A Soldier's Christmas Read online

  And it had been, until he'd climbed out of a chopper to join Captain Trent and her Red Horse team eight days ago. With some effort, he worked his mind around the acronym. Red Horse—Rapid Engineer-Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer. A fancy name for a highly mobile team that could perform such varied tasks as bare-base site surveys, demolition operations, well drilling, power generation, and construction of everything from runways to mobile aircraft hangars. Abby Trent, Dan had discovered in the past eight days, knew a little about all of those engineering functions and a whole lot more about leadership.

  She led instinctively, by listening to her people when they came up with ideas and guiding them to find a solution when they didn't. What's more, she did it with a breezy, no-nonsense competence that had earned her troops' fierce, unrelenting loyalty.

  Her leadership skills alone would have made Dan sit up and take notice. Throw in misty green eyes, hair as fiery as the sunset off Malibu Beach and a killer set of curves, and he'd had to force himself to keep his mind on the mission these past eight days.

  Oh, well. The captain and her team would finish their site survey and depart the area soon. Dan would remain behind with his Special Ops unit. Time and distance would kill his craving for sexy Abigail Trent.

  Or so he thought, until the woman walked into the mess tent later that evening.

  * * *

  ABBY PAUSED IN THE DOORWAY, HER EYES lighting up at the scene inside.

  Father Dominic and the children had already arrived. Sergeant Davis had glued rolls of cotton to his cheeks and was booming ho-hos as he passed out presents. "Feliz Navidad" blared through the speakers. Brown-paper "Christmas" wrapping flew. Kids shrieked with delight.

  The Americans appeared to be having as much fun as the children. The long, tall Texan, Steve Oakes, was down on his knees winding up a spring-driven dump truck. Joyce Carmichael cuddled a wide-eyed little girl on her lap, showing her how to comb the mane of a fluorescent pink pony. Dan Maxwell stood just inside the entrance, engaged in an animated conversation conducted via hand gestures with a towheaded youngster of seven or eight.

  He glanced up at Abby's entrance and his smile took a sardonic twist. Wondering what the heck she'd done now, Abby bristled. Before she could say anything, though, Sergeant Davis paused in his ho-hoing to call a warning across the heads of the youngsters.

  "Yo, Cap! Better watch where you're standing."

  At her blank look, Davis hooked a thumb upward. Abby craned her neck, spotted the twig dangling from a string and swallowed a groan. She lowered her gaze and locked glances with the man standing a few feet from her.

  "Mistletoe," Maxwell said, his eyes glinting.

  "Mistletoe," she echoed, annoyed at the breathy note to her voice.

  The glint in his eyes deepened. "Guess we'd better follow tradition."

  Abby didn't see any way out. Her troops were watching with expressions of mischievous glee. She didn't have the heart to spoil their fun.

  "Guess so," she replied with, what she hoped was a credible nonchalance.

  Her pulse did not leap in anticipation as she lifted her face to his. It was just thumping along to the joyful beat of "Feliz Navidad."

  That didn't explain why her knees went wobbly when he bent toward her, however. Or the sudden catch to her breath when his mouth brushed hers. Or the guilt that stabbed through her when she remembered how Eric had kissed her under the mistletoe at her parents' house last year.

  The memory jerked Abby's head back. Flushing, she tried to cover her reaction with a laugh. "Leave it to the combat engineers to rig a booby trap."

  "Yeah," Dan muttered under his breath as she wove her way through the crowd. "You Chargin' Charlies are good at that."

  Damn! He hadn't felt a kick like that since…since…He searched his mind, thoroughly disgruntled by the fact that he couldn't remember ever getting such a jolt from a single kiss. What was it about Abby Trent that revved his engines so fast and so hard?

  Still feeling the aftershock, he looked around for the kid he'd cornered just before Abby appeared. He'd caught the boy at the food table, stuffing apples and bananas into his pockets. Dan had tried to convince him he didn't need to stash away a secret hoard, that they'd send the leftovers back with Father Dominic. The kid either hadn't understood or didn't believe there would be anything left after the others got to the table. Jutting out his chin, he'd crammed another banana into his pocket. Now, apparently, he'd disappeared.

  He must have slipped outside while Dan was otherwise engaged with the delectable Captain Trent. Worried that he'd scared the kid away from the party, Dan tugged on his leather bomber jacket and went out into the night.

  As predicted, the weather had taken a serious hit. Thick, icy fog obscured the moon, the snowcapped peaks, even the valley below. Skirting the dilapidated bus Father Dominic had driven up to the site, Dan searched for the AWOL boy.

  He found him crouched beside the pallets stacked outside the supply tent. In the dim glow of the floodlights rigged around the site, Dan saw he'd pried up the lid on a crate marked with a Red Cross emblem and was pawing through the contents. Looking for drugs or other substances to peddle on the black market, Dan guessed.

  The kid couldn't know Abby's troops had secured all controlled items. That crate contained only bandages, aspirin, antiseptic ointment and other over-the-counter items. Even those items, though, would fetch a hefty price in this war-ravaged area.

  Dan approached slowly, his footsteps muffled by the dense fog. "Sorry, kid, that stuff stays here."

  Startled, the boy sprang up. Dan whipped out a hand and snagged his collar before he could take off. His skinny arms thrashing, the boy twisted and jerked and poured out a passionate defense in his own language.

  "Hey, it's okay! I'm not going to…Ow!"

  At the solid whack to his shins, Dan instinctively tightened his grip. The boy's jacket hitched up around his neck. Panic added volume to his protests. His cries cut through the fog, carried over the mellow rendition of Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas" now drifting from the mess tent, and brought Father Dominic running.

  Abby was right behind him. "What's going on?"

  Dan wasn't about to rat on the kid. With his country ripped apart by war, his village in ruins and his parents either dead or missing, the boy had it tough enough as it was.

  "Just a little misunderstanding. Not worth disrupting the party over."

  More than a misunderstanding, it turned out. After a fierce interrogation, Father Dominic disclosed that the boy—Constantine—hadn't been pilfering food and supplies for himself, but for his older sister.

  "Maria, she goes away to look for their father," the priest explained in his halting English. "The rebels take him. They take all the men and force them to fight."

  The men and many of the boys, Dan knew. Word was, all males strong enough to tote a rifle had been rounded up and marched off at gunpoint. With no help to work the fields hacked out of the rocky, barren slopes, the women of the village had scattered soon after that.

  "Maria comes back a few days ago," the priest said. "She hides in the village."

  A frown creased Abby's brow. "Why is she hiding?"

  "Constantine, he says she is afraid."

  "Of us?"

  "Of anyone who wears the uniform."

  Abby bit her lip. She was so used to thinking of the military as the good guys, it had been a shock to discover how many people feared soldiers of any stripe in this corner of the world.

  The boy tugged on Father Dominic's sleeve to get his attention.

  "Constantine says Maria is sick," the priest translated, frowning. "I must gather up the children and go to find her."

  "You can't drive the bus back down the mountain in this weather," Abby protested. "Why not leave the children here? I'll drive you down in the jeep."

  "You stay with your troops," Dan countered. "I'll drive him."

  She didn't waste time arguing. "We'll both go."

  *
* *

  THEY STARTED DOWN THE MOUNTAIN less than fifteen minutes later. Dan was at the wheel of the jeep, bundled against the cold in his flight suit and heavy jacket. Father Dominic huddled beside him. Abby and the boy sat in the back, wedged between a box of food and medical supplies.

  She'd tugged her stocking cap down over her ears and pulled up the hood of her field jacket for added protection against the icy wind. The boy was almost lost in a black-and-orange Detroit Tigers jacket, one of the items of clothing shipped in by Dan's unit.

  The haunting strains of "Silent Night" followed them until the fog smothered every sound but the hiss of the tires on the narrow mountain track.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TWENTY-MINUTE DRIVE DOWN to the village took an excruciating hour and a half. Thick, swirling fog shrouded the mountain, making every turn treacherous. Slushy snow and ice added to the hazards.

  By the time the jeep's headlights picked up the Greek Orthodox cross adorning Father Dominic's church, the muscles in Dan's neck had torqued tight and his palms were sweating inside his gloves.

  A mere handful of buildings, the village straddled both banks of the river. The houses and barns stood dark and silent. The roofs of some had caved in. Shell holes pockmarked others.

  "The fighting here was fierce," Father Dominic said sadly as Dan navigated the cobbled lane that constituted the village's only paved street. "The last battle…" Sighing, he shook his head. "It was very bad. The rebels, they bomb the bridge, even the church."

  Following his directions, Dan drove the length of the narrow street. The eerie stillness raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He'd slipped extra ammo clips for his sidearm into the pockets on his webbed belt. He'd also confirmed Abby had clipped on a radio and packed an assortment of emergency gear with the food and supplies she'd loaded into the jeep. Still, he found himself wishing he'd strapped on a little more firepower as the vehicle's headlights picked a path through the swirling haze.

  When the lane began to slope down to the ram parts of the ancient Roman bridge, Dan slowed to a halt and turned a questioning look on the priest.

  "Where now?"

  Father Dominic slewed around in his seat and conducted a brief conversation with the boy. Facing front again, he waved a hand in the general direction of the river.

  "Constantine says his sister is hiding there."

  Dan squinted through the swirling fog. "Where?"

  His passenger stabbed a finger at the cluster of buildings barely visible on the far side of the river. "There."

  "How do we get across?"

  "We must take the bridge."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  Perplexed by the question, the priest lifted his shoulders. "It is the only way."

  "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Padre, but your bridge has a hole in it."

  "This I know."

  "So how do you figure we drive the jeep across?"

  "We do not drive. We walk there, on the wall. Constantine says he does this to reach his sister."

  Dan eyed the narrow stone ledge for several moments before twisting around in his seat. His gaze locked with Abby's as she squinted through the hood of her field jacket.

  "I'm not liking the look of this."

  "Me, neither."

  She leaned forward, peering through the jeep's windshield at the stone bridge. Despite the fog, the gaping hole halfway across was clearly visible. She clambered out of the vehicle and shoved back her hood.

  "I want to take a closer look."

  Dan fished out a high-powered flashlight and joined her. They walked upriver a few yards and aimed the beam at the damaged side of the bridge. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Abby studied the crumbled stone and masonry.

  "Judging from the damage pattern, I say it took a mortar hit."

  That didn't sound good to Dan, but he kept his thoughts to himself until they retraced their steps, walked downriver and examined the bridge from the other side. From this perspective, the structure appeared undamaged. The two stone support columns stood solid and square against the night. The low wall edging this side of the causeway stretched unbroken from one bank to the other.

  "Think it will take our weight?"

  "It should," Abby replied after a moment. "The load-bearing arch and keystone are still intact."

  "You sure about that?"

  "As sure as I can be given the circumstances," she returned dryly. Her gaze swept the ancient structure once more. "That arch has withstood two thousand plus years of spring floods, winter freezes and war. The centurion who designed and directed its construction was some kind of engineer."

  "So are you."

  She jerked her head around. Her face was a pale blur in the diffused light, but Dan saw the startled surprise that lifted her auburn brows.

  "Am I hearing right? Did you just give me a positive stroke?"

  Not the kind of stroke he'd like to give her, Dan thought wryly. "Look, I know I've been riding you a little…."

  Her brows soared again.

  "Okay, I've been a pain in the butt."

  "Make that a major pain."

  Grinning, he acknowledged the pun. "But you got the site laid out. Better and faster than I thought it could be done."

  "Almost laid out," she corrected, although she couldn't help preening a little. "Two more days and my team is outta here."

  The reminder rubbed Dan the wrong way. His grin disappeared. In its wake came something close to a scowl.

  What was with him tonight? So he had a bad case of the hots for the captain? So that kiss under the mistletoe a while ago had come close to short-circuiting his entire system? He'd known all along Abby's team would roll out when they completed the site prep. A heavy construction team would roll in behind them, and Dan's Special Ops detachment would follow. That was how it happened in the military.

  That was also why his marriage had broken up, Dan reminded himself as he and Abby walked back along the riverbank. Special Operations personnel never stayed in one spot for very long. Dan's frequent temporary-duty assignments to hot spots around the world had made for steamy homecomings the first year or so. After that, the lengthy absences had worked against a union based more on physical attraction than love. He'd discovered later his ex had consoled herself with a number of men during his frequent absences, including the real estate agent she'd married two days after their divorce went through. Dan hadn't blamed her.

  Even now, the memory of his broken marriage didn't bother him half as much as the realization that he and Abby Trent would go their separate ways in a few days.

  "Here's the plan," he said brusquely, shoving the thought aside to focus on the immediate problem. "You wait with Father Dominic and the boy in the jeep. I'll boogie across the bridge and find the girl."

  Abby didn't bat an eye. Ignoring their difference in rank, she asserted her authority as officer in charge of the project that had brought them both to this remote mountain site.

  "Wrong."

  "'Scuse me?"

  "I'm the one with the working knowledge of stress fractures and load distribution, remember? I'll go across the bridge. You wait with Father Dominic and the boy."

  "No way."

  "I also weigh less than you do," she reminded him—unnecessarily, Dan thought. "We know the wall will hold Constantine. He says he's crossed it several times. It should hold me."

  "He says he's crossed it several times. He could be lying."

  "Lying?"

  Dan flicked a glance at the two figures waiting beside the jeep. When he turned back, a muscle ticked in the side of his jaw.

  "It wouldn't be the first time a pint-size guerrilla has lured Americans into a trap. The bridge could be mined and set to blow apart under us. I lost a friend exactly that way in Afghanistan."

  Abby's lips thinned. She knew they had to consider the possibility of a booby trap. Unfortunately, they were a fact of life in this war-ravaged corner of the world. And all too easy to plant.

 
; Dubbed antipersonnel devices by some Pentagon wag, landmines had been integral to military operations since first introduced in World War I. They'd become so much a part of modern warfare, in fact, they now constituted an international scourge.

  The thought that the rebels might have mined what remained of this ancient stone structure started Abby's stomach churning. The idea that kid in the jeep could be luring them into a trap only added to the sick feeling.

  This was Christmas Eve, for pity's sake! A night when they should be celebrating peace, not worrying about ambushes.

  With the sick feeling came another fierce wave of homesickness. What the heck was she doing in this war-ravaged country, thousands of miles from home? She could be sitting beside a roaring fire right now, sipping eggnog and singing carols with her family.

  The swamping sensation disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. She was here because she'd volunteered to serve her country. No one had twisted her arm. No one had put a gun to her head and forced her into the ranks of a ragtag guerrilla army, as had happened to the men in this village.

  Wrenching her thoughts back to the task at hand, Abby reminded Dan her team included a demolitions man.

  "Senior Airman Perry swept the area for antipersonnel devices when we first arrived."

  "Did he sweep the bridge itself?"

  "Just the road leading down to it and the buildings on this side of the river."

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek.

  "Let's talk to Father Dominic again," she suggested after a moment. "He should have a feel for whether the boy is telling the truth about his sister."

  The very suggestion that his charge might be lying shocked the priest to his core. "No! No! Constantine would not send us into harm."

  The boy echoed his sentiments, his young voice strident and urgent. Although neither Abby nor Dan could understand his words, they grasped his intent quickly enough when he hopped out of the jeep and started for the bridge. Dan caught him by the back of his Detroit Tigers jacket.