Oslo, Norway, March 11, 11:30 p.m.
Everything happened in slow motion. The thug raised his pistol to fire at Ivo. Astrid bolted up and out of her seat and rammed into the guy’s right arm from below, knocking the weapon upward. Ivo dived. Rolled toward the thug. The bad guy turned toward Astrid and backhanded her viciously. She staggered back, falling across the table and sending liquor and glasses flying everywhere.
Ingmar half stood, clawing his way backward from the table. Thug number two pulled out a weapon.
Screams erupted but were a vague, distant noise. Ingmar climbed over the table beside her and landed on his feet.
Shots rang out as both thugs shot at Ivo and the undercover cops commenced shooting back.
“No!” she screamed, rolling off the table. Mid roll, she vaguely noticed Ingmar sidling to the left behind his beefy bodyguards. He was eyeing the fire exit not far away. The jerk was going to escape!
She slammed into thug number two. God, the guy was a rock! He barely budged as her full body weight impacted him. It felt like she bounced more than anything else as she careened off him and toward the first thug.
“Izzy’s getting away!” she shouted over the chaotic din of screaming and gunshots.
Who knew if Ivo could hear her or not. She saw he’d come up onto his knees, his pistol held in front of him at eye level with both hands.
Thug number one’s pistol tracked Ivo’s movement. And then slowly, deliberately, in exaggerated time-stop motion, he fired. A spit of orange flame came out of the barrel as her mouth opened to scream.
Ivo toppled over, crashing to the floor. Still, the pistol tracked him, pointing this time at Ivo’s head. She saw the hammer draw back again as the thug’s finger started through another trigger pull. The bastard was going to kill Ivo!
Astrid jumped.
Northern Norway, March 11, 11:31 p.m.
Karen’s hand shook almost uncontrollably as she held a lighter to the piece of paper. By dint of intense concentration, she suppressed the tremor and lit the fuse. The flame took a couple of maddeningly slow seconds to devour its way down the twisted paper.
And then there was a loud whump.
It sounded just like a tear gas launcher. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, that’s what the bad guys would think, too.
She peeked up over the edge of her hollow. There was no splat of white on the dark wood wall, so she’d either missed the cabin completely or sailed her snowball through the broken window. She would assume the latter.
Neither bad guy was visible in the bedroom window at the moment. Well, it had made them duck at any rate. With fumbling fingers, she reloaded her cannon as quickly as she could with another wad of cotton, some more alcohol and another snowball. She aimed at the other window. Sure enough, that guy poked his head up first to have a look outside. She’d forgotten to make another fuse, so she held the lighter directly to the hole.
The whump was immediate this time.
“Both windows are clear,” she stuttered between chattering teeth. She glimpsed Team One rising to a crouch and sprinting away from the window. Or more accurately, floundering as fast as they could through the snow away from the window. She turned to the task of reloading. It was getting harder each time. Her whole body was twitching now, and it was nearly impossible to control her movements. By dint of incredible concentration and sheer force of will, she loaded again.
And fired again. This time there was a big, white spray of snow on the wall between the windows. No matter. It was all about keeping those hostiles out of sight. Just another few seconds and Team One would be clear.
She tried to reload again with her last snowball. She spilled nearly half the alcohol in the snow and dropped the snowball twice before she managed to get the cannon reloaded. It was taking so long that she kept having to pause and check the windows for returning hostiles.
The third time she did so, she bit out, “Get down!” The top of a head was emerging above the window ledge in the right-hand window.
She aimed the cannon carefully. This was her last shot. She had to make it count. A burst of gunfire erupted from the window. Crap! There were two guys there now, both firing. Thankfully, Team One had hit the snow, and their white camo gear made them nearly invisible a few yards beyond the circle of bright light falling on the ground near the cabin.
She lit the fuse.
Whump.
A man screamed.
Sweet! She’d hit one of the jerks! She hoped the ice had put his eye out.
“Clear,” she managed to force past her chattering teeth.
Anders, Aleesha and Misty jumped up and took off running again toward her position. Anders flopped into the tiny hollow beside her while Misty and Aleesha commenced widening the hollow to accommodate themselves.
“How’s it looking?” Anders panted.
Karen scowled and enunciated carefully, “You have a grenade?”
“No, but I’ve got a flash-bang.”
Flash-bangs were grenades loaded with a minimal amount of black powder, just enough to make a bright flash of light and a loud bang, but not do any real damage.
“Let’s shoot it at them.”
Anders eyed her improvised cannon. “You gonna lob it in the house with that?”
Karen nodded, since she didn’t trust her mouth muscles to continue cooperating.
Anders reached for a pocket in his coat while Misty transmitted, “Team One is clear. We’ve joined Python.”
“Blow it up, Anders,” Vanessa ordered.
“No can do. I overheard these guys talking earlier. They’re terrorists. The powder they made is part of some larger plan. An attack of some kind. I got the impression they’re planning to lace their psychedelic powder into something unexpected that’ll reach the general population of Europe and North America. They were gleeful about the target. We need to take one of these guys alive for questioning.”
Karen swore under her breath and had no doubt all the other Medusas were doing the same. This was a simple, straightforward mission. It had just gotten significantly more complicated.
Concentrating ferociously, Karen loaded the cannon one more time. Anders held the grenade’s handle down and pulled the pin. “This has a five-second delay,” he murmured.
Karen nodded. After he let go of the grenade’s handle and rolled it down the cannon, she’d have five seconds to light the cannon, blow the load, and get the grenade through the window. No sweat. Assuming her cannon didn’t disintegrate under the pressure of this heavier missile. Assuming her luck held and she actually hit the window one more time. Assuming she didn’t collapse into a full-blown convulsion in the next few seconds.
Carefully, she aimed her potato cannon one last time—at the right-hand window. The room without the giant bag of explosives hidden in it. She moved deliberately, not only to get this shot right, but also to hide the way her whole body wanted to twitch. She poured all the remaining alcohol down the barrel.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Holding the tent pole in one hand and the grenade in the other, Anders said, “Here we go, then. On my mark. Go!” Working fast, he shoved the live grenade into the mouth of the cannon and quickly pushed it down with the tent pole. He yanked the pole free and dived to the side. “Fire!”
Karen touched the fuse with her lighter.
Snow flew in all directions as the aluminum tube finally gave up the ghost. The whump was a deafening boom this time. Karen looked around frantically to see if the grenade had been spat out somewhere in their foxhole. A flash-bang might be small, but if a person was sitting on it, they’d still get messed up bad. No sign of the fist-sized gray metal.
And then a second explosion flattened her in the snow again. That one had come from inside the front bedroom. Yes! The flash-bang had found its target.
The front door slammed open and six men poured out pell-mell.
Jack got on the megaphone again and called out something in Arabic. The men dropped their weapons instantly and followed the weapons down to the ground. Damn, that was easy! One flash-bang and the whole gang wilted. Amazing, given that the bad guys had them severely outgunned.
Anders climbed to his feet cautiously, his rifle held shoulder-high in firing position. It was an awkward way to have to advance, but the old-fashioned rifle didn’t leave any other option. Misty and Aleesha went with him, advancing in similar fashion, alert for any tricks from the men now lying face-down in the snow.
Jack and Vanessa materialized out of the darkness and met Anders at the front door. A quick hand signal from Vanessa, and the three of them disappeared into the cabin. Isabella and Kat stayed under cover for now just in case something went wrong. Karen also stayed put. Not only was she unarmed, but she honestly didn’t know if her shaking legs would support her body weight.
Karen couldn’t be of any help to the team inside, so she turned her field glasses on the prisoners. They wore bulky, bright-colored, nylon parkas that should keep them warm and dry even though they were literally lying in the snow. Misty was patting them down one by one while Aleesha watched cautiously.
What a bunch of wimps. If she were any one of those six guys and they were only being guarded by one woman while another rendered herself combat-ineffective by having to search them, she’d jump her captors so fast her head would spin!
One of the bad guys turned his head so his face was toward her. She zoomed in on him to see if she could recognize him from any international wanted lists.
His face came into focus in her lenses. Olive skin. A little dark hair sticking out of his hood. Black eyes. And…Karen frowned. The guy looked…
…smug.
What the hell was up with that? He’d just been busted, his operation uncovered and stopped. What did he have to be smug about?
She pushed aside the bubbling rage in encroaching red haze. Something was seriously wrong here. She had to keep her head in the game. She blinked her eyes hard to clear the stabbing pain from her temples. Please, just a second’s relief so she could think! That was all she needed. Her body gave a particularly hard twitch, and her back muscles spasmed. She furiously fought the need to arch backward. Think, Karen!
Why was that guy so pleased with himself?
These guys made the drug ripping up her system right now. That made them chemists or lab techs. Smart boys, then. And…what? Come on, brain!
A moment of clarity broke over her. Where it came from, she didn’t ask. Maybe it was a gift from the gods, or maybe a few of her brain cells broke free of the fog of fury enveloping her. But suddenly the problem was as clear as a bell.
These guys made the drug that was messing her up. Lived in the same building with it day and night. Moved it around, packaging it into barrels.
Karen reached for her throat mike button. It took her several tries to land a finger on it. “V…Viper, is th…there a negative p…pressure ventilation system in th…there? Click if yes. S…silence if no.”
Silence stretched out in response to that.
Yup. As she’d thought. These guys must have ingested the same stuff she had—breathed it, swallowed it, gotten it on their skin, something. So why weren’t they twitching around on the ground having seizures and psychotic episodes?
More to the point, if she’d just been defeated in battle, she’d be so mad, no way could she contain the rage she was barely staying on top of now. How could that guy lie there and be smug? These guys had just been in a gunfight. They’d been shooting wildly and taken incoming fire. Their adrenaline alone should be sky-high. And with the effects of the drug stacked on top of that—
“Something’s wrong,” she announced over the radios. “Cobra, Adder, get your weapons pointed at those guys on the ground.”
“Talk to me,” Misty grunted as she patted down the last guy.
“They’re not upset enough about being captured.”
Aleesha came up on frequency. “How upset should they be?” she asked reasonably.
Fury at Aleesha’s tone shot out of Karen like lava from an erupting volcano. And that was the point. She took a deep breath. Focus. Say the words. Make herself understood. Beat back the rage just a little bit longer. “I got exposed to the stuff in the barrels one time. These guys have been living with it. You guys say boo to me and I’m ready to kill you. Why aren’t these guys completely insane? If I lost a gun battle, was forced to surrender, failed in my mission, I’d go berserk.”
Anders, Jack and Vanessa emerged from the cabin just then. “Clear,” Vanessa announced tersely.
Jack used his toe to roll one of the men over. Said something forceful in Arabic. No response. “Not talking,” he announced.
None of them were. Out here in the snow with all the prisoners together wasn’t the ideal way to get any of them to talk, either. They needed to be divided and separated in rooms by themselves, and then tricked into talking or mentally worked over by a good, hard interrogation.
“Okay, let’s get them away from the cabin so we can blow it up,” Vanessa said after a couple minutes. “We won’t get anything out of them out here. Cobra, Adder, come on out.”
Given that there were six hostages, the order made sense. That way there’d be a weapon trained on every hostage as the dangerous maneuver of getting them up and moving was accomplished.
“Let’s cuff them before we move them,” Vanessa ordered.
Jack pulled out plastic, disposable restraints and passed several to Isabella as she came forward. Both he and Isabella spoke fluent Arabic, and appeared to use it to instruct the prisoners to put their hands behind their backs. The handcuffing procedure went smoothly.
And Karen’s disquiet continued to climb. Was this no more than misplaced paranoia? A new symptom of the drug that she was experiencing for the first time? The twitchiness in her limbs started to feel suspiciously like panic. It rattled through her, shaking her from head to foot. Or maybe she was just having a panic attack on top of a seizure.
She tried to stand, and collapsed in an unceremonious heap, rolling down into the bottom of the depression, facing away from her teammates. Tried to reach her mike button to call for help. Couldn’t control her hand well enough to make that happen. Only ended up slapping herself in the face a couple times. Gotta love the irony of that. Now what? They’d figure out she wasn’t joining them, eventually. Someone would come looking for her.
And then a great, fist-like vise closed around her heart, squeezing it mercilessly until she couldn’t breathe. Oh. God. That. Hurt.
She opened her mouth. Tried to call for help. Nothing. Not a whisper of breath escaped her seizing throat muscles.
Holy crap.
She was going to die.
Oslo, Norway, March 11, 11:32 p.m.
The bullet ripped into Astrid’s gut like a hot knife slashing through soft butter. So instant and intense was the agony of it that she barely noticed slamming into the floor shoulder-first. A gush of hot and wet rushed over her belly. And with it came a sense of calm. Wow. She must be bleeding like a stuck pig.
More shots rang out in quick succession then, one right after another. A dozen in all. Something heavy fell beside her, jostling her. New shards of agony seared through her. She heard a long, low moan. Was that her making that awful noise?
There was so much shouting. She wished it would go away. Her head was throbbing from it. At least the throb was slowing down. If only it would stop.
The floor and shoes and darkness swirled around her. She felt as if she was going to puke. But the idea of contracting her stomach muscles to push anything out of her body caused mild panic to swim somewhere in the back of her head.
Something white and round and blurry appeared in front of her. A voice floated down. Said her name. Repeated it louder. Insistently. She just wanted to go to sleep.
“Astrid, honey, it’s me. Talk to me.”
“Ivo?” she breathed. Lord, what was that raspy sound? Surely not her.
“Stay with me, honey. You gotta fight. Stay conscious. Look at me. The ambulance is on the way.”
He was up. Talking. That was good. “You…’kay?” she wheezed. She coughed and the taste of blood filled her mouth.
“I’m fine. I have on my vest.”
“Vest—guess I look…dumb…but he aimed for…head…” Her voice trailed off, the rest of the thought lost. Cotton candy filled her brain.
“You dived in front of that bullet for me?” he asked. Sounded shocked.
“Well…yeah…”
“Aww, honey—” But then he disappeared from the narrow, dark tunnel of vision she had left. Another blurry white blob that looked like a face.
Voices started barking out medical stuff over her head. They sounded like they had things well in hand. Finally, blessedly, she let go. And slid into the warm, dark abyss that beckoned.
Northern Norway, March 11, 11:34 p.m.
Karen gazed straight ahead, into the teeth of the storm. What a hell of a place, a hell of a way, to die. She’d envisioned herself going out in a blaze of glory, saving her team from disaster. Maybe saving the world. Something noble at any rate. Not this. Not succumbing to some damned drug.
As whatever was happening to her got even worse, her lungs screamed for oxygen first. And then every cell in her body screamed for it. A hot flush rushed over her, and then intense pain as her muscles shouted for air.
And then something began to materialize in front of her. A gray shape in the darker gray of the snow. A gust of wind swirled snow more thickly for a moment and she squinted into the blizzard. Was that an angel or something coming to fetch her?
But as she watched, it materialized into a more human shape. Carrying a machine gun. And running.
Some angel.
And then he got close enough for her to make out his face. He was grinning ear to ear. Maniacally. In the full grip of the rage she knew so well. He was crazy as she was. And he was bent on killing. She knew exactly what he was feeling. The way blood surged through his head, how red filled his eyes, how thirst for violence was driving him mad with need.
And he was charging straight at the cluster of people in front of the cabin.
Of course.
The guys inside surrendered at the first opportunity. Laid around a while. Drew out the entire Spec Ops team staging the attack. And then, when all the special operators had come out of hiding, this guy would ambush them. She bet he’d shout a warning. All the bad guys would drop to the ground, and this joker would mow down all the Medusas where they stood.
Slick plan, actually.
Unless she stood her sorry self up this very second and stopped him.
Her body dragged in a sobbing breath. Where it came from, she had no idea. She focused every ounce of her being on doing that again. And painfully dragged in another breath. She had to roll over. Onto her belly. The guy was nearly even with her now, maybe ten yards away. She flopped like a fish on a dock, but managed to get onto her stomach.
Elbows bent. Hands by her shoulders. Jeez, her chest was killing her! Her left arm was completely numb. A one-handed push-up, then. She slid her right hand by jerky degrees under the center of her body. Pushed. Nothing. Pushed again.
She managed to wedge a knee under her gut. Thank God the snow was soft and she was able to drag her leg through it.
Another push, leg and arm this time. Better. She made it to her hands and knees. The guy was slightly in front of her now. His weapon was coming up into a firing position. And sure enough, he shouted.
The Medusas lurched, whirling to face this new threat. But standing in the light as they were and looking out into the blackness of night and white swirl of snow and fog and wind, they wouldn’t be able to see him. But she could. He was a black silhouette between her and the light. Somehow, she managed to hoist herself up to a standing position. She staggered a couple of steps on unsteady legs toward the ambusher.
As one, the prisoners dropped to the snow.
Run!
Karen’s brain screamed the command at every muscle in her body. Her teammates were going to die!
How she covered the distance between herself and the gunman, she had no idea. But the machine gun settled against its harness and into firing position as she neared him. A burst of gunfire erupted from the weapon, spraying bullets at her teammates.
Jump!
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vanessa fly backward. Aleesha went down in slightly less dramatic fashion, but clearly, she was hit, too.
Karen slammed into the gunman. The two of them crashed to the ground, the guy cursing and screaming at her.
Oh, she knew the feeling. Knew it very well, indeed. This bastard had just shot her teammates! Without a moment’s hesitation, she unleashed the rage. All of it. Every vicious, violent, savage impulse she’d ever amassed.
The pain in her chest was nothing compared to the glory of wrapping her hands around this guy’s throat. He tried to fight back, but she swatted his efforts aside like a fly. Thank God for every ounce of power in her big, muscular body that she was able to use to tear this asshole limb from limb! She squeezed the guy’s neck tighter and tighter, the same way the vise in her chest was constricting around her heart.
The abyss beckoned, and this time she flung herself into it headlong, sinking down, down, into the enveloping blackness. Everything went silent and dark.