The Medusa Prophecy

by Cindy Dees

• ISBN13: 9780373514366
• ISBN10: 0373514360
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Silhouette

Summary

Code named Python, Karen Tucker is the beautiful brawn behind the Medusas, the first all-female Special Forces team. When they're sent on an arctic training mission with a Norwegian team, it's Karen's strength that makes the men, especially Lieutenant And

Excerpts

The Arctic Circle, February 26, 1:00 p.m. "Anybody see them?" Karen Turner murmured, scanning the glacier-filled valley below while she squinted against the blinding expanse of white. Nothing.Dammit. Her teammates, the other five members of the Medusas--the first all-female Special Forces team in the United States military--muttered grim negatives as well. Somewhere out there was a Norwegian Special Forces team charged with tracking down the Medusas and treating them like hostiles if caught. Translation: if the Norwegians caught them, they'd beat the living crap out of them in the name of teaching the Medusas a lesson about daring to play with the boys. Karen sighed. Their supervisor, Col. Jack Scatalone, had warned them this wouldn't be easy. He'd said that foreign Special Forces teams would take grave offense at women trying to do the same job as men. American women soldiers had been allowed into combat in the 1990s and American soldiers had had a decade of getting used to the idea under their belts already. Not so in most other parts of the world. Problem was, for the Medusas to be effective in the long term, theyhadto be able to work seamlessly with their foreign counterparts when crises arose around the globe. In today's world, Special Forces teams had to pool their resources and work together because almost all security threats crossed international borders. That meant the Medusasmustovercome foreign teams' reluctance to work with women. And that meant training with them, or more to the point, sucking up whatever crap teams like this one handed out to the Medusas until they earned the foreign soldiers' respect. If the Medusas couldn't win over their foreign counterparts, they stood no chance of being combat effective. It was that simple. Which was why the Medusas had been hiking around out here for twenty-four hours straight. Only about five of it had been in actual daylight and all of it had been in bitter cold. Welcome to February in the Arctic. The Norwegian team had been on their tails relentlessly the entire time. The bastards had actually laughed during the mission briefing when they'd found out their job would be to track down and capture the Medusas. They'd even offered to give the women a couple hours extra head start. Of course, the Medusas had declined. It hadn't been until after she and her teammates said no that the Norwegians casually mentioned four of the six men on their team had been Olympic medalists in biathlon--combined cross-country skiing and target shooting.Great. Her boss, Major Vanessa Blake, asked over the throat mike and earpiece setup they used, "How much longer can you break trail for us before you give out, Python?" All of the Medusas had a snake nickname and Python was Karen's field handle. She consideredVanessa's question. She was getting dehydrated, and between trying to stay warm and outpace a bunch of damned Olympians, she was way down on calories. It took six thousand a day out here to function. Fortunately, her creeping panic at watching these guys inexorably eat up the gap between themselves and the Medusas could be used for fuel, too. She replied, "Another hour, I suppose. Two if we don't have to climb any mountains." The terrain was slashed by steep valleys and deadly crevasses in the permanent snowcap. Someone had to go first and break the crust of snow, generally sinking about waist-deep in the process. They'd each taken their turns at it, but because of her size and strength, she'd been taking double shifts on point. By her reckoning, they'd covered about twenty miles. She glanced at the sun skating low across the horizon. It would duck down out of sight soon, even though it was barely afternoon. "Hey, Viper," Karen said. "Did Scat hint at what these guys are planning to do after they catch us and rough us up?" Major Vanessa Blake, the Medusas' commander,