"Gant." Priabin protested.
"Not now."
He summoned the sections of moving map he would require. The main assembly building that now housed the shuttle craft and the laser weapon was more than twelve miles to the northeast. He assessed the distance, the obstacles, with a strange detachment. A ring of silos, an intricate web of roads and railway branch lines, test facilities, factories, support areas—danger symbols, restricted areas strung like the constituents of a minefield. His hands were aching and his legs cramped from holding the helicopter still in the now-turbulent breeze. He looked up, seeing navigation lights amid the stars. Nothing yet.
"Is the girl secured?" he asked, as if of a piece of cargo.
"I—"
"You want to save her pain, Priabin, make sure she can't move," he instructed through clenched teeth.
"Gant!"
"Just do it. You talk to Aral'sk yet?"
"They're standing by for a transmission. It's all right, I explained that our office's receiver was out of commission. They don't know— yet—what it is they're going to see."
"When they get the pictures, tell them to transmit them direct to Moscow—they can do that?"
"They'll have to use a relay to Guryev or on to Astrakhan, even Baku ... to the nearest satellite facility."
"Warn them to be ready on that. There isn't going to be much time. OK?" He attempted to trust Priabin; but images of the dead woman on the border road defeated him. Priabin would work with him—possibly. Priabin had his own life to save—possibly. But the dead woman and the dying woman—what had they done to him? "OK?" he insisted. "You ready?"
"No," Priabin replied immediately. "But we're on the same side, Gant. For the moment, and by the strangest accident—but we are. I have to stop them, too, there's nothing standing in my way," he added as if he divined the source of Gant's doubt. His breathing was harsh, contradicting his statement. Gant let it go.
"OK. Talk to Aral'sk, then get ready to use that video camera."
Begin.
The MiL rose gently from the shelter of the wooden barn. The wind cuffed the fuselage as it moved out of the shadows, into the betraying moonlight. Bright moon, strong wind. Gant loathed the night.
He scanned the sky, his gaze sliding from the starry darkness toward the wash of the moonlight. Nothing. No lights, no insect silhouettes. The wind struck the fuselage. He glanced down at the moving-map display. Twenty feet above the ground, the MiL began to move northeast, away from the Moscow road, toward the main assembly building of the Baikonur complex.
"I should not have had to come here, Serov. I should not have had to come."
Serov's broken arm was held in a sling made from someone's Uniform belt. His face was ashen with pain, his whole bulky form somehow diminished by his injury. To Rodin, he appeared—for once—subordinate. Rodin's voice echoed in the empty hangar. GRU officers and men had retired to a respectful, even nervous distance, anticipating some kind of detonation. Rodin slapped one removed glove in his palm, as if weighing a selected target. Serov had become the object of his rage, but more than that; the general felt a desire, almost a need, to vent some deep, anguished wrath on the man who stood in front of him. There were pools of light-rain-bowed gasoline around them where the stolen KGB helicopter had stood.
"I—comrade General, I am sorry that—"
"Be quiet, Serov. Be quiet before you say something that further displays your incompetence." Rodin's glove slapped into his palm like an anticipation. His staff, too, stood away from the two of them; near the open doors of the hangar—through which the American had flown the MiL and escaped! It hardly bore consideration, it made his body overheat, his collar seem tight. It evoked intense contempt, even hatred, for this, this creature in front of him.
Rodin cleared his throat of angry phlegm. "They will be found, Serov, within the hour. At liberty, they are an element of the most critical importance. This American, Gant—you seem to have underestimated him just as you did the KGB officer. You let them take you." The anger was back, and he did little to suppress it. His hand moved, without restraint, slapping the glove hard across Serov's face. "You—•" he snarled.
Rodin knew. Some deep instinct convinced him that Serov was involved in Valery's death. He could not analyze or even continue the idea. His wife was broken, and he could feel pity for her; just as he could feel his hatred of Serov. He knew that Serov, too, understood. His eyes gave that away.
"I will make it my duty to inform Stavka of this day's business, Serov," he promised. Had Serov killed his son? Impossible. But he had had something to do with it; had he hounded the boy? Showing him his future, in a cracked and distorting mirror? Had he
destroyed
Valery? "They will be recaptured," he proceeded, as if some rehearsed and uninvolved part of him continued with the business of security, and
Lightning.
'The measures taken must not fail.
It
is being put back into your hands. You'll come with us to mission control and run the search from there. Understand? You will succeed."
"Comrade General, my arm—"
Rodin waved a dismissive glove, airily. 'There is not time to have that set and plastered. You will come now. You have control of four gunships and another eight helicopters, as well as GRU and army units. You will use them to find these runaways. Come/'
Rodin turned away from the ashen, carefully neutral features. His stride did not falter. Inside himself, he felt a dark tide moving his heart and stomach. Now, now he could blame others, entirely, for Valery's death. Others would pay. Valery Avould be—avenged. The record put straight.
He reached the tight, expectant knot of staff officers. He waved them ahead of him out into the evening and the icy wind. He looked up at the stars. Somewhere out there, one small helicopter posed a danger. Critical—but it was difficult to believe that the American could evade the hunt for more than an hour or two. Before midnight, before the shuttle and the laser weapon began their journey to the launch pad, he and Priabin would again be in custody—or dead. He felt the wind snatch at his breath. It flew away like smoke. He bent his head to climb into the staff car's rear seat.
Dangerous, but not mortal. He looked out of his window. Serov was cradling his broken arm as he came out of the hangar. A gunship droned overhead. More distantly, lights flashed from other MiLs. Searchlights flooded down from the bellies of two other insect shapes in the distance.
"Mission control," he snapped. "Quickly." Then, as he made to settle back into his seat, his glance turned once more to Serov, waiting in the cold for his own car. He tapped his driver on the shoulder as he heard the gears bite and the engine note strengthen. "Wait," he said, and wound down his window. "Serov," he called. "Come here."
Serov walked the few yards in evident discomfort. He leaned slowly, like an old man, to the open window.
"Comrade General?"
"Where will they make for, Serov? What will they attempt?"
"Telephone—radio?" Serov replied dully. "Priabin will want to talk to Moscow Center."
"Exactly. Where, then?"
"Aral'sk is the closest office with the necessary comm—"
"Then do something about Aral'sk I don't care what it is—close the office, commandeer the equipment, destroy the place if you have to—just make it impossible for them to use Aral'sk KGB. Understand?"
"Yes, comrade General, at once."
"Driver—you can go."
* * *
The lamp set beneath the MiLs belly was on. The black-and-white television picture, four inches square and set above the control panel, showed the uneven ground over which the MiL passed with grainy inexactitude. Gant flicked off the camera. The surveillance equipment was effective in searching for moving figures and vehicles—it would have to be good enough from the roof of the main assembly building. Distance to target, seven miles. Ground speed, less than forty miles an hour.
Ten minutes now. Occasionally, in his headset, their voices barked and called. Areas clear, coordination with ground troops, consultations with the command post. Serov's voice was back, strangely weak and old, but decisive with what Gant sensed was desperation. The other voice had disappeared. They were concentrating the search to the south of him, to the west, too. Looking for a fleeing animal. He was within the net, but they were still casting it and not pulling it tight. He huddled close to the terrain, slipped beneath power cables, nosing like a dog rather than flying— but he had reached the curving rampart of silos, tracking radars and the power grid at the perimeter of the military launch complex to the north of Tyuratam.
Noises in his ears.
Nothing, clear . . . sweep of area completed—
and always Serovs angry dissatisfaction whipping them on. Silos like craters surrounded him, passed below his sight and the cockpit coaming. Priabin had been silent for a long time. Occasionally, he heard the woman coughing or moaning. He deliberately dissociated the noises from any human experience. They were only the distant night sounds he had heard in Vietnam; monkeys calling or men burning. Eventually they merged and lost identity.
The network of power cables straddled the road he was following. He slid gently beneath them, crossed another road, two parallel railway lines. The craters of the silos slipped behind him; radar dishes stared like blind eyes, ahead and around the MiL.
With the lamp on, at his speed and lack of height, they were no longer looking for him; he belonged with them, as familiar as a uniform or a waving hand. The wind, however, waited to ambush him. Rocked and jolted the MiL, rendered it egglike and fragile.
Six miles, five and a half. Lights along the flank of a low building, presumably a factory. He lifted a little and passed over it, splashing the light like a declaration of intent over the roof and the shadows that clung about the eaves. Dropped the MiL behind the building, moved on northeast. A truck stationary on a minor road, the glimpse of searchlights playing amid fuel storage tanks. A soldier
looked
up, his face white in the light for an instant, his eyes blind, his hand—
—waving.
Gant exhaled noisily.
"Priabin?" he said softly. "Priabin? Is the girl . . . how is she?" Asking after her, assuming sympathy, was like touching wood, or crossing his fingers.
"Unconscious again." Priabin's voice was dragged by pity and sadness. "Gant—"
"Don't say it," he warned.
"But, afterward—" Something continued to protest within Priabin, like a qualm of conscience he could not be rid of.
"Afterward, we hide until the cavalry comes for us," Gant confirmed. "Serov would kill us—you—as soon as he could. I might be valuable. You wouldn't be. You took him—he'll kill you even if everything's blown up in his face. Understand?"
"Yes, yes, dammit, Gant, I understand," Priabin breathed, as if not wishing to be overheard.
Four miles now—
A haze of lights, like a stadium's glow after dark. The assembly buildings for Soyuz, G-type boosters, satellite final assembly, Salyut construction and training, shuttle craft assembly . . . laser battle station assembly . . . target. Three and a half miles and five minutes away. Gant felt himself tense.
A net of moonlit roads, the trails of purposeful snails. Cars and trucks moving, swaying and bouncing their lights. The navigation lights, the downward-thrust searchlight of one of the hunting gunships away to the north, another walking white limb of light to the southwest. He felt the tension constrict like drying bandages Wound much too tightly. It was a moment of drowning extended for minute after minute, mile after mile; holding his breath for longer
a
nd longer.
The haze of lights was nearer, and individual stars of light had begun to appear. A row of streetlights along a road, clusters of lights
0y
er loading bays and railway tracks. Two miles, a little over three
minutes—
—dogs barking.
Area clear
, directions and orders, new head-
ln
gs, call signs. He had begun to understand their movements, recognize and determine the position of each helicopter that reported. They had reached the point of farthest travel and were turning to trawl back in; they were on the point of pulling the net tight around him.
A mile and a half.
There was no escape afterward. Merely hiding, if they survived.
"Aral'sk," he said gruffly through his nerves. "They still standing by?"
"Yes."
It had suddenly seemed important to ask, as if Aral'sk hung by a slender thread, another spider dangling as dangerously as the MiL he was flying. His helmet chafed where sweat had sprung on his forehead and neck, then dried, then appeared again; tidemarks of his successive fears.
"OK, you understand what you have to do?"
"Yes." A boy's small voice, reluctant but obedient.
"The battle station—don't finesse, Priabin. Just use the zoom to close in on it, and hold the shot. Let them see the shuttle, then what's in the hold."
"We won't need—"
"Damn you, just do as you're told. You don't know shit about the ten seconds that follow what you're asked to do. You don't know anything. We need all the ammunition we can lay our hands on." Stop it. Wasted energy, he told himself. "You're the backup," he continued in a calmer, more official tone. "Just get the shots, OK?"