Drink they did, until Thorgils felt a fire in his loins of an intensity he had never imagined. Then she slowly undid the back of her gown and let it slip to the floor, revealing the small, short dress that served as her underwear. He made more promises to her at this point—ones he couldn’t even remember now—and then she let the undergarment fall.
His myx-flooded eyes then beheld a creature of astonishing grace and beauty, a perfectly shaped naked female form that rivaled all great works of art. Lovely pert breasts, an uncanny hourglass shape, upper thighs that led into just the barest hint of light pubic hair, and perfect legs and feet. It was all there, dazzling his intoxicated senses.
What man would not have told her everything?
But then the deflating reality burst in upon him.
Just as it seemed as if she was guiding his hand to touch her naked breast, he felt his body shake with an incredible split second of pleasure—only to feel a damp spot gathering in the crotch of his uniform pants a second later.
At that moment he knew he had been tricked by this woman, and that she was probably a witch.
She had used the myx against him, tempting him with her beauty, and he had foolishly fallen for her spell. The result of his folly? Now four people knew exactly what was behind the entire Norse invasion scheme: himself, his father, the woman Elizabeth, and now this treacherous beauty, Dominique.
Even a dolt like Thorgils knew that was one too many.
So it was that when the hour of the great battle came, Thorgils felt like his insides were being pulled in many different directions.
His father’s orders were for him to observe the Norse landings and provide a kind of ritualistic eyewitness report on their execution. It was also decreed that Dominique would watch the landings and, through chanting line upon line of mythological Norse mumbo-jumbo, would somehow have an effect on its outcome and the number of Norse who would die.
But no sooner had the Fire Bats cruised into the battle area just as the landings began when Dominique told Thorgils in no uncertain terms that she would not partake in the bizarre ritual. Without the ceremonial, yet supposedly essential contribution of the Valkyrie, Thorgils was convinced that not only would many Norsemen die but that the enemy would quickly gain the upper hand and that the entire invasion itself would be a failure.
And that’s what happened.
It was a painful moment when Thorgils radioed his father aboard the Stor Skute and reported Dominique’s refusal and the subsequent slaughter of the Norse clans. The next sound Thorgils heard was a loud clump! followed by a burst of static. Then an underling officer came on the line and told him that his father had taken ill and could no longer speak to him.
Several minutes passed by, and then the woman Elizabeth came on the radio. Her frightening voice intimidating the very radio waves, she told Thorgils of his father’s final two orders: first, “deflower the Valkyrie,” then, sacrifice her.
And that’s exactly what Thorgils intended to do.
Chapter Fifty-three
IT WAS DARK BY the time Hunter crawled out of the Harrier’s cockpit.
He was spent, in mind, body, and spirit. His hands were nearly trembling, his eyes ached, and the pounding in the pit of his stomach felt like it would be with him forever.
Dropping down off the Harrier’s wing on to the damp sand of Jacksonville Beach, he felt the grip in his gut tighten up by a factor of ten. There were Norse bodies everywhere. Tangled, twisted and broken, some were missing arms, legs, or heads. Others were contorted into nightmarish positions.
Even worse, the crabs and the seagulls and the insects had already begun their feast.
Despite his exhaustion, Hunter ran. Up through the red-tinged sand, past the fires started by the nonstop bombing of just two hours ago, up and over the sea wall, and onto the deserted street of the one-time resort city. He ran until he was out of breath, and still he kept on running, his flight boots clacking through the deserted streets in such a way as to mimic the sounds of someone chasing him.
Running … until his mouth was dry and his eyes were watery. Running … with visions of the nightmarish force of carrier-attack craft pounding in his head. Running … with the frightening knowledge that the whole world had suddenly changed.
Running … with the fear that he could no longer conjure up a clear picture of Dominique’s beautiful face in his mind.
Running … away from the swashbuckling past and into a very uncertain future. Running …
Chapter Fifty-four
THE SMALL WHITE LIFEBOAT was lowered over the side of the Stor Skute, its solemn descent lit by the dozens of searchlights piercing the night and underscored by the baleful blowing of ten Norse bugles.
Placed in the center of the wooden boat was the body of the Great Verden. A long silver sword on one side, a symbolic flask of myx on the other, the body was wrapped in a white linen sheet that gave it the appearance of a mummy.
Once the boat reached the surface of the water, the bugles temporarily went silent. From the bow of the Great Ship, a solitary Norse soldier fired a flaming arrow into the boat. Then, as the contingent of crew on the converted luxury liner watched along with those on the twenty Norse surface ships and ten Krig Bats subs nearby, the flame began to slowly spread along the gunwales of the wooden funeral boat.
The Great Verden was going to his grave.
Elizabeth Sandlake watched the somber ceremony from the bridge of the Great Ship, barely able to contain her glee. Verden had died a coward’s death really, she thought. Not by an enemy’s sword or bullet but rather by a failure of the heart, the result of hearing about the refusal of his hand-picked Valkyrie to fulfill her duties and the subsequent disaster on the Florida beaches.
He hadn’t lived long enough to hear about the devastating air strikes launched against the United Americans.
Now, as Verden’s funeral boat drifted away from the Great Ship, the flame on board growing with every second, it was all Elizabeth could do to stop from laughing out loud. Her plans could not have been executed more perfectly if the bumbling Norsemen had been in on them from the beginning. With Verden out of the way, and his son Thorgils in the midst of a myx-induced, psychological hangover that would scar him for years, Elizabeth was a queen—again.
This time her kingdom was much larger than the Alberta fortress. Now she ruled over the remaining Norse clans—the surviving leaders having just radioed in their support of her elevation—and the men who sailed the nuclear-armed Fire Bats, Thorgils included. Plus, she had at her disposal, via a secretly negotiated contract, more than one hundred of the most advanced fighter and attack aircraft left in the world and an agreement with the Greater East Asia Divine Warriors’ Association who, at the moment, were staging for an enormous invasion of first Hawaii and then the West Coast.
What more would she need to conquer America?
Deep inside the Great Ship, peering through a cracked and stained porthole window, Yaz also watched the traditional Viking funeral ceremony.
Even though he was locked in the small room near the very bottom of the ship, Yaz had been one of the first to hear that Verden had died. He had learned quickly that there were few secrets on the Great Ship; it was simply against the Norse nature to keep anything in confidence. So his guards, excited and talkative as ever, had told him everything: the death of Verden, the defeat of the Norse clans, the massive retaliatory strike by the mysterious naval attack aircraft, the impending doom waiting to befall Dominique.
But as bad as it was, there was one startling fact they’d relayed to Yaz that caused his morale to plunge even further. And that was the treacherous Elizabeth Sandlake—of all people!—now ruled over the Norse.
At first Yaz was stunned. After her narrow escape during the lightning-quick raid against the woman’s Alberta fortress, he would have thought that she’d lie low—possibly forever. But the more he thought about it, the more it made a crazy kind of sense.
Who else but her would have the purely maniacal drive, the abso
lutely ruthless cunning and totally blind fury of ambition to pull the strings behind the whole Norse invasion facade? Who else would be able to cajole, threaten, or bribe all the major players who would have to participate in such a grandiose scheme? Who else was more capable of destroying the delicately reconstructed, still-fragile idea called America?
Now, as the flames completely engulfed the small boat carrying Verden’s body, the mournful blaring of the Norse bugles began again. Suddenly another more personally disturbing question popped into Yaz’s mind.
What the hell will happen to me? he wondered.
Chapter Fifty-five
Jacksonville Naval Air Station
MIKE FITZGERALD WRAPPED HIS hands around the broken cup half filled with coffee and tried to draw some warmth from its contents.
Even though the Florida night was a miserably sticky eighty-five degrees, his fingers were cold to the point of being numb.
“Stress,” he whispered to himself, trying to explain away his contradictory ailment. “Stress must come with defeat …”
He and Jones were sitting in the barely lit bomb shelter, their clothes dirty and in tatters as a result of their efforts to rescue the wounded and retrieve the dead after the massive air strike on the base. The base’s only working radio was sitting on the rickety table next to Jones. Until an hour ago, it had been blaring so many messages being sent between the various UA facilities down the coast of Florida that no one would have been surprised if the speaker suddenly began smoking. Now, nothing more than a mild score of static could be heard from the radio. All of the damage-assessment reports had been called in, as had the pleas for help with the dead and dying.
Now the radio was devoid of human voices, allowing those listening to the blur of background interference to contemplate exactly the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen the United Americans. In one day—or more accurately, in one hour—the jewel of the UA Armed Forces, their Air Force, had been reduced by nearly one half. It was a situation akin to Patton losing half his tanks or LeMay half his bombers. Worse even, as the destroyed aircraft and equipment was irreplaceable in the postwar world.
In another corner of the shelter sat the base’s telex machine, scrapped and battered from the air raid, yet still in working condition. It, too, had been silent now for hours.
The two men didn’t talk. There was nothing left to say. The devastating air attacks all along the Florida coast had left them numb in body, mind, and soul. The uncertainty of what lay ahead for them and for their country was almost unbearable.
Suddenly the telex burst to life, its unexpected clacking startling both of the normally unperturbed men.
Fitzgerald nearly dropped his coffee at the sudden noise. Now he leaned over the machine and read aloud as the words printed one by one onto the faded yellow telex paper.
The message, in two parts, was being transmitted from Jones’s office in Washington. Oddly, the preface indicated that the subject matter had nothing to do with the United American’s sudden defeat in Florida.
Rather, the first communication was one relayed from the West Coast and sent originally by Captain Crunch O’Malley.
It read simply: “Hunter’s airplane secured.”
But then the follow-up paragraph briefly detailed the story of Zim, the Hawaiian businessman, and the fact that Elvis had flown westward to investigate the man’s claim that a huge mercenary force was gathering in the South Pacific for a strike against the American West Coast.
The message ended with the dire news that Elvis was long overdue in returning from this recon mission.
The telex fell silent for a full minute, and then began clacking again.
The second part of the transmission had to do with a request that Jones had made of his Washington office just hours before the Norse attacks began. It had to do with the somewhat mysterious man, Wolf, the captain of the USS New Jersey. The ever-cautious Jones had asked his intelligence operatives to run a quick check on the man’s background, using what little resources they had at present in lawless, totally anarchic western Europe.
The first few sentences of the message confirmed that Wolf was everything Hunter had told them he was: a man who was pursuing his father and older brother in an effort to stop them from spreading death and destruction along the American East Coast.
But the next paragraph held a surprise. Wolf was not the anonymous if eccentric figure he had portrayed himself to be. Rather, he was very well known in some regions of the strife-torn Continent as a kind of postwar Robin Hood, a soldier of fortune who used his skills as a sea-going warrior to help and protect the millions of disenfranchised people eking out an existence in Europe’s new Dark Age.
The message concluded with an apt if ironic description: “Wolf is to parts of Europe,” Jones’s intelligence officer had written, “what Hawk Hunter is to most of America.”
Both Fitzgerald and Jones were surprised by the information, but in light of their present situation, it seemed of little consequence to them now. From all accounts, Wolf and his crew had performed extraordinarily well during the recent battle against the Norse. But even a weapon as mighty as a battleship would do little to alter the frightening new balance of power ushered in by the appearance of the mysterious enemy’s one hundred high-tech naval aircraft.
The telex fell silent, and once again, so did Fitzgerald and Jones. It was nearly 3 AM, and all the two men were doing was waiting for morning and wondering what new disasters it would bring.
Suddenly they heard a commotion at the front door of the bomb shelter. Someone was running. Running down the stone steps and down the long, narrow hallway.
A second later, the door to the room swung open and a somewhat disheveled figure bounded in.
It was Hunter.
Chapter Fifty-six
MORE THAN A HUNDRED fifty miles to the south, a column of Norsemen lay hidden in a humid and insect-infested swamp marsh, keeping as low to the ground as possible.
They were survivors of the disastrous invasion attempt the night before, and every man was supremely humbled by how lucky he was to be alive. Their sub had been attacked by an A-4 Skyhawk off the coast of Cocoa Beach in the opening minutes of the battle. The jet had dropped two bombs: one had exploded on the sub’s stern, damaging its propeller shafts, the other had slammed into the huge forward bulkhead where nearly a battalion of Norse troops was preparing to disembark from the ship and into the landing crafts.
Many soldiers were killed in the attack, including the sub’s captain and all of his officer staff. Many more were trapped for a time in the forward part of the vessel. For most of the battle, the sub could not move due to the damage to its propellers. But the smoke and flames belching from its pair of wounds apparently convinced the pilots of the attacking UA jets that further punishment was not necessary.
One man had come to the fore once night had fallen. It was he who not only instructed the rescue crews in freeing those men trapped at the front of the sub but also led the workers who jimmy-rigged a temporary shaft to one of the boat’s propellers.
Thus powered again, the sub slowly made its way for thirteen miles until it reached a large sandbar one mile north of Cocoa Beach. Here the sub was beached. When the tide went out, the one hundred seventy-five survivors were able to swim to shore.
Now the majority of these men lay hidden on the edge of the marsh waiting for a squad of scouts to return. The news these men carried with them would determine the fate of them all.
Two hours passed, and the night gradually gave way to the dawn.
Finally, the scouts came scrambling back to the main group—dirty and out of breath, but nevertheless carrying good news. There was a group of abandoned buildings nearby where the Norse survivors could take refuge. The structures were part of a large base of some kind, but the scouts weren’t exactly sure of the facility’s function. They told wild stories of a wide-open flat space built of concrete in the middle of the swamp and containing enormous towers and at least
one huge, strange-looking aircraft.
The rest of the Norse had no time for their tales. They knew they had to get hidden under the roof quickly, before the sun came up. With little fanfare, the one hundred seventy-five men emerged from their hiding places and followed the scouts through the twisting rivulets of the marsh.
By the time the sun broke above the horizon, the one hundred seventy-five Norsemen were standing on the outskirts of the long-ago-abandoned Cape Canaveral.
The unofficial second in command of the group, a high member of the Gothwarb clan named Thunke, stared out at the deserted base and realized that the scouts had not been exaggerating. The place did contain many strange, tall buildings as well as mile upon mile of concrete spaces. There were so many buildings, in fact, that the survivors could lie hidden for days, weeks, even months before anyone could find them.
It was the perfect refuge for the Norsemen; all it would take was Thunke’s asking for permission from the leader of the group to enter the facility for a closer inspection.
Making his way back through the column of anxious clan members, he reached the small tree where their new leader had taken refuge from the rising, increasingly hot sun. The man was not even a Norseman, but Thunke knew this didn’t matter at the moment. The man had fixed the propellers on the sub and had led the rescue of the trapped Norse soldiers. For such bravery, he had attained instant clan leadership.
Now he was giving the orders.
But due to peculiar circumstances, that was not as easy as it sounded. In fact, the only reason that Thunke was suddenly Number Two among the Norsemen was that he was the only one who could speak the new Number One’s language.
Now crawling up beside the skinny, beardless, pale-skinned man, Thunke retrieved a tin cup from his belt and a twig from the shading tree. Then, with precise, almost delicate movements, he began tapping on the tin cup.
Immediately getting the full gist of Thunke’s message, via the language of Morse code, the partially deaf, mute, and handless Englishman known as Smiley nodded his approval.
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