A Soldier's Christmas

by Lee, Rachel; Lee, Rachel; Lee, Rachel

  Perhaps it was his humanity that scared her most of all. "Left or right side?"

  "Pardon?" He squatted down in front of the fire, stripping off his mittens.

  "Left or right side of the rock bed? After we eat."

  Josh glanced up at her, eyes clear with understanding of her unstated boundaries. He flipped back his hood. "Right side, by the light, so I can read myself to sleep."

  He obviously wanted an easygoing tone, too, like with the shooting-hoops comment. Still, tension lines radiating from the corners of his eyes sprinkled guilt all over her. She couldn't squelch the desire to smooth her fingers over them.

  Danger zone. Back off notions of touching.

  She opted to be up front. Dodging the obvious wasn't helping, anyway. "Kinda tense, huh? Being here together. Things will be better once we're both settled at work. We won't see each other so much. Ops officer duties will have you hopping, being called out to the flight line every time there's an emergency. I'll be busy giving check rides and filling out form eights. Even when we do see each other, we'll both be too exhausted to notice."

  Liar.

  "Sure. Sounds great." He brought a longer log down over his knee. The frozen brittle wood snapped in half, the crack echoing. Crouching, he dropped one piece, then the second onto the fledgling fire.

  Sparks showered up, blazing higher to throw dancing shadows along Josh's beard-stubbled face. He so didn't deserve the pain she'd brought to his life.

  She inched closer to him, woodsy smoke teasing her nose on its curling path outside. "You can have the apartment if you want. I'll look for somewhere else to live. I know you'll be busy keeping everyone current and spun up in case things flare in Cantou again."

  He grunted, still staring down into the fire.

  "Josh? We have to learn to be civil. This isn't the only time we'll be working together."

  "Fine." His face snapped up. "Glad you're ready to talk. Let's start with why the hell we ever got married."

  Whoa! Scream on the brakes. Blood rushed to her head as if she were pulling G-forces. She was thinking more along the lines of "You get the blender and I'll take the food processor."

  She opted for the simple answer. "Your biological clock was ticking."

  He snorted. "A guy's clock doesn't run down."

  "Whatever." He'd wanted babies and she'd wanted to give them to him. So why hadn't she been able to just go for it?

  With a long stick, he prodded the fire, stoking. "So why did you marry me?"

  "My biological clock was ticking." Partial truth.

  His incredulous look shouted a louder answer than any he could have shot her way. Okay, so she'd delayed having children. Again. And again, even though originally they'd agreed to start a family right away, both of them impatient.

  Then their final explosive argument while unpacking in their new apartment had ended everything. She'd turned the spare bedroom into an office. He'd been planning more along the lines of a nursery.

  She couldn't stop thinking how damned scared she was to take that final commitment step, because someday he would demand answers to questions she saw crowding his eyes about her past. She hadn't told him, but she suspected he knew at least a part of the story thanks to her blabbermouth younger sister.

  Josh pitched a final branch into the fire. With deliberate, predatory intent, he leaned forward. She should move away, but couldn't find the will. No surprise around Josh.

  He stroked aside her hood, exposing her face to the grazing knuckles of his caress. "It's a damned shame we couldn't get our clocks in synch, because you know there's nothing I would have enjoyed more than giving you a baby for Christmas."

  Alicia held herself still under his touch, unable to pull away, unable to move forward. Her heart twisted with longing. She'd had such hopes for their first holiday season as husband and wife. Her gift for him remained wrapped, hidden, an antique sextant for her navigator husband.

  The heat of his fingers scorched her chilled face, stirring the hunger that simmered inside her anytime he touched her. She couldn't ignore it, but she refused to act on that hunger. "You really need to stop with the sexual innuendos. It's going to be uncomfortable enough sleeping next to each other tonight."

  He stared back at her, inscrutable thoughts scrolling across his eyes. Would he push?

  Finally, he just smiled, letting her off the hook for now. "I'd much rather sleep beside you than a bear."

  "Thanks, I think."

  His hand fell away. "But you're right. This sucks, being stuck out here together. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

  She didn't want him to be nice, especially not now when they faced a final night together. She'd already cheated him of so much. He deserved better.

  From the start, she'd known he was only getting half a person after what happened eight years ago. She'd hoped that maybe if she loved him enough, went through the motions of normalcy, everything would work. He would never know that she couldn't give him a hundred percent of herself.

  She'd been wrong.

  Alicia rocked back on her heels, suddenly certain she could not curl up next to him and hold firm to her resolve. "Maybe we shouldn't sleep at the same time after all. Once we finish eating, we could take turns sitting guard to keep the fire going. You should sleep first since you walked the lead."

  With some luck, they could take turns sleeping until morning, never awake at the same time for long. And somehow forget that they were stranded together during one of the longest nights of the Alaskan winter.

  * * *

  TEN HOURS LATER ON THE LONGEST NIGHT of his life, Josh held a branch-rigged torch overhead to add to the flashlight rays. Still, the beams barely pierced a dark deeper than outside. While Alicia slept, he wanted to scout around the cave. He needed to work off restless energy after his four-hour power nap.

  They'd eaten, drunk melted ice, all silently. The talk of babies for the holidays had axed right through any hope of joking away the evening.

  So her biological clock was ticking, which meant she just didn't want his babies. That delivered a kick in the seat of the pants harder than an afterburner.

  He focused on the task at hand, surveying their surroundings, scouring for anything that might help their survival situation, like animal furs or food. So far, he'd only found an empty rabbit's nest and a few rats.

  And a surprising lack of anything else.

  Other wildlife should have taken up residence in this shelter. Yet he couldn't find so much as a footprint. The cave floor looked as immaculate as his mother's fresh-mopped kitchen.

  No one was here now, but his instincts blared that someone had been recently. And that someone didn't want anyone else to know.

  "Hello?"

  He jerked to look over his shoulder, torch swooshing around to light an empty corridor.

  "Josh? It's just me." Alicia's voice bounced around a corner a second before her flashlight beam ricocheted off the wall.

  He turned before she could draw closer. "Careful about sneaking up on me."

  "Sorry."

  Soft regret carried on her single word, the sentiment obviously for so many more things between them. Her sleep-husky tones tempted him to hold her, shake her, kiss her, insist they give things another chance. But did he really want to keep trying to repair their broken relationship?

  Not if she wasn't willing to be straight up with him.

  He'd had a bellyful of people holding back from him. Hell, it wasn't like his brain made him a mind reader. Yet even while he mainstreamed enough to fit in, people always kept up walls with him as if his intelligence allowed him an understanding of their inner secrets.

  If he could do that, then he wouldn't have his crap dumped at the BOQ. "Go back to sleep. It'll be an exhausting trek with the extra snowfall. You've got maybe four hours left before we start out." He raised his torch to illuminate her.

  Big mistake.

  She stood silhouetted by the halo of light, her hood flopped back to reveal blond hair,
spiky, tousled, as if mussed from his hands during sex. Her unzipped parka flapped open to her sides, revealing soft curves encased in her flight suit.

  Heat surged south with unerring navigation.

  Hitching the torch ahead, he charged past toward the last corridor left unexplored. Four steps in, his instincts blared an undeniable warning. He eyed the irregular hacks in the cave walls, fresh indentions that had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with human intervention. The mine wasn't abandoned anymore.

  White suits dangled from pegs in the wall beside a tarp-draped mound no bigger than the new dining room table he and Alicia had bought the day before their split.

  "Josh? Is something wrong?" Alicia asked from a step behind him and, hell, but he hadn't even heard her approach this time.

  "I'm just hoping I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing." And now he intended to keep Alicia plastered to his side until he knew for certain. "Stick close."

  Illumination swelled in the small rock chamber as they walked deeper inside. He strode past the canvas-covered bulk to the white suit bags dangling like ghostly apparitions from a Dickens tale.

  Holy crap.

  Alicia's gasp behind him echoed his realization. "Protective clothing and breathing apparatus. God, Josh, these are better quality than the chemical gear we're issued and new. What the hell's going on here?"

  He swept aside the tarp to reveal boxlike machinery with levered doors and gauges. And thanks to a stint at the nuclear-weapons officer course at Sandia Labs at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, he knew exactly what he was seeing. None of it good.

  "Apparently someone has set up a smalltime mining operation here. This machine—" he gestured to the device on the left "—measures mass of the rock. The one on the right measures radioactivity. Combine those two machines and they perform radiometric sorting, which separates preferred uranium from rock and lesser uranium."

  "Whoa. Uranium? Hold on. This mine's supposed to be shut down." She hooked her hands on her hips, spinning a slow circle. "Wouldn't someone have noticed all the activity from hacking out so much rock?"

  "Usually with uranium to rock mass, you have to haul away a helluva lot of rock." He knelt on one knee in front of the black metal stretch of machinery, flicked a dial gauge. "Unless I miss my guess, they've struck a vein of pure uranite, probably a highly concentrated form. Uranite can be up to eighty-five percent concentrated, which makes small parcels. A mom and pop operation could pull this off without their activity being detected."

  "And this uranite has been sitting in a training base backyard?"

  "People see what they expect to see. Up to five seconds ago, I thought the only place to find this particular ore was in Blind River, Canada."

  "I may not be a genius, but even I know Canada's mighty darn close to Alaska."

  "They're probably taking out maybe a grocery-bag-size amount per day, then using a small plane or helicopter."

  Alicia stared at the suits. "I'm guessing a helicopter since we didn't see tracks outside other than the rabbits'." She filled in the blanks as quickly as he thought them. "Helicopter blades would blow away footprints upon take off."

  "Good guess." Damn, why couldn't they figure out marriage this easily? "Granted, it's raw uranium and has to be enriched. But it's enough uranium to build a bomb the size used in World War II."

  "So with that grocery bag, either paper or plastic, we could be totally screwed."

  He fingered the Geiger counter attached to one of the suits. "That's not even taking into account skipping the enrichment process and building a dirty bomb."

  His skin tingled at just the thought of radium exposure even as the Geiger counter in his hand told him they'd been exposed to less than an X ray.

  Alicia backed away from the suits. "RoseBud, as enlightening as this discussion is, I think it's time we took it outside."

  Fair enough. Radiation might not be a major concern, but the people who inhabited those ghostly suits could do some serious real-life haunting.

  Josh doused the torch, the flashlight more than adequate for hauling ass out. He clasped her hand and tugged her along behind him, grip tight. He wasn't risking losing her in the maze of tunnels. "We'll call from the radio once we're outside and can pick up a frequency. Hopefully the weather's cleared enough to send a chopper."

  "What an excuse to get out of finishing the class."

  "It'll make the logbooks for sure."

  She stumbled behind him.

  "You okay?" he called over his shoulder.

  "Just tripped over something in the dark. I'm fine."

  Tripped? Trip. Trip wire. Ah, hell.

  A sixth-sense premonition burned over him a half second before rumbling echoed behind them. A collapse? No. More of a squeak. Rolling. Opening. Like a gate or door.

  Woof.

  A bark. Another. Growls grew louder behind the walls, not the storm howling at all. Guard dogs or wolves? Either way, a death pack. Josh's hand convulsed around Alicia's.

  "Shit," he bit out. "Run!"

  CHAPTER THREE

  ALICIA GRIPPED JOSH'S HAND.

  She held tight, not from fear of the snarling reverberations chasing them through the cave. But out of a gut-sure sense that her husband would do something recklessly macho if he thought she was in danger.

  Holding firm, she sprinted, her feet slipping along the slick rocks and frozen mud. The flashlight beam bounced ahead.

  Josh's heat, sweat and intensity seared through their form-fitting flight gloves as they ran. Around a corner. Left or right? Josh shoved right.

  Ten steps later, the mouth of the cave came into view.

  "Gloves," she shouted. "Grab them."

  Her hand sailed down to scoop up her discarded arctic mittens. No time to snag the snowshoes. Thank God they had their goggles dangling around their necks.

  Alicia scrambled on her belly through the narrow opening. Her boots sunk into the snow. Snow flurried and she yanked up her hood.

  "Trees," Josh huffed. "Back into the forest. Climb up. We'll call for rescue from there."

  The trees were farther from their pickup point. But the snarling beasts were closer.

  She trudged through the drifts in a high-stepping run that screamed death. They needed to go faster, but the deep snow turned their sprinting into slow motion.

  Ominous barking swelled from inside the cave. Then pow, the deadly symphony cleared the cave and exploded full force across the open tundra.

  The trees grew closer. But were they close enough? She vise-gripped Josh. Ran. Prayed. Worked to dispel the image of hounds tearing at her husband.

  She could feel the steamy caress of hot breath as her hood flopped behind her. Was it her husband breathing beside her? Or were the beasts that near? She didn't dare look.

  Snowfall thinned from tree cover. She picked up speed, plunging deeper into the icy forest. She searched for a pine or birch strong enough to hold them.

  There.

  Five more steps. Josh knelt, hooking his hands together in a step.

  She opened her mouth to protest and send him up the tree first to make the call while she…what? Scrambled up as best she could.

  "No time to argue," Josh shouted. "Go. That's an order, Captain."

  Her soldier soul couldn't ignore the command even as her wife heart screamed in protest.

  "Yes, sir." Stuffing her survival mittens inside her flight suit, she placed her boot in his cupped hands. She bounced once, twice for leverage, and up…

  She grabbed for a low-hanging branch. She gripped, her flight gloves slippery around the icy branch. Please God, no missing that would cause Josh to stay on the ground longer. A firm hand landed against her butt. Supported. Shoved upward. She flailed her other arm, smacking a branch.

  It held. Yes.

  White birds flapped from the branches in protest. Dangling, swaying, she hooked her elbow around. She swung one leg up, then the other.

  Josh.

  She sprawled onto her belly on the th
ick branch, wrapped her legs and one arm around before reaching down. The barking grew intolerably closer. Josh grabbed a droopy pine limb, levered himself up with a boot. His gloved hand slapped into hers.

  The first snarling wolf skidded to a stop at the base of the tree, a mangy gray creature with fangs bared. Flashing teeth latched around Josh's leg. Her heart lurched as the other wolves closed in.

  The sound of ripping fabric mingled with snarls. She stared down into Josh's face, icy branch slick against her parka. Determination stung through her. He kicked, thunking his boot against the wolf's head, once, twice.

  Her hold strengthened. No letting go. The beast would have to pull them both down.

  Pine needles, clumps of snow, lethal icicles rained from the shaken branches. A wolf yelped and fell. An icicle poked from its side while the animal thrashed in death throes.

  Alicia slipped to the side. She stifled a shriek.

  Josh's eyes narrowed. She read his intent too well. He planned to let go. He would fall to his death to protect her.

  "No damn way, Joshua Rosen!" she shouted through gritted teeth. "Don't you dare let go out of some misguided macho-ass idea of saving me."

  Her arms strained, one burning from the exertion of holding on to the tree. The other stretched to the limit from her hand locking with Joshua's. "If you fall, then I'm going down with you. There's not a chance in hell I can sit up here while those wolves tear at you. So you hang on tight because I look forward to chewing you out once you get—"

  "Roger. Understood." A smile pushed dimples into his face, so at odds with the moment as he hung there somewhere between the branch and a pack of hungry wolves with white teeth and at least five pairs of crystalline eyes flashing up.

  "Not letting go." Josh inched closer. "So quit wasting…energy talking and just pull."

  Up.

  His booted foot swung free from the fanged jaws. Somehow his feet found purchase along the icy trunk. He hooked an arm around a limb, hefted himself over and settled, straddling a swaying branch.