The Night Stalkers White House - Books 1-3

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“I can’t believe that you talked me into this!” Daniel had to shout above the roar of the C-17’s jet engines and the air being plowed aside at five hundred miles an hour. The Black Hawk helicopter crew were up at the front of the plane. He and Alice sat about halfway down the side of the immense cargo plane.

Alice didn’t deign to answer. If her conclusion was right, and the Supreme Leader of North Korea was the one requesting the conference with the American government, then the President had to be ready to appear on a moment’s notice.

Daniel’s afternoon had been immediately hijacked from all other considerations. Added to that, a second sleepless night in a row, planning and coordinating this time, left him feeling lightheaded and hazy.

Now he was flying West to verify a portion of the preparation personally.

“What did Janet give you in the calendar tonight?” Alice sat on the next fold-down seat mounted along the side of the plane. They were hard and his butt hurt.

The woman was going to make him crazy. He checked his watch. Three in the afternoon. Fourteen hours ago he’d been having a nice sit down lunch with the President, now he was freezing his behind at thirty-thousand feet. How had this happened?

“The sun hasn’t even come up yet.” Especially not the mid-winter D.C. sun. “And we’re flying West through the time zones. We won’t even land until sunrise never mind sunset. Now you want to break your own rules?”

They sat in heavy parkas on barely padded seats. They should have pulled on the flightsuits when they were offered, but he’d thought a ski parka would be sufficient. They kept the air inside the plane heated, but the metal skin of the hull sucked the heat right out of his bones.

Two Black Hawk helicopters were aboard. Their rotors had been folded over their tails and they’d been slid in tail-to-tail. The Mil Hound was nowhere to be seen and the two Black Hawks looked absolutely vicious. These were attack craft, weapons hanging to either side from stub wings. Missiles, machine guns, something they’d told him was a cannon able to fire rounds wider than his thumb at a rate over eighty times per second. He’d assumed Major Henderson was kidding, but maybe not. He didn’t seem the type to joke about weaponry.

Alice grabbed his arm and rolled his wrist toward her so that she could see the watch upside down.

“Looks like nine-thirty to me. You know, you should get a watch that has those little numbers instead of just hashy marks. It would help you read time better.”

“Another of your mother’s rules? Adjust everything around you to suit yourself?”

Some of the light went out of Alice’s eyes and she released his wrist. She drifted off to a silent place. A place he suddenly feared because maybe he couldn’t reach her when she went there.

He did the only thing he could think of and pulled the Advent Calendar book out of his flight bag.

“Now let’s see.” He turned it so that she could look at it with him. Her face aimed down and her bangs flopped over her eyes, he hoped she was looking with him.

He did his best to make it a cozy moment, despite the need to shout to be heard above the engines.

“I seem of have eaten the first page out of house and home.” He made a show of inspecting inside each of the eight pull tab windows on the first page. Sure enough, all empty. He’d described each to her on the phone, but now she could see them one by one. And they were lovely art work.

He turned to the middle page.

This image was a grand sweep of delicate art. A sleigh piled with gifts and a dozen tiny micedeer perched on a roof peak as if they did it every day. Daniel had already eaten the caramel behind the door showing where Santa’s hat had caught on a brick inside the chimney.

Around the Christmas tree, a balding but undeniably jolly Saint Hamster, in a red and white jumpsuit that barely contained his furry girth, was scattering presents from his bag.

Daniel opened day ten; a tiny drawing of milk and cookies half eaten, the nibble distinctly two-toothed. Day eleven; inside, a naughty kitten trying to peek through a child-gate pulled across the head of the stairs. Day twelve, behind a picture of great uncle Rex; the good kitten asleep in bed. Day thirteen, Daniel could finally feel Alice’s smile though he couldn’t see it, a tiny mouse behind a tiny mouse hole curled up and fast asleep in a nest of red-and-green wrapping paper.

Day fourteen; the fourteenth of December, was a tall door running right up the length of the tree’s trunk. Inside were a pair of tiny candy canes, shorter than his pinky. Somehow Janet once again knew there would be two of them together. And once again, he’d missed the addition to the calendar’s pages.

Two weeks. He’d only known Alice two weeks. It was unimaginable. Partly because he’d had s*x with her, he’d never done that so soon, and also because he couldn’t imagine a day when he couldn’t at least speak with her. How had she become so important so quickly?

Daniel handed one of the candy canes to Alice and took the other himself. As they peeled off the plastic, they looked inside the calendar window to see a different version of the tree. Smaller, standing still in the woods with its companion trees. Somehow it looked to be asleep wearing a little nightcap of snow, and it had a dream bubble reaching up into a starry sky of being a real Christmas tree someday when it grew up.

“So, do you taste like a candy cane?” When Daniel brushed her cheek, she looked up at him with a slow reluctance. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask anything. He simply kissed her. Long and slow and deep, reveling in the taste of her. The feel of her.

He pulled back just a little and nodded. “Yep! Alice and candy cane. Knew that was a winner combination without even guessing.”

Her smile thanked him for not pushing. The eyes, those amazing hazeled eyes, he wished he could borrow a bit of elf magic and wipe them clear of whatever bad memory still lurked there. She held his hand tightly in hers, and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Daniel leaned back against the hull of the aircraft, feeling the vibration become a part of his body. With the Advent Calendar across his lap in one hand, and Alice’s fingers wrapped warmly in his other hand, Daniel could feel content. As if he were in the right place at the right time.

He rested his cheek on Alice’s impossibly soft hair, closed his eyes, and let the exhaustion of a pair of sleepless nights take him under.