission into a known enemy stronghold outside Helmand Province.

  “And if we do that right,” Jackson said, “then there won’t be any live firing. If we pay attention to briefings like this. Did you pay attention, Declan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jackson asked several other of the newer members, asking if they’d paid attention, if they were comfortable, if they finally knew exactly what they were doing and what it was that was expected of them. “Yes, sir!”

  Jackson’s smile withered away, and he took the energy of the room and quieted it down with a few sad little nods. Then he sat before them at the long conference table and said, in a low and quiet voice, “There’s just one more thing.”

  His statement produced some groans in the room from the DARC veterans, men who must have known what dangers lay behind such an innocuous little phrase. For some, it was famous last words made infamous now. Declan hoped the same wouldn’t happen here in Afghanistan.

  But what were the chances of that?

  The place seemed to welcome that sort of attention. He knew that. He knew there was no way DARC had traveled there without the idea that they’d be getting, eventually, involved in some serious shit. Some new pages added to the playbook. Some extracurricular training that involved more than just cardboard cutouts. And likely more than just your average Afghani insurgent.

  “Well Jackson, what is it?”

  Jackson smiled and said, “Everyone’s got the night off.” And then his smile broadened as if he’d expect everyone to cheer and sing praises. But what did a “night off” in a wasteland really have to offer?

  As the men began shuffling out of the briefing room, Jackson said, “Everyone except for you, Declan. Come here a minute.”

  Declan had already joined the crowd, eager to leave the room and get on with whatever the night off turned out to be. He stopped and spun around, spotting Jackson still seated at the table. He tried not to wince or shrug and just walk back to his boss with the typical zero-emotion display. He’d had a few years of army experience to train him to become a robot, to take orders like one, to slink back toward the boss’s table and accept whatever horrible news came from it.

  “Thanks,” Jackson said as Declan pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “I’ve got a little side project for you. Nothing crazy. But you did mention wanting to use me as a reference for something? You wanted me to write some sort of letter?”

  “Not at the expense of my life,” Declan said, a little more straightfaced than he’d meant. He finally cracked a smile, and Jackson seemed to ease up with him.

  “Just a side project,” he repeated.

  “Okay.”

  “I got a call last night,” Jackson said, “from a US diplomat in Kabul. He pleaded with me to find and rescue his missing daughter. Sophia Sweeney.”

  The robot scanned his memory bank for any data on Sophia Sweeney. There were none. Not even the faintest traces of human recollection.

  Jackson continued: “She went missing before her flight to Spain this morning. Her last known location was her hotel room in Kabul. Embassy Suites. Remember that one? The nice one. I showed it to you on the way in. They suspect it’s a kidnapping, but no group has come forward with any demands yet.”

  Declan knew bet
ter than to inject his own personal feelings and hunches on what happened. Or didn’t happen. To him, at least the human side of him standing on the edge of a “night off,” Declan wondered if she’d really gone missing at all. It sounded more like a missed flight than anything else. Then again, a missed flight in Kabul, especially with a young American woman, alone, usually meant something else.

  “All right?” Jackson said. “I just want you to take a look around. Nothing crazy. I bet you could wrap this up in a few hours and get back before lights out. If not, I might have to come searching for you.”

  “You expect me to slip into some bar or something?”

  “There’s more bars than you can think of in this place,” Jackson said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t think of derelicting my duty to you and this Sophia person. How could I enjoy myself knowing that she’s missing?” He kept his face straight the whole time knowing full well that it quite likely pissed off Jackson to no end.

  “Forget about this night off business,” his boss said. “Wipe it clear from your mind.”

  Declan nodded.

  “Or else,” Jackson said, a frown on his face, “someone might come along and wipe it for you. Keep focused out there.”

  After Declan said his goodbye, the kind of lingering look he’d received from Jackson seemed to burn its way into his mind. In the hall outside the conference room, he closed his eyes and saw it again. He was so used to Jackson’s jovial grin, the looseness on his face usually appearing between DARC assignments. Now, with the tension back in his boss’s face, it was obvious now that the lull had ended and they were once again right back in the thick of it.

  Jackson had made no mention of a teammate, but there he was, Asher, the other poor sap stuck on the wild goose chase with him. The way Asher sulked around made it seem like it was payback for something. Maybe it was all payback, Declan included. Some horrible thing in a past life. Maybe if he could find and rescue the girl, he’d finally be absolved of his sins. He told that to Asher, half to lighten the mood and half because it was true. But his teammate found it neither funny nor very relevant. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy. He had the objectives clear in his mind, the route of their search, how far they’d go, what risks they’d take. And most important, how soon they’d call it a day and return to the compound. Neither man disagreed on that fact. An hour. Get out, sniff around, and return alive and with all their limbs still attached.

  Their hour, thankfully, was winding down. Their last stop would be an open-air market, open to the public. All sorts of foot traffic. Busy throngs of shoppers. So much clothing under which a bomb could be easily strapped.

  So many cars that could swerve off the road and detonate before Declan even had a chance to flinch.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” he told Asher, whose wide-eyed glance back was all he’d needed to see. No need telling him to pay attention; he’d been looking that way since they turned the corner and was faced with the zoo that was Kabul’s central market. Immediately on sensory overload, a myriad of scents assailed his nostrils. Spices of every imaginable color. He could now recognize the difference between turmeric and saffron. He inhaled the scent of rose and orange blossom oils popular with the locals. Carts piled with deep purple eggplant and pale green melons. Roasted meat, soaps, and lamb kababs. He recognized the aroma of a popular Afghan dish—Qabli pulao—a mixture of rice with raisins and carrots and sprinkled with heavily spiced lamb. Fresh-baked breads wafted into his nose; the disk-shaped thin loaves known as Obi Naan, and the Lavash, more commonly served with meat and stew dishes. He noticed all this while continually sweeping his eyes through the crowd, the carts, the vendors selling goods from their vehicles. Declan glanced again at Asher.

  “What’s wrong?” The guy had been keeping his eyes a little too peeled at the market. They were half a block away, and it seemed as if he saw something. Eyes tracking something.

  Declan asked again, “What?”

  “Do you hear that?”

  “No.”

  “Shhh.”

  That was when Declan heard the distant ripple of automatic gunfire. Unmistakable. The sound triggered his gut to clench, his breath to hitch, the hair on the back of his neck to rise. And then an explosion. And then the horde of screaming, yelling people running in all directions. In the near distance, he saw a burst of dirt rise into the air, followed by a bright yellow-orange fireball. The ground absorbed the blast with a dull thwump. Then another. And another.

  Declan snatched at his radio, informing the base that there had been some interesting developments at the market. “They’re bombing the shit out of this place,” he said, keeping his voice calm but just at the edge. He and Asher stood on the edge, too, standing out and looking in. There was no way they’d go in. He swept his gaze left to right and back again, senses alert, watching for someone just standing still amid the chaos or rushing into the crowds of people racing to get away from the explosions and the gunfire. A suicide bomber ready to martyr himself and meet his virgin rewards in heaven.

  Nothing.

  Their last damn stop . . .

  Why was it always with these last stops, the last ten minutes of shift, that the world chose to go to hell? He made his way quickly to a shoulder-high wall made of mud and straw. It wouldn’t stop an explosion but might offer some shelter from flying bullets.

  Asher joined Declan behind cover and said, “Let’s just hold back for a moment,” while the gunfire continued down the road. “I don’t think we’ll be finding that American girl there.”

  “No?” Declan said, laughing. “You don’t want to even look? What makes you think that?”

  Another explosion, Asher saying, “That right there,” along with it.

  They really shouldn’t have been laughing about it. But seeing so much in so little a time frame, two years of an old deployment, had hardened him and forced Declan to seek comedy in even the worst little corners of his reality. It was all he could do to stay sane, and sometimes even alive. As long as he was laughing, he was living.

  He wondered if the Afghanis employed a similar defense.

  There was only just so much absurdity one could take . . .

  Declan radioed back to the compound, confirming their coordinates, and confirming that they were well away from the theater of battle. He heard the whistle in the air just before the explosion that ripped the air from his lungs. A blast of hot air pummeled his body, sending him tumbling through the air along with whatever splintered wreckage he could feel whizzing along with him. However far he’d flown before landing flat on his back, the wind was knocked out of him, his ears ringing and his head buzzing with sounds—screams, groans, shouting, and more gunfire.

  He opened his eyes and found himself in a cloud of smoke and dust and immediate confusion.

  But he was alright.

  He wasn’t even bleeding.

  But Asher?

  Where was Asher?

  Declan radioed for his teammate. Relief flooded through him when he received an answer. In the distance, as the dust cleared, he saw his buddy slowly scrambling to his feet, coated with a layer of dust. He also rolled to his left and clambered to his hands and knees and then to his feet. He ducked for cover behind the wall of a nearby building.

  “What the fuck was that?!” Asher said through the radio.

  “That was our timer politely reminding us to head the fuck back to the compound.”

  “I will,” Asher said, “After I sweep around and meet you on the other side of the market.”

  “How the hell did you get over there?”

  “It’s called running. Where are you?”

  “I’m still at the western edge. Wait, check that,” Declan said as the smoke cleared. “Eastern edge. I guess I was tossed pretty good, too.”

  On the radio, Jackson said to them both: “Can you assist with injuries? What are we looking at for body count?”

  Declan spied Asher strolling through the mayhem. He answered first, explaining that most
of the skirmish had moved on to the outskirts of town. Kabul police forces ran up against an increasingly smaller group of insurgents. After the surprise, and the bombs, they were usually quick to be put down. Like a surprise fire after a strike of lightning in a dry wood. The faster you could get to it to put out the flames, the easier it was to save the day. Today, the DARC team of two was happy to let someone else save the world. They still had a girl to find.

  “And keep an eye out for her on your way back,” Jackson said.

  Declan answered affirmative, though he was really beginning to get tired of this girl side-distraction.

  And then another distraction cropped up. Another side show, a short distance away, a woman with a thin blanket thrown over her head and upper body, surrounded by a cluster of men, forcing her into a lower door in a large, two-story structure. The sight of it burned into his mind for later, the windows and doors, the escape routes, the points of entry. The men, how they dressed. How they moved. Something in him knew already that he’d come back here to this building.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t ever leave.

  He hunched behind a parked van and watched carefully as the men rushed this person out, another image burning in his mind. The last before the scene ended. The legs. A woman’s legs, a pair of them beneath the blanket. Pajama pants, and strangely, tennis shoes separated by a strip of bare white skin.

  “Jack, I’ve got something of interest here,” he murmured into his radio while scoping 360 around him. “Looks like a group of men just hustled someone, a woman, a white woman, into a building just north of the activity. At the edge of the block.”

  “Hold on,” Jackson said. “Hold your position.”

  “Everything’s pretty quiet here except for . . . for what I just saw.” He could feel the tiny hairs rise on the back of his neck. His hearing dimmed slightly. His body knew it was readying for combat even before he knew it. “Christ,” he said into the radio, “it looked like a fucking kidnapping.”