Fine! Time to show them just what she could do.
She lay down in the snow and fast-rolled across the gap between the stone wall she’d been crouched behind and the brick building next over. As she rolled, she kept her rifle scope to her eye. Her best moving shot for rooftops was actually on her back, not her stomach—an unlikely trick she’d learned by accident in Mosul. Head tipped back, HK416 at the ready, she spotted two hostiles atop the wall on the far side of a broad courtyard. She hit both from her back, rolled onto her stomach, double-tapped an armed bad guy target crouching by a plywood maple tree, then two more into the mannequins on the roof from her back just to make sure the targets stayed dead.
The six hard clangs of bullets striking metal targets registered only after she was safe behind the red brick.
She held her fire as two children mannequins peeked at her from a nearby window. A dummy woman rushed across the street, her form gliding on a hidden track. A rough-painted man close behind her, using the woman figure as a shield, had an AK-47. The harsh ring of metal echoed between the buildings as Betsy shot him in the knee through the fluttering back of the woman’s dress—then twice in the face as soon the mannequin shifted aside.
As she rolled around the end of the wall, and dove for fresh cover, a particularly large snowflake plastered itself across the lens of her shooting goggles. It left a wet smear when she brushed it aside.
Betsy had tracked her quarry off the edge of the map somewhere, slipping out of simulated Afghanistan into a quaint French village setting that she didn’t recall ever seeing before.
The next building over, probably just painted plywood, was an exceptional imitation of rose-and-gray stonework, medieval arches, and cobbled streets barely wide enough for two donkeys to pass. It would make a resting place for the Merovingian French kings back before the Dark Ages. With the snow, it looked perfect for finding a little Provençal bistro with a mug of mulled wine and a cozy chair by a stone fireplace.
Of course the best that would be waiting for her after this would be a hot cup of coffee and a burger at the SWCS DFAC—the Special Warfare Center and School Dining Facility. If she didn’t freeze to death first.
A glance back the way she’d come to make sure no one was behind her and—
Betsy blinked hard, as if that would clear away the obscuring snow.
There was no longer an Afghan town behind her, though she knew she’d just been through one. She was at the center of a French village that looked too authentic, even for Range 37. Alleys twisted. Yew trees, so old and gnarled they truly might have been planted by some ancient French king, rose before a two-story, stone, row house. A cluster of dormant rose vines climbed a nearby wall, some of the stems thicker than her arm. They’d been there a while…a long while.
An actual donkey, pulling a tiny cart bearing a large wine barrel, clopped along, his unshod hooves muffled by the fallen snow. The hard rattle of the two ironclad, wooden wheels sounded from the cobbles.
She spun back to look down the street where she’d just shot the target with an AK-47. More people flowed across the courtyard now, but not gliding on any hidden rail. Some carried gigantic woven baskets, others wooden platters of food—all hurrying this way and that as if preparing for some event. Their clothing was loose and broadcloth.
And puffs of breath were coming out of their mouths.
There weren’t supposed to be any real people in a live-fire training except the attackers—in this scenario, just her. If she made a mistake, she could kill an innocent, not that she ever had. She’d always scored perfect marks in target discernment on the range and in the field. A man came out a doorway close beside where she lay in the snow and almost stepped on her.
“Excusez-moi.” He definitely spoke before hurrying down the road. Not a mannequin.
She sat up carefully, keeping her eye out for potential shooters. All of the people on the streets—and there were more with each passing moment—were dressed for some form of medieval village reenactment like the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo, only more French-Grand-Master-painting-come-to-life than simplistic-Nordic.
Not a one looked at her. She glanced down at herself to be sure that she hadn’t changed as well. Army boots, camo pants, Kevlar shooter’s vest filled with spare magazines for her rifle and a Glock still in its holster. She indeed still held her HK416 rifle and could feel the helmet on her head. Another blink, and she could feel her eyelashes brushing on the inside of her shooter goggles.
“What the hell?”
Even the air smelled different. Baked breads, wood fires, roasting meat that made her stomach growl.
Only one man was out of place now. He stood in the exact center of the courtyard and was looking directly at her.
Out of place! The alarm went off in her head. Instinct kicked in and she aimed and fired, only at the last moment realizing that he held no weapon. She tried to shift her aim, but knew it wasn’t enough.
The man leaned slightly to one side and the bullet missed his cheek by a hair’s breadth, smacking into a stone arch behind him and releasing a puff of rock dust as it pulverized itself.
Then, as calm as could be, he looked back at her.
Nobody, but nobody dodged a round fired from an HK416.
2
Betsy could only stare at him as the villagers continued to mill about without paying any attention to either of them. By now the donkey had drawn even with her position. She reached out to touch it. Though she wore thin gloves, it felt real enough.
The man, however, didn’t look real. Six feet tall, but slender as a willow branch. He didn’t look unfit or misproportioned, just impossibly slender. He had glorious black hair that fell to his waist, whereas her own blonde was short-cropped and barely reached her jawline. He had a long face with high cheekbones, pale skin, and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He was dressed in form-fitting black leather that might be appropriate for a chick on a motorcycle calendar. It did look very fine on him, so maybe she finally understood why guys went so ape over those kinds of calendars. A little. Not much really.
One thing was for certain, though. It made him look even more out of place in Medieval France than she did.
She couldn’t react, couldn’t find it in her to move as he stepped among the hurrying townsfolk until he was standing just an arm’s-length away. A thin red line scored his cheek.
He noticed the direction of her attention and raised a hand to brush at it.
“I’ll have to remember to move faster in future encounters.”
“Move. Faster.” People didn’t step aside from bullets moving at 890 meters per second.
His smile was brief, but dazzling and she could only blink in surprise.
“But…” She didn’t know “but” what, but it was the only sound she could make.
“I’m Horatio.”
“Horatio?”
“Yes,” his voice was impossibly deep and sounded more like flowing water than spoken words.
“Is that like ‘Go West, Young Man’ Horatio Alger? Or ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ in Hamlet?”
“Nor Captain Horatio Hornblower. Just Horatio the Herder.”
“The herder of what? Who…” No. “What are you?” She forced herself to look away from his dazzling blue eyes. Her gaze landed on a prominently pointed ear where the chill wind blew aside an elegant length of his hair like some runway model’s. He was both the handsomest and the prettiest man she’d ever seen, even if he wasn’t one.
A group of children, ones she’d have labeled as beggars, gathered together in a group and began to sing in Latin. As a child, she’d chosen to do her confirmation into the Roman Catholic church in Latin. As an adult, she could only wonder why she’d bothered with any of it.
Orientis partibus
adventavit asinus,
pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
“From the east, the pretty Advent donkey carries the sacred baggage?” Maybe not so much with her Catholic school L
atin.
“It is an ancient Latin Christmas carol, popular in twelfth-century France,” the man waved his long-fingered hand negligently about as if that was somehow where they were. “In your language it is called The Friendly Beasts and relates the legend of the animals who helped with the birth of Jesus. That verse is the donkey telling of carrying Mary to the manger.”
“Oh.” What else was she supposed to say to such a crazy statement. She considered for a moment. This definitely wasn’t Range 37. She rose to her toes and tried clicking the heels of her Army boots together three times.
Nothing changed.
Maybe it only worked for ruby Army boots.
Horatio smiled at her as if he knew exactly what she was doing.
“Allow me to escort you elsewhere,” he turned sideways to her and offered his arm. At a loss for what else to do, she shifted her rifle to her other hand—in shooting, all Delta operators were ambidextrous— left the safety off, and slipped her fingers about his elbow. He felt as thin as he looked, but he felt as strong as a seasoned operator who could hike fifty kilometers with a full pack, just to get into battle.
He led her down the street to a doorway that had a wooden sign hung above it depicting a cluster of grapes, and led her inside. The smoke from the big, ill-vented, stone fireplace stung her eyes and there was a rank smell like an entire Delta platoon that had been in the field for a month without bathing. But beneath that, the cinnamon and nutmeg of mulled wine and the richness of mutton stew filled the air.
Horatio sat with the elegance of a powerful man at a small, rough table close by the warm fire. She propped her rifle against the wall close to hand and sat across from him. Their knees brushed together comfortably. He didn’t draw away, but neither did he press. It was merely comfortable, friendly even. Not something she was used to with men. For the most part they either wanted sex or wanted her to get the hell out of the boys’ club military unit. Horatio the Herder was harder to read and she rather liked that bit of mystery.
In moments, they were served with clay mugs of wine—enough to plow her under the table if she tried to finish it—and a steaming bowl of stew.
“The wine is quite acceptable, but I would exercise a degree of caution regarding the stew,” Horatio winced as if it was bad memory.
She sipped at the wine and decided that if this was good wine, she’d definitely be avoiding the stew.
Betsy pinched herself, no change.
“Any chance that you’d know how badly I was injured or when I’m getting off these drugs? Or are you just a gorgeous hallucination named Horatio?”
Horatio hid a smile with a big draught of wine, but his blue eyes twinkled. They actually twinkled. It made him look very merry. If he really was in full elf-character, which his pointy ears indicated was likely, maybe it was part of his job to be merry. But that didn’t explain how he’d made those pretty blue eyes twinkle. Of course “Elf: identification and interaction with” wasn’t in any part of Delta Force’s Operator Training Course.
Maybe she didn’t want off these drugs, whatever they were. She’d had morphine after being shot up in Nigeria once and been completely loopy but calm as well. She still remembered portions of that helo ride while the combat search-and-rescue medics struggled to stabilize her. An incredibly handsome stranger, even in a seedy medieval pub, was a far more interesting reaction.
“I can place you back in Range 37 at any moment you should choose to request it. But I would like to discuss a special mission with you prior to such an eventuality.”
“A special mission?” She tried the wine again while considering where he might have learned such speech patterns. British sit-coms came to mind. The second sip of wine slammed the back of her throat with its tannic bite. This time it only made her want to gag rather than rip her throat out, which was an improvement. She could also taste the high alcohol content. That, she decided, could be a good thing in the current situation and managed to brace herself through a third taste, but couldn’t manage a fourth.
“Yes,” Horatio spooned up some of the stew, apparently ignoring his earlier warning—at least until he put it in his mouth. Then looked as if he didn’t know where to spit it out.
“In the fire.”
He did so, creating a brief flurry of sparks.
“Back to my question,” Betsy nudged her own stew bowl a little farther away as a safety precaution. “What are you and why am I hallucinating you?”
Not finding anywhere to wipe his mouth, he used his fingers, then wiped them on the edge of the table. “You are not hallucinating.”
“Just what I’d expect a hallucination to say.”
Horatio sighed before forging on. “This is real. Or mostly real. We see each other, but the locals merely observe a pair of strangers in locals’ clothing.”
“Uh-huh.” Betsy could only assume this was one of those accidents that was bad enough for amnesia to kick in. Most of this she wouldn’t mind losing, though Horatio himself was a real pleasure to look at. She’d been in the field a long time and dallying with a squad mate just wasn’t an option. Horatio however… He looked far yummier than the wine.
What had happened?
Maybe a stone wall of Range 37 collapsed onto her? Or perhaps one of her shots at the metal targets had ricocheted back. At this point it wouldn’t surprise if one of the targets had shot her back. Talking to a reindeer herding elf in a twelfth-century pub made anything seem possible.
“And as pertains to your earlier question, I am an elf—of the Christmas variety. The one entrusted with the care of Santa’s reindeer, if I may be specific.”
“Hence, Horatio the Herder,” Betsy didn’t think her imagination was strange enough to cook up this one, which was tipping the scale—impossibly—toward the side of this experience being somehow real.
“Precisely. My dilemma lies in the fact that it is only three days to Christmas and I can not find the lead reindeer anywhere. I have need of aid from a professional.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“You need me to track down…Rudolph?”
“Well, his name is Jeremy, but essentially yes.”
“Jeremy the red-nosed reindeer. Doesn’t exactly have the right ring to it, does it?”
“Robert L. May was prone to agreeing with you, which is why he changed the name for the Montgomery Ward children’s book he wrote regarding Jeremy’s tribulations as a young reindeer.”
“Wow!” Betsy managed a large swallow of wine to fortify herself. “You actually delivered all that as a straight line. I’m impressed.” Then she stared down at the wine and wondered what exactly was in it that she almost believed him.
3
“So, lay it out for me.”
“Lay it out? What needs laying out of it?”
Betsy pulled out her Benchmade Infidel knife, thumbed the release, and the four-inch, double-edged blade snapped out the front of the handle. She began carving the Special Operations Command shoulder patch into the wooden table with the point—a stylized arrowhead with a knife up the middle.
Horatio eyed her carefully. “I expect that you are a hard woman to buy Christmas presents for. What’s your Christmas wish?”
“I gave up on wishes a long time ago.”
Horatio looked at her aghast.
She held up the blade. The black-coated D2 steel appeared bloody in the dim firelight. “This one did nicely as a gift to myself. Start talking, Elf.” She returned to her carving.
“We permit the reindeer to run wild during the summer season.”
“I could do with a little running wild myself.” Betsy could feel her inhibitions slipping away. She hadn’t had that much wine. But knowing that you were injured and in some drug-induced dream made it difficult to care much about propriety. And if she was going to run a little wild, who better to do it with than a gorgeous man-elf-herder-thing.
“They always return when the fall lengthens the wavelengths that leaves reflect.”
“Lengthens the wavelengths? Oh, reds and golds. Never mind. Keep going.” Keeping her gaze averted from his intense eyes didn’t help much. His slightly hoity-toity way of speaking didn’t diminish the fact that his voice was just as beautiful as he was. She couldn’t be so shallow that a beautiful man with a liquid voice was getting to her, even if he was.
“Jeremy has failed to return.”
“That was the fall. And you’re just contacting me three days before Christmas? That is not what we’d typically call adroit mission planning.” She began digging the arch of the upper tab of the shoulder patch. What if she carved in the word “Airborne” as it should be and the table was discovered eight hundred years from now? Cause a hell of a stir. Perhaps she should drop into wherever this village was in the real world and find out for herself.
“Actually, yesterday was the final day of fall. We have now traversed the threshold of the winter solstice and such matters are suddenly come to a head.”
“Maybe a hunter got him.”
Horatio actually flinched. His oddly light complexion paled even further.
“Sorry, but you have to consider all of the possibilities.”
“That is one I shall not be considering until all other hope is lost.”
“So, where do we begin?” It wasn’t often that an impossibly beautiful man asked her to do something so highly unlikely. Usually it was requests for sexual favors, which wasn’t something she doled out to any Tom, Dick, or Horatio.
“At the stables, I suppose.”
“Of course. Because why wouldn’t Santa’s reindeer have stables. Are you nuts, Horatio? I was thinking it was me, but maybe it’s you.”
“I have not considered the possibility,” Horatio’s beautiful brow actually furrowed for a long moment as he studied his wine, then shook his head, causing his hair to flutter attractively. “No, I find your premise unlikely.”
The Complete Delta Force Warriors Page 14