Covert Christmas (18 page)

December 24, 0702 Zulu

C
onflict churned inside Jack. He was sweltering under the heat as the day's temperatures rose and seconds ticked. The Ivory Coast border was still a nightmarish trek ahead, up over the ridge through increasingly steep and treacherous terrain. It would take at least another day. He gripped his radio, every muscle in his body strung wire-tight as he fumed at Cass. Two hot spots began to ride high on her cheeks. And bitterness pooled in his gut—he had no doubt at all that she'd known all along.

She'd tricked him into this corner.

And now he had one of the biggest decisions of his life to make.

She mouthed “no,” shaking her head, eyes wide. She'd deduced what Jack was being asked. “Please, Jack,” she whispered.

Jack tried to swallow the ball of rage growing hard
and painful in his throat. She'd lied. A lie of incredible magnitude.

She'd dared to ask for his help, but had not trusted him enough to tell him the whole story. And it had landed him bang in the middle of an international diplomatic powder keg. She'd forced him to make sacrifices, and she hadn't come clean herself. Jack felt duped. Used. The anger swelled up from his stomach, all the more fierce because he'd kissed her. He'd fallen deep, fast and hard, again—dared to hope for a future, and she had just blown it all out the water.

Then Jack's gaze fell to Christmas, clutching tight at Cass's pants. He felt a squeeze in his heart and a raw protective power surged into him. Zuma or his men—if they ever got their hands on the boy—would slaughter that child on the spot.

Could he allow this five-year-old child to become a pawn in Zuma's game with the White House?

Now that he'd come this far, could he remain here and wait to see if he was forced to hand the boy over?

And in spite of it all, in spite of his anger, his sense of betrayal, Jack was drawn further over the line of no return, moving insidiously from soldier—a role that had always defined him—to renegade.

He sucked in a deep breath. “No,” he said firmly to his commander. “I have Cass Rousseau, but there is no boy.”

He keyed off, lurched toward her, fury powering his body. He jabbed his finger at her face. “You,” he yelled, “have pushed me into this—you forced my hand and you didn't even have the decency to give me the truth!”

She swallowed. “Jack—”

“I trusted you, Cass. By God, one thing I always did was trust you with the truth, goddammit! You were always
about
the truth…seeking it in your stories. Or so you led me to believe. And you lied to me—
used
me. And now? Look what you've done—you've hammered the nails in my coffin! I'll be court-martialed when this gets out. I'm going to prison. Do you really understand what this means, what you have asked from me
here? Do you not understand what I am doing for you…for
Jacob?
”

Both froze.

There, it had been said. It was out in the open.

And the vocalization was so powerful it rocked them both, taking on a sentient power of its own, swirling around them. Blood drained from his face. She swayed slightly. Then, galvanized, she hit back, everything she'd ever buried coming out in an adrenalinized rush.

“Damn you, Jack. Who are
you
to talk about sacrifice? You don't make sacrifices for your family. You're all about your troops, duty to the flag and country over your marriage.”

“That is not true—and it's not fair!”

“You were the one who missed Jacob's birth! And his first birthday. You were the one would couldn't be there on our wedding anniversary, or for Christmas four years ago, because of a tour you didn't have to accept.”

“I had to accept that mission—”

“No, you did not. It was for a career move. If you'd been there, maybe…maybe I wouldn't have taken that Alaska assignment, and I wouldn't have had to take Jacob with me—”

“Don't go there, Cass,” he warned, eyes narrowing.

“Oh, why not? You're the one who said I was running from facing it. Let me face you now! Maybe Jacob would still be alive, Jack, if you had been home.”

He spun away from her.

Cass's eyes filled with hot tears. “Look at me, Jack!”

He did. White-faced, furious, his fists balling at his sides. “How dare you say that? How can you honestly believe it?”

“Because when we had to move to North Carolina I was forced to turn down
my
promotion, and find yet another job, with yet another station, and almost immediately you went off on another tour. It was that new station that assigned me the Alaska piece, and I didn't want to leave Jacob with some stranger over Christmas, so I had to take him with to cover the assignment—”

“The storm wasn't my fault, Cass.”

“We wouldn't have been on that plane.”

Silence simmered. Water trickled close by. Shrieks and cries called through the jungle.

“This is not fair, Cass,” he whispered.

“You know it's true, Jack.”

“You can't do this. You can't look back with what-ifs. What happened, happened, okay? We needed to deal with that, move forward.
Together.
”

“How could I move forward! You blamed me for taking him with me!”

“It was a knee-jerk reaction, Cass, and I am so sorry—I was in shock. I'd just returned home from Afghanistan to learn you were in the hospital, almost died, the sole survivor of a plane crash…my son gone…I…”

He sat, slumping onto a log, and he scrubbed his face in his hands. “I'm so sorry, Cass. I…didn't know how to deal.” Jack sat, silent, gathering himself. “I didn't know how to handle my own guilt. My own sorrow for not having been there for you both. For making so many mistakes. So I hit out instead. If you'd only hung on long enough to let me work through it…long enough to allow me to say I was sorry.”

He got up, took her hands in his, eyes locked with hers. “But you ran away. You chucked those five years of our marriage, your ring, you boxed up all the photos, all our precious memories, and you shipped them into storage, all after one major fight, and you took off for the first international hot spot you could find. And you haven't stopped running since. Look at you, Cass, you're thin. You're tired. You're drained.”

“So I look like crap.”

“And I love you more than ever.”

Her eyes flickered.

“It wasn't just that one fight, Jack,” she said, very quietly. “It was the last straw.”

“It wasn't a straw—it was the
death of our son.
It was almost losing you. I came home to all that news. It was a shock. You didn't give me a chance to—”

“You were the one who hit back at me saying I wasn't cut
out to be a military wife,” she said, voice thick with emotion. “And you were right, Jack. I'm not. I couldn't—
can't
—compete with your loyalty to your country.”

“Yet now you're forcing me to give it all up anyway—to face a court-martial, prison, dishonorable discharge.”

She scrubbed her hands over her face.

He turned away, inhaling deeply.

Then he felt a small tug at his camo pants, and glanced down—Christmas, his eyes huge and frightened by their yelling. And for another insane, upside-down second, he saw Jacob again. It was as if their son was reaching out from some spiritual realm, touching them both. Jack shook off the odd chill, glanced at Cass. And by the look in her eyes, he knew she'd felt it too.

“Mr. Jack, can we go now?”

Jack blew out a chest full of air, feeling like a cad. This child had been through so much, how could he have allowed himself, even for one second, to forget why he'd come down this jungle path. He touched the boy's head, said in Kigali. “You are right, my little man. We need to move.”

December 24, 1745 Zulu

I
n heavy silence, they trekked for miles, the terrain growing steeper, more slippery, vines tangling over rocks drenched in moss.

Jack stopped, gave them each a mug of water sterilized with tabs from his kit. It was almost night. “We'll try to keep moving in the dark,” he said, packing their mugs away. “For as long as we can.”

Darkness fell as they were crossing a river, the moon beginning to glint on the water's surface. Cass heard the terrifying sound of a crocodile splashing, and in her nervousness she slipped. Quickly the current sucked her downriver. The sound of a waterfall thundered below.

“Don't move!” Jack yelled at Christmas as he dropped the pack and weapons and plunged into the water after Cass.

She caught a branch and he managed to pull her out, dripping, shaking. He helped her back along the bank to where Christmas waited, and they slumped to the ground. Jack held
her, just held, until he felt the tension in her body releasing. Pushing the wet hair back from her face, he looked down into her eyes. They caught the moonlight from a gap in the canopy above. “You could have trusted me, Cass,” he said, his need suddenly so raw he couldn't take it anymore. “You could have told me the truth. We could have embarked on this journey as a team.”

“If I had told you, Jack, what would you have done? Would have informed the DCM, your commander?”

He dragged his hand over his own wet hair. “I don't know, Cass. I honestly don't know anything anymore. The kid's a political time bomb, yet there's no way I could hand him over. To either side, not without being able to guarantee his well-being.” He sucked in a deep breath of air. “I don't even know who I am, anymore. I…” He snorted a laugh. “I lost myself when I lost you. I guess I've been looking ever since.”

Cass's eyes burned. Selfishness was something she'd always accused him of. Now she could see what she'd done to Jack, through her own self-absorption.

And his gut honesty was raw, new to her. Her powerful special ops soldier was suddenly rendered vulnerable in some way. He
needed
her.

Not just physically, but in some much deeper, more human way.

It's why he carried the photo. It's why he still wore his ring. It's why he was doing this.

“Jack,” she said quietly. “I didn't tell you because I didn't want to force you to choose between helping me and your duty. We've been down that road…it didn't work.”

Jack sat silent for a while beside her, watching Christmas squeeze the rest of the meal ration out the packet. This flight to freedom might have precipitated an identity crisis in him, but he was beginning, very clearly, in this dark and murky jungle, to see exactly who he wanted to be.

And just how far he was truly prepared to go to make it happen.

“You know, I think I made that choice some time ago, Cass,” he said quietly.

Before I even came to Kigali.

“I vowed to myself that if I ever got a second chance with you, I'd do it differently. I'd be older, wiser and I'd know better. I chose you, Cass. Now we're in this together. To the hilt. And I hope to hell you're going to choose me, stick by me, and go all the way. Across that border. But I need your trust, Cass. One hundred percent. I need you to make your own sacrifice.”

Emotion pulled her beautiful features, pale in the silver moonlight, her eyes dark, tired pools. And he wanted her. All of her, naked in his arms.

“You have to promise you will continue to lie about Christmas for as long as it takes to keep him safe, even when we get over that border. Promise me there will be no big insider feature story, no television interviews. No mention of the little king surviving at all. No matter how big this story of Kigali grows, you have to give it up.”

He was asking her to stop being a journalist, just like he'd been forced to go renegade.

“I did that already, Jack, when I stopped observing the news and started making a difference.” Tears spilled, suddenly unstoppable. Jack gathered her into his arms, held, comforted, and Cass sobbed every last sob she had not let out since her son's death.

He stroked her hair. Loving her. She was finally letting it go. And he was helping her. They were doing this together. Making the compromises they should have made a long time ago, for their family. For their child.

She looked up, finally spent. “I love you, Jack,” she whispered.

His own eyes filled with emotion and his heart jackhammered. “Christmas will be safe because of Jacob, Cass,” he whispered against her cheek, her ear, tasting her tears, his whole world cracking open, making him vulnerable to loss once again.

But he had to go there if he wanted her back.

“He'll live because our Jacob died. Because we came together.”

She nodded, wiping her nose, smiling wanly through her tears. “We'll do it, we'll make it.”

“Okay, we'll set up camp here, sleep for a few hours, and by tomorrow morning we should be through.”

But that belief was instantly shattered as Jack spied a faint flicker of light in the forest valley miles below. He grabbed his night-vision scope and swore. He could make out twenty men entering dense jungle, all wearing either a red beret, headband or armband. They carried industrial-strength spotlights, machetes, machine guns.

“They're on our track,” he whispered, pulse kicking. “Somehow they must know we have the king!”

“What now?”

Jack fired a glance at Christmas. “Now we run.”

“In the dark? On this steep terrain?”

Jack looked up, and through the small gap in the canopy, a single bright star had moved into his line of vision. He realized suddenly, it was Christmas Eve.

“Yes, through this terrain,” he whispered. “We follow that star, and we believe.”