Arctic Storm Rising
- Автор: Браун Дейл
- Серия: Nick Flynn #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 9780063015050
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Arctic Storm Rising». Краткое содержание книги:
His frown deepened. These men weren’t a cohesive team yet, just a collection of individuals hurriedly thrown together from a grab bag of other units across Alaska. Boarding the C-130 for the flight here was the first time any of them had ever really met. He shook his head. Everything about this assignment was half-assed. Apart from their names, his only source of information about the soldiers and airmen now under his command were the personnel files he’d downloaded onto his tablet shortly before takeoff. And he hadn’t had any real time to dig into those records yet.
Flynn had a depressing hunch, though, that he wasn’t going to find a lot of glowing adjectives in their personnel evaluations. Most commanding officers, ordered to “volunteer” men for this kind of long-term detached duty, would be very careful to select those who wouldn’t be particularly missed — the oddballs, misfits, and even disciplinary hard cases. One corner of his mouth quirked upward. He might not be looking at his very own Dirty Dozen, but the odds were good that he’d just been saddled with the Dingy Eleven.
Or maybe that should be the Grimy Ten, he thought, after a quick glance at the grizzled noncom seated right across the aisle from him. From the top of his broad, weathered face to the tips of his rugged combat boots, Sergeant First Class Andy Takirak, Alaska Army National Guard, had the look of a tough, thoroughly squared away military professional. Nor would the prospect of spending a winter in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness hold any terrors for the older man, Flynn decided. After all, this was his own native country.
According to his file, Takirak was a member of the Bering Straits Iñupiat tribe, distantly related to the indigenous peoples of the North Slope like those who lived in Kaktovik. In civilian life, he worked as a wildlife guide and hunter around the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. He’d been assigned to the Joint Force security team as its scout and senior NCO. And unlike the rest of them, the sergeant was a genuine volunteer. He’d offered to go back on active service the moment he’d heard the scuttlebutt about an experimental unit forming for duty along the barren Arctic coast.
Flynn wasn’t quite sure if that made Takirak crazy, or incredibly dedicated… or a bit of both. But he was sure that he was going to have to rely heavily on the National Guard sergeant’s expertise and survival skills to help whip the rest of this raw collection of individuals into a cohesive and efficient unit. He strongly suspected the Pentagon higher-ups who’d exiled him to Alaska expected him to fail in that task. He planned to prove them wrong — even if he privately thought the whole concept of creating special security units like this was a waste of manpower and resources. Any serious Russian attack on the North Warning System’s radars would probably be carried out by bombers and long-range cruise missiles — not up close and personal by Spetsnaz commandos or saboteurs.
“There’s the station, sir,” Takirak said quietly, pointing ahead through the bus’s salt-streaked windshield. Flynn leaned forward, studying the complex of buildings that was slated to be their duty post for at least the next six months.
The Barter Island Long Range Radar Site sat on a low coastal bluff, overlooking the cold, gray Beaufort Sea. A faint glimmer of dazzling white along the distant northern horizon hinted at the pack ice beginning to creep down from the Arctic Ocean. At the west end of the station, a raised platform held a white protective dome for the AN/FPS-117 active electronically scanned array air search radar. From a distance, it looked oddly like two-thirds of a golf ball resting on a flat-topped tee. As they got closer, its true size became more apparent. The top of that large dome rose nearly fifty feet above the flat, snow-covered tundra. And from the briefing he’d been given, Flynn knew that powerful motors inside the dome could rotate the entire fifteen-ton radar array through a complete circle in as little as ten seconds.
A string of connected, prefabricated buildings ran east from the radar platform. Rust streaked their metal roofs and siding. When the station was first built in 1953 as part of the old Distant Early Warning Line, it had been much larger, with barracks housing more than 150 U.S. Air Force officers and enlisted men. Now, those barracks and other outbuildings were gone, torn down when the Barter Island site had been modernized to become part of the U.S. and Canada’s new, largely automated North Warning System. The structures that were left contained generators, equipment and vehicle storage, and working quarters that were still far too big for a handful of resident civilian contractors.
With a high-pitched squeal of brakes, the bus pulled up in front of the ramshackle building closest to the elevated radar platform and stopped. A rusty white sign over a door identified it as the grand five-star beaufort sea vista inn.
“Jeezus,” one of the soldiers sitting behind him muttered. “Welcome to Barter Island LRR, boys. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
Flynn tamped down on a grin, recognizing the classic Star Wars quote.
“I prefer the outtakes version, myself,” another said with a sardonic edge to his voice. “The one where Alec Guinness just says, ‘It’s a fucking shithole. A fucking shithole.’”
“Yeah, well, he must have been thinking about this goddamned place, all right,” a third soldier growled. “Christ, I need a drink.”
“Then you’re out of luck, pal,” the first man told him. “’Cause Kaktovik is a dry town. No alcohol allowed. Not even beer.”
That triggered a chorus of subdued groans, which ended abruptly when Sergeant Takirak casually turned around in his seat and gave them the “look” so beloved of veteran noncoms. When delivered by a skilled professional, the “look” was said to be capable of putting the fear of God, eternal damnation, and thirty days in the stockade into the heart of even the most hardened reprobate. From the sudden, absolute silence that descended across the bus, Flynn judged that Andy Takirak was just such a professional.
He studiously ignored the byplay. His ROTC instructors had spent a lot of time and energy drumming into their students’ heads the proposition that half the job of figuring out how to be an effective officer was in learning what not to hear and what not to see. Besides, griping about their quarters, meals, and pay was a time-honored privilege of enlisted personnel. He didn’t mind bitching, so long as it didn’t exceed the traditional bounds.
As soon as the driver opened the bus door, Flynn was the first one outside. His breath steamed in the ice-cold air and his boots crunched across a layer of snow mixed with gravel. A light, freezing wind tugged at his scarlet beret. It carried the mingled smells of salt, fuel oil, and rusting metal.
Three civilians in winter coats and boots emerged from the building and strolled over to join him. Two were men, one of them tall and heavyset, the other short and wiry. The last was an older woman with short-cropped gray hair and a round, friendly face.
“Captain Flynn?” the tallest man said. “My name’s Johansson, Pete Johansson. I’m the maintenance supervisor here.” He nodded to the shorter man. “And this here is Smitty Walz. He’s my electronics whiz. But he doesn’t say much, do you, Smitty?”
“Nope,” the short man agreed.
“And I’m Marta McIntyre,” the gray-haired woman told him with a pleasant smile. “Mrs. Marta McIntyre. I’m the general gofer around the station — the cook, supply officer, and housekeeper all in one.” Her smile widened. “Plus, I keep Smitty and Pete from killing each other on the rare occasions our satellite TV dish goes on the blink.”