Page 27 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
READY ROOM,STAT.
He had drilledinto every one of his men to have their go bags with them at all times. It was the reason why they all insisted on always being the ones to drive.
His phone rang. It was Gideon’s ringtone.
Fuck! This is not going to be good news.
“Talk to me,” Kostya answered.
“Got Mike’s kids. Gotta do a pass-off. It’s gonna take me an extra thirty to get them over to the precinct,” Gideon said calmly.
“Okay. As soon as the kids aren’t with you and you’re safe, call me, I’ll conference you into the ready room so you can listen in.” Kostya knew that his paranoid computer geek friend had a satellite phone, so security wouldn’t be an issue.
“You got it.”
Kostya hoped to hell that was the only call he was going to receive. He had six of his men that were mission-ready—they were the best of the best, and if Commander Clark was saying now, he meantnow.
He made it to base without attracting the attention of any member of the sheriff’s department, which was a blessing. When he hot-footed it to their building he saw Ryker’s Harley parked in close. There was not a man or woman on Earth who would touch that thing while they were gone if they valued their life, but Kostya was going to see if there was a place to stow it inside. The last thing he wanted was that beauty to be murdered if a hurricane hit while they were off God knew where.
When he got to the ready room, Commander Clark, Ryker McQueen, Lincoln Hart, Sebastian Durand, and Landon Kelly were present. Landon gave Kostya a grin as he went over to the podium where his boss was shuffling through some papers. The man was radiating energy, which again, concerned Kostya because Simon Clark was known for being cool as a cucumber. It wasn’t that he was nervous or upset, just that Kostya could tell that something was up.
“Do you have six or seven men?” Simon asked.
“Seven,” Kostya immediately answered. “Gideon’s the only one who won’t be here immediately. He has to drop off his brother’s children.”
Simon nodded, looking down at a report, before thrusting it at Kostya. “We can go over some of the basics before Gideon arrives. You’re going to be dealing with damn near arctic conditions.”
Kostya winced. They’d trained up near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska twenty-five months ago, in January. Five days of diving, then they’d spent two weeks in the Denali Park and Preserve. Mateo and Lincoln hadn’t been with the team then and Jase was one of their best trackers in the snow and he was on the training mission. He knew Mateo Aranda was good, because his team—
“What?” Simon interrupted him mid-thought. The man didn’t miss a trick.
“Aranda came from Blue Cascade. I talked to Kelsey Hick’s team when he transferred Mateo my way, and they’d just done a mission in the Andes, so he’s good to go. From what I read in Lincoln Hart’s file, he’s supposedly checked out in arctic conditions, but I’ve got to ask him what he’s done. I know he grew up in Minnesota, but that doesn’t automatically make him prepared.”
“One of the reasons you’re going, even though you’re not up on rotation, is the training you did up in Alaska two years ago,” Commander Clark explained.
Kostya smiled at Mateo, who nodded to him as he came into the room and sat down. That just left Nolan and Gideon. As soon as he thought that, Nolan O’Rourke came in wearing a frown. Which was unusual; normally you could never read Nolan’s expression.
“How do you want to work this?” Simon asked.
“Gideon has a sat phone. As soon as he’s clear he’s going to call in, are you good with that?” Kostya asked his boss.
Commander Clark nodded. “Let’s get started. It’ll take me a minute to access the briefing on the network. I was kind of depending on Gideon to take care of things.”
“Don’t we all?” Kostya sighed.
Despite his words, Simon Clark quickly set up his laptop and pulled up the presentation he needed. “Hit the lights.”
Ryker McQueen was already at the wall and had them off before the commander finished his request. Five headshots appeared on the screen. Two women and three men.
“We’ve got five American biologists who have been missing for eight days. They were due to check-in at the Koivusuo Strict Nature Reserve in Finland six days ago.”
“Then why are they saying they’ve been missing for eight days?” Nolan asked with his hand up in the air.
“They called in using one of their satellite phones eight days ago, so the European head of the Intercontinental Wolf Center thought everything was fine, even when they were so late showing up at the rendezvous point. He figured that the bad snowstorm was the problem.”
“He didn’t call them?” Kostya asked, managing to keep the outrage out of his voice.
“Not until yesterday,” Simon sighed. “That was when he found out that not one of the team was picking up their satellite phones. What’s worse, he finally had the bright idea to go back and check out the GPS tracking on the call he had received eight days ago. It turns out that the team was two kilometers over the border into Russia. They were in the Republic of Karelia.”
