The airman dropped into his chair and pulled up the encrypted message file they’d been sent from Alaskan Command down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. “See, sir?”

Quickly, Flynn scanned through the alert. Key phrases jumped out at him. “Unprecedented levels of military air activity observed across the entire Russian Federation.” “No immediate confirmation of hostile intent.” “Increase in readiness levels directly authorized by the National Command Authority,” which meant the president and the secretary of defense acting jointly. But there was nothing about what might be behind these sudden Russian moves that had alarmed Washington.

His mouth tightened. He didn’t know what was worse: the possibility that nobody in D.C. had a fricking clue as to why Moscow had just put its entire Air Force and air defense network on a wartime footing. Or the very real possibility that the Pentagon brass and the intel community had simply decided not to share their information with the grunts, squids, and zoomies posted out at the sharp end . . . figuring that they didn’t need to know the whys and wherefores. Just like at the C-130 crash site in the Libyan desert, he thought bitterly.

Ditch that anger for now, Flynn told himself. His most immediate problem was figuring out how to translate this unexpected DEFCON Three directive into concrete action by the troops under his command. Older, more established Army formations and Air Force bases had thick manuals stashed away in their secure safes—manuals that laid out each and every action required to comply with the new, higher alert status, all the way down to precise rules of engagement for any extra guards posted at gates and perimeters. As a brand-new, completely untested unit, the men of his Joint Force security team didn’t have any comparable manuals to tell them what to do in a sudden crisis. They were entirely dependent on his intellect, training, and instincts.

He looked up and saw the rest of the team filing into the dining room. Word that something was up had obviously gotten out fast. He supposed that wasn’t much of a surprise. All twelve of them were basically living in one another’s back pockets. Once the sun went down and temperatures plunged well below zero, their universe was essentially restricted to a small number of corridors and rooms. Certainly nobody sane had any incentive to go wandering off anywhere outside, even when they weren’t on duty. It was the closest thing to a long-duration submarine patrol that anyone not in the U.S. Navy could ever experience.

“What’s the word, sir?” one of them asked.

“As of this moment, we’re moving to DEFCON Three,” Flynn replied, “along with all other U.S. bases, ships, and air squadrons around the world. For some reason, our Russian friends have moved all of their own fighters, strike aircraft, strategic bombers, and SAM forces to full alert.”

“Holy shit,” Hynes said in amazement. “Are we at war?”

“Not as far as I know,” Flynn told him. He glanced down at the time stamp on the alert message they’d been sent. He grinned crookedly. “Well, at least we weren’t as of fifteen minutes ago.”