by Cindy Dees
The cabin in front of her fuzzed out. She blinked hard a couple times to clear her vision. And what she saw when it came back into focus chilled her to the bone. Anders and her teammates were sitting against the side of the cabin, not three feet from the guys peering out the windows over their heads.
“Don’t move, Team One,” she whispered urgently. “One tango in each window above your position. Armed. Can’t tell for sure, but they look like AK-47s.”
There was a momentary lull in the firing. And another sound intruded upon the scene. A voice. Speaking in slow, deliberate Norwegian through a megaphone. Jack. Reading off the sheet Anders had given him. It translated roughly to, “Come out with your hands up. Surrender now and we will let you live.” The alternative if they failed to surrender went unspoken.
A voice shouted back at them from inside the house. And Karen’s jaw literally dropped. That sounded like…
“Arabic,” Isabella, the Medusas’ resident linguist bit out. “He more or less told us to go to hell.”
“Repeat the message in Arabic,” Vanessa ordered.
Jack, fluent in that tongue, complied.
More shouted Arabic that translated to a rather ruder version of “go to hell” than before.
“So be it,” Vanessa bit out. “Blow it.”
“No!” Karen retorted. “Team One is pinned down against the side of Point X-Ray.”
No transmission answered that, but in her head, Karen could just picture Vanessa swearing under her breath.
Karen squeezed her eyes shut, but the haze of red wouldn’t go away. Knives stabbed into her head from all sides. Needles of pain pierced her eyeballs until her eyes watered and she couldn’t see a thing.
“We need to draw these bastards outside,” Jack growled between shots.
“Cobra and Adder only, return fire,” Vanessa replied. “Maybe that’ll do it. If they hear only two weapons, maybe they’ll think they outnumber us.”
It wouldn’t work, but who was Karen to argue? She was going to be blind by then anyway. An urge to roll around in the snow, to scour her face in its icy cold nearly overwhelmed her.
How long the standoff continued, she had no idea. The tangos must’ve had a boatload of ammo in there, though, because they continued to shoot with complete abandon. Either that or they were completely undisciplined amateurs. She felt an overwhelming need to move. To get up and run around, to shake all her limbs and fall down in the snow and roll around. And she could only lie there in the snow staring at Anders and her teammates, trapped beside the building.
And then a new movement off to her right caught her attention. Somebody, one of the gang on Team One, poked their head up above a drift of snow.
“You’re exposed, Team One!” Karen called urgently.
Vanessa came up behind her on the radio. “Jack, what are you doing?”
“Drawing fire.”
“Yeah, well it’s working. Get down! I’m not having you stick your neck out and getting killed on my watch. There’s got to be another way to draw them to the front of the cabin so Team One can egress away from the building.”
For indeed, the hostiles seemed content to hunker down in their thick-walled cabin that was largely impervious to bullet fire and sit this thing out. Karen frowned. What if, instead of drawing the two snipers in the windows in front of her to the front of the cabin, they merely drove the hostiles away from the windows?
She transmitted, “If I had a weapon, I could shoot at these jokers and extract Team One myself.”
Vanessa replied, “I can send Cobra over. It’ll take a while, though.”
Karen reviewed the supplies in the team’s backpacks, which lay in the little hollow beside her. “Mamba, do you have any alcohol in your crash kit?”
“Yeah. You need some?”
“High-grade pharmaceutical stuff?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I have an idea.”
Moving at the necessary snail’s pace not to attract the attention of the men peering through their weapon sights in her general direction, she pulled out an aluminum canister used to store one of the tents. She slid the tent out of it. Rummaging in the medical crash kit she found a scalpel—Hah! They hadn’t succeeded in removing all weapons from her proximity, the bottle of nearly pure alcohol and a big wad of cotton.
Slowly, she turned so her back faced the window. That way she could work quickly with her hands without being seen. She shredded the cotton into a light, airy mass. Then, using the scalpel, she poked a hole in the side of the tube very near the closed end. Using a tent pole, she lightly stuffed the cotton wad down the tube. And then she poured in some alcohol. She was completely guessing as to the amount. She hadn’t made a potato cannon since she was a kid, and she and her cousins had used liquid propane, not high-grade alcohol.
Then she looked around for a nice, sharp chunk of ice about the same diameter as the tube. It took a little carving on the ice ball with the scalpel, but she achieved a smooth fit. She shaped several more ice bullets and laid them beside her. She aimed her improvised cannon at the cabin. Now the trick would be not to kill Team One with this thing. She propped it on the front lip of her hollow and did her best to sight down the length of the tube at the northeast window. She estimated windage and sinkage and made the necessary corrections.
No telling if the thin aluminum would blow up and kill her or if it would hold under the pressure of rapid gas expansion as the alcohol burned. To improve her chances, she packed the cylinder tightly in snow and ice, leaving only a tiny tunnel down to the hole in the tube. She twisted the cotton’s paper wrapping into a wick of sorts and stuffed it into the opening.
Then Karen transmitted, “Team One. Get down as low as you can.”
“What are you doing?” Vanessa demanded.
“I’m gonna throw a snowball at the bad guys.”
“A snowball?” Vanessa repeated, shocked. “Are you nuts?”
Karen grinned. “I’m certifiable. Thing is, I’m lobbing that sucker with a potato cannon.”
A moment of silence met that announcement. And then, with a hint of laughter in her voice, Vanessa replied, “Fire at will, Python.”
Chapter 17
Oslo, Norway, March 11, 11:30 p.m.
Everything happened in slow motion. The thug raised his pistol to fire at Ivo. Astrid bolted up and out of her seat and rammed into the guy’s right arm from below, knocking the weapon upward. Ivo dived. Rolled toward the thug. The bad guy turned toward Astrid and backhanded her viciously. She staggered back, falling across the table and sending liquor and glasses flying everywhere.
Ingmar half stood, clawing his way backward from the table. Thug number two pulled out a weapon.
Screams erupted but were a vague, distant noise. Ingmar climbed over the table beside her and landed on his feet.
Shots rang out as both thugs shot at Ivo and the undercover cops commenced shooting back.
“No!” she screamed, rolling off the table. Mid roll, she vaguely noticed Ingmar sidling to the left behind his beefy bodyguards. He was eyeing the fire exit not far away. The jerk was going to escape!
She slammed into thug number two. God, the guy was a rock! He barely budged as her full body weight impacted him. It felt like she bounced more than anything else as she careened off him and toward the first thug.
“Izzy’s getting away!” she shouted over the chaotic din of screaming and gunshots.
Who knew if Ivo could hear her or not. She saw he’d come up onto his knees, his pistol held in front of him at eye level with both hands.
Thug number one’s pistol tracked Ivo’s movement. And then slowly, deliberately, in exaggerated time-stop motion, he fired. A spit of orange flame came out of the barrel as her mouth opened to scream.
Ivo toppled over, crashing to the floor. Still, the pistol tracked him, pointing this time at Ivo’s head. She saw the hammer draw back again as the thug’s finger started through another trigger pull. The bastard was going to kill Ivo!
<
br /> Astrid jumped.
Northern Norway, March 11, 11:31 p.m.
Karen’s hand shook almost uncontrollably as she held a lighter to the piece of paper. By dint of intense concentration, she suppressed the tremor and lit the fuse. The flame took a couple of maddeningly slow seconds to devour its way down the twisted paper.
And then there was a loud whump.
It sounded just like a tear gas launcher. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, that’s what the bad guys would think, too.
She peeked up over the edge of her hollow. There was no splat of white on the dark wood wall, so she’d either missed the cabin completely or sailed her snowball through the broken window. She would assume the latter.
Neither bad guy was visible in the bedroom window at the moment. Well, it had made them duck at any rate. With fumbling fingers, she reloaded her cannon as quickly as she could with another wad of cotton, some more alcohol and another snowball. She aimed at the other window. Sure enough, that guy poked his head up first to have a look outside. She’d forgotten to make another fuse, so she held the lighter directly to the hole.
The whump was immediate this time.
“Both windows are clear,” she stuttered between chattering teeth. She glimpsed Team One rising to a crouch and sprinting away from the window. Or more accurately, floundering as fast as they could through the snow away from the window. She turned to the task of reloading. It was getting harder each time. Her whole body was twitching now, and it was nearly impossible to control her movements. By dint of incredible concentration and sheer force of will, she loaded again.
And fired again. This time there was a big, white spray of snow on the wall between the windows. No matter. It was all about keeping those hostiles out of sight. Just another few seconds and Team One would be clear.
She tried to reload again with her last snowball. She spilled nearly half the alcohol in the snow and dropped the snowball twice before she managed to get the cannon reloaded. It was taking so long that she kept having to pause and check the windows for returning hostiles.
The third time she did so, she bit out, “Get down!” The top of a head was emerging above the window ledge in the right-hand window.
She aimed the cannon carefully. This was her last shot. She had to make it count. A burst of gunfire erupted from the window. Crap! There were two guys there now, both firing. Thankfully, Team One had hit the snow, and their white camo gear made them nearly invisible a few yards beyond the circle of bright light falling on the ground near the cabin.
She lit the fuse.
Whump.
A man screamed.
Sweet! She’d hit one of the jerks! She hoped the ice had put his eye out.
“Clear,” she managed to force past her chattering teeth.
Anders, Aleesha and Misty jumped up and took off running again toward her position. Anders flopped into the tiny hollow beside her while Misty and Aleesha commenced widening the hollow to accommodate themselves.
“How’s it looking?” Anders panted.
Karen scowled and enunciated carefully, “You have a grenade?”
“No, but I’ve got a flash-bang.”
Flash-bangs were grenades loaded with a minimal amount of black powder, just enough to make a bright flash of light and a loud bang, but not do any real damage.
“Let’s shoot it at them.”
Anders eyed her improvised cannon. “You gonna lob it in the house with that?”
Karen nodded, since she didn’t trust her mouth muscles to continue cooperating.
Anders reached for a pocket in his coat while Misty transmitted, “Team One is clear. We’ve joined Python.”
“Blow it up, Anders,” Vanessa ordered.
“No can do. I overheard these guys talking earlier. They’re terrorists. The powder they made is part of some larger plan. An attack of some kind. I got the impression they’re planning to lace their psychedelic powder into something unexpected that’ll reach the general population of Europe and North America. They were gleeful about the target. We need to take one of these guys alive for questioning.”
Karen swore under her breath and had no doubt all the other Medusas were doing the same. This was a simple, straightforward mission. It had just gotten significantly more complicated.
Concentrating ferociously, Karen loaded the cannon one more time. Anders held the grenade’s handle down and pulled the pin. “This has a five-second delay,” he murmured.
Karen nodded. After he let go of the grenade’s handle and rolled it down the cannon, she’d have five seconds to light the cannon, blow the load, and get the grenade through the window. No sweat. Assuming her cannon didn’t disintegrate under the pressure of this heavier missile. Assuming her luck held and she actually hit the window one more time. Assuming she didn’t collapse into a full-blown convulsion in the next few seconds.
Carefully, she aimed her potato cannon one last time—at the right-hand window. The room without the giant bag of explosives hidden in it. She moved deliberately, not only to get this shot right, but also to hide the way her whole body wanted to twitch. She poured all the remaining alcohol down the barrel.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Holding the tent pole in one hand and the grenade in the other, Anders said, “Here we go, then. On my mark. Go!” Working fast, he shoved the live grenade into the mouth of the cannon and quickly pushed it down with the tent pole. He yanked the pole free and dived to the side. “Fire!”
Karen touched the fuse with her lighter.
Snow flew in all directions as the aluminum tube finally gave up the ghost. The whump was a deafening boom this time. Karen looked around frantically to see if the grenade had been spat out somewhere in their foxhole. A flash-bang might be small, but if a person was sitting on it, they’d still get messed up bad. No sign of the fist-sized gray metal.
And then a second explosion flattened her in the snow again. That one had come from inside the front bedroom. Yes! The flash-bang had found its target.
The front door slammed open and six men poured out pell-mell.
Jack got on the megaphone again and called out something in Arabic. The men dropped their weapons instantly and followed the weapons down to the ground. Damn, that was easy! One flash-bang and the whole gang wilted. Amazing, given that the bad guys had them severely outgunned.
Anders climbed to his feet cautiously, his rifle held shoulder-high in firing position. It was an awkward way to have to advance, but the old-fashioned rifle didn’t leave any other option. Misty and Aleesha went with him, advancing in similar fashion, alert for any tricks from the men now lying face-down in the snow.
Jack and Vanessa materialized out of the darkness and met Anders at the front door. A quick hand signal from Vanessa, and the three of them disappeared into the cabin. Isabella and Kat stayed under cover for now just in case something went wrong. Karen also stayed put. Not only was she unarmed, but she honestly didn’t know if her shaking legs would support her body weight.
Karen couldn’t be of any help to the team inside, so she turned her field glasses on the prisoners. They wore bulky, bright-colored, nylon parkas that should keep them warm and dry even though they were literally lying in the snow. Misty was patting them down one by one while Aleesha watched cautiously.
What a bunch of wimps. If she were any one of those six guys and they were only being guarded by one woman while another rendered herself combat-ineffective by having to search them, she’d jump her captors so fast her head would spin!
One of the bad guys turned his head so his face was toward her. She zoomed in on him to see if she could recognize him from any international wanted lists.
His face came into focus in her lenses. Olive skin. A little dark hair sticking out of his hood. Black eyes. And…Karen frowned. The guy looked…
…smug.
What the hell was up with that? He’d just been busted, his operation uncovered and stopped. What did he have to be smug about?
/> She pushed aside the bubbling rage in encroaching red haze. Something was seriously wrong here. She had to keep her head in the game. She blinked her eyes hard to clear the stabbing pain from her temples. Please, just a second’s relief so she could think! That was all she needed. Her body gave a particularly hard twitch, and her back muscles spasmed. She furiously fought the need to arch backward. Think, Karen!
Why was that guy so pleased with himself?
These guys made the drug ripping up her system right now. That made them chemists or lab techs. Smart boys, then. And…what? Come on, brain!
A moment of clarity broke over her. Where it came from, she didn’t ask. Maybe it was a gift from the gods, or maybe a few of her brain cells broke free of the fog of fury enveloping her. But suddenly the problem was as clear as a bell.
These guys made the drug that was messing her up. Lived in the same building with it day and night. Moved it around, packaging it into barrels.
Karen reached for her throat mike button. It took her several tries to land a finger on it. “V…Viper, is th…there a negative p…pressure ventilation system in th…there? Click if yes. S…silence if no.”
Silence stretched out in response to that.
Yup. As she’d thought. These guys must have ingested the same stuff she had—breathed it, swallowed it, gotten it on their skin, something. So why weren’t they twitching around on the ground having seizures and psychotic episodes?
More to the point, if she’d just been defeated in battle, she’d be so mad, no way could she contain the rage she was barely staying on top of now. How could that guy lie there and be smug? These guys had just been in a gunfight. They’d been shooting wildly and taken incoming fire. Their adrenaline alone should be sky-high. And with the effects of the drug stacked on top of that—
“Something’s wrong,” she announced over the radios. “Cobra, Adder, get your weapons pointed at those guys on the ground.”
“Talk to me,” Misty grunted as she patted down the last guy.