It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

by Suzanne Brockmann

  "You... are." Nell couldn't believe what she was hearing. He was going to tell her top-secret, classified information.

  "The mission objective was investigation. Jake believed there was a cover-up going on—that someone had screwed up bad during a SEAL training operation that took place six months ago.

  "See, there's a small island nation in Southeast Asia," Crash told her, "that for the past forty years has been one of the major ports for illegal drug trafficking. When the United States began actively trying to cut off drug dealers closer to their source, we worked to establish an alliance with this island's government.

  "Right up until recently," he continued, "we'd managed to build a foundation for a relationship that would be good for both countries."

  Nell leaned back against the headrest, watching Crash as he drove. He was a good driver, always checking the mirrors, holding the wheel with both hands. She felt safe sitting next to him, despite the fact that he was number one on FInCOM's most-wanted, armed-and-dangerous list.

  "But then, about six months ago, I was part of a team that intended to use this island as a training site. I'd hooked up with some SEALs from Team Ten's elite Alpha Squad, and we took four FInCOM agents to this island on a training mission to show them how we can kick ass in a potential terrorists-with-hostage situation. We were going to execute a rescue op, going up against some Jarheads on the island, who were going to play the part of the tangos."

  "Whoa," Nell said. "Back up a sec. You lost me. Jarheads and tangos?"

  "I'm sorry. Jarheads are marines—the nickname comes from their haircut. And tango's radio talk for the letter T, which is short for terrorists."

  "Got it. Go on," she ordered him.

  "When we inserted onto the island, we found ourselves jammed in the middle of one of the biggest training op snafus I've ever dealt with. See, as we approached the site where the simulated rescue mission was to take place, we found two KIAs." He interpreted before she could even ask. "We found the bodies of two of our marine friends—killed in action."

  "My God." Nell sat up, transfixed by his story. "What happened?"

  He glanced at her. "Apparently a firefight had broken out between the two major drug lords on the island between the time we left our ship and the time we hit the training site."

  "Firefight. You mean, a gun battle between the two gangs, right?"

  "Yeah," Crash told her, "but I wouldn't call them gangs. Both the drug lords had private armies with state-of-the-art technology. We're talking thousands of men and name-brand firepower. These armies were more powerful than the government's own armed forces. What started that day was more like a full-scale civil war." He glanced at her. "The average yearly income of the men who owned these armies was higher than the entire GNP of this country. One of 'em was an American expatriate named John Sherman—a former Green Beret, which really pissed off the Jarheads. The other was a local man named Kim, nicknamed 'the Korean,' because his father was from there.

  "Sherman and Kim had been careful not to go into each other's territory for years, and more than once, they'd helped each other out. But on that day, whatever agreement Sherman and Kim had between them disintegrated. And when they clashed, lots of innocent people were caught in the crossfire."

  He took a deep breath. "It wasn't easy, but we finally got all of Alpha Squad and the surviving marines off the island. But the fighting went on for days after that. When the smoke cleared, the body count was in the tens of thousands, and property damage was in the millions. The only good thing that came of it was that both Sherman and Kim were killed, too."

  He was silent for a minute, and the sound of the windshield wipers beat a rhythm that wasn't in sync with the Christmas pop song playing on the radio. "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree."

  "I don't get it," Nell finally said. "You said there was some kind of cover-up. What was there to cover up?"

  "The file Jake sent me contained a copy of a secret deposition taken from Kim's widow," Crash told her. "She claimed to have overheard a conversation in which an American Naval commander supposedly approached Kim and told him that the Americans would look the other way when he did business, on the condition that Kim use his army to destroy John Sherman and his troops. There's no single officer in the entire U.S. Navy—admirals included—who has authority to make this kind of bogus deal, but apparently Kim didn't know that. The deal was done and the Korean began planning a surprise attack on Sherman's stronghold.

  "But news of the so-called agreement and the impending attack was leaked—for all we know, Kim's wife sold him out—and Sherman struck first. It was during this initial attack that our marines were targeted, too, and two of them were killed."

  Crash glanced at Nell. Her face was only dimly illuminated by the greenish dashboard light, but he could see that she was hanging onto his every word, her eyes wide.

  It was clear that she trusted him. She believed every word that fell from his lips. Even now, after the way he'd abused her friendship—all those letters he never answered, all those times he'd kept himself from calling—she had total faith in him. Something inside him tightened and twisted, and he knew with a sickening certainty that he'd let far more than he'd ever dreamed possible walk out of his room when Nell had left that morning, nearly an entire year ago.

  And now it was too late.

  He held the steering wheel tightly, telling himself that he'd been right to let her go. He'd been home all of five weeks in the past twelve months. Of course, he'd volunteered for every overseas assignment he could get his hands on. If he'd wanted to, he could have spent most of that time in the States.

  But still, what he felt, what he wanted, shouldn't really matter.

  The truth was exactly the same now as it had been a year ago. Nell deserved better than he could give her. Of course, in Crash's opinion, she deserved better than Dexter Lancaster, too, but even the lawyer won points simply for being available.

  "Hey," Nell said. "Are you going to tell me the rest of this story, or do I have to figure out where to drop the quarter in to get you talking again?"

  Crash glanced at her. "Sorry. I was—"

  "Thinking," she finished for him. "I know. Trying to figure out how to track down this commander, right?"

  "Something like that."

  "Are you sure it's not just a rumour? You know, things go bad, and everybody tries to figure out who's to blame."

  "In the aftermath, there were tons of rumours," he admitted. "There were people who believed that the U.S. did make a deal with Kim. There were people who believed that rumours of the agreement between Kim and the United States were falsely planted by the U.S. to cause Kim and Sherman to wipe each other out. But none of that was true. I'm very familiar with the policies used in dealing with this island, and I know we stood to gain far more by playing by the rules.

  "If this commander really did make a deal with Kim, and I believe he did, he's responsible for starting a war. Thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Not to mention the fact that our alliance with this country has totally crumbled—all of their trust in us is gone. All the work we'd done to maintain goodwill and cooperation in stopping the drug traffic closer to its source was for nothing. The entire program's been set back a good twenty years."

  "But if you don't know who the commander is," Nell said. "How are you going to find him? There must be thousands of commanders in the U.S. Navy. Kim's wife didn't know his name? Not even his first name? A nickname?"

  Crash shook his head. "No."

  "Can she describe him?" Nell asked. "Maybe make some kind of police composite sketch?"

  He glanced at her again. "She's disappeared."

  "And Jake really seemed to think she was telling the truth, huh?" Nell asked.

  "He told me," Crash said. He had to stop and clear his throat. "After he was shot, he was still conscious for a while, and he told me that whoever this commander was, he had to be behind the shooting. I believe that, too. This son of a bitch killed Jake and framed me.
And now he's trying to kill you, too."

  Nell was silent, her eyes narrowed slightly as she stared out at the mixture of sleet and snow falling on the windshield. "What was his motive?" she finally asked. "This commander. What did he stand to gain by starting this civil war between Kim and what's-his-name?"

  "John Sherman," Crash supplied the name. "I've been running that same question through my mind ever since I read the file. It's entirely possible that things went as wrong for the commander as they went for the rest of us. And in that case, his intent probably wasn't to start a civil war." He glanced at her. "I have a theory."

  "Spill."

  He looked at her again. Yes, that was kind of what it felt like. After so many years of silence, everything inside of him was in danger of spilling out.

  "My theory is that the commander's motive was exactly what he'd told Kim. He wanted John Sherman dead. My theory is that this commander didn't give a damn about the drugs or the armies. My theory is that it was personal."

  "Personal?"

  "A man like Sherman's got to have lots of enemies. Over in Vietnam, his unit specialized in liberating large shipments of drugs and confiscating stashes of weapons. He spent quite a few years taking half of everything he liberated for himself—and turning around and selling it back to the highest bidder. It didn't matter that he was selling it to the enemy. Word got out that he was doing this, but before he was arrested he went AWOL."

  "And you think, what? This commander was getting back at him for having gotten away?"

  "I think it's possible that our commander served with Sherman in 'Nam. In fact, I've gained Internet access to some Navy personnel files, and I've hit on a list of three names—two commanders and one recently promoted rear admiral. They all served in Vietnam at the same time as Sherman. And they're all still on the active-duty list. I sent them vaguely threatening E-mail messages—you know, 'I know who you are. I know what you did.' But so far none of them have responded. I didn't really expect them to—it was kind of a long shot." He shook his head.

  "Think about all the people we called last year, about Daisy and Jake's wedding," Nell said. "It seemed like every other man was Colonel This or Captain That. The guy you're looking for could have been retired for years and still be addressed as 'Commander.'"

  "I know. And the list of retired Navy commanders who served in 'Nam when Sherman did is probably ten pages long." He looked over at Nell and smiled grimly. "If I want to find this bastard—and I do—my best bet is to try to shake some information loose from our friend who's napping in the trunk. But first I'm going to get you to a safe place."

  "Excuse me?" She was giving him her best are-you-kidding? look, brows elevated and eyes opened wide. "I thought we'd decided that help was a two-way street—that I'd let you help me, on the condition that you let me help you."

  "There's nothing you can do to help me."

  "Want to bet? I have an idea how I can help you get that information you need from our dear friend Sheldon. Without me, it'll be much harder. I may not be enough of an actress to win an Oscar, but I'm good enough to pull this off. We just need to stop at a convenience store and—"

  "Nell, I don't want your help." Despite everything that Crash had told her, there was still so much that he hadn't said—so much that hadn't spilled out. He hadn't told her how sitting so close to her in this car was slowly driving him crazy from wanting to touch her. He hadn't told her about the sheer terror he'd felt when he picked up that newspaper and saw the picture of Nell's house engulfed in flames. He wasn't going to tell her about the way he'd stood in that hotel room and watched her as she'd slept, feeling a possessiveness he knew he had no right to feel, feeling an ache of longing and desire and need that he recognized as being something he had to push far, far away.

  Separate, distance, disengage.

  No, he didn't want any help from Nell.

  "Maybe you don't want my help," she said quietly. "Maybe you don't even need it. But this guy in the trunk came to kill me. I'm involved in this, Billy, as much as you are. At least hear me out."

  Chapter 13

  Nell was too nervous to eat. She tossed her half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box and watched as Crash unzipped one of the gym bags he'd brought in from the car.

  "Here's what we're going to do," he said in his deceptively soft voice, as he reached inside and pulled out a cylindrical tube that he screwed onto the barrel of his Dirty Harrv-sized handgun. "I'm going to ask you some questions, you're going to answer them and no one's going to get hurt."

  Sheldon Sarkowski's left eye was swollen shut and his lip was puffy and still bleeding slightly. He'd still been out cold when Crash had stopped along a deserted stretch of road and pulled him from the trunk and into the back seat. Sheldon's hands had been cuffed and his feet tied, but Crash had covered both rope and handcuffs with a blanket as he'd then carried the smaller man into the cheap motel room they'd rented for the night.

  There were only two or three other cars in the entire parking lot—none of them within shouting distance of their draughty room.

  And that was good—in case there was going to be shouting. And Nell suspected that there was going to be some shouting. Not that Crash would be doing it. She'd never heard him raise his voice to anything louder than mezzo piano.

  Crash had managed to rouse Sheldon once inside the room. An ice bucket full of cold water in the face had done the trick. The man now sat, sputtering and belligerent, tied very securely to a chair.

  The gunman clearly wasn't in a position of power, yet he still managed to laugh derisively at both Crash and the gun. "I'll tell you right now, I'm not saying anything. So what are you going to do, kill me?"

  Crash sat down on the bed, directly across from him, his gun held loosely on his lap. "Damn, Sheldon," he said. "Looks like you called my bluff."

  Nell spun to face him, turning away from the window where she'd been furtively peeking out at the parking lot. "Don't tell him that!"

  "But he's right," Crash said mildly. "Killing him doesn't do anyone any good."

  Nell took a deep breath, aware that her first line had been terribly overacted, and that she was in danger of breaking into giddy laughter. She went back to peeking out the window, praying that this would work.

  "I don't have a lot of options here," Crash was saying. He sounded kind of like Clint Eastwood—his voice was soft, almost whispery but with an underlying intensity that screamed of danger. "I guess I could shoot you in the knee, but that's so messy. And it's unnecessary. Because all I really want is to be put on the commander's payroll."

  Nell turned around again. "Hey—"

  Crash held up one hand, and she obediently fell silent.

  "Here's my deal, Sheldon," he said. "I've been set up. I didn't kill Admiral Robinson, but somehow those ballistic reports were fixed to say that I did. I haven't figured out yet how the commander managed that, but I will. And I haven't quite figured out the commander's connection to John Sherman, but I'll figure that out, too. Sooner or later, I'm going to know the whole nasty story—all the sordid little details."

  He paused and then said, still in that same quiet voice, "What I'm thinking right now is that my silence is worth something. See, I think both you and the commander know as well as I do that even if I were to prove myself innocent, even if I were acquitted for the charges that have been brought up against me, I'm never going to shake the damage that's been done to my name and my career. In fact, I know for a fact that my career with the SEALs is over. No one's going to want me on their team.

  "And since I'm no longer gainfully employed by my Uncle Sam," Crash continued, "I'm finding myself in a situation where I need a new source of income. I figure if the commander wants all the dirt I've already uncovered, and all the dirt I'm going to uncover about him to stay neatly under the rug, then he's going to have to pay. Two hundred and fifty thousand in small, unmarked bills."

  Crash stopped talking. Nell gave him several beats of silence just to make sure he
really was done. Then she spoke. "I can't believe what I'm hearing."

  She really was a lousy actor. First she'd sounded too outraged, too over-the-top, and now she sounded too matter-of-fact. She wanted this guy to believe that she was intensely angry with Crash, not that she was bipolar.

  Anger, anger. How did people look and act when they were angry?

  More specifically, how did they look and act when they were angry with Crash?

  Nell had quite a bit of personal experience to draw on in that department.

  Over the past year, she'd spent a good amount of time angry as hell at herself, and angry at him, as well.

  Why hadn't he at least scribbled a two-line postcard, acknowledging her existence? "Dear Nell, got your letters, no longer interested in being your friend. Crash. P.S. Thanks for the sex. It was nice."

  Nice. He'd actually used that horribly insipid word to describe what they'd done that incredible, amazing, one-hundred-million-times-better-than-nice night.

  Nell had been too emotionally overwhelmed to react at the time. But she'd had plenty of time to smoulder in outrage since then.

  She invoked those feelings now, and shot a lethal look in Crash's direction. "I can not believe what you just said." Her voice had just the slightest hint of an angry quiver. Nice. Nice. He thought making love to her had been nice. "You're actually planning to sell out to these scumbags?"

  "I don't see too many choices here." Crash made himself sound wound tight with tension. "So just shut the hell up and keep watch."

  Shut the hell up? The words were so un-Crash-like, Nell took a step backwards in surprise before she caught herself.

  "No, I won't shut up," she shot back at him. "Maybe you don't have a choice, but—"

  He stood up. "Don't push me." The expression on his face was positively menacing. His eyes looked washed out and nearly white—and flatly, soullessly empty.

  Nell faltered, unable to remember what she was supposed to say next, frozen by the coldness of his gaze. It was as if nothing was there, as if nothing was inside him. She'd seen him look this way before-at Daisy's wake and funeral. She remembered thinking then that he may have been able to walk and talk, but his heart was barely beating.