Daniel's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  Captain Smith glanced around the table, eyed each of them warily before returning his attention to Alice. He rubbed his fingers together as if the high-five had somehow changed their texture.

  “What are you?”

  Daniel leaned forward, ready to jump to her defense, but she simply offered one of those disarming smiles.

  “I’m a specialist in logistics. There are perhaps a dozen people in the world who could recognize your trademark actions, if they bothered to look, maybe only a half dozen. I’m one of them.”

  Once again he assessed the circle about the table, then offered a soft laugh.

  “My job is to be invisible. I find it, ah, less than reassuring that I am not.”

  Alice patted his arm. “If I were allowed, I could tell you some stories about these two that would alarm them no end.” She nodded toward the Majors. “Several of them with well over ninety percent probability.”

  Henderson positively blanched, but Beale nodded. “That would not surprise me. Alice can be remarkably astute, Captain.”

  “So I see.”

  He stood and took his coffee cup over to the glass pot the waitress had left on a warmer plate when she’d taken breakfast order.

  Daniel could see that his hands were not rock steady. Apparently the captain made the same observation of himself. He stopped pouring for a moment, took a deep breath, then finished the task with rock-steady hands. Captain Smith returned to the table and took his seat with a calm that almost belied the moment he’d needed to recover.

  “And what remarkably astute observation has caused me to cross into U.S. territory for such an eclectic conference?”

  Daniel had thought about sliding up to the subject carefully, to test the man out. But if Alice approved of Captain Smith, and he in turn was apparently coming ‘round to appreciating Alice, perhaps he would forego that step.

  “We need a meeting location.”

  The Captain did not state the obvious, that U.S. soil had thousands of locations just as obscure as the present one. He knew that he wouldn’t have been contacted if that were the issue. He nodded for Daniel to continue.

  “As I’m sure you just surmised, it cannot be on U.S. soil. Yet we want it to be very near. It must have immense security that can be implemented by a minimal force.”

  “As the White House Chief of Staff is seated across the table from me, I can assume some measure of the care required. Though your lack of Secret Service escort must be truly irritating someone back in Washington, D.C. Does that also speak to the scale of your ultimate operational requirements?” The Captain waited with that amazing stillness Daniel had witnessed in so many of the Spec Ops best operators.

  Highest security was required for this mission. And with each person they added, that needed secrecy became less reliable. Daniel nodded toward the flight crew presently in the room.

  “This is it. Full team. Maximum protection. Maximum.” He let the last word hang.

  The Captain whistled quietly.

  Achieving a truly high-level protection force with only four people was a contradiction of terms. A simple bodyguard detail even for Daniel would normally be two or three. The President’s public visits, between advance site prep, security, press, and so on, often exceeded five hundred people not counting local law enforcement for crowd control. President Clinton had once planned to visit the African nation of Burkina Faso. They’d had to cancel when the advance team determined that there were insufficient hotel rooms in existence in the entire capital city of Ouagadougou to accommodate the President’s full entourage.

  “We’re the site approval and inspection team. I doubt there will be many more for the meeting itself.” Daniel tried not to think about that. “A day of site prep. Probably two nights and one day on site.”

  “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who will be visiting?”

  Daniel glanced at Alice for a moment.

  After a hesitation, she nodded her head.

  Daniel could feel his shoulders ache as if he’d just done fifty reps with too much weight. Every single thing Alice had said so far had played out. From the arms smugglers in Pakistan, to Captain Nathaniel Smith, to the back check that North Korea actually would be sending someone.

  Except for the absolute impossibility of the situation, he had no reason to doubt her next conclusion either. North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was leaving the safety of his country to meet privately with the President of the United States.

  Alice reaffirmed the nod more certainly. Brushing her hair aside to glare at him without even the partial screen of her bangs.

  Daniel resisted the urge to sigh. This grew trickier by the minute.

  “We’re unsure,” he had to decide how completely to trust the Captain. He hadn’t even told Majors Beale and Henderson yet about Alice’s conclusions. Need to know. Well, to keep the President safe, they now needed to know. All three of them. He took a deep breath and forged on, keeping his voice low.

  “I wouldn’t be shocked if we were hosting two heads of state.”

  That caused enough reaction at the table for the two crew chiefs seated at the far end of the room to spring to their feet and slip hands onto their sidearms.

  Beale recovered first and waved for them to stand down.

  Tim and Big John returned to their seats very slowly. But not until they performed a careful scan of the room, out the window to the sparsely used parking lot, and down the stairs to where the lone morning waitress was waiting for the breakfast order to be cooked. They finally settled back into their chairs.

  Daniel turned back to face Captain Smith and the Majors. Daniel offered a slow nod as confirmation that he too believed the assessment.

  The Captain didn’t need to know which other country was involved. The fact that the U.S. President would likely be holding a secret meeting on Canadian soil with a tiny security detail was already too much information.

  The Majors had obviously reached other conclusions based on their deeper knowledge of the situation. They­­ looked even more sober than usual. They’d been ready to fly into North Korea. That hadn’t fazed them for a moment. That they might well be transporting Kim Jong-un, the country’s Supreme Leader, was a different matter entirely.

  The chill remained only half a moment longer.

  By the stairs, one of the crew chiefs scraped his chair back loudly sending a clear signal. The cheery waitress climbed the stairs wielding a large tray piled with dishes. The smells of a hot breakfast reminded Daniel that all he’d had in the last twenty-four hours was a quick sandwich at his desk and a finger-sized candy cane.

  Everyone slipped into casual-mode so easily that Daniel had trouble crediting the room’s tension from a moment before.

  “Did you ever sail among the San Juan Islands, Alice?” Captain Smith asked it as if they had been discussing nothing but sailing for the last half hour.

  Right in character, she shook her head, rested her elbow on the table, and propped her chin on her hand. So attentive she appeared to be flirting. Daniel was a little surprised at the hot trickle of jealousy up his spine despite his mind knowing the reaction to be ridiculous.

  “I really prefer the Canadian Gulf Islands myself,” Smith waved a negligent hand out the window and toward the northwest using the excuse to slouch a little closer to Alice. “Quiet up there. Fewer folk, on and off the water. There’s this little bakery in Pender Harbor, fresh baked sourdough every morning. Whenever I sail in there, I buy a loaf and a stick of butter. That bread alone is as fine a meal as they set in any landside restaurant. No offense, ma’am,” he nodded to the waitress.

  “None taken. I’ve had that bread when we’ve gone up gunkholing on our little boat.” She turned to Alice. “Fine eating if you get the chance, Miss.”

  “Gunkholing?”

  “Definitely not from ‘round about here. Gunkholin
g is, well, it’s just puttering around for the hell of it. Pardon my language.”

  Daniel took a deep inhale and let it out slowly as he received his two eggs over easy on English muffins with hash browns and bacon.

  When the waitress finally left, after regaling them the best way to cook fresh Dungeness crab on the boat barbeque, Smith returned them to the main topic.

  “There is a little island that should interest you. A tad bit over eighty kilometers to the northwest. Privately-owned island. A single building. Non-resident owner. Only access is by air, unless you have the control code for the dock crane. That will better explain itself when viewed in person. High cliffs, large front lawn. Trees and, at this time of year, a truly deep sense of privacy. Not many fools sailing the channels in mid-December.”

  “How well known?” Major Beale asked.

  “Not very,” Smith dug a fork into his tall stack with bacon and sausage. “When the joker who built the crazy place was looking for an on-call helicopter service, he wanted the very best. Ended up calling a buddy of mine, retired SAS pilot who had moved from Glasgow to open a small Vancouver helicopter service. Flies for him, and still does the odd flight for me to keep his hand in.”

  He turned to the Majors, “Either of you ever flown with James McKee?”

  Emily Beale burst out laughing. “Tried to pick me up in the midst of a deep-ocean search and rescue operation back when I was a first lieutenant and he was a charming son-of-a-bitch freshly done with wife number four.”

  “Yes,” Smith smiled. “That would be James. You’re his type, doesn’t surprise me.”

  “What?” Beale asked. “Female?”

  Smith laughed. “Exactly. Also he’s very partial to a woman who flies. Regrettably he’s on vacation to see his second or maybe it’s his third set of kids. They’re in London.”

  “Do we need him?” Major Henderson’s voice was little more than a growl. His protectiveness of his wife, even for events long before they met, made Daniel feel less bad about his own reaction of jealousy about Alice.

  “Don’t need him for a second,” Smith offered. “All you need is the ten numbers of the security code, which I happen to know.”

  Chapter 24

  They unpacked one of the Black Hawks from the C-17.

  Alice watched from inside the cavernous cargo bay of the transport jet as the crew chiefs hauled one of the helicopters down the rear ramp and out into the chill rain. It required the better part of thirty minutes for Tim and John to unfold the rotor blades and prepare for flight. The Majors had spent about ten minutes circling the bird doing the external preflight checks before moving into the cockpit. Captain Smith had tagged along and now squatted just behind the pilots’ seats, clearly talking shop.

  They were all acting as if it were a normal day. Perhaps it was for them. Alice was ready to find the nearest walk-in freezer to warm up. It was merely freezing in Washington, D.C. The Pacific Northwest weather had supplied a slanting rain that was several degrees warmer and felt twice as cold. Even though she’d been sitting dry inside the belly of the C-17, she could feel the cold wind as it tested and probed the entire length of the cargo bay through the open rear ramp.

  Daniel stood outside too, the hood of his parka up. Not quite in the way, but not out of it either. Clearly enjoying being a guy around other guys doing guy things. He’d watched as they pinned the rotor blades in place. Once they showed him how, he’d tossed a line over the ends of the long rotor blades that had been tucked over the tail. He towed each one so that Tim and John who were perched atop the Black Hawk could pin them into place. Then as the crew chiefs worked their way around the bird undoing covers, checking door latches, and a hundred other little details, Daniel asked questions.

  Alice would bet that he didn’t forget a single detail either. Every item finding its cubbyhole in his neatly ordered mind. Her own mind felt more like a filing system crossed with a smallish hurricane. Her ability to retrieve and relate facts remained a constant mystery whenever she tried to explore her own process. Daniel didn’t appear to go there. His mind, while at least as exceptional as his body, appeared to be something he simply used. Didn’t analyze. Didn’t deconstruct. He just used it.

  Sounded like a nice, gentle place to be. She wished she could try it someday.

  They finally waved her over and she scampered through the rain. Only Daniel’s quick hand atop her head spared her cracking it on the cargo bay doorframe. The Black Hawk’s deck was a high step up, but the bay itself measured barely over four feet from deck to roof of the cabin. A couple of small seats had been attached there, three across the back facing forward and two at the front facing backward.

  She and Daniel took two of the seats in the back. He patted the middle seat and she slid in gratefully, as far as possible from the freezing outside world and able to rub shoulders with Daniel.

  Captain Smith sat across from them.

  The two crew chiefs went forward and took their own positions after sliding the cargo bay door shut. They rode sideways, each facing out a small window. The windows actually only appeared small. Each was mostly filled with a steerable minigun capable of firing six thousand rounds a minute, a buzz saw of death.

  A shiver having nothing to do with the temperature shook Alice so hard it almost hurt. Never had it been so personal, seeing the danger she was placing people in. She rarely left her cubicle at CIA headquarters. She’d make an analysis, and people would act on it. These people, ones she now knew, would fly into harm’s way because of what she’d learned. They were sitting in a craft of war. And this time her analysis would be sending them into North Korea.

  The Majors closed their own doors and within moments the twin turbines had spun up until they were a high background whine, a sound she knew would be in her sleep for days to come. The heavy thud of the rotors began to beat the air hard enough that it felt like a body blow.

  With a deepening of the rotor’s roar and a slight forward tip, they were airborne. Within moments they were over water, barely, but above it. She knew that Puget Sound was close to the south end of the runway, but she knew they were supposed to heading northwest. Maybe they were circling around to make sure no one had their trail. At twenty-feet above the curling winter whitecaps of Bellingham Bay, no radar would be following them.

  Daniel slid an arm over her shoulder, but there was no way to talk. She leaned in for the warmth and comfort, and watched the world flash by out the large windows in the closed cargo doors. Steep islands appeared abruptly, stabbing their conifer-covered heads briefly toward the sky before sweeping back toward the roiled ocean waters. They slalomed between the islands as smoothly as any ice skater, at least one dumb enough to be gliding a half second above instant death. If they caught a wave at this speed they’d be dead before even the best pilots could react.

  Somehow the impossibility of the situation didn’t worry her. Whatever the fates had in store, they were in control at the moment. Not Alice Thompson. Not even a little.

  With Daniel’s arm warm about her, she felt safe. She felt for the first time as if she belonged.

  The brilliant outsider, the analyst that no one could feel comfortable around, faded away. The one that everyone assumed could see right through them. But she couldn’t. She didn’t understand individuals, herself least of all. Politics, sure. Socio-economic dynamics of battle, no problem. What the guy next to her was thinking, never. At least not until Daniel.

  She lay her head against his shoulder and soon fell asleep in the safest place she’d ever known.

  Chapter 25

  Daniel didn’t hear any change to the helicopter’s rotors, but Captain Smith signaled they were nearing their destination.

  He wanted to tell Beale and Henderson to just keep flying. To never stop. Alice asleep inside the curl of his arm, her hair soft, brushing his cheek.

  The Canadian Gulf Islands out the window looked w
ilder than the American San Juans. The forests had fewer breaks for houses. Roads were narrow lanes rather than stretches of well-paved-and-striped two-ways. Fifty miles northwest of the airport and they’d also illegally crossed an international border.

  He shook Alice gently awake. There was no way over the rotor noise, but he’d swear he could hear a hum of contentment from Alice as she turned her face into his shoulder.

  Daniel hesitated because Captain Smith sat there facing them from two feet away.

  Screw it.

  He brushed Alice’s chin upward with a soft caress and then kissed her awake.

  Half awake, she leaned in; soft, warm, slow, luscious.

  Daniel’s seatbelt was abruptly too tight across his lap in exactly the wrong place.

  When fully awake, there was no sudden hesitancy. As if she knew even in her sleep exactly who she was kissing. Sitting here, in a roaring helicopter, might well be the sexiest moment of his life. Not for any of his body’s happy imaginings about sex, but for the familiar sensuality in Alice Thompson’s kiss.

  The helicopter banked and Daniel glanced up to see a daunting cliff wall very close outside the window.

  “Holy wow!” Alice’s observation was just audible.

  Thirty or forty feet high, the cliffs soared straight out of the pounding waves. The water must be deep because no pile of boulders huddled around the base. Anything that broke free here was headed for deep water. A steady turn lasted them through a full 360-degree circuit around the island. All cliff.

  Then the Majors flew the helicopter upward on a second circuit around the perimeter. Tall stands of dark, dark evergreen trees capped the rugged island that couldn’t be much over a quarter-mile across. As they returned to the south side, an opening appeared in the forest.

  A green lawn notched back into the trees. Near the cliff edge perched a massive metal-lattice crane. At the end of the crane dangled a floating dock, presently placed on the high meadow. Clearly, you could show up in your boat, engage the remote control, and swing the dock down to the water forty feet below for moorage. A long walkway dangled from the lower side of the crane boom, creating a bridge from ship to shore when it was in position.