Target, he reminded himself.
Lights flickered on in orderly rows in Mac's cockpit.
"Mac?"
"Sure."
"After you launch the missile, make for the entrance. I don't want anyone outside—one Kalashnikov could bring this baby down."
"Got you."
His palms dried. He flicked the low-light TV picture to the main
tactical
screen. Ghostly. The MiL was a dervish whirling in a small dust storm. The edges of the cavern's mouth were like dark curtains revealing a tiny stage. On that stage, he could see the gunship.
And a warm body registering . . .
Posed in front of the MiL, merely a shadow on the TV image, but a shimmering glow on the superimposed infrared display. One of the soldiers! It unnerved him. Flesh, not just„a machine. For
a
moment, he could not disregard the information of the infrared. His hand sweated. Then his mind restored the imperatives of ruth-lessness.
He said: "It doesn't exist. Concentrate on the gunship, Mac."
"Skipper."
The quality of the flickering, warm image changed as it entered the cavern. It shone out more brightly. And was clearer, more recognizably human.
Get out of the way . . .
As if aware that it was silhouetting itself against the pale entrance, the warm shimmer moved to one side, into what it thought was invisibility in the darkness.
"Mac?"
"Ready, skipper."
In a moment, if it moved any closer, it would see the reflection of panel lights on the Plexiglas of the two cockpits. Gant held his breath.
Through the mouth of the cavern. A straight line. The MiL continued to hover in its own little storm of dust. It was neither lifting nor falling, but soon it would climb out of their sight because the dust was beginning to rise around the cockpit, reducing visibility.
The warm image continued to swim toward them on the infrared. The MiL turned in the air like a sycamore leaf, the lights
w
ere in rows of readiness along Mac's panel.
"When ready," he whispered at last.
The MiL began to lift. Mac's breathing quickened as he watched the warm body moving toward the center of the screen.
Launch.
He heard the ignition even as he heard the horn sound in his helmet, signaling that Mac's range finder and IR had locked on to the target. He could almost hear the switches and the buttons and [he circuits. The cavern dazzled with rocket flame; exhaust smoke "illowed. He saw, garishly lit, ice tendrils hanging high above them, the huge roof of the cavern—
—and the man, in uniform, lit by fire and stunned into immobility. The AA missile tore free of the Hind's stubby port winglet, rocking the helicopter. Its flame lanced toward the entrance, and something too illuminated to see clearly fell away from it. Even through the Plexiglas there was a thin, high-pitched cry. Smoke rolled in the dying glare as what was now a small lance of flame vanished through the entrance. Distantly, he heard the noises of Mac's departure from the gunner's cockpit, and saw his dim shadow move away.
Gant stabbed buttons—ignition of another kind. His stomach churned. The rotors above his head began to turn slowly. Something was still screaming. Mac was running toward it, his lamp wobbling like a weakly held white stick alongside him. The rotors accelerated, their noise booming in the cavern.
On the main tactical screen, displaying the low-light TV image, the little bright tail of flame drove toward the bulk of the Russian helicopter. Microseconds passed.
The MiL, rotors turning, eyelike air intakes staring into the cavern, swallowed the missile. Light spread on the screen and spilled into the cavern so that he could see Mac bending over the scorched soldier. On the screen, the MiL opened almost like a mouth about to scream, staggered in the air, split, flew to pieces. Metal bounced into the cavern like pebbles. In the glaring light, Mac was pressed against the wall, his face averted. The place was alien, as if the rocks themselves were burning. He moved his shocked hands slowly, with extreme effort. In his mind, substitution whirled. He must contact Kunduz, inform them that the runaway had been destroyed like its companion—
intruder destroyed, mission accomplished
—slacken the pace of the pursuit, buy time. Then on their radars he would be Russian, he was explainable. It might gain him as much as minutes.
Above his head, the rotors were dishing, bathed in lurid orange light. The Hind strained against the restraint of the brakes. His hands gripped the column and the collective pitch lever. On the main screen there was a glow from outside, but the low-light television picture revealed nothing solid, no object out there.
A shadow appeared in the entrance, outlined by the fire behind it. It startled Mac—dim exclamations reached Gant through the helmet and the Plexiglas—and flame spat before the shadow ducked to one side and vanished from the entrance. Then Mac was waving him urgently forward.
The Hind struggled; Gant released the brakes. It rolled forward down a shallow slope, hopped over the gouge of the dry water
course,
and eased toward the mouth of
the
cavern. The glow from
what
remained of the Russian helicopter increased, making a bright lance of the airspeed sensor boom. Flame and smoke roiled about him, as if he were thrusting the whole machine into some furnace. Mac ducked his way to the side of the helicopter. Gant heard him slide open the main cabin door. There were—how many soldiers out there somewhere? Gant heard Mac's boots thudding on the metal floor behind him. The door was left open.
His breathing was stertorous, but his body still felt calm, even cold. The Hind eased more swiftly toward the exit from the cavern.
The Russian MiL was rubble, its fire already diminishing. He lifted the Hind over it, rising softly through the pall of smoke into the moonlit night. He flicked on the radio and prepared his signal. A moment of illusory calm—
—so that he hardly heard the gunfire, even though he saw the squat figure of a man on the ground. Saw flame, only vaguely heard the shots cry and bang on the fuselage. Kalashnikov on automatic. Moonlight splashed on the cockpit. Someone cried out from the transceiver . . . cried out?
Mac fell as Gant held the Hind in the hover. It was almost as if he had jumped, his shape seeming right for an attack upon the Russian, who was lying spread-eagled. Dust rose slowly around Mac from the impact of his body. Mac's own Kalashnikov buried itself upright near his body, like a marker.
"Mac!" he heard himself shouting, over and over. "Mac! Mac!"
Mac had killed the one surviving Russian, the only one who could contradict the lies he intended. But the Russian had killed Mac.
Gant's hand had turned off the Soviet channel almost as soon as he had begun yelling. It would be just another cry in the night as the intruders died. He had not given himself away. The moon silvered the Plexiglas. Survival became a panic in him, obscuring everything else; even Mac's death. For which he was responsible—he should have been more aware, should have taken the Hind up quicker.
Panic obscured his recriminations; obscured everything. Survive.
He opened the Tac channel, and immediately his voice was an acted enthusiasm, a cry of delight mingled with shock.
"Got the bastard!" he yelled in his mother's Russian over the Tac channel. "Got the deserting bastard!"
"You lucky bastard, Ilya!" he heard immediately, as if his pretended excitement was infectious. "You lucky sod!" Then: "What's your position, man?"
Without hesitation, Gant supplied the coordinates. Mac's shrunken form lay still on the valley floor, near the Russian soldier. There was nothing on his body to betray the mission or his origins; not for hours yet would they learn he came from nowhere, had no record. The pretense made Cant tired. His desire to flee, to survive through speed, had to be restrained at a cost.
The Russian pilot replied: "With you in four minutes. Lucky sod!"
"Roger. Out."
He flicked off the radio. Felt nausea rise to the back of his throat. Made himself not look down again, except to inspect the rubbish that was all that was left of the MiL. Even there, if he were lucky, there would not be enough to betray him. Only the dog tags, and even they might have been damaged enough to be unreadable except under laboratory conditions. At least—at the very least—he had four minutes.
He summoned the moving map to the main screen and bled in the disposition of radar defenses, watchtowers, camps and barracks, villages and farms and towns, the listening posts and the missile units. In the vast valley of the Oxus and the mountains that rose beyond it, inside the Soviet Union, the defenses were mainly long-range—especially since 1979. Crossing in a low-flying helicopter would be easy.
Fuel.
He glanced at the gauges. He had perhaps as much as four hundred miles of flying at his most economical cruising speed before his auxiliary tank dried up. It would leave him three hundred miles short of Baikonur. Three hundred miles short—somewhere in the deserts of Soviet Central Asia; Uzbekistan. He felt cold, his body slipping into a mild paralysis. He could not go back. He would never make it to Peshawar, all the way south back across Afghan airspace, not once they identified even one of the bodies below or some part of the ruined airframe. He was utterly trapped by the situation.
Panic surged in him. Go now, go before Kunduz begins demanding a full report—expecting one.
He felt his body flood with anger.
Mac.
No, it wasn't because of Mac; it was because he was trapped. It was like the Firefox, its fuel running out, before he reached the ice floe and the submarine that was
Mother One.
But there was no submarine out there in Uzbekistan, there was no fuel out there . . . run, run.
Mac.
Survive.
His hands moved almost automatically, and the Hind's nose whisked up. Still low and within the radar shield of the valley, he increased speed. Bowed to the pressure of the panic to survive. In six minutes, he could be across the border, inside the Soviet Union. His mind shut out the hours ahead, thought only of the next few minutes. He wasn't defeated, he hadn't lost—not yet. And he would survive.
One hundred, one twenty, one twenty-five—the Hind skimmed along the wide, dry valley, raising, as it passed, a small trail of dust no bigger than that of a single horseman. Going forward represented the prospect of opportunity. And there was something in the back of his head, something—
He could not focus, not yet, but it allowed him to expand his vision of the minutes ahead.
Nine-fourteen, local time.
Even the thought that he would never reach Baikonur could not halt or slow his northward momentum. To go back was to return to the certainty of death now rather than capture—he had killed three of theirs, five including the pilot and the gunner he had incinerated. All of them friends, acquaintances, comrades of other people.
The north promised more than that. Most of all—time; time in which circumstances might change, or might be altered to his wish; time which might focus the vague something at the back of his mind.
He looked at the gauges. Maybe as much as four hundred twenty miles before his fuel ran out.
Not enough.
President Calvin's hand swept in an angry gesture toward the screens against the wall of the Oval Office. Winter sunlight through the tinted windows paled and made more insubstantial the television images. Though the director of the CIA still found them as easy to recognize as if they were personal memories or hopes.
"Why the hell are we paying them to even bother to learn how to do that?" Calvin shouted. His voice seemed to contain as much anguish as anger, as his finger pointed accusingly at an image of the shuttle
Atlantis.
The transmission from the orbiter was from the camera's viewpoint along the spine of the shuttle, revealing the bulk of the Spacelab in the cargo hold, and beyond it two tire men with backpacks floating like huge white bees around the satellite they were repairing. The remote manipulator arm hung at the edge of the screen like a weak, broken limb. The earth appeared to be almost entirely ocean; virtually cloudless. The vast Pacific, impossibly blue. It was as if it unnerved Calvin for a moment, for he remained silent. Then he burst out again: "Answer me—you, Bill, or you, Dick—why should the country pay out the billions of dollars to teach those guys how to repair spy satellites?" He glared at his two companions. Filtered sunlight glanced across his shock of gray hair and his stubborn profile, gilding his features. He raised his hands, then slapped them against his thighs. "Those guys up there would be better employed learning how to repair Russian automobiles! A skill they could come to need. That up there is just about as advanced as a tow truck and nowhere near as useful anymore."
On companion screens, beside the image of the
Atlantis,
Baikonur. Russian broadcasts to the rest of the world, demonstrating their
peaceful mission in space . . . just like that of the American shuttle, a forerunner of future cooperative ventures, the Soviet
Raketoplan
shuttle will be launched on Thursday, to coincide with the signing of the treaty, the two shuttle craft will rendezvous in orbit in a symbolic gesture of peace, on Friday . . .
The subtitled commentary seemed to mock the men in the room, enrage Calvin further. On other screens, images from around a frightened world. Frightening, frightened, beginning-to-be-relieved . . .
hope is alive in the world again
. . . Calvin shook his head in shame and frustration. He had said that only a few weeks before, in his State of the Union message to Congress.