Covert Christmas

by Marilyn Pappao

  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 glanc
e, 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.

  Chapter 8

  December 23, 1507 Zulu

  Jack grabbed Cass’s arm, halting her. “They’re not charging us,” he hissed, eyes fixed on the herd. “Elephants can’t take inclines like that slowly. But whatever you do, don’t run—out here, only food runs. Now slowly go up onto those rocks, take Christmas and work your way a little higher. They won’t climb those boulders. We can watch them from up there.”

  “Watch them?”

  He laughed softly, eyes bright, clearly exhilarated by the sight of the prehistoric gargantuans. “We’re sure as hell not going anywhere else as long as they’re in our path.”

  From up on their rock ledge, they watched the elephants coming down to drink and splash red mud over each other. Awe overcame Cass. “They’re so quiet,” she whispered. “We never even heard them coming.”

  Jack nodded. “So much for making a noise like an elephant.” He put his arm around Christmas and pointed. “See? That one’s the matriarch, Christmas. She’s the boss, and the family has to listen to her no matter what. It’s their best chance of survival.”

  Cass smiled and cleared her throat theatrically. “Maybe we should take a lesson from that.”

  He looked at her, grinned, his gorgeous blue eyes twinkling like a summertime lake. Her chest tightened. They’d almost kissed, and it had just happened. And she’d really wanted it to.

  She glanced at his hand, the gleam of gold around his finger. Tears welled as easily as the smile that had sneaked up on her. She swiped them angrily away, turning her head so he wouldn’t see.

  She still loved him. Dammit.

  She still wanted him and she couldn’t have him, because it could never work.

  “Cass?”

  She sniffed, wiping her nose, but wouldn’t turn to face him.

  “What is it, Cass?” He touched her arm, his strength, his power suffusing into her, like it always had.

  Still turned away, she said, “Why do you still wear the ring, Jack?”

  “Why don’t you wear yours anymore?”

  “Why should I?” she said quietly.

  “Because we’re not divorced.”

  She turned slowly to look at him. “That’s only because neither of us wanted to face each other long enough to go through with it.”

  His mouth flattened. “Speak for yourself, Cass.”

  They fell quiet as they heard Christmas laugh at the antics of the two baby elephants. A baboon watched them, too, a short distance from the water’s edge where a crocodile had disappeared under the surface.

  “Do you want to do it—” he said, eyes on the herd “—make a commitment to end it, now, on our anniversary? It’s an appropriate enough day to deal with it.”

  Bitterness laced his words.

  “What I want to do is save this boy,” she replied, her own words crisp.

  “I wear the ring, Cass,” he said very quietly, “for the same reason I still carry this.” Jack removed the cr
umpled, tattered photo from his breast pocket, held it out to her.

  She turned to look.

  And her heart punched.

  In Jack’s hand was a photograph of Jacob—Cass’s arms around him, a huge smile on her face, happiness twinkling in her eyes. She’d carried more weight then, and it was flattering. They were seated in front of a Christmas tree at Cass’s parents’ home—in the mountain town where they’d married. “Christmas town,” Cass had called it, because in winter it always looked just like a perfect Christmas card.

  It was the last Christmas they’d ever had together. It was the Christmas before Jacob was killed.

  The pain that twisted through Cass’s chest was so powerful and so sudden, she couldn’t breathe for a moment. Slowly she tore her eyes from the frozen, crumpled memory to meet Jack’s gaze. And she noticed for the first time the new stress lines that fanned out from his eyes, the way the creases that bracketed his strong mouth had grown deeper. It was a rugged, handsome face, and she loved it with all her heart.

  She began to shake inside, afraid to say anything, to go further down this dangerous path, but could not turn away, either.

  “And I wear our ring, Cass, for the same reason I always find a small church somewhere in the world at this time of year, where I remember. And I pray for a way to find reason, to make sense of it all. For a way to make it right.”

  Guilt twisted through her.

  Jack had suffered as much as she had. She looked at Christmas, who was still watching the elephants. And an uncanny feeling of unreality wrapped like the hot mist around her. “It should have been me who died in that plane crash, Jack,” she whispered. “Not my son.”

  “Our son, Cass.”

  Her mouth tightened. She knew what she was doing. She was trying to protect herself by locking him out, holding her grief to her chest, private, personal, all her very own. As if letting it go would somehow betray Jacob’s memory.

  It was her way of keeping her son alive.

  “You should have gotten professional help, Cass, like the docs said. You have some kind of survivor’s guilt. That’s why you keep running, chasing these stories, isn’t it? You’re daring the world to kill you—as if it might make it right that it took Jacob instead.”