The Christmas Wild Bunch

by Lindsay McKenna

  “Navarro doesn’t know you’re up here at the other end of the line, making chess moves on him, I’ll bet.”

  “He may or may not. But druggies have eyes and ears everywhere. If he knows I’m here, he’ll expect we’ll interdict him on holidays. I’m hoping Navarro will remember past experience in Peru and stay on the ground all through Christmas.”

  “It’s a feint strategy,” Nike said, nodding her head. “A good one.”

  Holding up her crossed fingers, Dallas said, “Definitely. But if Navarro doesn’t know I’m at the helm up here on the border, he’s going to throw every Cessna he owns into the air on the twenty-fifth.”

  “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?” Nike said, finishing off her coffee.

  * * *

  “This sucks,” Murdoch muttered. He was commander that day, and a cold front in the area was making the air bumpy. They were flying over the Sierra Madres, where rain and snow had been forecasted for the entire region. It was a lousy day, with gray, low-hanging clouds wreathing the mountaintops, fog blanketing canyons and valleys below. The Cessna bucked even in his skilled hands. “I make a fabulous Christmas dinner with the best stuffing in the world, and you call us all back to work.” He slanted a humorous glance toward Dallas who was scanning the terrain through the binoculars. “What are you? A sadist?” he teased.

  Sighing, Dallas lowered the field glasses and glanced over at him. She couldn’t get enough of being in Murdoch’s presence, and yet when he was this close, her pulse went crazy. Her body ached with need, and her heart skittered with each heated look they exchanged. “Navarro launched ten Cessnas from the Hermosillo area. What was I to do when the federales called me at 0500 this morning? Navarro thinks we’re grounded and eating turkey or ham today. That’s why he launched this major move.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “I know, I know. It’s not your fault, Dallas. It’s just that I spent hours over the last couple of days preparing our meal. The wine’s chilled. Everything’s ready to pop in the oven….” He had visions of taking Dallas to bed as dessert. For her and him. Now, it was blown all to hell. Murdoch wanted to wrap his hands around Navarro’s neck and throttle the son of a bitch for ruining his romantic plans. He couldn’t figure out why Dallas was so hesitant. He saw desire in her eyes. Why wasn’t she giving him the signal to come and get her?

  Dallas squeezed Mike’s forearm, the muscles of which leaped and hardened beneath her touch. How she wanted to explore the rest of him. Murdoch was in top shape. Since he’d stopped drinking, he ran five miles every morning, long before the sun rose. The Nogales office had a weight lifting room and he used it religiously. “There will come a time when we’ll be able to stand down. Just have patience.”

  Curling his lip in a sneer, Murdoch swiveled around to see if he could spot drug planes hip-hopping through the rugged canyons and valleys. Rain began to splatter the cockpit windshield. He was hoping if the visual dropped below allowable conditions dictated in the Instrument Flight Rules, they’d get to go home, and maybe his Christmas plans wouldn’t be ruined, after all. Right now, despite the increasing rain, they had a good three miles of visibility, and that wouldn’t send them home early. “Patience, my ass. I feel like a hungry vulture with a meal sitting down below, but I can’t get at it.”

  Laughing, Dallas went back to hunting for smugglers with her binoculars. “You’re incorrigible, Murdoch.” She felt the Cessna bucking from the strong winds. At higher altitudes, the mountains were swathed in thick blankets of snow.

  “Yeah, but I know you love me anyway.”

  Dallas prickled beneath his teasing. “Love? First time you’ve used that word with me, Murdoch. You aren’t just throwing it around, are you? Men sometimes do that. They say, ‘Oh, I love you,’ just to get a woman to bed.”

  Banking the aircraft to the left, Murdoch slid a thousand feet lower. The mighty Sierra Madres bracketed them as they moved into a long, narrow canyon. The winds increased and the aircraft became harder to handle. It would shoot upward fifty feet when it hit an air pocket, and he’d have to stabilize it. “I don’t use that word like it was popcorn at a movie, Ms. Dallas.”

  Dallas chuckled. “Okay…”

  “Love is a commitment.”

  “It certainly is.”

  “What does love mean to you?” Murdoch asked her curiously. He noted how her lips tensed as she peered through the binoculars.

  “Love means a forever thing to me, Murdoch, through good and bad times. It means you follow your loved one no matter where they go in the world.”

  “That’s an interesting definition.”

  “My mother followed my father when he worked as a spy in a number of European countries. She did so because she loved him.”

  “I see.” Frowning, Mike rubbed his nose and then placed his hand back on the yoke. “And did he ever follow her on an assignment? You said they’re still in the Mossad.”

  “Yep, my father followed my mother when she was assigned to the Baltic region of Europe. Their love was such that they didn’t care where they were in the world so long as they were together.”

  “That’s important to you?” he asked soberly, expecting an honest answer from her.

  Her smile disappeared. “It’s everything.”

  “Well,” Murdoch said blithely, “you’re here and so am I. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. So it’s a perfect situation to think about a relationship. Don’t you agree?”

  Inwardly, Dallas grimaced at his lightly spoken words. She was under orders from the Pentagon to say nothing of the top secret move to place a second BJS squadron somewhere in the world. “Yes, it’s perfect,” she said without enthusiasm.

  Murdoch’s intuition niggled at him. Though he wanted to pursue the topic, he got back to the business of flying. With the changing wind conditions, the ragged spires of the rocky canyon they were flying through could rip a plane apart if a pilot wasn’t paying attention. The rain increased and visibility lessened, perhaps to a mile now. And if that wasn’t all, the weather, which had been ugly to begin with, turned threatening. Raindrops continued to splatter across the Plexiglas windshield. Secretly, he hoped they would turn to ice crystals. If they did, he and Dallas would have to fly lower to stop ice from gathering on their wings, and head straight home. The Cessna did not have heaters in the wings, and that meant the danger of crashing if ice began to build up on them.

  Mentally, Murdoch crossed his fingers. Black clouds from the west were rolling toward them in a large, churning bank. Maybe the temperature would drop even more. He noted the outside temperature was hanging at forty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

  “What a rotten day,” he growled unhappily. “Instead of being in my nice, warm apartment, with the turkey roasting in the oven, sending that wonderful smell throughout the place, we’re here in some of the nastiest smuggling country in Mexico. We could be hanging the decorations right now on the tree I just bought. Christmas music would be playing in the background. I’d ply you with a great wine. We’d kiss under the mistletoe and then enjoy a tasty dinner. Afterward, well…”

  “You’re such a dreamer, Murdoch.” Dallas gave him a tender look. She saw his eyes smolder with intensity. There was no question he wanted her—in every way. And didn’t she want him, too? Oh, yes. Far too much for her own good. But her future was about to change, and she wasn’t at all convinced Murdoch and their fragile new relationship would survive it.

  “You know, you’re always in my dreams,” he confided to her in a serious tone. Her gold eyes widened and then grew soft. Aching to kiss her, he reached out and skimmed her strong jaw with his fingers. “You are my dream come true, Dallas. You have to know that by now.”

  Pleasant tingles radiated from where he’d stroked her. Unconsciously, Dallas touched the area and then settled the binoculars in her lap. “Maybe we need to talk, Mike. Serious talk. Not teasing like usual, okay?”

  Shrugging, he said, “I’m all ears, Dallas. What do you want to talk about? Us, I hope
?”

  Dallas was about to speak when suddenly, the engine sputtered nastily. Tensing, she saw smoke leaking from beneath the cowling.

  “Damn,” Murdoch snarled, quickly moving into emergency landing procedures. “Call base. Tell them we’ve got serious engine problems….”

  CHAPTER 7

  Murdoch quickly feathered the engine. Thick black smoke roiled from beneath the cowling, making it hard to see. Cursing, he vaguely heard Dallas call the Nogales base and give them critical information. As he glanced down, he saw a possible place to land at the end of the canyon.

  Heart thundering, he wrestled the Cessna down to six hundred feet. The massive, rugged yellow-and-ochre walls of the canyon rose around them now, and the winds were erratic. Sweat popped out on his upper lip. There was no sound, just the hammering of the rain against the aircraft. The prop whirled lazily in the wind, as they free-floated on the air currents. The altimeter was rapidly unwinding. They were now at five hundred feet, on a gentle glide downward.

  “Tighten your harness,” he growled.

  “Done,” Dallas said, tight-lipped. She saw a small patch of flat land at the end of the canyon. “You heading for that box area?”

  “Got it,” he said, hands tight on the yoke. Attempting a dry stick landing, one without an engine, was dangerous under any circumstances, but here…The rain increased. Four hundred feet.

  “Damn, talk about low vis,” he growled.

  “Bad,” she agreed. Gripping the arm of her seat, Dallas could do nothing but watch. Murdoch was the pilot, and it was his responsibility to get them down safely. But could he? The wind slammed against them.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. Three hundred feet.

  The Cessna slid to the right, the wing tip suddenly dipping.

  Instantly, he played with the rudders. The craft righted. Two hundred feet.

  He was off course! The wind had blown him from the center trajectory he’d put the plane in. Instantly, he banked to the left, played again with the rudders. They skimmed a hundred feet above the rocky desert floor.

  Dallas saw the box canyon approaching. It was dotted with cactus and brush, and some chunks of rock that could tear the landing gear from beneath the Cessna. She tensed, gripping the seat and bracing.

  “Hang on!” Murdoch rasped. Fifty feet.

  If only the wind wouldn’t nail them! He wrestled with the controls as the ground suddenly came up at them. The stall buzzer started screeching because he’d brought the Cessna in nose high. At all costs, he didn’t want the tricycle landing gear torn off or they’d go nose-diving into the unforgiving desert floor. The screeching continued. The Cessna lugged, and forward motion slowed remarkably. Twenty feet.

  At the last moment, he dropped the nose of the plane. The warning shriek ceased.

  Silence reigned, except for the battering rain.

  And then…

  They were down! The landing gear settled in. Murdoch was so tense it felt as if he would snap in two. He played the yoke and rode the rudders as if stepping on fragile eggs. The Cessna raced along the rocky, rough ground.

  “Look out!” Dallas yelled, pointing ahead. A hundred feet in front of them a large rock lied. Large enough to do them major damage.

  Too late! Murdoch hadn’t seen the rock because of the low visibility. As he slammed his feet on the rudders, the nose whipped downward. The propeller dug into the earth and shattered, sending metal flying in all directions.

  The landing gear grated and snapped off.

  Suddenly, the aircraft skewed to the right, the wing tip digging into the muddy gravel. Cursing, Murdoch hung on, no longer able to control the Cessna.

  A grating roar, the sound of rock ripping the lightweight aluminum belly of the aircraft, filled the cabin. Murdoch felt the wing snap off; the metallic screech hurting his ears. More than anything, he didn’t want Dallas hurt.

  The harness bit savagely into his shoulders and across his waist as the aircraft hit the wall of the box canyon then shuddered in its death throes. It finally settled with scraping, shrill sounds against the rocks, then quiet prevailed.

  Dallas shook her head, trying to get her bearings. The fuselage cowling was bent up and ripped open. Her side of the Cessna was smashed against the canyon wall. The door was impossible to open, the window shattered and rain pouring in.

  “You okay?” Murdoch asked, unsnapping his harness and scanning her quickly. She looked pale but composed.

  “Fine, just a few bruises. You?”

  “Okay. Let’s egress,” he ordered.

  “Roger that.”

  Murdoch used his shoulder to pop the pilot’s door open. No more smoke was coming from the engine, which was good, but they couldn’t risk staying put. The possibility of explosion was high; he could smell aviation fuel inside and outside the cabin. Turning, he gripped Dallas’s extended hand, and she leaped out beside him.

  “Let’s get the survival gear from the rear compartment,” he told her. Rain was wetting his hair and clothing. The temperature was chilly, and the drenching only made him colder. Dallas beat him to the compartment. She twisted the handle, and the door fell open.

  Reaching inside, Murdoch hefted the large, dark green waterproof bag over his shoulder. He started to search for a safe, dry place to shelter.

  “Over there,” Dallas said, running ahead of him.

  There was a cave on the other side of the canyon, about two hundred feet away. Far enough from the plane that, in case it did explode, they would be safe from any debris or shrapnel. Trotting through the muck and puddles, and dodging jagged rocks, Murdoch closed the distance between them.

  “Phew!” Dallas said, happy to reach the dry cave. She turned and waved as Murdoch came in out of the rain. He dropped the rubberized bag on the ground between them and sank down beside it. “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah,” she said, grinning as she knelt opposite him.

  “I’m celebrating,” Mike told her, giving her a tense, twisted smile. He removed his helmet and set it aside, then started digging items out of the bag. “We’re alive. We walked away from this crash. Always a good time to celebrate.”

  “Ditto. But no turkey dinner tonight, Murdoch.”

  The adrenaline made him shaky in the aftermath. He noticed Dallas’s hands were trembling, too. “Don’t even go there,” he jested. “Damn, I wish they’d put a bottle of good, mellow whiskey into this survival kit,” he muttered. “I could use a stiff shot right about now to settle my nerves. How about you?”

  “Roger that,” she said, breathless. “I’m starting to have adrenaline letdown.” She shook her hands rapidly for a moment. “Realizing we survived, Mike. I was scared.”

  “Me, too.” He flashed her a tender look. Dallas’s color was coming back. She removed her helmet and set it nearby. The flak jacket came off next. “Did I ever tell you that you sure as hell make a shapeless flight suit look great?” he growled.

  Chuckling, Dallas felt heat roll into her face. She saw the glint of a hunter was in Murdoch’s eyes. “Thank you—I think.”

  Sitting back on his heels, he glanced out the mouth of the cave. “Look! Snow! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, to you! I might not have a turkey dinner and wine for you, but hey, this isn’t bad.” He gestured toward the huge snowflakes twisting and dancing in the gusts of wind.

  “Snow…!” She wrinkled her nose and grinned at him. The rain made the planes of his face gleam. Murdoch looked dangerously attractive.

  “Hey, just consider me your Christmas present.” He opened his arms wide.

  Her laughter echoed through the cave. “You’re incorrigible even under these circumstances.” She shook her head and started checking on their supplies; there were enough for a week at least.

  “Aren’t you inspired?”

  Dallas snorted. “Not unless you can produce a red ribbon to put in your hair, Cowboy.”

  Murdoch’s mouth curved faintly. “We can imagine, can’t we?”

  It felt good to Dallas to indulge in their
usual banter. They’d survived a crash! “We’ll see,” she murmured. Reaching for a GPS radio in the mix of items, she held it up. “I got a message off to Nogales before we went down. They know where we are.”

  “They can’t mount a rescue right now,” Murdoch said, eyeing the weather outside the cavern. “None of the federale helos have IFR instrumentation. Our base will probably contact them, and they’ll get here tomorrow morning, after it stops snowing.”

  Nodding, Dallas pulled out the silver blankets that kept in body heat. “You’re right. So we’re spending Christmas in a cave.”

  “At least we’re alive, unhurt and together.” He sighed, admiring the graceful way her hands moved. “Not a bad combo.”

  “Right,” Dallas said. “You want to start a fire? My blood has thinned from six years of living in the jungle, and I can’t take the cold like I used to.”

  Murdoch got to his feet. “I can’t have my woman cold.”

  The cave had been used by wild animals over the years; he could see dried scat here and there. The cavern wound back a good fifty feet, becoming smaller and smaller as he ambled toward the rear wall. Lucky for them, plenty of dry sticks and branches lay about. As he brought back the fuel, he noticed Dallas had already found dried brush just inside the cave entrance.

  Mike began to see this unexpected situation as a great opportunity. First off, a fire and getting dry. Then something to eat….

  As he started working on the fire, he hummed Christmas tunes to himself.

  * * *

  “Well, Christmas dinner hasn’t been all that bad,” Dallas said. The firelight was throwing deep shadows across the cave. She sat next to Murdoch on a log he’d dragged up to the fire. Outside, it was dark, and the snow was letting up.

  Murdoch pushed the beans around on his makeshift plate. “MREs are never good,” he muttered. “I keep thinking about that herb-rubbed turkey, my excellent dressing I spent a day on, all going to waste.”

  After finishing off her meal of spaghetti, Dallas took a sip of her coffee from her aluminum cup. “There’s always another day, Mike. You’re giving your gourmet meal its last rites?”