“Yeah, cheer up, Cole,” one of the others said with a crooked smile of his own. “Sure, it’s fricking cold out. And it’s dark. And we’re all gonna have to drag our sorry asses through the snow for miles and miles—”

“I’m waiting for the ‘but’ here, Boyd,” Hynes said darkly.

“Well, I mean, how much worse could it get?” the other man finished.

“A lot worse,” another soldier said suddenly, looking off to the south.

Flynn turned and saw a little party trudging slowly toward them out of the darkness. Wade Vucovich was staggering along under the weight not only of his own equipment, but also that of Sanchez and Torvald Pedersen. The big New Mexican had Pedersen slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. In a rush, everyone moved to join them.

With a grunt, Sanchez stopped and kneeled down. Then, gently, he rolled the dark-haired sniper off his shoulder and set him carefully on the snow.

“What happened?” Flynn asked, squatting next to Pedersen.

“Screwed up my landing, sir,” the marksman said blearily. “I think I busted my leg.”

Sanchez nodded. “Me and Wade here splinted it and gave him some painkillers, but Tor can’t walk on that broken leg, so I had to carry him.” He saw the astonished look on Flynn’s face and said quickly, “It wasn’t that far, Captain. Not more than a half a mile.”

Flynn stared at him blankly. A half a mile. Through snow and ice in below-freezing temperatures. Damn, he thought with sudden pride, these men were good. And to think he’d first seen these guys as the Grimy Ten, a bunch of no-hopers foisted on him by other officers who were smart enough to get rid of them. He felt a moment’s regret that Airman Mitchell had been the one man who’d folded up in the crunch. Despite M-Squared’s occasional goofball tendencies, he’d seemed to be shaping up well.

“You’re not going to leave me here, are you, sir?” Pedersen asked suddenly, sounding worried.

“Oh hell no,” Flynn assured him, as a way to solve this problem abruptly unfolded inside his mind. It was just a question of applying their very limited but very real resources to the task in hand. “You can ride on the one sled that mostly survived the drop. We’ll fix it up and rig a couple of rope harnesses so we can take turns pulling you, like sled dogs.”

Behind him, he heard Hynes mutter, “Geez, M-Squared on the run, all our snow machines wrecked, and now a busted leg to top it off. Crap, the sarge is going to be really, really pissed off.”

Flynn raised his head in sudden concern. He looked around the circle of faces. Everyone else except Takirak had already arrived at the rally point. So where was the veteran NCO? Lying out there somewhere in the dark, injured himself or maybe dead? He scrambled back to his feet, ready to order out a search party to go look.