by Thomas Craig
Winter Hawk
( Mitchell Gant - 3 )
Thomas Craig
One week before the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty is to be ratified in Geneva by the American and Soviet leaders, a CIA agent-in-place confirms that at the Soviet launch site, Baikonur, preparations are being made to place a laser weapon in orbit around the earth. If the launch is successful, the West will be defenceless and the Soviet Union will be controlled not by its government but by generals.
A panic-stricken US President puts Winter Hawk into operation, a desperate penetration mission into Soviet Central Asia, via Afghanistan, to bring out the agent-in-place and his proof before the laser weapon can be launched. Mitchell Gant, the hero of Firefox and Firefox Down, must fly one of two stolen Russian helicopters. He has four days to succeed. When the second of the helicopters, carrying his reserve fuel, is destroyed, Gant can neither reach Baikonur nor the safety of the West, unless…
Gant's flight into Russia, his fateful encounter with the KGB officer, Dmitri Priabin, who desires revenge on Gant above all else, his capture and subsequent attempt to escape, all set against a chilling background of nuclear confrontation and 'Star Wars' technology, show Craig Thomas at the height of his powers. In Winter Hawk he has created his most unforgettable adventure thriller to date.
Thomas Craig
Winter Hawk
DEDICATION
In Memory of my Mother, who died on January 4, 1985
EPIGRAPH
The fact is that one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risks to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face danger rather than accept an immediate loss.
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
PROLOGUE
We come in the age's most uncertain hours, And sing an American tune.
— Paul Simon, "American Tune"
"Two minutes, and they're nervous already."
"How many Russians?"
Anders had seen one fair-skinned face behind the tinted cockpit glass of the nearest helicopter. He continued holding the pocket-scope nightsight to one eye, studying the two Mil-24s in the hollow beyond him. The temperature had dropped below freezing as soon as the sun set, and there was a sliver of new moon amid the hard, bright stars. A thin, cold wind pattered fine sand against the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket and insinuated the stuff between collar and hairline. Below the crest of the dune, the thick barrellike lens of the night observer lay between Colonel Itzhak Jaffe and himself.
Anders could hear the murmur of an occasional voice in the silence, but often the noises might have been the wind calling and chasing around the hollow; and besides, the murmurs were much less clamorous than the remembered voices in his head and the urgency they demanded. His skin prickled on the back of his hands with nerves rather than the stinging of the blown sand. Jaffe pressed an earphone to the side of his head. The hollow had been sown with tiny microphones before the MiLs arrived. He could, with difficulty, overhear parts of the conversation between the occupants of the two helicopters — mostly the Farsi from the terrorists in one of the main cabins rather than the Russian from the pilots.
"Two, three," he finally replied. "Maybe two or three Iranians also." He shrugged expressively. "What were using — it isn't the best system."
"They might have noticed a listening post, don't you think?" Anders murmured. "Where are your boys?"
'"They're coming." Jaffe looked down the slope of the long dune.
A hand waved to him, palm-white, from the darkness below. 'They're coming," he repeated. He raised the bulky nightscope to his eye, then added when he saw the lieutenant's signal clearly: "A couple of minutes. From the west."
Anders felt his body twitch with anticipation as he raised the elevation of the pocketscope. A ghostly cliff opposite slid through the lens.
We have to have those helicopters… even now it isnt too late…
The director's voice, even in memory, possessed a quiet desperation. Anders saw that one man had left the helicopters — one of the Iranians, armed with an AKM rifle and tensely alert. Combat jacket, baggy trousers, bournoose. But not an Arab, rather an Islamic fanatic. Anders scanned the jumbled landscape beyond the man but could catch no glimpse of Jaffe's Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance commando unit moving toward the hollow and the helicopters.
A penetration mission, we have to mount one… we have to have two Russian gunships to do it…
… there isnt any leeway for a mistakey none at all….
Anders had asked the director how much time, how long do we have?
The reply echoed in his head, as if it an earphone were clamped to the side of his face and a tinny, broadcast voice penetrated his tension, excitement, fears.
You have to get it right this time — three days. There's only one opportunity — that gives Gant maybe two weeks to learn, to get ready…
Anders swallowed quietly, dryly. Then he jumped, his whole frame seeming as if it had been electrocuted, as Jaffe's voice announced:
'They're in touch." The colonel's hand was holding the earpiece once more against his head. Anders thought he could catch the scratching of a radio from the hollow, and trained the pocketscope on one of the tinted cockpits.
Both MiLs, a 24D gunship and an older 24A, were in full desert camouflage, but Syrian markings were nowhere in evidence.
"Are their verbal IDs holding?" Anders asked, studying both of the helicopters now, as if he expected to see some sudden realization, some sudden activity that would whisk the MiLs up and away from the trap.
Desperation… the word came back with the force of a blow. A month earlier, the only serviceable Mil that Chameleon Squadron possessed, at least that could pass the closest of inspections, had crashed on a reach-and-recover inside East Germany. The crew had died. For the CIA, the loss of the helicopter was far more critical. It had been one of the pair defected to Pakistan by Afghan army pilots in 1985. One had been cannibalized under examination, the other had been employed ever since on CIA missions. Their only Mil-24.
"They're holding, John, don't worry. We found out everything from our little group of Shiite friends." Anders shivered, but not from the chill of the desert night. "They're being told to hurry now. These Russian pilots don't like hanging around." Traces in Jaffe's accent of the New York he had emigrated from as a youth, more than twenty years before. "OK."
The Iranian on the clifftop was standing more erect. He waved briefly, then turned and waved more vigorously toward the two helicopters. Anders felt the tension tighten like cramps in his calves and buttocks, shiver in his arms as if he were stripped of his clothes. He realized he was still breathing hard from their brief, exhausting struggle to the crest of the dune. Or from tension; he could not tell.
"It's in your hands," he said with a dry little cough.
"Your people know almost all there is to know about these machines," Jaffe commented as he nodded in acceptance of responsibility. He gestured down into the hollow where electrics, pumps, machinery whispered. The two MiLs were like nervous, grazing animals, ready for flight at the first hint of danger. "We even sent you wrecks, bits and pieces before this. You don't want these for evaluation, am I right?"
"Right," was all Anders offered in reply.
"Forgive me for asking. Something like reach-and-recover, I guess?"
"Don't ever say that again, to anyone."
"Apologies. Will I get to read it in the newspapers?"
"I hope not."
Anders raised the pocketscope again. Jaffe rested the weight of the nightscope on the dune's crest. Men had emerged from the darkness and the folds of the landscape. Anders drew in his breath. Seven of them.
"Do they know?"
"You know the answer — yes. We estimate no
more than five in the Mil-A, just the crew of two in the D escort. I hope those two babies are just what you want — this bazaar is closing down after tonight." Jaffe grinned; white teeth in the hard moonlight.
… it's the only way in. The President has to have the agent and his proof — now; we have to have two helicopters — any other way and Cactus Plant will be discovered missing and they'll start looking for him before he can cross any border anywhere… bring in those helicopters…
Anders shook his head as if to loosen the burrlike grip of the words on his memory and awareness. His body was weak with tension, as if he were lying in sexual exhaustion, spread-eagled on the sand.
Slowly, the alien, dangerous corner of southern Lebanon became itself again as he watched Jaffe's unit, in Arab disguises and speaking Arabic, their officer with enough Farsi to initially beguile the Iranian waiting for their return; enough to converge without alarm with the waiting terrorist.
Two of the unit appeared to be wounded, leaning heavily against others of the group. Anders had seen some of the final rehearsals, but there was no sense of deja vu. Only danger, the possibilities of error multiplying with every step.
Fifteen yards of sand and rock now separated the group from the terrorist who waited impatiently for them. He called, and Anders heard a muffled, out-of-breath explanation. Eleven yards, ten, eight…
It all seemed huge and in slow motion, like the collision of two great prehistoric creatures. He could hear his own quick, shallow breathing and the little expelled grunts of tension from Jaffe. In his memory, the directors voice possessed a similar tense breathlessness.
… Cactus Plant has given us a possible date, John. The launch is rumored to be on schedule to coincide with the treaty signing. He's not going to be able to confirm that until maybe only a week before it happens… one week from launch time, we'll know for certain…
… altogether, maybe we have three weeks maximum — maybe only two, maybe no more than a week before they put this damn thing in orbit. The Israelis have found us the helicopters. Go bring them back…
Fear jolted Anders' mind back to the present. The terrorist might sense the strangeness of this approaching group, even behind their scarves and burnooses. Anders flicked his infrared, one-eyed gaze toward the helicopters. The image of them in the gray mistiness provided by the lens made him twitch with nerves. He felt stretched by the succession of moments. At no point until it was completed, until they had been successful, would he be able to feel they might not fail utterly. There was no relief, no escape.
He could see faces staring up toward the top of the cliff. What would they see? Might they not see…?
"OK, OK, OK," Jaffe was muttering, the earpiece clamped against his face, his head nodding even as he squinted through the nightscope. "OK, OK."
Anders switched the pocketscope to the group on the clifftop. Arms now akimbo in welcome, AKM held harmlessly away from the Iranian's body — three yards. Three steps.
Warm greeting, still relief in the terrorist's tones, even in the moment the group leader embraced him—now!
Small twitch of the whole body as the knife, blade darkened so as not to catch the moonlight, went in. A hand over the Iranian's mouth to prevent a cry, then the unit leader was holding the body upright, turning it… Anders watched, unable to breathe. Another embrace and — yes! — the exchange was completed. One of the pretend-wounded had straightened, begun to walk beside the unit leader in place of the Iranian. Chattering excitedly, his arm around the shoulders of the unit leader in welcome.
The whole group, in single file, began to thread its way down a dry gully into the hollow in the dunes. They were fifty or sixty yards from the two MiLs. Jaffe exhaled noisily, his tension almost as palpable as smoke in the chill air. The two pilots would already have completed their prestart checks. Anders had heard the hum of the auxiliary power units for the past — how long? It did not matter. He knew the MiLs were ready for an immediate engine-start. The moments lengthened, giving no comfort, only prospects of failure.
"Easy now, boys, easy now, easy," Jaffe murmured beside him, almost lovingly.
They were approaching the helicopters from the rear, moving slowly but seeming to Anders to rush toward failure. He could witness the whole scene now through the monocular eyepiece of the pocketsight. Gray, misty light. Rotors unmoving as yet. The terrorist's dead feet were dragging through the sand, his body supported by a man on either side. Anders noticed guns now. Kalashnikovs and Uzi submachine guns held loosely, slung easily. Forty yards to the MiLs.
Noise. Shattering, unnerving. Engine-start. The rotors moved, began to shimmer in the moonlight. Dust lifted but visibility was not obscured, only shadowed as the pilots held the rpm of the rotors at ground-idling speed. The Israeli unit moved closer as the MiLs appeared to tremble like cold dogs down in the hollow. When they lifted away there would be—
… I tell you, John, we have to have those gunships. It isn't any exaggeration, God help all of us, to say the future of this country depends on those Russian helicopters. You know how true that is, along with maybe a couple of dozen other people…
The Israelis would have only seconds before the torque wound up, the rotors were placed in their lift angle of incidence, and the MiLs moved up and away, escaping them. The timing, rehearsed a hundred, two hundred times, was critical.
Twenty-five yards. Another of the Iranians was out of the door of the 24A now, waving the group to hurry. The pilots were becoming impatient now that the MiLs were noisier, audible in the night. It had taken two weeks to bring about this conjunction of a special Israeli commando unit and two Russian gunships. Objective: capture intact, whatever the human cost. Two Israeli helicopter pilots waited in the dunes, a quarter of a mile away, ready and briefed to fly the captured gunships over the border to the waiting Galaxy transport that would hurry them back to the States. Where Gant and his crews would have perhaps two weeks to learn to fly them before they set out for — for the target of their reach-and-recover mission. Objective: agent Cactus Plant alive, proof intact.
Fifteen yards, waving arms and hooded faces. Exclamations in Farsi. The Islamic Jihad group had been under Israeli surveillance for a long time, operating against Christian and Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israel; periodic long-stay incursions, piling up the raids, the bombs, the bodies. Always, they were transported to and from their base in eastern Syria by Mil helicopters flown by Russian pilots.
It had taken days to break just one of them and to obtain the signals, the IDs, the codes, timings, landing fields, next pickup point. Days…
Anders shuddered. Stepping out of the Galaxy, he at once became part of it, and driven by his own demons of urgency and desperation, utterly without innocence. Even so, he did not want to consider the Iranian who had been broken and the others destroyed but still silent.
Eleven yards, ten—
He felt his whole frame trembling against the fine sand that had compacted beneath him. Jaffe's hand clamped on his arm, not to steady his nerves but to communicate a similar tense excitement. So many rehearsals…
The director and the President disappeared from his mind like half-remembered performers in a long-ago play. Fear of failure, desperation, nerves all became immediate, transmuted into pure adrenaline as he watched the drama's second act begin.
The pilot and gunner were clearly visible, shadowy bulks in the cockpit of the 24D. They were watching the approach of the unit in their mirrors. Pilot and copilot of the 24A side by side, also watching. There were so many eyes! The slow, broken shimmer of the idling rotors reflected the moonlight like two great, damaged mirrors. Sand scuttled and puffed, but the visibility remained too good. What if—? So many unfamiliarities of detail between remembered comrades and this unit — shape, height, voice, walk, posture. They'd see something any moment now. The noise from the engines and the whip of rotors might not be enough to hide strangeness in expected voices, words—
Anders was aware of the stubby wings
of the two MiLs; rocket pods and missiles were slung beneath them, all ironically pointing at the dune that hid Jaffe and himself. Wheels creaked against the restraint of brakes.
Seven yards, six, four—
Recognition and decision in the same appalling instant. The Iranian terrorist half turned to cry a warning and was beaten down with the butt of the unit leaders rifle. He sprawled on the sand like a dropped blanket.
Movement an instant after decision. The terrorist they had already killed fell slowly sideways as his body was released. Even before his involuntary movement was complete, two Israelis were through the gaping main cabin door of the 24A and others were running through the swirling sand raised by the downdraft of its rotors. Behind the tinted glass of the MiLs cockpit, Anders saw the gleam of a bright flashlight, inwardly heard the shouted threats to the two pilots, could almost see the grenade held in an upthrust hand, thumb on the lever — the Uzis pointing. The swift, sudden, chill shock of icy water, the shock of a stun grenade they could not even use for fear of damaging the cockpit instruments with the shock wave…
… might have to use grenades on the two separate cockpits of the other gunship, the 24D. They had always known that. No way to reach gunner and pilot without opening both cockpit doors, both hatches. And the 24D was farther away than its companion, its crew already alerted to danger. The greater prize but the more risky capture. His eye strained at the eyepiece of the pocketscope. Sweat was chill on every part of his body.
Now—
One commando had his hand on the pilot's cockpit latch, a second had climbed to the gunners cockpit and was heaving at the hinged cover. Flash of gunfire, the noise coming slow seconds later, it seemed. Two rounds at point-blank range from an army-issue Beretta 9mm. Satisfied, the commando dropped back to the ground. The gunners body was all but below the level of his cockpit sill.