“Ah,” he said, taking her point. “Meaning that what this source of yours demands is not necessarily what they will get.”

She smiled wolfishly. “Bingo. Because as soon as that aircraft is safely on the ground inside friendly territory, the negotiating power shifts pretty dramatically in our favor.”

Barter Island Long Range Radar Site, near Kaktovik, Alaska

That Same Time

Captain Nick Flynn looked around the brightly lit vehicle maintenance bay. The center of the large, oil-stained concrete floor was now covered by a thick exercise mat, courtesy of the logistics personnel down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson who’d finally filled one of his supply requisitions. He nodded in satisfaction. With the weather worsening day by day, he and Sergeant Andy Takirak had agreed they needed to move as much of their routine training indoors as possible. The maintenance bay might not be heated, but at least its prefab metal walls kept the wind and snow and ice outside. And he knew from their daily workouts that it was more than big enough for what he had in mind.

He unzipped one of the large duffel bags that had come up on the same flight with the exercise mat and started pulling out gear—mouth guards, boxing-style protective headgear, padded gloves, knee pads, and hard rubber training knives. This was the equipment he needed to run the team through a refresher course on what the U.S. Army and Air Force both referred to as “combatives”—the art of hand-to-hand combat. Far from being obsolete in an era of rapid-fire small arms, precision-guided munitions, and ever-more-destructive ranged weapons, hard-earned experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and other conflicts around the world had proved that the ability to survive and win in close-contact physical combat was a vital soldier skill. Hand-to-hand fighting could break out while troops were clearing buildings and villages, while they were manning security checkpoints, or even when trying to control prisoners taken on the battlefield.

Flynn heard the outer door behind him open and felt a swirl of freezing cold air. Suppressing a shiver, he got back to his feet and turned around.

First Sergeant Andy Takirak had come into the maintenance bay. The grizzled Alaskan brushed snow off his parka and stomped his boots to dislodge ice chunks wedged into their treads. “It’s coming down pretty hard out there, sir,” he reported. “Looks like that forecast was right.”

Flynn nodded. Weather stations along the Arctic coast and satellites had been picking up indications of a large series of storms building up over the polar ice cap and starting to move south. Air Force and civilian meteorologists were all predicting an extended period of high winds, blowing snow and ice, and near-zero visibility. Which meant, in turn, that the training gear he’d requested had arrived just in time. There weren’t likely to be any more supply flights arriving at the airport until the blizzards headed their way died out.

He indicated the equipment he’d unpacked. “What do you think, Andy?”

“I’ve always figured if you were close enough to an enemy to reach out and touch him, you were already in a world of hurt,” Takirak said calmly. He showed his teeth. “Give me my rifle and a couple hundred yards of distance any day.”