Tipton turned his attention to the gulf, scanning the shoreline again with his binoculars.

“Roman, where are you?” he hissed aloud, angry at the team’s disappearance.

But there was no sign of the rubber boats or the men who had sailed off in them. Only an empty expanse of sea and ice filled the lenses. He patiently waited five minutes and then five more, but it was a futile gesture. The assault team was not coming back.

He heard one of the idling aircraft rev its engines and he pulled himself away from the frozen vigil. Running clumsily in his heavy cold-weather gear, he made for the open side door of the first airplane. Jumping in, he caught a dirty look from the pilot, who immediately jammed the throttle forward. Tipton staggered to an empty seat next to the corporal as the Osprey bounced down the runway and lunged into the air.

“No sign?” the corporal yelled over the plane’s noisy motors.

Tipton shook his head, painfully reciting the mantra “no man left behind” in his head. Turning away from the corporal, he sought solace by staring out a small side window.

The Osprey, with its sister ship following close behind, flew over Coronation Gulf to gain altitude, then slowly banked around to the west in the direction of Alaska. Tipton absently stared down at the lights of a ship steaming to the east. In the first rays of dawn, he could see it was an icebreaker towing a large barge in its wake.

“Where are they?” Tipton murmured to himself, then closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep.

Chapter 55

55

TIPTON NEVER KNEW THAT HE HAD GAZED DOWN upon his Delta Force comrades. What he also didn’t know was that the men were suffering all the creature comforts of a medieval dungeon.

Zak’s security team had carefully stripped the commandos of their weapons and communication gear before marching them onto the deck of the barge, along with the Polar Dawn’s crew. The Americans were then unceremoniously forced at gunpoint into a small storage hold at the bow of the barge. As the last captive was forced down the hold’s steel steps, Roman glanced back to see two men hoisting the Zodiac inflatables aboard and securing them along the stern rail.

In the only sign of pity shown the captives, two cases of bottled water, frozen solid in the cold, were tossed into the hold before its heavy steel door was slammed shut. The door’s locking turn lever was flung over, then the rattling of a chain could be heard securing the lever in place. Standing silently inside the freezing black bay, the men felt an impending sense of doom hanging over them.

Then a penlight popped on, and soon another. Roman found his in a chest pocket and twisted it on, thankful that he had something of use that hadn’t been confiscated.