Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (readera ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Flynn snapped his head around and looked west. He spotted a faint glow low in the sky there. The HC-130J had its high-intensitylanding lights on, spearing through the darkness and the curtain of blowing snow and ice. That glow was growing brighter fast.The big aircraft must be coming straight in at more than 150 knots. “Pass the word, M-Squared,” he yelled at the radioman.“Tell everyone to clear the strip! You go, too! Now!”

“Yes, sir!” Mitchell nodded frantically. Shouting into the handset to relay the order, he turned and jogged away.

Flynn swung around through a full circle and saw the rest of his men scattering off the runway. All except one. About a hundredyards away, the short, square-shouldered figure of Private First Class Cole Hynes hadn’t budged. The soldier had his headdown while he stubbornly wrestled with another big piece of debris. He didn’t seem to have heard the order to get clear. Andhe was apparently too fixated on his task to notice that everybody else around him was bailing out.

Damn it, Flynn thought. Maybe the other man’s radio was broken. Or maybe its batteries were dead, drained by the subzero temperatures.He cupped his hands and yelled as loudly as he could. “Hynes!”

It was useless. The howling wind caught his voice and tore it to shreds.

Down at the far end of the runway, the big HC-130J appeared suddenly out of the darkness and snow. It was no more than fiftyfeet above the ground and descending rapidly.

Shit, Flynn realized. He was out of time. Frantically, he sprinted toward Hynes, who had his back to the oncoming Super Hercules.He didn’t waste any more breath yelling.

The aircraft touched down hard, bounced once, and then settled firmly onto the ground—thundering straight down the runwayright at the two men. Plumes of pulverized snow and ice sprayed out behind its massive landing gear and whirling propellers.

At the last moment, Hynes looked up, brushing at the snow dusting his goggles with an irritated gesture. His mouth openedin surprise. “Hey, Cap—”

And Flynn, still running all out, threw himself forward—and slammed straight into the shorter enlisted man. The hard, divingtackle knocked Hynes backward off his feet, with Flynn ending up on top. Desperately, he buried his face into the icy surfaceof the runway . . . just as the left wing of the speeding Super Hercules slashed past right overhead.

For a split second, the whole universe became a hurricane-force maelstrom of shattering, deafening noise and pounding winds,snow, and razor-sharp fragments of ice. And then, blessedly, the noise and pummeling died away.

Dazed, Flynn slowly raised his head and looked behind him. The HC-130J was slowing fast as it neared the end of the runway.Painfully, he levered himself back up to his knees.

“Ow,” Hynes said, sounding aggrieved. “Geez, that fucking hurt.” His eyes focused on the man who’d just knocked him on his ass. “Uh, I mean, that fucking hurt, sir.”

“Yeah, I bet it did,” Flynn agreed with a wide grin. He climbed back to his feet and then helped the enlisted man up. He nodded toward where the big four-engine turboprop had finally come to a stop with its propellers still turning, just before it ran out of runway and risked skidding off across the icy tundra. “But maybe not as much as getting sliced into a bazillion pieces by one of those propeller blades, right?”

“No, sir,” Hynes agreed fervently. “And thanks for not letting me get killed, sir.”

“Too much paperwork involved, PFC,” Flynn said, still smiling. “Fortunately for you, I’m lazy that way.”

About an hour later, once they’d finished helping the HC-130J’s aircrew tie their big plane down and cover its engine cowlingsand sensor pods against possible flying ice and hail damage, Flynn had time to welcome the two Air National Guard pilots andtheir staff sergeant loadmaster a little more formally. Which, since they were all exhausted and freezing, pretty much consistedof a quick handshake and nod across the aisle of the bus as it drove away from the airport.

“Skater and I sure appreciate your guys’ hard work out there, Nick,” Ingalls told him tiredly. “If we’d had to try settingdown with all that FOD still littering the runway, we’d have been in a world of hurt.”

“Heck, I’ve been wanting to add my own aviation component to this half-assed command,” Flynn said. “Now it looks like I’mfinally getting my wish.”

The copilot, a pretty brunette named Van Horn, choked back a laugh. “Just until the weather clears enough for JBER to flyin mechanics and spare parts to fix that dud engine of ours,” she warned.

Flynn peered out through the windshield. Even with the headlights, it was now basically impossible to see more than a coupleof dozen yards, if that. The brief lull in the storm was over and they were trapped again in the heart of a blizzard howlingacross the treeless, little island at full force. “That could be a while,” he commented mildly.

The others nodded. “Welcome to winter in Alaska,” Ingalls agreed with resignation. “Starts in the fall and doesn’t end until sometime around summer. I figure we’re probably stuck here for at least a couple of days, maybe more.”

“Well, it’s not all that bad around here,” Flynn told them.

Van Horn looked surprised. “It’s not?”

Flynn leaned back out of the way of the punch he thought might be coming his way in a second. “Nope,” he said wryly. “It’smuch worse.”

“I would kill you for that,” Laura Van Horn said with an answering smile. “But I’m too darned tired. So maybe I’ll take myrevenge later, Captain Flynn.”

Twenty-Three

Sharapovo Nuclear Command Bunker, outside Moscow

The Next Day

Piotr Zhdanov watched in frustration as search area after search area shown on a large digital map of Russia turned green—indicatingthat concentrated sweeps by Tu-214R, Tu-142, and IL-38 reconnaissance planes had come up empty. “You’re quite sure about theseresults?” he demanded. “After all, Petrov and his coconspirators have almost certainly camouflaged the PAK-DA prototype bynow, and swept away any traces left by his landing on a snow or ice field. Couldn’t your pilots and