The North

Shhhhewwww . . .

The Razor-head sank deep into Ghost Keeper's thigh, low enough to miss the body armor protecting his torso, but high enough to almost castrate him. His leg buckled and he tumbled from the sled, almost spiking his eye on the arrow sunk in Vern's back. The Mad Dog was about to blitzkrieg his team up the bank and into the bush after Winterman Snow when he saw the Cree go down in a spray of blood.

Shhhhewwww . . .

The second razor-head poked the Mad Dog dead center in the chest, then bounced off his armor as if he were Superman.

Ghost Keeper opened fire on the woods, blasting at the pines from which the arrows flew, snow puffing from branches hit by the shots, as moonlight glinted off the casings his pistol ejected.

A hail of gunfire ripped across the river, bullets zipping around them, hurling chips from the ice, five of the dogs pulling Ghost Keeper's sled yelping as they were hit, Wrangler snarling at the rebels coming toward them while trying to drag the dying malamutes forward to attack.

"Get him!" the Cree shouted, waving Rabidowski on after Winterman Snow. He fed another clip into the grip of his Smith and struggled around against the arrow to fire at the rebels.

The muzzle flashed.

Caught in a vise, the Mad Dog was forced to prioritize. A Member was down. There were rules. Unwritten but understood. Saving George was job one. Two sleds of weapons idle on the ice waited for the approaching four to haul them off to camp. The goal of this mission was to intercept and destroy these arms. That was job two. Winterman Snow was low man on the totem pole. Storming him

Shhhhewwww . . .

was no longer an option.

The third razor-head sliced clean through Sitka to drop the leader of the Mad Dog's team. With both sleds out of action, the Mounties were pinned down, caught in a hotbox of cross fire. Ghost Keeper's wound could bleed him to death.

The Cree toppled his sled to form a barricade, and drew the AR-15 from its waterproof pouch. A variant of the M-16, the assault rifle used by the U.S. Army, it sprayed a clip of thirty rounds—Pffdrdrdrdrdrdr!— at the rebels in three seconds. The four snowshoers hurled themselves prone.

SIG/Sauer in his fist and eyes sweeping the forest for any sign of Snow—was that the sound of retreating shuffles he heard in the lull while George reloaded?— the Mad Dog moved gingerly forward from the sled to the dead leader, each step a gamble he'd break through the crust and be leg-pinned as a target.

Clip after clip, as fast as he could reload, Ghost Keeper loosed a withering barrage of machine-gun fire. Only a fool out there in the open would raise his head to shoot back.

The Mad Dog cut the harness and tow rope to free the dead husky, then, gripping the collars of the first pair, led the surviving dogs across to the toppled sled of the other team. There he pulled the belt from his pants and cinched it around the Cree's thigh just above the arrow, a makeshift tourniquet that stemmed the flow of blood.George kept firing until he was out of clips.

The Mad Dog passed him the magazine cache from his provisions.

A burst of shots from the rebels pounded the slats of the overturned sled like xylophone bars, splintering through.

The Cree opened up again.

Heads out there ducked, and someone gasped.

On his belly the Mad Dog wriggled across the snow to the closer weapons sled. Cutting the tarp revealed a line of explosion signs: containers of high-octane fuel for flame throwers. Crawling back to cut Wrangler free from the dead dogs of Ghost Keeper's team, he gripped the malamute by the collar and led it over to lead his team of huskies. A good leader not in harness will lead anyway.

These were competition dogs.

Used to starting guns.

"In the basket!" the Mad Dog yelled to the, wounded man, who kept on firing as he was helped onto the sled. The Mad Dog slammed a clip into the other AR-15, then slung it over his shoulder while he yanked off a glove to hang two Thunder Flash grenades from his fingers by their pins. Climbing on back of the sled, he yanked the pins and tossed the bombs at the closer toboggan of weapons. "All right!" he ordered Wrangler and the team, the command galvanizing the dogs to jump forward and be off at full gait. The Cree braced himself for the jerk by stretching out on the sled. The Mad Dog turned and emptied the magazine of the AR-15 at the cans of flame-thrower fuel.

FOOOOOOOOM!

BOOM! BOOM!

The world behind exploded.

Suddenly it was summer and the brightest high noon of the year. Wrangler blitzed the team up the bank and into the woods, no need for a command to seek shelter from the heat and glare. George gripped the sled as the Mad Dog threw his weight from side to side to steer, or lifted up on the handlebars to help it over bumps, or shifted the rear end to give it new direction, or held it steady to prevent upsets. He would have jumped off and pushed uphill had the snow been harder, jumping on to ride the flats and brake downhill, but that was out of the question. The most difficult feat in sledding is breaking trail on a slope, but somehow they reached the top.

Halting on the crest, the Mounties gazed back down to the river.

Black smoke billowed toward the moon from the hole in the ice where the sled had exploded, melted through, and sunk.

The wounded rebel limped away.

From the haze, the other three emerged.

Behind them, undamaged, they lugged the remaining weapons sled.

When the Mounties tried to call Zulu base to order a backup strike, they found a bullet hole through the Mad Dog's radio phone.

Ghost Keeper's phone was down there.

So all they could do was watch the rebels haul the sled away and wonder what weapons were hidden under its tarp.