“This is Captain Flynn at Barter Island. I need to talk to—”

“Wait one, sir,” the other man interrupted. “I’m switching you to General Rosenthal, now.”

Flynn felt his eyebrows go up. Lieutenant General David Rosenthal was the top dog, the overall commander for every airman, soldier, sailor, and member of the Space Force based in Alaska. And despite that, he’d apparently just been sitting around anticipating this video call from a junior officer posted to the back end of nowhere? This deal looked worse and worse.

Rosenthal’s lean, squared-jawed visage flickered onto the screen. “Good afternoon, Captain. I assume you’ve got some questions about your orders?”

Flynn stiffened. “Not exactly questions, sir.”

The general smiled dryly. “More like a protest, then. As in, what kind of stupid SOB dreamed up this nightmare and dumped it in your undeserving lap?”

Despite his anger, Flynn felt an answering ironic grin flit across his own face. “Not exactly in those words, sir. But I guess that’s basically the gist of it.” He leaned a little closer to the screen. “Look, General, between the crappy weather and the prevailing winter darkness, asking my guys to make a parachute drop into those mountains goes way beyond the call of duty. Risk is one thing. They all signed on the dotted line when they enlisted. But this is more like a kamikaze run. My troops aren’t even trained for combat search-and-rescue operations.”

Rosenthal nodded grimly. “I’m well aware of that, Captain,” he said. “Unfortunately, the pararescue team we dispatched first was ambushed shortly after takeoff. A SAM brought down one of their two helicopters, with heavy casualties.” His gaze hardened. “Which makes your team it, I’m afraid. You and your men are the only airborne-qualified force we’ve got that can reach those crash sites sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Someone shot down one of our helicopters?” Flynn said, staggered by the news. Carrying out a missile attack just outside the largest military base in Alaska represented an almost unthinkable escalation. “Who? The Russians?”

“Probably,” the general said tersely. He shrugged. “Look, son, for what it’s worth, your orders come straight from the top—from the SecDef and the Joint Chiefs. Their assessment is that your mission is of the utmost importance. If we’re going to have any hope of avoiding an all-out war with Russia, we’ve got to learn more about what really happened out there, both to our planes and to theirs. So it’s vital that you find any surviving aircrew and retrieve the flight recorders from every crash site you can reach.”

Flynn frowned. “That’s one hell of a tall order, sir.”

“Yes, it is,” Rosenthal said flatly. “And I don’t like this much more than you do. But there it is.” His chin came up as he looked Flynn straight in the eyes. “Your country is counting on you and your team right now. I know that may sound corny as hell, but it also happens to be true.”

Shit, shit, shit, Flynn thought irritably. He really hated these kinds of appeals to his patriotism, especially since they were practically guaranteed to work on him. Just stick a flea collar around my darned neck and call me Uncle Sam’s Pavlovian dog, he mused in disgust. That was how they got you, he knew, by invoking the danger to a land and a people you loved. And the trouble was, sometimes the danger was real. If the Russians were suddenly shooting down American planes and helicopters practically at will, it was harder and harder to see how the U.S. could avoid a major armed clash with Moscow.