John Ringo: A Deeper Blue

“The reason we originally gave for the Rite is, of course, no longer… effective,” Mother Mahona said. “Which is well, since I don’t think the Kildar is willing to continue with the Rite.”

The previous mission had involved the sale of WMD by the Russian mob to Al Qaeda. The mob had the WMD, the Al Qaeda members had a very large quantity of portable currency and gems. Most of that had been captured and brought back, despite the battle. Mike had stated, bluntly, that dowries, now and for the foreseeable future, were covered.

Gretchen had not been her daughter by body but held her name due to being of the extended “Family” of the Mahonas. Mother Mahona and Mother Silva, Gretchen’s birth mother, were both at the meeting to see if they had any idea how to pull the Kildar out of his depression. Neither had come up with anything.

“I’d be more than willing to let him sit in there until his liver gave out,” Nielson continued. “But the point is we’ve got a mission. Pierson is really exercised.”

“What?” Patrick Vanner asked. The crew-cut and stocky former Marine, former NSA analyst and current electronic intel chief wasn’t sure what to do about the Kildar. The problem was, well, he was the Kildar . He owned the damned place, he was a total free agent and he had more money than God. There wasn’t any way to shake him out of his depression unless the guy did it himself. And that didn’t look to be happening any time soon.

“WMD, inbound to the States,” Nielson said. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“So we’d be operating in the States?” Adams asked. “They don’t have enough people?”

“The Boss asked,” Nielson said.

“Oh.”

“But I suspect he asked for the Kildar, yes?” Father Kulcyanov said.

“Yeah, but what the hell,” Adams replied. “Kildar, Keldara, big diff. So he sits this one out. I can lead the teams, Nielson does the mission planning. Heck, I can do most of that. We bring a couple of teams, keep the rest here for positional defense. Not that we need it much, given the condition of the Chechens.”

The last mission had been “the world’s most successful fuck-up.” Due to “insufficient data,” notably that a large and professional Chechen brigade was moving into the area, the Keldara had ended up in a pitched battle. It was there that Captain Bathlick and her “co” captain, Tamara Wilson, had won their spurs. It was also the reason Gretchen Mahona had been killed.

The battle had broken the back of the Chechens — their main local threat — when the Chechens assumed that four thousand fedayeen could easily wipe out a hundred “pagans.” In that, they had been so very very wrong. The battle had left the cream of the Resistance’s most elite force scattered for the ravens. Patrols had not picked up any sign of Chechen movement in their sector in the two months since the battle.

“The Keldara are not the Kildar,” Father Kulcyanov said cautiously. “If you choose to take the Keldara, if the Kildar approves, we will not stand in your way. They will, undoubtedly, win glory and those that fall will be lifted to the Halls. But do not mistake the Keldara for the Kildar. We do not.”

The Keldara had masked as Islamics and Christians over the years. They did not care what religion their masters wanted them to practice. But they had retained their true faith in the Old Gods of the Norse and traditions drawn from both Norse and Celts. Since the Kildar did not seem to care, they had, slowly, come “out of the closet” about their beliefs. One of those was that a person could not enter the Halls of Feasting, Valhalla, unless they had been proven in battle.

To Father Kulcyanov the last battle had been a mixed blessing. Far too many of the Keldara had entered the Halls, but for the first time in a generation Keldara were entering the Halls. The dun of the Keldara, their massive burial mound that most people mistook for a gigantic glacial hill, had been added to. The Keldara had added to their glory and had found favor before the Father of All. He would see his fallen children, nieces and nephews, in the Halls. His place was assured by the slaughtered crews of German Tiger tanks and broken units of the Wehrmacht and SS.

He had warned the Kildar, whom he had seen falling into soul-death, not to lose the path of the warrior. For the Kildar’s sake, who was warrior born, and for the Keldara. The Keldara were nothing without war.

But his words had, apparently, been insufficient.

“He’s got a point,” Vanner said. “Master Chief, you’re a good shooter and the Keldara will follow. And Colonel, you’re a good planner. And I can, as always, handle the intel and commo. But ain’t none of us the Kildar.”

“I’ve known Mike since he was a wet behind the ears BUDS recruit,” Adams said. “Of course, so was I. But the point is, he’s human. God knows he’s human. And he’s replaceable. Everybody is. We do the mission. Maybe we find the WMD, maybe we don’t. But if the Boss calls, we do the damned mission. Period fucking dot.”

“Okay,” Nielson said, sighing. “You take the teams. I’ll stay back here and handle the details. I can do that long range. Who do you want?”

“I’m going,” Vanner said. “There’s some tech I’ve wanted to pick up in the States for a while, anyway. And I’d rather be on site to handle tricky stuff. I’ll take four of the girls.”

Vanner’s staff was mostly Keldara females, most of them under twenty. They had soaked up the details of communications and intelligence as if they’d been training in it from birth. Lately, Vanner had been picking up some pieces of intel that made him wonder if that wasn’t truth. While the Keldara men were top-flight warriors and many of them smart as hell, the Keldara girls were so smart it was scary. And they were sneaky in ways he was just beginning to souse out.

“I’ll take Oleg… shit,” Adams said, pausing. The Keldara’s top team leader had had his leg blown off by a mortar in the battle. He’d gotten a state-of-the-art prosthetic, but he still wasn’t in top shape. And his Team was shaky without him. His other top choice, Team Sawn, had lost its leader in the battle and was still shaking down. Padrek, another he would have liked for their technical expertise, had been ravaged. About half of them were dead or still recovering.

“I’ll take… Vil and Pavel. Daria? I could use somebody to handle the—”

“Details,” Daria said, dimpling. The Ukrainian girl had been picked up on a mission, a kidnappee being held in a snuff house in Montenegro, while the teams were hunting for another girl. A trained but out-of-work secretary, she was still kicking herself for accepting the offer of “a good job in Europe.” That was a well known ploy that slavers used to capture females. But the con, and that was the only way to put it, had been well laid. She had been awaiting death when the Keldara showed up. She’d been hired while still on the mission to handle the burgeoning administrative details of the Kildar and stayed around ever since. The pay was good, the living conditions excellent and it wasn’t like she had to worry about slavers. “I’ll put in a call to Chatham for a plane big enough to handle two teams and support staff. And I’ll coordinate with the BCIS for entry of the teams and their equipment.”

“I’ll go as well,” Dr. Tolegen Arensky said. “If you’ll have me.”

The Russian WMD specialist, short, round with balding black hair, was a recent addition to the team. He’d been picked up during the previous mission after having been forced to betray the Russians and smuggle out samples of weaponized smallpox. He’d stayed on because he was also a trained physician and, well, not particularly welcome in Russia at the moment.