She shook her head helplessly, fighting down another wave of uncontrolled laughter. Then she looked straight across the table at him. “And despite all of this stuff, you’re really proud of your team, aren’t you, Nick? Or, at least proud of what you’ve made of them.”

Caught off guard, Flynn thought about it for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I guess I am. They’ve come a long way.”

Over the past weeks, under the pressure of hard work and rigorous training, they’d gone from a bunch of discontented, doggedly separate individuals to a cohesive, effective military unit. It would be going too far to say that any of them were really happy about being stationed at Barter Island. In fact, if he ever heard someone singing the praises of the radar station, he’d probably be tempted to arrange an immediate psych eval. But his men had definitely come together as a group. And despite all the hardships, they appeared determined to do the job they’d been sent here to do and to do it well—no matter how crazy the Pentagon’s idea of guarding the radar station against a physical attack still seemed.

“But that’s mostly Andy Takirak’s doing, I think,” Flynn heard himself saying. “I really lucked out there. He’s probably one of the best NCOs I’ve ever run into.”

Van Horn smiled at him. “From your description of him earlier, he does sound like a true paragon of all the military virtues, combined with the wilderness survival skills of an Alaskan Inuit,” she teased.

“He’s not perfect,” Flynn protested. “In fact, I just found out that he’s got some personality quirks of his own.” He looked sideways as if to make sure they were still alone and lowered his voice. “Horrible ones.”

“Do tell,” she said, with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

“Well, it turns out that one of M-Squared’s most recent projects has been figuring out how to hack into everyone else’s internet accounts,” Flynn said.

“Which is a federal crime,” Van Horn noted.

He nodded. “As I pointed out to Senior Airman Mitchell when I caught him red-handed. At great length. Along with a reminder that the military prison at Leavenworth might actually be one of the few places less appealing than Barter Island.”

“And then you got him to spill what he’d learned?”

“I had to,” Flynn said virtuously. “Just to make sure our unit’s operational secrets were safe.”

“Okay, so what’s your NCO’s terrible secret vice?” Van Horn wondered. “Porn?”

“Worse,” Flynn said darkly. “Much, much worse.” He lowered his voice even further and leaned across the table to whisper in her ear, noticing at the same time that it was a particularly beautiful, eminently kissable ear. “He’s part of an online writing group.”

Van Horn laughed, then her eyes widened again, this time in simulated dread. “Not . . . not . . . Star Trek fan fiction?”

“Oh, this goes way beyond a simple court-martial offense like that, I’m afraid,” Flynn told her grimly. “No, they write poetry. Modern, nonrhyming poetry. All about the wonders of the Alaskan wilderness. And sunsets. And the ocean.”