by Cindy Dees
She was a little confused as to how the Samis knew to be looking for intruders a full day before the Medusas came, but she wasn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth.
Larson muttered, “This is cheating. You were supposed to find my guys on your own.”
Karen muttered back, “The rules of engagement said to use all the available local resources at our disposal. I’d say these guys are local resources, wouldn’t you?”
Larson didn’t reply, but his narrowed gaze was answer enough.
“Sit there and be quiet, like a good servant,” Karen bit out. “It’s part of Delta training to make friends with the locals and then enlist their help. And if you ask me, we girls are doing pretty well at both with these folks.”
A woman came in, carrying another big, steaming pot, undoubtedly more food of some kind. Larson jumped up to help her with it and hung it on a hook by the fire for her. Whether he did it out of chivalry, or to rub Karen’s nose in his ability to make friends, too, she couldn’t tell. Either way, the native woman smiled shyly at him.
It turned out to be reindeer stew. It tasted surprisingly good. Nonetheless, Karen ate sparingly. These people didn’t look like they did much more than subsist, and seven soldiers with hearty appetites would no doubt strain the tribe’s limited resources.
Padmir finished his soup and set aside his carved wooden bowl. Larson translated as the chief announced, “Tonight, I send forth the word for a gathering of all the Sami people in the heart of our native lands The Great Restoration is upon us.”
“Great Restoration?” Karen repeated.
Larson shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m only the hired help.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
Vanessa piped up. “Would it be possible for these guys to draw us a map to the encampment of the outsiders?”
Larson relayed the question to the Sami men. “They’ll do you one better and will guide you goddesses to it. It will be an event to sing yoiks to their grandchildren about.”
Vanessa replied dryly, “Really, a map will be fine.”
Larson shrugged. “You won’t talk them out of it. If they don’t lead you, they’ll follow you.”
Vanessa sighed. “All right. We’ll head out first thing in the morning. That’ll put us in range of your guys by nightfall. And I’d really rather hit them in the dark if I can.”
Oslo, Norway, March 2, 9:00 p.m.
Jens dug his cell phone out of his breast pocket and took a look at the caller ID. Finally. The Oslo Police’s forensic chemist. And a really nice lady. He flipped open the phone.
“Hi, Marta. Thanks for returning my call. What can you tell me about my daughter? Is she displaying any of the classic signs of violent psychosis that the other victims have just prior to their deaths?”
“No.” Jens couldn’t help letting out a sigh of relief.
“That doesn’t mean she’s out of danger, though. We’re just now interviewing surviving family members and friends of the attackers. This drug seems to build up in the system over a period of time, and the symptoms become more pronounced and more…severe…gradually.”
“How much time?” Jens asked tensely, his gut right back in the twist it had been in ever since he’d discovered Astrid stoned at the kitchen table on God knows what.
“Days or maybe weeks. Hard to tell. Most of the victims, as far as we can tell were regular recreational drug users or outright addicts. We’re fairly certain a bad batch of drugs was put out on the streets, and that something in the drugs is interacting with other chemicals present to cause the psychotic episodes, convulsions and death.”
Jens cursed under his breath. “What do I do for my daughter?”
“Keep her off any drugs at all, and at the first signs of erratic behavior, get her to a hospital and in restraints, for her own safety and yours.” The pathological chemist added grimly, “And you could pray. Whatever this stuff is, it’s powerful and nasty.”
That was one way of describing it. People were dying all over Oslo. In the past week, they’d had more murders than the city averaged in a normal year.
“Thanks, Marta.”
“I’ll let you know if I find out any more.”
Jens disconnected the call. He knew of something else he could do besides wait and pray—neither of which he could do worth a damn. He could find out who Astrid had gotten her drugs from. Starting with that louse, Willie.
Northern Norway, March 2, 10:00 p.m.
The Sami people shifted around their sleeping arrangements and freed up two turf huts for the Medusas and Larson. When Karen and Larson were shown to one hut and the rest of the Medusas to another, Karen wasn’t the slightest bit amused.
He translated dryly; it turned out that as the preeminent goddess among the group, Karen was expected to have her own quarters. And of course, she’d want her servant with her to wait on her. The lesser warrior goddesses were given the other hut.
Unfortunately, said lesser goddesses were so busy containing gales of laughter that they weren’t the slightest bit of help at all in talking the Samis out of this sleeping arrangement. Fuming, Karen was forced to retire to her own hut. With her manservant.
The sod structure was surprisingly warm. Even with only a small fire in the center beneath the smoke hole in the roof, the interior was shirtsleeve warm. Either that, or Karen was acclimating faster to the cold than she’d realized. A Sami woman carried in a load of dried reindeer dung and a fresh skin of water, and then, backed out of the hut. Karen and Larson were alone.
She pulled out her sleeping bag and plunked down on top of it, glaring at her roommate. “Okay, Einstein. Talk to me about Norse mythology. Who, exactly, am I supposed to be?”
He leaned back against his pack, stretching his feet out to the fire. “The Samis think you’re no less than Freya herself.”
“And Freya is?”
He grinned. “The Norse goddess of love and fertility. Oh, and she’s also the goddess of war and patron of all female warriors.”
“Female warriors?” Karen echoed.
He shrugged. “The Vikings have a long history of women fighters. When the men were away conquering and pillaging foreign lands, somebody back home had to protect the village from being taken and plundered.”
“Tell me more about this Freya.”
“She was exceedingly beautiful and clever, as any self-respecting goddess should be. She possessed several notable magic items, including Brising’s necklace, which made her so beautiful that she was irresistible to men. She also had a cloak made of falcon skins that she used to fly with on occasion. She shared Odin’s love of battle, and the two of them split the spirits of all warriors who fell in battle. Half went to Odin’s hall, Valhalla. And the other half—including all the fallen women warriors—went to her hall, Sessrumnir.”
“Ahh. That’s the place the first Sami guy asked me if I’d come from.”
Crud. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to go along with this business of the locals thinking she was Freya. But darned if she was about to admit that to Larson! “Anything more I ought to know about Freya?”
“She got her golden necklace by sleeping with four mythical dwarven smiths. In return, they crafted Brising’s necklace from the stars and the fruitfulness of the earth. It enhanced her beauty so much that mortal men could hardly bear to look at her, and all men who saw her fell hopelessly in love with her.”
Karen made a face. “Who’d want men fawning all over them all the time anyway?”
Larson grinned. “I know plenty of women who think it would be wonderful to have men worship at their feet.”
Karen shook her head. “They’d get in the way. You’d end up tripping over guys everywhere you went.”
He laughed. “The American warrior is practical as well as smart and strong and beautiful. Maybe you do have a bit of Freya in you after all.”
More than a little uncomfortable with this whole goddess comparison thing, she abruptly changed subjects. “Tell me
about yourself.”
Larson looked startled. “Not much to tell.”
“Where are you from?”
“I come from a little island called Heng. It’s off the coast of southwestern Norway, not far from Stavenger.”
“I gather then you grew up around water and boating.”
He laughed. “It’s hard not to in Norway. And yes, I did. My father is a ship captain.”
“What sorts of ships?”
“He started in the Norwegian Navy but spent the last twenty years of his career piloting a container ship. One of the super-cargo carriers.”
“A military family then. Was he tough?”
Larson’s eyes darkened from light blue to dull gray. “You could say that.”
Well, then. That hit a nerve. “Okay. So you grew up around boats and the navy. Do FSK officers have to go to college?”
He nodded. “I studied ship design and Norse history at the University of Oslo.”
“Then what?”
“Then I joined the army.”
Yup, definitely tension between father and son. “Going army had to really twist your father’s knickers, what with him being navy and all.”
Larson answered too blandly, “I suppose it did.”
“Any hobbies?”
He frowned. “Who has time for hobbies?”
Karen grinned. “I know what you mean. Ever since I took this job, I’ve been going nonstop. If it’s not a mission, it’s more training. It’s like drinking from a fire hose.”
He laughed. “Your Special Forces aren’t so different from ours, except for—”
He broke off, and his next words hung unspoken in the air. Except for the part where the U.S. allowed women inside the fence.
He said hastily, “I do like to cross-country ski. I race in biathlons.”
“You’re one of the Olympic medalists who were chasing us, then?”
“Yeah.” An awkward silence fell. Into it, he said, “Biathlons originated in the Norwegian Army in the 1760s. We take it as a point of pride to be the best in the world at it.”
It was startling to realize that she and the Medusas had been keeping pace with an Olympian for the past few days. But then her gaze narrowed. “You’ve been taking it easy on us women, haven’t you? You threw the fight with me because you didn’t want to hurt me,” she accused.
He retorted, “No, I didn’t. You surprised me and took me off guard. And then you put a superior wrestling move on me.”
She subsided, surprisingly disappointed. It might have been nice to think he was bigger and stronger than her. But no. She was the Freya look-alike. A manly-girl who could whup up on an Olympic athlete for God’s sake. Humiliation roiled in her gut.
“But I’ll win next time,” he added confidently.
Right. Because after all, he was a man. And she was only a woman. A woman who couldn’t make up her mind about whether she liked this guy or hated his guts. Nothing like a little good old-fashioned dose of “you can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em” to mess up a girl’s head.
Karen hmmphed and crawled into her sleeping bag. She turned her back to Larson in disgust and tried to think small, feminine, fragile thoughts.
It didn’t work.
She fell asleep pondering creative ways to break Larson in half.
Northern Norway, March 3, 6:00 a.m.
It might as well be the middle of the night for all the light there was out here, but that was okay. The night belonged to them. The Medusas and their Norwegian sidekick were suited up and ready to go when the Sami trackers gestured that they, too, were ready to head out.
Karen walked past a number of Sami girls and women milking the reindeer and picking up the night’s deposits of fresh fuel by the reindeer. All in all, she’d rather be toting forty pounds of electronics, explosives and weapons and heading out to kick some Norwegian Army butt.
They walked until after sunrise, breaking at midday for a bite to eat and a short rest. And then they walked most of the afternoon without pause. These Sami men might be small, but they were tough as nails. Even Anders was showing signs of having to work a bit to keep up with them.
The sun set, and they walked about one more hour, which made it about four-thirty in the afternoon. And all of a sudden, the Sami men stopped and crouched. They murmured something to Anders.
“The hut of the outsiders you are here to cleanse from the land is over the next ridge. You can see the heat rising off it now.”
Karen looked where the hunters were pointing. Now that they mentioned it, she could see a faint shimmer of warm air rising in a column. There was no visible smoke, just that nearly invisible disturbance in the air. Good eyesight these Samis had. Must come from hunting for a living.
Vanessa spoke quietly. “Karen, tell these guys to head home.”
Karen turned to the two men. “Thank you for your guidance. Now it is time for you to leave.”
It didn’t take a translation of their agitated outburst in reply to figure out these guys didn’t want to leave. They wanted to hunt beside the goddess. She swore under her breath as Larson threw her a big, fat, I-told-you-so look.
She huffed. “Tell them this is our quest. We shall return to the village to fulfill the prophecy when we are finished here. But this is not a fight for men. It is ours.”
He raised his eyebrows but made the translation.
An ‘ahh’ of comprehension came from the two hunters. They nodded their understanding and turned immediately to go. Leaving six women alone to fight a gun battle, they couldn’t wrap their brains around. But a quest by the gods—that they could understand.
The two Sami men disappeared over the ridge behind the Medusas. “Okay, fellow goddesses. Let’s get on with this quest,” Vanessa commented dryly.
The others laughed quietly.
Their surveillance showed no activity outside the building. The Norwegians must not expect the Medusas to find them for several more days. And why should they? Had the Samis not led them right to it, locating this log cabin would’ve been like finding a needle in a haystack. The structure looked like an old hunting lodge. It wasn’t huge, but given the expense of hauling in all those logs, it looked downright luxurious for the region. The women guessed it slept maybe a dozen men.
There had only been five Norwegians and Jack on the helicopter, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t picked up more manpower before flying here. The women decided to plan for twelve men. Two to one odds wasn’t bad, especially when they had the element of surprise on their side.
The next step was some close-up surveillance to figure out what, exactly, these army types were doing way out here. The final step would be the fun part—the surprise assault where the Medusas got even for their loss in the unarmed-combat encounter. This time around, they’d have rubber bullets and rubber-bladed knives. The Norwegians wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Medusas eased forward, each taking a window in the structure to peer through. Keeping a sharp eye out for booby traps, Karen inched forward, one elbow at a time. Surprisingly, she ran across no traps. Maybe the other women hit them on their approaches. But, given that no snaps, pops, bangs or other explosions of noise gave away their approach, her teammates must’ve been successful at disarming any traps they ran across.
Karen tried hard not to think about Larson, creeping along right behind her, but it was hard not to. He dogged her every step, like a pesky shadow that wouldn’t let go of her ankle.
Finally, she eased up to the wall of the cabin, sitting on the ground beneath the window. A stack of twenty or so storage drums of some kind stood beside her. Probably spare fuel and provisions, given how far out in the middle of nowhere this place was. She extended her flexible mini-periscope and tucked its end up over one corner of the window sill over her head.
She was looking at a common room of some kind. It was a large space with a big, stone fireplace off to one side. Except instead of furniture in the room it looked more like a…lab. There were
long tables, and machinery that looked way, way too high-tech to be sitting out here in the wilderness. The only light in the room came from a doorway on the other side of the house, so she couldn’t make out a lot of detail as to what kind of equipment it was. But it definitely looked scientific.
“Report,” Vanessa breathed.
Kat reported a bedroom with no activity. Misty and Vanessa reported a kitchen with four men eating in it. Jack was not among them.
Isabella, who was around the corner from Karen’s position, reported a bedroom stacked full of large metal drums and a dozen additional drums sitting outside beside her. They appeared unmarked but were shipping containers of some kind. Anders glided off in the darkness to have a look at the drums, and Karen was glad to be rid of him. Then it was Karen’s turn.
“The living room appears to have been converted into a lab of some kind. It’s full of electronics and scientific-looking equipment. If it’s toys the Norwegian Special Forces are using, I’ve never seen anything like—”
A loud, ominous rumbling noise interrupted her. She whirled around with her back to building. If that was a trap going off, it was a hell of an explosion. It sounded like a freight train coming down the hill.
The whole mountain behind her seemed to be sliding toward her. Crap. Avalanche. She estimated the amount of flat land between the cabin and the mountain. Was there enough space for the snow to come to a halt before it slammed into her?
Larson sprinted around the side of the building, shouting, “Get to the lee of the building!”
That answered that. She dived around the end of the cabin, and joined her five teammates and Larson as the first boulder-sized chucks of ice and snow came hurtling past. The building at her back shook as the remnants of the avalanche slammed into it.
Shouting came from inside the building. Another slamming noise. This time of the front door flying open. Two men leaped out, back-to-back, each facing to the side.
It was a toss-up who was more surprised, the Medusas or the men staring back at them. Everyone raised their weapons simultaneously.
The reports of rifles exploded, deafeningly loud at such close range. The Medusas dived for cover around the ends of the building. Something hot burned across Karen’s left thigh just as she ducked around the corner. She’d been hit by rubber bullets before, and they didn’t feel like that at all.