Covert (3 page)

Of course, Rebecca hadn’t been paying a bit of attention. She had been trying to figure out the migration path that would bring such a concentrated group of Jewish descendants to Iceland.

“I must have missed it.”

Fran took a bite of pear and chewed it while she spoke. And Americans were considered rude? “The guide said that the tour used to include cave exploration, but then they were deemed too unsafe.”

“Then the owner of this bed-and-breakfast told us it had nothing to do with slips and falls, but that the caves bore back all the way to the cliffs and were haunted by the ancestors of the village.”

“Either way, our trip insurance wouldn’t cover it if we went up there.”

So why would one of the guides have offered to take Rebecca and Bunny up there?

* * *

No wonder the allies hadn’t just fired into the mouth of the cave and collapsed it. There were dozens of innocent lives at stake, including that of Vakasa, the little girl that had saved them.

“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Davidson surmised, for all of them.

“That’s what she—”

Brandt’s glare cut Lopez off. He was in no mood for the corporal’s humor today. Actually, any day, but at this moment, especially not. They were going to have to find a way around the numerous guards, sneak into the mouth of the cave, set off some explosives, and get the natives a safe distance away before the whole thing came down on their heads.

“Davidson, find a perch.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sniper disappeared into the brush without a sound.

“Lopez, we are going to need some kind of distraction.”

“You know it,” the corporal said with a smile.

“Levont, I am assuming you can help with that?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’ll get eyes in the sky, as well,” Talli said.

“Agreed,” Brandt answered having almost forgetting to give Talli an assignment.

As the man moved off, Levont leaned into Lopez. “Is it my imagination or is that guy not a great shot?”

“It is
not
your imagination,” Lopez confirmed.

“Distration?” Brandt prompted.

Now, if nothing else went wrong, they should be set for a night attack.

Then a man—a white man in camos—was shoved from the jungle’s edge. He stumbled a few steps, then fell to his knees. Brandt swept his binoculars to the captured man. A red and blue badge with a winged sword was on his shoulder. The French. Around his ankle was a vine rope. He’d been caught by a snare. It must have been what had set the monkeys off before.

These African paramilitary used both high- and low-tech techniques. By setting traps near animal gatherings, they had a warning system for when they had trapped something. Or in this case, s
omeone
.

“You know they’re going to try an ill-advised rescue operation,” Lopez said.

“So?” Levont asked, looking back and forth between Lopez and Brandt.

“Which means we don’t need to build a diversion, the French will do it for us,” Lopez answered.

* * *

Rebecca walked into her room, taking a swig of musk ox milk. The stuff was pungent, yet very filling. Bunny still wasn’t back yet. But the redhead was an adult, and she could do whatever she liked. While Rebecca had hoped that the younger woman and Davidson had formed a bond slightly stronger than Bunny running off with the first pony guide she met, Rebecca didn’t want to interfere.

She had a day of sample collecting to plan out.

Even though she was hunting down mitochondrial DNA, which was passed down through the mother’s egg and had nothing to do with external phenotypes, Rebecca was still going to start looking for Jewish heritage in those with darker hair and eyes.

Bunny’s guide might be one of the first she tested. Then onward to the next town that had a number of brunettes who stood out from the sea of blondes that inhabited this island. The Norsemen were light skinned and light eyed because of the extreme northern latitudes in which they had descended. With narrow angle light and not much of it, their skin needed to lighten up to allow more production of vitamin D. On the other hand at the equator, with full angle sunlight and plenty of it, skin and eye color had to darken up to protect against skin cancer. There was no better or worse, there was just adaptation to light conditions.

After collecting the obvious samples, Rebecca would then track down relatives of those dark-haired citizens to try and build a family tree. Hopefully, at that point she could build a timeline of when the Jewish population landed on Iceland. From there, they might be able to track down where on the continent that population had come from, and then backtrack as far as that would take her, trying to find a trail to the Disciples’ front door.

It was a long shot, but since all of the Disciples had been killed in the cavern, they had absolutely no leads to where the upper management of the Disciples were holed up. And if they were ever going to be safe, they needed to root out the Disciples just like they had the Knot. Okay, so that had been Brandt’s team doing the rooting, but this time he needed her to find them. They couldn’t root what they couldn’t find.

And this Viking connection was the first even remote lead they’d had. To think that the Disciples had come to Iceland centuries ago? Had they known of the new land? Did they know where they were going? Why were they questing westward? Were they looking for their savior?

Or were the Jewish population here just immigrants, unaware of the cultin their midst? Or was the entire Jewish contingency Disciples? But if that was the case, then it meant that Disciples had settled here.

And Bunny had just gone off with one of the archetypal Jewish phenotypes. Dark hair, high brow, strong nasal ridge.

Rebecca tried to rein in the panic, but with Bunny gone all night, it was a little hard. Especially after Russia and Jordan. It was nearly impossible to overstate the danger Bunny could be in. And Rebecca had let her maid of honor just wander off with a dark-haired stranger.

Grabbing her jacket, Rebecca set off to find the tour leader’s room.

Making sure that she wasn’t overreacting, Rebecca imagined what Brandt would say if asked if they should go find Bunny. Obviously, the answer would be “hell, yes.” Actually, it would probably be stronger than that. And what if they interrupted Bunny and the guide participating in some “adult” activities? “Guess she’ll learn to leave a note,” the Brandt inside Rebecca’s head answered. Glad to know her fiancée agreed with her.

Rebecca found the right room and knocked at the door. A grumble answered. Rebecca knocked again. The sound of muffled cursing came through the thick wood. Rebecca backed up a step as the door opened.

“What?” the blurry-eyed guide asked.

“I need your help to find my roommate.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your guide took Bunny into the ice caves and they haven’t been seen since.”

This got the guy’s attention. “He wouldn’t. Our insurance doesn’t cover that area.”

“I know,” Rebecca answered. “So you can see why I’m worried.”

“Give me three minutes,” the guide said, closing the door.

It was more like ninety seconds before the tour leader was dressed and ready to go. They made it to the barns, where the guide saddled two ponies who did not seem at all happy to be going out in the middle of the night. Their long tails swished in irritation. But the more Rebecca thought about it, the more worried she became. To think, they had let their guard down for just a few moments and the Disciples had snuck in and taken Bunny? Rebecca shivered, and it had nothing to do with the early morning chill.

The entrance to the ice caves wasn’t far, and the ponies made good time, especially with the tour guide spanking Rebecca’s on the rump. Little did the guy know he wasn’t just protecting his insurance premiums, he was potentially saving Bunny’s life.

They found the younger guide’s and Bunny’s ponies tied up next to a large, ragged hole in the ice.

“Damn it,” The tour leader cursed under his breath. “How many times have I told him…”

“So he’s come out here before?”

“To impress the girls, yes.”

That made Rebecca feel slightly better. Maybe this was just a seduction, and not something more nefarious. That would be a pleasant surprise.

They dismounted, tied their ponies up and headed into the ice cave. The ground was as slick as you would imagine an ice cave would be. Rebecca could see why the insurance company had insisted none of the tour come up here. The place was a broken hip just waiting to happen.

Moans came from deeper within the cave system.

“That’s just the wind coming through the various lava tube vents,” The guide reassured her.

Unfortunately, Rebecca was familiar enough with subterranean tunnel systems to know their idiosyncrasies. “I can see why the natives thought these caves were haunted, though.”

The tour leader just gave a grunt and headed into the cave. Water dripped down from the ceiling, splashing on Rebecca’s shoulder. The warm summer air, along with their body heat, was melting a bit of the ceiling. These ice caves had survived millennia, although, with global warming, Rebecca wondered how long they would last.

As they went deeper and deeper into the caves without finding Bunny, global warming became the least of her worries. They came to a three way fork in the tunnel.

“Well?” The guide asked.

Rebecca checked the ground. There were no shoe prints or indications of which way the pair had gone, so Rebecca chose the largest of the tunnels to go through. It should lead the deepest into the glacier, to where those supposed special runes would be carved.

They hurried down the tunnel, Rebecca only slipping occasionally. The tour leader made sure she didn’t fall. He was a pretty burly guy. Nothing compared to Brandt, of course, but who did?

Coming to another fork in the tunnel, Rebecca again chose the larger of the two, and was rewarded by finding Nordic runes carved into the ice. They were on the right track. After several more forks, Rebecca stopped.

“Turn off your light,” Rebecca instructed the guide.

As soon as he did, Rebecca noted a glow further down the tunnel. She’d learned the trick from spending so much time underground with Brandt’s team.

“Keep it off,” Rebecca instructed as she inched forward. The guide tried to pass her, but she grabbed his arm and tugged him back. “We’ve got to proceed with caution.”

“Why the hell should we?” the guide argued.

“It’s complicated,” Rebecca said, not overstating the situation.

Sneaking up, she could hear the rise and fall of voices. Unfortunately, the words were bouncing off the ice walls, distorting their meaning. Was Bunny begging for her life?

If she was talking, though, she was alive, and Rebecca would take it.

They finally arrived at the mouth of the next junction.

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” the guide said, and burst into the large cave.

Rebecca followed, hot on his heels, to find Bunny taking pictures of a large set of runes.

“Rebecca!” Bunny exclaimed, rushing over to her. “I didn’t want to wake you, but look what we’ve found.”

Relief washed over Rebecca. She was so glad that her worries were unfounded. “It’s three o’clock in the morning,” Rebecca chided the younger woman.

“And you?” The tour leader said to the guide. “Do you know how much trouble you are in?”

From the way the younger man’s eyes were downcast, apparently he did.

Bunny pointed to the wall. “The Vikings were a chatty bunch, and they insisted on thanking a benefactor who wished to remain anonymous. I think we can guess who that would be.”

Glad to be talking ruins instead of a Disciple kidnapping, Rebecca asked, “You’ve documented it all?”

“Yes, but there must be dozens of these caves. Even if we split them up, it could take us days to document it all.”

“Oh no,” the tour leader said. “No one is coming back here.” The man tried to herd them out. “This area is off-limits to everyone.”

“And if we sign a waiver for your company?” Rebecca asked.

The man’s eyes squinted. “And pay a fee?”

“So be it,” Rebecca said.

The man, again, urged them to the exit. “Until then, you are still my responsibility, so let’s get us all nice and safe back to the bed-and-breakfast.”

“I’m sorry,” the guide said, “But I can’t let you do that.”

Rebecca’s stomach sank as the younger man pulled out a gun. She hated being right. “You’re a Disciple?”

“A what?” the guide asked, seeming genuinely confused. “I got offered ten thousand to detain you,” he said, indicating to Rebecca. “And five thousand for her. So I settled on bringing you out,” he said to Bunny.

Even with a gun trained on her, the redhead’s eyebrows shot up. “Settled?”

* * *

Brandt shifted on his heels. They had taken up position near the mine’s entrance, waiting for the French to attack and distract the guards away from the mine so they could sneak in and set the explosives.

However, there were still a good twenty guards at the entrance. They were going to need a seriously large distraction to get past them all.

The French were going to have to act quickly if they wanted to attack before the sun rose. The skies were blushing a bit of pink at the horizon. He didn’t blame the French for waiting until the last moment, since early morning raids were the most effective. Best to attack when the people were in their deepest sleep cycle of the night. Disorienting the enemy was the key to a rescue mission.

Brandt wished the French the best of luck.

A shot rang out from the center of the village, then more. The attack was a go. Brandt nodded for Levont to take them in. Before he could, the little girl stepped in front of him. How could a child dressed in orange keep sneaking up on them?

Brandt passed Lopez, joining Levont at the head of the column. He tried to urge the little girl out of the way, but she refused to move. Worse, a middle-aged woman in bright green had joined her.

“It is suicide to go in there,” the woman said, putting her hands on the little girl’s shoulders.

“We’re used to those odds,” Lopez snorted, softly.