DARC Ops: The Complete Series Read online

  For once in her life she'd found a job that didn’t make her suicidal after the first couple of weeks. It was a big change, a workplace that didn’t leave her wondering after the first week if the ninth floor roof doors were locked. Here she was, finally, working for a great man who did great things in the world, Mr. Langhorne, one of the highest-ranking U.S. Senators, husband of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and chair of the Senate committee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counter-terrorism. It was heavy stuff. And super-linguist Mira was the one to translate it all. From foreign aid agreements to terrorist watch lists, it all flowed through her brain's well-oiled translation cogs. How could that not be exciting for a 26-year-old aspiring diplomat?

  But again, there was Chuck, incessantly gravitating toward her glass-panelled cubicle. He also had a knack for throwing monkey wrenches into her cogs. “What are you working on now? Swahili limericks?”

  He asked questions like this all the time, and Mira resisted the urge to roll her eyes every single time.

  For Mira, the natural-born polyglot, it was just another language to decipher. A sad, pathetic language which primarily consisted of about 600 different ways of saying “I really, really, really like you.” It was also a translation that Mira was not paid to perform, and so she ignored it whenever she could and deflected him when she couldn’t. That morning her excuse had been Senator Langhorne's letter to Yang-Dong Guo, head of China's pulp and paper industry.

  Wait, where was she again? Oh right, the forests of Myanmar...

  ...total forest stock volumes showing a decrease similar to 2006, with forest coverage rates falling from 17.22% to 12.49%. Therefore, the domestic wood pulp consumption of 14.62 million Mts of...

  Just beyond the letter's surface of statistics lay a carefully veiled plan, something especially clear to anyone doing the translating. The Senator was trying to guilt the Chinese—if not threaten them outright—away from their somewhat illegal and definitely environmentally reprehensible plundering of Myanmarian rainforests. The Senator also just so happened to offer sweetened trade deals that would increase American pulp wood exports. Everyone could go home happy. That seemed to be Senator Langhorne's trademark.

  And everyone did go home happy, including Mira, who, after leaving the Hart Senate building, which sat just a block away from the Capitol Hill, would listen happily to a Joan Didion audio book during the painless half-hour commute home across the Potomac. She'd cross on the 14th Street Bridge, then take the freeway past the Pentagon and the Arlington National Cemetery to Washington Boulevard which snaked around to her high-rise apartment in posh—okay, yuppie—downtown Arlington. And there, beneath the twenty stories of Randolph Towers, and without even thinking of the comforts of her sofa or TV or fridge, she'd do her daily ten laps in the indoor swimming pool. It was a practice she'd maintained since her arrival to the Towers four years ago, a move made possible by a scholarship from George Washington University. A dual Masters later, one in Business Administration and the other in International Trade and Investment Policy, she was scooped up and hired by Senator's Langhorne's personal headhunter.

  Sure, life was good for Mira. It was a quietly successful, orderly life which sometimes bordered on being a little too orderly. Even she would admit that, with her color-coordinated Rothko prints and color-coded book spines, the well-watered ferns, puzzle-pieces of Vermont foliage being linked together to the sounds of Billie Holiday, the occasional sip of Korean smoked tea, quinoa gurgling in the rice cooker. And most noticeably, the boring, albeit peaceful absence of a significant other.

  But as night approached, the quiet orderliness of Mira's apartment became almost suffocating. It would keep her awake, the sixteenth floor silence. Sometimes, when lying under the covers, she'd stretch out across the bed, her arms and legs spread wide, trying her best to fill its queen size. But she could scarcely feel the edges. Then she'd lie there and wonder about her other half, her true other half, the empty space of her mattress, wondering how many more nights it would stay cold throughout the night.

  Chuck, sadly, was the closest thing to a man in her life. Though he was much more the boy in her life. And hardly even that.

  “Morning, gorgeous,” was his next morning's greeting.

  ...Naai Surachejpong, for Thailand's cooperation in counter-narcotics training activities, and implementing... Fuck.

  Mira looked up from her laptop screen, her tight bubble of concentration having been popped at the familiar, grating sound of Chuck's nasally greeting. He had this particular talent, a way of smudging out the sparks of progress just as something big was finally about to catch fire.

  “Sorry,” Chuck lied. He was never sorry about interrupting her. “I just wanted to give you a heads up about the Senator. He'll be coming in early.”

  “So?”

  “So, in case you're not done with the Sura... Surachej...” A look of blankness crossed over his face.

  “Surachejpong?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “It's already done.” It was Mira's turn to lie. “But thanks.”

  “No problem,” he said, smiling as if he'd almost saved her day. “And sorry about Landon's. They were closed again.”

  “Chuck, you don't have to keep bringing me Landon's.” She watched his face twitch imperceptibly, and it almost made her feel bad for saying it. “I mean, you're gonna blow me up.”

  “Well, hey, we're in this together.”

  “In what together?”

  “The addiction,” he said with a dirty grin.

  “No, we're not.”

  “By the way, I eat twice as much Landon's as you. The éclairs, amuse bouche, bear claws...” He did a proud little half-turn which showed off his mid-thirties pudge. “Hasn’t blown me up yet.”

  “Yes, it has,” Mira said matter-of-factly. This time she didn’t feel bad about her honesty.

  Chuck laughed and turned away. “More to love, Mira,” he sang while striding back to his cubicle. “More to love.”

  A few moments later, as warned, the large, bovine head of Senator Langhorne appeared as it floated across the office above the tops of cubicle frames. His voice, too, floated across and transfixed the room. A temporary work stoppage ensued, with necks craning around at any odd angle necessary to catch a glimpse of the Senator. What was he saying? Who was he talking to?

  He reached Mira's cubicle, his smile having already begun to weaken slightly, his face rosy under the harsh florescence of office lighting. He'd been known to show up early after a night of socializing. The more hungover, the earlier he'd arrive.

  “Mira,” he said, his smile slowly returning. “I didn't get a chance to thank you for the additions.”

  “Which ones, sir?”

  “Well, look at that.” He chuckled. “Shoot, you're covering my ass left and right.”

  Mira smiled. She drew her hands from her laptop keys and folded them neatly in her lap. She had work to do, but interacting with the Senator was probably the most important part of the job.

  “The Yang-Dong Guo, especially,” he said. “Seems like our writers don't know the timber from the trees.”

  “It was an easy fix.”

  “Maybe for you it was.” The Senator began looking around to the other cubicles, quietly taking stock in his workforce. “I should have you writing these things, not just translating. Save a lot of time and money.”

  “Senator,” came the voice of Chuck, again on cue just as something good, like a sudden promotion, could've potentially happened. “Senator, your ten o’clock. Line two.”

  Langhorne nodded politely and retreated, with Chuck in tow, to the back of the office. In his absence, the room seemed to come to life again, an awakening mélange of keystrokes, caster wheels, and coughing. And now, for Mira, the melodious language of Thai.

  ...insufficient assets to control her remote border with Cambodia. Efforts to participate with neighboring LE can and should...

  The harsh, digitized ring of her desk p
hone promptly jarred Mira back to Washington. She answered the call and was surprised to hear the Senator's voice.

  “I'm sorry,” he began. “I know Chuck and I are probably killing you today.” He had no idea how half-right he was... “But could you do me a quick favor, Mira?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Could you please go into my office and print out the meeting agenda?”

  “Sure.”

  “Today's agenda. With the attachments.”

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks, Mira. I'll be in the conference room.”

  Fine. No problem. It wasn’t often that he requested her to do Chuck's work. It might even feel good to stand and walk a little. For the past month she'd become increasingly aware of a slight hunch forming in her back, the true sign of a full-time cubicle dweller.

  In the Senator's office, where no one was looking at her but the wall-mounted, taxidermied heads of big game animals, Mira could finally and properly stretch her back muscles. With her chest pushed forward and her shoulders rolled back, she stretched her arms straight up until she heard a loud, merciful pop.

  Finally, with self-administered chiropractics taken care of, she started in on his computer to track down that elusive meeting agenda. Though the search wasn't as straightforward as she'd expected. In contrast to the Senator's immaculately clean office and desk, his virtual desktop was a complete mess. There might have been around twenty open windows – all of them minimized to show a background almost completely covered in icons. He’d even left a muted YouTube video running, a slideshow of classic muscle cars. When she hit a wrong button, its music began to play, the obnoxious twang of cheap country rock briefly filling the office until it was silenced by her frantic mashing of the keys.

  It was quickly becoming clear that the search through Senator Langhorne's digital odds and ends would take a little longer than she'd hoped. She even felt some new pressure returning to the burgeoning hunch in her back. It was like two tectonic plates mashing together and sprouting forth a mountain. And as she considered the tectonics, a new and more troubling concern emerged. While at first she'd hope to quickly find and print his document, she now hoped that she wouldn’t stumble upon anything inappropriate. She did not want to accidentally discover the Senator's secret interest in some weird porn fetish.

  Please... Please don't be amputee cosplay...

  Just as the thought crossed her mind, an extremely odd-looking window opened up. And an immediate and unexplainable wave of fear washed over her.

  In lieu of some obscene discovery was a page of strange-looking symbols. To anyone else, it would have looked like any other piece of Senator's Langhorne's random computer clutter. Anyone else would have opened and closed it and moved on, continuing elsewhere with the banal search for a meeting agenda and its attachments. Chuck, for example, wouldn’t have given it a second thought. He might have even found the agenda by now. But what he certainly wouldn’t—and couldn’t—do, was translate the strange collection of symbols on the spot, rendering them into intelligible strings of meaning which could be read just like any other language. Like any other foreign document sitting in the translation folder on Mira's laptop.

  She had no choice. It happened effortlessly and on impulse, her eyes automatically converting gibberish to common symbols, which blended into words, and then sentences, to whole meanings. Slowly and methodically, under the watchful eyes of stuffed bears and mountain lions, Mira decrypted the message. The story. And what she read scared the crap out of her.

  When Chuck's voice wafted over her shoulder, she jumped up from her seat.

  “Whoa,” he cried, looking almost as startled as Mira.

  “Sorry, you just... You...” She was still too flustered.

  Chuck started laughing. “Seriously, are you okay?”

  “I was just looking for his agenda, and all these windows...” When she turned back to face the computer screen, she noticed the coded text was still up. And then she froze.

  Chuck approached the computer and nonchalantly clicked off the coded text window. “Yeah, he's pretty unorganized on here.” He started searching through various windows and folders, sighing casually. “What a mess.”

  “Yeah,” she said feebly.

  “The way he leaves this thing...” Chuck turned to check the door for his boss before continuing. “...you'd never think he's a Senator. Seriously. I don't blame you for being in here so long. It looks like some kid’s computer. But worse. Like the kid let his grandpa on it or something.” He clicked through a few more pages before muttering, “Fuck.” More scanning, clicking, swearing.

  With a grinding noise and several long beeps, the printer awoke from its inactive slumber. And on page one it sounded groggy and sluggish, protesting the job with long inexplicable pauses.

  Mira thought Chuck would have said something, or even just reacted in some small way upon his finding the document, but as more and more pages sputtered out of the printer, he seemed content to simply stare at her with an eerily distant smile.

  “Sorry for scaring you,” he said.

  “Me too.” Mira grinned tightly back at him.

  “Too much coffee?”

  “The opposite,” she said, walking over and collecting the pages from the print tray. “Not enough sleep.”

  2

  Mira

  She had presented the idea with an intentional half-heartedness, the invitation to an early lunch being just another of Mira's crazy impulses. A whim. A sudden craving for Kenyan food. Never mind that she'd just been to Njema Cafe several days ago, that it wasn’t exactly a convenient drive from Capitol Hill, and that it shared a building with a dry-cleaning shop. The laundry and the cheap neon signage, along with its cramped parking, only added to the authenticity of the experience, as if the corner of 4th Street and Wilma had been Washington's little slice of Nairobi.

  “Excuse me, Miss?”

  Mira turned around in her chair to look at the food counter. Her waiter had been leaning over it, trying to get her attention.

  “Kamari just called,” said the waiter. “He's on his way.”

  Although she was waiting for the arrival of two friends, only one of them was to join her at the table.

  “Still okay with water?”

  Mira smiled. “I'm hungry, but I'll wait.” And then she turned to look again at the décor, once again noting the minimalist, utilitarian, and maybe even cheap interior design. The chairs, not covered in the typical carefully folded fabric, were bare, modern, and metal-framed. The tabletops were faux wood and freshly wiped with a citrusy, medicinal-smelling cleaning solution. She looked across the room and observed a distinct lack of Kenyan flags, teak, Benga music and other kitsch, which had her once again appreciating the stark authenticity of Njema Cafe. Kenyan restaurants, in Kenya, never had to prove they were in Kenya.

  Remembering her reason for being at Njema, aside from hunger, Mira looked back down at her notes. She read over a list of words written on the notepad which usually never left her glove compartment, the words she'd frenetically scribbled as soon as she had gotten to her car. It was a wise move, writing them out while they were still fresh in her mind. At least as fresh as anything could be two corridors, an elevator, a security guard, and a soot-lined parking garage later.

  mburungo

  chapaa

  in baridi $

  The chair directly across from her suddenly scraped back across the floor tiles. Mira looked up from her notepad to see a very tall, gorgeous mocha-skinned woman slinging her purse around the chair back. For whatever reason, it was Lashay's custom to make her comings and goings as wordless as possible.

  “Well, there you are,” said Mira, instantly hating how inane it sounded.

  “Yep. You had me at chapati.” Lashay sat and looked around the restaurant. And in a much quieter voice, she said, “It's so empty here.”

  “Shhh. Why are you so late?”

  “For the same reason why we shoul
d've just got bagels at Buñuel's.”

  “Yeah, I dunno.” Mira handed her friend a folded paper menu. “That's not as fun.”

  “Neither is falling asleep at my desk in an hour.” She grabbed and unfolded the paper in a distinctly low-blood sugar type of haste.

  Mira shrugged as she read the menu. “Maybe for you. I love doing that. Food coma, here I come.”

  “And how does the Senator feel about it?”

  “Not sure. But it's always the best sleep I ever get.”

  Lashay looked up just in time to see the waiter approaching their table, a young African kid. Kid, mainly because of his face. As for the rest of him, definitely not kid. Mira noticed, too, suddenly wanting to skip her meal and go straight for his immaculately defined arms and chest instead.

  “You know what the best sleep I ever get is?” Lashay asked with a devilish grin.

  Mira thought about kicking Lashay's shins under the table. But it was already time to order drinks. Two seltzers with lime wedges.

  “So are we really just here for the nyama choma, or...”

  Mira gave her friend an innocent look.

  “Because I can tell something's up,” Lashay continued. “You have that weird eye twitch thing again.”