The Ides of Matt 2017

by M. L. Buchman

  Not on a Kelsey Killaney mission.

  “I need an expert in flight operations on the mission team in case something goes wrong.”

  He’d considered arguing, until she said she was going as well.

  “There isn’t time to sufficiently brief everyone on the layout. We only have tonight, so I have to be there. I’ve spent too long hunting Zavala to let him slip away.”

  Which explained why she’d only requested two Delta operators rather than a full team.

  “Can you drive?” Kelsey had asked as they were releasing the tie-downs on the vehicles.

  “Sure.” Of course he could.

  “I mean really drive?”

  “Dad ran sprint car races for a hobby. If he paid the entry fee, then got a sportfishing client, I’d drive the race for him. I was a much better driver than I was a fisherman.” Then he climbed into the driver’s seat of the MRZR and buckled in to settle the point. An MRZR was a close relative of a sprint car. Four seats instead of one, no airfoil on the top, and an MRZR had an engine that could only go sixty, not a hundred and sixty. But those were the differences. In common, they both had: an open metal frame with a serious roll cage, a very low center of gravity, demon-like cornering abilities, and were made for running in the sand and dirt and being fast while doing it.

  In the far back, an MRZR had an extra space like a miniature pickup. It could carry two extra soldiers or a pile of gear. Right now, they had massive tourist drink coolers—coolers that were loaded with all of their tactical gear and most of the weapons they had just illegally smuggled into a friendly country. Due to corruption, the results on these types of missions were often better if the foreign government wasn’t notified. The challenge was to not be caught in the process as that tended to upset them badly.

  It was only as they rolled off the back of the Chinook and onto the deserted beach, that the truth clicked in.

  “You already knew that I could really drive. That’s why you didn’t get a second driver for this mission from Delta.”

  “Maybe I just like your hat,” Kelsey said it as if she was all innocence. No, she said it like a tease—like maybe the first tease she’d ever made.

  He drove up the beach and over the berm onto the Quintana Roo road, then waited for Duane and Sofia to join them in the second MRZR. How had that lucky bastard gotten a woman like that? Sofia was beyond beautiful, right up there in Kelsey Killaney’s category. And she was a Delta Force fighter. As far as he knew, they had like three women in the entire unit, yet somehow Duane had won her heart. And not just a little. Married if that didn’t beat all. The only man less likely to get married in their Ranger platoon than one Jason Gould.

  That got Jason thinking about why he himself was that way. Because he was stupid? Or because he’d never met the right woman? He’d take answer B any day. Any day before now. He wasn’t sure why she fascinated him so much, but that was a question he was willing to pursue.

  “You hate my hat,” he reminded her.

  “You’re right. I hate your hat.”

  “And how important is it that we go low profile undercover here?”

  “Why do you think we repainted the MRZRs in hotrod colors and are wearing civilian clothes?”

  “But you hate my hat.”

  She glared over at him.

  “That’s too bad.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d grabbed the extra accessory when getting civilian clothes out of his room, but he had.

  “Why? Because you so love your hat?”

  “I do, but that’s not the problem,” he tried to shake his head as if she was pitiful.

  Duane and Sofia cleared the berm and pulled up beside them on the empty highway as the helos disappeared back into the night: the big Chinook and the two guardian DAP Hawks. They’d fly out well beyond radar range and refuel from a circling C-130 tanker while they waited.

  “Then what’s the problem, Jason?” Kelsey’s guard was down just enough that if he was quick…

  He pulled out his second hat, triggered the flashing nose, and pulled it onto her head. Her hair was impossibly sleek, so smooth it might have been ice, but was so warm and human that it seemed to burn his hand. He yanked his hands away before he could do more.

  “There,” he declared. Stomping on the gas, he unleashed the MRZR. It leapt down the road with Duane and Sofia close behind. “Now you’re low profile.”

  “I’m going to have to kill you, Jason,” she shouted over the racing wind.

  “Wait until after the mission, okay?”

  Chapter Five

  Kelsey tugged the hat down against the speed-generated wind and hated herself for it. Hated that she hated Christmas. Hated that she still didn’t know how to be nice to Jason when he’d been nothing but nice to her. Wearing his stupid matching hat was the first concession she’d managed.

  He looked over and grinned at her as he turned left onto the Carretera Transversal to cross the island.

  “So, tell me why you’re irrational about Christmas?” He shouted over the wind noise. The electric MRZR itself was quiet, but there was roaring wind and the tire noise as they raced the 9.3 miles across the island in a vehicle with no windshield. The wide two-lane road ran straight as an arrow between two uninterrupted walls of green—their headlights well-focused on the road ahead so that they’d be hard to spot from any distance.

  Not a chance. “Tell me why you’re so crazy for it that you have not one but two Rudolph hats.”

  They covered a mile in silence before he spoke. He slowed a little, but the road noise barely changed.

  “Mom bought them for Dad and I last Christmas. This one is his,” he tapped his forehead. “You’re wearing mine.”

  “Why do you have his hat? Thief!” She was suddenly very conscious of having Jason’s hat on her head. It was so…personal. As if they were together—somehow a couple.

  Again the mile-long pause.

  “The cancer killed Dad by Valentine’s Day. Mom followed him, of a broken heart by July Fourth.”

  Kelsey felt as if she’d just been punched. She reached out and clamped a hand over his arm in sympathy. Could feel his muscles rippling beneath the surface as he drove. His strength a comfort, when she should be the one providing that.

  “Sorry,” he steadfastedly stared ahead without a glance toward her. “It just slips out sometimes. When I’m not being careful.”

  Kelsey could only look at him in amazement. His ridiculous hat and teasing her about it had more meaning than should be possible. In an instant he transformed from a ridiculous man who had been kind to her, to a kind man who didn’t mind being perceived as ridiculous—even if he wasn’t.

  How was he so comfortable in his own skin that he could do that?

  She was on the verge of asking, but knew that wasn’t right. He’d just laid his heart out on the cross-Cozumel road. His honesty demanded the same.

  “My parents hated each other. I still don’t know why they stayed together.”

  Kelsey’s hand still rode lightly on Jason’s forearm, but she was reluctant to take it away. Through it, she could feel a listening stillness come over him.

  “But they didn’t fight all year. Instead, they saved all of their bitterness for one ‘special season’,” she wished she could do this softly rather than shouting it in short choppy sentences with no ability to gauge her listener’s reaction. “The Christmas tree. Mom thinks they’re pretty. Dad hates them as a waste of money, space, time… I don’t know. It’s not like we were poor. Maybe he hates them because Mom likes them. Dad would pick the fight starting in October. Stretch it into February when he was on a roll.”

  Jason’s stillness continued as the lights of San Miguel de Cozumel city began to light the road ahead of them.

  “Christmas is nothing but bad memories.”

  Jason slowed as they entered the outskirts of the city. He hadn’t said a word as she’d told him something that she’d never told anyone. She’d always managed to keep her Bah Humbug! to herself be
fore. Somehow was never dating anyone when Christmas came around, always opting out of Secret Santa at work. She’d stressed herself into actual illness before any number of Christmas parties.

  And Jason just drove.

  “Look.”

  She was looking, to see what his reaction to her was. For some reason it seemed to matter, but she couldn’t read it.

  Then he nodded to either side of the road.

  She looked. There were breaks in the trees. Houses that were little more than hovels were tucked in among palm and avocado trees. And each one had bright Christmas lights. Sometimes just a doorway, sometimes a spiral climbing a palm tree, and frequently a lit creche of the birth in the manger in gaudy plastic. The closer they got to town, the more extravagant the displays.

  They turned southwest on the Avenida Rafael E. Melgar.

  The waterfront was a wonder of lights. To her right lay the sea. Cruise ship docks jutted out into the dark ocean—the ships lit like cities of their own. Hundreds and hundreds of people strolled along the seawall. Most holding hands or in close groups chattering happily together.

  The street was divided by a narrow median with a palm tree every hundred feet or so, and each was brightly wound in Christmas lights. The one- and two-story whitewashed shops along the inland side of the street were a bounty of Christmas displays.

  Jason continued to drive in silence.

  People waved at them in their two colorfully lit MRZRs, dressed up so that they looked like high-end dune buggies. She waved back.

  They passed a tall lighthouse close by the cruise terminal. It cast no light. Yet even from here, in the brightest heart of the promenade, she could see the tall beacon to the south that had replaced it—two white flashes every five seconds.

  Was that herself? A decommissioned lighthouse amidst an abundance of light?

  She turned back to Jason as he continued easing along in the southbound traffic. Was he the beacon that now flashed so brightly ahead? Somehow he was holding onto the joy that his dead parents had taught him while she was still wrapped up in the darkness that her parents had tried to teach her.

  It was a crappy metaphor, especially if it was true and she was the decommissioned lighthouse.

  Up ahead there was another light, far taller and flashing brightly. That looked like a much happier metaphor, if she could figure out how to live it.

  Chapter Six

  I don’t want to feel decommissioned any more.” Kelsey slipped her hand off his arm and he missed it. He missed the comfort. He missed the connection.

  “What?” Jason wondered where that had come from. He was still trying to shake off the memories of last Christmas, his dad already past being able to speak, but smiling as he wore his goofy hat. Meager presents opened on a hospital bed because no one could find the energy to shop for more.

  “The lighthouses,” Kelsey pointed upward.

  Jason hadn’t even noticed them. He could barely see anything other than the withered man who took up so little space on the vast bed.

  “You think you’re a decommissioned lighthouse?”

  “Can’t prove otherwise by me.”

  He’d heard her story, about her idiot parents. Had they somehow pounded into this beautiful woman’s head that she wasn’t worth better?

  Jason had asked Sofia about her, when it was clear they knew each other.

  “Not much to tell. Brilliant, driven, the very best in very tough crowd. But she really keeps herself to herself, if you understand what I am meaning. She never talks about anything outside of the missions. So it’s not as if I’m giving anything away because neither will she.”

  But Kelsey just had. To him.

  “Kelsey?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How could you get something so completely wrong?”

  “What? I know where Zavala is. I know the layout of the house. We are the perfect assets to do this fast and quiet.” She was back on the mission, and she was right. They’d rolled past the flashing lighthouse, leaving behind traffic, another cruise terminal, and once more were into the outskirts of the rapidly disappearing town.

  “There,” she pointed. They dropped down onto the narrow shore road past the big resorts, the Chankanaab Beach Resort being the last of them. He had a quick glimpse of a quiet lagoon and thatched huts. It was the sort of place he’d imagined bringing a woman, though not with a load of weapons, rather with a bikini and a lot of time with nothing planned.

  They continued south along the shore. The low beach and berm were usually close by, except when lush estates pushed the access road inland.

  “Here,” Kelsey pointed again.

  He turned off into a vacant lot. It made a gap through the scrub trees and palms connecting the road to the beach. He stopped before they reached the sand. The electric MRZRs were silent and he could hear the gentle splash of the waves picked out in the headlights. He and Kelsey here, together. It was very easy to imagine.

  Duane and Sofia rolled up quietly behind them, but Jason ignored them.

  Instead, he turned to Kelsey. Her face was randomly lit by the blinking Christmas lights on the roll cage. The shifting shadows made it hard to read her expression.

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” he said, for lack of any better ideas.

  “It is,” she looked down at her folded hands.

  “Got a present for you.”

  “Better than this hat?” Then he saw her bite her lower lip because she now obviously understood the importance of the hat. He’d only been teasing when he put it on her, but it had gained so much meaning in the last half hour.

  “Well, okay, it’s not that cool, but I’m making this up as I go.”

  She only nodded, but it was quick, accepting. Then she appeared to brace herself.

  He dug in his pocket and pulled out the bag of Christmas Skittles, handing it across solemnly.

  Kelsey stared down at it for a long time before taking it gently from his hands.

  “To hell with your past,” he told her. “To hell with mine. New beginnings. Though I figured I was safer to start small.” It was also the only thing he had to give at the moment.

  She looked up at him with her dark eyes so wide that they seemed to catch all of the colors of the Christmas lights at once.

  Then she clutched the little packet of candy to her chest with both hands, and nodded for him to continue down the beach.

  The plan was fiendishly simple—he wondered if all of Kelsey’s plans were like that. If so, she absolutely belonged in the 5E. It was beyond stealth…it was cool! And so much better than the home invasion that was their backup scenario.

  They drove the two Christmas-decorated MRZRs slowly down the beach. In front of each beach house before Zavala’s, they stopped and sang Christmas carols. When her clear soprano joined in, it really brought it to life. The owners came out, offered punch and apple fritters at one house and orange sugar cookies at the next. Each stop drew out the owners of the next residence along the beach front.

  At Zavala’s, the last in the row, the pattern held. Zavala came out to hear them and brought a bottle of rum. On the last stretch of darkened beach, they knocked out his two guards with dart guns they’d stashed under the seats, drugged Zavala and his equally dangerous brother as well before tying them in back of the MRZRs, and continued on their way as if nothing had happened. His capture only took seconds.

  Just inland was the little-used Aeródromo Capitán Eduardo Toledo. A small field used for tourist flights during the day, and nothing at night. The Chinook slipped in and they drove up the cargo bay ramp so fast that the helo barely stopped.

  Once they were aloft and clear of Cozumel, Kelsey came to find him where he was leaning against the angle of the raised rear ramp—his normal post as tail gunner.

  She still wore the hat.

  And she opened her joined hands for just a moment to show that she still clutched the little packet of candy, before once more holding it to her chest. And her eyes, those wide, lovely eyes
looked ready to take on the world.

  Then she leaned in to kiss him. Not some quick thank you peck, but soft, lush, so full of warmth that for a moment he felt as if he was indeed lying on a sunny Cozumel beach with her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered from mere inches away.

  Jason tried to come up with some quip. Something to ease the moment for the lady in the blinking Rudolph hat. But all he could think to whisper back was the same, “Thank you.”

  He’d assumed this Christmas would be hell, because of the memories of the last one. Instead, she’d given him the gift of hope as a present.

  When she kissed him again, this time letting herself curl up against him, he had hope for the many Christmases to come as well.

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

  Thanks for reading along!

  Another year has gone by, another baker’s dozen of tales have been told.

  I hope that they brought some joy, some escape, and a few happy sighs.

  If so, I feel that my goals were well achieved.

  See you next year!

  Don’t miss these prior great collections!

  Available at fine retailers everywhere.

  About the Author

  M.L. Buchman started the first of, what is now over 50 novels and as many short stories, while flying from South Korea to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Part of a solo around the world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.

  All three of his military romantic suspense series—The Night Stalkers, Firehawks, and Delta Force—have had a title named “Top 10 Romance of the Year” by the American Library Association’s Booklist. NPR and Barnes & Noble have named other titles “Top 5 Romance of the Year.” In 2016 he was a finalist for Romance Writers of America prestigious RITA award. He also writes: contemporary romance, thrillers, and fantasy.