Karen froze. Blinked slowly. Said carefully, “Excuse me?”
“Women don’t belong out here in an environment as harsh as this. It takes tremendous strength and stamina to survive in the Arctic.”
Wrong thing to say to a Medusa. The past twenty-four hours of humping across the Arctic, setting a perfect ambush, and climbing a damned mountain in the dark and cold hadn’t made any impression, eh? Karen began yanking on her clothes. Donned her boots and parka. Said stiffly, “Thank you for taking care of my feet and for the suggestion on digging my tunnel deeper.”
“Is everything all right?” he asked, frowning.
“Yes, everything’s fine. I’ll just be heading back to my shelter, now.”
“You can stay here if you like. It’ll be warmer.”
“No, thank you. I’m here to experience Arctic survival. Air mattresses and fireplaces don’t qualify, I think.”
“Do you want me to walk you back to your hut?”
“No,” she answered a little sharply. He didn’t get it. He had no idea how seriously he’d just stepped over the line. What in the hell did he mean by that comment? After all, you’re women. Of course it took tremendous strength and stamina to survive out here! Who the hell did he think the Medusas were? A knitting circle? She’d had no patience with condescension from American soldiers, and it turned out she had no patience for it from a Norwegian, either.
She crawled outside. The storm had abated, at least to the extent that she could make out the other lumps of the Medusas’ and other Norwegians’ shelters. But then the wind gusted again, and visibility dropped fast. Boy, this weather was changeable! She wasted no time following the guide rope back to her igloo. She crawled inside her tunnel and redug it at a much sharper angle. And sure enough, as she packed snow from the newly dug floor against the ceiling, the wind diminished and finally disappeared.
Just to be safe, she stripped off all her clothes again when she was done with the job to let any hint of moisture evaporate from her skin. And again, she warmed up as soon as she did so. She pulled on her long underwear and crawled back into bed.
Sleep was a long time coming, but, she was reasonably comfortable when it did. Women, indeed. She’d show Anders Larson a thing or two about what women were capable of.
The Arctic Circle, February 27, 10:00 a.m.
Over the next couple of days, Jack summoned them by radio to come out for training whenever the storm let up. Larson and his men taught them how to make solar snow melters out of their Mylar survival blankets and how to cut slits in strips of leather for makeshift sunglasses that would protect their eyes from snow blindness. The incredible glare of the sun off miles and miles of white snow could severely sunburn a human’s cornea in a matter of hours.
It was hard to tell what the Norwegians thought of the Medusas. Like most Special Forces operators, they held their cards pretty close to the chest. But Karen thought she detected a certain thawing in their attitude. And they didn’t laugh at the Medusas anymore. At least, not much.
Karen was on the verge of going stir crazy staring up at the blue-white ceiling of her tiny hut in the late morning of training day four when the storm finally let up. Vanessa called over the radios for the Medusas to assemble outside in five minutes.
Hallelujah. Something to do. Karen suited up and crawled out of her shelter. It was noticeably warmer than yesterday. She estimated the temperature was all the way up to zero or so. And more to the point, the sun was shining. The storm had broken.
Jack stood beside his shelter, chatting with the Norwegians. He looked downright chipper this morning. Drat. That never boded well for the Medusas. He announced briskly, “There’s been a change in plans. Oberstløytnant Larson will fill you in on it.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed as the Norwegian stepped forward. “Based on our initial report to our superiors on your performance, our headquarters would like to continue observing your training exercises. To that end, the FSK—the Norwegian Defense Special Command—will be participating in your ongoing training henceforth.”
What the hell did that mean? Had they liked what they’d seen enough to want to see more? Or did it mean they had yet to see anything that convinced them the Medusas were competent enough to work with?
Karen groaned under her breath. Yippee. More making nice with male chauvinist pigs. After Larson’s unfortunate slip of the tongue, she’d pretty much been able to avoid any contact with him. But whether or not she could keep that up over the next several weeks was anybody’s guess.
Jack picked up the narrative. “Most of our Norwegian colleagues will be leaving shortly. They will be flown across to the mainland where they will establish a covert operations post. Your job, ladies, will be to locate their position and disable their outpost.” He added slyly, “Without getting your butts kicked this time.”
Karen ignored the jab. After all, the Norwegians had walked right into the ambush. Had the Medusas used weapons, they’d have killed all the Norwegians where they stood. To Jack, she said, “Define disabling their outpost.”
Jack grinned at her. “Don’t blow it up. At least, not with anyone inside.”
The Medusas nodded casually while the Norwegians looked faintly alarmed.
“Oh, and Oberstløytnant Larson will be staying with you ladies to act as an observer. He is not to be regarded as a member of your team for planning purposes.”
Karen spoke up. “What guarantee do we have that he won’t act as a spy or saboteur on behalf of his men?”
“You have my word on it,” Larson said a bit sharply.
Karen looked him square in the eye, intentionally took a moment to weigh his words, and finally drawled, “I’ll hold you to that.”
His eyes narrowed, but he made no reply.
Out of the corner of her eye, Karen thought she saw Jack’s mouth twitch in amusement. Jerk. In fact, all men were jerks.
Oslo, Norway, March 2, 7:00 a.m.
Detective Jens Schumacher looked around the crime scene dispassionately. Gad, what a lot of blood! It sprayed the ceiling, ran down the walls and soaked the carpets at the entire far end of the room. Krag had really done a number on his boss.
According to the preliminary report the initial on-scene murder detective—a good-looking kid named Ivo Dahl—was making to him right now, Krag had also slashed fourteen of his coworkers. All of them had needed medical attention and three of them required hospitalization for their injuries.
Jens shrugged off his olive-green, army-surplus parka and passed a hand over his rapidly balding head. He really ought to look into doing something about his hair, but who had time? Even if he did get plugs or a weave, it wasn’t like he had time for women. Between work and Astrid, his nineteen-year-old daughter who’d just moved back in with him, his life was in enough turmoil.
Jens interrupted Dahl’s dry narrative of what blood spatter had come with which victim to ask, “What are his coworkers saying?”
“They’re appalled.”
“Of course, they’re appalled,” Jens snapped. “What do they think of Krag? Did he have it in him? Did they see this coming?
Was he angry over anything?”
Dahl lowered his voice. “They all were angry. The new CEO pushed them into a deal with the European Union and set an impossible timetable for creating a telecom network of some kind. They’ve all been working long hours and been under a lot of pressure.”
“Was Krag the sort to crack under pressure? Any history of violence?”
“No to both, according to his coworkers. He’s been here…”
Dahl looked down at his notes, “…nine years, and has been through high-intensity deadlines before.”
“Did he have a beef with the CEO?”
“No more than anyone else around here. They’re all fairly guarded in their comments about the victim. I gather he was not particularly well liked.”
Jens glanced over where the dead executive had been sprawled on the floor. The guy’s head and face had looked like a hamburger. “I should say he wasn’t liked at all. Anybody jump up to defend the Dane when the attack happened?”
Dahl shook his head. “Witnesses say it happened very quickly. No warning.”
Jens frowned. That was the odd thing. Disgruntled employees always gave fair warning to their bosses before they did the deed. They sought redress for their grievances before they resorted to murder. They didn’t just get up in the middle of a meeting and slash their boss to death. What had set Krag off like that?
“Is there a transcript of the meeting?” Jens asked.
“No, sir.”
People on certain drugs were known to do random and violent acts. “Was Krag a drug user?” Jens asked.
“Folks I’ve talked to say he might have taken something to keep him wired through the long work hours.”
Jens glanced over at Krag’s body, which lay on its side, stiffening, arched backward in a violent death spasm.
“What killed Krag?”
“Medical examiner wants to autopsy before he makes a ruling.”
“Yeah, yeah. What did he say to you off the record when he took a look at the guy?”
“Said the guy had a seizure of some kind. Maybe something blew in his brain. An aneurysm or a stroke made him nuts and then killed him.”
Jesus. A blown blood vessel could make some average, law-abiding citizen flip out and do all of this? To Dahl, he said, “Find out who Krag’s close friends were. The kind who’d know whether or not he might have done coke on the sly.”
The kid nodded.
Another cop poked his head into the bloody conference room. “Schumacher, there’s a television crew out here. You wanna talk to them?”
“Hell, no! I didn’t get my beauty sleep last night. Get them out of the building.”
Jens stepped into the kitchen from the garage, shedding his parka as he went. It was really cold outside today. Normally, he’d stop by a lunch place and grab a sandwich to eat on the way back to the office, but the morning’s murder scene—yet another random explosion of violence—had been only a few blocks from his house, and a hot meal sounded good. Even if it was microwaved leftovers.
He looked up, startled to see Astrid seated at the kitchen table. She gazed up at him vaguely, not quite focusing on him. “Hi, Daddy,” she drawled.
“Hi, honey. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
He frowned. He wasn’t a cop for nothing. She looked stoned to him.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at class?”
“Didn’t feel like going.”
He moved over to the refrigerator and pulled out last night’s casserole. “Why not?”
“Too cold out.”
He plopped a glob of the congealed noodles and salmon into a bowl and tossed it in the microwave. When Astrid had moved back in with him, she’d said it was because her mother had turned into a “total drag.” Buttons beeped as he programmed the oven. Yup, parents had a way of turning into drags when their kids were stoned and skipping college classes. He probably stood a better chance of getting the truth out of her while she was still high than he did once she came back down. He turned around to face her.
“What’d you take, Astrid?”
“Huh?” She squinted up at him.
A dreadful thought struck him. What if she’d gotten into some of the stuff that was making all those people go crazy? Not Astrid. Not his little girl. Images of the gory murder scenes of the past several days flashed through his head. He asked more urgently, “What are you on?”
“The chair?”
Very funny. He restrained his growing panic. He, like most of the homicide division, was convinced the recent rash of murders was tied to drugs. They’d been able to link four of the five murderers to drug use. They didn’t know exactly what drugs yet, or if something was wrong with the drugs they’d ingested. But now was not a good time to be fooling with street drugs in Oslo.
He leaned down and took Astrid by both shoulders. “What are you on?” he demanded.
She began to whine about how he was hurting her. The microwave dinged to indicate his food was hot. But he ignored it all, forcing her to look at him. “You’re not in trouble. But I have to know. What did you take?”
“Some coke,” she mumbled. “And some other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
She zoned out on him, her head lolling to one side. He gave her a shake and repeated forcefully, “Tell me! Your life may depend on it!”
“I dunno. Pills. Willie said they were a real kick in the pants.”
Willie. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Soon to be dead boyfriend, god damn it! Jens turned his daughter loose. “I’m going to call a chemist friend of mine, sweetie. She knows a lot about drugs. She’ll know what to do for you. Just rest your head on the table for a minute. Okay?”
Astrid didn’t answer. She’d passed out somewhere on the way down to the table.
The Arctic Circle, March 2, 1:00 p.m.
Breaking down camp had been a matter of jumping on the roofs of their shelters and collapsing them into shapeless piles of snow. After a several-hour maintenance delay, two helicopters had finally arrived. Jack climbed aboard the first one with the Norwegians. All except Larson, of course. He piled on the second helicopter with the Medusas.
To Karen’s chagrin, the other women arranged for Larson to be smashed up against her in the chopper’s crowded belly. Once the helicopter took off, they had to shout to be heard. Except if a guy put his mouth practically against your ear. Turned out you could hear him just fine then.
“Have I done something to anger you?” he asked.
Hell, yes, he’d angered her! None of the Norwegians had shown the slightest acceptance of the Medusas as their equals the entire time they’d been up here training. For the past four days, Larson had treated Karen and her teammates like overgrown Girl Scouts earning merit badges.
She took a deep breath. Jack had talked to the Medusas before they came to Norway about working with soldiers from another country’s armed forces. He’d warned them the Medusas’ existence would be a tough sell and that it was going to take mountains of patience to get through to their foreign counterparts. She sighed. That probably didn’t include picking fights with the foreign country’s observer.
She turned to shout into his ear. “Do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t think of us as women. Treat us like you would any American soldier over here for Arctic exercises.”
“But you’re not regular soldiers,” he protested.
“You’re right,” she shouted back. “We’re not. We’re Special Forces operators who are smarter, tougher and deadlier than any regular American soldier you’ve ever met.”
He frowned and obviously considered making some sort of snappy comeback, but ultimately refrained. Wise man. She’d hate to have to push him out of the helicopter. He might turn out to be useful for something, yet.
Their helicopter landed them on a barren stretch of beach. Abundant icebergs bobbed in the sea at their backs and gravel crunched under their feet. The coast rose up away from them, rocky and bare, and the smooth slope of a glacier ran down to the sea off to their left. Yet another garden spot of the north, apparently. The helicopter’s crew wrestled a large canvas bag out of the back of the cargo compartment and tossed it to the ground. Then, the aircraft commander opened his door and held out an olive-green cloth folder encased in clear vinyl. Karen had worked in a helicopter maintenance unit in the marines, and was the most comfortable around choppers, so she ran back under the rotors to retrieve the mission briefing package.
The bird lifted off, and silence settled around them.
“I say,” Karen commented drolly, “it must be all the way up to ten or fifteen degrees out here.”
Larson took off a glove and held up his hand for a few seconds. “Minus ten Celsius,” he announced.
Karen did the math in her head. Fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. “Good grief, it’s nearly summer.”
While the other women smiled, he replied, “It is unseasonably warm for this part of Norway.”
“All I have to say is anyone who’d live in this climate is nuts.”
He laughed and gestured around them with his hand. “You notice the absence of human habitation around you. We Norwegians agree with you. Only a few Sami hunters and herders live up here.”
“Sami?” Karen asked.
“The indigenous people. They used to be called Laplanders, but that’s considered a pejorative these days. They prefer their own name for themselves, which is Sami.”
“Are they the folks who herd reindeer?” she asked.
He nodded. “They also hunt seals, walrus, bears and rabbits, much as your own Alaskan Inuit people might, and they fish the seas as well. But they are primarily known for being a nomadic people who follow the great reindeer herds.”
The Medusas quickly unpacked the bag of additional gear Jack had arranged for them to have, noting thankfully, the six pairs of those cool folding snowshoes. They weighed only a few pounds, but the difference they made, even just standing around like this on the edge of a glacier field, was incredible.
Vanessa opened the vinyl folder. It contained laminated maps, both regular ones that depicted sparse roads and villages, none of them nearby, and several much more useful topographical maps in various scales. In their line of work, it was all about knowing the lay of the land.
And then, of course, there was a mission briefing packet. Vanessa read aloud the written version of the instructions they’d gotten earlier. Somewhere in this general area was a Norwegian Army outpost, which they were to find and take out. And then Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“Get this.” She read on. “Norwegian patrols are active in the area and should be considered hostile. They are under orders to find and neutralize any intruders who approach their secret facility.”
Karen groaned. Staying alive in this extreme climate was going to be hard enough. And how they were going to find some dinky hut in the middle of this mountainous terrain with its thousands of valleys and rocky rifts, she had no idea. But now there were going to be hostiles chasing them, too?
Vanessa read through the rules of engagement—standard stuff. Simulate lethal force. Load rubber bullets only. Don’t harm anyone for real. Don’t destroy civilian assets. But pretty much anything else went.
Karen’s background prior to serving in the Medusas included a fair bit of land reconnaissance training since that was a primary mission of the marines. It was no surprise when Vanessa looked at her as she asked, “Any suggestions on how we proceed, ladies?”
Karen answered right away. “First thing, get to the highest ground we can and have a look around. Then, try to figure out what an outpost up here would be doing, and deduce the most logical place for it to be.”
The other women nodded while Larson crossed his arms and looked interested.
Vanessa asked, “What’s strategically important up here? Naval activity in the Arctic Ocean? Communications?”
Karen replied soberly, “Oil.”
The others looked at her in surprise.
“It’s always about money. Norway makes a fortune on its oil industry. A third of its gross national product or something like that.”
Larson looked startled that she knew something like that. People always assumed that because she was a marine she was stupid. Wrongo, buckwheat. She continued, “Except the bulk of their production is in the North Sea, way down south in Norway. Unless they’ve made a new find up here in the Arctic they’re not telling anyone about.”
Ol’ Anders looked even more startled, and Karen did her best not to read anything into his expression. They dared not use him as a meter of their correctness. He was Special Forces after all. Which meant he was a trained liar. She wouldn’t put it past Jack to have pre-arranged for their Norwegian escort to mislead them.
Vanessa spread out the topographical map and they all crouched around it. “Right here,” she stabbed a finger at the map, “is the highest peak in the immediate area, and it happens to be fairly near the coast. What you say we go have a look at it?”
The other women nodded. But Larson protested, “That’s nearly five miles away! And you have a great deal of gear to carry.”
Karen gritted her teeth. “We’re each hauling about forty pounds. We routinely train in seventy pounds. And we had to hike eighty miles in one session to pass our initial training.”
His eyebrows shot straight up, but all he said was, “It’s your mission. Walk as far as you like.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed. That sounded suspiciously like a challenge.
They hiked into the mountains for several hours, and probably covered half the distance to the mountain. The snowshoes were a godsend. Plus, it helped that all the Medusas seemed motivated by Larson’s skepticism over their ability to go that far carrying gear.
The sun had passed low on the horizon from one side of the sky to the other, and was about to begin its short dip behind the western mountains when Isabella, who was on point, raised a fist in the visual signal for them to stop.
Karen frowned. Isabella had done that sharply, like she’d spotted a threat. Her frown deepened as Isabella signaled that she’d spotted two targets ahead. So soon? Had the Medusas already run across a Norwegian ‘patrol’? It seemed too easy.
Vanessa signaled the women to get down on their bellies and proceed forward with caution. Karen inched forward to where Isabella sprawled in the snow, peering over the ridge through her binoculars. Karen pulled out her own field glasses and had a look.
At first, she didn’t see anything. But then, that wasn’t necessarily a surprise. Isabella was one of the top photo intelligence analysts around and had an incredible eye for detail. And then a black speck moved against a field of white, and Karen zoomed in on the target. Male. Dressed in a bulky fur coat. But beyond that, she couldn’t make out anything.
Vanessa breathed across the throat mikes and earphones they all wore, “Let’s move in and identify them.”
The Medusas moved fast whenever they were tucked down in a swale and out of sight of the targets. But they flowed like molasses over the ridgelines when they would be in view of the hostiles. In about fifteen minutes, Isabella held up her fist again. And this time she signaled that the targets were over the next ridge at a distance of roughly two hundred feet.
The Medusas shed their camping gear and donned only their combat equipment for this last approach. Vanessa signaled them to fan out and surround the target. Karen and Misty were assigned to get around to the far side of the two men, who were together now. And then it was time to move out.
Karen low-crawled on her belly through the snow, tunneling her way forward underneath the crisp line of frozen snow that rimmed the ridge in front of them. As soon as she emerged, she spotted the targets. Two men, wearing odd, extremely high-tech looking sunglasses, narrow slashes that wrapped around their heads. Practically no skin was visible on either man. They wore rough fur coats with hoods and masks of some kind covering most of their faces. At a glance, they might be mistaken for bears.
The two men were gesturing with their hands as if they were having a conversation.
Karen eased left, swinging wide around the men. She stayed low, moving only when neither man was looking in her direction. It always amazed her how soldiers could be right out in plain sight and not be spotted. It was all about the eye seeing movement, not still shapes.
One more spurt forward and she’d be in position. She looked out of the corner of her eye without moving her head and spotted Misty making a quick crawl forward. She was almost in position, too. Given that the two of them had had to travel significantly farther than the others, she expected the rest of the team was in place already.
And then another subtle movement caught Karen’s attention. It came from behind her. Moving only her eyeballs, she scanned the snow, looking for the source of that visual flutter. Son of a—
Larson was no more than thirty feet behind her. He’d followed her out here! And put them all at risk by doing it! He could’ve been spotted tailing her like this! And besides, it really grated on her nerves that he’d followed her for this long before she’d seen him. The guy was good, dammit.
Karen clicked her throat radio once to indicate she was ready to go. Five more individual clicks answered hers. A pause, and then three fast clicks to signal the go.
Karen rose to her feet and charged the targets all in one movement. Her MP-5 submachine gun leveled at the targets, she raced forward.
The two men started violently as six white, armed apparitions rose up all round them. They threw their hands up in the air, jabbering in what sounded like Finnish, but Karen wasn’t sure. It definitely wasn’t Norwegian. From the men’s tone of voice, they’d scared the snot out of these poor schmucks.
Misty, a Russian speaker, tried that tongue on the men. They shook their heads in the negative. And then one of the men tried English. “Please to not kill us!”
Vanessa raised the muzzle of her weapon up and away from the men, but the other Medusas kept theirs trained on the men. “Who are you?” Vanessa asked.
“Hunters. Who are you?”
“We are hunters as well. What are you way out here hunting?”
“Rabbit,” the man blurted. “You?”
Vanessa took a long look at the guy, then answered, “Men.”
She pushed her hood back, revealing her face, and the two men stared. They pulled down the knit masks that covered their faces, bunched them around their necks, and stared some more.
“You hunt for men?” the spokesman repeated incredulously. “You wish to find husbands out here?” He said something in the other language, and both men burst out laughing. Uproariously.
Karen could see the humor of it from their point of view. Perhaps Vanessa should have been a bit more specific about which men they sought and why. However, her gaffe seemed to have broken the ice with these guys.
Karen happened to glance over at Larson. He was grinning fit to beat the band. And for some reason, that irritated the living heck out of her. Her eyes narrowed. And an idea occurred to her. She turned to the two men and pushed back her own hood to reveal her gender as well. “Are you, by any chance, Sami warriors?”
The English speaker nodded. He seemed pleased to have been called a warrior.
“Perhaps you could help us, then. All six of us are women, and we’re all looking for men. You wouldn’t happen to know where to find more just like you, would you?”
The other Medusas followed her cue and pushed back their hoods as well. The Sami men looked around in disbelief. “Six women?”
Karen nodded.
That provoked a spate of what must be an indigenous Sami dialect between the two men. Then one of them turned to Karen and asked, “Are you the warrior goddesses come to us from the hall of Sessrumnir to fulfill the prophecy?”
Karen did not have the foggiest idea what they were talking about, but the guy asked the question with such earnest intensity, she decided to roll with it. “We are. Perhaps you can take us to your people?”
The two men nodded in what for all the world looked like awe. “We have an encampment not far from here.”
Bingo. “How many of you are there?” Karen asked.
The second man answered in heavily accented English, “Ten hunters. Women and babies. About fifty.”
“Come with us,” the first one said. “We take you to them. And then we send out message to Sami nation that time of prophecy has come.”
The Medusas nodded and fell in beside the hunters, who set off inland toward the south.
Larson stomped up beside Karen to mutter, “What in the bloody hell are you doing?”
“Increasing our reconnaissance force from five to fifty-five. We can’t cover all this terrain alone. But these guys will know it like the backs of their hands.”
“But they think you’re goddesses. And you’re letting them,” he replied in outrage.
Karen looked at him blandly. “Who’s to say we’re not goddesses to these people? I think we come across as pretty godlike. Don’t you?”
“But…” he spluttered, “It’s a lie.”
“No, Oberstløytnant. It’s a job.”