Northern Norway, March 11, 7:00 p.m.
Karen lay on her stomach in the snow at the top of the ridge, peering down through her night-vision goggles on maximum magnification at Point X-Ray, which they’d dubbed the cabin. As in X marks the spot.
The cabin looked much the same as it had the last time, with a few minor changes. Where once a pile of twenty or more fifty-five-gallon steel drums had stood, now the pile was down to three drums. A wide, packed trail led from the cabin door off to the east—left to right in her field of vision. It looked to have been made by a small, tracked vehicle. A snowmobile to judge from those small, horizontal ridges in the snow.
The cabin was surprisingly active. Lights were on in several rooms. She’d spotted outside floodlights mounted on each corner of the cabin, but they were blessedly turned off at the moment. Those exterior lights were both good and bad. On the plus side, if they got flipped on, they’d illuminate any human targets like ducks in a shooting gallery. On the minus side, the lights would negate the Medusas’ night-vision gear and any advantage they’d have of operating in the dark. The bad guys would be blind, however, to anything and anyone beyond the range of the floodlights. The Medusas could use that to their advantage.
Well, the Medusas minus her. She didn’t get to play with the other children because she couldn’t be trusted not to flip out with a rifle in her hands. That, and Aleesha was concerned that too much exertion might release more of the drug stored in fat cells into her blood. She had to sit in the principal’s office and watch the other kids have recess out on the playground, dammit.
Irritation flared in her gut. And it didn’t have anything to do with the drugs coursing through her system! It was just plain annoying to be cut out of the action.
“Any movement, Python?” Vanessa asked from over where everyone else was huddled, a few yards away, well below the ridge line. They got to plan out the attack while she played harmless spotter.
“Three men are moving around the main room. Looks like they’re setting up more lab gear.”
“Anyone outside?” her boss followed up.
“I would have told you if there was,” Karen snapped. “I mean it’s not like I don’t know how important it would be to announce that they have a sentry posted.”
“Riigghht,” Vanessa drawled. “Thanks.”
Karen scowled. And now they were going to accuse her of going crazy again. She was just feeling a little testy. She had complete control over it.
“…so Anders will plant the explosives in and around the cabin with Aleesha and Misty helping him. The rest of us will move around front and create a shooting diversion. If they retreat inside and refuse to come out, we warn them verbally to surrender. If they refuse, we blow up the place with them in it. If they do surrender, Anders, Jack and I will go inside and clear the cabin. Because we haven’t practiced room clearing with Anders, we’ll go into each room solo. I don’t want us to kill each other because the Norwegians and the Americans manage their fields of fire differently.”
No kidding. That would suck to have one of your own teammates rake his weapon fire across your position and cut you in half. Although a tiny part of Karen’s brain was amused at the idea of jumping into a room with a half-dozen other Special Forces operators and mowing them all down where they stood. She could just imagine the looks of surprise on their faces as they went down.
Vanessa continued, “When we go through the front door into the main room, we’ll do a standard wedge field of fire. I’ll spin in and take the left third of the room, Jack will spin in and take the right third, and you go in straight and take the middle, Anders.”
Karen frowned. That put Anders in the most vulnerable position. What was Vanessa trying to do? Get him killed?
Her boss continued, blithely unaware of Karen’s fury beside her. “After the main room is clear, I’ll take the southeast bedroom. Jack, you take the northeast bedroom and the bathroom. Anders, you take the kitchen. When the three of us have reported an all-clear, we’ll retreat outside, and Anders will blow it.”
“Everybody clear on the plan?”
Karen couldn’t resist being pissy. In a fake perky voice, she announced, “And I’ll knit everyone scarves so we’ll all be cozy and color-coordinated when this mission is over.”
Vanessa replied evenly, without breaking her briefing tone of voice, “I need you to act as the spotter for both teams. Take up a position two hundred yards east of the cabin where you can keep an eye on that snowmobile trail for movement and watch both the group setting the explosives and the group picking the fight.”
It was a sop. A fake job to make her feel like she was part of it while they kept her out of the way. But let her do a real job? No way. Her eyes narrowed and her gaze clashed with Vanessa’s.
Viper said quietly, “I realize you don’t like being left out of the fight, Python. But if you were in my place, would you put a weapon in your hands?”
Karen scowled, but a tiny part of her appreciated Vanessa’s blunt honesty.
Viper continued, “I don’t have the manpower to spare to put someone on you to watch you and make sure you don’t lose control. I need you to watch our backs and hold it together. Those are important jobs and I need your full concentration on both of them. I’m trusting you, here.”
Karen sighed. Her boss was right, but that didn’t mean she had to like sitting out here with only binoculars for a weapon.
Vanessa announced, “I want one more equipment check and a radio check. Then we head out.”
When it was her turn to come up on frequency and report how much ammo she was carrying and indicate that she could hear everyone else loud and clear, Karen responded blithely, “Two knitting needles locked and loaded, and I hear you five by five.” Meaning, on a scale from one to five, her radio reception strength and clarity were both at maximum.
Anders moved over beside her and murmured off microphone, “You okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You sound a bit…belligerent.”
“Wouldn’t you be belligerent if all you got to do was watch the damned operation?”
He shrugged, although his parka masked much of the movement. “I suppose so. But we both know why it has to be that way.”
She glared back in silence.
“I’d kiss you if I didn’t think our lips would freeze together,” he murmured. “Be safe. I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you.”
Okay, so that punctured her belligerence a little. Still. Go over there and watch us, Karen. Be a good little girl and let us know if anyone is coming. Oh, and you don’t get to carry any weapons. You can’t be trusted…
Yada, yada, yada.
“Let’s head out,” Vanessa transmitted.
Oslo, Norway, March 11, 8:00 p.m.
Jens opened the front door. “Come on in, Ivo. She’s almost ready.”
Ivo came inside, brushing off his coat. The snow was coming down hard out there. Or rather, it was blowing sideways hard. Jens doubted much of it was reaching the ground in these winds.
Ivo commented, “I’m hoping that with the clubs more crowded on a Friday our boy will show up to push his pills.”
“Let’s hope so. We could really use a break, since we’ve had no luck stopping the stuff from hitting the street.”
“Well, maybe the military operation up north can shut down the lab making it.”
Jens snorted. “Can you imagine what would happen if this stuff got distributed all over Europe?”
The two men traded grim looks. It didn’t even bear thinking about. Fortunately, Astrid chose that moment to stroll down the stairs wearing a dress that was too tight and too short for a father’s taste, but seemed just right for Ivo’s.
Ivo held her coat for her while Jens bit back an urge to tell the two of them to be careful. They knew that. And besides, an entire team of undercover cops was accompanying them everywhere they went. It would be okay. He hoped.
Northern Norway, March 11, 9:00 p.m.
Karen slogged down the ridge line to her left and lay down in the snow to tunnel below the crest so her passing wouldn’t be visible from a distance. It was just like their first day of training when they’d done this little maneuver. Except this time she felt no pain from pulling herself forward on her elbows, and the cold and snow down her jacket felt good. She was burning up all of a sudden.
It was slow going pulling herself along on her belly in the snow. She stopped now and then to turn her head and check out the cabin through her NVGs. Still no movement outside. But the guys inside were scurrying around like rats in a cage. In a big hurry, apparently. What had their knickers in such a twist?
The wind howled around her like a moaning ghost. The storm’s fury had lessened to a dull roar for the moment, but new snow still whirled and danced like a dervish. Visibility sucked. She was two hundred yards from the cabin at the moment and couldn’t see a blessed thing but white. She’d have to move in closer. To hell with Vanessa’s instructions.
She angled toward the cabin, crawling until she reached the snowmobile trail. She supposed she ought to treat it like a stealthy road crossing and do it fast and low when the coast was clear. But, hell’s bells…In this weather, she could park in the middle of it and do a jig, and no one would see her! As tempting as that was, she rolled her eyes and did it the old-fashioned way by scooting across on her belly. She hoped that, wherever Vanessa and Jack were lurking right now, they were satisfied.
She turned around, which was a pain in the ass flat on her stomach, reached out, and used one finger to repair the snowmobile tread marks as best she could. It wasn’t perfect, but she highly doubted the bad guys would be coming through here with a fine-tooth comb to notice the hastily repaired track. When the wind settled down and actually let snow fall to the ground, new snow would cover it anyway.
She crawled for another fifteen minutes in fits and starts, keeping her movements arrhythmic and slow. She stopped about fifty yards from the cabin when she could actually make out the building and the shadows around it. Yup, just as she’d thought, having a spotter out here in these low-visibility conditions was a complete waste of time. Incoherent anger choked her at being set aside like this.
She dared not get much closer or she’d end up in someone’s field of fire and get hit by a stray bullet. But much farther away and she couldn’t see anything at all. She refused to sit off by herself in the middle of a freaking blizzard while the others did this op.
She burrowed carefully, digging a shallow depression for herself to lie in. Then she propped her NVGs on the edge of it and commenced watching the snow go by.
Her palms itched for a weapon. Any weapon. A damned knitting needle would be better than this!
And then she saw a movement. On the snowy slope right behind the cabin. A white shape low to the ground. No way to tell if it was Anders, Misty or Aleesha. But at least she had a fix on Team One. She turned her attention to spotting the other Medusa team. They were impossible to pick out. They’d probably already moved into position while she made her way to this little garden spot. Without them moving or firing, there was no way she’d pick them out of the amorphous blob that was the night and blowing snow. Which was good. The name of the game was to be invisible. She went back to watching Anders and friends.
It was textbook. They crept down to the back of the cabin and laid several blocks of explosives along the wall. That must be Anders in the front setting the explosives. For legal reasons, a Norwegian needed to do the actual work. He’d also be the guy to push the little red button.
A second white form was crawling along behind Anders, checking the wiring. That must be Aleesha, the Medusas’ explosive ordinance expert. Which meant the third figure, the one passing Anders the bricks of go-boom must be Misty. Anders disappeared around the far end of the cabin for several minutes, then made his way back down to the end nearest Karen and the remaining barrels of psychedelic powder.
Ideally, they’d enter the cabin to drop the bulk of the improvised explosive. ANFO, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, performed best when set off in a confined space, like, oh, a bedroom. The next part of the op was for Anders to enter the cabin and set the majority of the ANFO under one of the beds. To that end, Karen concentrated hard on the two bedrooms, both of which had a window facing this direction.
“Both rooms clear,” she murmured. “Neither lit but ambient light is entering both from the hallway. The door to the southeast one is about halfway closed, the other door’s wide open. Neither appears occupied, but the top bunks in both rooms are obstructed from my view.”
Which sucked for Anders. He’d have to go in on the assumption that the bed was occupied. And that meant he’d have to go in quickly. In this weather, an open window would be discovered within seconds.
Anders was too close to the cabin to respond aloud. But Karen didn’t need him to tell her what he was up to. He stopped under the southeast bedroom window. Aleesha and Misty crouched on either side of it. Aleesha would jimmy the window open, Anders would dive in, Misty would pass him the duffel of ANFO and det cord, and Aleesha would close the window behind him. Done right, a silent, five-second maneuver.
It took four seconds.
Karen held her breath for too long, waiting for Anders to show up again. Her lungs burned, and then her entire chest ached with the suspense. He would’ve rolled under the bed, out of plain sight, to set up his toys. When the bag of ANFO was all wired to blow, he’d click his throat mike once. Aleesha and Misty would open the window at the same time he dived for it, and he’d be out of there in two seconds. Three tops.
Two minutes passed. Three. Five. He ought to be more than ready to get out of there. Tension mounted in Karen’s gut, coiling tighter and tighter. It felt as though a python was wrapping around her chest, constricting by inches. With every breath she took, it got harder and harder to suck air into her lungs. Where was he?
Something was wrong. He ought to have clicked by now. She couldn’t see anything that would stop him from leaving. What was he hearing?
Vanessa murmured, “Python, report.”
“All clear. No movement in the bedrooms or hallway. Anders is still in place, however. He’s been inside—” a quick glance at her watch “—six minutes.”
Which was to say, since Anders was monitoring this frequency, too, get the hell out of there already!
So focused on Anders was she that it took her a while to register the ever-so-faint vibration in the ground beneath her. At first, she put it down to her wildly pounding heart. But it got heavier, and then an almost subliminal noise began to accompany it.
Shit! She rolled over on her back and looked behind her, down the snowmobile track. She peered between gusts of snow and made out a dark shape. Coming toward her fast.
“Incoming!” she announced urgently.
Oslo, Norway, Midnight Sun Lounge, March 11, 11:00 p.m.
Astrid looked around the disco. They were all starting to blur together in her head. She and Ivo had been in and out of so many that she could hardly keep them straight. But the routine was always the same. They went in, staked out a place at the bar, sipped a soda, did a little dancing so she could have a look around at the patrons, and got friendly with the bartender and whoever looked like regulars in the place. Then Ivo casually dropped the name Izzy to see if he got any response.
She still was intimidated by Ivo. And the more she got to know him, the more intimidated she got. He was just such a decent guy. A white-hat type all the way. So out of her league. She couldn’t help feeling like an immature teenager when she was with him. He talked about things like politics and theater—stuff she was interested in but had never talked about with guys before.
“The usual?” he shouted in her ear over the pounding music.
She smiled and nodded at him. Ginger ale with a twist of lemon. It looked like an alcoholic drink, but she could have a dozen and not be the worse for it.
“I need to go to the toilet,” he shouted. “Will you be okay here for a few minutes?”
She grinned back at him. “What would you do if I said no? Hold it or take me with you?”
He laughed. “Tough choice. I think I’d take you with me. I like being with you.”
Her toes curled into tight little knots of pleasure. “Go on. I’ll be fine by myself. And the rest of the team is still watching me.”
She watched his tall, lean form weave around the edge of the dance floor toward the neon sign pointing to the restrooms. And, as her eyes followed him around the room, she noticed a cluster of people at tables in the back corner. She and Ivo hadn’t scoped out that area yet. She peered through the dim light. And started. For a second there, a man had waved his hand in the air sort of like Izzy did it.
She squinted harder at the guy. She couldn’t be sure from this distance. A dark-haired man, maybe in his late thirties or early forties, sat at a table with several other people. Three girls and two more guys. A crowd of empty glasses filled the table in front of them. Even though the guy was dressed plainly, he had a vague air of, ‘I’m a rich guy who can afford to pay for all my friends, and the women hang all over me.’ Sort of like Izzy. Although the pimpish vibe had been much more pronounced in the drug dealer she recalled.
Had she spotted their guy? How cool would it be if, when Ivo got back, she could tell him she’d found his man for him? It would go a long way toward proving that she could handle herself like an adult.
She leaned forward to shout at the bartender, “Do you know that group at the fourth table from the back wall over there?”
The bartender looked where she indicated. “Nope. But they’ve been in here a couple times before. Met a few weeks back with some guys from a medical supply company. I overheard a couple of the salesmen talking about closing a deal for some lab equipment.”
“What are they drinking?” she shouted across the bar.
“Absolut Citron.”
“Give me a bottle of it. Put it on the tab of the guy I’m with.”
The bartender nodded and passed her a fresh bottle of the Swedish vodka. She grabbed it by the neck and headed out across the dance floor. She wasn’t a half-bad looking blonde herself, and with the vodka in hand, she had confidence she could get close enough to have a good look at the dark-haired guy.
She pasted on what she hoped was a seductive smile and walked up to the big table. “Where’s the party?” she shouted.
Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. The blondes looked stoned out of their heads already. The two beefy guys on the ends of the booth—bodyguard/thug types—looked up at her much more alertly, however. But the dark-haired man was the one who answered.
“Who’s asking?” he shouted back.
“My name’s Astrid. My boyfriend—make that my ex-boyfriend—is a jerk, and I want to have some fun.” He definitely looked like the guy she remembered. Although this guy looked thinner. Older. Maybe she’d been wrong about him.
Her target flicked a wrist swathed in a gaudy gold-and-diamond watch. “Make room for our new friend.”
Okay, now that did look familiar.
One of the thugs stood up and let her slide into the booth. To her chagrin, the guy sat back down, effectively trapping her. Drat. She’d been hoping to sit on the end where she could make a quick exit if she had to. Ivo was going to come back and spot her over here. Then, he’d either kill her or let her drown in her own stupidity. Neither option was appealing, and either way, he’d never want to date her again.
She turned quickly to her host and held up the bottle of vodka. “Can I interest you in a little of my favorite poison?”
Surprise showed in the guy’s eyes for a millisecond, then he said smoothly, “Next round’s on Astrid.”
The other blondes murmured vague thanks at her. Creepy. She looked the dark-haired guy in the eye and asked boldly, “What’s your name?”
“Call me Ingmar,” he replied.
Ingmar? The guy looked more like an Ahmed. And his choice of words had been interesting. The guy didn’t say, “My name is…” He said, “Call me…” And then there was the fact that Ingmar started with an I like Izzy.
“You been in town long, Ingmar? I don’t remember seeing you around.”
He downed the double shot of vodka she’d poured for him and grimaced as its fire hit his throat. “I’m passing through.”
“Where are you headed, sailor?” she asked with a hint of seduction in her voice. She leaned forward so the neck of her dress gapped open.
The guy was sharp. He didn’t miss her tone or her invitation. He tossed her a sharklike grin and then took a slow, thorough look down her dress. She might not be model-thin, but she was stacked. She let him ogle to his heart’s content. Men never equated boobs with brains. The longer he looked, the dumber he’d think she was.
After nearly a minute she sat up straight. He hadn’t answered her question, dammit. She prodded again. “Traveling’s tough in this weather. You gonna be in town a few days while the blizzard clears?”
He frowned. “I gotta get north. Got a pick-up to make. I fucking hate snow.”
She laughed easily. “Then you’re in the wrong place, Ingmar.”
“No shit.” He cursed liberally through the next few minutes of desultory conversation and dodged any more of her efforts to get him to divulge anything about himself.
But the longer she sat here, the more sure she was that this was her guy. Except he never talked about dealing drugs or having any business in Oslo. In fact, the only business he talked about was getting his delivery up north. That was the one thing that wasn’t adding up. The man she’d remembered had been pushing his little pills hard. Wanted to move as many as possible as soon as possible. Yet this guy never even hinted at having a stash of pills to move.
She eyed the hallway from which Ivo should emerge any second. She needed to get out of here. Soon. She’d probably learned all she could about this Ingmar fellow. And it was plenty to know the police should definitely have a little chat with this guy.
She picked up the vodka bottle and poured another round of drinks. By grossly overfilling everyone’s glasses, she was able to empty the bottle. She’d use the excuse of getting up to fetch another one as soon as everyone finished this round. But darned if Ingmar didn’t decide to sip at his glass.
A lean, familiar form appeared in the entrance to the hallway leading to the bathrooms. Crud. Time was up. She had to go. Now.
To the thug beside her she shouted over the music, “Let me out. I’ll go get us another bottle of vodka.”
The guy shrugged. “That’s what waitresses are for.”
She glanced to her right. Ivo had spotted her. He was frowning and making his way through dancers toward her. She glared at him and tried to warn him off silently, but to no avail. She even frowned and shook her head slightly at him. Not going to take a hint. Now what?
“Hey, Ingmar,” she said brightly. “Wanna dance?”
The guy lolled on his bench. “Do I look like a dancer?” He laughed.
She smiled brilliantly. “Sure, you do. C’mon. I’ll show you some steps. It’ll be fun. I can move my package like nobody’s business.”
The thug beside her interrupted. “We got a problem, Mr. U. We got a cop incoming. And he looks pissed.”
The change in “Mr. U.” was immediate and startling. He lurched upright, his arms yanking away from the blondes, one of whom whined in protest. His gaze narrowed, darting left and right. “You said there’d be no cops in here,” he snarled at the talking thug.
“They don’t usually come in here.”
“Usually isn’t good enough. No cops,” Ingmar hissed.
Okay, then. So even if this guy wasn’t Izzy the drug dealer, he was definitely a criminal. No law-abiding citizen was that freaked out by the idea of a cop approaching his table.
The thug beside Astrid stood up. Thank God. She slid to the edge of the booth. As soon as the big man took a step forward, she could slip out of here. But the thug didn’t move. Instead, he said gruffly, “Can I help you, Officer Dahl?”
Astrid couldn’t see around the bodyguard type, which was probably just as well. Ivo must be royally torqued off that she’d gone fishing for Izzy on her own like this.
“Jaeger. Long time no see. They finally let you out of jail, huh?” Ivo said from the other side of the mountain of man in front of her.
“Yeah. I’m out.”
“So, introduce me to your new friends.”
“They ain’t your friends, Dahl. Unless you got some business with me, why don’t you just move along now?”
“Ah, but they are my friends.”
Astrid noticed Jaeger’s hands flexing into fists inside his jacket pockets as he drawled, “Dahl, you’re off duty. Go away before I gotta do something…like this!”
Astrid gasped as the man lunged forward, for she’d seen something from her low angle directly behind Jaeger that Ivo undoubtedly could not. Jaeger’s right hand wasn’t empty as he pulled it out of his pocket.
“Ivo!” she screamed. “Gun!”
Northern Norway, March 11, 11:15 p.m.
Karen reported tersely, “Two snowmobiles. One rider each. Anders, hold your position.”
She drew breath to tell Aleesha and Misty to make like snowflakes, but as she turned back their way, they’d already melted away into white nothingness. Anders and his men had taught them well. Time for her to do the same. Her adrenaline screaming, she pulled the snow she’d pushed aside earlier over her legs. Awkwardly, flapping her arms like seal flippers, she tossed snow over her back. Jeez. Her heart felt as though it was going to pound its way right out of her chest. Her breathing came light and fast and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
How in the hell did Jack and Vanessa operate together on missions? She was so worried about Anders she couldn’t even draw a full breath.
The first snowmobile drew level with her, the chainsaw scream of its engine deafening as it roared past. It was towing some sort of long, crude sled behind it. So much for anyone noticing her tracks. A second snowmobile passed her. It was towing a sled, too. The vehicles neared the front of the cabin.
Now would be the perfect time for the Medusas out front to start shooting. Except they dared not start a fight until Anders was back outside. Odds were somebody would rush into a bedroom to grab gear or hide, and he had to be gone before that happened.
“Get out, Anders,” Karen ground out. “The show’s about to start out front.”
Infuriatingly, he didn’t respond. The first snowmobile parked in front of the cabin. The front door opened.
“Come on, golden boy!” she urged.
The second snowmobile pulled to a stop. Any second it would cut its engine.
“A bunch of the hostiles are out front being social with each other. Let’s go!” Karen whispered furiously.
Finally. A single click.
Misty rose up out of the snow beside the cabin instantly, a snow-covered Sasquatch. The window sash was barely halfway up when a white form half-dived, half-slithered through it. Misty yanked the window back down.
“He’s out,” Karen announced tersely.
“Fire,” Vanessa ordered.
The idea was for Katrina, the team’s sniper, to knock out a window. A non-lethal shot that would startle the bad guys and shake them up without killing anyone. An announcement that armed forces were outside the cabin. A rifle report rang out, its sharp noise distorted by the storm into a tremendously loud crack. Karen barely heard the tinkling shatter of the kitchen window over its echoes off the mountains around them.
The bad guys reacted all right. Before they’d barely flinched, they’d all leaped for the cabin door. Four of the five men hit the opening simultaneously. They looked like a bad cartoon, all trying to shove through it at once. They popped through to the interior. The fifth guy crouched—a slightly more military reaction, took a quick look around, appeared to realize how exposed his position was, and dived for the cabin, too.
As they’d predicted, the outside floodlights went on. Karen had already pulled up her night-vision goggles just in case. No need to fry her retinas tonight, thanks. She squinted into the abrupt and blinding light.
And then tinkling noises sounded all around the building. All the remaining windows were being broken out…from the inside!
The bastards were planning on shooting back!
“They’ve taken firing positions in all the windows I can see,” Karen panted. God, her chest hurt. And she didn’t have a damned thing to fire back at the guys looking out the bedroom windows in her direction except insults. And now, with them looking out, she couldn’t move either, lest she be spotted.
Shots started ringing out. Undoubtedly the tangos. The Medusas wouldn’t waste their limited ammo in such wanton fashion. Besides, the clunky, bolt-action rifles the Medusas were stuck with didn’t allow for the rapid fire she was hearing.
With the weird acoustics out here, Karen couldn’t tell where the shots were going, but it sounded like it was mostly aimed out the front of the cabin toward Medusa Team Two. Dang, the noise was loud! It rang in her head, one crack stacking on top of another until she was sure her skull was going to split. The pain was excruciating. Her eyeballs were going to explode! Make it stop.
It was all she could do not to scream.
Stop. Rewind. Since when did she scream in the middle of a firefight? She’d lain on more firing ranges than she could count, for hours on end, and they’d been a hell of a lot louder than this.
Why it hadn’t dawned on her earlier that she was losing it again, she had no idea. But sudden awareness of the encroaching madness did burst across her brain. Crap. Not now!
The cabin in front of her fuzzed out. She blinked hard a couple times to clear her vision. And what she saw when it came back into focus chilled her to the bone. Anders and her teammates were sitting against the side of the cabin, not three feet from the guys peering out the windows over their heads.
“Don’t move, Team One,” she whispered urgently. “One tango in each window above your position. Armed. Can’t tell for sure, but they look like AK-47s.”
There was a momentary lull in the firing. And another sound intruded upon the scene. A voice. Speaking in slow, deliberate Norwegian through a megaphone. Jack. Reading off the sheet Anders had given him. It translated roughly to, “Come out with your hands up. Surrender now and we will let you live.” The alternative if they failed to surrender went unspoken.
A voice shouted back at them from inside the house. And Karen’s jaw literally dropped. That sounded like…
“Arabic,” Isabella, the Medusas’ resident linguist bit out. “He more or less told us to go to hell.”
“Repeat the message in Arabic,” Vanessa ordered.
Jack, fluent in that tongue, complied.
More shouted Arabic that translated to a rather ruder version of “go to hell” than before.
“So be it,” Vanessa bit out. “Blow it.”
“No!” Karen retorted. “Team One is pinned down against the side of Point X-Ray.”
No transmission answered that, but in her head, Karen could just picture Vanessa swearing under her breath.
Karen squeezed her eyes shut, but the haze of red wouldn’t go away. Knives stabbed into her head from all sides. Needles of pain pierced her eyeballs until her eyes watered and she couldn’t see a thing.
“We need to draw these bastards outside,” Jack growled between shots.
“Cobra and Adder only, return fire,” Vanessa replied. “Maybe that’ll do it. If they hear only two weapons, maybe they’ll think they outnumber us.”
It wouldn’t work, but who was Karen to argue? She was going to be blind by then anyway. An urge to roll around in the snow, to scour her face in its icy cold nearly overwhelmed her.
How long the standoff continued, she had no idea. The tangos must’ve had a boatload of ammo in there, though, because they continued to shoot with complete abandon. Either that or they were completely undisciplined amateurs. She felt an overwhelming need to move. To get up and run around, to shake all her limbs and fall down in the snow and roll around. And she could only lie there in the snow staring at Anders and her teammates, trapped beside the building.
And then a new movement off to her right caught her attention. Somebody, one of the gang on Team One, poked their head up above a drift of snow.
“You’re exposed, Team One!” Karen called urgently.
Vanessa came up behind her on the radio. “Jack, what are you doing?”
“Drawing fire.”
“Yeah, well it’s working. Get down! I’m not having you stick your neck out and getting killed on my watch. There’s got to be another way to draw them to the front of the cabin so Team One can egress away from the building.”
For indeed, the hostiles seemed content to hunker down in their thick-walled cabin that was largely impervious to bullet fire and sit this thing out. Karen frowned. What if, instead of drawing the two snipers in the windows in front of her to the front of the cabin, they merely drove the hostiles away from the windows?
She transmitted, “If I had a weapon, I could shoot at these jokers and extract Team One myself.”
Vanessa replied, “I can send Cobra over. It’ll take a while, though.”
Karen reviewed the supplies in the team’s backpacks, which lay in the little hollow beside her. “Mamba, do you have any alcohol in your crash kit?”
“Yeah. You need some?”
“High-grade pharmaceutical stuff?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I have an idea.”
Moving at the necessary snail’s pace not to attract the attention of the men peering through their weapon sights in her general direction, she pulled out an aluminum canister used to store one of the tents. She slid the tent out of it. Rummaging in the medical crash kit she found a scalpel—Hah! They hadn’t succeeded in removing all weapons from her proximity, the bottle of nearly pure alcohol and a big wad of cotton.
Slowly, she turned so her back faced the window. That way she could work quickly with her hands without being seen. She shredded the cotton into a light, airy mass. Then, using the scalpel, she poked a hole in the side of the tube very near the closed end. Using a tent pole, she lightly stuffed the cotton wad down the tube. And then she poured in some alcohol. She was completely guessing as to the amount. She hadn’t made a potato cannon since she was a kid, and she and her cousins had used liquid propane, not high-grade alcohol.
Then she looked around for a nice, sharp chunk of ice about the same diameter as the tube. It took a little carving on the ice ball with the scalpel, but she achieved a smooth fit. She shaped several more ice bullets and laid them beside her. She aimed her improvised cannon at the cabin. Now the trick would be not to kill Team One with this thing. She propped it on the front lip of her hollow and did her best to sight down the length of the tube at the northeast window. She estimated windage and sinkage and made the necessary corrections.
No telling if the thin aluminum would blow up and kill her or if it would hold under the pressure of rapid gas expansion as the alcohol burned. To improve her chances, she packed the cylinder tightly in snow and ice, leaving only a tiny tunnel down to the hole in the tube. She twisted the cotton’s paper wrapping into a wick of sorts and stuffed it into the opening.
Then Karen transmitted, “Team One. Get down as low as you can.”
“What are you doing?” Vanessa demanded.
“I’m gonna throw a snowball at the bad guys.”
“A snowball?” Vanessa repeated, shocked. “Are you nuts?”
Karen grinned. “I’m certifiable. Thing is, I’m lobbing that sucker with a potato cannon.”
A moment of silence met that announcement. And then, with a hint of laughter in her voice, Vanessa replied, “Fire at will, Python.”