—left hand, right, left, right, fifty—his breath suspended, everything about his body tensed and still in anticipation of the first wild lurch and the tearing noise of a rotor blade—fifty, fifty, fifty—
Air.
Fading daylight, level flight for a moment, and the rushing blur beside him cold and empty. The doors in the mirror—
He banked the MiL savagely, then climbed as rapidly as he could as they began shooting. His body was bathed in sweat as it returned from shock. His hand began to burn with pain. His mind, no longer icy with judgments, knew they could not escape, not in this small, unarmed helicopter. He was merely alive, but not safe.
He heard—
"That bastard's shot her—shot her."
14: Last
Ditch
Time itself was limited
to the next two minutes.
A
clock had begun to register in his head, second after second. He could see no further than the two minutes' advantage he had over any organized helicopter pursuit. Eight seconds had already passed. He was becoming accustomed to the lightness, the individuality of this MiL,
a
type he had never flown before.
He eased the column forward, ignoring the wail of protest and horror that gathered in the tiny cockpit. Yet he could not isolate Priabin and the moans that must be the woman by switching off his headset. The ground beneath him diminished in the last of the daylight. He flicked on the radar, studying it at once, his mind closed to the sounds in his ears.
At six hundred feet—where they can see you, he told himself angrily—he slowed the climb until the MiL entered the hover; then, using the controls with new deftness and certainty, he made
a
360-degree turn Eyes flickering from the radar to the scene darken ing outside the Plexiglas, to the radar, to—
—the blip of a patrolling gunship already changing course, sum moned back toward him. There was nothing else in the air as yet He lowered the pitch lever, and the MiL began to drop back toward the ground. He heard in his ears Priabin's plaintive cry.
"Gant—you must land the helicopter. I can't staunch the bleeding." Then something about
stomachy huge loss of blood, looks pale, barely conscious—pain.
"You must land, we must get Katya to a hospital."
"Serov got away!" Gant growled in accusation. He had intended
a
question, but it became an accusation "You let him get away—we have nothing."
"Shut up."
"Listen to me. There's no way out of here, Priabin. This airplane has no weapons. It can't outfly a crow, damn you!"
The MiL moved steadily away from the airfield, crossing boundary lights strung below like a warning. Gant flicked on the moving-map display, which glowed to life on the photo-reconnaissance main screen. The section of map surprised him with its detail. Getting lost would be easier with this much information.
For how long? For what purpose? Pessimism insisted, elbowing hope aside. Priabin still protested and demanded in his ears—almost inside his head now. He continued to head the MiL south, toward the old town, the Moscow road, the shelter of the river. Anywhere he could find ground clutter to confuse their radars, low cover, even a place of concealment. Because he had no alternative. It was simply a matter of time; thirty-eight seconds of the two minutes' freedom had passed. In the gunships, APUs were already warming up, rotors waited to turn, hands were poised near throttle levers, final flight checks were made, orders poured into headsets. He dismissed the crowding thoughts and switched off his radar. The solitary patrolling gunship was not in pursuit; it was waiting for new orders, for the pack. The tiny MiL drifted no more than forty feet above scrubby, frozen fields, scattered wooden buildings.
Gant studied the helicopter's main instrument panel. A PR adaptation, familiar enough; cameras, low-light TV, infrared, neither defensive nor offensive systems, just recording instruments. The moving map slid with him, repeatedly throwing up details that suggested safety, soon dismissed and ignored. Tyuratam's lights glowed against the darkness to port and to the southeast. In his mirrors, the Baikonur complex was a haze of white light.
They had nothing now, only Priabin's wild story. What they needed—what they had had with Serov as their prisoner—was proof, corroboration. This—
Lightning
. . . Gant shied away from the thought. They intended it; they would achieve it. Their mad wild card on the table, changing the basis of the game, declaring the eventual winner.
Lightning.
He could not think of it rationally, thus refused to think of it at all, except to understand that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
Survival dictated other priorities. He watched the moving map record his increasing distance from the hangar and the
airfield-
Sixty-two seconds of the two minutes had vanished, slipped from him. He felt weary, hungry, still numb in parts of his body and mind from the shock of escape. Hope had drained him of adrenaline.
"Gant? Gant, are you there?" he heard.
"Yes," he snapped.
"She's unconscious. I, I think she's dying. For God's sake, turn back and land. I'll show you the hospital complex—turn back before it's too late." Priabin's voice was strange, as if a .recording of a long-past crisis. Gant remembered the Finnish border, the woman's body cradled in Priabin's arms beside the car. The woman in there, evidently dying, was Anna, not the junior KGB officer with whom he worked—maybe even slept.
"No," he said carefully, firmly.
"Yes, damn you!" Priabin almost screamed in his head.
Gant flicked on the radar. Nothing ahead of him. Against the town's haze, he could see power lines, radio masts. He threaded a course dictated by the details of the map, designed specifically to assist low-altitude, even night, flying. He flicked off the set again.
"No. She's dying—you said it. You can't save her—or yourself, that way. She's on your conscience, Priabin," he added without pity in his voice. "You messed up back there. She got shot. It happens." Better to finish it quickly, encourage the rage, burn it off like gas from a well. He needed Priabin's brain, not his feverish, guilty imagination.
And Priabin raged; cursing, blaming, pleading. The MiL drifted south slowly, hidden by folds and dips, masked by ground clutter. Gant poised his hand over the radio, waiting to tune to the principal military frequency. He would need to know when they began the hunt, how they began it. Priabin's anger slid into incoherence, into harsh breathing, sobs, then a soothing murmuring to the unconscious woman.
Gant exhaled carefully, deeply. The haze of the town was closer, the road and railway and river no more than a few miles ahead. Lights from a scattering of homes, headlights on a minor road to the
w
est of him, bouncing and imitating searchlights; the image made him shiver with anticipation. Yet, with only the haze ahead and in his mirrors, the scattered lights, the last strip of orange-gold mark-
the always indistinct desert horizon to the west, the murmuring
v
oice of Priabin—it was all unreal; deadening, like a sedative. The ^iL was comfortable now, like a familiar car. He flicked on the ^dio, tuning it.
A roar of voices after the swish of static. Like a great anger. Command, commands, commanding—eventually a voice emerged, and it did not seem to be that of Serov, even distorted by rage and distance. An older voice. Snapping out orders, giving advice, directions. The hunt was on.
Literally. Airborne, the first two gunships, heading south at close to maximum speed. They wouldn't care if at first they overran him.
Kill on sight, destroy on contact, end, finish, make certain, no survivors, destroy on contact
. . . the litany unnerved him. He returned the set to its neutral, safe swish of ether. He would not be able to evade them. Fuel gauges registering full; he'd get no more than—what, one fifty, carrying only two other people in the main cabin? One fifty. The western shore of the Aral Sea? Not even that far. He groaned.
Priabin's voice was silent. Just an occasional movement, the scraping of a boot on metal, the whispers of a shivering body in his ears. A small, weak, unconscious groan. He listened instead to the retuned radio.
Positions, speed, altitude, pattern, all immediately supplied, as if they were reporting to him. Once the pattern was established, they might go to another channel or into code, but it was all too diffuse as yet for the controller to resign the authority and success of the search to his units. He wouldn't be able to see most of them on radar because they were keeping low now, rushing through the early night, eager and assured. Positions, visual scan, IR traces, ground clutter—
"Priabin."
"What?" A man startled from sleep or reverie. His voice was dull with misery.
"We—we need proof! Proof they can
't
mistake or misunderstand. Real proof—not like those tapes. Real." The idea was still formless. "Right. Like—pictures." He clenched on the
thought,
grinding his teeth, forcing its birth. "TV, infrared—cameras,
right?
Transmission, video recording—range?"
"What?"
"What's the range of this damn transmitter?" he bellowed.
"I—I'm not sure. A hundred miles, fifty—I don't know."
"Then you'd better hope."
"Why?"
"You use it, to transmit PR pictures direct?"
"Sometimes."
He lifted the MiL over power cables. The road was ahead, cars moving along it, lights rising and falling, spraying out into the dark countryside. Scattered houses, the early moon, stars. The darkness appeared unsafe.
Nothing in his mirrors. The two minutes had come and gone. Two minutes thirty seconds. At high speed, they wouldn't be more than a minute behind. Maybe a minute and- a half. Then use the time!
"Aral'sk—the nearest KGB office . . . receive the pictures?" He was incoherent in his struggle to shape the idea. "Uuuhn," he groaned, as if the notion resisted and he were grappling with it. "Damn it."
"I don't know."
"Talk to them!" he yelled. "You talk to them. Is there a radio back there?"
"Yes—what pictures? Gant, what—?"
"Maybe some. ..." His voice was soft now, his breathing stertorous but relieved. IR, TV—low-light TV, transmitter, recorder, cameras of different kinds in the main cabin, Priabin would have to describe them—Christ, Priabin was going to have to use them!
His voice gabbled. The idea was loose, slippery. He held on to it only by bellowing the fragments.
He had slowed the MiL almost to a hover, twenty feet above a darkened and dilapidated wooden building. Barn or warehouse. Its bulk—he dropped alongside it, but kept his undercarriage perhaps six feet above the ground—disguised his radar image. Lights streamed along the road. Headlight beams washed over sand, over the ditch alongside the road, caught the gleam of icy railway track, all as if seeing him rather than simply moving across his sight. His head rang and whirled, his voice was breathy, threatening to crack.
No more than a minute now, the clock in his head insisted.
"Assembly building . . . shuttle vehicle—laser weapon aboard?" He did not pause for a reply. "Pictures—pictures! From the doors • . . roof—shuttle and weapon, all we need . . . transmit to KGB receiver—proof, other people know, Moscow—everyone . . . otherwise we don't survive, this could keep us alive . . . once their secret's blown, we might be safe—assembly building ..."
His voice failed.
"Gant? Gant?"
"What?"
"It's madness—you realize that? I can't do it."
"Forget her!" he roared back. "Forget the woman—she's dead, Priabin. Were all dead unless we get some leverage—now. Understand me? I can't get us out of here, I'm not Captain Marvel. Can Aral'sk KGB pick up a transmission?"
Priabin was silent for a moment, before he said, "I'll ask them." Then, as if uttering a betrayal, he repeated vehemently: "I'll ask them!"
"Do it now," Gant said with a sigh he could not prevent. He almost added something more sympathetic about the dying girl, but refrained. Priabin's conscience, his grief, was inconvenient, possibly dangerous.
Gant held the MiL in the hover, seven or eight feet from the ground. Beyond the road, the river caught the first pale moonlight like a winding slug trail. He felt a breeze elbowing against the fuselage, heard Priabin's breathing, his movements in his ears. Let his own body subside.
Not the doors; the booster stages had been moved to the launch pad, the doors would not be open. The roof, then. Skylights.
Holding the MiL occupied his instincts and his limbs. His mind cooled. TV camera and even infrared . . . Priabin would have to get out of the MiL, use an IR lens on a still camera, unless—
"You got a portable TV or film camera back there?"
"Um—yes, I think so." Priabin searched. Gant heard the man pause, then sniff audibly. "Yes. Videotape recording, not TV."
"OK, use that. I'll take TV—"
"Can you operate the equipment?"
"Pray I can."
He had been assessing the control panel. Lights, camera, action—yes.