Flynn laughed.

“Anyway, my other relatives must have been too poor to keep me, because I got shipped off to a foster home down in the Lower Forty-Eight.” Takirak turned his head toward Flynn. “I didn’t make it back to Alaska until I turned eighteen and hitchhiked in across Canada.” His smile returned. “Then I joined the Guard the next year and haven’t looked back since. I figured getting Uncle Sam to pay me to tote a rifle and spend a lot of time outdoors was a sweet deal.”

Flynn nodded with a grin of his own. “Guess so, Sergeant.” He burrowed deeper into his jacket. “Speaking of spending time outdoors, I think the sooner we start getting the men used to operating in this climate, the better.”

“Yes, sir. You’ve got that right.” Takirak looked over his shoulder at the radar station behind them. “It’s real easy for guys to huddle up inside once there’s snow on the ground. Gets even easier as the dark comes on and everything ices up,” he warned.

Flynn grimaced just thinking about it. He wasn’t immune from that same natural urge to hibernate. Their quarters inside the station were surprisingly comfortable. Besides an industrial-sized kitchen and dining area, there was even a rec room with a TV, a pool table, and a popcorn machine. And he’d already overheard some of the enlisted men hoping their new CO wasn’t really a gung-ho type, despite his Special Operations Command beret. “Suggestions?” he asked.

“That we start off with an hour of PT at zero-seven-hundred hours, tomorrow morning,” Takirak said.

“Which is more than an hour before the sun even comes up,” Flynn pointed out.

“Yes, sir, but we can’t let the position of the sun dictate anything from here on out. Working days have to start and end when we say they do, not when there’s sunlight outside,” the other man said patiently. “Anyway, we can use the vehicle maintenance bay. It’s got decent overhead light.”

“But no heat.”

Takirak’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “Trust me, sir. We’ll all be sweating plenty by the time PT’s done.”

Flynn thought about that and matched the older man’s smile. “I take your point. And after PT?”

“Breakfast to replace the calories we just burned off,” the sergeant said. “And after that some kind of working detail or maybe a route march across the tundra to acclimate.”

“We need a firing range,” Flynn said slowly, thinking it through. The team was equipped with a variety of small arms and heavier weapons, including one of the new, very lightweight M3E1 Carl Gustaf 84mm recoilless rifles and an M249 light machine gun. Issued fresh from stores, all of their weapons would need to be zeroed in to be effective in combat conditions. “Somewhere out on the western end of the island, where there’s no chance of any stray rounds hitting anything or anyone by accident.”

Considering that there was nothing between here and Prudhoe Bay except the occasional rock, that wouldn’t be much of a challenge.