Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Twenty-Five
Kaktovik, Alaska
A Few Hours Later
Captain Nick Flynn glanced around the little hotel’s dining room. It wasn’t exactly fancy, but it was reasonably comfortable, warm, and well lit—though maybe a little too well lit for his present purposes. Meals were ordinarily served buffet style, but since he and Captain Laura Van Horn were the only ones eating here tonight, the cook had made a show of bringing plates of something resembling chicken marsala, rice pilaf, and steamed broccoli directly to their booth, even going so far as to adopt an outrageously fake French waiter’s accent in the process.
That had sparked a strangled laugh from the stranded HC-130J’s attractive brunette copilot. “Gosh, I didn’t expect dinner theater,” she remarked to Flynn once the inn’s grinning cook had sauntered back to his kitchen.
“Kaktovik is a lot more sophisticated than you might first think,” he responded with a smile.
Van Horn nodded. “So I gathered from the perfectly nice, store-bought curtains in my room here. Despite all the dire warnings you gave me on the bus last night, this quaint little inn does not actually use strips of cardboard cut from packing boxes for window coverings.”
“They don’t?” Flynn said, pretending to be surprised. “Well, there you go. Sophistication at its peak. After all, this is the biggest town for more than a hundred miles in any direction.”
She wagged an accusing finger at him. “Uh, Nick, I hate to break it to you this way, but Kaktovik is also the only town for a hundred miles in any direction.”
“Let’s not quibble over the choice of a mere adjective,” he said loftily. “I say biggest, you say only. What matters most is that we’re both totally correct.”
Van Horn laughed. “Fair enough.” Then her expression turned more serious. She looked across her plate at him. “Which makes me wonder just how a regular U.S. Air Force officer, especially one who doesn’t come across like he has his head stuck up his ass, ended up getting posted out here in the back of nowhere.” She cocked her head to one side. “I’m kind of guessing it wasn’t because you made a career-winning move in your last assignment.”
To his surprise, Flynn wasn’t as irritated by her probing question as he would have expected. Maybe it was the way she asked it, which seemed honestly sympathetic rather than judgmental. And maybe it was because she was the best-looking woman in uniform he’d seen for weeks. Well, admittedly, borrowing her own joke, she was also the only woman in uniform he’d seen for weeks. But there was something that made him want to trust her. “You’d guess right,” he told her with a tight shrug.
“Care to fill me in?” Van Horn asked, genuinely curious now.
“I wish I could,” he told her truthfully. “But I really can’t. Let’s just say I ended up in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with exactly the wrong people.”
Her bright blue eyes widened a fraction. “Oh, wow. Don’t tell me you got caught dallying with your commanding officer’s wife/girlfriend/daughter?”