Instead, she began to cry. Softly and to herself, hugging her knees as the slosh and drift of the boat came in surging pulls with the men falling into a long-practiced rhythm.
But there was a buzz about. It was on the air.
Something was out there, up there, about forty-five degrees above the horizon ahead.
She peered in the direction of the whopping sound.
It was more the cadence of the distant sounding whop-whop-whop that had her attention. Much as it sounded like a helicopter very far away, she sensed it wasn’t. She sensed it was close by and muffled.
And when she studied it hard enough, she could swear that there was a black patch in the sky ahead where stars should be.
And then she felt the tremor of something coming in through her feet. Not a sound, but a resonance faithfully transmitted and amplified by the stem of the wooden craft.
The men about her could feel it too, and the rhythm of their pull broke sporadically as they craned to see what they were also sensing.
She looked at Raol at the tiller oar and he was intently looking ahead into the night. She knew that he was getting ready to bark an order.
What to do? Her mind raced, gambling with thoughts.
If she was right, she should jump overboard right now. Even trussed like this, she’d have a better chance than to sit it out in a sea battle.
An ambush might be the final straw. She’d seen it in Raol’s eyes and watched it in his men. They wanted her dead and he was losing faith in keeping her alive.
But if she was wrong?
If there was no rescue underway here in the pre-dawn light?
If they got out to sea, she’d have a better chance aboard, whether it came to a negotiated climax or a military one.
If she went overboard trussed like this and there was no rescue? These men could double back and would probably kill her on the spot, or let her sink.
The sonorous throb underfoot seemed stronger. She had fished enough with her father as a child to recognize its pattern. That was an outboard motor, no question. It was impossibly silent, but it was somewhere out there.
But did it even know she was here?
Was it just fishermen making for home way out in the distance, oblivious to her drama as hostage?
The dark and flat ocean can play fantastic tricks on the mind and the senses, this much she knew.
The cliffs on either side said their goodbyes to the longboat as it slid silently between them, the stars above offering the only clue that these sentinels were there, tall and black, carving a shape out of the pinprick twinkle of distant suns so far away.
And at that moment, a sun directly overhead turned on. A shaft of it piercing the night, putting its finger squarely onto the deadly boat cutting its path to freedom.
The helicopter gunship had turned on its searchlight.
Then, BOOM—BOOM, it was total daylight, as two flares exploded at 300 feet and illuminated the sky, turning night to day.
Tegan went for the side in that instant.
It was a clumsy and bruising flight for life.
She’d been rehearsing it in her head, not believing that she’d have the guts to try it or the athleticism to pull it off.
But fear lends wings to the desperate. She hit the deck and rolled like some tortured worm, frantically over to the bulwark. Somehow, she bucked and came up on her knees, getting her chin onto the rough axe-hewn gunwale.
She pushed back hard onto her feet, expecting to feel a sword slash her legs away, but none came.
The men were transfixed by the flare in the sky, the revealed helicopter, and the inflatable craft howling toward them at breakneck speed.
Tegan came to a standing position, hands tied behind her back and feet tied together. It was likely a deadly action to take, but far less terrifying than not taking it. She let that precarious center of gravity now above the gunwale seize her as she threw her weight out of the boat.
It worked. The gunwale caught her against the thigh and she went cartwheeling over into the icy slap of the pitch-black ocean coming the other way.
But she didn’t come to the surface—she couldn’t come to the surface.
In that moment of exploding terror, she realized that she couldn’t swim at all, trussed as she was, her sodden clothes neutralizing the buoyancy of that lung full of air she’d managed to snatch.
She hung there in limbo, caught between the mayhem of a dazzlingly lit world above and the icy black grave beckoning her below.
***
In the dazzle of that shocking white light, Raol saw the woman roll like a snake to the port side of the boat, buck and come to her knees in the same movement.
It was at once impressive and confirmation that she was not truly human, that he had been duped by a skræling she-devil come to spy and sow descent.
In the shock of the moment, it was all slow motion and he felt he could swing his axe and chop her in two as she came to her feet, but there seemed no point. The tiller in his hand was more important. She would fall into the ocean and become one with it anyway.
Ahead, their path was blocked by another small city of lights like the one they had encountered that first night in this spirit-infested world they’d stumbled into.
It had fingers of light that came probing across the sea to him.
“PUT ABOUT!” he was yelling at the men, “stroke for shore!”
He threw every last sinew into the tiller oar, as if crushing it hard to port could somehow hasten their turn.
The men leaned on their oars with growls of effort and the bow came swiftly about, just as the howling black beast with a dozen blackened men clinging to its back came screaming past them.
One of the men dropped from its back and went down on the spot where the she-devil had gone into the water, and two rocks came sailing into the longboat as the fiend skipped past just out of slashing range.
Raol had seen a geyser hiss and blast its anger, but it was as nothing compared to the double burst that exploded in their midst, knocking the men from their rowing seats and deafening them all in its blinding flash.
A voice with a sharp and echoing character barked incomprehensibly and kept barking.
Round and round them went the flying beast with the men on its back, barking and barking at them.
It was dizzying, the sea was lashed to a fury, waves coming at them from all sides, their fighting ship rolled and pitched as if in a tempest.
A precious axe went flying from the longboat at the tormentors. Freyrík had expertly found his mark. The axe slammed the man most actively engaged in steering that thing off of the transom into the water.
The reply was swift. The air cracked overhead and Freyrík’s head was gone in a cloud of red mist. His lifeless body slumped into the foot well. A thunderclap report from that strike echoed from the land a moment later.
It drove the Norsemen wild with fear and revenge. A hammer and a second hammer flew at the tormentors, one falling short, another knocking one of the blackened jockeys into the water as the craft sped by lobbing another hissing projectile into the longboat.
Within seconds, a billowing white cloud fizzing from the projectile had the men choking, their eyes raging with pain and tears flowing in cascades, blinding them.
“Throw it overboard,” Raol shouted, and it was done.
“Douse yourselves,” the shout went up, and the men scooped at the ocean, washing the burn from their eyes.
Now enraged, the men abandoned their oars and had weapons in hand, ready for the tormentors’ next pass.
A clap of sound and Raol was slapped in the chest by an invisible punch; he doubled over from the impact of it. And then a second clap and Ótta was poleaxed where he stood. And like a multitude applauding in victory, a swarm of unseen hornets came aboard, beating the men into painful submission, their stings invisibly delivered until every one of the Norsemen were stricken and laid flat.
The little black craft slowed and passed close by, assessi
ng its quarry. Bearded men rolled about in agony in its holds, clutching their pummeled limbs and torsos.
The menace began barking at them again in that strange language.
“Keep low,” Raol winced his orders. “Fein injury. Let them come aboard and then we rise up.”
And it was done.
The Norsemen pretended at surrender.
A second and third whining craft came bounding fast across the starkly lit sea under more sunbursts high above, keeping the blanket of night away.
The three crafts circled in a tightening course.
Closer and closer they crept, all of the white faces and black bodies trained on them, most holding crossbows of some sort aimed toward the longboat.
The pain of the hornet stings was subsiding and the parched ripped throats from that smoke were a small encumbrance for men now ready to die in their final battle.
It would be a heroic one, Raol determined.
“Let them get aboard before we strike,” he reminded his men quietly.
But as the first of the Combat Rubber Raiding Craft came bumping alongside, Ótta was too eager to visit Valhalla, and with a guttural howl of defiance, he launched himself over the gap.
He was instantly struck by some new torment trailing thin lines. He froze in the air and fell gyrating across the gunwale as if in an epileptic fit. Sliding into the footwell, he kept dancing a berserk little jig, his body arching and his eyes rolled back.
It was the trigger that sent the whole boatload of Norsemen flying toward their tormentors, and each was stuck and brought gyrating to the floor, paralyzed and unable to move.
Raol felt the barbs strike him in the thigh as he stood and there was a buzzing sound in his ears. The creature gripped him from within and began to beat him deep inside.
His eyes fluttered and everything went black as he hit the deck and lost all control of his limbs.
When his senses returned, he found himself trussed hand and foot staring up at devils all about him in black sealskin. He looked about and saw that all of his men were equally bound, like hogs for the slaughter.
***
“Hold your fire! Hold your fucking fire,” the instruction boomed across the airways.
The shooter had squeezed off a round from four hundred yards away. It was counter to orders.
The marksmen were only posted to intervene if the woman was in danger, but she was already overboard and a diver sent in to retrieve her.
“Bloody idiot,” the coordinator was furious.
“CRRC, put some CS gas aboard.”
“Copy.”
The inflatable shot past and moments later a small mist enveloped the boat.
“Let’s see if that helps.”
But their wily opponents quickly figured out to wash the gas from their faces and were out of their rowing seats brandishing weapons.
“We’re going to have to subdue them with pepper balls and beanbags. Give them a pass.”
The inflatable circled past and opened fire. The men within the longboat were knocked about by the impacts that rained in on them.
“Okay, withdraw, bring in the support craft and see if they’re in a mood to surrender. If they’re not, have Tasers ready. No live fire.”
With the two support boats in position, it looked like the Norse had given in to the inevitable.
“Alright, cautiously bring it alongside and have a boarding party ready.”
But as the boarding party came alongside, one of the longboat’s men flew at them.
It took no more instruction.
Tasers whipped out across the gap and every man aboard was quickly brought down, cuffed and shackled.
“Alright, let’s close the operation down. Take the craft in tow and transfer to shore.”
Helicopters were on standby to evacuate the prisoners and inspect them for injuries.
Chapter 23
Field Hospital, Bell Island
Latitude: 47°39'15"N
Longitude: 52°54'57"W
It had been a tragic scene to witness playing out on the screen.
There was elation in its almost flawless execution, save for the one needless fatality.
But there was another death to it too. The death of legends in Pete’s mind.
Pete was of Norse stock. His great-grandfather out of Scotland carried the genes, genes from all sides that had come to him from that wild north over the centuries.
The quiet pride of knowing that in his veins ran the blood of mythical warriors had always been an unspoken strength.
Intellectually, he knew that when modernity met its deepest ancestral origins, the outcome would always be foregone, yet it bruised some small romantic notion of heroism.
The finest of Norsemen in their prime had been subdued with no more effort than lifting candy from a baby’s hand. Their bravest gallantry had proved feeble and impotent in the face of superior technology.
And there they lay now in the hastily erected field hospital ten miles southeast of where the action had taken place. Flown into the clearing, sedated and examined like animals in some fantastic wild game park relocation program.
The longboat was towed and beached close by, out of the public eye so that the forensic team could get aboard.
At last Pete gained access to Tegan.
It was a nervous moment.
In the weeks of their separation, when communication was impossible, the memory of her kept haunting him. This had never happened before to him, not since his heart had been broken decades before.
Tegan had melted something deep within, and the defrosting of his heart had continued. Pete, powerless to halt its advance, felt strangely intimidated by his own feelings.
And then, when the call had come that she was in peril, something deep within him connected to her predicament.
Instinctively, he’d known that the situation was dire.
It was as if there was a silken connection between them that had spanned the black gulf of the night, feeding bizarre images of her predicament into his mind.
It had driven him to near maniacal efforts to slash his way through the red tape and persuade the brass that Cronner’s fears seemed realized.
Most thought he’d lost his mind, but he had the ear of a sympathetic General who carried influence.
Now there it was, an international incident, albeit an entirely secretive one.
The Norse were foreign nationals, Scandinavians of a sort who had perpetrated murder on the shores of Canada.
Strictly speaking, it was an act of war. A peculiar war, because the Scandinavians of modernity could hardly be held responsible for their long-dead citizens.
The entire event had been triggered by the United States, and the Pentagon were charged with resolving the matter rapidly and in total secrecy.
He came into the makeshift debriefing area and his heart leapt—there she was, beyond the heavy clear curtain of the quarantine area, clutching an oversized beverage billowing steam in the cool night air.
Her clothes were still filthy with tangled half-dry hair, no hint of makeup… and absolutely ravishing.
She was turned three-quarters away from him and engaged in deep conversation with a man.
Pete felt himself hating that man with a burning jealousy because he had gotten to her first.
“Helluva way t’ get my attention,” he said, repeating the nonchalant first approach to her he’d choreographed in his mind.
“Ahhhh, my favorite gun runner,” Tegan replied, pretending at being cool, while her swallow betrayed her lie.
The extreme adrenaline of the night banishing her exhaustion and flu symptoms.
“Nice company you’ve been keeping.” He kept up the pretense as the man interviewing Tegan withdrew, realizing that this was family.
“Charming, aren’t they?”
He locked her in his arms and felt her heart drumming against him… or was it his against her? He really couldn't tell.
She hung on with a fury that belied
her diminutive size, and then he felt her starting to softly cry into his neck.
The longer he held her, the more violent her sobs became until she was shuddering and choking on the tears.
Behind her back he wiped his own tears.
“Tegan…” he said, “Tegan…”
In the catch of his voice were pangs of deep loss, and then he heard his voice say something he wasn’t expecting.
“I love you, girl,” and he gulped on it.
The crush of her arms around his waist doubled with her sobbing, and then the sobbing became laughter.
“You mean that?” She pulled back, looking into his eyes. “Really?”
“I… yeah… well… it’s kinda pathetic and all that but… I mean it.”
She dove back into the hug, mumbling incompressible things and saying, “Pete…” many times along with them.
Several officials bearing clipboards or stethoscopes, each with urgent questions etched in their eyes, were watching them; looking for a gap to invade the intimacy.
“Well, this is gettin’ a bit awkward, eh?” He held her by the shoulders and his smile was as broad as the sun that had indelibly pigmented his handsome face over a lifetime.
She wiped her tears with a grubby and still damp sleeve.
“Can I get you something dry?”
“They offered me a hospital gown,” Tegan began to laugh, the pressure of it pushing the last few tears out, “but I didn’t want you to think I’m a patient.”
“I’ll razzle something up.”
“Do you know if my folks know about this?”
“That’s how we found you, clever girl. They got hold of me… your message… and… well… sorry ‘bout the no-contact before.”
“Like I care right now,” she dived in for one more hug.
She was like a little child on Christmas morning.
“There’s a cordon around here ten miles thick. This ain’t actually happening, if y’a get my drift.”
“It’s not on CNN?”
“And won’t be. This never happened.”
“So, I’m like in the Witness Protection Program?”
“No… but you will develop amnesia.”
“What?!” In her eyes was the startle from a literal excise of her memory.
“No... I don’t mean like a lobotomy or chemical peel of your brain or whatever. You’re simply gonna forget this. It was a mistake, a bad dream, an acid-trip flashback. I promise you. I got access in here for only two reasons… one was my clearance. They impressed on me it’s off-the-charts confidential…”
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