Jack checked his watch. If the other team was in place, they’d hit their door in the next thirty seconds.

Time to get to work.

Jack racked the charging handle of his MPX. The terrorists would all be inside in weather like this. Of course they were. He smiled to himself. What moron would be outside in this shit? The snow fell heavier now in the fierce wind—near-blizzard conditions. Jack brushed away the ice crusting on the back of his gloves.

He tried his comms again but still got no reply. Even if Adara and Midas were squatting here next to him, they couldn’t talk to one another—in this wind they’d have to shout, and even if they could hear one another they’d risk giving their positions away.

Jack watched the seconds tick by. He was grateful for the long, tedious hours of training he’d spent over the last week on a platform not unlike this one, especially now that he was finally here in the freezing dark, getting hammered by gale-force winds and with time slipping away. He checked his watch again.

Go!

He ran in a low squat past a steel storage crate and rounded the corner when something near the deck caught his eye. “Head on a swivel!” Ding had shouted at him time after time in training reps. It saved his ass again.

Jack froze in place, the toe of his boot just short of a line of snow.

A tripwire.

It stretched across the steel grating, heavy flakes perching on it like fat pigeons roosting on a power line.

Jack knelt low and lit up the tac light on his weapon, following the tripwire to its terminus—an MRUD, a Yugoslavian knockoff of a Claymore mine.

Tricky bastards.

Gavin’s intel brief didn’t mention mines, but Clark said to be ready for anything. Maybe these Green Army Fucks deployed a jammer to screw with their comms, too. But now Jack wondered, Are the tangos just covering their perimeter, or are they setting us up for something worse?

Jack stepped carefully over the tripwire, his eyes keenly alert for more of them in the green glow of his NVGs and the falling snow. He saw none as he reached his position to the right side of the outward-opening steel door.

According to the dated schematics, the square control-room building he leaned against was thirty feet by thirty feet—identical to the other three structures on the old platform. Jack was entering on the east wall. On the far west wall was another door, leading to the crew’s quarters. On the north wall was a door to the machine shop. That was his goal.

If I survive the control room, he reminded himself.

Inside the control room there were no interior walls. All of the control panels, desks, and workstations were along the exterior walls. Once he was inside, there was nowhere to hide.