“Pretty much,” Rebecca answered, trying to look as workaholic as possible.
“I’d love to see the caves,” Bunny interjected.
“I will let you know if a group ends up going,” the guide said, then rode off.
“See?” Bunny asked.
Guess her friend was right. The guide was into Rebecca. Weird—before being engaged, she couldn’t get a guy to even look at her. And now that she had the ring on her finger? She couldn’t keep them away.
* * *
Monkeys hooted from the other side of the jungle as Brandt stared at the yellow and orange globs.
The rest of the teams would probably stay unidentified, if they could get in and out of here quickly enough. Other allies were here, of course. The Brits were on stage, along with Germany’s KSK who had set up camp. Hell, even French COSs were here. It was like they had their own mini-NATO exercise, only this was no run-through. The stakes were about as high as they could get. Why the hell was everyone lingering? Many of them had been here hours before Brandt’s team.
Those that sought the uranium had to figure out how to get past the chieftain’s defenses and carry crates weighing hundreds of pounds each out of the mine and to a rendezvous point for a helicopter airlift. Brandt did not envy those teams. The allies, though? Why hadn’t they just fired an RPG into the mine and been done with it?
“Vakasa!” a woman yelled near the edge of the forest. “Vakasa!”
The little girl in orange ran from the jungle and hugged the woman. Vakasa took her mother by the hand and tugged her toward the village. She skipped along, seeming to be oblivious to the fact that five well-armed men were right behind her.
“Let’s get that grenade ready,” Brandt said, counting the minutes until their helicopter extraction.
Davidson swung the rocket launcher from his back as Lopez grabbed the grenade rocket from his pack. Within seconds, they had the RPG launcher ready to go. Davidson set the launcher on his shoulder and used the scope to zero in on the mine’s entrance.
“Shoot when ready,” Brandt said as Davidson hesitated.
“We’ve got a problem,” the private said.
“When don’t we?” Lopez joked.
“What?” Brandt asked Davidson.
Snapping the rocket up, the younger man frowned, accentuating his scars, “Those aren’t soldiers guarding the mine shaft, they’re women and children.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
* * *
Rebecca startled at the knock at their small “hotel” room’s door. Turning her laptop away from the door. Not that anyone could really understand the odd symbols and DNA markers on the screen, but still. Maybe she had been hanging out with Brandt too long and had developed his suspicious mind. Rebecca looked to Bunny, who rose from her small twin bed, a question on her face. In two steps, she crossed the room and opened the door.
The guide from earlier stood there with some climbing equipment in his hand. “Still want to explore those caves?”
The smile on Bunny’s face was her answer. Bunny had been whining about those caves all evening. Supposedly, there were runes in them thar’ hills. And Bunny was all about the runes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” The guide asked. “They really are beautiful.”
Rebecca feigned a stretch and a yawn. “Nah. I think I’m going to head to bed.”
The guide looked out the window at the bright sunshine. “It’s early still.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” Rebecca countered. Being up in the Artic circle during the summer, daylight lasted long into the evening. “And I’m beat.”
The guide shrugged as Bunny exited the room. “Get some rest then,” he said as he put a hand on Bunny’s back, guiding her down the hallway before he shut the door.
Rebecca went back to her keyboard. She needed to figure out the most representative genetic marker for the Jewish tribe they were tracking. It was going to take her all night to find the right gene.
Cracking her neck, Rebecca propped another pillow behind her lower back. That pony ride had not been kind to her lumbar area.
The next thing Rebecca knew, she was startled awake. Guess she hadn’t been lying to the guide. The room was dark as she blinked her eyes. Looking to her watch, she found it was three o’clock in the morning. She glanced over to Bunny’s bed to find it empty. Apparently, Bunny had found those runes she was after.
Stomach rumbling, Rebecca got up and pulled on her jacket, heading over to the bed-and-breakfast’s dining room, which was really just a room with several tables and benches set up for “crowds” like this tourist group.
However, they had promised snacks and refreshments in the kitchen at all hours of the night. Since most of the tourists were from different time zones, that made sense. What was two o’clock in the morning here was actually nine pm to her, and to any European, it was six o’clock in the morning. Which, for two of her fellow travelers, made it breakfast time.
“Good morning!” one of them announced quite loudly. People who decided to take their vacation on pony-back to Iceland weren’t exactly normal.
The other woman offered her hand. “Mabel Eston,” she said and she pumped Rebecca’s hand up and down. “And excuse my friend here, Fran Dechold.”
Rebecca withdrew her hand at the earliest convenience. “Rebecca Monroe.” Weird—this may be one of the last times she introduced herself that way. By the end of the week, she would be Rebecca Monroe-Brandt. “So how did you enjoy the ice caves?”
Mabel cocked her head to the side. “Ice caves?”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said, “The guide was taking a group out.”
“You mean, Erik, our Norse god guide?” Fran asked, gushing over herself.
“I guess,” Rebecca answered, although, with dark hair and a prominent brow ridge, she certainly did not think the guy was Norse by any stretch of the imagination. “You two didn’t go, then?’
“We didn’t even know about it,” Mabel said. “Trust me, we would have been there, since he’s cougar-bait. Don’t you agree?”
Ugh, don’t lump me in with you two, Rebecca thought as she looked to the two rather dumpy-looking tourists. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but they were like two Weevils trying not to fall down. They were the opposite of cougars.
Of course, Rebecca did not voice her thoughts. Instead, she just shrugged and grabbed a few biscuits and a bottle of ox milk from the fridge. “Sure.”
She had almost made it out of the kitchen when the two turned their conversation to the caves. “I thought the caves were off limits?” Fran asked.
“They are haunted or something,” Mabel answered.
Rebecca turned back to the two. “What do you mean?”
“Weren’t you listening to the main guide when we rode through town?” Fran asked.
Of course, Rebecca hadn’t been paying a bit of attention. She had been trying to figure out the migration path that would bring such a concentrated group of Jewish descendants to Iceland.
“I must have missed it.”
Fran took a bite of pear and chewed it while she spoke. And Americans were considered rude? “The guide said that the tour used to include cave exploration, but then they were deemed too unsafe.”
“Then the owner of this bed-and-breakfast told us it had nothing to do with slips and falls, but that the caves bore back all the way to the cliffs and were haunted by the ancestors of the village.”
“Either way, our trip insurance wouldn’t cover it if we went up there.”
So why would one of the guides have offered to take Rebecca and Bunny up there?
* * *
No wonder the allies hadn’t just fired into the mouth of the cave and collapsed it. There were dozens of innocent lives at stake, including that of Vakasa, the little girl that had saved them.
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Davidson surmised, for all of them.
“That’s what she—”
Brandt’s glare
cut Lopez off. He was in no mood for the corporal’s humor today. Actually, any day, but at this moment, especially not. They were going to have to find a way around the numerous guards, sneak into the mouth of the cave, set off some explosives, and get the natives a safe distance away before the whole thing came down on their heads.
“Davidson, find a perch.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sniper disappeared into the brush without a sound.
“Lopez, we are going to need some kind of distraction.”
“You know it,” the corporal said with a smile.
“Levont, I am assuming you can help with that?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I’ll get eyes in the sky, as well,” Talli said.
“Agreed,” Brandt answered having almost forgetting to give Talli an assignment.
As the man moved off, Levont leaned into Lopez. “Is it my imagination or is that guy not a great shot?”
“It is not your imagination,” Lopez confirmed.
“Distration?” Brandt prompted.
Now, if nothing else went wrong, they should be set for a night attack.
Then a man—a white man in camos—was shoved from the jungle’s edge. He stumbled a few steps, then fell to his knees. Brandt swept his binoculars to the captured man. A red and blue badge with a winged sword was on his shoulder. The French. Around his ankle was a vine rope. He’d been caught by a snare. It must have been what had set the monkeys off before.
These African paramilitary used both high- and low-tech techniques. By setting traps near animal gatherings, they had a warning system for when they had trapped something. Or in this case, someone.
“You know they’re going to try an ill-advised rescue operation,” Lopez said.
“So?” Levont asked, looking back and forth between Lopez and Brandt.
“Which means we don’t need to build a diversion, the French will do it for us,” Lopez answered.
* * *
Rebecca walked into her room, taking a swig of musk ox milk. The stuff was pungent, yet very filling. Bunny still wasn’t back yet. But the redhead was an adult, and she could do whatever she liked. While Rebecca had hoped that the younger woman and Davidson had formed a bond slightly stronger than Bunny running off with the first pony guide she met, Rebecca didn’t want to interfere.
She had a day of sample collecting to plan out.
Even though she was hunting down mitochondrial DNA, which was passed down through the mother’s egg and had nothing to do with external phenotypes, Rebecca was still going to start looking for Jewish heritage in those with darker hair and eyes.
Bunny’s guide might be one of the first she tested. Then onward to the next town that had a number of brunettes who stood out from the sea of blondes that inhabited this island. The Norsemen were light skinned and light eyed because of the extreme northern latitudes in which they had descended. With narrow angle light and not much of it, their skin needed to lighten up to allow more production of vitamin D. On the other hand at the equator, with full angle sunlight and plenty of it, skin and eye color had to darken up to protect against skin cancer. There was no better or worse, there was just adaptation to light conditions.
After collecting the obvious samples, Rebecca would then track down relatives of those dark-haired citizens to try and build a family tree. Hopefully, at that point she could build a timeline of when the Jewish population landed on Iceland. From there, they might be able to track down where on the continent that population had come from, and then backtrack as far as that would take her, trying to find a trail to the Disciples’ front door.
It was a long shot, but since all of the Disciples had been killed in the cavern, they had absolutely no leads to where the upper management of the Disciples were holed up. And if they were ever going to be safe, they needed to root out the Disciples just like they had the Knot. Okay, so that had been Brandt’s team doing the rooting, but this time he needed her to find them. They couldn’t root what they couldn’t find.
And this Viking connection was the first even remote lead they’d had. To think that the Disciples had come to Iceland centuries ago? Had they known of the new land? Did they know where they were going? Why were they questing westward? Were they looking for their savior?
Or were the Jewish population here just immigrants, unaware of the cultin their midst? Or was the entire Jewish contingency Disciples? But if that was the case, then it meant that Disciples had settled here.
And Bunny had just gone off with one of the archetypal Jewish phenotypes. Dark hair, high brow, strong nasal ridge.
Rebecca tried to rein in the panic, but with Bunny gone all night, it was a little hard. Especially after Russia and Jordan. It was nearly impossible to overstate the danger Bunny could be in. And Rebecca had let her maid of honor just wander off with a dark-haired stranger.
Grabbing her jacket, Rebecca set off to find the tour leader’s room.
Making sure that she wasn’t overreacting, Rebecca imagined what Brandt would say if asked if they should go find Bunny. Obviously, the answer would be “hell, yes.” Actually, it would probably be stronger than that. And what if they interrupted Bunny and the guide participating in some “adult” activities? “Guess she’ll learn to leave a note,” the Brandt inside Rebecca’s head answered. Glad to know her fiancée agreed with her.
Rebecca found the right room and knocked at the door. A grumble answered. Rebecca knocked again. The sound of muffled cursing came through the thick wood. Rebecca backed up a step as the door opened.
“What?” the blurry-eyed guide asked.
“I need your help to find my roommate.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your guide took Bunny into the ice caves and they haven’t been seen since.”
This got the guy’s attention. “He wouldn’t. Our insurance doesn’t cover that area.”
“I know,” Rebecca answered. “So you can see why I’m worried.”
“Give me three minutes,” the guide said, closing the door.
It was more like ninety seconds before the tour leader was dressed and ready to go. They made it to the barns, where the guide saddled two ponies who did not seem at all happy to be going out in the middle of the night. Their long tails swished in irritation. But the more Rebecca thought about it, the more worried she became. To think, they had let their guard down for just a few moments and the Disciples had snuck in and taken Bunny? Rebecca shivered, and it had nothing to do with the early morning chill.
The entrance to the ice caves wasn’t far, and the ponies made good time, especially with the tour guide spanking Rebecca’s on the rump. Little did the guy know he wasn’t just protecting his insurance premiums, he was potentially saving Bunny’s life.
They found the younger guide’s and Bunny’s ponies tied up next to a large, ragged hole in the ice.
“Damn it,” The tour leader cursed under his breath. “How many times have I told him…”
“So he’s come out here before?”
“To impress the girls, yes.”
That made Rebecca feel slightly better. Maybe this was just a seduction, and not something more nefarious. That would be a pleasant surprise.
They dismounted, tied their ponies up and headed into the ice cave. The ground was as slick as you would imagine an ice cave would be. Rebecca could see why the insurance company had insisted none of the tour come up here. The place was a broken hip just waiting to happen.
Moans came from deeper within the cave system.
“That’s just the wind coming through the various lava tube vents,” The guide reassured her.
Unfortunately, Rebecca was familiar enough with subterranean tunnel systems to know their idiosyncrasies. “I can see why the natives thought these caves were haunted, though.”
The tour leader just gave a grunt and headed into the cave. Water dripped down from the ceiling, splashing on Rebecca’s shoulder. The warm summer air, along with their body he
at, was melting a bit of the ceiling. These ice caves had survived millennia, although, with global warming, Rebecca wondered how long they would last.
As they went deeper and deeper into the caves without finding Bunny, global warming became the least of her worries. They came to a three way fork in the tunnel.
“Well?” The guide asked.
Rebecca checked the ground. There were no shoe prints or indications of which way the pair had gone, so Rebecca chose the largest of the tunnels to go through. It should lead the deepest into the glacier, to where those supposed special runes would be carved.
They hurried down the tunnel, Rebecca only slipping occasionally. The tour leader made sure she didn’t fall. He was a pretty burly guy. Nothing compared to Brandt, of course, but who did?
Coming to another fork in the tunnel, Rebecca again chose the larger of the two, and was rewarded by finding Nordic runes carved into the ice. They were on the right track. After several more forks, Rebecca stopped.
“Turn off your light,” Rebecca instructed the guide.
As soon as he did, Rebecca noted a glow further down the tunnel. She’d learned the trick from spending so much time underground with Brandt’s team.
“Keep it off,” Rebecca instructed as she inched forward. The guide tried to pass her, but she grabbed his arm and tugged him back. “We’ve got to proceed with caution.”
“Why the hell should we?” the guide argued.
“It’s complicated,” Rebecca said, not overstating the situation.
Sneaking up, she could hear the rise and fall of voices. Unfortunately, the words were bouncing off the ice walls, distorting their meaning. Was Bunny begging for her life?
If she was talking, though, she was alive, and Rebecca would take it.
They finally arrived at the mouth of the next junction.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” the guide said, and burst into the large cave.
Rebecca followed, hot on his heels, to find Bunny taking pictures of a large set of runes.
“Rebecca!” Bunny exclaimed, rushing over to her. “I didn’t want to wake you, but look what we’ve found.”
Relief washed over Rebecca. She was so glad that her worries were unfounded. “It’s three o’clock in the morning,” Rebecca chided the younger woman.
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