Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

next stage of boredom, a stage he privately referred to as the “So help me God, the first chance I get I’m going to grabsomeone’s weapon and shoot my way out of this fricking place” phase. Although that was mostly a joke, he couldn’t shake theuncomfortable feeling that no one planned to let him out of this isolated wing any time soon.

The only people Flynn saw regularly were doctors and nurses . . . and the armed guards posted outside his door. He’d had to do a lot of arguing even to get a rundown on what had happened after he’d ejected from the Russian aircraft. Fortunately for him, PFC Hynes, who should have his sergeant’s stripes back now as a reward, had reacted instantly to the sight of his commander vanishing into an enemy bomber by ordering the Ka-60 helicopter crew to “follow that plane!” And while falling farther and farther behind the speeding PAK-DA, they’d still been close enough to see Flynn’s ejection seat parachute open, and retrieve him before he froze to death. After that, the helicopter had returned to the battlefield at the spur hill, picked up the wounded and other survivors, and then made it safely through the tail end of the blizzard to Fairbanks. Thankfully, Floyd Leffert, Rafe Sanchez, and Tor Pedersen were expected to recover fully from their injuries. One of the four badly wounded Spetsnaz commandos hadn’t been so lucky, but the other three were still alive—and apparently the subject of a lot of heated diplomatic negotiations between Moscow and Washington, D.C. The same thing went for the two captured Russian pilots and their Ka-60 helicopter.

In the meantime, here he was, Flynn thought gloomily, stuck in isolation—unable to communicate with anyone, not the survivingmembers of his team and not even his own family. At least the food was decent, for hospital food. Then again, that might onlybe an omen that they were fattening him up for the bureaucratic kill. What felt like endless hours of debriefings since he’dbeen flown here from the trauma center in Fairbanks had made a couple of things painfully clear: First, the U.S. intelligencecommunity had desperately wanted to get its grubby hands on that Russian stealth bomber in an intact condition. And second,the spooks were really pissed that the superadvanced aircraft was now scattered in highly radioactive pieces across some desolateslope in the Alaskan Never-Never instead.

Flynn wasn’t sure anyone believed what he’d told them about the Russian colonel’s real plans to blow the hell out of strategic targets from Washington, D.C., to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. One of the CIA debriefers had even snidely wondered why Flynn hadn’t had the foresight to record Petrov’s demented ramblings on his smartphone as evidence. His quick, smart-ass rejoinder that he’d been kind of too busy “doing all that running and shooting and not dying shit” hadn’t gone over very well. His mouth quirked upward in a wry grin. It might be time he reread that book on how to make friends and influence people. Its lessons obviously hadn’t stuck.

There was a soft knock on his door. Flynn looked up warily. It wasn’t anywhere near lunchtime yet, which left only a seriesof unpleasant alternatives ranging from the next round of painful physical therapy for the injuries he’d sustained while ejecting . . .to another mind-numbing debriefing session where intelligence officers asked him the same damned questions over and over andover again, obviously hoping they could trip him up somehow. For just a moment, he was tempted to call out “Go away!” justto see what would happen. But then he shrugged. Anything, painful or not, was probably better than just lying here. And not,not, not thinking about the itch between his shoulder blades that he could not scratch.

The door opened.

And Captain Laura Van Horn came in. The attractive, dark-haired National Guard pilot grinned cheerfully at the surprised expressionon his face. “Wow, Nick. I heard you’d had a tough time, but I have to say that you really do look like hell.”

With an effort, Flynn closed his mouth. “It’s camouflage,” he told her, smiling back. “I’m only lulling the sentries out thereby looking helpless like this. That way I can catch them off guard when I make my move to break out of this joint.”

Van Horn came over and gently tapped the solid plaster cast encasing his chest and arms. “Pretty good camouflage,” she commenteddryly.

“I may have gone a bit overboard,” Flynn admitted. He raised an eyebrow. “Which leads me to wonder just how you got in here.From what I can tell, I’m sort of off-limits to just about everyone.”

She nodded. “That you are.” She shrugged. “But I told you I was a woman of many talents, remember?”

“Yeah,” Flynn said tightly, trying very hard not to summon up the mental image he’d created the last time she said that. Stuck in a hospital bed with twenty pounds of plaster immobilizing his arms was definitely not the right moment to imagine Laura Van Horn in a sexy outfit.

“Plus, I have some friends in high places,” she said as the door opened behind her. A thin, middle-aged man in a dark jacketand tie quietly entered. He had graying hair and pale eyes that peered out knowingly behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

Flynn looked him over with a skeptical eye. “You don’t strike me as being a doctor. And you’re sure as hell not a nurse. Whichmakes you—”

“My boss,” Van Horn finished for him. “Mr. Fox.”

“Fox? Seriously?” Flynn said. “And now you’re going to tell me that Mr. Fox here heads up a civilian air freight company inAlaska? Flying people’s mail orders and gift boxes between there and Seattle?”

She had the grace to redden slightly. “That may not have been completely accurate.” She folded her arms. “Our range of operationsis actually a little more . . . global.”

“I bet,” Flynn said, starting to feel a little angry at having been played for a sucker when they first met. “I guess whatyou really do is more like delivering weapons and explosives to