Near Dark (Scot Harvath #20) - Brad Thor Page 0,15

egged her on in that direction.

She had felt guilty about how she had let her family down and, most importantly, her father. She had been embarrassed that he had to come and bring her back home. He had been disappointed in her. She had seen it every time he had looked at her. The shame had been impossible to bear. She wanted him to be proud of her. She still did. The military would make him proud. It would also provide her a means to be proud of herself.

In all honesty, it had been one of the best things to ever happen to her. She had needed the military’s structure and its discipline. Had she returned to university in Oslo, she was convinced that she would have only been dragged back into the suffocating world of drugs.

Instead, she had gone through basic training and then set her sights on a new unit she had heard the army was toying with codenamed Tundra. It was rumored to be an all-female Special Forces pilot program. Very little was known about it and because it was so highly classified, very little was being said.

She had applied and had been rejected three times. Each time they had given her a different excuse. Too tall Too skinny Too weak.

While there was nothing she could do about her height, she could improve her body and overall physical fitness, which was exactly what she did.

She lengthened her runs, added in sprints and cross-training, began lifting heavier weights, and completely changed her diet.

When she applied a fourth time and they tried to reject her, she was pissed. And she gave it to the panel with both barrels—telling them to start thinking up new excuses now because she was going to apply again and again. She wasn’t a quitter. It was precisely what they wanted to hear. She was given a slot to try out for what would be known as Jeger Troop—the Norwegian word for huntress.

The ten-month program was grueling, but she relished it. The more they threw at her, the better she did. No matter how hard they tried to break her, they couldn’t.

From the eighty-eight female soldiers initially invited, only twenty were able to complete the training, and from there just thirteen went on to form the first unit.

Sølvi was proud of herself. And just as important, so was her father. She had been made for Jeger Troop. Or so it had seemed.

Despite being deployed multiple times, she had never fired her weapon. None of their operations had gone kinetic. It seemed that Jeger Troop spent the majority of its time either conducting surveillance or interacting with Muslim women in Afghanistan—hoping to develop actionable intelligence.

Shit assignments came with the territory—even for Special Operations forces. Sølvi, though, had been led to believe that they’d be undertaking the kinds of missions similar to the male commandos’. The fact that Jeger had been regulated to “safer,” second-tier operations didn’t sit well with her. That wasn’t what she had signed up for. And so, she had started looking around for other opportunities.

It didn’t take long for her to come to Carl Pedersen’s attention. The moment he met her he knew she’d be perfect for NIS. There was something about her—a street smarts, a savvy that couldn’t be taught. She was intelligent and quick-witted; perfect for the espionage business. She was also a very striking woman, which would discount her as a threat. Lots of men were going to drop their guard the moment they saw her. In Pedersen’s opinion, she was being wasted in the military.

Nevertheless, poaching her from Jeger was going to ruffle a lot of feathers. They had spent a boatload of time and money training her. It took some serious string-pulling to get her transferred, but string-pulling was something Pedersen was quite skilled at.

She was an exceptional student. Privately, he liked to joke that she had the “Three Bs.” Beauty, brains, and huge brass balls.

From the moment she had shown up at NIS, she had been eager to prove herself. She was a risk-taker, but not a foolish risk-taker. Pedersen was confident that as long as he could help her channel her passion, she’d be one of the best intelligence operatives Norway had ever seen—maybe even better than him. And, he had been right.

No matter what kinds of assignments he sent her on—no matter how complicated, or how dangerous—she always found a way to succeed. Yes, she got knocked on her ass. She also got battered, bloodied,