Arctic Storm Rising

Thirty-Five

Nick Flynn moved cautiously out onto a patch of dark ice just below a massive boulder half-buried in the hillside. One misstep and he’d take a long, painful spill down the steep side of this rugged spur. Slowly, he edged out into the middle of the ice patch and crouched down. His flashlight beam flicked out, catching what looked like a trail of rust splotches across the surface.

More dried blood, he thought with satisfaction. Along with parallel depressions sliced into the top layer of ice. Which meant they were still headed the right way. He shook his head in amazement. To have made it across this part of the slope without tipping over and tumbling end over end downhill, Major General Mavrichev must have been driving that snow machine flat out at top speed. The Russian general had also been incredibly lucky, Flynn decided, though that was probably the wrong way to look at it — considering that he was almost certainly dying at the time.

Flynn rose back to his feet and looked around. Counting him, eight men were spread in a skirmish line along the flank of this half-mile-long spur. It ran roughly south off a longer, higher ridge that separated this valley from the next. A couple of hundred feet below and a few hundred yards to the southwest, he could make out the small moonlit shapes of two more of his troops, Rafael Sanchez and Noah Boyd, as they moved slowly across more level ground, hauling a sled with Torvald Pedersen strapped aboard. He didn’t like the need to disperse his small command so widely, but it wouldn’t have been safe to try pulling that sled across this hillside. Not unless he wanted to risk adding a broken neck to Pedersen’s already-fractured leg.

He took a moment to check the digital map stored in his tablet. Past this spur, the terrain opened up onto a somewhat wider plain, one cut through by curving, shallow, gravel-banked streams that eventually merged to become the Old Crow River. Considering Mavrichev had taken a pistol-caliber-sized round through his right lung, the Russian general had likely been shot somewhere in that next valley. Which meant whoever it was that had put a bullet into him was probably close, no more than a few miles up ahead. And that, in turn, meant it was time to start being a hell of a lot more cautious.

Flynn edged off the ice patch onto firmer ground and then keyed his tactical radio. “Kodiak Six to all Kodiaks on this hill. Close up on my position. Sanchez and Boyd, you guys hold where you are for now. Six out.”

Acknowledgments flooded through his headset. Both ends of his skirmish line began curling toward him, with the men higher on the spur sliding carefully downhill and those lower down painstakingly working their way back up. It took time to complete the maneuver, but finally, Flynn found himself at the center of a group of closely clustered, curious faces. All but one. Takirak stayed a couple of yards away, as if he wanted to both physically and mentally distance himself from the others.

Flynn frowned inside at that. Something had seemed off with the grizzled noncom ever since they’d found that dead Russian Air Force general. Maybe it was the head wound he’d taken, though that hadn’t seemed more than a surface gash. Or maybe, he thought sadly, the older man was one of those recruiting-poster soldiers who excelled in peacetime training and then folded under the stress of real action. Whatever it was, it was a serious problem. He’d come to depend heavily on Takirak’s advice and local knowledge. Realizing he could no longer fully trust his second-in-command felt an awful lot like losing his right arm.

“What’s up, sir?” Hynes asked at last.

Aware that he’d been silent for too long, Flynn shook himself. Soldiers didn’t like being stared at by their officers. It made them nervous, both because they started wondering how they might’ve screwed up, and worse, because it could mean they were being led by someone who had no fucking clue of what to do next. And enlisted men knew all too well that an indecisive officer was the one most likely to get them all killed.

“Here’s the deal,” he said calmly, facing his men. “Somebody out in front of us seems kind of trigger-happy. Now, they might technically be on our side—”

“Like maybe the CIA?” Airman Kim asked curiously.

Flynn nodded. “Possibly.” Then he shrugged. “Or they may be outright hostile.” He saw Hynes’s mouth open and beat him to the punch. “Yes, as in the Russians, PFC Hynes. Either way, I want the chance to take a good, hard look at whoever they are before they see us coming. So we’re switching to night vision gear starting now.”

Heads nodded in understanding. From their current position, in the hills above these intertwined valleys, the ordinary flashlights they’d been using could be seen for miles.

“Using the NVGs in this cold will drain their batteries pretty fast,” Takirak warned.

Flynn stared at him. “I’m aware of that, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “Do you have an alternative that I’ve missed?”

The older man nodded. “We’d make better time down on the flat with the guys hauling the sled,” he said, pointing downslope. “Movement would be easier, faster, and a heck of a lot safer. There’s less chance of someone twisting an ankle on that tundra… and any lights we need won’t be as obvious at a distance.”

Flynn shook his head. “We’ll stick to the high ground for now,” he said firmly. “At least until we know more about what we could be facing up ahead. If we are heading into trouble, I want every tactical advantage I can get.”

“It’s your call, sir,” Takirak allowed stiffly. But the disapproving set of his shoulders and the undercurrent of skepticism in his voice both left no doubt that he believed his commander was making a mistake.

Flynn ignored that. Trying to argue the sergeant into agreement would only waste time. And making it even more obvious that their two leaders weren’t seeing eye to eye would only unnerve the rest of his soldiers and airmen. Instead, he pulled his own night vision goggles out of an insulated pouch attached to his body armor and slid them on over his helmet. He powered them up. Instantly, the darkness brightened into a monochrome semblance of daylight. The men around him did the same, though Takirak donned his own vision gear with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

“Okay,” Flynn said. “We’re going to tighten up our skirmish line from here on out. I want two-man fighting pairs, with a twenty-yard separation between pairs. We’ll follow this spur around back to the northeast and continue on along the main ridge. Keep your eyes peeled and move as quietly as you can. Once we’re back on the main ridge, pay attention to our right flank. That’s the most likely threat axis. If anybody is camped up ahead, they’re probably down there on the valley floor — somewhere close to one of those iced-over streams for water and shelter.”

Hynes held up a hand. “What do we do if we spot someone, sir?”

“You take cover and report the contact, PFC,” Flynn told him. “But nobody opens fire unless I give a direct order. Is that clear?” They nodded.

Flynn swung his M4 carbine off his shoulder. “Right. Let’s move out—” And then he broke off suddenly, holding up a hand for quiet. He thought he’d heard something behind them, off in the north — a faint, rhythmic whirring sound. In the abrupt hush, he heard the noise more clearly as it grew louder. It was the fast, thudding noise made by a helicopter’s rotors and turbines.

“Down!” he hissed. Everybody on the hillside dropped flat and froze in place. In their white camouflage smocks and heavy rucksacks, they looked more like snow-covered rocks than anything else. He glanced downslope. The two men pulling the sled had stopped and were staring up at the sky back the way they’d come. He tapped the push on his tactical radio. “Sanchez and Boyd. Grab Pedersen and find some cover. Now!”

That kicked them into gear. With the injured man’s arms slung over their shoulders, the two soldiers hurried into a small depression lined with snow-covered bushes and went to ground.

“Friendlies?” Kim whispered.

“Not likely,” Flynn replied. That helicopter sounded like it was coming from the north, and there weren’t any U.S. military helicopters closer than Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson — which was hundreds of miles to the south and currently socked in by that big blizzard.

Takirak wriggled around to face him. “You could be wrong about that, Captain,” he said pointedly. “There are a lot of civilian helicopter operators working out of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. I used to fly with them a lot when I worked as a guide up around Deadhorse. Maybe our guys at JBER hired one of those birds to bring in reinforcements for us.”

“Reinforcements from where exactly, Andy?” Flynn asked, working to hide his irritation. For some reason, Takirak seemed to be trying very hard to sow doubts about every decision he made. What the hell was the noncom’s problem? “In case you forgot, there aren’t other U.S. troops stationed this far north.” That hit home. He saw the older man’s eyes flash angrily.

The thwapping sound of spinning rotors slowed suddenly and then faded away. It was replaced by a low, shrill whine of engines spooling down.

Flynn raised his head. The helicopter had landed behind them, somewhere out of sight around the curve of this rocky spur. Reacting quickly, he waved his men back up onto their feet. Pushing on ahead the way he’d originally planned would be foolhardy now. The last thing he wanted was to be surprised by a potentially hostile force closing in from the rear. He clicked his mike. “Sanchez and Boyd, stick tight where you are. And stay off the radio. Six out,” he murmured. He looked at the others. “The same goes for everybody else. Voice commands and hand signals only from here on out. We don’t know who else might be listening to our net.”

His men nodded. Maybe the idea that someone could have broken into their tactical net was crazy, but it felt like a hell of a weird coincidence for that helicopter to have landed so close to them. It was almost as though it had been guided straight to this particular spot, which was otherwise just one of thousands of square miles of virtually identical wilderness. One thing was for sure, Flynn knew. All of his instincts were screaming danger warnings right now. And he didn’t plan to ignore them.

Quickly, he issued new orders. They would backtrack along this spur toward where that helicopter had landed — deployed and ready to conduct a hasty ambush against anyone who might be following their trail. He half expected Andy Takirak to bitch some more, but instead the noncom merely nodded. “Good plan, Captain.” Takirak unslung his own weapon and started to move out ahead of the rest of the unit. “I’ll go scout,” he said, with a quick, unreadable glance over his shoulder. “I can reach a decent observation point faster on my own.”

“Hold on, Andy!” Flynn said sharply.

Almost unwillingly, the older man halted in his tracks. “Sir?”

“Leave the radio,” Flynn ordered, nodding at the bulky PRC-162 still slung over Takirak’s other shoulder. “You don’t need the weight. And that antenna sticking up might give you away.” For a moment, he had the strangest sense that the sergeant might disobey him.

But then, with a fleeting half smile, Takirak pulled the radio off his shoulder and set it down on the snowy slope. Without another word, he turned and loped away over a low rise, swiftly vanishing from sight.

Watching him go, Flynn felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck. Takirak’s native name, Amaruq, Gray Wolf, had never before seemed so apt. He had the sudden, eerie impression that the older man had just revealed himself as a complete stranger — someone he’d never actually known. And as though that revelation was a sort of key to unlock his intuition, Flynn abruptly saw an answer for many of the odd events that had worried him over the past several hours.

Seconds passed while he stood frozen in place, feeling sick at heart and trying to make the pieces to this puzzle fit in some other way. Flynn couldn’t fight down the sudden, terrible certainty that he’d never see M-Squared, his red-haired radioman, again… at least not alive. But then he breathed out. There was only one way to be sure, and in the meantime, he wasn’t going to gamble with the lives of his men in the hope that he was wrong.

Flynn turned quickly to the half-dozen soldiers and airmen still with him. “Change of plan,” he told them quietly. He pointed at the top of the spur, a couple of hundred feet above where they were now. A tumbled mass of rocks and larger boulders marked the crest and continued on down the far side. “We’ll set up there instead,” he ordered. “Now, drop your packs here and follow me!”

Obeying, they shrugged out of their rucksacks and then hurried after him as he plowed upward through the snow and ice.