Unwilling to be amused, Korenev shook his head. “Get the men on board, Captain. It’s too fucking cold to fart around out here. If the mission’s been called off, at least we can warm up a little first.” He moved out from the helicopter to meet the newcomer halfway.

It was the ice camp’s communications specialist. He held out a message folder and map overlay. “This just came in from Moscow, Major,” he panted, trying to catch his breath in the bitter, lung-freezing chill. “Highest priority.”

Korenev read through the message with growing interest. The GRU had just received new intelligence from one of its most reliable agents, a source code-named SIROTA, Orphan. A small force of American troops—an irregular mix of active-duty Army and Air Force personnel and National Guard reservists—had reached the target zone ahead of them. The map overlay showed the U.S. unit’s last reported position. As a consequence, his original orders to deploy for a covert reconnaissance into the region had been altered. Now he was to hunt down these Americans and eliminate them first. He shrugged, taking this ruthless directive in stride. Like his men, Korenev was a hardened veteran of the war against terrorists in Syria, where prisoners were rarely taken by any side. Pocketing the map overlay, the Spetsnaz major moved on toward his waiting helicopter. As soon as he buckled into his seat, the Ka-60 lifted off and darted southeast, skimming just above the polar ice to avoid detection by enemy radar.

Ninety minutes later, the helicopter slowed in its headlong rush and turned toward an eerie black monolith rising starkly above a gleaming mound of ice. A signal lamp blinked repeatedly from the top of the monolith, which was actually the SSBN Podmoskovye’s large sail.

The Ka-60 orbited once around the surfaced nuclear submarine and then settled in to land nearby. Before its rotors stopped turning, sailors bundled up in thick coats and fur caps against the cold dragged hoses across the ice to begin refilling its nearly empty fuel tanks. Soon, fully refueled, the helicopter lifted off again. Now it flew south, carrying Korenev and his Spetsnaz commandos toward the coast of Alaska and the mountainous wilderness beyond.

Kodiak Force, F-22 Raptor Crash Site, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

A Short Time Later

Scorched and torn pieces of metal and fragments of half-melted composites were strewn for dozens of yards around a fire-blackened crater a couple of meters deep. The dying F-22 must have augered in almost vertically and at very high speed, Flynn judged. One gruesome check of the crumpled mass of fuselage half buried in the bottom of the crater had confirmed that the Raptor’s pilot hadn’t managed to eject before her aircraft slammed nose-first into the frozen tundra. At least her death was quick, he thought sadly.

Now he and his team were probing the debris field for some sign of the fighter’s mission data recorder—which should have captured everything from cockpit voice and video recordings to detailed data from its engines, flight computers, and other avionics. That was exactly the kind of information Air Force investigators needed. With it, they might be able to piece together a reasonably accurate picture of what had happened during the clash between the American F-22s and the three downed Russian aircraft. In the pale glow cast by the low, full moon poking above the eastern hills, flashlight beams darted here and there through the tangled wreckage.