Cradling his own captured AKM rifle, Flynn moved out from under the spinning blades . . . and then stopped dead, taken completely by surprise at what he saw ahead of him. They’d landed about fifty yards from the only intact structure left, a very large fabric tent of some kind. It was a faded white that matched the snow-covered terrain, and draped in camouflage netting to break up its silhouette. But the whole front of the tent had just rolled upward, allowing him to see the huge blended-wing aircraft hidden inside.

“Jesus Christ,” Flynn muttered to himself, staggered by the sheer size of this plane. It was as big as a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and shaped pretty much the same way. But it was just as obviously not an American aircraft design. Which meant it belonged to the Russians. His eyes narrowed in speculation. What kind of war game was Moscow playing here? Why secretly station a brand-new strategic bomber of some kind—for this could be nothing else—so deep inside American territory?

He felt a shiver down his spine. Whatever the reason, he was pretty sure it was nothing good, at least not from an American perspective. For a split second, Flynn stood frozen in place, remembering the earlier, explicit orders relayed to him from the Pentagon: Observe and report any unidentified aircraft on the ground, but under no circumstances take any other action without further instructions. Then he shook his head decisively. Yeah, screw that, he thought with a mental shrug. There was no way he was just going to sit back and watch the Russians finish whatever they were up to here, because he could hear that stealth bomber’s engines spooling up right now.

Besides, Flynn asked himself with a sudden grin, what more could the spooks and the Joint Chiefs do to him for disobeying orders? Exile him to the back end of Alaska again?

He started to trot across the snow toward the hangar. But then he spotted movement under the aircraft’s fuselage. A man in one of those pale blue Russian flight suits—the same kind worn by Mavrichev, the dead general they’d found—was already climbing up a short crew ladder into the bomber.

Without hesitating, Flynn raised the AKM rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. A clump of snow kicked up under the fuselage. Too low. He raised his aim slightly and squeezed off several more shots. This time he saw sparks cascading off the metal ladder. But the crewman he’d been shooting at had already disappeared through the open hatch.

Flynn lowered his weapon and sprinted toward the hangar, acting almost entirely on instinct. He couldn’t tell if he’d scored any hits on that guy, but whether he had or not didn’t seem to matter. Somebody was still inside that Russian stealth aircraft, and unless he wanted to just stand here and watch it fly away, he needed to get a lot closer.

Gritting his teeth in pain, Petrov dragged himself up the ladder and flopped over onto the deck. His right arm, torn open by a rifle round, now hung useless at his side. Straining, he struggled back to his feet. But when he tried to turn the manual hatch control, he almost blacked out.