The MiG, moving at low speed, gradually enlarged in the mirrors. The pilot was cruising along the valley at their altitude. Herding them while he waited for their answers.
"My mission has the highest security clearance from Kabul Army HQ," Gant persisted, knowing he would not be believed. Anders was talking in his head now, and the noise angered him. It reminded him of the priorities of the mission, of the price of failure, when all that interested him was the span of a single minute and his own survival. "Why the hell are you taking so much interest, comrade? Over," he added. And then waited. Anders nagged again. Garcia's Hind remained steady. He could hear, where his right ear was free of the headset, the man's ragged breathing from the transceiver.
The MiG was level with them.
"Kabul won't vouch for you, comrade—no one at central airfield even remembers two MiL-24s taking off tonight. Please identify. Over." A brash, amused, contemptuous irony in the pilot's voice; it reassured—but why?
What was in the MiG pilot's mind? It was something to do with the degree of suspicion, or the kind of suspicion . . . what? What did he think?
The MiG, unable to match their speed without stalling, had slowly moved ahead of them. Then it lifted sharply, just in case, aware of the armament of both helicopters. It rolled, flashing like a shark in the moonlight, then turned tightly to drop back into the valley behind them; leveling off, pursuing once more.
Deserters or unsanctioned black marketers—one or the other, maybe both—that's what he thought! Illegality, not penetration. Profit, not espionage. Gant studied his mirrors. Moonlight glinted on the MiG's sleekness, and on two more distant spots. The
Soviet
helicopters. There would be others gathering now—or maybe not? The degree of confidence, even of amusement in the pilot's voice? There might be no general alert, not at the moment.
What to do with the Flogger?
His mind was cold; body hot, but alert rather than jumpy. He had
passed
through nerves to tension. He replied to the pilot, easing the right amount of nervousness into his voice. Almost pleading.
"Look, comrade, you check with the top brass at Kabul. And I mean the
top
brass—and apologize from me for dragging them into it. Over."
"Sorry, comrade, you'll have to do better than that. Kabul doesn't know you. Parwan wants to know why* you were using the roundabout route, and Kunduz wants you to divert. Climb immediately to four thousand meters and take up a heading directly for Kunduz military air base. Confirm when you have a revised ETA. And remember, I'll be watching you. Over."
The MiG was level with him once more. Between him and Garcia. Gant's mind was suddenly cold with doubt. The sleek air-combat fighter was only a couple of hundred yards to starboard. The pilot would be wary, but he evidendy didn't expect trouble from them. Deserters or black marketers, people to be despised, even discounted.
He could see the outline of a flying helmet in the MiG's cockpit, and the AA missiles beneath the wings—and the gun and the laser range finder beneath the forward fuselage.
"I copy. Acknowledge diversion to Kunduz air base and climb to four thousand. ETA sixteen minutes."
"You will be accompanied by the two helicopters astern of you. Take up close formation with them on rendezvous. Do you copy? Over."
"I copy."
Gant glanced at the moving map. The MiG was lifting away once more, burning fuel prodigally in its maneuvers. Its mission range? Would it have to return to Parwan or Kunduz to refuel in another minute or so? If so, another MiG or a Sukhoi would already be on its way to take up station. He watched it, willing it to return rather than depart. Images flashed in his head, but seemed like reflections from distorting mirrors. The Soviet border was less than ten miles away. Kunduz was fifty miles to the southwest.
"Shit," he breathed. It was impossible to shake the MiG, and if it needed to refuel, it wouldn't abandon them until a replacement arrived. The two Russian MiLs were clearly visible in his mirrors.
He heard the incoming surf of Garcia's breathing; faster, more ^gged. Shit.
He clenched the control column more tightly, altered the collective pitch lever, climbing out of the valley into the dark sky. His head was turned, to watch Garcia follow him.
Mac said: "Skipper, shouldn't you call Langley—?"
'The hell I will!" he snapped back. He was listening to the tenor of Garcia's breathing as if with a stethoscope.
Break.
Garcia's voice yelped in his headset, and the tanker helicopter lifted sharply, nose up, out of the valley. The falling star of the MiG dropped more quickly, as if alerted. It banked fiercely around behind them, leveling off. When the pilot spoke, his voice was tightened by G forces.
"Maintain your former heading—climb to four thousand meters and wait for your escort. Repeat, climb to four thousand on your former heading. Do you copy? Over."
Garcia flipped out of sight. Gant climbed more rapidly until he could look down on the scene. He saw the two pursuing MiLs also climb and begin to divert. Saw the MiG-23 racing from behind and below. Had he picked up Garcia after his turn?
"Garcia—for Christ's sake get back here!" Gant yelled into the transceiver. Ether replied, and hoarse but more relieved breathing. Excited murmurs he could not make out. The MiG swept up toward Gant, past him, and locked onto the tail of Garcia's MiL. Garcia had increased his speed to perhaps one fifty; not nearly enough. The MiG pilot was flashy, but good. Good enough. Gant felt his stomach lurch. Mac's voice protested.
"Return to your former heading and maintain. Abandon your present heading. Reduce your speed. Wait for your escort. Do you copy? Over."
The two aircraft raced away from Gant, diminishing in size. Garcia was already another half mile away from Gant in the split seconds that had passed since he broke—cover, formation, and nerve. The MiG coursed behind him. The two MiLs were hurrying, panicked into movement, toward the point of disobedience. They could smell blood. Ahead of Garcia were hills that might hide him. He might have taken the decision based on surprise and the nearness of that covering terrain. No. He had panicked himself into risk, into confidence.
And was wrong.
Gant increased his own speed, rushing across the mile-wide valley, his head moving from side to side like that of an animal at bay, seeking cover. He knew what would happen, with a sick certainty,
and he was already on the other side of the experience, considering only his own survival and escape.
"Skipper—" Mac protested.
"No," he replied without emotion.
All three Soviet aircraft were distracted by Garcia, forgetting him for the moment.
Where?
A solid wall of snow-streaked rock on either side of the valley. No avenue of escape, no narrow cleft that would keep out the MiG. Its pilot's voice pursued Garcia; commanded, ordered, threatened—
—threat. Only a matter of seconds now.
"Garcia—for Christ's sake slow down!" Gant yelled, knowing it would be useless, but somehow satisfying Mac, and some small part of himself.
In a moment, all their screens would be blind. He had time—
—hung in the air in the middle of the valley, watching the helicopters and the MiG and the tiny speck that was Garcia's Hind. Could not help but watch.
He scanned blank cliffs.
"Find somewhere, for Christ's sake," he murmured to Mac.
Threat. Challenge.
He could hardly think ahead now. There was only survival. He had been caught, and he had to survive this situation in any way he could. Look,
look—
Final warning.
A spurt of flame, from an igniting rocket motor, no bigger than that of a flaring match. An AA-8 missile, infrared homing, had been launched by the Flogger. Even though Gant anticipated it, was sure it would happen, he felt stunned.
1 am authorized to open fire if you do not obey my instructions,
lingered in Gant's head.
You are in restricted airspace. 1 will open fire unless you—
One of the few Russian phrases Garcia had ever bothered to learn hung on the ether and in his mind for a moment—the moment °f the missile's spurting, glowing flight.
Go fuck yourself.
Garcia's voice was high-pitched.
Look, look for an escape, don't be distracted, look.
The MiL spun jn the hover in the deserted, blank valley. There
w
as no hiding place. Gant had to watch Garcia's Hind as the AA fissile hurried after it like a burning arrow. It hunted just for a
moment for a warm, electrically alive object above cold, unmoving rock. Then it struck.
The whole sky seemed to become orange and white at the moment of impact. Burning fuel washed like a waterfall the few hundred feet toward the flank of a hill. Garcia groaned through the transceiver and began a scream he did not complete or even understand. The Hind, shattered, spilling burning fuel, tumbled against the hillside, split further, opened, and crumpled. Gant had snatched up the night glasses from their pocket in the cockpit door. The scene was enlarged, clear, horrific. Rotors flew like separate metal sycamore leaves, great half-molten pieces of fuselage bounced and tumbled. Fuel ran like lava down the hillside.
His
fuel,
his
fuel—
He could think of nothing else, having ignored the fact until the moment of the explosion. Not Garcia's death, not the deaths of Lane and Kooper, not even his own immediate danger. He thought of nothing except the fact that his reserve of fuel had burned up. Now he could not reach Baikonur, despite his own auxiliary tank. He could never get back.
Even as he heard Mac whisper "Oh, sweet Jesus Christ" in the transceiver, he knew that the MiG pilot had aborted
Winter Hawk.
He was surrounded, unable to escape, there was no point in even trying to evade capture.
He hovered, stunned.
8: Oasis
A
hole in the cliff.
Gant flicked switches, knowing that it did not matter now, knowing that he was below the shield-edge of the valley walls, knowing that their screens would be blinded by the nova of the explosion and burning of Garcia s MiL—knowing that unless he explored, analyzed, found a hole in the rocks in the next few moments, it was finished anyway. He felt relief as the helicopter s main panel and principal screens sprang to life, stuttering to green and red, lights and LEDs winking, systems coming on-line.
The infrared display glowed like a sunrise. The green of the radar screen was still awash with flying metal and fuel and confused images; Garcia's helicopter continued to explode on his screens.
Hole in the rocks.
Blackness amid moon-washed cliff. Less than half a mile away, the readouts proclaimed. Was it a retinal image from staring into the explosion?
He dropped the Hind like a huge stone toward the floor of the
v
alley; as familiar as if lowering into Nevada or New Mexico, because it represented safety—at least, for the next few minutes. His attention was mesmerized by the sense of the two Soviet MiLs and the Flogger grouping like dogs around a quarry already torn.
He saw and sensed Mac in the gunner s cockpit, but he hardly impinged. He was saving himself and the machine. Nothing mattered beside the reality of the gaping black hole that now grew larger. Not a retinal image, then ... a cave, a cavern, a cleft.
Safety.
Qualification. Dead end. He was running like a sheep into a pen.
Imperative. Get out of sight.
The entrance to the cavern had to be big enough.
He could see crumbled sections of rock face, openings, the gouge of the river bed waiting for the spring. Boulders littered the floor.
He edged the Hind toward the eastern wall of the valley. He glanced continually in his mirrors, quartered the sky through the cockpit Plexiglas. Nothing, yet.
The imperative overcame the qualification. He needed time to think, to plan, to revise, a time when he wasn't flying. He turned the helicopter slowly nose on to the cavern and shunted the machine gently toward it.
"Horizontal clearance—nineteen meters . . . vertical, six meters thirty, skipper," Mac's voice murmured from the transceiver. The mouth of the cave was wide enough, tall enough, though it was close.
"OK, Mac."
He whirled the Hind on its axis like a matador's cape, scanning the clifftop above him, the valley around them, the empty sky, pinpricked with stars, lighter where the wash of moonlight spread from the full, pale disk. No shadows, no silhouettes, nothing. He poised the helicopter opposite the mouth of the cavern.
"IR lamp on," he announced, tugging the infrared goggles over his helmet and adjusting them. A gray world, the light from the lamp splashing like dull paint into the blackness. The sense of the cavern's size impinged upon him; the place, opened out behind the entrance, retreated in every direction beyond the reach of the lamp.
He shunted the Hind forward, its undercarriage hanging just above littered boulders. Most of all, he was aware of the rotors whirling above his head. The dimensions of the cavern's mouth were as clear in his mind as if he were reading them on white paper. Mac's voice murmured the changing clearances on the right or left. The main panel glowed; he scanned it continuously with the rapidity and repetition of a child avoiding cracks in the pavement to fend off bad luck.