“Any sign of the captain?” the soldier asked, a young corporal whose face was hidden behind a cold-weather mask.

Tipton shook his head, then looked at his watch. “They’re late, and our aircraft are due in twenty minutes.”

“Do you want me to break radio silence and issue a call?”

“Go ahead. Find out what’s going on and when they’ll be here. We can’t keep those birds on the ground for long.”

He rose to his feet and turned toward the makeshift airfield. “I’m going to activate the beacons.”

Tipton walked quietly away. He didn’t want to hear the radio call. Instinctively, he knew that something had gone wrong. Roman had made an early start. He should have been back with the Polar Dawn’s crew nearly an hour ago. They certainly should have been within sight by now. Roman was too good a commander, the team too well trained for something not to have gone dramatically wrong.

Tipton reached one end of the airfield and turned on a pair of battery-operated blue lights. He then paced to the opposite end of the coarsely graded runway and activated a second pair of lights. Returning to the base camp, he found the corporal vainly calling the assault team over a portable radio, as one other soldier stood lookout nearby.

“I’m not getting any response,” the corporal reported.

“Keep trying until the planes have landed.” Tipton faced both men. “We have our orders. We’ll evacuate whether the rest of the team is here or not.”

Tipton stepped closer to the soldier on lookout, who was barely distinguishable from the corporal in his heavy white parka.

“Johnson, instruct the pilots to hold for five minutes. I’ll be on the ridge keeping lookout for the captain. Just don’t leave without me,” he glowered.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

A minute later, a faint buzz split the frozen night air. The sound grew louder until evolving into the recognizable whine of an aircraft, followed by another. The two Ospreys flew without navigation lights and were invisible against the black sky. Specially modified for expanded range, the two aircraft had flown nearly seven hundred miles from an airstrip in Eagle, Alaska, just over the Yukon border. Skimming low over the tundra, they had easily evaded detection flying over one of Canada’s most remote regions.

Tipton reached the top of the ridge and looked back toward the runway as the first plane made its approach. Waiting until it was just fifty feet off the ground before hitting its landing lights, the Osprey came in low and slow, jostling to a quick stop on the uneven surface well short of the perimeter blue lights. The pilot quickly gunned the plane to the end of the runway and whipped it around in a tight arc. An instant later, the second Osprey touched down, bouncing roughly over the ice, before taking its place in line for takeoff behind the first Osprey.