by Craig Thomas
‘It shouldn’t…’ the younger man began.
‘With this old tub’s luck, Dick - what d’you think’ll happen? He’ll put the wheels down, stick back - and phut! The lights’ll go out!’ He tried to smile, but the effect was unconvincing. Both he and Fleischer knew that, however he said it, the content of his statement was deadly serious. Two degrees drop in the temperature would mean that the air above the surface of the floe would achieve dewpoint, that point on the scale where freezing fog would begin to form. The effect of the turbulence of the Firefox attempting to land could trigger the drop in temperature.
Seerbacker, as if prompted by his own lurid imaginings, clattered off down the companionway. As soon as he thrust his thin, lanky form into the control-room of the sub, he said:
‘Where is he?’
‘Three miles - a little over eleven thousand feet, sir!’ the radar-operator sang out.
‘Is he still on the same bearing?’
‘Sir.’
‘Can he see the floe?’
‘Yes, sir. Cloudbase is thirteen-and-one-half thousand.’
‘Then let’s surprise him, gentlemen,’ Seerbacker said with a grim smile. ‘Blow all tanks - hit it!’
The floe was the only thing down there that Gant really saw. He had dropped out of the cloud at thirteen thousand feet, only three minutes or a little more away from the target - and there it was. Big, perhaps two miles north-south, and almost the same across. It lay directly in his path. On the radar-screen, there was no craft of any kind. Yet the target lay less than six miles ahead of him. That floe was the right distance away. Only its distance from him had made him regard it at all.
He knew it had to be the floe. For a long time he had suspected that he had never been intended to reach the polar-pack, nor had he ever been intended to rendezvous with a tanker-aircraft - that would have been too risky, too dangerous by half. It had to be the floe - and a landing. His eyes searched ahead, saw nothing. For a moment, then, he felt close to panic. A flat floe, like a dirty white water-lily on the surface of the bitter Arctic water. It was surrounded by others, smaller for the most part. There was no sign of life! He felt the bile of fear at the back of his throat, and his mind refused to function, analyse the information - then it happened. The signal changed, the homing-signal began to emit a broken, bleeping call, two to the second. He recognised its similarity to a sonarcontact, instantaneous echo. Even as the seconds passed, the bleep became more and more insistent, urgent. He was closing on the target. He studied the condition of the sea, estimating the windspeed again yes, five to ten knots, no more. Even before his questions had been answered, even before the shock of the changing signal had dispersed, he began the routines required if he were to land on the floe. The last of the ice-crystals starred on the windscreen dispersed under the effects of the de-mister. Again, more urgently now, he studied the surface of the floe, but only a small part of him was looking for signs of life. Principally he looked at the flatness, the length of possible runways, looked for markings, judged the direction of the wind…
When it came, it came with the sudden shock of freezing water, or a physical blow. At the western edge of the floe, away to port, and still ahead of him, the ice buckled, curled at the edge before cracking. The reinforced sail of a nuclear submarine came into view, and Gant saw the bulk of the ship beneath; ice spun away from it, sliding from its hull.
A bright orange balloon was released from the sail, and then an orange streamer of smoke which spurted vertically before the wind tugged it flat downwind of the submarine. Gant knew as soon as he saw the emerging sail that he was looking at an American submarine.
Automatically, he checked the radar. Negative. He eased on power, felt the aircraft shove forward, and dropped the nose. As he touched on the air-brakes, and stabilised his speed at 260 knots, the smoke was passing beneath his wingtip. He noticed, with almost idle curiosity, that the sonar-like pinging of the homingdevice had changed to a continuous signal - instantaneous echo. The target was below him, a submarine full of paraffin; it would be a’matter of less than an hour before he was refuelled, and ready to take off. He hauled the aircraft to the left, in a rate one turn that would line him up in the direction of the wind-flattened smoke from the sail.
The wind direction was such that he would land along the north-south axis of the floe, which gave him almost two miles of snow-covered ice in which to stop. He knew the snow, unless it was utterly frozen, would act as an efficient braking-sytsem - it would be, he told himself with a grim smile, the relief at finding the sub still warming him, like landing on a carrier - something else he had learned to do in Vietnam.
He dropped the undercarriage, and the lights glowed, registered the wheels ‘locked’. He slowed his speed to 220 knots, and levelled the wings. The floe was ahead, with the dark cigar of the submarine embedded in it, a lizard half-emerged from its shell, its streamer of orange smoke in line with his course.
He checked back on the stick, and read his altitude as one thousand feet. He dropped his speed to 180 knots, and stabilised there. His rate of descent was now 350 feet per minute. The grey. wrinkled waves, seemed to speed up, to reach up at him hungrily. He eased back the throttles, and the speed dropped to 175 knots. He was almost dazzled now by the glare of the icefloe, yet through the dazzle, the surface still looked good.
He chopped the throttles, and the Firefox suddenly seemed to sag tiredly in the air, began to sink. He checked back on the stick into the flare-out position. On full flap, the Firefox seemed to drop for a moment, then the plane jolted viciously as the wheels bit into the surface snow, and the nose-wheel slammed down. Visibility disappeared for a moment as the snow spewed around the nose, and it was a second or more before the de-mister coped. The forward screen cleared.
Even as Gant wondered whether the engine would flame out because of snow in the air-intakes, he saw that his visibility had disappeared. He was rushing across a surface of ice and snow, enveloped in a thick, rolling grey fog.
Nine
PRESSURE
Gant understood what had happened - dewpoint; the formation of a thick, rolling blanket of fog along his rushing track had been almost instantaneous. The knowledge did not lessen the rising unease he felt, could not counteract the explosion of adrenalin in his system. The engines had not flamed out, and the snow flung up around the cockpit by the nose-wheel had slid from the screen - yet he could see nothing. He was helpless - the snow on the surface of the floe was slowing the aircraft as swiftly as any reverse thrust from the engines and yet he was slipping across an ice surface, down the north-south axis of a floe, towards the icy grey waters of the Barents Sea. If the size of the floe were too small, inadequate, if he had miscalculated, if…
The Firefox slowed to walking pace, trundling more unevenly now, jolted by the indentations and scabs of the surface ice beneath the thin blanket of snow. And the fog was already thinning, as the turbulence of his passage became less; it was spreading, thinning to a grey, damp mist. He looked over his shoulder, shifting in the couch for perhaps the first time in an hour. He could not see the orange balloon, nor could he see the line of the streamer of smoke, which would give him some indication of the direction of the sub. He turned the aircraft to port, through one hundred and eighty degrees, and taxied back up the line of his landing. crawling forward, his eyes searching for figures moving in the mist, lights or signals which might direct him. He felt the unease and the adrenalin drain from him. He was down.
He thought he saw a lumping, shapeless figure moving to port of him, but could not be sure. The mist seemed to have thickened again. The figure had not been carrying a light. He pressed the button, and raised the cockpit cover. The sudden change of temperature as the heated air of the cabin rushed out and was replaced by the Arctic air above the floe seemed to knife through the protection of the anti-G suit as if it had been made of thin summerweight cotton. He was chilled to the bone in a moment, his teeth chattering uncontrollably behind the tinted facemask
of his flying helmet. His hands on the controls seemed to tremble, as if registering the groundshock of an explosion. He unlocked the helmet and tugged it up and away from his head. His cropped head seemed to prickle with a cold fire. Ignoring the noise of his teeth, he craned his head, listening and looking in the direction from which he had glimpsed the figure in the mist.
He thought, twice, in swift succession, that he heard voices away to his left, that he was paralleling the path of men searching for him - but he couldn’t be certain. The voices, like the cries of alien birds, seemed to distort in the thick mist, and he couldn’t be sure of the direction from which they came. Then he realised that the men would be heading to what they would have assumed was the point of his halt, behind him now - they would not, perhaps, have expected him automatically to make a 180 degree turn, and cover his tracks. Then he saw a dull glow, lighting a misshapen, lumbering figure, a lamp held low in a swinging hand. He heard his own name being called, loudly, yet seeming faint, unsubstantial. He did not reply, and the figure called again. Gant felt a curious reluctance to speak, despite the cold, despite the sudden, rushing sense of loneliness, of the interminable time of his journey from Bilyarsk - and before that, from London. The voice was American. He smiled, in spite of his detachment - that was it, he recognised, it was detachment he felt, a sense of removal from this figure cautiously approaching. It was so, so ordinary, a lumping shadow with a New York accent - nothing really to do with him, and the Firefox, and what he had done.
He shrugged off the feeling. The wind gusted to perhaps twelve knots, and the blast of it struck him in the face, reviving him to the present, to his physical cold and discomfort. He raised his hand to his face, cupped it and yelled. His own voice sounded thin, almost unreal. ‘Over here - the plane’s over here, man!’
‘That you, Gant?’ the voice replied. Gant realised only as he began to cast about that his own eyesight was vastly superior to that of the figure to his left. He turned the Firefox in the mist, very slowly, and saw the figure straighten, and become certain of his whereabouts. ‘Jesus - I must need glasses, for Chrissake!’ the figure said.
Gant had no need to apply the brakes; slowed by the surface snow, the aircraft rolled to a halt. The great turbojets made only an impatient murmur behind him. He could hear the figure, which now seemed tall and thin, only given a tent-like shape by the parka it was wearing, talking into an R/T handset.
‘O.K., you men - I found him. Get over here, on the double!’ Then the figure moved forward. A mittened hand slapped against the fuselage and Gant, leaning out of the cockpit, stared down into an ascetic, lined face. He could see the gold leafing on the peak of a Navy cap beneath the fur trimming of the parka hood. Gant smiled, foolishly, feeling there was nothing to say. A great wave of relief surged in him, almost nauseous, and he began to shiver with emotion rather than the cold.
‘Hi, fella,’ Seerbacker said.
‘Hi,’ Gant said, in a choking voice. He saw other figures moving in the mist, and the round globes, furred and dim, of lamps.
‘Hey, skipper - you want us to line up now?’ a voice called.
Seerbacker, seemingly distracted from a perusal of Gant’s features, turned his head, and yelled over his shoulder. ‘Yeah - let’s get this bird over to his mother it’s dying of thirst!’ He turned back to Gant, and added, in a low voice: ‘You don’t look like anything special, mister - but I guess you must be - uh?’
‘Right now - you’re pretty special yourself. Captain!’ Gant said.
Seerbacker nodded, and lifted the handset to his face. He said:
‘O.K. this is the captain. Call it for me.’
He listened intently as men began to call in, as at a roll-call. When there was a silence once more, he looked at Gant, and said: ‘I’ve got half of my crew standing on this goddam ice, mister, in two nice straight lines, all the way to the ship. Think you can ride down the middle?’
‘Like the freeway,’ Gant said.
Seerbacker raised his hand, gripped the springloaded hand and toe holds and hoisted himself clear of the ground.
‘Mind if I hitch a ride?’
‘They’re pretty rough on freeloaders on this railroad.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ Seerbacker said with a grin.
‘O.K., let’s roll.’
Gant eased off the brakes, and the Firefox slid forward. He saw the first two men, their lights haloed, bright, and then other lights, a tunnel in the mist. He straightened the nose down the centre of the tunnel, and the lights began to roll slowly past on either side, only just visible in the mist. He heard Seerbacker giving an order.
‘O.K., you guys, move in, dammit! This bird won’t bite - it’s one of ours, for Chrissake!’
The lights ahead wobbled, narrowed, became brighter, more helpful to him.
‘Thanks,’ he said to the invisible Seerbacker below him.
‘O.K., mister. They’re only here to help - even if they don’t like it.’ There was an edge to his voice as he ended his sentence. Gant sensed, beneath the surface, the resentment that had emerged along with relief at his arrival - the resentment of men stuck in the middle of an enemy sea for day after day, tracking the drifting floe.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, involuntarily.
‘What?’ Seerbacker began, then added: ‘Oh, yeah. It’s just orders, mister - don’t give a mind to it.’ Gant saw a long low shape, sail atop, ahead of him through the mist. ‘There she is,’ Seerbacker said unnecessarily and Gant felt the pride in his voice. It was the pride of a commanding officer in his ship.
‘Yeah - I see it,’ he said.
‘Pull up alongside,’ Seerbacker said. ‘You want to eat in the car, or come on inside?’ Gant swung the Firefox parallel with the fattened cigar of the ship, half-buried in ice, like something reptilian emerging from a white shell. He cut the motors, and the plane died. In the absolute silence of the next moment, Gant felt a fierce affection for the aircraft. It was not something he had stolen, a freight for the CIA - it was what had brought him from the heart of Russia, helped him to escape, taken on a missile-cruiser, taken on…
Seerbacker interrupted the flood of his fierce, cold, mechanical love for another machine.
‘Welcome to “Joe’s Diner”. The cabaret isn’t much good, but the hamburgers are a delight to the weary traveler! Step down. Mister Gant - step down, and welcome.’
Gant unstrapped himself from the webbing of the couch. As he stood up, his muscles and joints protested as he moved. The wind seemed to gust at him, the freezing cold from the Pole search through his suit, eat at him. He shuddered.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He stepped out of the cockpit, no longer reluctant, down onto the ice.
‘Call them out,’ Vladimirov said. ‘A report from every Polar Search Squadron now!’
It took four minutes for the report to be completed, time which the First Secretary seemed not to consider wasted, wherever Gant was, and whatever he was doing. Vladimirov loathed the political game that was being played and in which he had joined, his silence giving assent, his cowardice dictating his silence. When the last search-plane had reported on its findings in its designated area, it was clear that there had been no attempt by the Americans to establish any kind of fueldump on the ice, no attempt to mark out or clear any kind of runway. Vladimirov, his belief shaken but not destroyed, felt his bemusement hum in his head like a maddening insect. He had the answer, somewhere at the back of his mind, he was sure of it…!
The cold eyes of the First Secretary, and the glint of the striplight on Andropov’s glasses, made him bury his reflections.
‘Now,’ the Soviet leader said, ‘order all available units into the North Cape area - everything you have!’ Vladimirov nodded.
‘Scramble “Wolfpack” squadrons in the North Cape sector through to Archangelsk sector,’ he snapped. ‘Staggered Sector Scramble for all units.’ He did not glance at the map-table, did not ask for the map to be changed. He was oblivious to it, seeing i
n his mind with absolute clarity, the dispositions of all surface, subsurface and aerial units that might be employed. ‘Order the Otlintnyi and the Slavny to alter course at once for North Cape - order them to proceed at utmost speed.’
‘Sir!’
‘Order all submarines on the Barents Sea map to alter course, and to proceed to the Cape area at top speed.’
‘Sir!’ ‘Order the Riga to alter course, together with her escorts, and to put up her helicopters at once - they are to proceed at top speed to the Cape.’
‘Sir!’
It was futile, he knew - the bellowing challenge of a coward after the bully is out of earshot, the simulated fury of the defeated. Yet he became caught up in its frenetic, useless energy. He was intoxicated by the power he possessed.
Like a child he had once seen building on the sands at Odessa a long time ago, he made himself oblivious to the sea of truth creeping up behind him, and threw all his energies into the task of making his fragile, impermanent structure of sand. He flung everything into the air, changed the course of every surface and subsurface vessel in the Barents Sea.
The map on the table was now showing the western sector of the Barents Sea - its operator had bled in the map reflecting Vladimirov’s countless orders. Vladimirov realised he was sweating. His legs suddenly weak, unable to support him any longer. He lowered himself into a chair, looked up and found the First Secretary smiling complacently at him.
‘Well, my dear Vladimirov - that wasn’t so bad, after all - eh?’ He laughed. Behind him, like an echo, Andropov smiled thinly. Vladimirov shook his head, smiled foolishly, like a rewarded child. ‘You seem to enjoy it - eh? Power … you understand, eh?’ The man was leaning towards him. Vladimirov could do nothing but continue grinning foolishly, and nod his head.
A voice cut into his vacuous confrontation with the Soviet leader. ‘Tretsov reports the Mig-31 crossing the coast on the line of longitude 50 degrees, near Indiga.’ It was like a single stone dropping into the flat silence of a pond. All of them around that table were suddenly reminded of the awesome potentiality, the enormous power, of the thing that had been stolen. It was little more than twenty-five minutes since Tretsov had taken off. The coast was approximately 1250 miles due north from Bilyarsk, and the Mig-31 had already reached it, passed over it, heading for its rendezvous over the Barents Sea with a tanker aircraft.