The President’s angry voice echoed off the walls of the White House Situation Room on the lower level of the West Wing. An Army colonel, brought in by the Pentagon generals to serve as a sacrificial lamb, responded in a quiet monotone.

“Sir, the team failed to appear at the extraction site at the appointed time. The airfield support squad was not advised of any problems from the strike team and were themselves evacuated on schedule.”

“I was promised a low-risk mission with a ninety percent probability of success,” the President said, glaring at the Secretary of Defense.

The room fell silent, no one wishing to antagonize the man further.

Seated two seats down from the President, Vice President Sandecker found a touch of amusement to the inquisition. When called to an emergency meeting by the National Security Advisor, he was surprised to find no less than five generals seated around the Secretary of Defense in the conference room. It was not an omen of good things to come, he knew. Sandecker was no fan of the secretary, a man he found to be narrow-minded and trigger-happy. Yet he quickly put his personal feelings aside for the crisis at hand.

“Colonel, why don’t you tell us exactly what you know,” Sandecker said, deflecting the President’s anger.

The colonel described the planned mission in detail and the intelligence that supported the rescue strike. “The befuddling aspect is that there are indications that the team was successful in freeing the captives. Radio intercepts from Canadian forces in Tuktoyaktuk report an assault on the holding complex and the subsequent escape of the Polar Dawn’s crew. We’ve detected no indications that they were recaptured.”

“What if the Special Forces team was simply delayed?” Sandecker asked. “The nights are short up there right now. Perhaps they were forced into hiding somewhere for a period before making it back to the airfield.”

The colonel shook his head. “We sent an aircraft back to the extraction site under darkness just hours ago. They touched down briefly, but no one was there, and additional radio calls went unanswered.”

“ They couldn’t have just vanished,” the President grumbled.

“We’ve analyzed satellite reconnaissance, radio traffic, and local contacts on the ground. They’ve all come up empty,” stated Julie Moss, the President’s National Security Advisor. “The only conclusion that can be made is that they were quietly recaptured and relocated to a new location. They might be back on the Polar Dawn or possibly flown out of the area.”

“What has been the official Canadian response to our request for release of the ship and crew?” Sandecker asked.

“There has been no response,” Moss said. “We’ve been curtly ignored through diplomatic channels, while the Prime Minister and Parliament continue to make outlandish claims of American imperialism that are straight out of a banana republic.”