by Thomas Craig
Fuel.
He glanced at the gauges. He had perhaps as much as four hundred miles of flying at his most economical cruising speed before his auxiliary tank dried up. It would leave him three hundred miles short of Baikonur. Three hundred miles short — somewhere in the deserts of Soviet Central Asia; Uzbekistan. He felt cold, his body slipping into a mild paralysis. He could not go back. He would never make it to Peshawar, all the way south back across Afghan airspace, not once they identified even one of the bodies below or some part of the ruined airframe. He was utterly trapped by the situation.
Panic surged in him. Go now, go before Kunduz begins demanding a full report — expecting one.
He felt his body flood with anger.
Mac.
No, it wasn't because of Mac; it was because he was trapped. It was like the Firefox, its fuel running out, before he reached the ice floe and the submarine that was Mother One. But there was no submarine out there in Uzbekistan, there was no fuel out there… run, run.
Mac.
Survive.
His hands moved almost automatically, and the Hind's nose whisked up. Still low and within the radar shield of the valley, he increased speed. Bowed to the pressure of the panic to survive. In six minutes, he could be across the border, inside the Soviet Union. His mind shut out the hours ahead, thought only of the next few minutes. He wasn't defeated, he hadn't lost — not yet. And he would survive.
One hundred, one twenty, one twenty-five — the Hind skimmed along the wide, dry valley, raising, as it passed, a small trail of dust no bigger than that of a single horseman. Going forward represented the prospect of opportunity. And there was something in the back of his head, something—
He could not focus, not yet, but it allowed him to expand his vision of the minutes ahead.
Nine-fourteen, local time.
Even the thought that he would never reach Baikonur could not halt or slow his northward momentum. To go back was to return to the certainty of death now rather than capture — he had killed three of theirs, five including the pilot and the gunner he had incinerated. All of them friends, acquaintances, comrades of other people.
The north promised more than that. Most of all — time; time in which circumstances might change, or might be altered to his wish; time which might focus the vague something at the back of his mind.
He looked at the gauges. Maybe as much as four hundred twenty miles before his fuel ran out.
Not enough.
President Calvin's hand swept in an angry gesture toward the screens against the wall of the Oval Office. Winter sunlight through the tinted windows paled and made more insubstantial the television images. Though the director of the CIA still found them as easy to recognize as if they were personal memories or hopes.
"Why the hell are we paying them to even bother to learn how to do that?" Calvin shouted. His voice seemed to contain as much anguish as anger, as his finger pointed accusingly at an image of the shuttle Atlantis. The transmission from the orbiter was from the camera's viewpoint along the spine of the shuttle, revealing the bulk of the Spacelab in the cargo hold, and beyond it two tire men with backpacks floating like huge white bees around the satellite they were repairing. The remote manipulator arm hung at the edge of the screen like a weak, broken limb. The earth appeared to be almost entirely ocean; virtually cloudless. The vast Pacific, impossibly blue. It was as if it unnerved Calvin for a moment, for he remained silent. Then he burst out again: "Answer me — you, Bill, or you, Dick — why should the country pay out the billions of dollars to teach those guys how to repair spy satellites?" He glared at his two companions. Filtered sunlight glanced across his shock of gray hair and his stubborn profile, gilding his features. He raised his hands, then slapped them against his thighs. "Those guys up there would be better employed learning how to repair Russian automobiles! A skill they could come to need. That up there is just about as advanced as a tow truck and nowhere near as useful anymore."
On companion screens, beside the image of the Atlantis, Baikonur. Russian broadcasts to the rest of the world, demonstrating their peaceful mission in space… just like that of the American shuttle, a forerunner of future cooperative ventures, the Soviet Raketoplan shuttle will be launched on Thursday, to coincide with the signing of the treaty, the two shuttle craft will rendezvous in orbit in a symbolic gesture of peace, on Friday… The subtitled commentary seemed to mock the men in the room, enrage Calvin further. On other screens, images from around a frightened world. Frightening, frightened, beginning-to-be-relieved… hope is alive in the world again… Calvin shook his head in shame and frustration. He had said that only a few weeks before, in his State of the Union message to Congress.
He studied one screen after another like a list of indictments against him. Barbed wire being rolled back on one screen, the symbolic demolition of concrete emplacements on another. Fences, silos, missiles on others, being moved, opened, shut forever, torn down. A montage of withdrawal as potent as a magnified sigh of relief. On yet another screen, an English-language documentary on the city of Geneva and the location of the signing session, the Palais des Nations. A wide-angle view showed the snowbound city, the gunmetal-colored expanse of Lac Leman, the tiny, distant, frozen tail feathers of the Geneva Fountain.
Calvin turned away from the screens. His desk was littered with dozens of newspapers. Some of them had slipped and lay scattered on the apple-green carpet with its scroll and seal. Headlines glared and lay abandoned, like the decorations for a Christmas past. Celebration, optimism, unqualified approval and praise. Calvin began to imagine that he had surrounded himself with the newspapers and the screens in order to torment himself. Mirrors to reflect his scars.
Failure inhabited the Oval Office, though his desk and the floor were strewn with success. He knew his anger was only a bluff, a device to hold failure at arm's length. Dick Gunther knew the game was up; so did the CIA director. Their faces told him that quite clearly. Gant, that last fond hope, that last desperate stake, had disappeared. He had run into the desert sand like a trickle of water.
Calvin raised his glance as he heard the director clear his throat.
"I'm sorry, Mr. President," he heard the director say. It was no more than a repetition of the first words he had uttered on entering the room little more than ten minutes earlier. Even before he had explained, he had begun to apologize. As soon as Calvin looked at him, the director looked down.
"OK, Bill," Gunther soothed. "That's the end of it. There's nothing any of us can do now."
"Nothing? Nothing, Dick?" Calvin stormed. "They're going to put a laser battle station into low earth orbit the day after tomorrow and you say there's nothing we can do? Find something, dammitl That battle station will be capable of taking out spy satellites, ICBMs, even Atlantis and the other shuttles. That's the hole we have to get out of."
Gunther shook his head. He was perched on the corner of the desk. Calvin saw the gleam of calculation in his eyes; but he was only weighing the presidential mood, looking for soothing, meaningless words.
Calvin looked back at the row of screens. The blue earth shifted, as if knocked from its orbit, as the camera shot changed to a closeup of the two astronauts at their repairs to the surveillance satellite. A KH-11 type, which watched the borders of Israel. Its maneuvering rocket was failing to respond to transmitted instructions. And Space-lab. Weeks of experiments to find purer pharmaceuticals, high-strength alloys, high-purity crystals for electronic components. Not an aggressive element aboard the Atlantis.
Gant was missing, presumed dead. The long-range AWACS aircraft above the Pakistan border had lost touch with the helicopters. Gant had vanished into a whirlpool of Soviet aerial and radio activity. They must have discovered, exposed, and now finished him. It was that news the director had brought with him. It was noon in Washington, the end of Tuesday morning. On Thursday Calvin would have to sign in Geneva — or earn the world's embittered, enraged scorn. Something no President could afford.
&nbs
p; The telephone rang. Calvin's hand jumped, then he reached out to take the reply to the call he had made on hearing the news of Gant's loss. He concentrated on keeping his extended hand steady. Gunther handed him the receiver.
At least one explosion, the director had announced. A lot of radio traffic, radar emissions, all the trappings of a search-and-kill mission.
The Soviets had indeed had a quarry. Gant.
Calvin snapped on the amplifier and placed the receiver in its cradle. The others, too, could listen to this. He spoke to the U.S. chief negotiator in Geneva.
"Yes, Frank. Yes, we all feel that, Frank. I want to know what's happening at your end." Giordello's sympathy and the appalled, lost tone in his voice irritated Calvin.
"But, Mr. President, in view of—
"Listen to me, Frank, what is my timetable in Geneva?" He did not look at either Gunther or the director.
There was a short silence, then Giordello began reciting the litany of protocol and procedure and procession. Midday, Thursday. The bald fact emerged and grew, looming in the Oval Office like a shadow. Clouds had removed the pale gleam of sunlight. The presidential seal on the carpet was dulled, and the images on the screen blazed out. A fool's errand, a fool's journey on which he must set out before midnight, so that he could sign away America before the weekend.
He sighed. And he could no longer keep the pain and distress from his features as he listened to Giordello's voice. He was beaten and he knew it.
Katya remembered her father, almost like childhood prayers. It is my litany because I am afraid, she told herself. Nothing more than that. She remembered the factory workers face in the local party newspaper, on a huge billboard that gazed across the cobbled square of the town. Her fathers eyes had been apologetic, asking almost Why am I here, what have I done to deserve this? As if he Were a criminal, photographically displayed to a shocked public.
In the darkness, the icebound marsh possessed a sheen from the moon. Frozen sedge scraped against her waders. She moved forward gently, her slow pace seeming to lend an extra cold to the frozen night. A thin wind cried across the marsh. Some bird honked in the dark. Ahead of her, she could discern a thin vertical line of dim light. And another, horizontal line that joined it. Like heated, magnetized iron filings, glimpses of light shone through gaps in the rotting planking of the houseboat.
This is my litany, she recited once more. The first new Moskvitch, for which they had waited another three years after her father's output at the boot factory qualified him for one — output and Party loyalty, of course. An example to his fellow workers. What am I doing here? Her father's bemused, even fearful features looking out from the billboard had rendered him less than a hero; once and for all.
Bare, utilitarian, unreliable; blue. The Moskvitch. Hard to start from the autumn to late spring. Impossible to use from November to March. Its wipers stolen two days after it was delivered. The spare tire a week later. Her father's pride and joy. What have 1 done to deserve this? Why me? As always, overwhelmed by the generosity of the Party.
She glanced at her watch, the memories not interfering with her alertness. Eleven. The leaking light from the houseboat drew her on. Sedge scraped and snapped and brittlely rustled, rattled too by the dog, who panted and shivered alongside her. The boat was less than fifty yards away now. Again, a bird honked. The dog growled, and she soothed it to quiet. She descended the knoll of reeds she had climbed, one of the many tiny islets dotting the marshes. To the east, the sky had a pale, chilly glow; the thousand arc lights around the cosmodrome and the occupied launch pad. There were farther, dimmer gleams from the science city, from villages, from watch-towers and silos. Yet here, above the thin mourning of the wind, she could hear the mutter of nocturnal animals disturbing the sleep of Waterfowl.
Katya shuddered in her coat, her face chilled inside its upturned for collar, her beret seeming to do little to keep the aching cold from her head.
On her way to school, she had passed her father's bemused glance from the billboard every day for a month. School friends sometimes mocked, or were silent out of envy or contempt. He was, and remained, only a factory worker and had no right up there alongside teachers, scientists, engineers, officials of the ministries. The cold wind of March had rattled the portraits, making their heads turn this way and that, ever vigilant. Her father had seemed cold and uncomfortable up there, as if he, too, knew his place. Memory invaded her, radiating warmth, calm.
She slapped her arms across her chest, pausing so that one foot could test the ice, then moved her weight onto it, followed by the other foot. The dog slithered, then regained his balance. His great tail banged against her waders. She must get even closer, to make sure — though she knew that Kedrov was in there… Kedrov the spy.
She glanced the flashlight's beam across the thick ice. Moved gingerly. As if to demonstrate its safety, the dog skittered ahead of her. Nothing to fear.
The ice seemed to strike coldly through the soles of the waders, through both pairs of thick socks. The iron-filing pattern of the leaking light beckoned her. She stepped more confidently toward the houseboat, its outline low and huddled against the faint-glowing night. Ice groaned, but quietly, as if disturbed in its sleep. The wind insinuated and moaned, her noises were indecipherable. Kedrov would not be alerted.
She reached the mooring and wiped the flashlight beam over its rotting wood above her head, over the plank crossing from jetty to deck. The boat's movements in the wind and the water had reduced the ice around the hull to a soupy, treacherous slush that groaned and slopped. How deep was it? Could she wade in it?
The wooden jetty would be noisier, but in the wind, with the noises of the boat's rotten wood…? Gingerly, she reached out and touched each step of the jetty. Then she climbed, moving slowly, very slowly. Creaks, the night glasses banging once before she pressed them against her breasts. Her breathing was ragged in a sudden hush of wind. Then, once more, the wind struck through her gloves and clothing, urging her on. The dog's big feet scampered beside her, increasing their noise. His breathing was louder than hers. She knelt at the top of the steps, halfway along the jetty, the boat directly ahead of her, and shushed the dog, made him lie down. Then she straightened. The dog's tail slid back and forth in the beam of the flashlight, but he did not attempt to rise.
"Good boy," she murmured. His tail increased its speed. Then she began creeping toward the houseboat. Her gun was in her gloved hand, her gloves almost too thick for her forefinger to fit into the trigger guard of the Makarov. The pattern of light from the gaps in the boat's planking was clearer, more inviting.
This is my litany because I am afraid, her mind whispered. The memories were random now, flying like sparks.
A plank creaked. The past vanished. She shifted her weight gently and released the wood; it groaned with relief. The dog still lay where she had left him. She moved forward on tiptoe. She was no more than a dozen yards from the boat. Some of the gaps in the planking were wide enough for her to discern a shadow moving inside. Her heart banged.
When she reached the boat, her heart slowed. She knelt down on the jetty to bring her eyes level with a wide, jagged crack of light where the shadow had moved, then settled. She squinted into the crack, half poised like a runner on blocks. Her waders squeaked against one another. Her gun rested on the rotting wood, clutched unregarded in her left hand.
Kedrov.
Her heart began to thump once more. He was holding a mug. Beyond his shoulder, a haversack. A transistor radio lay on the small, bare section of table she could see.
She had found him!
Self-satisfaction warmed her like scalding coffee. She seemed to touch his features with her intent, squinting look. Nose, mouth, profile, thinning hair. The features matched those of the photograph clearly in her mind.
She was very aware of her quick, light breathing and of the gun in her gloved hand.
And of Priabin.
She sighed, but the warmth of pleasure remained; pride was like
a blanket into which she snuggled. She checked once more — radio, mug, Kedrov, radio, coffee mug, Kedrov—
— then straightened up, feeling light-headed with success. She tiptoed back toward the dog. Her body urged her to hurry the first yards of the mile or so back to the car and the radio mike.
Kedrov—
She ruffled the dog's fur and laughed softly, luxuriously, at her own success.
The bare, scoured landscape flowed slowly beneath the belly of the Hind. Gant was vividly aware of the fragility of the machine that enclosed him, that kept out the freezing night temperature and the cut and noise of the wind; aware of its power to kill him. Perhaps within minutes now. Just like his father's life-support machine: tubes, a tent, a mask covering the resented face. The doctor, his sister, her husband the trucker, all approaching the moment in different ways. He in his uniform, cap beneath his arm, body stiffly at attention. He'd decided for all of them and switched off the life support. The opaqueness of the tent pitched over his father's shrunken form had slowly cleared. A small, old body without the capacity to evoke feeling of any kind had gradually been revealed.
He squeezed the thought from his mind. Now, over this bleak, cold desert, this machine was keeping him alive — and it would switch itself off and kill him when the last drops of fuel drained from the reserve tank. Like the MiG-31 over the North Sea, the Hind would make an attempt on his life.
Icy perspiration. The dunes slid beneath the Hind's black shadow. Sand flew off their crests at the helicopter's passage. Distance to Baikonur, a little less than four hundred miles; location, Soviet Central Asia, following the course of the river Oxus toward the Aral Sea. Below him, the emptiness of the Kara Kum; the huge, decayed, toothless jaws of the valley carved by the Oxus opened on either side of him. Dunes and the diamond-sparkling sky stretched away in every direction. Far to the north, too far to concern him, thin cloud hung like the gray smoke from a cigarette.
However precisely and carefully he described the landscape to himself — with whatever assumed detachment — he knew he was unraveling like wool in a cat's claws. Panic had approached, and he was conscious of forcing a mental door shut against its increasing pressure. Soon — perhaps even before the fuel ran out — he would not be able to control it.