Firefox

by Craig Thomas

  He wondered whether the cruiser would wait like a complacent animal, to swallow him in its fire, or whether it would launch a brace of missiles while he was still more than a mile away. Infrared was imprecise - technology had been unable to narrow the inevitable spread of a heatsource as it registered on the screen. It was not a good way to obtain an accurate fix. Nevertheless, fire-control aboard the cruiser, using infrared missiles, did not need to be precise.

  He knew he was now visible to the men on the bridge, a grey petrel seemingly suspended just above the surface of the icy water. He watched the screen, waiting for the sudden bloom of missile-exhausts to emerge from the bulk of the cruiser. At the moment of launch, any SA missile would show up as a bright orange pinprick.

  On the radar screen, he picked up what he guessed was one of the cruiser’s Kamov helicopters, and his ECM readout calculated height and range. He decided to launch one of his own AA missiles as a diversion, let the electronic adrenalin of the information flood the cruiser’s fire-control computer, let the physical diversion of a hit on the chopper add another dimension to the chessboard across which he moved towards the cruiser.

  He launched. The missile pulled away, and whisked up and out of his view. He watched it tracking across the screen, homing on the helicopter, which he knew, would have picked up the missile, and would be scuttling to take avoiding action. Gant bared his teeth behind his facemask. The electronic war that was all he had ever known thrilled him to the bone, every nerve and muscle fulfilled. War was reduced to a game of chess, to an elaboration upon elaboration of move and counter-move. And he was the best.

  The deck of the cruiser bloomed with pale fire, brighter spots on the screen. They had waited, anticipating that he would pull away from the threat of the submarines and the helicopters. Yet he had maintained the same course, heading directly towards them. The fire-control on the bridge, as he had hoped, had been triggered by his own attack upon the Kamov - the helicopter burst into flames in the sky above him, but he saw it only peripherally as a sudden orange flower, petals falling…

  They had wanted to drive him between the cruiser and one of the submarines; expected him to pull up and away from them. But he had kept coming at them. Whatever the Soviet captain knew or did not know, he would have been told of the perilous estimate of the Firefox’s fuel supply. That would have driven him to action. The Soviet captain had jumped the gun, triggered by Gant into a reflex action.

  The ship was only hundreds of yards ahead of him as the SA missiles leapt from the twin-launcher forward of the bridge. Gant pulled away, sliding with exposed underbelly to port, to pass the cruiser. On the screen in front of him, he saw the missiles deviate from their original track, to close on him with frightening speed. Then, at his silent command as he reached the optimum moment, the thoughtguided weaponssystem triggered the tailunit. Behind him, suddenly, there was an incandescent flare that paled the sun. He shoved the throttles forward, and the Firefox leapt across the water like a spun stone, skipping the tops of the wrinkled waves, the bows of the cruiser looming above the cockpit in one brief, momentary glance, and then he could see nothing but the grey water as he passed no more than fifty yards from the ship’s plates.

  Behind him, the tailunit, releasing a heatsource which, for four seconds burned far hotter than his two Turmansky turbojets at low speed, attracted the pair of heatseeking missiles, and the ball of fire on the screen brightened until it seemed to hurt his eyes, even behind his tinted facemask. Then the bloom died suddenly. On the screen, the cruiser was more than a mile behind him as he went supersonic.

  His fuel-gauge registered empty. The Mach-counter showed him steadied at Mach 1.6. The altimeter showed him skipping over the sea at less than fifty feet, still, he hoped, out of sight of the submarines and their infrared, though by now they would have a transmitted bearing and range from the cruiser.

  He watched the screen, saw the two patches of dull orange from the exhausts of a second pair of SA infrared missiles overhauling him. The Soviet captain had been premature. He had been waiting for the better target, the optimum moment, but the trick of the tailunit must have taken him by surprise. However, he had responded by ordering the release of two more missiles - and…

  Gant saw the patch of light at the port edge of the screen as another two remotely launched SA missiles from the submarine nearest to him began to converge on his exhaust.

  He checked the readout on the ‘Deaf Aid’. The bearing of the transmitter remained dead ahead of his present course, right on the last course he had fed into the aircraft after leaving the Novaya Zemlya channel. The distance was still one hundred and sixteen miles to its location. The homing signal began to clamour at his brain in the silent aftermath of the split seconds of violent action. He knew it was imperative to slow down.

  Easing the throttles back he slowed, so that on the screen the four distant dots of dull orange seemed to draw swiftly nearer. The tailunit had worked. Gant knew he was gambling, but this time he had an alternative, whereas before he had had none. He could attempt to outrun the pursuing missiles until his fuel ran out.

  It was a curious sensation of helplessness, with not even a button to press, as his only link with reality seemed to be the four closing points of orange light. He felt, since he was not looking up from the screen, as if he were a still, helpless point, a kind of sacrifice. He could feel the sweat beneath his arms, running down his sides, chill inside the pressuresuit. He knew that under the weight of the grip he was exerting on the throttles, his hand was shaking fiercely. He waited He threw the throttles forward, and the Firefox leapt like a startled animal, flew like a terrified bird. The tailunit released again and the explosion was almost instantaneous, huge and audible; then the shock-wave rocked the Firefox and he fought to steady the plane. It was like an extra thrust of engine-power. Quickly, he eased back the throttles and the speed dropped to below 170 knots once more.

  He ignored the fuel-gauge. His eyes turned to the ‘Deaf Aid’ his whole attention being to the noise of the homing signal. Less than .a hundred miles. In the sudden, almost sexual release after his escape from the coordinated missiles from cruiser and submarine, he didn’t see how he could make it.

  Icefloes, larger, more frequent now, passed beneath the belly of the Firefox as he headed north. The First Secretary’s conversation was brief, and to the point. He wasted no time on an appeal to Major Alexander Tretsov’s loyalty as a Russian and as a member of the party, or on specious inspiration. Rather, he used the other weapon, which had become synonymous with his name - fear. He told Tretsov what was at stake, and he impressed upon him the price of failure. Tretsov was to head northwards, at top speed, using the phenomenal power of the Mig-31, and to rendezvous with a tanker-aircraft over the northern coastline of Russia. From there, he would head for the current position of the Riga, from which vessel there had, as yet, been no report; here another tanker would be waiting in the event that he required a further refuelling. The tankers were already on route to their contact coordinates.

  Tretsov had been visibly nervous of the weight being thrust upon his shoulders. For a senior test pilot in the Red Air Force, he was young, in his early thirties, and he looked younger than that. Vladimirov had felt for him as the whole crushing weight of the First Secretary’s personality acted upon him, and the silent presence of Andropov struck coldly. Yet he was good, his record was a fine one, Vladimirov was forced to admit. Whether, in the unlikely event of his being able to locate Gant, he was good enough to destroy the American, was another matter. Vladimirov was almost sorry for Tretsov that he was to be put to the test. He was technically the junior test pilot on the Bilyarsk project, and had flown fewer hours than his senior, Voskov - but Voskov was dead, killed by Gant. The KGB had found his body in the locker. Rather grotesquely, it had fallen comically out of the locker like a mummy from a sarcophagus.

  The atmosphere in the War Command Centre after the departure of the chastened, grim-mouthed Tretsov was, for the First Secretary,
more congenial. The exercise of power, and the gratifying obedience tinged with fear that had shown itself in the pilot’s eyes, soothed him, reinforced his sense of the overwhelming odds ranged against Gant, the American who had dared… The First Secretary felt his anger rising again, and fought to calm himself. The second Mig-31, cleansed of the foam sprayed on it following the attempted sabotage, and armed to the teeth with AA missiles and cannon-shells, sat at the end of the main runway, wailing for the final clearance from the Tower. In moments, it would pass close to the First Secretary’s Tupolev. The Soviet leader positioned himself at one of the small portholes let into the room to observe the take-off.

  For Vladimirov, the situation was neither so simple, nor so gratifying. For the Commandant of ‘Wolfpack’ the period of the conversation of the First Secretary with the almost silent Tretsov had been a period of anxiety. The First Secretary appeared to wish to ignore the minutes ticking away, the time approaching of Gant’s expected interception with the course of the missile cruiser and her two subs. The Soviet leader listened, perhaps, to other voices, in other rooms. But Vladimirov knew that the cruiser had to stop Gant, that it was the last chance; last, because he still didn’t know how Gant expected to refuel, but knew that he must. He churned the possibilities in his mind, in an attempt of his. own to ignore the clock with its red second-hand sliding round the face.

  Carrier … carrier-sub … polar-pack … aircraft … ditch, to be collected by sub? None of them made any sense. It was almost impossible for a sub to hide itself in the Barents Sea and he had nothing but a wild theory that the Americans could have produced a carrier-sub, especially since the Mig was not adapted for a carrier-landing of any kind. No, it had to be an aircraft. And there wasn’t one. Unpalatable though it was, it was the truth. There was no unidentified aircraft in the area, nor likely to be at the time one would be required by Gant.

  He considered the possibility of Gant ditching the Mig at sea, hoping for collection by a submarine. The plane would be submerged, and could then be towed behind the submarine back to wherever the CIA had arranged. It was fantastic, but it might be made to work. The plane would be damaged by sea water, but the Americans would learn sufficient from it to remove the Mig-31 completely as a threat to air superiority.

  Yet there was no submarine in the area either, and no surface vessel capable of reaching Gant’s last position for hours.

  Which meant it had to be the polar-pack. Gant must be hoping to use the last of his fuel in as steep a climb as he could muster, and to glide the remainder of the way. It was a desperate idea, but no more desperate than sending one man in the first place to take on the KGB, in order to get out of Moscow and arrive at Bilyarsk. And Gant had done that at the bidding of his masters - why not this? The theory was that an aircraft like the Mig could gain perhaps as much as two miles in a glide for every thousand feet it climbed. Gant could climb high enough, if he had the fuel, to glide to the edge of the permanent pack.

  He was on the point of requesting the puzzle be fed to the computer for analysis when he heard the voice of the code-operator. The computer-conceived code in which the message had been transmitted from the Riga had been broken down and it was this that the operator read from his print-out.

  ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Message from the Riga…’ It was as if the operator were unwilling to proceed with it, feeling the attention of the room drawn to him in an instant.

  ‘What is it?’ Vladimirov snapped.

  ‘Contact made with unidentified aircraft. Missiles fired, infrared type, from cruiser in two groups of two, and from submarine escort in one group of two…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The aircraft appeared to be carrying some kind of drone tailunit which detached and ignited.’ There was a pause, then: ‘The Mig-31, sir, wasn’t destroyed as far as they can tell. It was already over all radar horizons before the contact time of the missiles, but the captain is not prepared to verify positive contact.’ The code-operator looked directly at Vladimirov. ‘He would like clarification of the type and capability of the aircraft that he attempted to destroy, sir.’

  Vladimirov’s head spun round, so that his eyes stared into the grey, slatey surfaces of those of the Soviet leader. The words of challenge and contempt which were rising to his lips died in his mind. He said nothing. The face that confronted him was implacable, and all the righteous indignation that O.C. ‘Wolfpack’ felt was squashed, buried. He could not throw his career away, not so lightly as that, in heaping his recriminations upon the First Secretary. Instead, he snapped at the code-operator.

  ‘Secrecy must be maintained. Thank him for the job he - attempted to do, and order him to stand by for further instructions.’

  ‘Sir!’

  The keys of the encoding-console clicked almost at once. The disguised mimicry of the First Secretary’s maxim concerning security was the furthest Vladimirov felt he could allow himself to go. The recognition made him ashamed. Then he dismissed the feeling. ‘What do you intend to do now, Vladimirov?’ the First Secretary asked him, his mouth a straight line, his eyes completely without expression. In that face, in that moment, Vladimirov saw the truth of power in the Soviet Union, saw the heart of the cadres and coteries that were contained within the Kremlin. Because the First Secretary was able to put the blame for failure upon others, then the failure itself was no longer important. If Vladimirov were dismissed, disgraced for the loss of Mig-31, that would be all that would matter. This man before him cared nothing for the realities of the situation, only for the personal politics of his own survival.

  Vladimirov was sickened, rather than frightened. With selflessness in extremity taught as one of the virtues of the military caste to which his family had belonged for generations, he gave no thought to his own survival or success. Yet the Mig-31 must not be lost to the Americans, thrown away.

  ‘I - I shall order all available units into the area of the Riga, First Secretary,’ he managed to say in a level voice, from which he carefully excluded any trace of anger, or bitterness.

  ‘And - what will they do?’ Andropov asked with contempt.

  Kutuzov came to his rescue. Perhaps he, too, had been sickened by what he had silently witnessed in the War Command Centre, or perhaps he sensed the tension in Vladimirov and intended to help save his career for him. Whatever, the old man’s bravery as he spoke with contempt to the Chairman of the Committee for State Security made Vladimirov warm towards him.

  ‘They, as you put it. Chairman, will make every effort to recover the Mig-31 that your poor security in Moscow and at Bilyarsk allowed to be successfully stolen by one man - one single American!’ The whisper from the ruined throat carried clearly to every ear in the room, the tone of the voice imprinting itself on every consciousness. The Chairman of the KGB flushed, two points of colour on the parchment-toned skin over the cheek bones. The smile, cynical and aloof, disappeared from his face.

  Vladimirov transferred his gaze to the First Secretary’s face. The Soviet leader appeared disconcerted, as if reminded of painful realities. He said, as if somehow to make amends without actual apology: ‘Mihail Hyich - I know that you will do all you can. But - what is it that you propose to do, with the whole of the Red Banner Northern Fleet and most of “Wolfpack”, northern sector, at your disposal?’ The voice was calm, almost gentle - mollifying.

  Kutuzov turned his gaze to Vladimirov, nodded, as if at some secret understanding, and then Vladimirov said: ‘The first priority. First Secretary, is to order the take-off of the Mig.’ The First Secretary turned back to the small window, as if prompted by the calculated priority the O.C. ‘Wolfpack’ had placed on his own pet surmise.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Pass the order to the Tower.’ The order was transmitted by one of the radiooperators. Still keeping his gaze on the runway through the window, he said: ‘And - next?’

  Vladimirov looked down at the map in front of him, revealing the bright, isolated points of light in the wastes of the Barents Sea, north to the
permanent pack.

  ‘Order the Riga and her submarine escorts to alter course, and head north in the wake of the Mig at all possible speed.’

  Over the clicks of the encoding-console, Vladimirov heard the First Secretary mutter: ‘Good.’ Already it appeared, the man’s huge complacency was returning. Vladimirov had noted it often before, in his dealings with those who governed his country, the anodyne that could be found in action.

  He looked down at the map, ignoring the broad back of the First Secretary in the grey suit, the fabric stretched across the powerful shoulders. Were he a less elevated individual, he thought, it might be possible to draw comfort from that rigid stance, that overbearing impression of strength.

  ‘Scramble the Polar Search squadrons immediately,’ he ordered. He watched the leonine head nod in approval, saw the shoulders settle comfortably. Surface craft, he thought. ‘Order the missile destroyers Otlitnyi and Slavny to proceed with all possible speed to the predicted landrail of the Mig on the permanent pack.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The three “V’-type submarines to proceed at once on courses to the same landfall reference.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Vladimirov paused. Faintly through the fuselage of the Tupolev, he heard the whine of engines running up. The Mig, cleared from the Tower, was preparing for take-off. He did not cross to the tiny window as he heard the engines increase in volume as the Mig raced down the runway. Instead, he watched the shoulders of the First Secretary and the slight, hopeful tilt of the head. There was a blur from the runway beyond the window, and then the unmistakable sound of a jet aircraft pulling away from the field in a steep climb. For a moment, the First Secretary remained at the window, as if deep in contemplation, then he turned back into the room, and Vladimirov noticed the slight smile on his face.