Page 4 of Gunn's Mission

Gunnar Neilson hadn’t been paying close attention to the meeting Stone Jacobs had called that morning, but the question pulled him back from the dark place his mind had gone. He relaxed his hand, which was squeezing a stress ball as part of his therapy. “Yeah. Northern Minnesota. Why?”

The corners of Stone’s mouth curved slightly, and his eyes narrowed. “I had a call from Hank Patterson. He has a job and is looking for the right guy…”

Since Stone was staring intently at him, he wondered what made Stone think he was the right guy. But he played it cool. “Yeah, I was raised in Minnesota, but why does Hank think that guy is me?”

“Well, we’ve all had cold weather training of some sort, but this… This will be challenging—even for you.”

Intrigued, Gunn studied Stone. He wasn’t sure he liked that hint of a smile on his new boss’s face. Then he glanced around the large table in their headquarters where everyone who wasn’t already on some mission elsewhere had gathered. By their curious looks, they were equally intrigued.

Booker Hayes, one of Yellowstone office’s new flight team pilots, part of the newly formed Team Eagle, raised a single eyebrow as he stared back at him. “I don’t have a clue what this is about.” He turned to Stone. “I’m assuming you won’t need one of our planes since you haven’t checked with me about availability…”

Stone shook his head.

Hunter “Wolf” Black, who had spent time with Gunn at the burn center at USAISR in San Antonio, Texas, after the horrific accident that had ended military careers of two helicopters full of men heading into battle, shrugged as well. “Now, I’m beginning to feel a little relieved I’m not on the roster for this mission. They need cold weather creds?”

Stone tapped the table. “Hank has a friend at the Pentagon who asked if we had someone we could send up north—to a research facility in the Arctic. I can’t tell you anything more about why the Pentagon is interested, but I can tell you where you’ll be heading—if you decide to take this job.” He turned to Kyla, who was sitting in front of a monitor in a row of computer monitors. “Sweetheart, would you bring up the map?”

She smiled, clicked a couple of keys, and a map of the Arctic Ocean appeared on the large screen mounted on one wall.

She used her mouse to move the cursor arrow. “I have the coordinates,” she murmured. The cursor moved to a point north of Canada, in the middle of the sea, and stopped. “That’s where this facility is right now—or at least, where it was last night.”

The facility’s location moved? Gunn sat forward. “I’m heading to a boat?”

Kyla glanced over her shoulder, and a wide grin stole over her face. “Not a boat, Gunn.”

Stone chuckled, likely because Gunn hadn’t done a good job hiding his confusion. “The facility is located on a floating ice floe.”

“The fuck you say,” Wyatt Bixby said, slapping Gunn’s chest with the back of his hand. “You’re heading to an iceberg?”

“They call it a floating island,” Stone said.

“What’s the mission?”

“You keep everyone alive.”

Gunn sat back in his chair, still staring at that cursor pointing at the blue sea. “From what? Polar bears?”

There were chuckles, but those quickly died down.

Gunn blew out a breath that filled his cheeks. “I’m assuming it’s not polar bears. They could hire a hunter to take care of any predation.”

Stone frowned. “Hank mentioned there had been a death on the floe. A murder. There’s a very small group of scientists stationed on the floe, mostly collecting data on climate change and weather patterns.”

“And the Pentagon cares…why?” Gunn asked.

“That I can’t tell you, but once you get to the main research center in Cambridge Bay, Canada, you’ll be briefed by a military guy embedded with the operations center at Polardyne Incorporated. They’re the ones coordinating the funding for the research team, which is providing data to think tanks around the world.”

“And the Pentagon is just one of the agencies providing that funding?” Gunn asked.

“That’s my guess.”

“How long will I be there? I can’t imagine getting off an ice floe in the dead of winter would be easy.”

Stone shook his head. “I can’t tell you that either. All I know is that until they determine who’s responsible for their scientist’s death, they need a guy to oversee security to keep the remaining six personnel safe.”

To Gunn, it sounded like a boondoggle. One complicated by the extreme weather but not something that required the particular skills of a highly trained warrior. “You don’t think this is overkill? Sending a SEAL?”

“Apparently, the Pentagon was considering sending a small team of their own but decided against it because they didn’t want too much attention paid to the deployment and didn’t think they’d need more than one operative.”

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