Arctic Storm Rising

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.”