“I’ll have Smitty show your guys where to stow their personal gear,” the station superintendent told him. “The rest of your equipment arrived a couple of days ago. We’ve stashed it in the vehicle maintenance bay for now.”

Flynn nodded. The orders creating his Joint Force security team specified that it was expected to actively patrol the area around the radar site. That included the mainland as soon as the surrounding lagoons iced over. To make that possible, the supply sections at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, or JBER, had provided a mix of snowmobiles, cross-country skis, and snowshoes. Teaching his men and himself how to use them was going to be one of his top priorities.

“And while they’re doing that, I’ll give you a tour of your quarters,” Mrs. McIntyre said. She jerked a thumb at the rusty sign over the station door. “That bit about it being five-star accommodations may be baloney, but really this place isn’t so bad.” She swept her gaze across the barren, snow-covered landscape around them and then shrugged. “Well, on the inside, anyhow.”

A couple of hours later, Flynn stepped outside. The sun was a distant bright dot on the western horizon. The wind had picked up, and high gray clouds were moving in from the north. It already felt much colder among the lengthening shadows. Shivering, he pulled the hood of his cold weather parka over his scarlet beret and tightened the coat’s Velcro wrist straps down around his gloves.

Then he crunched across the frozen tundra to the edge of the bluff where Andy Takirak stood alone, looking out to sea. The National Guard noncom had a pair of binoculars around his neck.

“See anything, Sergeant?” Flynn asked as he drew up beside the other man.

Takirak grinned. “Miles and miles of nothing, sir.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a cloud of steam. He waved a hand at the low gray-green waves rolling toward a gravel beach only a few feet below them. Chunks of drift ice floated in among the waves. “All the way from here to the North Pole and beyond. No people. No roads. No cars. No houses. Just the seals and the polar bears hunting them out there on the ice cap, living and dying the same way they have for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“Which you don’t mind?” Flynn wondered, hearing the unmistakable happiness in the other man’s voice.

“No, sir,” Takirak admitted. “Up here above the Arctic Circle is where I feel the most alive.” His grin turned sheepish. “I read in a magazine somewhere about some famous writer who said hell was other people. May not be that way for most folks. But it kind of is for me. Which makes being out in the wilderness like this a little bit of heaven.”

Flynn couldn’t think of much to say to that. He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess that’s a natural attitude for anyone raised up here.”

“Maybe so. But I wasn’t brought up in Alaska, Captain,” Takirak told him. He looked out to the sea again. “My parents died when I was real little. Some kind of accident, I guess. All I got from them was my native name, Amaruq . . . Gray Wolf.” He pointed at his short, gray-flecked hair. “Suits me better now.”