Sleipnir

Chapter Eight

When I finally stirred, I was momentarily confused. I blinked at my surroundings for what felt like whole minutes until memory returned; then glanced automatically at my wrist. The watch gave me an utterly meaningless time; but I had a feeling I'd been asleep for several hours. I was so cold I could barely move. An angry, vibrating whine made itself known somewhere above my head, grating like fingernails on slate, just at the edge of hearing. That must've been what'd woken me... .

Groggily I rolled over. The cyalume still glowed brightly. Higher up, another greenish glow caught my attention.

Uh-oh.

I dragged myself up onto hands and knees and peered at the knife. It was embedded nearly to the guard in stone.

The eerie green light which I'd seen swirling through it during battle was back. A high-pitched sound resonated through the very rocks. I reached out hesitantly and touched the haft. The tail grabbed my wrist with scalding strength. I yowled and jerked back. It felt like I'd tried to move the whole mountain with my wrist.

"Ungh—"

There wasn't room to stand up, so I shrugged out of my pack, and sat with both feet braced against the wall. I grabbed hold with both hands, and pulled. Several vertebrae popped creatively; then the blade wrenched loose from crumbling stone and my head cracked hard on the opposite tunnel wall.

When the stars disappeared, I shook myself and sat up.

The knife lay quietly in my grasp. The blade wasn't even scratched.

It figured.

I rubbed my skull gingerly and didn't feel any blood, although there was a lump growing beneath the skin. Having determined that I was relatively undamaged, I sheathed the knife and retrieved the cyalume stick, then took a quick look around.

This passage was low and very narrow. Beyond the glow of my lightstick it seemed to end in the utter blackness I'd learned to associate with deep passages. So far so good. I eased up onto my knees and established that there was just enough clearance to crawl with my pack in place, so I strapped it back on and began to explore.

Presently the tunnel opened out into a larger chamber. Walls, floor, and ceiling had been smoothed from centuries of flowing water. Soft green cyalume light showed a vast circular pattern worn into a bowl-shaped depression below me. Looking up, I saw a matching pattern on the ceiling, forming a dome above my head. It looked as if a whirlpool had formed where the tunnel opened out, carving the dome above and bowl below. Beyond the depression, the passageway continued on, wider and higher, through a black hole in the far wall.

Good. That boded well. But first, I had a little urgent business to attend to. I was shivering so hard my elbows wanted to collapse beneath me. First came dry clothing. Fortunately, I'd packed my spares, including underwear and socks, in waterproof bags. I stripped off my wet stuff, shucked on dry clothes, and spent the next fifteen minutes doing calisthenics. When I stopped shivering and finally began to feel warm again, I sat down to deal with the rest of my soggy gear.

The sleeping bag was hopeless. I set it aside to form an "abandon" pile. Inside the pack, I found a waterlogged lump of former hardtack biscuits glued to the inside of their paper container. My stomach rebelled; but I'd eaten worse. I patted the mess into a lump, and divided it into three smaller "loaves." These I put to one side, along with my remaining bits of dried fruit and the last jerky stick.

Most of my spare ammo was wrapped in plastic against the dampness of the cave. I was pleased to find it still dry, despite my recent immersion. I set the wet plastic carefully aside and stacked ammo into a neat little pile, then removed the magazines from my belt pouches. They were soaking wet, of course, along with the ammo in them. I hoped the individual rounds were well sealed. I emptied the magazines and set the wet rounds to one side.

My meager supply of carbide was completely useless now, of course, since I had no way of burning it without the helmet lantern. I stacked that on top of the sleeping bag.

I then emptied every pouch and pocket of my gear, and spread everything out. I frowned and pulled at my lower lip. Two of my four twelve-hour lightsticks had broken their vials during my bout with the river, so I had plenty of light at the moment; but I'd run out one day sooner than I'd anticipated. I was down to two twelve-hour sticks, four six-hour units, and seven half-hour shorties, for a total of two days, three and a half hours of potential light.

Something told me I wasn't going to stumble across the gateway to Niflheim during the next two days and three and a half hours; but there wasn't much I could do about that. Spelunking in the dark ought to be about as much fun as scuba diving the Titanic.

Having established the condition of that gear absolutely essential to my survival, my next priority was to dry and clean the guns. They shouldn't have begun to rust yet, of course; but it didn't pay to take chances. Rummaging through my supplies, I found the little field cleaning kit I carried with me everywhere, and took the guns apart one at a time, drying, cleaning, lubricating, and carefully inspecting each part before reassembly. I checked the AR-180 aluminum magazines for damage. Thankfully, I found none, so I dried them and the rounds they had contained.

I took more care with the P-7 magazines, drying and very lightly oiling each one, both inside and out; then I dried each individual round thoroughly before returning it to the magazine. The only ammunition I had been able to buy for the P-7 had been some World War II German surplus 9mm Parabellum, which had steel-jacketed iron bullets rather than the civilian hollow-points I would have preferred. The caution I used in drying them out was well advised; there's always a risk of iron rounds rusting in steel magazines, even without submersing them in mineral-rich water.

Then, hungry enough to eat nails, I bit into the first of the three "bread loaves." It was awful: wet and doughy. But I choked it down and washed the taste from my mouth with water.

After drinking my fill—half emptying the canteen in the process—I grabbed a cyalume stick and crawled back to the river. Refilling the canteens left me with a full supply. I was relatively warm, relatively dry, and relatively fed. All in all, I felt relatively marvelous—only mildly battered, bruised, and bashed. Not bad for a guy who ought to have been dead a couple of times over.

Once everything was dry, I threaded the chain that held my gold Thor's hammer through carrying holes in the ends of my three functioning lightsticks. I couldn't afford not to have both hands free; hanging from my chest was a good place for them. Then I snugged the magazines back into the pouches on the web gear, repacked everything I was taking with me, and carefully strapped the rifle to the pack frame, with the stock folded so the barrel wouldn't scrape on the low ceiling.

The P-7 hung reassuringly at my waist, and the knife seemed to hum a pleasant little tune against my calf. My footsteps echoed above the distant sound of the river. I even whistled a Sousa tune, feeling remarkably well pleased with the world.

Which was probably a good indication that the bottom was about to fall out again.

It was Crater's fault we visited Frau Stempel in the first place. I'd never been to a fortune teller in my life, although I'd been to the circus as a kid, and had blown plenty of pop-bottle money on the sideshows. Crater got this wild idea that a fortune teller could warn us if the ragheads were going to hit us again, so after an argument, and several bets and counter bets, we decided to visit Frau Stempel. She had a place in the village, nice and discreet, and made a living selling books, candles, and advice. She could've been my grandmother.

As luck would have it, I drew lots for the first session.

"Sit down, won't you?" she asked with a smile.

Her "sitting room" smelled like a bakery, warm with scents of apples and cinnamon. There was no trace of mumbo-jumbo knickknackery, just a cozy little parlor for two, with comfortable, overstuffed chairs, and a little table with Belgian lace draped over it.

"You do not believe in what you have come for, do you?"

I glanced up, and met bemused blue eyes. I started to answer, reconsidered, and finally said, "Frau Stempel, I don't know what I believe."

Her eyes widened slightly; then she simply patted my hand, and sat down across the table from me. She didn't pull out tarot cards, or put a crystal ball between us. All she did was move a candle holder to the center of the table, and fish out a box of wooden matches. The candle was white, and covered with little squiggles and cramped words. She lit the new wick, fanned out the match, and smiled.

"Now, what would you like to know, my young friend? There is a girl, perhaps, or do you have a soldier's fears?"

What did I want to know? I didn't really give a damn about ragheads anymore, so long as they kept to their side of the fence. Even if they didn't, I could handle myself in a fight. Still, that's what we'd come to find out.

I opened my lips to ask about the ragheads, and said, "Tell me how to find Niflheim."

Her eyes shot wide, and her face lost color.

"What?" Her voice was breathless.

"Niflheim," I said with growing conviction. I leaned forward, with my elbows propped against Belgian lace. "If you're any good, Frau Stempel, tell me how to find Niflheim, without dying."

She blinked several times, and closed her hands in folds of the lace, then swallowed. "You... are playing with me, yes?"

I held her gaze. "I'm not crazy," I said softly. "And I'm not making a joke."

Frau Stempel wet her lips, then excused herself and poured a glass of water from a pitcher and drank it down in two rapid gulps. Then she returned to the table, and proceeded to ignore me completely. She concentrated on the candle flame, and whispered words, too softly for me to hear. The room seemed to grow darker, despite afternoon sunlight pouring through the curtains and the candle flame between us. The back of my neck crawled, and I found myself wanting to glance over my shoulder. Maybe this hadn't been my best idea ever... .

The candle flared wildly in the still air. For an instant, I thought someone must have opened the door on us—

Then a four-foot column of flame shot upward from the table. Frau Stempel screamed and I found myself on my feet, backing away from searing heat. Someone was yelling outside, trying to get the door open. Frau Stempel ran for the door, herself, but it wouldn't open. She whirled and faced the thing that was growing out of the fire. I had never taken my eyes from it.

It had fangs, and wild, angry eyes, and the lean, hungry shape of a hunting dog. Belgian lace ignited under its paws. Fire spread to the carpet, the chairs. Snarls filled the parlor, and the saliva dripping from its mouth as it advanced ignited new fires. Frau Stempel screamed again, and beat on the door.

There wasn't a dry spot anywhere on me, and I was having trouble breathing... . I hurled myself between Frau Stempel and the thing locked in the room with us.

It lunged.

I yelled, and threw one arm up—

A warm haft slid into my hand and wild green light flared brighter than the hellhound. Heat engulfed my whole body, and I yelled again. Momentum carried the blade right through the fiery apparition, muzzle to tail. I heard a sizzle as it parted to pass on either side of me... .

Then it was gone.

I stood panting in the middle of the rug, and clutched Gary's knife. The green glow vanished... and so did the knife. Little fires scorched the rug all around my feet. I stamped them out, and grabbed the pitcher of ice water. That took care of the smoldering chairs and tablecloth. A moan reached me from near the door, then the knob simply turned, and the whole gang piled into the room.

"What the hell happened?"

"Get Frau Stempel!" I snapped. She was seated on the floor.

Wally picked her up, and carried her out of the room, while Chuck wrestled with the windows. The parlor was full of smoke. I followed Wally, who had found a couch in the next room.

"Frau Stempel? Are you all right?"

She looked up, and moaned. "Go away... ."

I crouched beside her. "I'm very sorry, Frau Stempel. I... had no idea... ."

She closed her eyes. "Please, go away."

Her face was somewhere between grey and white, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Wally covered her, and found a telephone. We waited until the doctor had arrived. I explained that the candle had overturned, and the room had caught fire, then I left him with some money to cover the cost of his visit and the damage to her home. I felt like a worm; but it was the best I could do.

Crater never did get his answer; but I'd gotten mine.

There was only one hellhound in all of Norse mythology. Its name was Garm. The cave it guarded was the entrance to Niflheim. Somewhere, that cave existed, and Odin didn't want me to find it. In less than three weeks, I'd have all the time in the world to hunt. Just three weeks...

If I could keep Odin from killing me first.

For the next three weeks, I watched my back and slept with one eye on the door, and generally was as edgy as an addict three days after his last blow. At any rate, I watched my step. Every step.

By the time my last shift on the towers rolled around (although I didn't know then it would be my last), I was beginning to wonder if maybe Odin wasn't saving up for a shoe the size of Manhattan to drop on me. Conditions had gotten back to relative normal—although nobody ever talked about Gary Vernon or Frau Stempel—and the guys had started in with the jokes about my being so "short" I'd have to start standing on a ladder to unzip my fly, and other equally crude quips designed to get me through my last few weeks as a U.S. infantryman. They were a good bunch of guys, and I knew I'd miss them.

It was a quiet shift from the start; but there was a new moon, which meant it was black as the inside of a cave beyond the lights. Bright sunshine the day before had started to thaw the frozen ground, leaving relatively warm, wet earth under a blanket of cool night air. Spring wasn't supposed to arrive in Germany until April, but the weather these days was every bit as weird as everything else in my life had been lately.

The nice part was not freezing to death in the towers, or having to slog through two feet of snow on patrol. The bad part was, cool moist air hitting the warm earth as it chilled had resulted in a sea of ground fog stretching across the whole countryside and hiding the terrain beneath a layer of thick white nothingness.

As luck would have it, I was stuck in Tower Three, facing the worst spot on the perimeter, a belly-deep washout that ended just outside the fence. It ended there only because we'd shoveled half a truckload of dirt into it on this side to keep it from running right into the compound. I couldn't see anything of the washout tonight, though. The fences rose from drifting fog, floating eerily above the wet earth as though we'd invented antigravity.

I hated nights like this. There was no way to see what might be crawling around out there, and I didn't have much backup from either direction if things got hot. Butler was over on my right, nowhere to be seen through his windows. Our resident doper was stretched out on the floor again, dead to the world, leaving me with double terrain to watch.

At least I didn't have to worry about watching over to my left. Johnson had really cracked that day I cut up the ragheads. Brass'd had to strip him of his security clearance and pull him off the towers. He'd kept babbling about "that knife... ." They'd given him a job filling ketchup bottles in the mess hall. At least he was off the guard towers and out of my hair.

(Every time I asked Sergeant Brown about the ragheads I'd cut up, he just said, "We're working on it," or, "The MPs are handling it." I finally quit asking.)

There hadn't been any more incidents since then, either. We'd put the fear of Allah into them; or at least made them more cautious. I hoped we hadn't made them too cautious—they'd always left traces before, warning us they were in the area; but things had been so quiet lately, everyone was getting too relaxed. I didn't like it; but there wasn't a thing I could do about it, except sweat.

I glanced over at the tower to my left, where Stanley was wide awake and fully alert. No; more like nervous and wound up tighter than my old childhood Timex.

I snorted. He still wasn't talking to us. His first day in the platoon—a week after Johnson left us—the guys had generously told him LAD meant Launch And Die, and the moron repeated it in front of the artillery officer. Five minutes of the best ass-chewing it had ever been my pleasure to witness was followed by fifteen minutes of intense one-on-one instruction on Launch and Dispersal tactics... .

I still marveled at Stanley's total lack of brains. He wasn't dangerously stupid, like Johnson; just amazingly gullible. The gods alone knew we had needed a few laughs by then. He'd been such an easy hit that first day, Chuck had really outdone himself, devising a plan to put Stanley to the test. And Stan, bless his teeny little brain, hadn't let old Chuck down.

The very official-looking orders required Stanley to attend the "Pershing Missile In-flight Maintenance Non-Commissioned Officer's Course," and included a typed description of said course, complete with parachute training, electronics training, promotion to sergeant, and extra pay for hazardous duty. All that was required of Stan was to show up with all his gear at the First Sergeant's office right before morning Physical Training (a full half an hour before reveille).

First Sergeant Pitt was One Serious Mutha from South Chicago. He'd been with us exactly one week longer than Stanley, and he already had a rep as someone you didn't, and I mean not ever, screw around with. So naturally, Chuck sent our lamb right into the new First Shirt's gentle care. Pitt read the orders, and asked Stan if he was ready to begin training, then opened his window, and tossed Stanley out through it. Into the middle of morning PT.

Poor old Stan. He promised to give the guys endless entertainment. I was almost sorry I'd miss it. Almost. Stanley just might make these last few weeks of mine more bearable than the months behind me had been. Brass had already told us we had to pull duty ninety days straight, so although I had leave coming to me before my discharge, I wouldn't be able to use it. We were short nearly half a shift, and there was no chance of getting any more new recruits security-cleared before summer. I had no idea what they'd do when I rotated out. No matter how you looked at it, it was going to be a long spring.

I sighed, watching the heavy fog stir into wisps and tendrils in the faint breeze, and tried not to think about the brunette I'd met on my last pass for the whole season. Ready, willing... and I was stuck with one raging appetite and no relief in sight. I glanced at the sky, and frowned at the heavy overcast I could just barely see. It might rain before the shift was up, and that'd be just great. Warm, wet—

I would not think about that brunette.

A hint of motion caught my peripheral vision and I looked sharply left. So damn dark out there, and with that washout running right up, hidden in pea soup...

The commander of the relief walked into sight between the fences on the far side of Stanley's tower, moving toward the washout. I relaxed. Stan yelled "Halt" and Corporal Brunowski called back the proper response. I wondered if Stanley would remember—or care—to follow custom and telephone us that the commander of the relief was headed our way.

A quick look right confirmed that Butler was still out cold. Of course. And—of course—there wasn't a peep from Stanley on the phone. Obviously he was way too pissed off to let anyone else know the corporal was making his rounds. I picked up the phone to warn Butler as well as the next tower down from him, where Monroe was on guard. Wally and Crater and the rest of the bums I normally hung out with were sacked out over in the bunkhouse between shifts. Lucky stiffs.

I got no response on the phone. I frowned, ringing it a few more times, still with no results. It was live; but no one was responding. Must be Sergeant Baker on the switchboard. It would be just like him to turn it off, to see who tried to call and who was sound asleep. Butler was still down and out. Well, Christ, I had to do something.

I went out onto the tiny back "porch" of the tower and slammed the door a couple of times to wake Butler up. Nothing. I glanced over to see how close the corporal was—and saw nothing. Aw, nuts. He must've run past to get under my tower. The whole guard mount was playing stupid games tonight.

I peered under the tower—and found nothing. A prickle ran down my spine. Where the blazes was Brunowski? He'd been moving toward the washout... .

Thoroughly irritated, and more than a little worried about gigantic black hellhorses and one-eyed gods with a really perverted sense of humor, I slung my rifle over my back and climbed up onto the roof. I needed to gain an extra few feet of angle. With a slight grunt, I hauled myself up over the little walkway that ran across the back of the tower. The earlier faint breeze had picked up a little and felt cool in my face as I belly-crawled through roofing gravel over to the edge. Fog was blowing into eddies and clear spots, leaving the washout partly visible. I looked down between the fences... and found Brunowski.

Flat on his back, sprawled with arms and legs at all angles. Dark blood was still spurting from his throat.

They'd got Brunowski.

Goddamn.

A knot of something between fear and rage took hold of me, even as my eyes found the hole in the outer fence. Someone just outside the wire was holding the hole apart. Two guys were crawling belly-flat past the corporal, toward another man pulling apart a hole in the inner fence. Of all the times for sergeant of the guard to screw around with the phones...

I scooted back and pulled my rifle free, then eased back the bolt to cock it as quietly as I could manage. I checked to see if the magazine had fed properly, started a round in the chamber, knocked the forward assist into place...

And started to sweat.

Jesus God, let me not screw up... .

I put the rifle on semiautomatic, stood up, and took aim at the s.o.b. crawling through the hole in the inner fence.

Two shots rent the silence. Both caught the leading terrorist in the neck. He flopped awkwardly and slid backward to disappear into a stray patch of whiteness.

"HALT! DO NOT MOVE!"

I fired another quick burst of six rounds, two of which caught the second man in line when he jumped up to return fire. He slammed backward and I heard yells coming from Stanley's tower. Two down, eight shots gone; that left ten shots loaded. If the magazine had been full.

I caught motion with the corner of my eye and turned to see a fifth man running through the grass straight at us. I centered him and fired four times. He disappeared. I cursed. I'd hit him—where'd he go?

A burst of full automatic fire raked my position. I returned fire into the woodline, five shots, then dropped to my knee to change magazines. I heard fire to my right and saw flashes from Stanley's position, returned by fire from both the washout and the woodline. Jesus Christ, how many were we up against? I dropped the spent magazine, grabbed a fresh one from my pouch, and slammed it home.

I saw the flashes an instant before the roof exploded beneath me. Pain tore through my left foot and arm. Something slammed into my chest as I stared stupidly at a hole punched clean through the magazine. The carrying handle of the M-16 shattered in my face—chunks of flying shrapnel caught my jaw and cheeks with the force of knives shot out of a cannon. I think I yelled. Then I staggered backward, gasping, as pain and shock caught me like a fist.

My feet hit empty air as I plunged backward off the tower. I yelled like a stabbed sow, and windmilled stupidly all the way down. Twenty-eight feet is a long way to fall. Especially when you've just been shot multiple times. The firefight was still loud in my ears when I smacked into cold, wet muck. Sound vanished, and sight went with it.

When they came back, pain held me like a net, and tangled my arms and legs so that I couldn't move. I felt an icy breeze. A shudder shook my whole frame. I tried to get my eyes open. I could feel the ground, soft and oozing, under my back; but I couldn't see the stars that ought to be above me. Something blocking them? Another shudder tore at me and I tried to get my eyes focused. All I could see was a vague blackness. A thrill of horror nearly made me throw up.

Sleipnir had already come for me, dragged me to hell... .

I got myself to one elbow. For an instant, it was touch and go whether the vomit in my throat came up, or went down. Then I saw blurred motion in the fence not four feet from me. Someone in blackface, trying to get through—or two someones—

I groped for my rifle, but couldn't feel it. Couldn't begin to see it. I heard guttural curses in what sounded like Arabic. I tried again to focus my eyes, and saw two blurred hands trying to jam two magazines into two rifles... .

I groped wildly for my own rifle—then remembered it was shot to pieces—

DAMMIT—!

Sweat poured as I tried to summon that demon-bladed knife into my hand. Nothing. Son-of-a—

Goddammit, I wasn't going to just lie there and die while Odin laughed! I lurched upward. Two faces swiveled. Two rifles came up, two barrels centered me... .

Then nausea took hold and I collapsed onto my side, retching into the mud. I couldn't think with the pain in my head, and the knife hadn't come, damn its evil little black soul... .

I felt a tug on my shoulder. Sheer terror galvanized muscles I thought I'd lost use of permanently. I grabbed wildly—and found the rifle. I swung upward, hard. It connected with a meaty smack as someone tried to shove it aside.

"Randy, don't shoot—dammit, get his fingers loose—don't shoot—it's us—Crater and Wally—"

I finally managed to get my eyes focused. Crater's long frame leaned dizzily over me. The lower part of him seemed to be drifting in lazy white fog... .

Rage—sudden and terrible—spread a bloody film across that innocent white fog. I struggled to get up. Goddammit, if Odin wouldn't come fight me, fair and goddamned square, I'd show the bastard, I'd get up and walk all the bloody way to Valhalla—

A wave of intense nausea hit about the same time my head exploded in a twenty-megaton burst. I doubled up, and decided being dead would be a great deal more pleasant.

"Hey, man, don't move, you musta broken something—you shouldn't move 'til the medics get here."

They were pushing me back down. Pain drained the strength anger had brought. I sagged back into the mud. Then slowly I realized I didn't hear any more gunfire.

Crater blurred again. I muttered, "Hold still—you got two heads, dammit—"

"What'd he say?" Wally's voice asked from somewhere off in the fog.

"Shut up!" Crater hissed. Then, "Just hang on, Randy; the medics are coming."

"Did we get 'em?"

Had I actually got that out?

Crater answered, so I must have.

"We stopped the s.o.b.'s, Randy. We stopped 'em. There's a guy with a loaded rifle in his hand and four holes in his chest hanging right there in the inner fence, dead as a doornail. There's another dead one behind him, down in the outer fence by the washout. We found a blood trail off into the woodline. Sergeant Baker's out there with the rest of the relief, tracking it. Even Stanley got one, down by his tower."

Stanley? Good God.

"Did—you—get any—?" I tried to keep my eyes focused on a face that kept blurring out of shape, and heard Crater laugh.

"Hell, Randy, I got one in the head but you'd already killed him. He's the one who crawled off and got stuck in the outer fence. And Butler went nuts. Fifteen, twenty rounds out into the trees. I think he even hit a couple of rabbits, poor little bastards."

The laughter left his voice then. "Brunowski's dead. Stanley's dead, too. One hole in the front window, one in the back, and one clear through his head. His rifle jammed. You were one lucky s.o.b., man. There's holes in the floor, the desk, the radiator; not to mention the roof. Damn lucky all that wood and crap slowed 'em down. Medics ought to be here any minute." Then, dimly, "Dammit, Wally, aren't they here yet?"

I wasn't listening anymore. I was floating on a foggy sea of pain, thinking about a good noncom's death, and a newbie's useless one, and cursing a cowardly god who wouldn't show his face in an honest fight. The pain intensified. I wondered absently what they'd tell Stanley's wife back home—not that it made any real difference to me or anyone else—then I slipped into darkness and mercifully left the pain behind.

We never did find out who'd shot us up that night. Most of them got away, and the ones that stayed as corpses just disappeared, same as the ones I'd cut up with Gary's black knife. Nameless, faceless, they'd slipped away into the night to regroup somewhere else, while our officers figured out ways to keep the whole mess quiet. I never did find out what they told Stanley's widow.

I ended up in Frankfurt for a while, in the main hospital for the forces based in Germany. Actually, I'd been damned lucky. I'd been hit four times, and falling off the back of that stupid tower had netted me a concussion and several assorted nasty sprains and bruises. It was several days before I stopped seeing double images; but then, it was several weeks before I could walk on my shot-up foot, and even with crutches it hurt like bloody blazes.

One bullet had grazed my arm, just a flesh wound, not much deeper than a scratch. The second round had punched through the tower itself, then through my rifle's magazine before hitting my flakvest, leaving nothing more serious than a good-sized bruise, although it had hurt like I'd been kicked by a horse. The baby coronary I'd had in the ambulance on the way in had convinced me I'd been shot through the heart itself—and was just too slow on the uptake to go ahead and die.

The third round had shattered the handle of my M-16; quite a bit of flying debris as well as the spent round had slammed into my face. The stitches had left some very interesting scars that had proven surprisingly successful in rousing the nurses' sympathies. (So I'm an asshole—I'll take the attention of beautiful women any way I can get it.)

Of course, I was really lucky that my jawbone hadn't been shattered—which would've left me wired shut and sipping pizza through a straw for months—or that none of the shrapnel had hit my eyes. One handicap I could not afford was blindness. I figured Odin was going to be hard enough to find as it was.

The round that hit my foot had shoved all the bones aside on its way through, drilling through the boot sole, the fleshy muscles in my foot, and the top of my boot through the laces. Because of the concussion, they hadn't dared give me any morphine in the emergency room; but they had managed a local anesthetic in my foot while they cleaned leather and wool scraps out of it.

As for falling off the tower... I could easily have killed myself, or at the very least have busted up a leg or ankle to the point of being permanently crippled. My therapist—a sadist if ever I met one—had taken great glee in telling me about several of the guys he'd worked on, who'd fallen out of various buildings from the same height. I figured I'd gotten off one helluva lot luckier than I deserved.

By the time I was released from the hospital, I was officially out of the Army. Most of the guys I would have wanted to say goodbye to had called one afternoon from a pay phone while I was still in the hospital. They took turns telling me which Frankfurt whores to look up once I got back on my feet. Chuck even mailed me a box of rubbers, and a get-well card signed by everybody. A good bunch of guys...

When they finally pronounced me fit and discharged me, I packed up everything I owned, headed for the far north—toward good caving country—and hunted up a spelunking guide. I told Klaus what I needed, and good old Klaus outdid himself. He led me into a cave that had been discovered three weeks before my discharge, when a freak rockslide broke open the fissure. Professional spelunkers were still pushing it, and they hadn't found bottom yet. The first man to set foot in the cave had almost died in a nasty accident. When local kids saw him carried out, they said he looked like he'd been mauled.

Within days, everyone was calling the cavern "Garm's Cave."