Flynn crouched beside a blackened metal panel wedged into the dirt. Holding his flashlight in one gloved hand, he gently brushed away flakes of carbonized composites with the other. The panel might have a serial number or an identifier code that could help determine which section of the Raptor it came from.

“Sir!” a voice hissed softly through his headset. “Hey, Captain! It’s me, Hynes. I think I got something here. There’s something weird upslope, maybe a few hundred yards out.”

Flynn looked toward where he’d posted the Army PFC as a sentry at the eastern edge of the debris field. The enlisted man had dropped to one knee, sighting along the barrel of his M249 Para light machine gun up at the steep, rocky hillside looming over the crash site.

Quickly, Flynn moved toward Hynes, staying low himself. He went prone next to the shorter man. “What did you spot? Movement?” he asked sharply.

“No, sir,” the other man said. “Just some kind of lumpy shape up there on that slope. And it hasn’t moved an inch since I first noticed it. But whatever it is, it sure as shit isn’t anything natural.”

Takirak dropped prone on the other side of Hynes. “Trouble?” he asked quietly.

Flynn shrugged. “Could be.” He grinned tightly. “Or maybe PFC Hynes here needs an eye exam.”

“Hey, I was twenty-twenty the last time the docs checked me over,” the enlisted man protested.

Flynn readied his own carbine and nodded to Takirak. “Let’s go check it out, Andy.” He glanced at Hynes. “You cover us, PFC.”

“Yes, sir,” the younger man promised, still sighting through his scope. “If whatever that thing is so much as twitches, I’ll blow the shit out of it.”

Cautiously, Flynn led the way uphill, veering wide to stay out of Hynes’s line of fire. By the time they were about a hundred yards out, he could see what the enlisted man was talking about—a darker, oddly shaped mass nestled in among a field of ice- and snow-covered boulders that must have been deposited across the slope by some retreating glacier thousands of years ago. He and Takirak kept going, planting their feet carefully to avoid sliding back down the steep slope.

When they got within twenty yards, Flynn flicked on his flashlight. His eyes widened slightly as the beam illuminated an unsettling sight—a corpse sheathed in ice and slumped over the handlebars of a snow machine that seemed to have wedged itself between two larger rocks.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered in amazement, hearing an equally astonished murmur from Takirak a little behind him. He moved closer and carefully set his M4 down against a boulder.

Gingerly, they eased the dead man off the machine, laid him down, and then rolled him over. His pale blue flight suit was marked by a dark, reddish-brown stain of dried blood around an ugly exit wound high up on his chest. Flynn’s light settled on the name tag fixed below this wound. генерал-майор василий мавричев, дальняя авиация, it read. Slowly, he translated the Cyrillic letters out loud, “Major General Vasily Mavrichev, Long-Range Aviation.” His jaw tightened. “Okay, this is bullshit,” he growled. “Total, absolute, complete bullshit.”