And the National Guard sergeant still held the flashlight he’d been using as a signaling device.

Flynn sighed. There were moments when he really hated being right. This was probably the worst of them. He sighted along the barrel of his pistol, aiming at Takirak’s back. “So, Andy,” he said quietly, almost conversationally. “Just how long have you been betraying your country?”

For a long, seemingly endless moment, the other man froze solid, not moving a muscle. But then he turned his head slowly toward Flynn. “I have never betrayed my country, Captain,” he replied with a thin, tight smile on his face. “Ya russkiy, chlen sibirskogo plemeni yupikov. I am a Russian, a member of the Siberian Yupik tribe.” He shrugged. “And for what it matters, a colonel in the GRU.”

Flynn whistled softly under his breath, suddenly seeing the bigger picture they’d all missed. Along with the Inuits and Aleuts, the Yupiks were one of the three main groups of native peoples spread over the sprawling northern regions from Russia’s Far East to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. They shared related languages and common cultures. Recruiting one of them to act as a deep-cover agent in Alaska, with a lack of family ties explained by his supposed status as an orphan fostered down in the Lower Forty-Eight, was a brilliant move by Russia’s military intelligence service.

With his cover established, Takirak had been perfectly placed for years to spy on the vital oil fields and pipelines at Prudhoe Bay—and, through his service with the Alaska National Guard, on U.S. military installations across the state. No doubt, in the event of war, he would have been ordered to carry out sabotage missions against them. Flynn shook his head slightly in dismay. Man, we let the fox, or rather Amaruq the Gray Wolf, saunter right into the henhouse, he thought coldly, imagining how pleased the men in Moscow must have been when Takirak wangled his way into this assignment to guard the radars making up Alaska’s portion of the North Warning System.

Abruptly, Takirak whirled toward him—hurling his flashlight like a missile. It crashed into Flynn’s shoulder, sending him staggering back a couple of steps, partially off-balance. Before he could bring his Glock back on target, the Russian sprang to his feet, crashed into him, and chopped down hard at his right hand. Flynn’s pistol went flying, clattering away into the rocks somewhere out of his reach.

Shit. Not good. Shaking off the stinging pain from his hand, Flynn shoved the older man back a couple of paces and then went for him. Takirak lunged to meet him head-on. Grunting with effort, they exchanged a flurry of short, vicious strikes aimed at vulnerable points—turning and twisting to absorb some painful blows, while parrying others. Neither gained a decisive edge. At last, almost by mutual accord, they separated slightly and crouched staring at each other, panting, scraped up, and bloody.

Takirak spat blood out of his mouth, without taking his cold, hard eyes off Flynn. Both men drew the combat knives they carried on their body armor and closed in again. There was no holding back now—only one of them would walk away from this.