“You answer a question, Toad, by evading it. What is right? Why do you think Grafton knows what right is?”
Toad was no longer paying attention. He was staring at his watch, watching the second hand sweep. They should be on the ground by now…if they were still alive. Why hadn’t they called? Did he really trust her judgment, or was he a coward not to assert himself? If anything happened to her…
* * *
Jake Grafton saw the smoke column twenty miles away. The black smoke towered like a giant chimney at least three thousand feet into the atmosphere. As he got closer he could see that the wind had tilted the column, which was visibly growing taller, mushrooming into the upper atmosphere.
Creeping up to two hundred feet to avoid the dust being sucked into the inferno raging at the base of the smoke, he bounced in turbulence even here on the up-wind side of the fire. The turbulence made his bowels feel watery: that damaged wing might have a broken spar. As the plane bucked the stick felt sloppy and the secondary hydraulic system pressure dropped. He must be oh so careful.
The hangar was ablaze. Rita.
Ten or fifteen minutes ago?
Something silver on the mat? A wing?
It couldn’t be a wing from Rita’s plane, could it? Could it?
He edged in for a closer look. No. It was a big wing, attached to a transport that was also on fire. She caught someone parked on the mat and shot them apart.
He turned away from the blaze and consulted his fuel gauge. Fuel would have been okay plus a bunch if he hadn’t spent all that time maneuvering at full throttle and let that jerk shoot up his plane. Going to be tight.
Right engine was still alive and pulling hard — no more warning lights. The slop in the controls when operating on the backup hydraulic system was acceptable as long as he didn’t have to defend himself, as long as the secondary pump held together, as long as he could make his aching right leg work. The plane flew okay on one engine if he held in forty pounds or so of right rudder. The rudder trim wasn’t working. Sorry about that!
He had about forty miles of radioactive terrain to cross before he could get out and walk. It was a little like flying over a shark-infested ocean — you prayed for the engine to keep running, counted every mile, watched the minute hand of the panel clock with intense interest.
Jake Grafton’s eyes scanned the vast distances between the horizon and the bottom of the cumulonimbus clouds. He gazed up into the gaps between the clouds, searched behind him and out to both sides. The sky appeared to be empty. Because he knew how difficult another aircraft was to spot in a huge, indefinite sky, he kept looking. And occasionally his eyes came inside to check the clock.
So she made it to here and took out the hangar and that transport on the mat. He hadn’t seen any craters on the mat that would mark misses. Apparently she put all her ordnance into the bucket, a neat, professional job.
Thank you, Rita, wherever you are.
He listened to the engine. He watched the clock hand sweep. He unhooked his oxygen mask and swabbed the sweat from his eyes.
Forty miles of terrain required about ten minutes of flying to cross. When the ten minutes had passed Jake began to relax. His right leg was hurting since he had to maintain constant pressure on the rudder, but he felt better. It was goofy when you thought about it — Captain Collins said about forty miles, and of course the fallout zone had no definite boundary. The intensity of the radiation would just decrease as the miles went by. Knowing all this and feeling slightly silly, Jake still felt better with each passing mile.
If this shot-up jet would just hold together…
* * *
When the city of Lipetsk appeared in the haze at ten or twelve miles, Jake Grafton eased the nose of his Su-25 into a climb. He went across the city at several thousand feet and made a gentle turn to line up for the northwest runway about eight miles away.
Nothing happened when he lowered the gear handle. He found the little emergency switch and held it in the down position. The gear broke free of the wells and fell into the slipstream — he could feel the drag increase.
His numb right leg refused to put the right amount of pressure on the rudder. The nose wandered a little from side to side. Carefully playing his single engine, Jake Grafton tried to keep the speed up and fly a flat approach. Only when he was sure he could make the field did he use the electrical switch to drop ten degrees of flaps.
He cut the engine immediately after he felt the tires squeak. Without brakes this thing would roll forever; he had no idea how to engage the emergency system. He had tried turning the parking brake handle ninety degrees and it didn’t want to rotate.
When the jet was down to about twenty MPH it began to drift toward the edge of the runway. There was nothing he could do. It rolled off the edge and came to rest in the grass.
For the first time in over an hour, Jake Grafton relaxed his right leg. It was numb, shaking.
Jake used the battery to open the canopy. As the huge silence enveloped him he took off his mask and helmet and wiped the sweat from his hair. He was drained.
Somehow he managed the energy to get his gloves off and begin unstrapping. When he got the fittings released he sat there massaging his right thigh.
“Admiral! Admiral Grafton!” It was Rita, running across the grass toward him.
“Hey, kid. Am I glad to see you!”
She slowed to a walk, just fifty feet or so away. She glanced at the shattered wing pylon, then looked up at Jake. “I got the hangar, sir.”
“I know,” Jake said, and wiped his eyes with his fingers. “I know.”
20
The helicopter’s two radios were mounted on a shelf on the bulkhead between the cockpit and passenger compartment. The leads had a collar that allowed them to be unscrewed when the radio needed to be removed for servicing. Jake Grafton used his fingers to twist the collars and pull out the plugs. Then he told Spiro Dalworth to tell the pilot to land at the Lipetsk railroad station.
Not a single Russian had come out to look the Su-25s over when Jake landed at the army airfield fifteen minutes ago. He climbed down from the cockpit and followed Rita toward the helicopter.
“What happened at Petrovsk?” Jake asked.
“There was a four-engine jet transport on the mat, sir, and they were loading a missile aboard. I looked on the first pass and shot on the second. On the third the transport caught fire. I then bombed the hangar and it caught fire. I fired out the gun on the clean room.”
He wondered what thoughts went through Rita Moravia’s mind when she saw live humans and knew they couldn’t be allowed to get on that plane and leave. What had she thought when she lined up the cargo plane in her sight and pulled the trigger? All things considered, it was probably better not to ask. “Did you see any markings on the plane?”
“Arabic script, sir. They must have wanted those missiles pretty badly to risk a trip in daylight.”
“Lot of cloud cover. They might have pulled it off.”
“Saddam sent his people on a suicide mission. One man I saw on the ground wasn’t wearing a hot suit.”
The wars of the kings were much more civilized, Jake reflected. No wonder Churchill preferred the nineteenth century over this one.
The Russian chopper pilot was already in the cockpit and started the engines as they climbed aboard. Within a minute he lifted the machine from the parking mat.
Staring now at the disconnected radio leads, Jake concluded he needed a knife. He didn’t have one. He wedged the lead between the hammer and frame of his revolver and used that to strip off the collar. Now the lead could not be reconnected. He did the same with the lead to the second radio.
Someone wanted him dead. Perhaps those dead fighter pilots had orders to concentrate on the lead plane or were so ill with buck fever that they lost track of Rita at a crucial moment. Whichever, both he and Rita were fortunate to be alive. Still, with only a telephone call more fighters could be launched to shoot down this unarmed helicopter and
convert their earlier escape into an alarmingly brief reprieve.
A prudent man would find another form of transportation. Jake Grafton was a prudent man.
Very prudent. After the chopper settled into the street in front of the railway station, he asked Dalworth, “What’s the pilot’s name?”
“Lieutenant Vasily Lutkin, sir.”
“Tell him to fly on to Moscow after we get off.”
He watched the helo pilot lift the collective and feed in forward cyclic. The pilot glanced once at him, then concentrated his attention on flying his machine.
Jake watched the helicopter until it crossed the rooftops heading just a little west of north.
Vasily Lutkin might make it. Maybe. If his luck was in.
Those four fighter pilots were trying to kill you, Jake, but not this guy.
Okay, so now you know how Josef Stalin did it. Just give the order and watch them go to their doom.
With sagging shoulders he followed Dalworth and Rita into the cavernous station.
And how much luck do you have left in your miserable little horde, Jake Grafton? Not much, friend. Not much. Guilt and luck don’t mix.
* * *
There was a vending booth inside the terminal building selling Pepsi in tiny paper cups, about an ounce of the soft drink for a ruble. Jake laid a ten-ruble note on the counter and while Dalworth went to buy tickets, he and Rita each drank five cupfuls of the sticky sweet liquid. Then Jake wandered off for the men’s room, burping uncontrollably.
The train was full to bursting. There were no empty seats in the car they found themselves in so the three Americans wedged themselves into a little space on the floor. Men, women, and children with everything they owned filled the car. One man had a goat. Several women had baskets that contained live chickens. A man lay in the floor between the aisles vomiting repeatedly while a woman periodically gave him something to drink from a bottle.
“Radiation sickness, I think,” Dalworth whispered.
Jake just nodded. After a half hour Rita went over to help, dragging Dalworth along to translate.
The air was thick with a miasma of odors. Smoke from Papirosi cigarettes made a heavy haze.
The train stopped about once an hour for ten minutes or so. Each time Jake stayed seated in his corner with his hand under his jacket on his gun butt watching the people fighting their way aboard. The scrambler was wedged under his legs.
No one got off the train. Moscow was the universal destination. Some of the people who clamored aboard were soldiers in uniform, but they were wrestling bags of personal articles. No one in uniform or out paid any attention to the Americans. Finally the train got under way again and all the struggling humanity somehow found a place to ride.
These Russians had endured so much, yet there was so much still to endure. When he had replayed the morning’s flight for the twentieth time and the adrenaline had finally burned itself from his system, Jake sat looking at his fellow passengers, trying to fathom their stories and their lives as snatches of Russian swirled on the laden air. Finally his head sagged onto his knees and he slept.
* * *
Every minute passed slower and slower for Toad Tarkington. He paced, he stood at the window from time to time and stared out, occasionally he turned on the television and stood gazing at the images on the screen for minutes at a time without seeing them, then snapped it off. He paced some more.
When he could stand it no longer he picked up the telephone and dialed. “Captain, this is Toad. Heard anything?”
Then he hung up and went back to pacing, and fidgeting, and gazing gloomily at Herb Tenney and Jack Yocke.
“What did Collins say?” Yocke asked.
“Nothing.”
“What are you going to do if Grafton and Rita don’t come back?”
Toad didn’t answer. He didn’t want even to acknowledge the possibility out loud, let alone discuss it with Jack Yocke. Jake Grafton and Rita Moravia were the two most important people in his life. He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of a vast, dark abyss. Every minute that passed made the gaping horror more probable, and more unspeakable.
After a while Yocke said, “Surely we ought to discuss it.”
“They’ll be back.” End of conversation.
They were on the ground somewhere. Tactical jets carry a limited supply of fuel, and when it’s exhausted…no one ever ran out of gas and floated around up there unable to get down. So where were they? In the fallout zone? Shot down? Why hadn’t they called? Any way you figured it, something had gone seriously wrong. And our boy Herb probably had something to do with that something.
Toad found himself glowering at the CIA agent asleep on the couch. Sleeping! He forced himself to look away.
By six o’clock in the evening Toad had reached the breaking point. For lack of something better to do, he decided to go find Collins. “I’m going out,” he announced to Jack Yocke, who looked up from the paperback novel he was reading. “Keep an eye on Herb.” Toad hoisted himself erect and walked toward the door.
“Aren’t you going to give me your pistol?” Yocke asked.
“Nah. There’s marines outside.”
“Outside?”
“In the hallway. You have any trouble, just shout and they’ll come running.”
The reporter was speechless.
Toad pulled the Browning from his waistband. “This thing wouldn’t do you any good anyway.” He thumbed off the safety and pulled the trigger. Click. “It’s empty.”
Yocke found his voice. “Empty!”
One of Jack Yocke’s endearing qualities — and he had precious few, in Toad’s opinion — was that sometimes he was extraordinarily slow on the uptake. Maybe it was an act. Whatever, Toad Tarkington savored the moment. “You don’t think I’m stupid enough to give a loaded gun to a trigger-happy thrill-killer like you, do ya? If you didn’t shoot off your own toe, you’d probably go berserk and murder everybody north of the Moskva.”
“You dirty, rotten, slimy, retarded stumblebum, you—”
That was the high point in a long, dreary day of merciless tension and uncertainty. Toad stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind him before Jack Yocke got really wound up. He mumbled a greeting to the marine sitting at the top of the stairs as he went by.
* * *
It was after 7 P.M. when a pale, exhausted Rita Moravia sagged onto the floor beside Jake. Her flight suit reeked of vomit.
“How is that sick man?” Jake asked.
“Dead. Radiation poisoning, dehydration I think — oh, I don’t know. His heart stopped and we just…gave up.” She brushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes and hugged her knees.
Several platitudes occurred to Jake, but he held his tongue.
“How did you evade those fighters this morning?” Rita asked. “This morning! God, it seems like another lifetime ago.”
“One guy stalled and went in, I shot down the others.”
“You were lucky.”
“That’s all life is: luck — some good, some bad, most indifferent. Some of it you make yourself, most of it you just have to take as it comes.”
“What’s going on here, Admiral? Why did the Russians blow up their own reactor?”
“To hide the fact that nuclear weapons were gone.”
“You aren’t serious?”
“Oh, but I am. Somebody — let’s postulate a small group of somebodys — collected a lot of money from Saddam Hussein for some nuclear weapons. Saddam took delivery at Petrovsk the evening before the reactor blew up. Everyone there who wasn’t in on the sale was killed. Then the reactor exploded and the usual prevailing wind delivered a lethal concentration of fallout on Petrovsk. Eventually someone would visit Petrovsk, but the way things work in Russia, that visit was a long way off. Maybe years. When it eventually came to pass, our small group of somebodys were sure they could control the dissemination of the news of what happened at Petrovsk because long before then Boris Yeltsin would be driven from power. And
they would be in.”
“How could they be sure of that?”
“The reactor explosion would cause a political crisis. They would escalate the event to a crisis if it didn’t happen naturally. And they had done their homework with Saddam’s money. A lot of money. Real money, hard currency. The people at the top in Russia are just like the people at the top everywhere else — they want good food, nice clothes, adequate housing, an education for their kids, decent medical care. The Communist party used to deliver all that, but those days are gone. Whoever can deliver that life-style to the people in power will rule.”
“Money.”
“Hard currency — U.S. dollars. For bribes. To dole out to the faithful. To buy votes in the legislature. There’s a flourishing dollar economy in Moscow — just how on earth does an honest Russian come by dollars?”
“Oh, my God,” Rita whispered. “To murder all those people! I can’t believe it.”
“This is Russia,” Jake told her, his voice low. “Even the stones are guilty. See that old man over there, the one with the campaign ribbons on his lapel? He’s a veteran of World War II. He probably has a hundred stories about how he and his fellow soldiers fought to the last ditch and saved Russia from Hitler. What he won’t tell you about are the penal battalions — every division had one. These were unarmed battalions of political prisoners — Russians who had said something unwise about Stalin or the NKVD, people who appeared to be less than happy living in the new Communist paradise. The men in the penal battalions were herded ahead of the tanks before every attack to step on the land mines and clear the way. And German machine gunners slaughtered them and revealed their positions to the Red Army troops. Then the tanks and gallant soldiers like that old man killed Nazis and won glorious victories. They saved Mother Russia. Ah yes, that old man is proud of his ribbons.
“Yet this is the amazing part—the Commies never ran out of recruits for the penal battalions. That maniac Hitler gassed and shot and starved his domestic enemies — all at his cost. Stalin killed his enemies just as dead but he turned a nice profit doing it. And Stalin didn’t bother cremating the corpses: he let the body parts rot right where they lay to fertilize the soil.
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