Operation Stealing Christmas

by Vicki Hinze

  Operation Stealing Christmas

  Vicki Hinze

  OPERATION STEALING CHRISTMAS

  © 2019 by Vicki Hinze

  ISBN: 978-1-939016-32-4

  All rights are reserved. All characters and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or via any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or via any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission of the copyright holder and publisher.

  Operation Stealing Christmas is a Clean Read adaptation of the General Market novel, Double Dare, copyrighted and published (Silhouette Bombshell) in December 2005 under ISBN: 0-373-51383-6.

  In 2019, the author rewrote the story, creating Operation Stealing Christmas, a Clean Read adaptation. This is its first publication.

  Cover Design by VK Hinze

  Published by Magnolia Leaf Press

  Niceville, Florida, USA

  To Raymond Wayne Hinze

  I don’t know that I’ve ever deserved a son

  as special as you,

  But I wish every parent could feel as blessed.

  I am so proud of the man you’ve become.

  Thank you, Ray, for the privilege

  of being your mother.

  Love,

  Mom

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek: S.A.S.S. CONFIDENTIAL

  In the Know

  About the Author

  Also by Vicki Hinze

  Chapter One

  “Jingle bells. Jingle bells. Jingle all the waaaay—”

  Singing along with the radio, Captain Maggie Holt hit a pothole in the dirt path leading through the woods to her office. Her right front tire dropped a solid six inches, jolting her, jarring her teeth. “Whoa!”

  The red Jeep absorbed the shock without a groan, but her morning’s first cup of coffee splashed all over the dashboard and passenger seat. The cup hit the side of the door and fell to the floorboard, a casualty of the daily war to get to the middle-of-nowhere shack without suffering bodily injury.

  Should have used the travel mug. Maggie grimaced, just about sick of this. Her fellow operative, Darcy Clark, had trashed a set of shocks on Wilderness Trail, as they’d come to call the overgrown path, just a few days ago. What was it going to take for the commander, Colonel Sally Drake, to insist someone fix the sorry excuse for a road?

  Irritated, Maggie smoothed at a soaked spot on her pale-blue uniform shirt and cranked up the radio, sifting through the lyrics to catch up to the tune. Tapping the gas, she moved gingerly through the woods, down the narrow ruts lined with hurricane-twisted pines and thick, spiky underbrush.

  “In a one horse open sleigh. Hey!” She sang along and slid a glance to the Christmas ornament on the center console beside her. Everyone in the S.A.S.S.—Secret Assignment Security Specialists—unit celebrated Christmas and had to put an ornament on the tree no later than today. Colonel Drake’s orders. She’d checked and none of the unit’s operatives had taken time out from work this year to put up a tree at home. Some hadn’t even made it home in the better part of a week. When missions ran hot, that happened. It was all part of the job, and everyone knew it. The tree was the colonel’s attempt at keeping everyone grounded in life as well as in work. Not likely to happen, in Maggie’s humble opinion, but it was an endearing goal regardless.

  The sparkling silver star was coffee-soaked but unbroken. Soaked would dry and unbroken was a good thing, because Maggie was not going back to Santa Bella Mall again for anything until after New Year’s. It’d taken thirty minutes to drive down to the mall, fifteen minutes of scouring the parking lot row-by-row to find an empty slot, ten minutes to get inside and pick out the ornament and yet another fifteen minutes in line to pay for the thing before getting out again. She figured that, before leaving the store’s parking lot, she had more time invested in the sparkly ornament than she’d spent with her ex-husband Jack in the last week of their marriage.

  And wasn’t that a shameful truth to have to admit?

  Letting go of the steering wheel, she checked her hand.

  The imprints of the spiky star and her wedding band were still there. She’d divorced Jack’s sorry hide three years ago, but she still wore the wedding band most of the time. It kept rodents at a distance—and it reminded her that she hadn’t been blameless in the destruction and demise of her marriage. Equally important, seeing the ring on her finger reminded her why, as long as she remained an operative, having a relationship was about as smart as Jack’s recent intermittent attempts to drink himself to death.

  Tapping the remote clipped to her visor, she blew past the first open gate and watched it swing closed behind her. Sticking to the trail, she glimpsed signs posted on the fence enclosing the deserted bombing range every eight feet. They read: Use of Deadly Force Authorized.

  She and the other S.A.S.S. operatives stationed here were the deadly force.

  A mile in, Maggie came to the second wire fence. This one was topped with razor wire so sharp it’d cut soda cans tossed at it. A speaker was attached to the gatepost. Inside was an artillery battery; dormant but maintained and ready to be used if needed. The odds of that were slim to none. At least, for so long as their nemesis didn’t know the unit headquarters were stationed on the premises. No unit ever had been stationed out here, until S.A.S.S. moved here from D.C.

  She tapped the remote and the brakes, stopped and waited for the gate to swing open. The remote didn’t have the range here that it had at the first gate, and the gate itself was slower to open. There was a specific purpose for that. Whoever was manning the monitors inside the S.A.S.S. bunker could take a look at who was coming in and have sufficient time to react.

  That reaction included sounding an internal alarm so everyone could bug out of the bunker and get to the trailer parked behind the shack, which is where the unit’s host believed their headquarter offices were located since that’s where he had assigned them.

  Maggie waved at the surveillance camera and then drove on inside, whipping down the weedy trail to the shack. She parked in her normal spot, next to Kate’s yellow Hummer.

  Colonel Drake and the Providence Air Force Base commander, Colonel Donald Gray, were entrenched neck-deep in a battle of wills. They had competed for the S.A.S.S. unit command and she’d won. He’d been bent on making her miserable ever since, which is why she refused to ask him to repair Wilderness Trail. The abandoned bombing range fell under the command of Providence Air Force Base. As the Providence AFB commander, Colonel Gray assigned everyone their offices on both and, being true to his charming self, he had strutted his stuff and dumped the S.A.S.S. unit out in the middle the abandoned bombing range twenty miles north of the Florida base. For an office, they had a shack. For water, a well. For electricity... There was no electricity.

  It had been impossible to handle S.A.S.S. operations out of the shack, which had more holes than roof and walls and too little room for their equipment. Even he had recognized that and had an old house trailer delivered. Colonel Drake graciously thanked him, and got busy planning. It really would’ve been murder for the unit to actually try to function out of the trailer parked behind the shack, but Colonel Gray still believed the un
it had set up operations in it.

  Gleeful at their primitive conditions, he had been generous and given them a generator. Not one that actually had the capacity to run their equipment, of course. He wanted Colonel Drake—and anyone who worked for her—to suffer for beating him out in a head-to-head competition for the S.A.S.S. command job. But neither Colonel Drake nor the unit operatives complained to the honchos higher up in the chain of command to intercede. The operatives took on this challenge just as they did any other assigned them and focused on a solution.

  Captain Mark Cross had been instrumental in the entire process. He’d used his money—rumor was he had a lot of it, and he must, considering the palace he’d provided them—and his talent to build the S.A.S.S. unit an amazing underground bunker. A top-notch, technologically advanced, freaking fabulous bunker with impressive offices twice as nice as any of those assigned to the Pentagon honchos. That they pulled off keeping the bunker a secret pleased Colonel Drake immensely. It did the unit members, too, because they were certain if Gray ever discovered the bunker, he’d toss them out and move in someone else. Anyone else to keep the S.A.S.S. from having it.

  Maggie grabbed the star, slid out of the Jeep into the brisk air and then stepped over to the shack. A hand-carved wooden sign hung above the door and read Regret. Mark had carved it as a reminder to all who entered. If Gray thought by sticking the unit in a primitive rattrap, he’d won, then he’d regret it.

  Across the board, everyone with access to the bunker conceded that Colonel Gray had seriously lost the office-space battle in the Gray/Drake battle of wills. Thank heavens.

  Gray thought he’d won and preened at seeing them crammed into the little trailer. Luckily, he didn’t inspect very often, which was the only time any of the unit went into the trailer.

  Inside the falling-down shack, thin rays of sunlight filtered through the cracks and spilled onto the dirt floor. Maggie stepped to the right and pressed a board that looked more gray and aged than those around it. A split door slid open, exposing an elevator that led down a floor to the bunker’s vault.

  She stepped in and pushed the button to take her down. Of course, if Gray ever found out about the offices S.A.S.S. actually had, he’d commandeer them for himself and toss the unit into some other rat’s nest or swamp without power or water. To avoid that, S.A.S.S. operatives had created the early warning system signaling outsiders’ arrival, practiced scrambling regularly and kept their secret to themselves. So far, Colonel Gray remained in the dark. He’d never seen anyone in the S.A.S.S. unit anywhere other than in the trailer parked out behind the shack.

  When the elevator door opened, Maggie stepped out into the crisp white hallway. Private offices lined the walls. At the east end, broad doors led to the Operations Center, and beyond them was Darcy’s private domain.

  Captain Darcy Clark had been an operative until a mission had gone south and she’d received a serious head injury. It’d taken a while and a lot of determination on Darcy’s part, but she’d recovered—with a kick. Total recall. The injury had taken her out of the field, but her new gift made her a serious asset for assimilating Intel reports from around the globe.

  Yet no gift comes without costs, and Darcy’s were high. Around others, she suffered serious sensory-input overload. The severity of the attacks varied, but at their worse, they were debilitating hyper-stimulation that sent all her muscles into lockdown. She couldn’t move even a fingertip. A trip to the mall was an utter nightmare. More often than not, Darcy required total isolation to function normally, which meant even within the unit, she needed a place to retreat. Mark made sure she had it in her isolated office.

  The good news on Darcy was that, since she had risked taking on a mission for which she was uniquely qualified—total recall—down on the Texas/Mexico border with Customs Agent Ben Kelly, she hadn’t needed as much private time as she had before. Maggie was glad for that, and hoped the trend continued. Life in isolation for five years had been hard on Darcy.

  Maggie walked past the broad screens covering the common walls, past the photos of the FBI’s Most Wanted, Homeland Security’s suspected terrorists and the S.A.S.S.’s watch lists. She checked the hot-spots board and was relieved to see things were relatively calm worldwide, with the exception of Iran, which was never calm these days. Soon, she prayed.

  She dumped her purse on her desk then headed to the kitchen, located just this side of the Operations Center.

  Captain Amanda West, a S.A.S.S. senior operative, was in the adjoining common room, throwing darts at a picture of Thomas Kunz tacked to the center of the dartboard.

  By presidential decree, the S.A.S.S. unit’s primary assignment was to intercede, interrupt and intercept Kunz.

  So far, the world’s most successful black marketer of top-secret, cutting-edge technology and weapons-systems/arms sales had three darts stuck right between his eyes. After his last stunt, an attempt to steal Darcy’s mind that, thank goodness, fell flat, he deserved each of them and more.

  Seeing his photo raised Maggie’s hackles. Kunz was German, hated America and wanted to destroy it, preferably through the destruction of its economy. Unfortunately he’d had some success and he’d been as elusive as Bin Laden after 9/11. Worse for the S.A.S.S. operatives pursuing him, Kunz and GRID—Group Resources for Individual Development—his raunchy band of greedy mercenaries, would use any tactics to succeed. Their loyalty was to money at any costs, which often made the work for Maggie and the others opposing them disheartening and sickening. When fighting an enemy dedicated to a different ideology—even if it’s twisted—it’s easy to respect the dedication. But there is no respect in greed. There is only fear and destruction.

  Another dart whizzed through the air and stuck in Kunz’s forehead, well within Amanda’s one-inch group. “Thinking this morning, huh?” Maggie asked. Amanda always threw darts at Kunz when something required deep thinking.

  “Yeah.” Amanda sighed and nailed him again.

  Maggie paused. “Is he up to no good on something new?”

  “Kunz is always up to no good. You can take that to the bank. But we haven’t heard any new Intel on a specific operation yet today.” Amanda hiked a shoulder. “Of course, the day is young.”

  It was about eight o’clock in the morning. Maggie hung the star on the tree in the corner, noticing only two other ornaments on it. Colonel Drake had placed an angel on top. “Then, what’s on your mind?”

  Amanda frowned, wrinkling the skin between her brows. “It’s Mark,” she confessed, talking about Captain Mark Cross, with whom she’d had a serious thing going for nearly a year.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Maggie liked Mark, and these days she didn’t like many men, which was just one of the many undesirable emotional stages of divorce: a merciless roller coaster that included far too many downsides and even more sadness. She repeated her mantra: one bump at a time.

  Everyone else liked Mark, too, including Kate. The Queen Grouch hated almost everyone, but she loved Mark like a brother. Both alone, a couple years ago they had become surrogate family. Mess with one, fight both. Not a wise move.

  “Nothing’s wrong with him.” Amanda stopped, her arm midair, and just stared at Maggie. “Not one single thing. Not one.”

  So nothing was wrong with him and apparently that was a problem. “Okay, then.” Maggie couldn’t begin to figure this one out. She shrugged, walked across the wide room to the kitchen counter, snatched her butterfly cup from the cabinet and poured herself some coffee. The rich, heavy steam rising from the cup smelled like roasted heaven.

  Amanda followed her. “It’s not natural, Maggie. There should be something wrong with him, right? I mean, all men have something wrong with them.”

  Amanda still hadn’t adjusted to being in love. Considering the abuse her father had heaped on her in her early years, Maggie expected it’d take her a good long while to learn to trust. Men who beat the life out of you in drunken stupors then lock you in wooden boxes and forget you there
for days don’t do much to inspire warm fuzzy feelings, much less a desire for taking on the risks of loving anyone.

  How horrible that must have been. Shuddering, Maggie sipped from her cup then turned around. Loving Mark had kind of sneaked up on Amanda and bitten her on the backside when she hadn’t been looking. With her protective armor, that’s the only way it could have happened.

  “You don’t want to ask me that question,” Maggie said. “I’m not what you’d call objective about men right now.” Not bad, Maggie. Downright diplomatic. That too familiar knot of sadness swelled in her stomach.

  “No, I do want to ask you,” Amanda insisted. “You were married. You know how the relationship changed before and after. Mark and me, we’re good. I—I don’t want to mess it up.” Her fear of doing just that pounded off her in waves. “Don’t all men have something wrong with them, Maggie?”

  Great. She really didn’t want to go there, but Amanda was nothing if not persistent, and she looked so worried.

  “Here’s my best advice, okay? You want a man with something wrong? My ex-husband will absolutely thrill you. It’ll take years to count all his faults and flaws, and you’ll never understand him.” All true, and yet Maggie had been in love with him—until he’d stomped on her heart.

  With a little sigh, she added cream to her coffee and stirred. “But if you’ve got any sense, you’ll forget about looking for something wrong, and just be glad that every time you look Mark’s way, the glare of his faults and flaws isn’t blinding you.”

  “I am glad. Really. I just— Oh, God. I don’t know.” Amanda poured herself a glass of juice and then shut the fridge door.