Arctic Storm Rising

Nick Flynn’s own role in the mission was less clearly defined. After graduating from college with an ROTC scholarship, he’d undergone intensive training to qualify as a Special Tactics Officer in the Air Force Special Operations Command — earning the right to a scarlet beret, similar to the maroon beret worn by the rest of Wizard One-One’s crew. But there the similarities ended. Thanks to an ear for languages and a gift for quick study, he’d been quietly recruited into Air Force intelligence operations shortly after completing the STO course. He’d come to Egypt with the squadron as one of its combat rescue officers. But that was just a cover story. His real mission was to gather HUMINT, human intelligence, on the Egyptian and other foreign nationals involved in the exercises — focusing on those who might someday be recruited as potential intelligence sources. Or, conversely, on those who might be open to working with terrorists or other groups hostile to U.S. interests.

Ostensibly, his language skills were the reason he’d been assigned to this flight. None of the others in the helicopter crew knew enough Arabic to liaise with locals if that proved necessary. But the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Sixty-Fourth had his own motives in putting Flynn aboard. “You’re a spook, Nick,” he’d said quietly. “And whatever’s actually going on out there is really fucking spooky. Right now, no one higher up the chain of command will tell me what the hell one of our C-130s was doing off on its own so deep in Libya. All I’m getting is static about how I don’t ‘need to know.’ Well, that’s bullshit. So there’s no damn way I’m sending my folks out on a limb without a specially trained pair of eyes and ears along to ride herd on this situation. Which is where you come in.”

Flynn couldn’t disagree with that line of reasoning. More than a decade after the brutal civil war that ended Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s authoritarian rule, Libya was still a cauldron of rival armed factions. There was no real central government, only fluctuating coalitions of regional groups, tribal militias, and die-hard Islamists. Chaos and conflict were the stuff of everyday life throughout most of the fractured country. That was especially true in the sparsely populated far south, hundreds of miles from Libya’s more densely inhabited coastal strip along the Mediterranean. All of which made the region the very last place you’d expect an unarmed U.S. Air Force cargo plane to be operating.

Reflexively, he patted the M4A1 carbine slung from his tactical body armor. Whatever they found at the crash site, this sure wasn’t going to be another boring day spent schmoozing Egyptian, Saudi, Iraqi, and other foreign officers over endless cups of tea.

A soft ping through his headset signaled an update from the helicopter’s navigation computer. From her position in the cockpit’s left-hand seat, Kate Kasper relayed the new data as it appeared on one of her big multifunction display panels. “Heads up, whiz kids. We’re about eight minutes out from the estimated crash site. Check your gear and stand by.”

Flynn took a quick pass through the accessory pouches attached to his body armor. Extra magazines for his carbine and Glock 19 sidearm. Check. His Panasonic Toughbook tablet field computer was ready to go with a full battery. So were his pocket laser range finder and multiband tactical radio. He was set.

In the pair of seats behind him, Zalewski and Camarillo were doing the same thing with their personal weapons and trauma kits. Satisfied with those, the PJs went rapidly through the array of compact cutting and lifting tools packed in their individual rucksacks.

“Two minutes,” Kasper called. “Radar’s picking up objects on the ground about six miles out, at our twelve o’clock.”

“I don’t see any smoke,” Dykstra commented matter-of-factly. “Any fires must have burned out by now.”

Flynn leaned back in his seat, craning his head sharply to look through the helicopter’s forward cockpit canopy. With all the heat haze, it was difficult to make out many details. But there was definitely a blackened scar stretching across the orangish desert sand. At one end of the scar, he could see a big, crumpled gray cylinder partially buried nose-first in a large dune. A debris field of torn and bent pieces of blackened metal — scorched wing panels, twisted propellers, and shattered engine mounts — stretched away for hundreds of feet on both sides of the wreck.

Dykstra whistled softly. “Looks like that Herky Bird slammed in almost horizontally. The wings ripped off, but the fuselage seems mostly intact.” He tweaked the cyclic, pedals, and collective to reduce their airspeed as the Jolly Green II swung through a gentle, level turn to come in behind the downed C-130.