Winter Hawk mg-3

by Thomas Craig

  "You have heard, many times over the past weeks and months, of the importance of this place and this time. I can only repeat that to you now, and to echo the words of the great writer, Charles Dickens — we must begin the world. Let us begin the world together. Thank you and God bless you."

  A moment's pause, then he raised his right hand and waved. A drowning man, he saw himself to be. A man of destiny, so his features proclaimed and the occasion suggested. He stepped down from the rostrum into the company of the Swiss president and the members of the Federal Council, the members of his own party, the Soviet ambassador and his retinue. A shoal of black Mercedes sedans drew slowly toward them like the constituents of a funeral pr cession. He shook hands with warm automatism, smiled, and offered a suitable gravitas to everyone who looked in his direction.

  On the hoods of the cars, stiff and rattling little flags. The flag of his country, the hammer and sickle, the United Nations blue, the Swiss white cross and the flag of the city of Geneva, the eagle and the key. The same symbols cracked and writhed outside the main terminal building. The eagle and the key — the American eagle and the key to the prison. He could not avoid the idea.

  John Calvin climbed into the rear of the appointed Mercedes and felt himself slump like an invalid into the soft upholstery. Danielle clutched his hand as if to comfort and congratulate in a single gesture. He gripped her hand, patting it up and down on his thigh, as if measuring solemnly the passage of some short, remaining peripd of time.

  The plantation of firs surprised him, coming out of the evening darkness with the sudden leap of something animate and mobile. He lifted the MiL, restrained its swing to port, and leaped the trees as if they were part of a racecourse. Then slowed the helicopter even further, so that it hung lazily above the ground. The nose yawed to port, the rudder pedals were spongy and unresponsive. Whatever the damage sustained, it was intermittent, but each time it returned it was like the nearing crisis of a fever, shaking the helicopter more violently, making its control all but impossible. His hands and feet and body and awareness all knew that the Mil-2 was becoming un-flyable. Ten miles or ten minutes — no more. There were no additional factors in the equation. The Mil was finished. — lurch, yaw, the trembling sense of fragility as the whole airframe shuddered with his effort to reestablish control. The tail rotor bit. swinging the tail back into alignment. Sweat dampened his forehead and armpits. He looked down at the small plantation of firs, curved like a windbreak. Moonlight revealed light, bare soil stretching away southward, a cluster of small, warm lights beyond. Farming country, reclaimed desert. Irrigation channels and ditches scarred the flatness. Dikes and canals.

  The passive radar receiver was silent. They'd lost him. Maybe they considered him still inside Baikonur, couldn't yet believe he'd slipped through the net. The radio was silent, too. He could not find the Tac channel they had switched to, hadn't the freedom of his right hand to reach forward to do so. He had to grip the controls fiercely every moment, despite the throbbing ache in his bruised hand, fighting the sensation of lack of control, of the emptiness that lay under his feet. They'd find him soon — a car or cart on a road, a former's ear, a soldier, a disturbance of ducks or cattle… something would give him away.

  He held the Mil in the hover, in a small space of relief when the rudder pedals responded. What to do? He felt empty at any thought of abandoning the MiL, however fragile and damaged, yet he knew he would find no secure cover that would enable him to examine the aircraft and possibly repair it. He would become the honey pot as soon as he put down for any length of time.

  To abandon the MiL… on foot? Find a car, any vehicle, drive — the thousand miles to Turkey or Pakistan? Or just to — the nearest surviving KGB office. And what happened to him, then? After the success, when Priabin turned around with the look from the houseboat on his face? Gant shivered; the airframe was obedient, like a grazing horse around and beneath him.

  What should he do?

  He turned the Mil gingerly, like a child balancing on one leg and turning through a complete circle… gently, gently. The wind had lessened, as if satisfied the damage provided a sufficient complication of the situation, but he was still wary of it. He held his breath as the nose swung slowly like the lens of a surveillance camera, remote and obedient. He was through eighty, ninety degrees, the tail stabilized, the Mil steady on the spot and at a constant height — fifty or sixty feet. One hundred and ten degrees—

  — buffet of wind, then, as if displeased at his skill. The tail swung, the nose yawed violently. Rudder pedals more necessary because he had passed the downwind position of the turn and the rate of turn had speeded up. The extra force of the wind demanded more rudder — too much, too quickly. The Mil turned on its side like someone about to die, and as he righted the machine the thin, rippling darkness of the fir plantation was instantly closer. The Mil was shivering throughout its fuselage. The nose was swinging out of control, the helicopter was becoming a wild sycamore leaf at the mercy of the windy air — north, west, south, east… the helicopter began to turn like a dancer in some mad balletic spin, foster and fester… north, west, south, east, north, west… it would fell in * moment, undirected and on open ground near the firs. Terrified a* the thought of fire, he stopcocked the engines and then pushed the main electrics switch to Off. All he had left was rotor inertia between himself and the trees — he had to control the crash. He drove the Mil downward the last few feet, felt the undercarriage touch, then dig and skid and snap… saw the rotors eating at the trees like flailing saws, saw the tail as he looked over his shoulder lurch against young firs and gouge and snap them — then crack open. Rotors grinding with a sick and hideous noise, then one snapped, and the Mil lurched into a slide, a fall, a stillness.

  Still.

  He heard silence ascend through the scale and become as real as noise. It had taken only moments. He had thought nothing, imagined nothing, simply waited for the crash to be over. He had known it would not kill or injure him; it had just been the end of the MiL.

  Then he breathed, raggedly and loud and often. And heard Priabin in his headset. Shaky-voiced, almost afraid to do anything but whisper.

  "Gant? Gant — are you all right?"

  Gant stared through the Plexiglas, through fir branches and smeared resin. A small gap of starlight and moon-sheened sky. No huge tear in the fabric of the plantation; good. The Mil was tilted, but there was no surviving tail to thrust out of the trees.

  "OK," he murmured absently before the minutes ahead invaded his thoughts. "OK. You?"

  "OK, I think."

  There was a quiet horror in his voice, from the other side of shock, on behalf of the dead woman. Now Priabin would blame him more than ever. Become dangerous. That was the future, and he dismissed it, sliding back the door of the cockpit. He heard a thin branch snap, felt the chill of the evening invest the cockpit. Released his straps, climbed awkwardly up and out, dropped to the ground. Branches cracked under his feet. He smelled seeping fuel on the cold air.

  He looked up — cover? Almost. He had driven into the firs sideways on, at a downward angle. Some of the trees had bent and slipped back like dark curtains while others had snapped or leaned drunkenly. Night — all night, perhaps. Unless they came very close, they'd see little until daylight.

  Hie main cabin was intact. The tail boom had snapped off behind the aerial lead-in, a third of the way along its length. It stood like a ruined statue less than thirty yards away, masked by trees.

  The door of the cabin swung open. He turned quickly to face cabin, then took off his helmet and threw it aside. Immediately he listened to the night, his ears still ringing from the headset's confinement. First, the disturbed cries of birds, then the sighing of the wind in the firs. Nothing else. Baikonur's single gunship zveno had lost his scent.

  Priabin's face was a white, pleading mask in the cabin door. Gant realized that Priabin's shock would delay him. He felt a resistance mounting within him, but he accepted Priabin's priorities for
a few moments longer. He did not want to look at the woman, as if he had contributed to her—

  He had, he admitted.

  Clambering up and into the Mil-2's dark main cabin, he heard his own breathing, heard Priabin's, too. The woman became reduced in importance. He did not enjoy his renewed sense of his own priorities, but accepted the necessity of disregarding her death.

  Priabin had covered her body. She was, Gant made himself believe, no more than a heap of coats on the cabin floor. He stood very still for some moments, staring at the fuselage. Guilt lessened, faded. A heap of coats.

  Slowly he realized Priabin was murmuring her name, over and over. The sound contained grief, guilt, affection. He could not tell Priabin it was time they departed.

  Maps, torch, the gun, flares, even the radio? At least, if he couldn't remove one of the sets, he had to listen. He had wasted time here, he thought ashamedly, yet he was convinced he was right. The woman was dead; he had to survive. He had to know where they were, what they were doing. He jumped down to the litter of fir needles and broken branches on the plantation floor. He listened again. They were still safe. He looked at his watch, holding its dial close to his face. Six-fifteen.

  He clambered back into the cockpit. Snatched out the folded, heavily creased maps from the pocket beside his seat. Found the flashlight, snapped the rifle out of its clips behind his head, high up on the cockpit bulkhead. Cradled these things like precious possessions. He needed to use the radio. Reserve battery power only — if the aerials had not snapped off, if the set had not been damaged. He checked the code cards in the slot beside the set. The helicopters regular KGB pilot had scribbled the military channel frequencies below his own codes… Wednesday. He hesitated, then switched on. Voices leaped into the cockpit's silence.

  Almost at once, he realized their error. Some unidentified aircraft? No, vehicle moving on the north-south road beyond Dzhusaly. As much as fourteen or fifteen miles away to the northeast. What was it? Patrol tried to stop a truck, no camouflage or insignia — broke through the barrier, patrol vehicle damaged, unable to pursue… All helicopter units to proceed immediately…

  Black marketers, drunken soldiers, thieves, it didn't matter which. Time had opened like a carelessly left window, and they could climb through it like burglars. They had to take advantage of it.

  Gant continued to listen. Different crises signaled like lamps in a storm. The three remaining gunships of the Baikonur zveno had already acknowledged, and detailed their changes of course to rendezvous to the northeast, where the truck had broken through the barrier. They each reported no contacts in their current sectors. Serov — he recognized his voice easily — was too eager, too ready to believe; deceived by his need to recover the situation. Rodin, the general, was riding on his back. Gant savored Serov's error. He listened to the man divert a troop-carrying Mil-8, a couple of road patrols in light vehicles. He heard him direct units to erect roadblocks, order UAZ light-vehicle patrols to cordon off areas. He listened for a moment longer, then turned off the radio.

  As he climbed down from the cockpit, he carefully cradled the rifle, torch, maps, bars of chocolate. He paused for a moment, then climbed reluctandy into the MiL's main cabin.

  Even the exercise of power in desperation was a source of satisfaction, Rodin realized. His voice raged with insistence, unreasonableness, even threat, his features were highly colored, but none of them dared sustain their objections in the face of his determination; his power.

  "The launch will take place in nine and a half hours from now," he repeated like the closing of a door on some argument in a distant room. "Not tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen, but before dawn. The weapon will be placed in its orbit one hour later. It will be used as soon as possible thereafter. Do you understand me clearly? You all have your tasks." He had not paused for an answer to his question out plunged on. "Your responsibilities. See that you carry them out. ^ is now" — he glanced at his watch—"six-thirty. Launch time is set at four a.m. tomorrow. Very well. Dismissed, gentlemen, dismissed."

  They moved away from him, their boots echoing on the catwalk ^here he had gathered them. He did not concern himself with their *ac*s, the expressions they might now allow themselves. He had issued his orders. It was simply a matter of telescoping the launch schedule from twenty-four hours to nine and a half. The task could be accomplished—

  — must be. The American was still loose, and his sense of Serov s ability to stop him had diminished. His sense of other and larger failures had increased. He felt the distance to Moscow as tangibly as the black thread of a telephone cable, and Stavka at the other end of the connection. He would have to tell them, but not yet. His goal was clear. He must achieve the object of Lightning before there was any possibility that the American could reach a friendly border— reach anyone at all. Priabin might have persuaded him that it was best to try for a KGB office within the flight radius of the stolen helicopter.

  Their — their freedom maddened him like a goad. He was diminished by their being at large, hampered and confined by it. While they were at liberty, he had only the illusion of action the illusion of choice. They had evidence for the old men of the Politburo, including Nikitin the social reformer, the open hand of our society as Pravda called him again and again. Rodin's hands whitened in their intense grip on the guardrail of the catwalk. He was blind to the scene below, as if undergoing some strange fit or blackout. Nikitin and the others would raise their hands in horror and back away— disown the army and the laser weapon and the research and development program and continue with their emasculation of Russia's defenses. They would not stop until they had butchered the army, just as the pig Stalin had done — for other reasons — in the thirties. Hie motive did not matter; the country would be weak, ineffectual, unable to defend itself. The open hand of our society. baubles, television sets, cars, packaged food, was what Nikitin offered them, and, and they seemed to want it.

  Rodin shook his head. His vision cleared. The weapon was directly beneath him, loaded and locked into the shuttle craft's cargo bay. In minutes, the cargo doors would be closed, the signal would be given, and the shuttle would begin its journey on the transporter. It should take thirteen hours for the transporter to reach the launch gantry, twelve at best, and another three hours to hoist it atop the booster stages. He had ordered the whole operation to be completed in seven hours maximum. Beyond that, fueling would take another two hours, and final checks a further half hour. Then— launch. Nine and a half hours. Impossible, they claimed. Do it, he had insisted.

  Power, emanating from the scene below, the renewed urgency he saw and sensed, the speed of movement, the first noises of the closing of the cargo doors of the gleaming shuttle. Power—

  The logic of what he intended was inescapable, yet it seemed elusive. It was his responsibility. He had to demonstrate the weapons capabilities, like a crude sideshow trick to capture to attention of peasants. Otherwise, the Politburo would retreat, renounce—

  He nodded his head. The transporter s locomotives roared and howled below. Still-life for a long moment, everyone watching. Then, with a tremor like anticipatory nerves, the shuttle moved inches, then a foot, then more… A cheer, echoing in the vast spaces. He looked up rather than down, at the splinters of wood and the crazed metal that hung from the shadows of the roof. The American had broken in like a vandal, stealing evidence. The glimpse of the broken skylight, the vague future it sketched, confirmed his decision. Serov had to recapture them. Meanwhile, he would put the weapon into orbit — then think, consider the consequences of his decision. The shuttle was moving slowly, inexorably now toward the gaping main doors. He smelled diesel, ozone, metal, heard the cry of mechanical effort.

  If the American lived, if Priabin proved—? Russia would be vilified, the situation thrown back in their faces — and the army, he, would be responsible. He would have caused — what? War? No, not with the Americans, not war. What, then? He shook his head, not knowing, knowing only that if he did nothing, if Lightnin
g were to be foiled and defeated, there would be nothing — a weak army, a weak Russia. Surely they would understand, as he did. He nodded his head this time. The locomotives were halfway through the doors into the night. Stavka would agree with him, and, in time, so would Nikitin and the others.

  Bleakly, he qualified his optimism. Even if they didn't understand, he was not prepared to leave his country and his service defenseless, as the Americans seemed ready to do. He could find a calming sense of purpose in that.

  "I want to know which way out they plan to take — now!"

  Drugs — no. Beatings — no. Electrodes — no. Sensory deprivation — too long, and no. He wanted to employ the instruments of his craft. With Priabin, he had underestimated, miscalculated. Not taken the man seriously because he looked little more than a boy and had messed up badly in the past. Here, with Kedrov, it was different. He wanted to use the skills…

  But it was a matter of power, the power of his presence, his will. Like recovering a lost faculty. He knew that this was part of a program of recuperation, like a special diet for an invalid, and however much Serov wished to ignore insight, he could not avoid that debilitating image of himself. Priabin had held a knife at his throat and he could all but feel its vile trickle now as his throat constricted with remembered fear and present hate. His broken arm throbbed, but he could easily have clenched his fist and beaten it time and again into Kedrov's face, lying there on the pillows and looking helplessly up at him. He had to gut Kedrov by will and presence alone, without the other aids.

  Kedrov's eyes blinked a number of times. Serov could see his soft, exposed throat swallowing, again and again. Antiseptic and the other disliked hospital smells filled the small, narrow room in which Kedrov had been restored to something like his former self; drained of the drugs, his mind put back together.

  Eventually, Kedrov said in a hoarse whisper, his throat evidently sore from tubes: "I don't know. I don't know anything." He shook his head slowly from side to side like an uneasy sleeper to emphasize his denial.