Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] by Wetand Wild

from David, who’d had a wry sense of humor. Somehow, she knew David would approve of her wearing them tonight. Once he’d even made love to her wearing nothing but those expensive boots. “Wanna get down and dirty, baby?” he’d asked her more than once.
    Oh, yeah!
“Are you ready?” she asked Lillian as she got into the passenger seat of her Mazda.
    Lillian nodded with a mischievous grin. “And rarin’ to go.”
    “The question is whether the world is ready for the two of us.”
    Down and dirty, here we come!

Chapter Seven
    Friends in low places …
    “Hey, Mad Max, time to get down and dirty.”
    Ragnor ignored the intrusive voice of one of his comrades—probably his swim partner Cage—as he lay splatted face down on his pallet, where he’d fallen fast asleep after a quick showering several hours ago. “Go away,” he mumbled.
    They’d returned to the base from San Clemente Island, where they’d been engaged all day in “sneak and peek” or “escape and evade,” covert operations designed to teach them how to move about unseen in enemy territory. When they weren’t crawling about in the mud and brambles, they were doing “surf penetrations” for the same purpose. Their faces and arms had been “cammied up,” meaning camouflaged with greasepaint so they blended in with their surroundings. Down and dirty, for a certainty!
    Before going out for that “field op,” they’d been taught hand-to-hand combat in a hall with padded walls and floor. Ragnor had taught the burly instructor a thing or two, including how to employ a proper garrote when a silent kill was required, or the proper way to engage an enemy head-on when a sword was not at hand. Really, these soldiers with all their fancy weapons did not know everything about war. To his surprise, they did not appreciate his input.
    He’d missed dinner but did not care, with every muscle in his body screaming from the past three days’ exercises at San Clemente. War games, they called them. More like torture games, if you asked him.
    And he was sick to death of the chieftain’s sayings, which were designed to be inspirational but were mostly just downright half-brained. Like his latest, “Pillage before you burn, boys … ha, ha, ha,” as if every good soldier didn’t already know that. He suspected it had been a bit of sarcasm on the chieftain’s part directed at him. He had not laughed.
    Aside from the physical torture, he was in mental anguish as well. He just did not understand how another country could have so many advanced weapons, horseless vehicles that could travel across land or air, flameless lighting, running water, glasslike apparatuses that fit over the eyes enabling a soldier to see at night, and so many other marvels. Why had he never heard of this country before? He still was not sure that he hadn’t fallen into some after-death realm. He didn’t feel dead, but then, how would he know how dead felt?
    He had survived more than one sennight in this new land, thanks to his comrades in SEALs who’d explained many things in hushed tones so thechieftain would not overhear. And they covered for him when he blundered.
    “C’mon, Max, the chicks are waiting for us.” It was Pretty Boy speaking. “Well, they’re waiting for
me
. Don’t know about you ugly ducklings.”
    “You’re a swan, all right, Pretty Boy,” Flash remarked. “All feathers and no meat.”
    Ragnor cracked his eyes open to slits to gaze at his wonderful, albeit lackwit, comrades.
    “Hah! You’re just jealous of my pretty feathers. Besides, I got meat. And chicks know I got meat,” Pretty Boy countered, patting his groin for emphasis.
    “We Cajuns are better than anyone at drawing chicks. We don’t need no pretty faces, either. All we gotta do is wink and drawl out, ‘Come here, darlin’.’ They melt every time,” Cage proclaimed. “
Laissez les bon temps rouler
. Let the good times roll, baby … Loo-zee-anna style.”
    “I am not hungry.”