The Christmas Lights Objective Read online

  Right. Low profile mission. But had the woman who hated Christmas thought of the Christmas lights? Jason suspected that she was the sort of woman who thought of everything and left nothing to chance.

  The way the MRZRs raced aboard told him it was either SEAL or Delta at the helms.

  Once they were in, he dropped back down. Both drivers wore clip-on fuzzy antlers.

  “Duane? Dude! Haven’t seen your ugly face since you left the Rangers for that wimp-ass Delta outfit.” They’d stayed in close touch, but in four years had never managed to be in the same place at the same time.

  “Jason, you Night Stalker piece of shit!” They thumped each other’s backs hard enough to hurt.

  “Cool antlers. Too bad they aren’t half as cool as my hat.” Then he spotted the gorgeous Latina stepping out of the other rig. She looked very cute in her antlers.

  “You must be Sofia. I can’t believe that you fell for a lump of coal like this one.”

  “He is all mine,” she said in a happy, lushly Spanish accent, as she gave him a hug. “I have heard so many good things about you. I would know you anywhere by your so very silly hat.”

  “And if it hadn’t been Christmas?”

  “By your very good looks,” she didn’t hesitate to laugh.

  Then she turned to Duane but kept an arm around Jason’s waist so he kept his around her shoulders.

  “I do not know,” Sofia said thoughtfully. “Jason is so handsome. Why didn’t you ever tell me this. Maybe I should be with a Night Stalker man and not a Delta boy.”

  With all the speed Jason would expect of a Delta operator, Duane hip-checked him into the emergency fire extinguishing system and separated Sofia with a quick hand about her waist—a move so smooth that it had all three of them laughing.

  Chapter 3

  Kelsey sat at the far end of the helicopter’s shadowed cargo bay and tried to look away. What would she give to be a part of that laughing circle of three? They looked so easy together, so effortlessly happy. That was a part of working for The Activity—she and the other analysts were a collection of loners, brought together by a fascination for the intricacies of information and an ability to turn it into actionable intelligence.

  The folder that Colonel Gibson had provided was a perfect example. The first page had contained just three lines of information that suddenly brought her last six months of work into sharp focus.

  * * *

  Delta Team and 160th SOAR 5E, Ech Stagefield, Fort Rucker

  Juan Zavala, Christmas Eve

  (and an address in Cozumel)

  * * *

  It was Christmas Eve Day and Colonel Gibson had given her the first actionable lead on the elusive Juan Zavala that she’d seen in six months of hunting for him.

  Zavala was one of the kingpins of the ultra-violent Jalisco New Generation cartel that she’d been tracing. The Jalisco were the former armed wing of the Sinaloa cartel and were rapidly gaining precedence in the Mexican drug scene. Under the kingpin theory of “take out the top and the internecine battles will do the rest of the cleanup,” Zavala was a prime target.

  She even recognized the address. It was a beach house that she had researched as one of his likely safe houses, but had never been able to trace him to.

  Then the woman separated herself from the two men as they turned to arranging the two MRZRs more carefully and tying them down for flight. She moved through shadows until she was almost at Kelsey’s side.

  “Sofia?” She’d never expected to see Sofia Forteza again since she had left The Activity.

  “Kelsey!” And Sofia gave her a hug as well which surprised her completely. Sofia had been one of her few friends at The Activity before she’d made the unlikely shift to Delta Force. But they’d never had a hugging kind of friendship.

  “You seem happy.”

  “Ecstatic! I didn’t know how much I loved being out in the field. Actually, I did know that. I know it better now. And Duane certainly helps,” she was practically glowing as she aimed a happy look back down the bay.

  “How do you know Jason?” Kelsey wasn’t sure why she was asking. She’d watched them hug and felt… She didn’t know. As if she wished it was her instead?

  “I don’t. It is the way that Duane talked about him, I seem to already know him. They served in the US Rangers together. They’ve stayed very close.”

  Another skill Kelsey didn’t have. She’d lost touch with Sofia the moment she’d headed over the horizon.

  “Is this mission yours?” Sofia’s effortless manners didn’t give Kelsey enough time to feel uncomfortable.

  She nodded.

  “Good,” Sofia nodded her head emphatically in return as the APU screamed to life and then the twin turbines began spinning up. “Then I know everything will go fine.”

  “You do?” Kelsey must have heard wrong over the building noise. A backwash of hot exhaust rippled through the cabin—it would clear as soon as they were moving. She’d been worrying about the mission every second since Colonel Gibson had handed her the file then evaporated or dropped through a trap door or whatever he’d done.

  Sofia dug into her pocket and pulled out a pair of earplugs as the engine noise escalated. She shouted as she slid them in. “You were always the best planner we had when the terribles hit the fan. Except for me, of course. We all knew it and it made you a little scary to work with.”

  “I was?”

  Past words, Sofia simply nodded before heading back down to rejoin the men.

  People were scared of her?

  Actually, that explained some reactions she’d observed. Rooms did seem to go quiet when she stepped into them, as if she was checking up on everybody. Except the 5E’s briefing room. They were so skilled that maybe nothing daunted them.

  What would it be like to work with them more? On occasion, an agent was permanently embedded with an elite team to facilitate operational communications more tightly with The Activity’s specialties regarding human and signal intelligence. To be embedded with the 5th Battalion E Company would be both a challenge and…fun. Fun? That wasn’t something she was very good at and erased the thought from her mind.

  But she couldn’t help glancing back down the cargo bay. Jason in his blinking Rudolph hat hadn’t been afraid of her—just the opposite. He’d continued talking to her even after she’d snapped at him for offering her Christmas candy. Killjoy strikes again.

  Chapter 4

  Kelsey Killaney’s plan sounded simple on the surface. Jason now knew that the surface appearances had nothing to do with one of Kelsey’s plans.

  She’d only outlined the basic approach strategy back at Fort Rucker: length of flights, refueling stops, necessary equipment. Per her instructions, beneath his flightsuit he wore slacks, a dress-shirt, and running shoes, though she hadn’t explained why at the time. Under his shirt he wore a vest of lightweight Dragonskin armor for a bit of invisible protection.

  She’d laid it out on the four-hour flight down to Naval Air Station Key West and refined it on the three-hour crossing to Cozumel after they’d eaten a hurried dinner while refueling. He’d never been to the small resort island off the Yucatan coast. Bringing a hot babe down here for a winter vacation had definitely been on his bucket list.

  He’d never imagined that when he did it, he’d be unloaded after nightfall onto an empty stretch of beach ten miles across the island from the city of San Miguel de Cozumel. The weather was perfect. They’d left the storm somewhere over the Florida Keys and now drove out beneath a canopy of stars. Shirt sleeves were just right for the warm evening, though he could have done without the extra layer of the Dragonskin.

  Night Stalkers usually didn’t deploy on the active part of the mission, that’s what Ranger door kickers and Delta operators were for. His job was to get them there, then shuffle away and hide until it was time to come fetch them.

  Not on a Kelsey Killaney mission.

  “I need an expert in flight operations on the mission team in case something
goes wrong.”

  He’d considered arguing, until she said she was going as well.

  “There isn’t time to sufficiently brief everyone on the layout. We only have tonight, so I have to be there. I’ve spent too long hunting Zavala to let him slip away.”

  Which explained why she’d only requested two Delta operators rather than a full team.

  “Can you drive?” Kelsey had asked as they were releasing the tie-downs on the vehicles.

  “Sure.” Of course he could.

  “I mean really drive?”

  “Dad ran sprint car races for a hobby. If he paid the entry fee, then got a sportfishing client, I’d drive the race for him. I was a much better driver than I was a fisherman.” Then he climbed into the driver’s seat of the MRZR and buckled in to settle the point. An MRZR was a close relative of a sprint car. Four seats instead of one, no airfoil on the top, and an MRZR had an engine that could only go sixty, not a hundred and sixty. But those were the differences. In common, they both had: an open metal frame with a serious roll cage, a very low center of gravity, demon-like cornering abilities, and were made for running in the sand and dirt and being fast while doing it.

  In the far back, an MRZR had an extra space like a miniature pickup. It could carry two extra soldiers or a pile of gear. Right now, they had massive tourist drink coolers—coolers that were loaded with all of their tactical gear and most of the weapons they had just illegally smuggled into a friendly country. Due to corruption, the results on these types of missions were often better if the foreign government wasn’t notified. The challenge was to not be caught in the process as that tended to upset them badly.

  It was only as they rolled off the back of the Chinook and onto the deserted beach, that the truth clicked in.

  “You already knew that I could really drive. That’s why you didn’t get a second driver for this mission from Delta.”

  “Maybe I just like your hat,” Kelsey said it as if she was all innocence. No, she said it like a tease—like maybe the first tease she’d ever made.

  He drove up the beach and over the berm onto the Quintana Roo road, then waited for Duane and Sofia to join them in the second MRZR. How had that lucky bastard gotten a woman like that? Sofia was beyond beautiful, right up there in Kelsey Killaney’s category. And she was a Delta Force fighter. As far as he knew, they had like three women in the entire unit, yet somehow Duane had won her heart. And not just a little. Married if that didn’t beat all. The only man less likely to get married in their Ranger platoon than one Jason Gould.

  That got Jason thinking about why he himself was that way. Because he was stupid? Or because he’d never met the right woman? He’d take answer B any day. Any day before now. He wasn’t sure why she fascinated him so much, but that was a question he was willing to pursue.

  “You hate my hat,” he reminded her.

  “You’re right. I hate your hat.”

  “And how important is it that we go low profile undercover here?”

  “Why do you think we repainted the MRZRs in hotrod colors and are wearing civilian clothes?”

  “But you hate my hat.”

  She glared over at him.

  “That’s too bad.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d grabbed the extra accessory when getting civilian clothes out of his room, but he had.

  “Why? Because you so love your hat?”

  “I do, but that’s not the problem,” he tried to shake his head as if she was pitiful.

  Duane and Sofia cleared the berm and pulled up beside them on the empty highway as the helos disappeared back into the night: the big Chinook and the two guardian DAP Hawks. They’d fly out well beyond radar range and refuel from a circling C-130 tanker while they waited.

  “Then what’s the problem, Jason?” Kelsey’s guard was down just enough that if he was quick…

  He pulled out his second hat, triggered the flashing nose, and pulled it onto her head. Her hair was impossibly sleek, so smooth it might have been ice, but was so warm and human that it seemed to burn his hand. He yanked his hands away before he could do more.

  “There,” he declared. Stomping on the gas, he unleashed the MRZR. It leapt down the road with Duane and Sofia close behind. “Now you’re low profile.”

  “I’m going to have to kill you, Jason,” she shouted over the racing wind.

  “Wait until after the mission, okay?”

  Chapter 5

  Kelsey tugged the hat down against the speed-generated wind and hated herself for it. Hated that she hated Christmas. Hated that she still didn’t know how to be nice to Jason when he’d been nothing but nice to her. Wearing his stupid matching hat was the first concession she’d managed.

  He looked over and grinned at her as he turned left onto the Carretera Transversal to cross the island.

  “So, tell me why you’re irrational about Christmas?” He shouted over the wind noise. The electric MRZR itself was quiet, but there was roaring wind and the tire noise as they raced the 9.3 miles across the island in a vehicle with no windshield. The wide two-lane road ran straight as an arrow between two uninterrupted walls of green—their headlights well-focused on the road ahead so that they’d be hard to spot from any distance.

  Not a chance. “Tell me why you’re so crazy for it that you have not one but two Rudolph hats.”

  They covered a mile in silence before he spoke. He slowed a little, but the road noise barely changed.

  “Mom bought them for Dad and I last Christmas. This one is his,” he tapped his forehead. “You’re wearing mine.”

  “Why do you have his hat? Thief!” She was suddenly very conscious of having Jason’s hat on her head. It was so…personal. As if they were together—somehow a couple.

  Again the mile-long pause.

  “The cancer killed Dad by Valentine’s Day. Mom followed him, of a broken heart by July Fourth.”

  Kelsey felt as if she’d just been punched. She reached out and clamped a hand over his arm in sympathy. Could feel his muscles rippling beneath the surface as he drove. His strength a comfort, when she should be the one providing that.

  “Sorry,” he steadfastedly stared ahead without a glance toward her. “It just slips out sometimes. When I’m not being careful.”

  Kelsey could only look at him in amazement. His ridiculous hat and teasing her about it had more meaning than should be possible. In an instant he transformed from a ridiculous man who had been kind to her, to a kind man who didn’t mind being perceived as ridiculous—even if he wasn’t.

  How was he so comfortable in his own skin that he could do that?

  She was on the verge of asking, but knew that wasn’t right. He’d just laid his heart out on the cross-Cozumel road. His honesty demanded the same.

  “My parents hated each other. I still don’t know why they stayed together.”

  Kelsey’s hand still rode lightly on Jason’s forearm, but she was reluctant to take it away. Through it, she could feel a listening stillness come over him.

  “But they didn’t fight all year. Instead, they saved all of their bitterness for one ‘special season’,” she wished she could do this softly rather than shouting it in short choppy sentences with no ability to gauge her listener’s reaction. “The Christmas tree. Mom thinks they’re pretty. Dad hates them as a waste of money, space, time… I don’t know. It’s not like we were poor. Maybe he hates them because Mom likes them. Dad would pick the fight starting in October. Stretch it into February when he was on a roll.”

  Jason’s stillness continued as the lights of San Miguel de Cozumel city began to light the road ahead of them.

  “Christmas is nothing but bad memories.”

  Jason slowed as they entered the outskirts of the city. He hadn’t said a word as she’d told him something that she’d never told anyone. She’d always managed to keep her Bah Humbug! to herself before. Somehow was never dating anyone when Christmas came around, always opting out of Secret Santa at work. She’d stressed herself into actual illness b
efore any number of Christmas parties.

  And Jason just drove.

  “Look.”

  She was looking, to see what his reaction to her was. For some reason it seemed to matter, but she couldn’t read it.

  Then he nodded to either side of the road.

  She looked. There were breaks in the trees. Houses that were little more than hovels were tucked in among palm and avocado trees. And each one had bright Christmas lights. Sometimes just a doorway, sometimes a spiral climbing a palm tree, and frequently a lit creche of the birth in the manger in gaudy plastic. The closer they got to town, the more extravagant the displays.

  They turned southwest on the Avenida Rafael E. Melgar.

  The waterfront was a wonder of lights. To her right lay the sea. Cruise ship docks jutted out into the dark ocean—the ships lit like cities of their own. Hundreds and hundreds of people strolled along the seawall. Most holding hands or in close groups chattering happily together.

  The street was divided by a narrow median with a palm tree every hundred feet or so, and each was brightly wound in Christmas lights. The one- and two-story whitewashed shops along the inland side of the street were a bounty of Christmas displays.

  Jason continued to drive in silence.

  People waved at them in their two colorfully lit MRZRs, dressed up so that they looked like high-end dune buggies. She waved back.

  They passed a tall lighthouse close by the cruise terminal. It cast no light. Yet even from here, in the brightest heart of the promenade, she could see the tall beacon to the south that had replaced it—two white flashes every five seconds.

  Was that herself? A decommissioned lighthouse amidst an abundance of light?

  She turned back to Jason as he continued easing along in the southbound traffic. Was he the beacon that now flashed so brightly ahead? Somehow he was holding onto the joy that his dead parents had taught him while she was still wrapped up in the darkness that her parents had tried to teach her.