Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) (24 page)

“How many copies did you make of this?” she hollered across the room.

“Why don’t you go ahead and check,” he called back. “I know you know how.”

Carly checked.

It was un-copied.

“You must think I’m a real son of a bitch,” he said, laughing. Carly unplugged the machine and ripped the hard drive out of the case with her bare hands.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for the tour. Good luck with the move.” She turned around to look for him. “Kendall?”

He was gone.

“Kendall?”

The lights turned off.

“Tansy?!”

H
e heard
the screams over his radio. And then other voices, men, several of them sounding as panicked as Carly. Something was definitely wrong.

The lights were out?

He heard mass confusion, the sounds of people scrambling around in the dark. He heard Carly calling for help.

Armed with night-vision goggles and an AR-15, Tansy slipped in the rear door, careful not to let the metal door clang shut behind him. He was immediately faced with a long, empty hallway. Along it were several closed doors, and at the end, at the opening, a figure holding a gun flashed by.

“They’re raiding us!” someone cried. “Fucking raiding us!”

Crap. It was the worst possible outcome. Instead of beating the FBI to the militia compound, they’d simultaneously converged into one giant shit show. He had to find Carly and get them both out of there, fast.

“Everyone hold your positions,” he whispered into his headset. He didn’t need any more of his people in the potential kill zone. In fact, it might even be a good idea to have one of his men make contact with the Feds, update them on the plot twist, the presence of friendlies in the warehouse. But there was an even better idea—grabbing Carly and getting the fuck out of there and not having to explain themselves at all. The hard drive would be a bonus.

“Start up the generator!” someone cried behind him.

Tansy needed to act fast, keep his advantage. He hustled down the hallway, along the wall, all the way to the end where he took a peek around the corner into the warehouse area. At first, all he could see were tall piles of computer scrap, but around one of them stepped an armed thug in military fatigues. He had both hands stretched out in front of him, a handgun in one of them, and he was walking slowly like a zombie toward a row of work tables. Tansy watched him nearly trip over a bunch of power cords. But there was something else by his feet. A woman, crouching on the ground.

Carly.

A horrified look on her face. Hands shakily gripping a revolver. She looked around blindly, as blind, confused, and scared as when he’d rescued her on that cliff in Northern Nevada.

He looked back to the armed militia member. He’d moved carefully to one of the desks and was feeling around for something. A flashlight appeared in his hands. He shone it down the aisle between scrap piles. The light was not yet at Carly. But it was close, zigzagging along the ground as it moved closer. He could see her body stiffen. Shit! She was freezing up. He silently pleaded for her to shoot him.
Shoot him. Aim and fire at the light.

But she didn’t.

She probably couldn’t see his gun, had no idea of the danger she was in.

He stepped closer.

Shoot him!

But she was still frozen.

And so Tansy had no choice but to put a small red dot on the center of the man’s chest, and then double tap the trigger.

He dropped immediately and without a sound. When Tansy looked back to Carly, she was gone.

Tansy felt someone’s body slam into him hard from behind, the momentum knocking him over onto the cool tile floor, his rifle rattling loudly as it skipped away from him on the ground. The pressure was still on him, someone’s full weight pressing him down. And then hands at his face, and then arms around his neck, choking him. Tansy shot one of his arms up between his neck and the attacker, peeling away the attacking arm. It slipped greasily, landing back around his head this time, his goggles bending and snapping off his head. When he squirmed out of the headlock, the room lights came back on. And when he wasn’t grunting, he could hear the distant drone of a generator engine. But the grunting returned as he spun his attacker by the shoulders, an old wrestling reversal. On top of his attacker now, and with a knee pinned against his belly, Tansy took a second to look at the face of the bank robber. Goatee, red and wrinkled face, hateful beady eyes.

“Tansy!” Carly cried from across the room.

His attacker slipped out of Tansy’s pin like a snake through a child’s hands. He watched as the man dove for the AR-15.

Carly screamed again, but it was silenced by a loud gunshot.

Somehow during it all, all the grunting and screaming and the mad dash for an AR-15, someone had been able to sneak up on Tansy and club his arm with a hard and heavy object. The force of it knocked his arm forward, the concussion rocking through his body. But the odd thing was that it didn’t hurt. It only bled.

He wasn’t hit. He’d been shot.

Tansy looked back to Carly, who had a gun in her hands and a horrified look on her face. She’d fired the miss, the almost catastrophic miss, from twenty-five yards. And the man who’d picked up the AR-15, who was raising it to aim at Tansy’s head, was a lot closer than twenty-five yards.

And then another gunshot rang out.

The man dropped fast, his body thudding against the ground on top of the rifle. No more movement.

Tansy looked back to see Carly. She didn’t look scared anymore.

The sounds of voices from the hallway kept Tansy from congratulating her, from running up, grabbing her and holding her, and from thanking her. And then another sound, the tinny squawk of someone’s voice coming through a headset that was lying on the floor. Tansy grabbed it and held it against his ear, a warning about the Feds and their tactical unit that was arriving sounding in his ear. He was glad he’d kept his men on the roof. Not so glad about putting Carly through the shit show.

Although she already looked accustomed to it.

“I get to drive,” she said, thrusting her hand forward. Her hand . . . holding a beat-up hard drive with cables still dangling. “Let’s go.”

Yes, go. They should go now and leave the rest to the FBI. Let them clean up the stragglers and the bodies. Let them try to piece it all together. They finally had their missing puzzle piece.

They hustled to the back entrance of the store, Tansy taking a quick look behind them before unlocking the door. When they emerged into the morning light, Tansy was sure he’d be staring at a few dozen gun muzzles of an FBI tactical unit.

But the parking lot was as empty as it had always been.

C
arly was staring
out the window, looking down at the frenzied hive of activity that was Las Vegas. It was a nice view. They were on the top floor.

Except it wasn’t an executive suit.

Or even a hotel.

“Hey, Jasper,” said a woman’s voice from the doorway. “We’re closing up.”

“Yeah, I’m just about done,” Jasper said, putting the finishing touches on Tansy’s bandage. “You’re lucky it was just a graze, or we’d be here a lot longer.”

Carly moved away from the window and walked over to the bed where Tansy had been sitting for the last twenty minutes. She felt horrible.

“Cheer up,” Tansy said, smiling at her. “I’ve had a lot worse than this.”

“Yeah,” said Jasper, applying the final layer. “Both of you should be happy. You didn’t hit anything serious.”

“Yeah, she did,” Tansy said with an evil grin.

The image of a man’s lifeless body flashed before her eyes.

“Saved my life,” Tansy jumped down off the bed. His arm—his good arm—wrapped around her and wrestled away her morbid thoughts. “You saved my life,” he said again, this time sounding as serious as the sentiment.

Carly thought of how he’d saved hers—without shooting her in the arm while doing so. And despite the odd feelings of it, the new feeling of killing someone, she was glad she’d been able to return the favor. She was also glad that there was one fewer terrorist for the world to deal with. The hard drive was theirs. And they were both alive. And together.

“I have a contact that can take care of that thing for you,” said Jasper, rubbing a squirt of anti-bacterial soap into his hands.

His “contact” turned out to be a janitor. “That thing” was the hard drive. And the hospital incinerator would “take care of it.” But still, Carly couldn’t help but give Jasper a suspicious look. “How well do you trust your friend?” She had gone through too much to not wonder.

“What?” asked Jasper, sounding a little confused.

“Your guy,” she said. “Can he be compromised?”

“Compromised?” He laughed.

“Jasper,” Tansy said. “Do you think you could do it yourself? It would mean a lot to us.”

“If it makes you feel better, no problem.”

“It would.” Tansy turned to Carly. “You’re not gonna ask me if I trust Jasper, right?”

She smiled and gave him a little push.

“So you guys gonna hit the town after this?” Jasper walked toward the door. “Might as well get
something
out of all this.”

Tansy looked over at Carly, reading her expression effortlessly, and then conveying it to Jasper. “We got a lot out of it already.”

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