Nicole worked the room and outdoor area, on both sides of the fountain pool, by walking with Marie, seemingly chatting companionably in French, while they surreptitiously dropped the drug into the various fruit punch bowls. They had to make sure that all of them succumbed, lest others get suspicious; so, they made doubly sure that everyone had imbibed at the same time by offering to help the overworked servants place out fresh bowls of icy cold punch and icy bottled water with the caps undone.
While Nicole was doing a final check of the area, Donita and Marie went into the bathroom where they helped each other extract their own molar-anchored ampoules, both containing mini weapons.
Marie stayed behind, watching over the rooms, while Donita and Nicole hurried down the corridor as fast as they could in their long, revealing harem gowns and carrying a pitcher and two glasses. Nicole even had a garnet glued into her belly button. She’d removed her belly button ring before the mission.
When they got near the metal door, they slowed and smiled seductively at the two guardsmen. In French, they offered the men a cold drink, on orders from the harem mistress, they said. Of course, the men didn’t understand them, but they understood the gesture and drank greedily. Then they leaned against the wall and leered at them, especially at Donita, who was doing this eye-riveting thing with her breasts. Breathing in deeply, then out, then in, then out. Each time, her nipples and the surrounding areolas could be seen prominently pressing against the red sheer fabric of her bodice.
Soon, the men slumped to the floor, and it looked as if the gods of luck were with them. They wouldn’t have to C–4 blast the door or spend time trying to pick the lock since there was a key ring on the one guard’s belt. Plus they now had full-size weaponry—two rifles, a pistol, and several knives. Quickly, they opened the door, dragged the men inside, and shut the door firmly behind them, engaging the lock.
Then they turned.
Saints would weep at what they saw.
Lemonade, anyone . . . ?
“They’re in!” Slick yelled to everyone in the cave, then muttered, “Son. Of. A. Bitch!” as he looked over Geek’s shoulder at the video coming in from one of the WEALS’ contact lens cameras.
The battery life on these mini cameras was less than five minutes, and even then they often malfunctioned. So the women would try one at a time. This first one was working. Too well. Even in the dark chamber where the hostages were being held, they could make out hazy images.
At the gruesome images, Trond’s nuts shot to his tonsils over fear for Nicole, but then he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Donita and Nicole moving about; it must be Marie’s lens doing the filming. The three of them seemed to be unharmed. For now. Not so the hostages.
One of the hostages, older than the rest, which meant it had to be the author Selah ad Beham, was in bad shape. Lying on the floor on a threadbare blanket, she appeared unconscious, which would be a blessed relief considering her injuries. Even a rough eyeball analysis of her external injuries indicated severe beatings and possibly rape.
“Uh-oh! I count only thirteen packages, aside from Donita, Marie, and Nicole,” Geek said.
An ominous silence followed as they replayed the visual scan of the room. “The Greek movie star is missing,” Slick concluded, which was immediately confirmed by a hand mic transmission from Marie. “Athena Goldstein hasn’t been seen since the first days of capture a year ago.”
Morris Goldstein was a powerful politician. Heads were going to roll if his wife was dead. Not that heads weren’t going to roll today, anyhow.
Marie continued, “Selah ad Beham is in critical condition. Both internal and external injuries. The skin on the bottoms of her feet is burned off.”
He heard Nicole’s voice mic interrupt then. “Several of the girls have been raped. We’ll need rape kits. And Beth Hillman has had all her teeth knocked out, and is suffering severe gum infection.” Beth was a young Manhattan beauty, a college coed, whose only crime had been that her father was a hedge fund owner who’d supposedly contributed financially to some Israeli militant group.
Trond understood now what Zebulan had meant about there being plenty of evil sinners for the Lucies to harvest here without going after the SEALs or the hostages . . . and him, of course.
“Medics,” Slick said then. “We’re going to need several medics on the incoming Chinooks. We have blow-out kits for cursory wounds, but these hostages are going to need lots more than we can provide. Geek, can you alert Kabul to have medics on the Chinooks when they come in for extraction? A physician would be even better. And ambulances should be waiting for our return. A lot of them.”
“Roger that,” Geek said, already transmitting the visuals and voice mail back to CentCom.
“Kitty, Kitty, are you there?”
“I’m here,” Nicole said.
“And me,” Donita and Marie both said into their own hand mics.
“Insertion into your chamber will be through a hidden cave entrance. Listen for a tapping on the wall. Five taps in a row.”
“Roger,” the three women said.
Slick then contacted all the men who were at various cave entrances to the compound. They weren’t sure which entrance led to the place where the hostages were being held, and since there were foot-thick metal doors, explosives would have to be used.
They listened to the silence on the line as one after another of the SEALs reported no response to their tapping.
Finally, the women could be heard shouting, “We hear it. We hear it.”
“It’s F.U.’s location,” Slick told the SEALs behind him. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
Men immediately began to gather their gear, each heading toward the cave opening, each well aware of his job as part of the team, and knowing exactly where to go.
All their faces were rigid with fury.
Before they left, Trond heard Nicole exclaim, “What the hell is that? Shut the door, shut the door! Oh fuck! Do you see that . . . thing?”
“It’s as big as a house and has a friggin’ tail,” Donita added.
“And scales. And fangs. Holy crap! It just attacked one of the guards. Wait, there are two of them.”
“I smell lemons. An overpowering lemon scent,” Nicole observed. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
He heard a door slam shut.
The transmission then went dead.
When it came to road trips, he sure knew how to travel . . .
Nicole, Marie, and Donita worked quickly with the women to arrange them on the floor on the far side of the room, hands covering their ears, ankles crossed, and mouths wide open, as they’d been taught in WEALS training, to withstand the explosion to come. Otherwise, even with smaller C–4 explosives, they could sustain permanent damage to their eardrums.
In the case of Selah, the author, Nicole laid herself on top of her body as best she could. The poor woman probably wouldn’t make it. Among the many injuries, Nicole suspected spleen damage.
And Nicole didn’t even want to think about what she’d witnessed outside in the hallway a short time ago. Then, when she’d peeked through a short time later, all she’d seen was a pile of stinky slime. The lemon scent had disappeared.
Even though they’d been prepared for it, the first explosion caused them all to jerk with surprise, followed by the hostages screaming and crying. “Keep your positions,” she yelled out over the chaos. “More to come!”
On the heels of her warning came another explosion, and a massive hole in the wall opened up. SEALs began swarming into the room. Immediately, Cage and K–4 came up to her with a stretcher and the three of them managed to get Selah on her way to safety with as little additional damage as possible. Other SEALs were carrying the girls in their arms, crooning sympathetic assurances to them. One of them had to be Cage, who said, “It’s okay, darlin’. Uncle Sam sent us ta bring you home.” Those hostages who could walk, or run, were already in the cave tunnels, rushing toward ultimate rescue.
She turned t
hen and hit a brick wall . . . rather, Trond’s chest.
“I swear, woman, I lost nine lives over you today.” He yanked her into his arms and hugged her fiercely. When she started to say something, he gritted out, “Don’t you dare mention my gayness. Not now. Don’t. You. Dare.”
“You’re crushing me,” she managed to get out, though she had to admit to liking the way Trond’s arms felt around her. It just wasn’t the right time. Nor would it ever be.
“Over here, Easy,” Slick shouted, and Trond ran over to help maneuver the hallway door open so they could check out the rest of the harem for any women being held against their will. Not that they would be able to tell since they were still under the influence of the sleep drugs. Marie gave them a quick assessment of the individuals in the harem and held up the camera that held nude pictures of the three WEALS. With glee, she shot it with a rifle she’d picked up somewhere.
Just then, the sound of helicopter rotors could be heard overheard. It couldn’t be the Chinooks so soon. Besides, the extraction point was at least a quarter mile away, and it would take the SEALs a half hour to get there with their “baggage.” It must be Najid returning home.
Oh God! We’ve got to get out of here. All hell is going to break loose. Nicole turned, about to go after Trond and Slick to warn them, although they would have heard the helo, too, and she realized she was alone in the room. But not really.
There was a man near the cave opening, leaning casually against the wall, eating an apple. An apple! He was a good-looking man, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the logo “Devil May Care!”
“Hello, Nicole,” he said.
She frowned. “Who are you?”
“Zebulan, but you can call me Zeb.”
Nicole pulled out the pistol from her belt, the pistol she’d taken from one of the guards in the corridor, one of the guards who had been attacked by . . . well, that wasn’t important now. “Are you one of Najid’s men?”
“Me? A Jew? Not even close.”
“Are you with the SEALs? Or the other special forces?”
“Let’s just say I’m a . . . um, friend . . . of Sigurdsson.”
“Trond?”
He nodded.
For some reason, she had doubts. She couldn’t quite explain why. And, besides, why were they just standing here when exit was of prime importance? Still, she found herself asking, “You’re Trond’s friend?”
“A friend of sorts, you could say.”
“Are you, like, one of his lovers?”
At first, the man’s eyes went wide. Then he slapped his thigh with wild laughter he couldn’t hold in. “You think Trond is gay?”
“Don’t you?”
The man . . . Zeb, he had called himself . . . just shook his head. “Trond is no more gay than I’m . . .” He seemed to hesitate for the right word. “ . . . alive.”
“What?” she gasped, especially when the man tossed the core of his apple to the ground and began to transform into the kind of beasts she’d seen outside in the corridor earlier. He grabbed her arm, then wrapped a scale-covered arm around her from behind, placing a knife blade at her throat, just as Trond burst into the room, pistol raised and pointed directly at Zeb. It was a strange-looking pistol, like a Sauer, but somehow different.
“Zeb, put the knife down,” Trond said icily.
“You drop your weapon first.”
“You don’t want to do this, Zeb. I know you don’t.”
“You’re right, but I have no choice. You know what Jasper wants.”
“You have a choice. There’s always a choice.” Pounding footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor. Looking directly at Nicole, Trond said, “Slick has already left. It’s just you and me here now. If we don’t hurry, the Chinooks will leave without us.” She noticed the oddest, scariest thing then. Fangs were elongating inside Trond’s mouth.
Turning his attention to the man holding her, Trond said, “You can take me back to Jasper. Let Nicole go.”
“No!” Nicole protested, sensing that if Trond left her now, she’d never see him again. He was sacrificing himself for her. Why that should matter so much was a puzzle.
“Too late!” the beast said as a key began turning in the corridor door. With his arm still wrapped around Nicole, the beast dropped the knife and grabbed hold of Trond’s arm. With a whooshy noise and blinding mist, Nicole felt as if they were flying through the air. In what felt like hours, but must have been only seconds, she found herself in an empty cave with Trond and Zeb.
“What to do, what to do!” Zeb said.
“Was that Najid’s men at the door back there, or Lucies?” Trond asked.
Nicole had no idea what Trond meant, but Zeb apparently did. “Both,” Zeb replied.
Trond glared at Zeb, but then he cocked his head to the side, “You saved us, didn’t you? You didn’t bring us here to take us to Jasper.”
“I’m still pondering my options.” More confusing words, from Zeb this time.
On those strange words, Nicole felt the three of them swoosh up into the air, through the ceiling and roof. Swoosh was the only word she could think of to describe this in-one-place-one-instant-and-in-another-an-instant-later. For just a blip of a nanosecond they seemed to hover above the courtyard, where dozens of the tailed and fanged beasts swarmed over the helicopter and chased after fleeing humans. At the same time, she saw fanged human-looking creatures with wispy blue wings attacking the beasts. Chaos reigned everywhere.
But then she seemed to go unconscious because next thing she knew the three of them were standing on the deck of a cliff-side, bamboo-and-banana-leaf-roofed bungalow with a spectacular view of the turquoise blue waters.
Dazed, she looked around to see two fanged men—Trond and Zeb—high-fiving each other. She, on the other hand, felt like high-diving into the water to swim away from what had to be a mirage, or something worse. At the least, she would get great pleasure out of shoving the two dick-for-brains men—or whatever they were—over the cliff.
Instead, her stomach heaved, and she fought to find level ground so that the bile pushing its way into the back of her throat could be forestalled. Losing the battle, she bent over the railing and began to puke her guts out.
She hoped when she was done, this nightmare would be over.
Some hidey-holes are nicer than others . . .
Trond wasn’t sure what to do first. Belt Zeb a good one for scaring the crap out of Nicole, or offer to help Nicole, who was still leaning over the railing, retching. He chose the latter.
“Here,” he said, pressing a handkerchief into her hand, his other hand holding her hair back off her face. “Can I do anything for you? A cool washcloth? An aspirin? Is there anything you want?” he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She didn’t raise her head, just tilted it to the side to give him a direct look of loathing before saying, “Yeah. Go fuck yourself, you lying, slime-sucking scumbag.”
“Okaaay,” he said, turning toward Zeb, who grinned at him.
“My wife told me the same thing in pretty much the same words in Old Hebrew when she was pregnant with our second child. Not the lying, slime-sucking scumbag words. The other ones.”
“You had a wife. And children?” Why was he asking such irrelevant questions at a time like this? And why was Zeb sharing such irrelevant information at a time like this?
Zeb paused, seemingly surprised that he’d revealed so much. A cloud passed over his no-longer-grinning face. “Yes, I had a family. A long time ago.” As if wiping an eraser across his expression, he rubbed both hands over his eyes and smiled, offering, “Wanna beer?”
“Thank you, God!” Trond replied, glad-handing the demon. A cold beer was just what he needed about now.
“Not God. It was me who hauled all those cases of brew up the mountainside. Will Blue Moon be okay, or would you prefer a pilsner?”
“Blue Moon would be perfect.” He followed Zeb through the open glass doors into a large living room, complete with co
mfortable, buttery yellow leather sofas and recliners, a flat widescreen TV on one wall, and colorful, probably museum-quality oil paintings on the other walls . . . one of them a big-ass depiction of the open petals of a flower. It resembled the labia of a woman’s vagina, if you asked Trond, which no one did.
Zeb walked into the kitchen that was separated from this main room by a wide, curved archway. It appeared to be all red granite and stainless-steel, top-of-the-line appliances. Corridors led in several directions, leading to bedrooms and bathrooms, he supposed. The place wasn’t huge, but it was casually luxurious.
When Zeb returned, he handed Trond his bottle of beer and sank into the matching recliner beside Trond’s. In the midst of these high-quality furnishings, Zeb had the foresight to provide the ultimate male comforts. They both drank deeply, then belched with appreciation. That was all right, Trond figured, since it was just the two men. He’d made a concerted effort centuries ago to curb his cruder, slothful habits, like belching and farting.
Trond placed his half-empty bottle in the special cup holder on the arm of the recliner, then stacked his hands under his head and leaned back, inclining the chair, with a sigh of comfort. “What is this place, Zeb?”
“My hidey-hole.”
“Jasper doesn’t know about it?”
“Not yet.”
“I thought Jasper knew everything, or could find out everything.”
“I suppose he can, but he never had reason to question my comings and goings. Not yet.”
“You’re going to be in deep shit over this, aren’t you?”
Zeb shrugged. “Depends on what I do with you two.”
Trond arched a brow.
“If I deliver the two of you to Horror, I’ll be a hero. If I don’t . . .” He shrugged again.
“Yes, I imagine it would be horror to be a captive of the lead Lucipire.”
“It would be that, but I meant his home. Horror is the name of Jasper’s castle. In your homeland, by the way. The Norselands. The far, far northern Norselands. Land of ice and . . . horror.”