of men in military fatigues waited there. No sooner had the UH-60’s wheels
touched down than a tall, blond man in military fatigues was leaning in the
helo’s open cargo door, extending a hand to Tombstone as he unbuckled his
safety harness and retrieved his briefcase.
“Welcome to Bergen!” the Norwegian officer shouted to be heard above the
whine of the helicopter’s rotors. “It’s very good to see you!”
Tombstone had memorized a table of Norwegian military rank insignia
before leaving the Jefferson. Three stars on white-bordered shoulder slides
made the man a colonel, equivalent to a U.S. Navy captain. “Commander
Magruder, sir!” he shouted back, saluting. “It’s good to be here!”
“Forget the formalities, my friend. This way, please!” Bending low
beneath the slowing rotors, they trotted across the field to the waiting
soldiers who were standing next to several jeeps and an M-113 personnel
carrier parked by a road. Tombstone clambered into the back of one of the
jeeps, and in moments the entire convoy was heading east, racing up a six-lane
toll road into the hills above the city. The road was almost deserted save
for military traffic, and the tollbooths stood empty and ignored.
It was surprisingly warm and humid, with the mugginess that hangs heavy
in the air before a thunderstorm. Bergen, Tombstone reminded himself, lay
farther north than the southern tip of Greenland, but it possessed a
remarkably mild climate. The hill-blanketing forests were lush and green.
“I’m Colonel Bondevik,” his host said once they were under way. His English
was perfect, carrying only a trace of the musical lilt of the Scandinavian
tongues. “I’m sorry we couldn’t let you fly directly to our headquarters, but
we were concerned that enemy infiltrators might observe the helicopter and
locate our position.”
“Infiltrators?”
“The Spetsnaz.” Bondevik spat the word. “And traitors as well. I fear
the spirit of Vidkun Quisling is not entirely dead in our country.”
The journey into the hills was interrupted only once, ten minutes after
they left Bergen. Receiving a code phrase by radio, the lead jeep in the
convoy pulled off the road and into the shelter of the hardwood forest that
lined that part of the highway. The others followed suit, and waited in the
shadows silently, unmoving, for several moments more.
Then the silence gave way to a growing thunder in the distance. Seconds
later, four jet aircraft boomed out of the east, skimming the hilltops in a
tight-knit diamond formation, so low that Tombstone could see the red stars
painted on wings and tails, and the sun-glint from their canopies.
Sukhoi-27s, Tombstone thought, “Flankers” in the NATO lexicon.
Twin-tailed and arrowhead-flat, they looked like enlarged copies of the
American F/A-18 Hornet, and like the Hornet they were designed as multirole
aircraft, as handy at ground attack as they were in a dogfight. The formation
vanished to the west. Several minutes later, the distant boom and thud of
explosions echoed among the trees, and the Norwegian soldiers with him grew
grimly silent. Bombs were falling in the city they’d just left.
“Have the air attacks been bad?” he asked Bondevik as the convoy began
moving up the highway once again.
“Bad enough,” the Norwegian replied. “Nothing on the scale that you
Americans demonstrated in Iraq a few years ago, but bad enough. We think they
are not so interested in pounding us into rubble as they are in keeping us off
balance. So far the bombing has done nothing but strengthen us.”
Tombstone wasn’t certain he’d understood. “Strengthen?”
“You would be amazed, my friend, how a man can be strengthened by hatred.
Our men fight the bastards with the ferocity of berserks.”
It was raining by the time they reached their destination, a steady,
melancholy drizzle. The headquarters of the Norwegian defense was located in
the woods outside a village called Arna. There was little to see–tents
scattered in small groups beneath the dripping canopy of the forest. Vehicles
were carefully draped with branch-festooned camouflage netting, and the
machine shops, motor pools, and warehouses were hidden in tunnels cut into the
faces of rocky bluffs. Tombstone saw no cook fires, and care was taken not to
run the motors of jeeps or personnel carriers more than was absolutely