Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] (26 page)

Once they disembarked from the metal death trap at the Fort Benning military base in George-ha, he sank to his knees on the ground and gave thanks to
Odin for his safe journey. The worst part of getting off that airplane was knowing he would have to get on again in three weeks. Even worse, he would soon be jumping out of it, or something similar, whilst the plane flew in the skies.

Insanity, that’s what it was.

“I thought you were a smoke jumper at one time.” Cage frowned as he patted him on the shoulder. Ragnor stood and bent over at the waist, trying to breathe.

“What’s a smoke jumper?” Ragnor asked.

“Never mind,” Cage said, shaking his head at him.

“You gotta earn your wings, man,” F.U. told him.

He told F.U. what the Navy could do with his wings.

“You’ll love it,” Pretty Boy said. “You get such a rush the first time you fall. Just like the first time I took the checkered flag at Darlington. Wow! Better than sex.”

“Mayhap better than your sex play,” Ragnor countered, “but not better than my sex play.”

“Seriously, Max, you better get your act together or you’ll be FUBAR before you make your cherry jump,” Flash advised in a kindly fashion.

“Foe-bar? Do you refer to my sword Foe Fighter?”

All his fellow trainees said, “Huh?”

“It’s foo-bar, buddy. FUBAR means Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition,” Flash explained.

“Oh, well, I am already that,” Ragnor said. “We Vikings have a similar word we use betimes. UFWABL.”

“Oooof-wobble? You pullin’ our leg, Max?” Cage asked with a laugh.

“ ’Tis the truth. Up a Fjord Without a Bloody Longship. Same thing.”

Just then a man with a commanding presence yelled out, “At-ten-hut!”

Everyone within hearing range jerked to attention, including Ragnor.

The man, who resembled a bull, stood right in front of Ragnor’s group and seemed to be addressing him personally, though he was surely talking to them all. “I am Sergeant Major Williamson of the United States
Army
Airborne, and we are not about to put up with any crap from a bunch of hairy-assed leg swabbies.”

Ragnor learned later that all combat troops called sailors “swabbies,” implying that all they did was stay safely on ships and swab decks. The term “leg” was used to define anyone who hadn’t yet been jump qualified.

“Is that clear, mister?” the bull bellowed, and, yea, he
was
looking directly at him.

“Who? Me?” Ragnor said, which was really lackwitted, of course.
When will I learn to be quiet?

“No, I’m talking to that tree over there. What’s your name, boy?”

“Ensign Magnusson, sir,” he said, staring straight ahead.

I think I am going to throw up the contents of my heaving stomach.

“I’m gonna remember your name, Magnusson.”

That is just wonderful
. It appeared the sergeant major was demonstrating to them all that they were Navy men at an Army base. Unfortunately, he intended to use Ragnor as his whipping boy.

“Dost think it is fair to pick on me? In my opinion—” he started to say before the sergeant major put up a halting hand.

His comrades groaned with dismay, and some of the Army troops grinned.
Mayhap I should not have spoken.

“And your crybaby, whiney-assed opinion would be what, Ensign Mag-nuss-on?”

“Nothing, Sergeant Major, sir,” he replied, suddenly gaining the wisdom to shut his teeth. “What was that word you used before?” he asked Flash in an undertone once the Army man turned away.

“FUBAR,” Flash murmured back.

“For a certainty!” Ragnor concluded.

“I have another one for you,” Cody said. “This is a classic SNAFU.” Ragnor didn’t even bother to ask. Cody explained all on his own. “Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.”

“That is us,” Ragnor agreed with a sigh.

“Not us,” JAM said. “You.”

Meanwhile, back at the … base …

All hell broke loose after Max left town.

Alison and Ian had both been ordered to move into bachelor officers’ quarters at the base, thanks to a sudden escalation of her breather/stalker situation. Armed military police followed both of them wherever they went, even to the bathroom. Lillian and Sam moved in temporarily with Dr. Feingold, to everyone’s surprise except Alison’s.

The Breather calls had started up again, despite Alison’s private number. There were messages now, in the same or a similar foreign-accented voice—definitely Middle Eastern, according to the Intel—and they were threatening.

A tracing
device had been found in the wallet Alison had given Ian for his birthday. Apparently, the device had been planted there by the person who had entered her apartment weeks ago, as a way to find out where Ian was living.

As a result of the tracing device, Ian’s home had been entered and his phone lines wired. He was also being threatened by the foreign-accented culprit.

Someone was up to no good, and it involved both Alison and her brother. Her father, alerted to the danger, had arrived from D.C., accompanied by an armed guard worthy of a visiting king.

No one knew why they were being stalked, but some of the best military and private Intel in the country was at work on the case. Terrorism in any form was taken seriously these days.

But that wasn’t the worst of Alison’s problems. She was pregnant.
Pregnant!
No one knew but her, and she was less than one month along, but that didn’t change anything.
Pregnant!

Who would have thunk it?

A physician. A superintelligent woman. A Navy SEAL aspiree. A woman who had her whole future mapped out. A control freak personified. Pregnant. Was that dumb, or what?

She and Max had used condoms every time they’d made love … lots of condoms.
Except
for that one bleepin’ nanosecond in the broom closet. God must have a sense of humor to have thrown this roadblock her way. Or maybe He had some plan for her. Was it destiny, as Max kept saying?

She had to laugh or else she would cry.

Well, Max would be coming home at the end of next week.

Would that make things better, or worse?

Are we having fun yet? …

The first two weeks weren’t too bad.

The grueling physical exercise required of SEALs was cut in half, and there was no Gig Squad, no long swims, or nighttime evolutions.

Same old constant running as in SEALs training, though. No one ever walked here, either. The men and women were ordered to run everywhere. “Move it, move it, move!” But here the running was called the Airborne Shuffle, running in step with the left foot slamming down. Some half-brain sitting in an off-his somewhere probably thought it had a musical lilt to it.

Really, the military in this time and this country was a bit barmy, placing so much emphasis on running. They ought to put more time on swordplay, catapulting, laying siege, boiling oil, forcing battering rams through heavy doors.

The Army people here appeared not to like the Navy people much, for no apparent reason, possibly because they’d given their barracks a special name, the Frog Pond, setting them apart from the others.

Sergeant Major Williamson had singled Ragnor out for particular dislike, also for no apparent reason. But the Viking could handle that kind of torment easily. Real torment would have been serving under someone like Svein Forkbeard, who had a free hand with his broadaxe. Cage summed up Ragnor’s situation succinctly: “Sometimes you’re the dog. Sometimes you’re the hydrant.” Ragnor didn’t know precisely what a hydrant was, but he got the gist.

He and the other SEAL trainees had survived
these two weeks. That was the most important thing.

This fifth phase of SEAL training in George-ha was designed to teach the men how to fall in progressively more dangerous situations. The PLFs (parachute landing falls) started with a thirty-four-foot tower simulating an airplane exit.
And wasn’t that great fun!
Then they moved on to 250-foot captive jumps.
Even greater fun, that!
During the upcoming final Jump Week they would all be required to make five qualifying jumps, one in full combat gear and another a mass jump with all their comrades. Out of an airplane. Up in the sky.
I can’t wait. Ha, ha, ha!

The work was tedious at times. Over and over they practiced the proper way to fall into the sawdust pits, to avoid breaking a leg or other body part. They must needs fall on the flat of their feet with the legs acting as springs to absorb the shock, upper body twisting to the side. Not as easy as it at first appeared. Sometimes he missed his brother Torolf, who would have enjoyed hearing him tell of lessons in falling, of all things. The two of them had done way too much of just that as youthling boys bent on mischief.

Today was Saturday, and they’d been given the only liberty day to be dispensed whilst in George-ha. Ragnor had been calling Alison’s tell-a-fone number every half hour, to no avail. All he got was her answering machine—a torture device, to be sure.

“Where could she be?” he complained when he returned to the table in the drinking hall where his friends were sloshing down beer and eating pete’s-ha, an Ah-mare-ee-can delicacy that looked like manchet bread with cheese and a bloodlike substance on top. Actually, it was delicious.

“She’s still not there, huh?” Cage asked, patting him on the shoulder as he sat down.

Ragnor shook his head and decided he just might have to drown his sorrows in his mead. He’d been unable to make any fone calls the first two weeks they’d been here. Now, at his first free time, she was unavailable. Why he would think she should have made herself available, without prior notice, he had no idea, but he was chagrined nonetheless.

Just then a female Army person sat down in the empty chair on his other side and said, “Hiiiii, baby.”

He looked to his left and then behind him to see whom she addressed. “Are you talking to me?”

“Oh, yeah! My name’s Tamara Blue. I’m from Savannah. Y’all can call me Tammie, y’heah?” She talked with the same lazy drawl as Cage.

“Just call me Max,” he replied, a mite baffled. Usually women latched onto Pretty Boy first, attracted by his superior good looks, as he so often reminded them. Or JAM if they were more tempted by dark, mysterious men. Ragnor was not a humble man. He knew his assets, and they were plenty, but still he asked, “Why me?”

“Honey, I reckon you got a butt to die for. I noticed when you went to make a phone call.”

He grinned.
Bloody hell, I wish Torolf were here. He would be hooting with laughter that a woman is attracted by my arse.

“Y’all gonna buy me a beer?”

“Oh. Yea. Of course.” He felt as clumsy as an untried youthling. Cage laughed and raised a hand in the air to signal the serving wench. Ragnor’s other comrades smirked at his awkwardness.

He recognized the woman now. She was in their
jumping class. Whilst some of the men shivered in their boots afore leaping from the high towers, she had launched herself out with a wild yell of “Yahoo!”

“Sooooo, Max, is it true what they say about SEALs?” she inquired lazily after taking a long swig of beer straight from the bottle. Holding his eyes, she did the most outrageous thing. She took the long neck of the bottle into her mouth, all the way, then slowly drew it out, licking the sides the whole time.

Son of a dragon! I wonder if Alison can do that?

He heard Cage mutter at his other side, “Sonofagun!” The other men muttered things more explicit than that.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, what?” He gulped as he spoke. Tammie was short, petite, and blond, with a tattoo on her arm that read “Born to be Wild.” She was not his type at all; still, a part of his body appreciated her assets very much … and the bottle trick, he had to admit. He shifted in his seat to accommodate that growing appreciation.

Tammie noticed and grinned at him. “I asked if it was true what they say about SEALs?”

That they are demented? That they talk too much about women? That they are braggarts?
“What do they say?”

“That y’all have great staying power. All that long-distance swimming and stuff tends to build muscle.” She put particular emphasis on the word “muscle,” which let him know which muscle she was referring to. As if he and said muscle didn’t know exactly what she meant.

“I do not know about SEALs, but we Vikings are known far and wide for that particular talent,” he told her truthfully.

“Oh, my Gawd! You’re a Viking, too. I luuuuve football.”

Flash burst out laughing, and beer shot out of his mouth. “Good thing he’s not a Ram. Think of that picture.”

“Do you think the Minnesota Vikings wear horned helmets?” Cody was laughing so hard he kept hitting the table with his fist as if to catch his breath.

“Or that the Rams know how to
ram
?” Sly added with a chuckle.

In truth, they were all making mirth at his expense and that of the young woman.

“I mean that I am from the Norselands,” he explained to Tammie.

“Jerks!” she said to the entire table, including him. Then she stood, about to stomp away.

Ragnor couldn’t insult a woman, even a stranger, especially when tears welled in her eyes. He put a hand on her forearm and drew her back down. “My apologies, m’lady, I meant no offense. I really am a Viking by birth. And my friends”—he cast a warning glower around the table—“well, they are nigh
drukkin
and will surely suffer the alehead in the morning, if that is any recompense.”

She nodded her acceptance of his apology. Some of her friends came to join them at the table, which shut the crude mouths of his comrades. In the shuffle of gathering extra chairs and ordering drinks, Tammie asked, “Wanna dance?”

Well, actually, he didn’t “wanna,” but he couldn’t offend her further. So he stood with a sigh of resignation and walked out onto the dance floor. There were no musicians, but music blared from a lighted box.

Tammie came only to his chin, so she wrapped her arms
around his waist and rested her face on his chest. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he placed them on her shoulders. Then they swayed from side to side.