Covert Christmas (15 page)

Monday, December 23, 0248 Zulu

S
am hurtled the Jeep through scenes of carnage—no streetlights, no power anywhere, darkness aglow with burning houses. Vehicles lay wrecked, charred along the side of the road, people running, screaming. A tank trundled along the highway topped with drunk soldiers. Women screamed from places Cass couldn't see.

In all her years of foreign correspondence, she'd never experienced anything quite like this—the smell of burned bodies, the diesel. The sound of heavy rap music. Dancing silhouettes in front of flames, and laughter amongst the screams.

Cass's stomach backflipped at the sight of a small pile of bodies at the side of the road. Inside she warred with a human need to help versus a fierce journalistic instinct to cover this story, to let the world know the horror of what was happening here. She glanced at Sam, his profile grim.

“Welcome to hell,” Sam said, reading her thoughts. Then he swore. “Up ahead, roadblock!”

Oil drums with fires roaring inside lined the road. Drunk soldiers and rebels fired randomly into the air. Sam floored the gas, wheeling suddenly off-road and bashing through grass and brush before bounding onto a dirt track. “We go around back of her village.”

Outside Gillian's simple, square concrete house, a thin dog scuttled across the dirt road. Everything was dark, silent.

Too silent.

Cass and Sam glanced at each other.

“Gillian?” Sam called hesitantly as he edged open the unlocked door.

A groan came from the blackness inside, but the distinct coppery smell was enough to tell Cass something was very wrong. Sam flicked his lighter, found a kerosene lamp. A gold low flickered into the room, making shadows come to life. And Cass gasped.

Gillian lay on the sofa, a bunched-up towel clutched tightly to her stomach. It was saturated with blood. Gillian's hands glistened with it.

“Gut shot,” Gillian whispered.

Sam thrust the lantern into Cass's hands and lunged forward, dropping to his knees in front of the sofa. “What happened? How badly are you injured?” He edged the towel off her wound, trying to see.

“I…ran a blockade on the way here, and they shot at me. Hit several times…go, please get the boy. He's in the cellar.”

“Go, Cass,” Sam said firmly as he reached for a glass of water and put it to Gillian's lips. It was the first time he hadn't called her boss. Cass hesitated, worried about her friend.

“Please,” moaned Gillian. “Please, just take the boy, leave me, or…this will be for nothing. His…his name is Christmas Savungi.” She struggled to breathe in and Cass heard the gurgle in her friend's chest. Blood dribbled from the corner her mouth. “He's…just five years old. He…has…no one…”

Cass found a candle, lit it, hands shaking with adrenaline.
Creaking open the cellar door, she smelled the scent of hot raw earth. She held the candle up in front of her. And in the darkness she saw a pair of dark, shining eyes. Something grabbed Cass by the throat.

“Christmas?” she whispered, reaching gently for his hand. She felt it slip into hers, small, cool. Emotion ripped through her chest—he felt just like Jacob. And for a strange second she felt as if her son was here, now, in this dark cellar, reaching out to her. And suddenly nothing mattered more to Cass than saving this small, vulnerable child.

She turned around to tell Sam to help Gillian into the Jeep. But as Sam's eyes met hers, she knew.

Gillian hadn't made it.

“Take the boy to the Jeep!” Sam barked, eyes bloodshot. He gently covered Gillian's face with his large hand, closing her eyelids. Moisture sheened down his ebony face, glistening on his high, proud cheekbones as he bent down and breathed a kiss over her lips. He covered her with a sheet.

“We will do this,” he snapped, rage crackling from him even in his gentleness. “For her, we do this! Now take the child. And swear on your life you will not tell anyone who he is.”

Cass looked at her shrouded friend lying on the sofa—a haunting image in the flickering kerosene glow and lunging shadows. Then she felt Christmas's little hand in hers. She glanced down into those huge, frightened eyes. “I promise,” she whispered. “I promise I'll get you out of here, Christmas, okay?”

Sam repeated her words to the child in Kigali. “Be proud, be brave. And tell no one your surname, Christmas. You will be safe that way.”

He bit his lip, nodded, a tear tracking down from each eye. And Cass's heart ached.

 

With Christmas hidden under a coarse gray blanket in the back, Sam barreled the Jeep through burning streets while Cass prayed there would still be choppers at the compound, that Jack would still be there.

If there was one thing Jack was, it was stubborn to a fault, and doggedly reliable when he set himself to a mission. He could save this boy. Cass knew he could, if only she'd be able to convince him.

“How will you get Christmas into America?” Sam yelled as he swerved through smoke-filled darkness.

“I don't know. But I will.”
I swear it.

And Cass realized she'd just crossed a line. No longer was she reporting on this Kigali story, she was making it. And she didn't care. Because she was making a difference, for a child.

“Just hurry! I don't know if they'll still be there.”

But as they rounded a bend they hit another blockade. Petrol smoke roiled from burning drums in front of a tank and group of soldiers. “Too late to turn back! Hold on!” Sam jammed on brakes and swerved, trying to run the barricade up the side. Machine-gun fire peppered the vehicle. Sam gasped as bullets thudded into his neck and shoulder, jerking his head sideways. Blood began to spurt from his neck as he slumped onto the steering wheel, horn blaring as they barreled straight toward the firing soldiers.

Monday, December 23, 0359 Zulu

Jack checked his watch, sweat dripping. It was getting even hotter as the hours inched towards dawn. The evacuation was also going faster than initially anticipated, since they'd managed to secure two additional heavy-duty birds from the Ivory Coast military. He watched the lights of another helo materializing from out of a black sky thick with smoke.

Susan Swift stood beside Jack on the patio under the lapa as they waited for the chopper to land. Her children and husband had already been flown to the staging area.

“Are you're sure you're ready to leave, Madame Swift?”

She inhaled deeply, nodded. “Diplomacy has become untenable. I don't even know who to communicate with. We have no means of knowing who is behind this yet.”

Jack jerked his chin to the sky. “Here's your ride.”

“Thank you.”

He stepped away as a message came in through his earpiece. It was the pilot, telling him the Liberian air force had started making low flyovers. It looked as though the civil war could conflagrate into all-out invasion. “Orders are to get everyone out on this last flight,” said the pilot.

Jack's chest tightened. He glanced down the drive where Cass had disappeared hours ago. “Negative,” he said into his radio. “I need to do one more sweep.”

There was a moment of static, or hesitation on the pilot's part. “Officer, that was an order.”

“Repeat…you're breaking up…” Jack killed the transmission, spun round to address Swift. “The CBN journalist who was interviewing you earlier—do you know if she has a sat phone? Do you have a contact number?”

“Well, yes, we do. My aide has her number in my office.”

“I need it. She's still out there,” Jack said.

Swift studied him for a long moment. “As is her right, Officer. She's been in bad situations before. She's a professional—this is her game.”

Jack read a whole lot more behind Swift's tone. Here was a strong woman defending another woman's right to a dangerous career.

He flattened his mouth.

Yeah. So it was her right to go get herself killed. Cass had always accused him of trying to stomp on her career. If she wanted to die chasing her next big story, all the power to her. There was no way on earth he could control Cass. They were like oil and water. As much as he still loved his estranged wife, they could never live together.

Second chances were a stupid pipe dream. He'd been kidding himself too long.

He sucked it up, and keyed his radio. "We're good to go, clearing out…"

Monday, December 23, 0405 Zulu

C
ass lurched across the seat, shouldering Sam sideways as she grabbed the wheel. Blood flowed hot over her bare arm. She elbowed his knee, dislodging his foot from the gas pedal, and the Jeep decelerated slightly. Cass used the moment to ram the stick shift into second gear, grinding against the clutch as the vehicle bounded down into a ditch. She swung the wheel to the right, slowing the Jeep's progress, crashing through brush. Cass swore, but blindly kept going.

Finally she managed to slow enough in dense undergrowth to reach down for the brake. The Jeep stopped, hidden by trees.

Heart pounding, sweat dripping, Cass listened. She heard gunfire, but the soldiers must have been so inebriated or high that they hadn't got it together to come after them.

Quickly, Cass felt for Sam's pulse. Nothing.

Christmas?

She swung around, peeled off the blanket. The boy peered
up at her, dead silent, wide-eyed. Shaking.
Oh, God.
A child should never have to experience this kind of terror. Tears filled her eyes. “It's going to be fine, I promise, with all my heart. I'm going to do this.”

But how?

With a trembling hand Cass wiped blood and dirt off her mouth. Then she sweated to maneuver Sam's massive frame out from the driver's seat, stilling every few seconds to listen to the jungle, to the sounds of gunfire, to see if the men were coming.

She finally managed to pull him into the passenger seat, and she climbed into the bloodied driver's seat. Fighting exhaustion, Cass realized suddenly that she had no idea how to get back to the compound, other than along that blockaded road.

She had her sat phone in her backpack. But who was she going call—911? She laughed harshly out loud. Needing to hear the sound of her own voice, to validate herself. Yeah right.
You wanted this—you wanted to push the limits.

But she did not want a kid in it all. Not a little boy, vulnerable, dependent on her. A boy the same age as Jacob had been.

As she leaned forward and turned the key in the ignition, she heard truck engines approaching. Adrenaline kicked—the only place she could think to hide until it was light was Gillian's house. Cass headed down a side road and reconnected with the main road several miles further east. Retracing her route she drove slowly, watchful of the flickering fires, praying it was still quiet in Gillian's village.

She'd hide with Christmas in the cellar until daybreak.

And then she'd have to figure out what to do next. Because no way was she going to get help from the embassy now.

They'd all be gone by dawn. Jack, too. Probably damning her to die for her story. She deserved it.

She was on her own. Always had been, even when they were together.

But this innocent boy called Christmas did not deserve this.

She had to get him out of this dark and burning nightmare. Come hell or high water.

And she had to do it alone.

Monday, December 23, 0612

Cass creaked open the cellar door and peered out into the small living room. A hazy orange dawn filtered through the drawn curtains. It was hot, muggy, the scent of the death pungent. She crept out, her stomach clenching as she bypassed Gillian's shrouded form on the sofa.

Carefully, Cass lifted the edge of the curtain with the backs of her fingers. Her muscles went rigid—there was a group of men down the road, looting a house. It wouldn't be long before they reached this one.

Hurriedly she moved to the kitchen. In the fridge she found fruit, bottles of water. She took these to Christmas in the cellar. Then she grabbed her backpack and stuffed what other food she could find into it. Hastily she cobbled together a first aid kit from the bathroom cabinet, and exchanged her blouse and skirt for a pair of pants and a T-shirt from Gillian's closet. She rinsed Sam's blood from her face and arms.

But before she was done, she heard the men yelling outside. She bolted back down into the cellar, leaving her pack and sat phone on the kitchen table.

She held Christmas tight, praying they'd leave, that if they entered the house, the shrouded body might spook them off.

Then she heard the Jeep's engine starting outside to the sound of cheers and random gunshots.

She cursed, tears of frustration burning into her eyes as she heard them driving it away. She wondered what they'd done with Sam's body—she'd left him in the passenger seat.

Now she didn't even have transport.

Despair, fatigue, heat crowded out logic for a moment.

How on earth was she going to get this little boy out of this country in crisis? She didn't speak the language, she stuck out
like a sore thumb, didn't know the way…she'd relied on Sam for so much.

Her thoughts were broken by a sound somewhere in the house. Cass tensed, listening, her heart jackhammering.

She heard it again.

Her sat phone! In her bag upstairs.

With shaking hands she crawled out. Hunkering down on the floor behind the table so no one would glimpse her through the kitchen window, she reached for the phone.

“Hello?” she said quietly. Nervous.

“Cass. It's Jack. Where are you?”

Emotion surged through her, lodging hard in her throat. Nothing, not one thing in this entire world was more welcome than hearing his voice, and for a moment she was unable to speak.

“Cass, are you all right?” The deep, measured calm of his voice steeled her. Cass cleared her throat, not wanting to come across as weak or uncertain to him. Or afraid. “I…I'm fine.” But her voice clearly belied her words.

“Cass, speak to me—what's going on?”

“Jack. I'm in deep trouble.”

 

Jack watched the rotors of the chopper speeding up as he spoke, the pilot making a motion for him to come. The DCM was finally on board. She had received another call from Washington, which had delayed their departure for over an hour. Jack had tried to delayed it further. At war within himself, he'd capitulated and called Cass, trying her phone several times, growing increasingly worried when there was no answer.

Now his stomach knotted at the sound of her voice. And he knew Cass would not ask for his help unless something was very seriously amiss. He closed his eyes for a moment, torn, seconds ticking away, the sound of the rotors increasing.

“My cameraman is dead, Jack. I've been hiding at a colleague's house, in the cellar. She's been shot dead, too and her village is being looted. The roads are blocked. Our vehicle is gone.”

The rotors roared to full speed, downdraft whipping palm fronds into a frenzy. This was it, last chopper out. The rebels had breached the army blockade on the highway. It was just a matter of hours, maybe even minutes, before they reached the compound.

“Cass—” he said.

“I need you, Jack.”

His heart swelled, his fist tightening on the phone. This was what he wanted—wasn't it? For her to need him, for one last chance to get it right, to atone for his own role in messing up their marriage?

He glanced at chopper.

Once that bird left…