Books » Janet Evanovich » Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town
Author: Svendances
Rated: T - English - Drama/Angst - Reviews: 19 - Published: 12-23-13 - Updated: 12-23-13
id:9952359
I've been telling myself for a couple of weeks now that I was going to write a Christmas Song Fic. Problem was, I couldn't find a Christmas song that spoke to me enough to tell a story. Until last night. Eight o'clock on Christmas Eve Eve I decided what the song shall be and worked out the setting etc for it. And today, I spent all day (pretty much... I started at 8am and it's now pm) writing it. Because it had to get done before Christmas Day.
Edit: Had to take the lyrics out, so please either listen to the song or have a read of the lyrics so you get a feel for the song.
Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town
"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house," Lester muttered under his breath as they crouched in the bushes a good two hundred yards from the utter mayhem they had just narrowly escaped. "Every creature was stirring because a bunch of Americans levelled the community in a matter of minutes."
"Keep it down, Santos," Ranger replied, fiddling with his comm. unit. "They could still be looking for us."
And he had a point. This close to the scene, any number of unsavoury characters could be lurking about in search of the foreign men who'd barged in with guns ablaze and tore apart every structure in the village. In retrospect there were a lot of things that could have – and probably should have – been done differently, starting with their government contact. Every single piece of information they were provided with at the beginning of this mission had been false. The men were starting to think that they'd been set up. And by 'starting' we mean 'were certain'. Never in all their years in the military and serving the government had they participated in a mission that had been so poorly planned.
First, given barely an hour's notice, they'd been reefed from their day to day lives, briefed in quick fashion and sent out to do Uncle Sam's bidding with no time ask questions and only the skint file to answer them once they were shoved on a plane to parts unknown. They knew where they were supposed to be going, of course, but unfortunately for them, where they were dropped was nowhere near the location that had been specified. They were used to such occurrences, due to engine failure, or other unforeseen circumstances that couldn't be helped, but as far as they could tell, there was no reason they couldn't have been dropped closer to the target than the six day hike they'd had to endure before finally commandeering a vehicle for the last twelve hours.
Things had only gone downhill from there.
They met with their contact, a shifty character with a twitchy nose and a curled moustache. That should have been their first hint that he was not on their side. The second was when the details he gave them didn't match up the stories they collected from the locals. When they double checked with Uncle Sam, they were given direct orders to take out the target as planned or they'd send someone else in, and they couldn't guarantee that this someone else wouldn't view them as a threat as well and take them all out.
Three hours of meticulous planning went into following their orders while causing the least amount of damage. And it all went to hell in a hand basket the moment they crept into the house to find the target waiting for them, gun in hand. He got off one shot – directly into Hank's thigh – before the core team of Trenton's finest private security and investigation company got their act together and disabled him. It took just two minutes to get him bound to the central support pole of the hut. And another thirty seconds for the back up to spring through the doorway, blocking the men's exit.
They had to fight tooth and claw to get out of the small shelter, but by the time they were in the open night air once more, the alarm had been raised throughout the village and more men were there, ready to seek revenge on the men they saw as the source of all the bad luck that had come their way in recent months.
Ranger and his crew had driven into town to save them all from the man they had been told was enslaving men and physically abusing women. As it happens, though, they were turning up to cop the blame for the unspeakable acts the American government had wreaked on this small village and the surrounding area.
Their escape was swift, but not so swift that they got out clean. Fire was spreading from one structure to the next eating up the straw houses faster than an obese man at an all you can eat chocolate buffet. In the red glow cast by the blaze, Lester could just see the tree under which the village children had been playing that morning, creating dolls and all sorts of toys out of whatever sticks and broken utensils were available to them. And there was the steady line of fire making a beeline for it through the long grass.
"We should have tried to save them," Lester mumbled, adjusting his belt so it didn't pinch his flesh anymore than was absolutely necessary. "It's not their fault we were all given false information. They had a problem and thought we were the cause. We on the other hand, were acting on orders in blind faith, even though the whole mission has been shifty from the beginning."
Bobby, who's hands were working double speed to dig the bullet out of Hank's thigh in the minimal lighting of their hiding place, made a frustrated gesture with on bloodied hand. "Didn't I say it felt off on the way over? Didn't I make my thoughts clear on what we should do? When we get back stateside I'm going to demand a full investigation of all parties involved in this farce of a mission. At this stage I'm inclined to think that even if we could make it to the pick up on time - which is statistically unlikely, considering the speed of an injured man hobbling through scrub, the fact that nothing else has gone right since we left Rangeman, and the limited amount of time we have left – we'd be left stranded by the idiots that put this thing into action."
"We get the point, Bobby," Hank groaned, clenching his jaw to keep from crying out as Bobby's tweezers dug a little deeper. "This isn't exactly how I pictured spending my Christmas either."
"Comms are down. We're on our own," Ranger announced, clipping his unit back onto his shirt and peering out at the disaster they'd wrought on the village. Men were running around with buckets and pots of water in futile attempts to put out the rampaging fire, while women gathered the children together a short distance away. Ranger thought they'd be better off letting the fire do its thing and combing through the wreckage to salvage anything they could later, but the fact that they were all occupied worked to their advantage in getting away unnoticed. "How long until we can move, Brown?"
Bobby looked up from his task for the first time, glancing around at his friends and colleagues. "It's in deep," he explained, cutting his eyes to Lester for the standard 'That's what she said' joke. But it never came. Even in the midst of the worst war-torn situations they'd been in, Lester had always been quick to add his sexual innuendos. It was his usual way of dealing with the stress of a mission – or daily life, as it so happens. That he wasn't even attempting to joke around now was troubling. Had he finally managed to lose his happy? Bobby had never seen him like this. "Could be another few minutes."
Hank yelped in pain as Bobby accidentally jerked his hand. His usual steadiness had been stolen away in the face of this completely FUBAR mission.
"It'll hurt less once it's out, right?" Hank asked, turning green in the face.
Lester, the little ray of sunshine he was, scoffed, "I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure having a gaping wound in your thigh isn't going to hurt any less than having a bullet stuck in your muscle."
Unfortunately, Hank's stomach was not as strong as the other men, and with just the mention of what lies beneath his skin, his mind was filled with graphic images of what it would look like if they didn't get to real medical help soon and his leg became infected, the contents of his stomach erupted from his throat and onto Lester's cargos, further souring his mood.
"Got it!" Bobby quietly exclaimed, lifting the bullet into the air with his tweezers. "I'll quickly wrap the wound and we can get going. I'll stitch it in the truck."
Within minutes, Hank's leg was padded and bandaged to hopefully stem most of the bleeding. Between the five of them they managed to get him upright, but soon discovered that putting any kind of pressure on the wounded leg was out of the question. The fire behind them was spreading and the cries of anguish grew louder as the villagers succumbed to the realisation that everything they owned, along with some of their loved ones, was lost. Any minute now, they would abandon their fire fighting efforts and come after the men who may not have been the original cause for all their bad luck, but were certainly the reason for this latest catastrophe.
Not wanting to get caught in that again, Ranger stood in front of Hank, staring him in the eyes solemnly. "This is going to hurt," he uttered quietly. "But you can't make a sound." And with that, he promptly hefted him into a fireman's carry and started walking in the direction of the truck they'd stashed earlier in the evening before all hell broke loose.
Lester was the first to arrive at the vehicle, brushing the leaves and branches they'd used to conceal it aside, and jumping in behind the wheel. He turned the key that had been left in the ignition.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Same reaction.
Tank, lifted the hood to see what the problem was, swearing under his breath when he saw the great gaping hole.
"On the first day of Christmas, the locals took from me," Bobby sang morbidly. "The engine from my stolen SUV."
"How did they even manage that?" Lester asked, leaning out of the cab to peer at them all in the gathering darkness. "An engine's not light."
"It was nice of them to leave the rest of the car as a ray of hope, though," Hank bit out from Ranger's shoulder.
Tank crossed his arms over his chest and stood back, surveying the scene with disgust. "Any way you can MacGyver us an engine?" he asked Hank. It was a long shot, but Hank was an engineer, so if any of them could, it was him.
Hank shook his head. "Not unless you've got some engine parts lying around." After a pause, he added, "Or a spare engine."
Lester rolled his eyes and jumped out, heading for the tree they'd stashed their packs in. "Don't you think that even if we did have a spare engine, they would have taken that as well? Two for the price of one, right? Everyone loves a sweet deal."
"So what happens now?" Bobby asked, catching the packs as Lester dropped them down from the upper branches.
"Looks like we're thumbing it," Ranger said.
"Santos, hold your thumb out," Tank instructed once they'd reached the main road.
"Why?" Lester asked, casting the large black man a bewildered glance over his shoulder as he let the way.
"Because we don't have time for you roll up your pants and stretch out your sexy leg," Tank deadpanned.
"I'd do it," Hank offered, "But I'm disabled at the moment."
"I think the bandage and blood detracts from the sexiness of your legs, anyway," Bobby commented.
"Focus," Ranger ordered, sweat beading on his forehead from the heat of the climate and the heavy load in his shoulders. "Lester, thumb out. Everyone else pipe down and look out for cars. If we want to survive tonight we need to get out of here the fastest way possible. And that sure as hell isn't on foot."
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Lester holding his thumb out as cars pasted them by without so much as slowing down to see if they were all right. Frustration and tension was thick in the air surrounding them. As the latest car zoomed past in a cloud of smoke, Ranger's thoughts turned, not for the first time that day, to how important it was that he make it back to Trenton by Christmas.
Stephanie.
Of course it was Stephanie. After years of tip toeing around each other and their supposed non relationship, they'd finally gotten their shit together and admitted that there would never be anyone that could make each other as happy and satisfied as they were when they were together. As a result, they'd gotten married six months ago. This was supposed to be their first Christmas together. He'd been looking forward to sharing the holidays with someone for a change, and knew the men were excited about having their first 'family Christmas' as they had deemed it.
A pang of guilt shot through his chest as he recalled that there wasn't even anything under their tree for Stephanie. He'd hidden it in the safe in his office, convinced that if he put the gift in plain view, the curiosity would get the better of his wife and she'd peek at it before Christmas morning. Now she was going to be left thinking that he'd forgotten to get her anything at all.
"That's it," Tank muttered, stepping off the edge of the road and right out to the centre as he spotted a set of headlights approaching.
"What the hell are you doing?" Bobby demanded, aghast.
"They'll either stop to avoid hitting me, or hit me," Tank explained. "At this point, I don't care."
Luckily for them, as the dusty red cattle truck approached, it slowed and eventually pulled to a stop, just inches from where Tank was stood. A head with a large white beard – not unlike Santa's – poked out of the cab window and peered at the behemoth blocking his way, then the companions of the behemoth, all lined up on the side of the road staring with eyes as wide as saucers.
"You got yourself a death wish, lad?" he asked Tank in a heavy cockney accent.
"Not a death wish," he explained, moving closer. "Just to get home by Christmas."
"Well you're not going to make it by jumping out in front of trucks," he said, adjusting the hat perched on his head despite the fact that the sun had set at least four hours ago. "Where're you all headed, then?"
The men shared a look, silently determining just how to answer that question. Technically, they were headed for Trenton, debriefing be damned, but they'd first need to get to an airstrip with a fuelled plane that could get them back to the states.
"Trenton, New Jersey," Bobby finally replied. "That's in the United States."
"No kidding!" the man exclaimed.
"Any chance we can get a lift?" Lester asked.
The man let out a loud belly laugh. "I know I look like Santa, but I can't drive around the world in one night," he apologised. "I can, however, get you to an airstrip and lend you a plane."
Lester rolled his eyes, ready to keep walking, rather than join the obviously delusional man in the vehicle he was in control of. Knowing they're luck he'd have a Schizophrenic fit and end up murdering them all. Then they'd never make it home.
"Is that a reindeer?" Hank asked, out of the blue, pointing to the cow tethered in the back of the truck. "You're Santa, right?"
This was met with another laugh as jolly man hopped down from the cab and made his way around the back of the truck to the gate. "Just a cow, I'm afraid," he said good naturedly. "And I mean it about the plane. I'm on my way to the airstrip now. Got a package I need to get to New York for my niece for Christmas. I'd be more than happy to let you hitch a ride."
"Great!" Bobby accepted. "Thanks." He jumped up onto the bed of the truck before any of his colleagues could protest and turned to help Hank move to lean against one of the walls when Ranger set him down. "How long to the airstrip?" he asked as Tank and Lester also climbed up to join the cow.
"Hour and a half," he said. "Maybe less if you don't mind being tossed about by the speed."
"We don't," they all said in unison. And with that, Ranger mounted the truck as well, allowing the Santa-like man to close them in and make his way back to cab.
"It's a seventeen hour flight back from here to New York," Bobby announced. "And we're seven hours ahead here. We should make it back by Christmas afternoon at the latest."
20 hours later, the men emerged from the private jet, cleaner than they'd been when they stepped onboard seventeen hours earlier thanks to the shower on the luxury plane. Two Rangeman SUVs were waiting on the tarmac as per the order Ranger had given via borrowed satellite phone before they left. One was ready to take Hank and Bobby straight to the nearest hospital. The other was taking the rest back to Trenton to salvage what was left of Christmas Day.
Ranger settled into the front passenger seat and reached across the console to snatch the phone from Manny's belt as he waited for Lester and Tank to climb into the back seat. He dialled the number he knew by heart and waited through seven agonising rings for his wife to pick up.
"Yeah?" she said, sounding forlorn.
Relief washed over him at hearing Stephanie's voice. "Meet me in the parking garage in an hour," he instructed.
"Ranger?"
"Merry Christmas, Babe."
And Merry Christmas to all of you lovely readers and reviewers, too! I honestly don't know where I would be without you all. Probably trapped in my own head.