Covert Christmas (16 page)

Monday, December 23, 0637 Zulu

J
ack swore.

He argued with himself he would be quick. He'd try and call for an evac once he returned with her to the compound. But at least he'd be trying—he'd never live with himself if he didn't.

“Hold on, Cass,” he said into the sat phone as he made a flicking motion with his hand, telling the pilot to take off. He keyed his radio. “U.S. civilian is stranded behind enemy lines,” he barked. “I'm going in to assist.”

He killed the transmission before the pilot could respond, or remind him that the compound itself could come under siege within hours. He switched back to the sat phone. “Where's your friend's house?” He strode swiftly toward one of the military jeeps on site as he spoke. Jack told himself he was not abandoning the chargés d'affaires, his mission, his country, by going to look for Cass in hostile territory. He was doing his duty.

As a husband.

And it was about bloody time. He'd lost enough to know how much he wanted now, and what deep compromises he was prepared to make for a second chance.

“I'm not sure, Jack. It was dark. We headed out on the eastbound route, but then Sam took several back road detours to avoid blockades. He…he was shot in the neck…when we tried to run one of the roadblocks.”

Jack fired the jeep's ignition. “Does your phone have GPS?” He barreled out of the compound gates as he spoke. They were now unguarded, the crowds of asylum-seekers milling about, restless, some angry at the Americans for pulling out and leaving them to uncertain fate in their own country. One threw a rock at Jack's vehicle as he passed.

“It does—” She gave him the coordinates. Jack punched them into the military vehicle's GPS mapping system. Then he laid on the gas, racing eastward. The sound of artillery shelling rattled to the west.

“Why did you leave the compound, Cass?” he said, fists tight on the wheel. He wanted to keep her talking. And he needed to know.

“I…my friend needed help.”

He was silent for a second. “It wasn't for a story?”

There was another beat of silence, a shift in her tone. “No,” she said quietly.

He sucked in air, fists tightening even further on wheel. “Don't move from where you are, understand? Keep your phone on, and make sure it has a clear line with no obstruction to the sky. It's not going to work if you take it down into the cellar. It's probably why I couldn't get through earlier.”

“You tried earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Jack?”

He inhaled. “I'm still here.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Ambushed by a fierce surge of emotion, he signed off.
Above, in the western sky, the Black Hawk carrying Swift grew smaller, metal glimmering in the first violent rays of the morning sun.

 

Daylight revealed a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Black smoke snaked from burning villages and vultures circled above dull green trees. Scavenger dogs and baboons scampered between bodies, and the gutted wrecks of burned-out vehicles were strewn along the road. But the sound of shelling had ceased and an eerie lull pressed down with the heat of the new day—perhaps a hangover from the night of violence. Jack wondered how long the lull might last before the next wave.

Sweat slid down his brow as he saw blackened oil drums and a coil of razor wire across the road ahead, soldiers with red bandannas and armbands passed out against trucks. This must be the barricade that Cass and her cameraman had run into earlier. He swallowed at the thought of how close he'd come to losing her, to never getting a chance to make things right.

Quietly, Jack swung the wheel, ducking off the tarred road. He followed a rutted dirt track into dense trees. If he played it calm, using the GPS mapping software in his military vehicle, he could keep moving toward Cass via a series of off-road routes through the old rubber and cacao plantations that covered the foothills in this area.

The flashing GPS dots grew closer and closer. He was almost there.

He neared a small cluster of houses with tin roofs. The stench of carrion was powerful here. He saw more bodies, an abandoned tricycle. A kid's bloodied shoe. His mouth turned bitter.

So this is Christmas…and look what you've done…

Inhaling deeply, he pulled up outside the plain square house registering on the GPS.

The cameraman's large body lay crumpled on the packed red dirt outside, like tossed-aside garbage, tire tracks at his side. Rage mushroomed in Jack. His gaze flicked left and right as he reached for his assault weapon and clicked off the safety.
Gun leading, he crept round the side of house, peered in the window. Through a small gap in the drapes he saw a body on the sofa, covered in a sheet drenched with blood. His mouth turned dry.

Once he'd circled the perimeter, Jack tried the front door. It was locked. He kicked it open. Weapon leading, he entered the home. A wall of humidity slammed into him, thick with the overpowering stench of death. He scanned the small living room, saw Cass's pack and sat phone on the kitchen table.

Cellar, she said cellar.

He spun around, saw the cellar door, but before he could move toward it, the door creaked slowly ajar. Jack raised his weapon, pulse quickening. The door opened farther and Cass emerged, her eyes dazed from the darkness underground.

Raw emotion slammed so hard and fast through Jack he didn't think about what he did next. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her tight against his body, and he just held. And for a nanosecond time stood still, the years between them slipping away. Just as quickly, Jack felt awkward, and pulled away.

But he saw that her eyes shimmered with tears.

Swallowing, he turned away, disguising his own overwhelming feelings with action. “Come,” he said grabbing her pack and sat phone from the table. “We don't have one second to spare, not if we're going to make it back to the compound and get a flight out of this hellhole before—”

“Jack, wait.”

Something in the firmness of her tone stopped him, and he looked into her eyes.

Her gaze flicked nervously to the cellar door. A sense of uneasiness curled into him. “Cass—” He stepped up to her. “Why
did
you come here? What happened to your colleague, exactly?”

She ran her tongue over her teeth—he knew the gesture well. She was cooking up some story. Irritation flared. “Look here, Cass, Liberian jets have started making low flyovers—civil war could erupt into a full Liberian invasion at any moment.
For all we know the new Liberian government initiated this instability. No one understands what is going down yet, or who is behind what faction. It's—”

“Jack,” she said quietly. “There's a small boy in the cellar. We have to take him with us.”

He stared at her, precious seconds leaking by. “A U.S. citizen?”

Her lids flickered. And he knew, he just knew her too well—she was going to lie to him.

Irritation segued into a burst of frustration—he and Cass had such a way of bringing out the worst in each other, butting heads all the way. He was kidding himself, it would never work between them. “We're running out time. And my orders are clear—only U.S. citizens. If he's local, we leave him!”

More precious seconds slid by as Cass battled with her next choice. She knew how stubborn Jack could be and how much a true soldier he was. If he had orders to leave behind Kigali locals, he would. His crack infiltration team would not have survived their missions without clear and sometimes harsh guidelines. If she told him the Kigali royal family had been slaughtered, and that the little five-year-old orphan hiding in the cellar was now technically king of a country in chaos, Jack would be compelled to inform the DCM immediately.

She didn't want to put him in that position. She did not want to cost him his career.

But she'd made a promise to Sam and a vow to the boy.

She could not allow Sam and Gillian to have sacrificed their lives in vain.

Cass steeled herself, meeting Jack's eyes directly, a little quiver shooting through her chest at the intensity in his gaze, and what it did her body. “The boy is the son of an African-American employee of the U.S. embassy,” she said. “The child was visiting Kigali friends and got separated from his family during the attack.”

Jack's eyes narrowed, his blue stare crackling. The temperature under the tin roof increased as the sun grew more
fierce outside, and humidity inside grew thicker. Perspiration gleamed on Jack's skin.

“Don't do this, Cass,” he growled, low, angry. “Do not lie to me! I've seen the manifest. I know who worked at the embassy and no one said a child was missing. Tell me who the child is!” he demanded.

Cass swallowed, her cheeks going hot, sweat pearling between her breasts. The image of Christmas, his big, frightened eyes, the feeling of his little hand in hers, washed through her.

“It shouldn't matter whose child it is,” she said very quietly, sensing the time running away, the last window of hope closing. Panic tightened her chest. “He's just a five-year-old orphan, Jack. He's got no one—” Her voice caught on a sudden lump of emotion. She took Jack's large hands in her own. “Please…this is a child we
can
still save.”

Jack stared at Cass, memories, pain, suddenly thick, visceral, lacing into the damp, hot air. More precious seconds ticked by, and he allowed them to slip, unable to do otherwise as he looked into his estranged wife's eyes, the window into her torment no matter how much she tried to hide—or run—from it.

Because suddenly Jack understood what was going on with Cass.

She was thinking of Jacob.

And now so was he.

“Jack,” she urged softly. “I know I've crossed a line. But now that I'm here, now that you're here…we
have
to take this boy with us. We cannot leave him.”

Jack raked his hand through his dust-thickened hair, his body damp with sweat as the equatorial heat pressed down. “Cass, I have orders. They do
not
include evacuating locals.”

“Fine.” Her mouth flattened and her eyes turned cold. “Then give me one of your guns, and a knife, anything you can spare. I'll do this on my own.”

“You'll die.”

“At least I'll die trying! At least I won't have to live the
rest of my life trying to hide from the memory of…” Shock registered on her face as she realized what she was saying. The rest of her words stuck in her throat and hung, unspoken, quivering between them. Tears pooled in her eyes.

“Oh, Cass—” Jack whispered, reaching up and cupping the side of her jaw. She leaned into him slightly, needing him, the human connection in this living nightmare. Jack's heart swelled with compassion. “Cass, I know what this child symbolizes to you, but—”

Before he could finish, a silent, frightened boy stepped out from behind the cellar door, his luminous dark eyes focused intently, solely, on Jack.

Jack froze.

The boy was the same size and age as his son had been when he died, and for an insane, head-over-heels, crazy about-face moment, Jack saw Jacob standing there.

He cursed, lifting his face to the ceiling, as if the sheer force of gravity might hold back the brutal surge of emotion churning inside him. How could this be? It was like some freaking sign—seeing Cass on their wedding anniversary, being confronted by a five-year-old boy that he
could
still save, together. With Cass.

Like they hadn't been together for their son. At Christmastime. When they'd lost him.

Cass touched his arm. A powerful current of connection jolted through him. And he just knew why he must help her.

It was for Jacob.

For his memory.

It was a way to give some meaning to their son's death.

It was the way to a second chance.

Monday, December 23, 0655 Zulu

J
ack crouched down, balancing on the balls of his feet as placed his hands on the boy's small shoulders. “Don't worry, big guy,” he said gently in Kigali. “We're going to look after you. My name's Jack. Can you tell me your name, son?”

Tears pooled in the boy's eyes. “Christmas,” he whispered.

Jack shot a glance at Cass. “You have got to be kidding me.”

She shook her head.

“What about his last name?”

“Gillian didn't say.”

Jack regarded her intently. “Are you
sure?
”

“Of course I'm sure.”

Jack's gaze pierced hers, looking for a lie, something that might tell him Cass knew more. But right now, all he could see was raw emotion and he was imbued with an eerie sense of something bigger, something surreal going on here.

“Will you help us, Jack?”

He looked away. And Cass knew he was struggling. He had to be thinking of Jacob, of what they'd lost. Her gaze fell to his large, capable hands resting on the boy's shoulders, and she caught sight of the gold band against his tanned skin. Shock jolted through Cass.

Jack still wore his wedding ring.

She opened her mouth, but was at a loss for words, a maelstrom of feelings riding through her, and automatically her thumb sought her own naked ring finger. Her throat choked with tears.

“Yes,” Jack said, turning back to face her. “We'll take him.”

Emotion hiccupped hard and sore through her chest and in that moment Cass loved Jack with all her heart, the way she always had. The way she'd forgotten how. Because she knew what sacrifice he had just agreed to make, how it could cost him his career with the military, which defined him. And he was doing it for her.

For the memories they shared.

For what they had lost.

For Jacob.

She crouched down to Christmas's eye level, reached out, touched Jack's arm. “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered.

His mouth tightened, a small muscle pulsing at his jaw. And Cass felt a tenuous rope of compassion, grief, quivering between them, bonding them. They were in this together.

Monday, December 23, 0700 Zulu

Cass sat beside Jack in the army jeep, Christmas in her lap. His little hands gripped her shirt and she cupped his head against her breast in an effort to keep him from seeing what was happening in the streets and fields and plantations of his country.

Jack's features were resolute, his hands tense on the wheel. He spun off the track suddenly, heading between the trees of
an old rubber plantation. “There's another roadblock ahead—could see by the smoke. We can take a back route through the plantations in the foothills, but it will take a lot longer.”

“How do you know so much about this place, Jack? How long have you been here?”

“Six months. My team was helping the new Kigali army develop a training plan.”

Surprise washed through Cass. “
You
were part of that group? Swift told me there was a twelve-man team here training local troops.”

“Yep. That was us.”

Cass studied his rugged profile, a new curiosity rustling into a whole mess of conflicting emotions. Her gaze went once again to the wedding ring on his sun-browned hand, and she felt hurt, guilt. That ring had once represented so much hope and promise.

“More smoke above the canopy there,” Jack said with a jerk of his chin. “The violence is still spreading. Hell knows who is behind this thing.”

Guilt deepened. Cass looked away, cupping Christmas's head tighter against her body. The poor child was so exhausted he'd fallen asleep in the midst of this chaos. Sorrow and empathy swelled inside her as she held the boy—it was such a human, maternal feeling to protect a small and innocent child. How her arms had ached to hold Jacob again in this way, how her very soul had felt like an empty hole when he died.

Jack swore a streak suddenly and spun the wheel of the jeep. He steered into dense undergrowth. A monkey screeched and a large bird startled out from the foliage with a cry.

“Rebels?” Cass whispered as they came to a stop. It was dark and hot like a sauna under the trees. Jack sat for a moment, silent, scrolling through his GPS mapping system. “Yeah—we're cut off. No other way back.” He checked his watch, muscles rolling smoothly under his sun-browned skin. His dark hair was damp.

“Even if we do find a route, chances are they've taken the
compound already.” He reached for the radio, keyed it, calling his detachment commander.

“I'm trapped behind enemy lines with a U.S. civilian, Captain. She's a CBN reporter.” Jack shot Cass a glance as he spoke, his attention flicking briefly to Christmas huddled and still sleeping in her arms. But he said nothing about the boy. Nor about the fact the reporter was his estranged wife. “We're going to try head north, up into the mountains. We'll cross into Ivory Coast from there. I'll maintain radio contact.”

He signed off.

“You want to go over those mountains?” she asked, incredulous. “That jungle is impenetrable, Jack, no tracks, nothing. No one goes there, and if they do, they don't always come out alive.”

He exhaled heavily, pulling a waterproof pouch with contour map out of his pocket. He studied it a while in silence, then restarted the ignition without looking at her. “There'll be less chance of violence in that region,” he said bluntly.

She'd pushed him out of his comfort zone and he was annoyed by it.

“Are you sure it's the best—”

“It's the only way,” he snapped. “We try and go back into that mess and we're not going to stand a chance. I'm not going to put you and the boy into that kind of a hostile situation. You want my help, you play by my rules.”

His brusque tone instantly got under her skin.

“Your rules? That's what it's always been about, Jack, hasn't it? Your rules. Your game. Never any compromise, no teamwork in—”

His eyes flared to hers, crackling, angry. “Do you want my help or not? Because I sure as hell can leave you here anytime you want.”

She opened her mouth, ready with a biting retort, but thought better of it, swiping the dirt-layered sweat from her brow instead. Cass hadn't realized just how much she'd allowed stress, fatigue, fear to get better of her, and she'd slipped into knee-jerk habit of bickering with Jack. That had been a mistake.
Because he was making huge sacrifice—he was helping her smuggle a non-U.S. citizen over the border against his orders. And he was doing it because of what they'd shared in the past.

There'd be hell to pay if he found out she'd known all along that Christmas was the new king, that she knew who was behind the coup and had not told him. But if Cass gave him that knowledge now, it would force Jack into an even worse situation. She couldn't do that to him.

In silence they bumped and maneuvered up into the hills. The going was tedious on a track of red dirt riddled with giant potholes, some big enough to swallow an army jeep whole, or at least break the axle.

The jungle grew thicker, creeping, crawling in from both sides, reclaiming the narrow trail, covering the sky above. Small rivers now trickled through the potholes, eroding soil further. The scent grew verdant. Bright birds darted under the canopy and the monkeys became more exotic, some with old men's faces, others with tufts of facial hair or bright behinds. Vines, thick as a man's arm, snaked from monstrous branches.

And as they inched up to higher altitude, a hot mist began to roll down from the dull green peaks, swamping the atmosphere with fine droplets and a whispering sense of unease. Odd cries came from the forest, making Cass edgy. And as they crossed a wide riverbed in a muddy gully, the jeep died.

“Out of gas,” Jack said matter-of-factly as he turned around, leaning into the back of the jeep for Cass's pack. “Jack…I'm sorry.”

“We need to go on foot from here, anyway.” He began stuffing her pack with his GPS, radio, knife, water purifying tablets, flint, flares and other gear. He got out of the jeep, trekked through the mud, and dumped the gear on a flat rock at the base of a steep, rocky cliff wall.

“No,” she called after him, “I mean I'm sorry about what I said earlier, about rules, compromise.”

He shot her a glance, but said nothing. Instead he helped Christmas out the vehicle. Crouching down to the boy's eye
level, he said in Kigali, “You go sit with that gear and guard it, my little man. Can you do that?”

Christmas nodded, eyes intent on Jack.

Jack turned to Cass. “I need your help to push the jeep down into that gully over there, into the undergrowth. Don't want to leave a blazing beacon in the middle of the riverbed marking our way.”

Reaching into the vehicle, he made sure the gears were in Neutral.

“Jack, I mean it. I'm sorry. It was…inappropriate, a force of habit.”

“Please just push, Cass.” He shouldered his weight into the vehicle, guiding it with the steering wheel, sweat dripping instantly. “C'mon, give it some muscle, will you? The mud's thick here.”

But she put her hands on her hips, glowered at him. “You're doing it again, Jack. You're avoiding the issue, the thing that tripped us up every time.”

He stood up, swiped sweat from his brow. “Jesus, Cass. I'm trying to get you to safety—”

“And then what?”

He sighed. “Look,” he said quietly, “it cut both ways. You wanted me to quit the military, that's what it boiled down to, but this is
me.
This is the guy you married. I am a soldier.”

“A soldier who married a foreign news correspondent, Jack. I didn't hide who I was, either. And it wasn't easy for me to give up one job after another, following you from base to base. With each transfer or promotion you got, I had to quit yet another job at some other small-town station. I gave up my international career for you and Jacob, so I could be a good mom, a decent wife. That's not something you'd ever have even begun to think of doing for us.”

He rubbed his brow, stepped closer. “Maybe we just tried to tie the knot too early, Cass, before working out the nuts and bolts of how this thing was going to work.”

She swallowed at his proximity, the way his muscles bunched and gleamed from exertion, the way his hair hung
damp on his brow. Poignant memories curled, cool, through the hot mist—the pleasure of making love with him. Jacob's birth, which he'd missed. Their son's first birthday, for which Jack had been absent. Their first wedding anniversary—Jack on yet another tour of duty.

Adrenaline, the hot zones, they fueled them both. It was the stuff of their energy, the fire behind their passion. They'd met in a war zone, and fallen in love in one. Thriving on the danger. But her pregnancy had changed it all.

Cass had been forced to quit the race.

And she'd tried, by God, she'd tried. Jacob had been the glue that had kept her struggling to make it all work.

But when she lost Jacob, she'd needed her job back. She'd needed to throw her pain into something. Their home had felt so empty.
She
had felt so empty. She couldn't just sit there, alone, being a military wife for an absent husband who held his duty for his country above his will to make his marriage work.

And Cass knew she couldn't have asked him to be otherwise, any more than he could ask her.

That's why it hadn't worked and never would, even as fiercely as the electricity still crackled between them.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “Maybe we should never have even tried.” Cass placed the palms of her hands on the back of the jeep. “Let's get this done with. Let's get over those wretched mountains. Then we can move on.”

The going was tough, the mud slippery, and as the vehicle jolted forward down the incline, barreling into the gully, Cass slipped and splatted face-forward into the mud. Pain sparked from her arm.

“Hey, easy there,” Jack said, reaching down to take her hand. He helped her to her feet, holding her close, the palm of his hand on her ribs, just under her breast, as he steadied her. Cass's heart stammered and her cheeks heated. It was the fall, she told herself, not the proximity of his body, the way he was touching her. Yet she couldn't get herself to back away.

“Does it hurt anywhere?”

“No,” she lied.

“You sure? I know you, Cass—”

“I said I'm fine.”

“Good.” He wiped the mud from her cheek as he spoke, a tenderness softening his stark blue eyes. Cass was suddenly conscious of the heat, a flock of birds with red beaks flying overhead, the sounds of the jungle, butterflies in the sky. “Thanks,” she said softly.

Jack stared at her, his eyes changing to a moody indigo. He started to slide his hand down her arm, slowly, his body leaning forward, his head angling slightly. Cass's vision blurred as his mouth neared hers, and every molecule in her body responded, waiting for his kiss. But suddenly she caught a movement behind him, and stiffened.

“Jack!”

He dropped his hand, stepped back. “Sorry,” he said brusquely. “Won't happen again—”

“No,” she hissed. “Behind you. Elephants!”

He spun around just as a large herd charged out the trees and down the opposite bank into the riverbed.

“They're charging us!” Cass yelled as she spun around to flee.