Winter Hawk mg-3

by Thomas Craig

  Gunther looked down, as did the director, seated next to Anders. The silence loomed, waiting to be filled. Calvin was staring at him, accusingly, it seemed to Anders.

  "And now you tell me our last chance is on hold," he snapped.

  Anders glanced at the row of television screens along one wall. The mission room at Langley appeared on four of them in glaring color, from different angles. The scene appeared slow, underwater, almost inactive.

  "Mr. President, the repairs they have to effect to one of the two gunships can't be done while they're in the air."

  "How long, Mr. Anders, how long?"

  "They can't give me a closer estimate than — maybe tonight."

  "Maybe tonight?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr.—"

  "That isn't good enough, Anders, and you know it." Calvin turned his accusing gaze on the director. "Bill, you pleaded with me to initiate this operation. Forty-eight hours, maximum, that's what you said. They haven't taken off from Nellis yet, and three of your forty-eight have already disappeared."

  The director shifted awkwardly on his chair like a chastened schoolboy.

  Calvin sat at his desk, almost an interloper masquerading as President. His eyes looked lost and afraid.

  "There's nothing I can say, Mr. President," the director offered apologetically. There was only disappointment in his voice, and an overwhelming sense of past events.

  "What's the extent of the damage to the transport helicopter?" Dick Gunther asked.

  "It's in the rotor head," Anders replied. "And in the hydraulic control jacks below the rotor head" Calvin appeared impatient with detail, as if he suspected lies or excuses. "They thought they had time to work on it — they're flat out now, Mr. President," he said mollifyingly. "It's a long and difficult job. They can't adapt U.S. parts to fit, not easily—"

  "The hell with it, Mr. Anders," Calvin snapped. "Just chalk it up as another Company mistake — in your catalog of errors, Bill. You advised me to leave this guy in place in Baikonur until the last moment, you insisted the crews weren't ready to undertake the mission, that more weeks of training were required — and all that it's gotten us is nowhere. We've lost the game, Bill. You've fumbled the pass."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. President."

  Anders was angry, but he controlled his features. His brow began to perspire, and his body felt as if wrapped in hot, constricting towels rather than dressed in his gray suit. Calvin was manifestly unfair. He, too, was angry, but angry only that Winter Hawk would not have its chance — risky, sure, but their only chance.

  He glanced at the Oval Office clocks in turn. One of them, a French clock, gilded and ornate, was placed on a low, darkly shining table. It was the First Lady's choice, he assumed. Its blue-num: bered face showed a little after three. Sunday afternoon. The snow flew beyond the green glass as wildly as the recriminations in which Calvin had indulged.

  "Why the hell did they go ahead?" Calvin was asking. "Why didn't they trust us?"

  No one replied. The director lit his pipe. Anders was aware of the lighter tapping softly with nerves against the pipe's bowl. Blue smoke rose in the room, drifting across the windows toward the flag. Anders' gaze slid over Calvin's face, and he was shocked afresh by the deep stains beneath the man's eyes. The thick gray hair no longer added distinction to a strong face; it was no more than an old man's good fortune. He entertained an alternative image of Calvin, coming down the steps of Air Force One, returning to Washington from Vienna. Hands raised like a victorious fighter, grin broad, step quick and confident, almost running to the lectern with a genuine excitement, a need to tell. That had been after the first summit of his term of office, his first meeting with Nikitin. They had agreed on the principles of the arms reduction treaty, and the timetable for negotiation.

  The voice had been full and resonant as he stood at the row of microphones. The cameras had continued to click and whir, the lights to flash, as he made his historic announcement.

  My fellow Americans…

  Calvin turned like someone afraid he was being followed and gazed out of the windows at the flying snow. It was as if he sensed the comparison of images in Anders' mind.

  … today, President Nikitin and myself have committed ourselves and our two countries to a resolute search for peace and for genuine, verifiable reductions in our nuclear arsenals…

  Anders remembered the emotions and the wild excitement the speech had aroused even in himself, a senior career intelligence officer, though he would not have remembered the words except that TV stations had been replaying the damn occasion, over and over, all that week. In the four weeks before, ever since they had first known about Baikonur, the words had become increasingly hollow. Now, at this crisis, the speech — that first one of all of them — was no more than the naive utterance of a duped politician. The signing of the treaty should have crowned Calvin's first term and assured a second. Now he stared ruin in the face; historic and historical repugnance was his inheritance. No wonder the man looked old and weary

  … we have agreed that there will be no special cases, no exclusions. Every weapons system currently deployed or in the development stage is to be on the table, on both sides…

  The confident Harvard tones had been singing a siren song, and the world had listened greedily. Hoping, at last hoping.

  A new beginning. Half the Pershings and cruise missiles and half the Soviet SS-20s had been withdrawn at once, the following day, as a gesture of mutual good faith. The world could hardly believe its luck.

  But the world still believed in its luck. It didn't know what the men in that room knew. Anders' face twisted in bitterness. He felt betrayed — yes, that was it, betrayed, as anyone would. As they will when they hear — if they ever hear.

  They will, he concluded. The news will leak out some day — this year, next year, the one after that. The Soviets have us by the short hairs, they've got Star Wars instead of us. We're all washed up.

  The world had gone on cheering for two whole years, Anders with them. Until Cactus Plant's bombshell out of Baikonur—They have transported a laser battle station for launching—Christ! Two years had dropped hollow, like counterfeit coins hitting the pavement.

  My fellow Americans…

  Now those raised arms looked like surrender, like newsreel shots of weary and defeated Marines emerging from the hostile Vietnamese jungle. Eventually, Calvin would have to tell the world what had gone wrong, and that he had no answer to the Soviet laser weapons because he'd slowed down the research programs, cut the funds, believed the Russians. They'd crucify him.

  Anders realized Calvin was looking at him intently. He felt his cheeks warm under the piercing, accusatory gaze. It was as if Calvin were reading his thoughts.

  "You think I've given up, Mr. Mission Officer?" the President asked slowly, acidly. His eyes looked inward, with something like distaste.

  "No, Mr.—"

  "Never mind. I want your butt on the copilot's seat of a military jet inside of an hour. Get the air force to fly you to Nellis. It should take you three hours, no more. And you're responsible for getting those gunships airborne today. Understand me? Today!"

  Mitchell Gant appeared to sip at the can of beer in his hand with the wary delicacy of a cat. Seated in a crouch on the narrow bed against one wall of his cramped room, he seemed absorbed by the television set, as if he were trying to exclude Anders from his awareness. On the screen, the space shuttle Atlantis floated above California while the full text of the NAR Treaty, clause after clause of it, rolled as sofdy as movie credits, superimposed on the shuttle's image.

  All three major networks were running the same compilation of images and the treaty's text. As it ran, the shuttle was shown over every area of the planet covered by its orbit, all recorded daylight shots, countries and oceans immediately recognizable from two hundred miles above the earth. To Anders, each clause that appeared on the screen was one more cruel fiction.

  He cleared his throat, but Gant did not turn his head.


  "You know most of those guys," Anders offered.

  Gant glared at him, as if disturbed from pleasure.

  "Sure, I know some of them — Wakeman, the mission commander — yeah, I know them." He seemed to lose interest in the conversation and sipped once more at his beer.

  Anders felt oppressed by the narrow, bare room. Bed, table, two upright chairs, two government-issue easy chairs, a strip of carpet. It might have been a waiting room at some downtown doctor's office where all the patients were either black or Mexican. A small refrigerator, metal lockers instead of a closet or chest of drawers. There was a door to a tiny kitchen, another to a bathroom. Yet Gant must have chosen these quarters. His rank entitled him to a bungalow on the base. This was like — like a closet for storing machines not in use.

  He opened the refrigerator, disturbed by his own metaphor, and took out a can of beer. Pulled the ring. Gas plopped softly. Gant had turned down the music accompanying the program. The quiet of the room oppressed. Gant's presence seemed to charge it with static electricity. Anders shook his head. He did not understand Gant. From his context — this room — he received no clues as to the man's present or past — or future. He looked at the television screen as if through a window onto a larger perspective.

  Atlantis had been in orbit for a week. A long scientific mission including the disposition of two new surveillance satellites. The crew was also scheduled to repair other satellites and, he remembered once more, to rendezvous with their Soviet counterparts on Friday, the day after the signing in Geneva. There was even TV talk that the shuttles might land at each other's home bases. Silly talk, but it nevertheless disturbed Anders. The world's present mood was evident in it. The party had begun in earnest, and no one could call it off now.

  On the screen, the Pacific occupying almost half of it now, the earth looked like some huge flower bowl on which petals of desert, grassland, and cloud floated. The shuttle's robot arm hung like a great elbow joint in one corner of the screen, and a Michelin tire man, one of the crew on a spacewalk, hovered above the Spacelab in the shuttle's cargo bay. It was a reshowing of the repair job the shuttle had performed five days earlier. The whole program was a rerun of one long peace slogan.

  The lump of the malfunctioning satellite appeared to one side of the screen. Anders sipped his beer, his hand tightening involuntarily on the can. The tire man backpacked toward the satellite. The earth below him remained untouchably, impossibly beautiful.

  Frustration gripped Anders.

  "Christ, Gant, how can you just sit there?" he burst out. "Don't you care?"

  "Plenty. What good will it do, Anders? I can't repair rotor heads. They're working as fast as they can."

  "We don't have any time, Gant."

  Gant ostentatiously looked at his watch. It was seven in the evening, local time, as near as it mattered. Ten o'clock in Washington. Soon Anders would have to call the Oval Office — again. He squeezed the can in his hand. Gant was like a pressure forcing itself against him; immobile like a Buddha, silent again now that he was not being spoken to. Then he looked at Anders.

  "It could take four hours, it could take all night. You've seen."

  The room oppressed Anders even more. He felt an imposter in his borrowed flying overalls. His body ached from the unfamiliarity of the copilot's seat of the EF-111 in which he had been flown from Andrews to Nellis. Gant's apparent indifference enraged him.

  "The man expects you to succeed, Gant," he said waspishly.

  Gant turned his head, his eyes glinting. "So? The man expects?" He gestured with the beer can. "When the repairs are through, we go. What the hell else do you want from me?"

  "He wants, Gant — he wants. You have to give him this agent on a plate, and his holiday movies. Can you do that?"

  "I'm not his wife, Anders. Just one of the slobs working in the guy's factory, underpaid and underfed." He grinned quickly, looking suddenly boyish. "We're not ready, Anders. You know that. Not even me."

  There was a certainty about Gant's pronouncement, negative though it was. The room around him said little or nothing about the man. A pennant from Vietnam on one of the buff-colored walls, a few photographs of aircraft, a younger Gant posed in front of a Phantom jet, pilot's helmet under his arm. Little or nothing — yet Anders was impressed by the force with which Gant occupied the room.

  "You — have to be ready," Anders said.

  Gant shrugged. "It doesn't change the facts. We should have had another week, minimum. Those machines are pigs to fly. Tell the man that when you talk with him." He looked at his watch once more. "Isn't it time to call home?" His features wore an undisguised cynicism that angered Anders. Gant was contemptuous of him, of the President — of the mission?

  "Where in hell are you coming from, Gant?" he snapped. "What is it with you? I don't need all this crap from you."

  "But you need me, Anders. So does the man. My misfortune, but you do. This idea was crazy from the beginning. Now it's suicidal."

  "You want out, Gant? Is that what you want?" Anders sneered, the can squeezed almost flat in his fist.

  Gant shrugged expressively. "Out? Why?" He gestured around the bare room. "You told me, once, Anders, why I work for you. For the rest of the assholes in the Company. Because you let me fly. Huh?" He dismissed Anders with a wave of his hand and turned back to the television as he said, "I'm in, Anders. I don't have any hankering to face charges that have been tailored to fit me — maybe even a list of charges." He snorted in derision. "I'm a big boy, Anders — I tie my own shoelaces and I know the score. I just get parked here till you need me. I'm going just as soon as they fix Garcia's ship."

  "OK." Anders sighed. He leaned heavily against the door. He realized he had never really entered the small room. It and its occupant baffled him. Gant was cocooned, somehow apart. Perhaps he really did despise the very people who needed him, to whom he was valuable. Anders added in a tone that was intended to mollify: "If we can have the agent and the material by Thursday, we can still win, Gant. We can bargain."

  Gant studied Anders' angry, tired face. Anders could not change his expression. His muscles were set in defeated lines.

  Gant said: "Maybe. If and maybe."

  "What the hell else can we do?" Anders cried out. The can in his hand was crushed flat.

  Gant shrugged. "Nothing. But the idea is still crazy."

  "You'll be in Soviet helicopters, you have all the call signs, the channels and frequencies, you'll be there maybe a half hour—"

  "They'll shoot a guy on a bicycle on sight, Anders. That place is going to be sewn up tight — and I mean tight." He looked down at his own can, shook it — it made no sound — then lobbed it into a waste-basket. He closed his hands together as if in prayer. "And the guy's jumped, Anders. You don't even know if he'll show up when we do."

  "He said. Kedrov knows where to be. He has a transponder only you will be able to pick up. The rendezvous island in the salt marshes is pinpointed. Winter Hawk is something they won't be expecting, not in a million years."

  "So you say."

  "So the President says, Gant. To quote him exactly, he said, Tell that guy to get his ass over there — and no foul-ups.' His message is clear, Gant."

  "Sure. Otherwise it's a long vacation somewhere where they're always losing the keys. I know."

  "We don't do that."

  "This time he will. I have the ball, Anders." He returned his gaze to the screen. The terms of the treaty were still rolling softly up the screen, the shuttle still floated invulnerably and apart above the ocean.

  "I have to make that call," Anders said, throwing his can at the wastebasket. It struck the side and clattered on the floor. Gant smiled.

  He looked toward Anders as if weighing him. Then he said: "Give the man my compliments. Tell him Captain Fantastic is just raring to go." Once again, he snorted in derision.

  3: Gathering Storm

  "— gone, sir. He must have vanished some time during the night, over the roof. We—"

&nb
sp; "You were there!" Priabin shouted into the cars radio microphone. "You stupid buggers were on the spot all night!"

  "Sir, we had all the exits covered," the voice began once more, its note of apology more calculating and less shocked.

  In the Zil's front passenger seat, Viktor Zhikin sighed angrily and banged the dashboard with his gloved fist. His murmur was an echo of Priabin's sentiments.

  "Find him!" Priabin barked, his voice unnerved. The silence around him in the car was thunderous. The driver had turned off the music from the black-market cassette.

  "Sir?" Zhikin asked as Priabin threw him the microphone.

  "Don't let's allow Orlov to go the same way, shall we?"

  Zhikin snapped into the mike: "All units — move in at once. Now." Acknowledgments crackled in the car

  "Come on," Priabin snapped. "Orlov will know where his little friend is." I hope so, he added to himself. I hope so.

  He opened the rear door and climbed out. The temperature assailed him, biting through his heavy overcoat, his boots. The black car was clothed with heavy frost.

  Dear Christ, he thought, the idea striking him cleanly, they've lost Kedrov. Anger welled up at once, almost choking him. He had to find him; his whole career, his return to Moscow, depended on it. If it was discovered he let an American spy escape, he would be well and truly finished. Panic coursed through him like the effects of a drink. He almost lost his footing on the icy pavement. It glinted dully in the red, early light.

  He steadied himself against the car, hardly squinting as he looked into the heavy, swollen ball of the sun that had just heaved itself above the flat horizon. Like a heavier-than-air balloon. Its dull red disk was bisected and trellised with launch gantries, the skeletons of radio masts, and radar dishes.

  Zhikin crossed the narrow, cobbled street just ahead of him. It was veined with gray ice. The blinds of Orlov's shop were closed. Paint peeled from the wooden door. The shop's sign was weathered almost to illegibility. A word-of-mouth clientele, Priabin reminded himself humorlessly. Cassettes, expensive stereo items from the West, even the more usual currency of denim. Orlov supplied to the young and to the scientific and technical communities; the army had its own semiofficial pipeline, which flowed with more regularity, bringing the prized and scarce consumer luxuries. For the army it was a perk, not a crime.