“I wish it were under better circumstances, Norman,” she said, already on familiar terms with him, it seemed. “But don’t you worry. We will get you through. You have let our dream come true, and now we will show you the way.”

Starting in 1721, Greenland had been a colony of Denmark, its population originally living off subsistence fishing. Indeed, for most of the island’s history, half its entire economic output had been shrimp exports. By the turn of the twentieth century, most of the citizens of Denmark saw this last legacy of their failed colonial ambitions as a burden (the Virgin Islands, their only other major holding, had been sold off to the United States in 1917). They resented having to send a yearly subsidy a thousand miles away to feed, house, school, and clothe a population of mostly non-Danish indigenous peoples, or Eskimos, as they were popularly known.

But in the twenty-first century, the relationship flipped. The frozen waters off the massive island opened up due to global climate change, and eight massive oil fields were discovered, totaling as much as eighty billion barrels. Greenland’s citizens realized that if they could break that old colonial link, instead of sharing their island’s wealth with six million Danes, they could keep it at home and divide it among just fifty-seven thousand Greenlanders. Greenland, or Kalaallit, in the Inuit tongue, could become the world’s richest petro-state.

Greenlandic independence had really been just a dream, though, as NATO would never allow the territory of one of its own members to be torn asunder, especially with a key U.S. military base located in Thule. But then, three days after the current conflict began, NATO’s North Atlantic Council, its political body, voted not to join a war already seemingly lost in the Pacific. Unfettered by the old politics, American strategic planners had soon after taken note of the fact that the potential new country had nine commercial icebreakers in its ports, while the U.S. Coast Guard had only one remaining icebreaker, and it was sixty years old and presently stuck in the wrong ocean at the port of Bremerton, Washington.

And so a deal was struck: The United States would recognize and protect the sovereignty of the nation of Kalaallit, instantly making it the thirteenth-largest country in the world by geographic size and the richest by per capita income. In exchange, Admiral Abelsen and the world’s newest navy, made up exclusively of icebreakers, would escort America’s Atlantic Fleet through a new path to the east.

The approach to the mountain had taken Conan and the insurgents two days of slow movement. Hiking up the one gravel road would have taken them only a few hours, but they would have risked bumping into the twice daily patrol from the Directorate guard force at the foot of the mountain.

Judging from the ache deep in her left elbow, Conan guessed that the cut there was infected. All the crawling over the forest’s slimy dirt and roots made it inevitable. But this was the best she’d felt in weeks. It felt good to be doing something other than running, which to her had started to feel like slow-motion defeat. Since the ambush at the school, the Muj had done nothing but escape and evade. But now they had a mission.

Maybe that helped too. The fact that someone else had finally made the call eased the weight of decision the aching heaviness of responsibility. How long had it been since she had just followed orders? Until her D-TAC buzzed and that sea glider showed up, all she’d had was her instinct and Marine Corps training.

The physical toll of getting to the target site might kill them before the Directorate could, though. Mount Ka‘ala was Oahu’s highest point. At just over four thousand feet, she told herself, the mountain wasn’t that high compared to the ones in the mountain-warfare courses she had done. Yet the sinister way the heavy mist wreathed the jagged range made it an angry reminder of how cruel the world could be. The constantly attacking mosquitoes would not let her forget it. Focus on the mission kept her and the rest of the NSM inching higher, minute by minute, under their sweltering woolen blankets, willing themselves to reach their position before nightfall.

As they trudged along, she couldn’t help admiring how the descending sun lit up the Directorate aerostat surveillance balloon. Its silver skin reflected the sunset in orange ripples.

“Like a big fat juicy peach there for the taking,” said Finn, steadying a spotting scope. “Ready to go shopping, sir?” He was still making jokes, but there was a palpable tension between the two of them since the school shootings, an undertone of challenge even in the way he now called her sir.

“Seems right,” said Conan, trying to ignore the tone. That was what she had been taught at Officer Candidate School: squelch it immediately or ignore it. She couldn’t squelch it now; the NSM was too fragile to hold together under the force of discipline. Indeed, she’d already noticed the looks from the other team members they’d met and heard their disapproving whispers about the kids who’d died at the school and the comrades who’d been deserted there.

She signaled to the three other insurgents nearby to keep advancing. Shrouded in their blankets, which would help defeat thermal-imaging surveillance, the fighters took the formless shape of decomposing stumps.

“Pass me the suppressor,” she said to Finn.

Conan wriggled out of her pack and set up the Chinese weapon, a QBU-88 rifle. The suppressor screwed on easily and within thirty seconds, the rifle’s scope had established a network connection with a TrackingPoint spotter.

“I have the impact point,” said Finn, getting back to business. The scope, which they had taken from a Dick’s Sporting Goods, automatically adjusted for range, wind, and ballistics and was connected to a networked tracking engine. Wherever the target, a hit was guaranteed for even an amateur marksman, especially as an auto-lock wouldn’t allow the gun to fire until it was pointed exactly at the mark the spotter had laser-designated.

“You know, my brother-in-law had one of these. Point, click, and shoot. Asshole would assassinate Bambis from a thousand meters away, all the while sipping his Pabst Blue Ribbon. And not ironically, mind you.”

“How we looking?” Conan asked.

“Got nothing at IP Alpha,” said Finn. “Pissing in the wind. Well, you know what I mean, right, sir?”

“Roger that,” said Conan. “See the aim point?”

“Got it,” said Finn. “Anyone else you want me to clip while I’m up here? Maybe one of us, sir?”

Conan ignored the bait and adjusted the rifle on her shoulder; the scope and spotting device recalculated the round’s impact point.

“Did you leave the seat up again?” said Conan.

“Me? Never,” said Finn.

“All right, then, you’re safe for now. How’s IP Bravo?” The pair worked out the firing solution so the three shots she fired would hit their targets in close sequence. That was essential to the opening phase of the mission.

The old radar dome building, a sphere atop a lattice-structure base, looked like a dirty golf ball fished out of a septic tank. The site had been built in 1942 as part of Hawaii’s first radar defense network and had operated through most of the Cold War. Then budget cuts had left it mothballed for decades. But high ground would always remain valuable real estate. The silver aerostat, a faint smile of the sun’s final light cast across its crown, hovered three hundred and fifty feet above the old dome, its sensors unobstructed out to the ocean in all directions.

“How are we for time?” said Conan.

“Three minutes,” said Finn.

They covered themselves and their gear with their blankets and waited. Sweat pooled in the crook of Conan’s arm and stung her infected elbow.