Ingalls ran his eyes over his own display. “I confirm Gearbox Two, no oil pressure.” He glanced out the cockpit window at their left wing. The six-bladed propeller on the inmost engine was stationary. “Number Two is feathered. No signs of a fire.”

“For small favors, let us be very, very grateful,” Van Horn said devoutly. She glanced at the pilot. “Okay, Rip, what now?”

“Now you take the aircraft,” he said, sounding perfectly calm and in control. “Thus allowing me, as the august aircraft commander, to focus all my attention on managing this deplorable situation.”

She nodded, settling her hands firmly on the yoke in front of her and giving it a quick shake to verify that she did indeed have her hands on the yoke. “Yes, sir. I have the aircraft.”

“You have the aircraft, Captain,” Ingalls confirmed formally, slightly relaxing his own grip. He keyed his radio mike. “Elmendorf Control, this is Totem One. I am declaring an inflight emergency. We’ve lost our Number Two engine. No fire, repeat, no fire.”

“Copy that, Totem,” an air traffic controller replied. “Advise your intention.”

Ingalls considered that. Technically, their HC-130J was rated to continue missions with the loss of a single engine. That was especially true for this training flight, without any heavy cargo or passengers aboard the aircraft. But the idea of trying to make it back to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, nearly five hundred nautical miles away, in the middle of a storm, wasn’t that appealing—especially down one engine for unknown causes. If one engine could crap out like this, there was no guarantee that a second and a third wouldn’t do the same thing at the worst possible moment. Eielson Air Force Base at Fairbanks was considerably closer, but it would still take them forty-five minutes to get there. And the most direct flight path to Eielson meant crossing the Brooks Range, some of the highest and most rugged country in all of Alaska. Yeah, no thanks on that, he decided.

“What’s the status of Deadhorse?” he radioed. The airport serving the Prudhoe Bay oil fields was just sixty nautical miles northeast of their current position. It didn’t have a control tower, but at least the runway was paved.

“Deadhorse is shut down,” the controller reported. “Visibility is currently nil, with blowing snow and very high winds.”

“Crap,” Ingalls muttered. “Okay, how about Barter Island?”

“Wait one.”

Van Horn shook her head. “Barter Island? Man, that’s the back end of nowhere. I’ve flown in there a couple of times. It’s just a gravel strip.” The aircraft hit another pocket of turbulence and shook from end to end. “Which on a night like this is going to be ass-deep in snow and ice.”

Ingalls shrugged. “Right now, I’ll take just about any runway in a storm, Skater. And if we lose another engine, I’m gonna be happy if we can even find some relatively flat piece of tundra to set down on.”

“Totem, this is Elmendorf,” the air controller’s voice said through his headset. “There’s a small security detachment posted at the radar station there. I just checked with them. They report the storm’s died down a little there, with north winds diminishing to about half of what they were an hour ago. The ceiling’s only around fifteen hundred feet and visibility’s not great, maybe a mile, maybe less. There may also be debris on the runway. Our guys are moving out now to check that and clear the strip if necessary—but they say it’ll take some time.”