Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (android based ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“This is a big place and with just the three of us to keep it running, we’re all pretty much self-motivated.”

Mrs. McIntyre nodded. “And now that you and your troops are here, I guess I’ll be cooking for you, too. At least, that’s whatthose high muckety-mucks down at Elmendorf are hoping.” She turned to watch Sergeant Takirak and the others filing out ofthe bus. Under the noncom’s soft-spoken orders, they immediately began unloading their personal gear, equipment, and weaponsfrom the vehicle’s luggage compartment. “Unless, you’d prefer living on those MREs I hear so much about.”

Flynn shook his head quickly. “No, ma’am. We’d be thrilled to eat whatever you put in front of us.” The armed forces’ MealsReady to Eat were fine. In the field. If you didn’t have anything else. And if you were seriously hungry. But in his opinion,anyone who’d choose MREs over home-cooked food had either lost all sense of taste or had some other serious psychologicalproblems. Besides, from the look of Johansson’s waistline the odds were good that Marta McIntyre was a decent cook.

“I’ll have Smitty show your guys where to stow their personal gear,” the station superintendent told him. “The rest of yourequipment 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 areaaround the radar site. That included the mainland as soon as the surrounding lagoons iced over. To make that possible, thesupply 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 pickedup, 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 aroundhis gloves.

Then he crunched across the frozen tundra to the edge of the bluff where Andy Takirak stood alone, looking out to sea. TheNational 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 handat the low gray-green waves rolling toward a gravel beach only a few feet below them. Chunks of drift ice floated in amongthe waves. “All the way from here to the North Pole and beyond. No people. No roads. No cars. No houses. Just the seals andthe polar bears hunting them out there on the ice cap, living and dying the same way they have for hundreds of thousands ofyears.”

“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. “Iread 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 diedwhen 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.”

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 LowerForty-Eight.” Takirak turned his head toward Flynn. “I didn’t make it back to Alaska until I turned eighteen and hitchhikedin across Canada.” His smile returned. “Then I joined the Guard the next year and haven’t looked back since. I figured gettingUncle 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 timeoutdoors, 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 forguys to huddle up inside once there’s snow on the ground. Gets even easier as the dark comes on and everything ices up,” hewarned.

Flynn grimaced just thinking about it. He wasn’t immune from that same natural urge to hibernate. Their quarters inside thestation were surprisingly comfortable. Besides an industrial-sized kitchen and dining area, there was even a rec room witha TV, a pool table, and a popcorn machine. And he’d already overheard some of the enlisted men hoping their new CO wasn’treally 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 endwhen we say they do, not when there’s sunlight