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

wait for it to be shipped by sea.” She shook her head in regret. “Man, I hate to thinkabout what that beautiful car looked like after its first winter up here.”

“Weren’t you tempted to ‘lose it’ in transit?” he asked mischievously. “Just to save such a nice sports car from getting allbanged-up and rusty, I mean.”

“Oh hell yes!” Van Horn smiled to show she wasn’t serious. “The only trouble was I couldn’t quite figure out how to pull theCorvette off our plane without anyone noticing.”

Flynn nodded slowly. “I see. So essentially you’re telling me that you’re a wannabe air pirate.”

Van Horn leaned back in the booth and stared at Flynn appraisingly. “I’m a woman with many talents.”

For just a moment, he envisioned the curvy Laura Van Horn in skintight leather leaning against a red Corvette. His pants suddenlyfelt too tight and he realized he really had been stuck out here in the icy boonies for way too long. “Uh, yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Sure.” He was grateful that there was a table between them as he tried to change the image in his mind.

Van Horn took pity on him and changed the subject again. “So what’s the deal with the guys in this security unit of yours?I know the military’s gone all gung-ho on ‘jointness’ these days, but that’s a pretty wild grab-bag assortment you’ve gotthere—Army, Air Force, and Army National Guard, right?”

Glad to be able to focus on work, he nodded. “I keep hoping to snag a Marine, a Coastie, and someone from the Space Forceso I can make a full set.” He shrugged. “No joy there, yet.”

“And are they as good at causing trouble as you are?” she asked curiously, smiling slightly to take the sting away.

Flynn laughed. “Like you wouldn’t believe!” And then, before he knew it, he found himself telling her funny stories aboutthe assortment of military-grade-A oddballs, misfits, and overall “square peg in a round hole” types he’d found himself saddledwith the day they all flew into Barter Island. Everything from M-Squared’s elaborate pranks that almost always backfired onhim to Private Vucovich’s failed effort to set up an illicit moonshine still in one of the radar station’s unused storagesheds. “Fortunately, no one was hurt when it exploded,” he finished. “But Vucovich did find himself spending a couple of verycold and very lonely hours picking half-fermented potato slices out of the snow.”

“Oh, holy crap,” Van Horn choked. She dabbed at the tears of laughter in her eyes. “I sure wish I’d been there to see his face when thatcontraption blew sky-high!”

“It was truly a sight to behold,” Flynn admitted. “It was all there, everything from the agony of defeat to the thrill ofseeing a ten-foot high ball of flame billow above the tundra, and knowing it was all his doing.”

She shook her head helplessly, fighting down another wave of uncontrolled laughter. Then she looked straight across the tableat him. “And despite all of this stuff, you’re really proud of your team, aren’t you, Nick? Or, at least proud of what you’vemade of them.”

Caught off guard, Flynn thought about it for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I guess I am. They’ve come a long way.”

Over the past weeks, under the pressure of hard work and rigorous training, they’d gone from a bunch of discontented, doggedlyseparate individuals to a cohesive, effective military unit. It would be going too far to say that any of them were reallyhappy about being stationed at Barter Island. In fact, if he ever heard someone singing the praises of the radar station,he’d probably be tempted to arrange an immediate psych eval. But his men had definitely come together as a group. And despiteall the hardships, they appeared determined to do the job they’d been sent here to do and to do it well—no matter how crazythe Pentagon’s idea of guarding the radar station against a physical attack still seemed.

“But that’s mostly Andy Takirak’s doing, I think,” Flynn heard himself saying. “I really lucked out there. He’s probably oneof the best NCOs I’ve ever run into.”

Van Horn smiled at him. “From your description of him earlier, he does sound like a true paragon of all the military virtues,combined with the wilderness survival skills of an Alaskan Inuit,” she teased.

“He’s not perfect,” Flynn protested. “In fact, I just found out that he’s got some personality quirks of his own.” He lookedsideways as if to make sure they were still alone and lowered his voice. “Horrible ones.”

“Do tell,” she said, with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

“Well, it turns out that one of M-Squared’s most recent projects has been figuring out how to hack into everyone else’s internetaccounts,” Flynn said.

“Which is a federal crime,” Van Horn noted.

He nodded. “As I pointed out to Senior Airman Mitchell when I caught him red-handed. At great length. Along with a reminderthat the military prison at Leavenworth might actually be one of the few places less appealing than Barter Island.”

“And then you got him to spill what he’d learned?”

“I had to,” Flynn said virtuously. “Just to make sure our unit’s operational secrets were safe.”

“Okay, so what’s your NCO’s terrible secret vice?” Van Horn wondered. “Porn?”

“Worse,” Flynn said darkly. “Much, much worse.” He lowered his voice even further and leaned across the table to whisper inher ear, noticing at the same time that it was a particularly beautiful, eminently kissable ear. “He’s part of an online writinggroup.”

Van Horn laughed, then her eyes widened again, this time in simulated dread. “Not . . . not . . . Star Trek fan fiction?”

“Oh, this goes way beyond a simple court-martial offense like that, I’m afraid,” Flynn told her grimly. “No, they write poetry.Modern, nonrhyming poetry. All about the wonders of the Alaskan wilderness. And sunsets. And the ocean.”

“You’re kidding me,” she said in disbelief.

He shook his head with a grin. “Nope. I swear it’s the God’s honest truth. And I kind of wish I hadn’t looked at what M-Squaredshowed me. Some things should stay private.”

“Definitely!”

For another long moment, they looked at each other