Eagle Station

With a cold shiver, the Welshman had the sudden, eerie impression that the moonlit forest around him was stirring, coming magically to life in the silvery half-light. It was as if the witches of Russian myth were summoning the trees themselves out of their age-old slumber to join in the hunt for them.

“Oh, stop scaring yourself, Davey,” he muttered crossly. “You’re not in one of your old grannie’s ghost stories.” Scowling, he hunched over the steering wheel, forcing his attention back onto the narrow highway unrolling in his high beams. This was no time to indulge in wild fantasies. Not when he still had several more hours of hard driving left to reach the cabin Sam had picked out as a possible safe house… with the last bit certain to be the hardest of all, feeling his way along a maze of rutted dirt logging trails in the pitch dark.

But out there in the darkness beyond the van’s wavering headlights, at the very edge of his vision, he couldn’t help sensing a lurking malevolence — as though the whole countryside and every man’s hand were now turned against them.

Sixteen

Canadian NORAD Region Forward Operating Location Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Later That Night

Until last year, Major Ian Schofield had led the Iron Wolf Squadron’s commando teams, training them in the dark arts of ambush, long-range reconnaissance, and sabotage carried out deep inside enemy territory. Now the lean, wiry Canadian did much the same thing for Scion itself.

He’d been leading his most recent group of Scion recruits, all of them already veterans from half a dozen of the free world’s best special forces units, through an intensive wilderness survival course when the emergency call from Battle Mountain came in. Ferried by helicopter to this remote city only a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, he’d barely had time to wash up and change before hustling back to the edge of the flight line.

NORAD’s Forward Operating Location Yellowknife was a secure military hangar complex sited immediately adjacent to the civilian airport. One of four similar small facilities built across Canada’s far northern frontier, it was intended to strengthen the sparsely populated region’s air defenses. Currently, two Canadian CF-18 Hornet fighters were on standby here, forward-deployed to deter long-range Russian reconnaissance flights over the polar region.

“That aircraft you’re waiting for is on final approach, Major,” the Royal Canadian Air Force warrant officer assigned as his escort said helpfully. “It’s coming in low over the Great Slave Lake.”

Obediently, Schofield swung his binoculars to the southeast. Even this late, past ten at night, there was still plenty of light. Sharp-edged shadows slanted past him across the tarmac. The sun, a fiery orange ball, was at his back — hanging just above the northwest horizon. This close to the Arctic Circle, late summer days were long and the nights were very short.

He squinted, fiddling with the focus, while he zoomed in on a black batwing-configured aircraft descending rapidly toward Yellowknife’s Runway 28. Four large engines were buried in the wing’s upper surface, and he caught just a quick flash of gold-tinged sunlight reflecting off a cockpit canopy.

“I don’t recognize the type,” the Canadian airman beside him commented.

Schofield’s teeth gleamed white in a face weathered by years spent outdoors in all climates and seasons. “You wouldn’t,” he said cheerfully. “It’s quite literally the only one of its kind.”

“And if you told me more—”

“I’d have to kill you,” Schofield said, sounding even more cheerful. “Though of course with the greatest regret.”

As the approaching aircraft crossed the lake’s rocky shoreline and flew low over Yellowknife’s city streets and houses, the muffled roar of its engines diminished sharply. Several control surfaces whined open on the wing’s trailing edge, providing more lift as its airspeed decreased. A nose gear and twin wing-mounted bogies swung smoothly down and locked in position.

By the time it was around a mile from the runway, the plane seemed to be almost gliding noiselessly — skimming along barely above bare granite outcroppings and scattered stands of pine and spruce. It came in very low over the white striped lines that marked the threshold… and touched down with just a puff of light gray smoke from its landing gear. Immediately, those big engines powered back up, howling shrilly as the pilot sharply reversed thrust and braked. Amazingly, it rolled to a complete stop in less than a thousand feet.

Beside Schofield, the RCAF warrant officer muttered, “Good Christ, that was—”

Schofield coughed meaningfully.

“Something I didn’t see,” the warrant officer finished.

“I do appreciate a fast learner,” Schofield said with approval.