“Look, I’ll go round those two up,” the sergeant volunteered. “Alert status or not, their phones are probably off, or out of battery. And I know most of their likely haunts.”

Flynn nodded. “Yeah.” He grinned crookedly. “That’ll give me a chance to spring the glad tidings on everybody else while you’re gone. Though maybe I should put on my body armor first.”

“Mission briefings are a prerogative of rank, Captain,” Takirak said stolidly.

“Which you wouldn’t dream of horning in on,” Flynn guessed.

“Not in a million years,” the sergeant said devoutly. “Yours is to reason why. Mine is but to do or die.” He stood up and started pulling on layers of cold weather gear, pausing only to slide his tablet into an inner pocket of his parka.

That took Flynn aback for a split second. He wouldn’t have guessed that the veteran noncom was a slave to tech gadgets, the way so many of the younger soldiers and airmen were. Then he shrugged inwardly. After all, he wouldn’t have ever pegged Takirak as a would-be poet, either. But maybe the National Guardsman just figured they might not be coming back to the radar station anytime soon, depending on how this hazardous search-and-rescue mission went.

Nearly an hour later, in the middle of supervising his men as they finished stowing their weapons and other equipment aboard the airport bus, Flynn checked his watch for what seemed the hundredth time. He frowned. Where the hell were Takirak and Mitchell?

Private First Class Torvald Pedersen, the team’s designated rifle marksman, had checked in a while back and was now busy helping the others. When asked, the dark-haired rancher’s son from South Dakota confirmed that the sergeant had found him first, as he was just finishing dinner at one of Kaktovik’s small hotels. Takirak had ordered him straight back to base, before heading farther into town to track down M-Squared. Since then, nobody had seen hide nor hair of either man. Nor were they answering repeated calls to their phones.

Flynn swung away from the bus and stared down the icy track leading into Kaktovik, hoping that he would see two figures trudging toward the radar station. But there was nothing moving. In the distance, the little village’s street and house lights twinkled brightly against a night sky speckled with thousands upon thousands of stars.

At least some of the meteorologists’ predictions of improving weather had panned out, he realized. Thick clouds still obscured most of the mountain peaks south of the small island, but the skies overhead were clearing and the north winds had calmed down some. If similar conditions held over their drop zone, the jump might not be quite as suicidal as he’d feared. But that still seemed like a big “if” when there were so many lives on the line.

Two of his men, Vucovich and Airman Peter Kim, steered their snow machines out of the station’s large-vehicle maintenance bay. Each vehicle towed an empty sled behind it. With a flourish of loud, lawnmower-like motors, they pulled up beside Flynn.