CARRIER 9: ARCTIC FIRE By: Keith Douglass

that we have here, including all of the portable communications systems.

Hand-held radios, GPS–all here as soon as you can.”

The younger man looked grim. “Be all that you can be,” he said

finally. A tight smile crossed his face.

2120 Local

USS Jefferson

“How many men?” Admiral Wayne asked again.

The young SEAL petty officer looked haggard and drawn. “At least

thirty, maybe more. Maybe forty, I don’t know for sure,” he said. His

fatigue was evident in his voice.

“Could you see whether your teammates were shot?” Lab Rat asked. He

stared at the man before him, wondering at the combination of strength,

training, and sheer courage that had brought the SEALs back alive.

“I don’t know. We were too far away. I heard gunfire–a Kalishnikov,

I’m certain of it. One burst from an M16, that’s all. I thought I saw a

SEAL on the ground, but I couldn’t be sure.”

Batman turned to Lab Rat. “I suggest you start talking to the other

SEALS, Commander,” he said. “We’re going to have to get them out.”

“Let me go, sir,” the SEAL they were interrogating said suddenly. A

look of desperation crossed his face. “We don’t leave our men

behind–never.”

Batman regarded him carefully. “This mission isn’t going in the next

five minutes, son,” he said quietly. “You let the commander finish up with

you, then you hit the rack for a good solid twelve hours. After that,

we’ll see what you and your shipmates look like. If you’re up to it,

there’ll be a spot on the mission for you.”

The younger man looked relieved. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

“I think I’m done with him, Admiral,” Lab Rat said. He turned to the

SEAL. “Hit the rack, sailor. If you need something to help you sleep, see

Doc. But if you want to be part of this mission, you’d better be asleep in

the next fifteen minutes.”

The young sailor left quickly, his eyes already half-lidded at the

thought of sleep.

Lab Rat turned to the admiral. “This will be a bastard of a mission,”

he said quietly. “The SEALs will want to do their own planning, of

course.”

Batman nodded. “They always do. Anything they want–anything

intelligencewise, or any other form of support, we get it for them.”

USS Coronado

“She’s on final, sir,” the TAO said. Tombstone studied the plat

camera mounted in one corner of TFCC.

“Doesn’t look like she’s having problems to me,” he said shortly.

“Airspeed good, hover is stable–no, I can’t see a damned thing wrong with

that bird.” The helicopter gracefully settling onto the deck above him

confirmed his suspicions. “Get them down here,” he snapped at the chief of

staff. Then he turned to the lawyer behind him. “In my stateroom,

Captain. You’ve got ten minutes to make me real smart on what my options

are. Let’s start with treason and work our way down from there.”

Aflu

The moment the weapon left his hands, something slammed into Sikes’s

back. The force sent him flying through the air like a linebacker, and he

landed facedown on the hard ice, the grooves and ridges in it scraping the

protective gear away from his face and smashing one lens of his protective

goggles.

For a moment, he thought he’d been shot. He felt a deep ache starting

in his back, and he wondered which would kill him first–bleeding from the

wound or hypothermia from lying on the ground. A few moments later, he

realized that he’d been body-blocked rather than shot. The familiar oozing

of blood was absent, although the ache below his left shoulder blade

remained. He lay on the ground motionless, not daring to move.

A harsh voice barked out a short pause, evidently a command of some

sort. Sikes turned his head slowly, aware now of the ache in his neck, to

look at the man who had spoken. Something about the phrase–he tried to

remember if he had ever run across it in his language schools. No, but it

was tantalizingly close to something he did know.

The man barked out another sentence, and two of the paratroopers

approached him from either side. One pointed the barrel of his Kalishnikov

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