Firefox

by Craig Thomas

  The young man had stepped back a couple of paces, so that he could still see Gant clearly. The tinted facemask of the helmet, combined with the integral oxygenmask, made it impossible for him to tell that it wasn’t Colonel Voskov in the pilot’s position. He was at a loss what action to take. He glanced swiftly down the hangar. It was true that the second Mig-31 was being towed towards him from the far end of the hangar and, although it appeared under control, there was still smoke and flame from the fire there. He had been told by Tsernik that no one, on the express orders of Colonel Kontarsky, was to be allowed near the plane. But did that apply to the pilot?

  Gant ignored the KGB man and went through his pre-start checks as swiftly as he could. He plugged in his radio and communications equipment, finding the location of the socket instinctively, as if he had always flown that aircraft. The simulator which had been built in Langley, Virginia, at CIA headquarters, from Baranovich’s smuggled descriptions and photographs and from computer projections, now proved its worth. Then, he plugged in the connection from his helmet to the weaponssystem, a single jackplug similar to the radio. He pushed the jackplug home into the side of the ejector-seat itself. It was the final sophistication of the weapons system of the Mig: if he were forced to eject, then he could control the destruct mechanism of the system to prevent any part or fragment of the plane’s weaponry and its control-system from falling into enemy’s hands.

  He glanced down at the KGB man, swiftly, as if taking in the reading from one of his gauges. The junior officer still seemed perplexed, reluctant. Gant connected up his oxygen supply, then coupled in the emergency oxygen. Next, he switched in the anti-G device, a lead which plugged into the pressuresuit just below the left knee. It was this which would bleed air into the suit to counteract the effects of increased Gforces on his blood, forcing it round his system against the effect of sudden turns, dives or accelerations. Cautiously, he tested it, felt the air bleed in rapidly, and checked the gauges which confirmed his bodily reaction. It was working.

  He knew he was stripping the pre-flight routine to the bone, but there weren’t even seconds to spare. His eyes read the gauges; flaps, brakes and fuel. The fueltanks were full, and they would need to be since, as he sat there, he did not even know the nature or position of his refuelling-point.

  There was one more thing. He extracted the innards of the transistor radio from a pouch-pocket on the thigh of the suit, bared an adhesive strip, and then fixed the anonymous collection of circuits in their wafer-thin black case developed at Farnborough exclusively for his use to the corner of the instrument panel, with a silent prayer that it had not been damaged during the past three days. If it had been, he would never know.

  He was ready. His routine had taken mere seconds to complete. The second Firefox was only yards away as it trailed behind the small tractor. He had a single moment in which to convince the man below him. He leaned down, and waved his hand for him to move, yelling as he did so: ‘You’ll get your head knocked off if you stand there any longer!’ He swept a finger across his throat, and pointed to the wing and engine-intake behind the Russian. The young man looked, understood, and selfpreservation made him move clear, tugging the ladder obligingly after him.

  Gant smiled, relaxed, and turned his attention to the aircraft. As he did so, his gaze swept across the door into the hangar through which he had entered perhaps a minute earlier. He saw Kontarsky, his face white, his arm extended, finger pointing in his direction. There were other men at his side, perhaps half-a-dozen, filling the doorway behind him. In a purely reflex action, he pressed the hood control, and automatically the hood swung down, locked electronically. Then he locked it manually as a standard double-check. He was isolated in the machine. A part of it.

  The fogginess, the lethargy, the nausea of the dream, all had left him now. There was, curiously, no elation either. There was only the functioning of smooth machinery - a mechanism within a larger mechanism. Elation would come later perhaps.

  He checked the cockpit air-pressure; then, reaching forward, he gang-loaded the ignition switches, switched on the starter motors, turned on the high-pressure cock and, without hesitation, even for self-drama, pressed the starter-button.

  Halfway down the fuselage, there was the sound of a double explosion, like the noise of a twelve-bore against his ears, as the cartridge start functioned. Two puffs of sooty smoke rolled away from the engines. There was a rapid, mounting whirring as the huge turbines built up; he checked gyro instruments erect. He saw the flashing light which indicated that he had forgotten the fuel-booster pump, switched it in, and the light disappeared on the panel. He eased open the throttles, and watched the rpm gauges as they mounted to twenty-seven per cent, and he steadied them there. He glanced out of his side-window. Kontarsky and two of his men, as if galvanised by the explosions of the starter-cartridges, were moving forward but, by comparison with the speed of his actions and responses, as if they were moving underwater, slowly - too slowly to stop him now. He saw a gun raised, and something whined away off the cockpit, harmlessly.

  With one eye on the JPT (jet-pipe temperature) gauge, he opened the throttles until the rpm gauges were at fifty-five per cent and the whine had increased comfortingly. He released the brakes.

  The Firefox had been tugging against the brakes’ restraint and now that they were released, skipped rather than rolled forward, towards the hangar-doors through which Gant could see the dawn streaking and lighting the sky. He saw men rushing to the doors, in an attempt to close them against him - but they too, moved with a painful, ludicrous slowness and they were too late, far too late. He checked the gauges and booster-pumps and then he was through the hangar doors and out onto the taxiway. In his mirror he could see running figures, left ridiculously behind him as the Firefox rolled towards the runway.

  Using the rudder and differential braking, he turned onto the runway. As he straightened the airplane, he ran through the checks again.

  He breathed deeply, once, then he opened the throttles to full. He pushed the throttles straight through the detent, and brought the reheat of the massive engines into play. He felt their power as a huge shove in the back, an almost sexual surge forward. There was a moment of elation, fierce, pure. The plane gathered speed. At 160 knots, it was skipping on the ridges in the runway-slabs. At 165 knots, he brought the elevator controls into play, and the Firefox left the ground. There was a further surge of acceleration as the drag induced by contact with the runway vanished. He retracted the undercarriage.

  The Firefox wobbled its wings as he over-controlled, unused to the quality and finesse of the power-control system. He was lifting away steeply now, within seconds.

  In the rising sun he saw, off to the right of the nose, a glint of sun on metal. He pulled back, and hauled the stick to the right. He felt the pressure of the anti-G as he went into the turn, almost rolled the plane completely through his over-control, then levelled the wings. He looked out to his left, and below and behind him. A Tupolev Tu-144, carrying, he knew, the First Secretary, was turning to make its final approach to the runway at Bilyarsk. He looked at his altimeter. He was already at almost eight thousand feet.

  It was fifteen seconds since the undercarriage had left contact with the runway. He was a thousand miles from the Russian border - any Russian border. As the sweat of reaction from his near-collision ran down his sides, beneath his arms, he grinned to himself. He had done it. He had stolen the Firefox.

  PART TWO

  The Flight

  Six

  COUNTER MEASURES

  By the time Kontarsky came aboard the First Secretary’s Tupolev Tu-144, the moment after the giant supersonic airliner had rolled to a halt on the runway at Bilyarsk, dashing up the mobile passenger-gangway in which he had ridden from the hangar, the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party had already been told of the theft of the Mig-31 over the flight-deck UHF. As he was ushered into the military command section of the aircraft, aft of the passenger accommodation, the equ
ivalent of the war command office on board the U.S. President’s aircraft, he was confronted by what was, in fact, a council of war. The room was already filled with heavy cigar smoke.

  Kontarsky saluted rigidly, and kept his eyes straight ahead. Only the back of a radiooperator’s head at the far end of the cigar-shaped room filled his vision. Yet he knew that the eyes of the room’s principal occupants were on him. An awareness that seemed to seep through the skin like damp told him where each of those powerful men sat. He knew that each was regarding him intently. He understood the details of the expression on each face. Directly in front of him, round the command table, circular in shape and fitted with projection equipment which would throw onto the table a relief map of any part of the Soviet Union, any part of the world, sat the First Secretary himself; on his right sat Kutuzov, Marshal of the Soviet Air Force, a world war ace, and a hardline Communist of the Stalinist school; to the left of the Soviet First Secretary sat Andropov, Chairman of the KGB and his ultimate superior. It was that trinity which so frightened him, which made the moments since he had stepped through the guarded door into this sanctum seem like minutes, hours … endless.

  It was the First Secretary who spoke. Kontarsky, still rigidly to attention, and not requested to be at ease or to sit, saw from the corner of his eye the restraining hand of the First Secretary fall on the sleeve of Andropov’s suit, and he caught the glint of an overhead striplight reflected from the gold-rimmed spectacles worn by the Chairman of the KGB.

  ‘Colonel Kontarsky - you will explain what has happened,’ the First Secretary said, his voice soft, authoritative. He seemed unhurried. There was no other sound in the room except the steady hiss from a radio. It was nearly three minutes since Gant had taken off in the Mig, yet nothing seemed to have been done.

  Now that he had failed, Kontarsky was almost hysterically eager to encourage and exhort the efforts to reclaim - or destroy, he presumed - the stolen aircraft. He swallowed. ‘An American…‘he began, and coughed. He kept his eyes looking directly ahead, at the scrubbed neck of the radiooperator. ‘An American pilot called Gant is responsible for the theft of the Mig-31, sir.’

  ‘On the contrary. Colonel, it is you who are responsible,’ the First Secretary replied, in a voice bereft of menace, bereft of humanity. ‘Proceed.’

  ‘He infiltrated the compound here with the aid of various dissident Jews, who are now all dead.’

  ‘Mm. But not before they told you what you wished to know, I presume?’

  Kontarsky looked down into the broad, lined face. It was a strong face. He had always thought so. The eyes were Jike chips of grey stone.

  ‘We - learned nothing…’ he managed to say.

  There was a silence. He noticed that the radiooperator was sitting more upright in his chair, as if tense. When his eyes returned to the circular table, he could see the First Secretary’s strong, veined hand tapping at the sleeve of the Chairman’s dark, sober business suit, as if restraining him.

  ‘You - do not know what the destination of the Mig-31 will be?’ he heard the First Secretary ask.

  ‘You know nothing?’ Kutuzov interposed, shocked. Kontarsky saw the First Secretary glance swiftly at the ageing Marshal who was in full uniform, the sombre blue tinselled with insignia and overlapping decorations. The old pilot fell silent.

  ‘No.’ Kontarsky said, and his voice was small and flat, as if the room were deadened, without reverberation.

  ‘Very well,’ the First Secretary intoned after a moment of heavy, oppressive silence. At that moment Kontarsky saw his ruin. For the First Secretary, and for the others, military personnel and KGB, gathered round the circular table, he had ceased to exist. ‘You will place yourself under close guard. Colonel.’ Kontarsky’s lip trembled, and he looked once into the First Secretary’s eyes. It was like looking in a mirror that refused’ to reflect his physical presence. ‘You are dismissed.’

  When Kontarsky had left the room, the door closing behind him softly, the First Secretary glanced in the direction of the Marshal. He nodded, once, and then turned his head to look at Andropov. He said: ‘There is no time now for recriminations. That will come later. It appears obvious to me that this is a CIA venture, a desperate attempt to cancel the huge advantage in air superiority that the aircraft would have given to the Soviet Union. We know nothing else than the man’s name, and his official file. It would tell us nothing of use. As each moment passes now, the Mig-31 moves further and further away from us, towards … where, Mihail Ilyich?’

  The Marshal of the Soviet Air Force glanced over his shoulder at the back of an operator at a small console.

  ‘Give us the “Wolfpack” map of the U.S.S.R., quickly!’ he said.

  The operator punched buttons in instant obedience and, as the men seated at the table withdrew thenhands, and packets of cigarettes and cigar-cases, the surface of the table registered a projection-map of the Soviet Union, clustered with tiny dots of varying colours. There before them on the screen of the table lay the diagram of the immense outer defences of the Soviet Union. The First Secretary leaned forward across the table, and tapped at the map.

  ‘Bilyarsk,’ he said. His finger traced a circle round the area he had indicated. ‘Now, in which direction has he gone?’

  ‘We do not know. First Secretary,’ Kutuzov said, his voice gruff. He had had an operation for cancer of the throat two years earlier, and it had left his voice a tired, dry whisper.

  He looked across the table, across the glowing projection of the map, at Vladimirov, the tall, lean-faced officer with grey hair and watery blue eyes who sat opposite him. The ruthlessness, the confidence, of that face helped him to regain a little of his calm, after the blow of the theft of the Mig. He had been winded, temporarily paralysed, by what had happened. It had been even more of a body blow than Belenko’s defection in a Foxbat four years before. He could still see, in his mind, the bright, swift glint of the fuselage as the aircraft had pulled away from the Tupolev, climbing swiftly. A glimpse, that had been all he had.

  Over the UHF, then, had come the information that an unauthorised aircraft had taken off from the single main runway below them in the strengthening light. He had known, with a sudden, sick realisation, what aircraft it had been; before confirmation had flowed in, even as they touched down and the big plane had skipped once and then settled on the runway. Someone, an American, had stolen the greatest aircraft the Soviet Union had ever produced - stolen it.

  ‘What do you think, Vladimirov?’ he said.

  The tall, lean-faced man glanced down at the map, then looked up, addressing his remarks to the First Secretary. General Med Vladimirov, commandant of the tactical strike arm of the Soviet Air Force, the ‘Wolfpack’, as it was designated, was worried. He, too, understood the problem - how to trace an untraceable aircraft - but he did not intend to allow the First Secretary to see his doubts. Then, as lethargy seemed to have left him, he spoke.

  ‘I suggest a staggered sector scramble. First Secretary,’ he said directly, ‘in two areas. We must put up as many planes as we can, along our southern and northern borders.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘Because, First Secretary,’ he said, looking down at the map, ‘this lunatic must refuel if he is to fly the aircraft to a place of complete safety. He will not refuel in the air - we would know if some mother-plane were waiting for him over neutral or hostile sky.’

  ‘What is the range of this aircraft?’ General Leonid Borov asked, seated next to Vladimirov. Borov was commandant of the ECM (Electronic Counter-Measures) section of the Soviet Air Force. He, it would be, in the event of a pre-emptive strike by the West, who would coordinate the radar and missile defences with the air defences.

  ‘It would be fully fuelled,’ Kutuzov said. ‘Almost three thousand miles maximum, depending on what this American knows, and how he handles the aircraft.’

  ‘Which would put him here - or here,’ Vladimirov said, his hand sweeping the Arctic Ocean, then drifting across the expa
nse of the table to indicate the Iranian border, and then the Mediterranean.

  ‘Why would he go either north or south, Vladimirov?’ the First Secretary asked. His voice had become impatient now, and his body seemed eager for activity, as if the blood were tinglingly returning to his limbs after cramp.

  ‘Because, First Secretary, any pilot who ran the risk of the Moscow defences would be committing suicide even in a plane that allows no radar trace!’

  There was a brief silence. All of them there, the five men round the circular table, and the team of guards, ciphermen, radiooperators and aides to the ranking officers, all of them understood that the unvoiceable had been uttered. Now that the American had stolen the Mig he had turned that unique fact to his advantage, the fact that the airplane’s defences incorporated an antiradar system.

  ‘It works too well!’ Kutuzov growled in his characteristic whisper. ‘It works too damn well!’

  ‘The American knows of it?’ Andropov said, speaking for the first time. Heads turned in the direction of the bland, urbane Chairman of the KGB. He seemed unabashed by the failure sustained by one of his officers, the monumental failure. Vladimirov smiled thinly. Perhaps he thought, with a hardline pro-Stalinist First Secretary, the Chairman considered himself untouchable. He continued looking at the man across the table from him, who looked like nothing so much as a prosperous, efficient Western businessman, rather than the head of the most powerful police and intelligence force in the world.

  ‘He must know,’ Vladimirov said, ice in his voice, ‘Your man’s security must have been full of holes, Chairman, for the CIA to have got him this far.’