Garcia's helicopter was tight behind him, zigzagging, skimming, flicking and dancing through the terrain. Garcia had become infected by the exhilaration of danger; now he was alert, confident, flying on instinct and even passion. Yet he nagged at Gant's awareness; a liability, someone to have to be careful for, someone whose mistakes could be fatal.
On the moving-map display, the dot that represented his position was well to the north of the Panjshir Valley and the air base at Parwan. He was little more than fifty miles from the Soviet border. Ahead, directly north, lay the main highway from Faizabad to Mazar-i-Sharif, running east to west like the huge river valley of the Oxus, which lay beyond it and which marked the border itself. It was flatter land there, less easy to hide in, more populated; roads, railway lines, villages, irrigation canals, air bases and military camps. The golden road to Samarkand.
He glanced at his watch, at the map once more, then around him. Mountains were retreating in the mirrors, the land opening out ahead. Patches of brown rock jutted through the snow, naked outcrops—and a tented encampment was suddenly beneath and alongside them; still lumps that were camels, the flicker of a cooking fire. Dark tents bulging like the backs of huge creatures trying to bury themselves in the snow and sand. The river gleamed. The country had altered. He wanted to use the radar, now that it would begin to be effective, out of the mountains, but he dare not allow any electronic emission to be picked up and pinpointed. Not now, not this close. He was seven hundred and fifty miles from Baikonur. It was almost nine in the evening. He had to make it before daylight—get back out before daylight. He crushed all thought of the hours of the return flight, skulking through Afghanistan in broad daylight. He had perhaps nine hours in which to be on his way back—well on his way. Haste, haste, his thoughts cried, and his hand twitched on the stick, his eyes glanced at the throttle levers over his head.
Russian from the HF radio, startling in his headset.
Positional report, one MiG, he guessed. It was about twenty miles away from him. The AWACS Ilyushin would be there somewhere, too, and the helicopters. There had been no alarm raised, he reminded himself. No one is interested in you. They think they have you pigeonholed. No one is interested. He withdrew his hand from the main panel where his fingers had twitched near the switches that would activate the radar.
No.
The huge, sandy desert of the river valley was beginning to spread out before him now, beyond a line of low hills. He could now be seen by look-down radar; the ground clutter was less effective in concealing him in these lowlands. The moonlight gleamed on the fuselage.
If the MiG was alerted, if the Ilyushin picked him up again, would it dismiss him? Would its crew simply chuckle, remember his cover story, make lewd jokes, and go back to their routines?
More Russian from the radio. The helicopters. Less than ten miles away, less, as they reported in. Why? He'd heard nothing, only routine messages and few of those; but he'd been hiding in the mountains, and the radio had squirted with static for whole seconds at a time. He'd lost contact with them on numerous occasions, so how could he know what they'd said to each other?
He must stop.
He studied the terrain. As yet, there was no need to refuel. He felt urgency prick at his skin, invest his stomach. The land was bare and inhospitable. Should he hide somewhere in it? Until he could assess the situation, without giving them the opportunity to fix his position and course, should he?
The Hind flipped over a ridge, and the land rose once more as he approached the line of snow-capped hills. The Oxus and the border lay just beyond those hills, at the end of the valley of the Kokcha River, which would be empty of water until the spring thaw in the mountains to the south of him. He dabbed at buttons, and the computer bled into the moving map the disposition of watchtowers, camps, radar installations, listening posts, patrols. The border sprang to life, gleamed on the map's colors and contours.
In the dry river valley of the Kokcha, then. Somewhere. Shunting the two MiLs beneath some overhang, some tuck in the terrain, to wait until the situation could be assessed, analyzed. They were too close and not accidentally close, he believed. They were still interested, though for the moment they could not find him.
He gained altitude because there was no defile that he could see. He was climbing to cross the hills but climbing into radar sight, too. His shadow chased him across the sheets of snow and the bare ridges of rock.
Tension prickled his hairline, made his shoulders ache. He shifted to greater comfort in his seat, feeling the harness cut into his body. The silvering moonlight pried over the cockpit. He increased speed to one seventy, one seventy-five, and Garcia and their two shadows raced across the bare hills with him. He felt exposed, naked. The MiG and the MiLs might not pick him up, but the 11-yushin was capable of spotting him, and he was increasing the chances of that by the speed of his flight. Slow down—
He eased off the power, dropping the MiL's speed to little more than half. Garcia almost overshot him to port before he readjusted his own speed. The hills slipped beneath. The MiG, out there somewhere, preyed on Gant's nerves. It was less than twenty miles away, only a minute away, allowing for a change of course and a cautious approach. Cat and mouse—he sensed the cat, the heat from its fur, its breath . . .
Then it came. Without introduction, without call sign, he heard his position, as if he himself were reciting it from the moving map in front of him. The AWACS Ilyushin had retained its interest in him. Unlike the professional pilots of the MiG and the helicopters who had buzzed him and retired laughing and gesturing, the AWACS aircraft, because of its sensitive role, would carry a GRU officer or
a
GLAVPUR political officer—the aircraft's real rather than titular commander.
His position, heading, speed were repeated and acknowledged by the MiG.
"It's blown wide open," Gant said over the transceiver with a grim calm that surprised him. His hands, unlike his voice, quivered. "Let's hide—first I want to take a look."
He switched on the radar. Wiped the moving map from the tactical screen. Which greened. Immediately, on the northwest edge of the screen, the AWACS aircraft appeared. The two MiLs were to the south of him, and westward. They were more than five minutes away. They could be outrun. The border ahead remained unalerted, for the moment. Nothing was in the air to prevent his crossing. He counted the passing seconds, as if making a call that was being traced through the telephone exchange. How long before his emissions removed all doubt about his position and heading? He was electronically waving at them. The MiG, the MiG . . .
He summoned the head-up display. Along the cockpit sill, figures stuttered. Course, speed, altitude, distance. Twenty-five miles away, speed four hundred, altitude dropping quickly. Time to convergence, one minute forty seconds. He snapped off the radar, and the image of the MiG moving purposefully toward the center of the screen remained as a retinal afterimage.
He flipped over the back of a hill; Garcia s helicopter flea-jumped behind him. The long, riverless valley stretched ahead, a mile wide and sloping down to the border and the Oxus. It was wide enough for the MiG to be able to maneuver within it. Gant cursed his luck, his eyes scanning the valley walls, its dry riverbed. Rocks, overhangs, outcrops, ledges. As soon as he had disappeared from the radar screen of the MiG, it would have increased speed. The AWACS Ilyushin would be guiding it. It would be unlikely to have lost its fix on them. The convergence was—inevitable.
He reinstated the moving map, searching it frantically for a narrower side valley, something to draw tightly around the two helicopters and prevent the MiG from turning or maneuvering. Nothing. He plowed on, the border no more than thirty miles away now.
"Garcia—find somewhere we can put down—and fast," he snapped into the transceiver. "Split up—take the eastern wall of the* valley. Til fly the western wall—make two targets. ..." He hesitated after the word had been spoken, but the situation could no longer be disguised. "Do it,
M
he added.
"Gant—he knows where we are, right?*'
"He knows."
"OK, let's play hide-and-seek."
Garcia was edgy, but brightly nervous; confidence fizzed out rather than dripped or leaked. He wasn't believing in the situation. It was still a game, training. Gant didn't know if his mood would change the moment the MiG appeared.
Garcia's Hind drifted out of the mirrors and across the wide valley; beginning to lose shape and identity against the colored rock, snowdrifts, bare outcrops. The camouflage concealed it almost perfectly. Gant squinted to make it out. Garcia, like himself, had dropped his speed dramatically, further losing himself against the background. Good. Gant watched the valley wall to port, a gray-white curtain. Waited.
Like a shark, sudden and fast, the MiG—a Flogger air-combat fighter—flashed above the valley, its belly lit to ghostliness by the moon. It vanished almost at once to the east. A new star climbed and turned in the black sky a second or two later.
"Anything, Garcia?"
"Only for sitting ducks."
Gant watched the distance in front of him. The star dropped toward the valley, winking palely. Gant felt a strange envy, which became anxiety in a moment. He sensed the MiG pilot s superiority, his eager, unworried confidence. The Hind was no match for the Flogger. It entered the valley perhaps five or six miles ahead of them. The two MiL's behind them would now be working with the MiG, via the commands and sightings of the AWACS aircraft, and hurrying to overtake them. He estimated they would enter the valley in no more than three minutes. At maximum speed, just over two minutes from the position they held when he had briefly used the radar. Then he and Garcia would be in a box, with the lid screwed down.
The MiG-23 howled up the valley toward them. Another sighting pass, he thought. One more look, one attempt to communicate after that. Too late to hide now; the bluff had to be continued, and it had to work.
"Arm all the firing circuits, just in case," he said almost casually over the transceiver. Garcia would hear him; so would Mac—
—whose helmet turned. Mac looked up at him, then raised his thumb. Wide eyes, white teeth in a pale blob of face. That was all Mac was.
The MiG was level with them for an instant. A glimpse of dark cockpit, as if the aircraft were pilotless. Then it roared away, into an immediate climb and turn. On its infrared screen two spots would glow hotter than the surrounding icy rocks. Two spots, one each side of the valley. The pilot would be pleased, would retain his confidence, even though he knew the Hinds were armed and were more maneuverable in the box of the valley. He had fixed the targets, and he had assistance. Gant turned his head. Once more, a new star climbed and winked in the night.
"All weapons systems to my control," he announced, then added: "Garcia—do nothing till you hear from me, OK?"
Over the transceiver, Garcia's voice was tightened by tension; yet almost elated, too. It was still only training, only practice. They'd never done it for real. They did not know what real was. Could not understand it. Gant understood it too well. But real hadn't killed him yet.
"Gant, what the hell is there to do?"
Beneath the elation, Garcia was peeling open. Soon, the proximity of the rocks, the speed and armament of the MiG—AA missiles, a gun pack, look-down, shoot-down radar—all would begin to weigh more heavily. Gant was unnerved now, but even Garcia probably thought it was excitement, not fear. But Garcia's confidence was being stripped away.
"Forget it, Garcia. Set down as soon as you can, where you can. On your own. Just don't get in my way." Because that was the only message he had for Garcia, the only one that possessed value: Don't kill me along with yourself.
The new star was felling back toward the valley once more. Gant ignored the distant speck of Garcia's MiL and its wavering shadow. The radio tuned to the Soviet Tac channel blurted in his ear. The star fell with frightening swiftness. Gant experienced it with Garcia's taut nerves, sensed him and his copilot, Lane, craning to follow its course. He was suddenly aware of how much fuel the other Hind was carrying. They were riding in a giant gas tank. Now Garcia and the others would have begun to smell the fuel by a trick of fear on their senses. Its volume and proximity would be scraping at nerve and will.
The Flogger dropped back perhaps as much as three miles behind them, its pilot's voice in his headset broken by the terrain and the slow bend in the valley that made it invisible for the moment. He sensed confidence and suspicion through the static.
"Unidentified helicopters—you are in restricted airspace without permission. Please identify yourselves. Over."
The MiG appeared in Gant's mirrors, rounding the bend and rapidly overtaking them. Gant glanced across at Garcia. He was maintaining speed and heading, hugging the rock face, the MiL's shadow breaking up and reforming like dark water.
Gant replied at once, knowing that the cover story had been checked and found wanting. Someone in the AWACS aircraft. Just routine, but just in case.
The pilot of the MiG pounced upon the fiction.
"Unidentified helicopter—try again. Kunduz requests your positive ID for Parwan. Kabul central army aviation field has no record of your flight. Please explain your purpose and authorization. Over."