The Christmas Lights Objective

by M. L. Buchman

  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 6

  “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.

  Wild Justice (excerpt)

  If you liked this, you’ll love Duane and Sofia

  Wild Justice

  (excerpt)

  The low hill, shadowed by banana and mango trees in the twilight of the late afternoon sun above the Venezuelan jungle, overlooked the heavily guarded camp a half mile away. But that wasn’t his immediate problem.

  Right now, it took everything Duane Jenkins could do to ignore the stinging sweat dripping into his eyes. Any unwarranted motion or sound might attract his target’s attention before he was in position.

  From two meters away, he whispered harshly.

  “Who the hell are you, sister? And how did you get here?”

  “Holy crap!”

  He couldn’t help but smile. What kind of woman said crap when unexpectedly facing a sniper rifle at point-blank range?

  “Not your sister,” she gained points for a quick recovery. “Now get that rifle out of my face, Jarhead.”

  Ouch! That was low. He wasn’t some damned, swamp-tromping Marine. Not even ex-Marine. He was ex-75th Rangers of the US Army, now two years in Delta Force. And as an operator for The Unit—as Delta called themselves—that made him far superior to any other soldier no matter what the dudes in SEAL Team 6 thought about it. That also didn’t explain who he’d just found here in the perfect sniper position overlooking General Raul Estevan Aguado’s encam
pment.

  It had taken him over fifteen hours to scout out this one perfect gap between the too-damn-tall trees that made up this sweaty place and, with just twenty meters to go, he’d spotted her heavily camouflaged form lying among the leaves. It had taken him another half hour to cover that distance without drawing her attention.

  Where was a cold can of Coke when a guy needed one? This place was worse than Atlanta in the summer. The red earth had been driven so deep into his pores from crawling over the ground that he wondered if his skin color was permanently changed to rust red.

  Why did evil bastards like Aguado have to come from such places?

  More immediate problem, dude. Stay focused.

  The woman’s American English was accentless, sounding flat to his Southern ear. Probably from the Pacific Northwest or some other strange part of the country. But there was a thin overlay that matched her Latinate features—full-lipped with dark eyebrows and darker eyes, which was about all he could tell through her camo paint. The slight Spanish lilt shifted her to intriguingly exotic.

  But she wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was.

  “Keeping you in my sights until I get some answers, ma’am,” Duane kept his HK MSG90 A2 rifle aimed right at the bridge of her nose—a straight-through spine cutter if he had to take her down. It would be serious overkill, as the weapon was rated to lethal past eight hundred meters and they were whispering at each other from less than two meters apart. With the silencer, his weapon would be even quieter than their whispers, but he hadn’t spent the last sixteen hours crawling into position to have her death cry give him away. If she so much as squawked as she went down, every goddamn bird in the jungle would light off, giving away his presence.

  She sighed and nodded toward her own rifle that rested on the ground in front of her.

  He shifted his focus—though not his aim—then let out a very low whistle of appreciation. A G28. Even his team hadn’t gotten their hands on the latest entry into the US Army’s sniper arsenal yet. Not quite the same accuracy as his own weapon but six inches shorter, several pounds lighter, and far more flexible to configure. A whole generational leap forward. Richie, his team’s tech, would be geeking out right about now. The fact that he wasn’t here to see it almost made Duane smile.

  “A Heckler & Koch G28. What’s your point, sister?” He drawled it out for Richie’s sake, who’d be listening in on Duane’s radio. Then the implications sank in. If his Delta Force team couldn’t get these yet, then who could? Whatever else this woman was, she would be tied to one of the three US Special Mission Units: Delta, SEAL Team 6, or the combat controllers of the Air Force’s 24th STS.

  Or The Activity.

  That fit.

  The Intelligence Support Activity served the other three Special Mission Units. If she was with The Activity…that was seriously hot. It meant she was both one of the top intel specialists anywhere and a lethal fighter. And that meant that she’d been the one to put out the call that had brought him here and was sticking to see the job through. That at least answered why she was in his spot. It also said a lot that she hadn’t taken any of several easier-to-reach locations that were almost as good.

  “It is about time you caught a clue. Welcome to the conversation.” She picked up her rifle as if his wasn’t still aimed at her. Very chill. “You are being a little dense there, soldier.” At least she got the branch of the military right this time.

  “Hey, they don’t call me ‘The Rock’ for nothing, darlin’,” Duane lowered his barrel until it was pointed into the dirt. “They actually call me that becau—”

  The moment his weapon was down, he suddenly was staring down the dark hole of the G28’s silencer.

  “Uh…”

  “The Rock certainly isn’t because you are a towering black movie star. It must be for your thick head.”

  Duane swallowed carefully, unable to shift his focus away from the barrel of her weapon to see if the safety was on or not.

  “He spells his name differently. He’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ with a w and a y. I’m more normal, D-u-a-n-e T-h-e R-o-c-k.” He made it sing-song just like the theme song from The All-New Mickey Mouse Club that he’d been hooked on as a little kid.

  “M-o-u-s-e,” she gave the appropriate response.

  He couldn’t help laughing, quietly, despite their positions—him still staring down the barrel of her weapon—because discovering Mickey Mouse in common in the heart of the Venezuelan jungle was just too funny.

  “Normal is not what I need here,” the woman sighed and there was the distinct click of her reengaging the safety on her rifle.

  “Only thing normal about me is my name, ma’am.” Always good to “ma’am” a woman with a sniper rifle pointed at your face.

  “Prove it,” she turned her weapon once more toward the camp half a kilometer away through the trees. Her motions were appropriately slow to not draw attention. However, it was too even a motion. A sniper learned to never break the pulses of nature’s rhythm. She might be some hotshot intel agent—because The Activity absolutely rocked almost everything they did—but she still wasn’t Delta, who rocked it all.

  Duane breathed out slowly and spent the next couple minutes easing the last two meters toward her. Having the camp in view meant that one of their spotters could see them as well, if the bad guys were damned lucky. He and the woman both wore ghillie suits—that’s why he’d gotten so close before he spotted her. The suits were made of open-weave cloth liberally decorated with leaves and twigs so that the two of them looked like little more than a patch of the jungle floor. He’d dragged his on backcountry jungle roads for twenty miles to make sure he smelled like the jungle as well. Having a jaguar trounce his ass wouldn’t exactly brighten up his day.

  Even their rifles were well camouflaged except for either end of the spotting scopes and the very tips of the barrels. If he hadn’t recently been lusting over the new specs, he wouldn’t have recognized her HK G28 at all in its disguise.

  Getting into position as a sniper took a patience that only the most highly trained could achieve. A female sniper? That was a rare find indeed. The two women on his Delta team were damned fine shooters, but he and Chad were the snipers of the crew. A female sniper from The Activity? This just kept getting better and better. He’d pay a fair wage to know what she really looked like beneath the ghillie and all that face paint.

  “Maybe you and I should go to the party as a couple.” At long last he lay beside her, close enough that he would have felt her body heat if not for the smothering sauna of his ghillie suit.

  “What party? And we’re never going to be a couple.”

  “Halloween. It’s only a couple weeks off. We could sneak in and nobody would see us in our ghillies. People would wonder why the punch bowls were mysteriously draining.”

  “And why the apples were bobbing on their own,” she sounded disgusted. “What I want is—”

  “Let’s see what y’all are up to down there,” he cut her off, just for the fun of it, and focused his rifle scope on the camp below. He was a little disappointed when there was no immediate comeback, though there was a low muttering in Spanish that he couldn’t quite catch but it cheered his soul.

  The general’s camp was a simple affair in several ways. The enclosure was a few hundred meters across. An old-school fence of wooden stakes driven into the ground, each a small tree trunk three meters high with sharpened points upward. Not that the points mattered, because razor wire was looped along the top. Guard shacks every hundred meters—four total. The towers straddled the fence. Not a good idea. The structure should have been entirely behind the wall to protect it from attack. Unless…

  “You got a name, darling?” Lying beside her, Duane could tell that she was shorter than he was. Her hands were fine, but her body was hidden by the ghillie so he couldn’t read anything more about her looks.

  “Yes, I have a name.”

  “That’s nice. Always good to have yourself one of those,” Duane c
ould play that game just as well as the next person. He turned his attention to the camp. “Our friendly general isn’t worried about attack from the outside or he’d have built his towers differently. He’s worried about keeping people inside.”

  Sofia Forteza had already known that from her research, but she wondered how Duane—spelled the “normal” way—did.

  She’d spent months tracking General Aguado. Cripes, she’d spent months finding him in the first place. He was a slippery bastardo who did most of his work through intermediaries and only rarely surfaced himself. Tracing him to this corner of the Guatopo National Park—so close to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, that she’d dismissed it at first—had taken a month more.

  Duane had taken one look at the place and seen…what?

  He’d have built his towers differently.

  She leaned back to her own scope and inspected them again. It took a moment to bring the towers into focus because her nerves were still zinging as if she’d been electrocuted. Somehow, in all her training, she’d never looked down the barrel of a rifle or even a handgun at point blank range—perhaps the scariest thing she’d ever seen.

  Scariest other than Duane’s cold blue eyes. He was the most dangerous-looking man she’d ever met, which is why his jokes and his smooth Southern accent were throwing her so badly. He sounded half badass, macho-bastard Unit operator and half southern gentleman. It was the strangest combination she’d ever heard. One moment he was wooing her with warm tones, obviously without a clue of how to woo a woman, and the next he was being pure Army grunt with a vocabulary to match. She simply couldn’t figure him out.

  Finally she shrugged her emotions aside enough to focus her scope properly. Stay in the jungle, not in your head. She rebuilt it in layers. The strange silence of the wind—not a single breath of air reached the jungle floor, instead it stagnated, adding to the oppressiveness of the heat. Macaw calls alternated between chatter and screech. Monkeys screamed and shouted in the upper branches. Buzzing flies had learned to leave her alone and the silent ants were no longer creeping her out. All that was left after she canceled each of those out was the man breathing beside her and the compound of that bastard Aguado that she’d been staring at for the last twenty-four hours.