by Thomas Craig
He turned back to the men in the room, his face enraged. Gant was on foot, he had to be, or holed up somewhere. On the collectives, they were turning out their bedrooms, their cupboards, their privies for any sign of him. Everything had been or was being searched. It was ridiculous, unbelievable that they could find no trace of him.
"Ask them," he said hoarsely, waving a hand in front of him. It was an admission of bafflement, of weakness, but he had to make it. Then he'd settle Priabin. But first… "Ask them — every officer out there. I want ideas. Call every one of them in turn and ask for their ideas."
"Sir, that could take—"
"I don't care how long it takes!" Serov stormed. "They're the people on the spot. Ask them. Well, get on with it — get started!
He was hot, sweating profusely with his efforts at the wobble pump. He paused only to wipe his sleeve across his brow or to glance at the watch on his wrist. Nothing else interested him; he was unconcerned with the cold, empty landscape around him-He was oblivious to the walkie-talkie thrust into his breast pocket-He had almost filled the chemical tank in the Antonov's cabin with kerosene. It was three-thirty in the morning.
He worked furiously at the pump, bobbing over it like some frantic lifeguard over the body of a rescued swimmer, attempting empty him of water. Watch, brow, pump — his horizons. In his haste, he had knocked over a drum of kerosene. Its sweet smell made his head spin. The odor was all around him like an invisible cloud.
Three thirty-two. He checked the gauge. He had transferred two hundred and ninety gallons to the chemical tank. Empty drums lay on their sides around him like litter. Spilled kerosene stained the ground. The loosened tarpaulin crackled and snapped behind him in the occasional gusts of wind. Helicopters had passed in the distance, always to the north. No vehicles had come down the track toward the hangar or the fuel compound.
He cradled his back in his hands for a long time, while his breathing returned to normal. Eventually, he crossed to the tractor. His strength seemed to ebb at the thought of the battery and its weight. You can lift it, you can… He glanced at the Antonov. Close now, close.
He touched the ignition key of the tractor. Noise blurted from the walkie-talkie against his breast, stunning him. He whirled around in his seat as if someone were behind him. The noise slowly resolved into a human voice. Into a demand for an acknowledgment from the dead GRU private.
He did not dare answer.
His eyes frantically studied the night sky, examining individual stars, expecting them to shift, move, resolve themselves into navigation lights. They did not.
"Acknowledge."
They knew the man's name, his rank, his number. They wanted to speak to him, question him.
He did not dare reply.
But if he didn't, they'd come.
17: Fires in the Night
He did not dare acknowledge.
Gant turned the ignition key, and the tractors engine roared. The noise clamored, drowning the small, insistent voice from the walkie-talkie. He put the tractor into gear, turning the wheel with a strength that surprised him; comforted him, too. The battery's bulk seemed to have increased. It dominated his thoughts. He accelerated along the side of the hangar, his eyes constantly checking the sky above and around him. Only stars, only the fading moonlight—
The voice was apparent again. While it repeated its summons over and over, it lost its threat. He turned into the hangar. The huge rear tires crushed something that cracked audibly, the wingtip of the stripped Antonov brushed against the top of the cab. He felt a tug at the tractor, heard a tearing noise. The door of the Battery Room was visible ahead of him as he turned on the tractor's headlights. Splashing light no longer mattered. He halted the tractor and stepped down.
As he entered the confined space of the room and the engine noise diminished, he realized that there was no sound from the walkie-talkie. He held it to his ear for a moment — no, nothing. He almost wanted to shake it like some clockwork toy that refused to work, but thrust it back into his breast pocket. He looked at his watch. Three thirty-eight. It had begun; suspicion, realization, counteractivity.
Breathing deeply, he checked the dials on the charger. The battery was almost fully charged. He undipped the leads, tested the bulk of the battery, felt for the carrying handle; it hardly slid more than a few inches as he heaved at it. He groaned aloud. Stood back-
The bench on which the battery rested was a few feet from the floor. He would damage the battery for certain if he dropped it.
Come on, come on, he raged at himself. Try.
He turned to the tractor, headlight eyes staring at him, making him blink and squint. Come on!
He moved behind the bench, pushing at the battery. It slid reluctantly to the edge, almost teetering there? in danger of falling. He checked, then moved alongside the battery. He was sweating feverishly. He gripped the carrying handle in both hands and tugged. The battery slid off the bench onto the floor with a hideous concussive noise. He shone the flashlight but could find no damage. Back bent, he dragged the battery by its handle out of the Battery Room, across the dusty concrete to the tractor. His breathing was like a punctuated groaning.
This was the last thing, the last task. He gripped his arms around the battery, heaving and straining at it. He staggered with the weight, lurching against the side of the tractor, thrusting the battery like a ram against the cab, against, in, into the cab… gasped for breath, back aching, arms numb. He looked at the battery resting innocently on the floor of the cab, near the pedals.
Almost at once, a sense of his peril returned, and all but doubled him up with stomach cramps. He forced himself up into the cab. Accelerated slowly, the cramps passing. He drove out of the hangar, almost afraid to look up. Then making himself quarter the sky. Stars, moon, darkness. Nothing moved. Nothing on the track, either. He rounded the hangar, heading toward the clearly visible aircraft. Drew up next to it.
Three forty-three.
He slid the tractor inch by inch alongside the open battery compartment in the Antonovs tail. His hands were light on the wheel, his foot gentle on the pedal. He watched over his shoulder. Closer, closer. He could not attend to the night sky now; his horizon had become the edge of the cab, the distance to the open flap.
Yes!
He switched off the engine and jumped down. Silence gradually seeped into his hearing. Silence, still. Only minutes now.
He would have to heft it into the compartment before rigging it. Stow and rig — how long? It won't matter shit if you don't get it into the compartment. He positioned himself, feet slightly apart, arms at each side of the battery, then he bent and strained, as if about to hurl the battery into the open flap. Paused, tried to raise his body, move his arms as they cracked with the strain. Lifted the battery, staggered in a turn, expelling his breath in a huge shout.
The battery banged into the compartment. He lurched forward with the effort and with the frantic desire to stop it from falling backward toward him. If it did, then he would never be able to hold it, would fall with it.
His imagination was feverish with anticipation, so that his hands felt as if the battery were beginning to topple. He thrust at it frantically, struggling it farther into the compartment, finally feeling it tilt into the shallow tray in which it was normally secured. Heaved it again without any sensation in his hands that its bulk had been squared as he intended, then he dimly felt it drop firmly into the tray and remain still. He kept his hands on the battery to calm them as sweat broke out all over his body, as if produced not by his effort but by the trembling weakness afterward. Christ!
He wiped his mouth with the back of one quivering hand. Three forty-five.
Where were they now? Suspicion or realization? Even counteractivity? Somewhere between realization and action, he decided. Close—
T minus fourteen minutes.
The countdown clock in the security room had been readjusted once more as Rodin shaved further minutes from the launch procedures. Serov glanc
ed up at it. It seemed to bear little relationship to the activities of the room and its occupants; as if the tinted windows comprising the wall between himself and the rest of mission control had become completely opaque. The scenes on the television screens were unaccompanied by noise or words. Launch pad, the strange steam of vaporizing fuel, the garish lights, the images from the flight deck of the shuttle; all somehow less real than the fiber-optic map and the radio connection with one corporal driver.
"Why not?" he repeated. "Why can't you raise him?" He addressed the words to the ceiling. If the man failed to pick up his words, they would be repeated by the radio operator. He wished to remain detached.
But why did the countdown clock intrude at the very edge of his peripheral vision? It had nothing to do with the American. He could not ignore it. Thirteen minutes thirty. It was three-forty in the morning, his eyes were gritty with tiredness, his body stale and beginning to acquire an odor within its uniform. Yet his brain refused to be weary; it leaped and jumped with electricity.
He turned his back completely on the countdown clock.
"Well?" he demanded.
… no idea, comrade Colonel," he caught by way of reply.
"And there were two aircraft in that hangar?"
"Yes, comrade—"
He interrupted: "You were certain they were unusable?"
"The chief engineer explained—"
"What did he say — exactly?" Three forty-one. Time seemed to be accelerating. His mind obeyed the diminishing time, not with anxiety or fear but with a sense of keeping pace, even overtaking. His body itched for action. "Exactly."
All the checks, all the calls they had made, and only one failure to respond — this one a GRU private guarding two aircraft.
"One of them was stripped right down. We could see that for ourselves."
"And the second one?" His tone was at one level of intensity, the volume of his words raised but constant; as if addressing a large crowd.
"… battery on charge ready to—" he caught, but his mind had plucked up his attention. He was ahead of the explanation outrunning the passing moments.
'Then it is only the battery!" he bellowed at the ceiling, his head spinning, the windows now completely black and opaque. "If the battery were replaced in the aircraft it could fly!"
"Comrade Colonel, I don't—"
"Idiot!" he yelled. There was a triumph in his voice, large and unarticulated. But even as he shouted the single word, he felt that foilure had gripped his throat, constricting it. He could already, he could — dear God, the American had an aircraft! The windows no longer seemed opaque. The whole of mission control's huge extent rushed against the glass, clearly visible. He could at once pick out Rodin on the far side of the room, behind a glass panel similar to the one that divided him from the main room. Opponent. "Idiot!" he choked. "And now we can't raise your companion. Do you think by any remote chance he might be dead?" He waved his hand. "Cut that clown off. Get me the collective's chief engineer — whoever knows about that plane. Hurry."
He paused on some mental outcrop. He glanced at the upright toap, its violent colors shifting and blending and then standing out starkly like lights at evening. What should he—? What decision? A wrong move and—
What, what, what?
Serov dimly felt his nails digging into his palm. He was aware of mission control, aware of the countdown clock, which now seemed to have raced ahead of him. What should he do?
Voice of the radio operator calling the collective. No one would be attending to the radio at this time in the morning. Mistake—
"Cancel that call," he yelled, surprising them and himself. Their faces turned to him, expectant, even demanding.
American… aircraft that needed only a battery… three forty-three in the morning… the temperature of the room, his mind a vast darkness lit with fires… his collar tight, faces looking in his direction, looking for direction.
Noise from the radio, another radio, a gunship calling in — map, colors flowing, then solid for a moment, white like a star. Gunship—
"Order — order," he repeated more clearly, growling his throat free, "that gunship to pick me up — now. Order the nearest gunship to pick me up. Order the others to rendezvous at, at the collectives hangar. Immediately." He sounded breathless, young and somehow absurd. But they obeyed. "Ask how long rendezvous will take, how long it will take to pick me up here." His hands waved like those of a conductor, drawing sense from the chaos in his own head. "At the collective, wait until I get there. Hurry."
He grabbed up his overcoat and cap, even his gloves, from the chair against the windows where he had left them a long time before. Saw Priabin, who was at that moment looking up at him. From his hand of cards.
Serov almost raised his hand, almost clenched his fist at the KGB colonel, to threaten, to crush all in a single gesture. But did not. Priabin. His time was close. The American first.
"Hurry."
Three forty-four. Ten minutes to launch time.
Ten minutes to launch time. Dimly, Priabin could make out Serov's bulk, his saturnine features beyond the tinted glass. Three forty-four on half the clocks in the room, ten minutes to launch on the other half. And the countdown ringing mechanically through the whole vast area. Cards in his hand — ridiculous, crazy. Serov's image more real at the glass for a moment than anything else. Then the man disappeared. Something of the urgency with which his shadow vanished communicated itself to Priabin, and his voice faltered in his bid. Bridge. Himself, surprisingly the guard — patronizing thought — and two computer technicians whose tasks were completed. At a loose end, like many others; catered for by a rest area in one corner of the huge room, marked off only by a ring of chairs. Cards, tobacco — no drink, naturally — the atmosphere of some company's staff club. Ludicrous.
Serov's sudden urgency worried Priabin.
"What was that, Colonel?" the guard asked almost affably. His tone suggesting Priabin wasn't a prisoner. "What did you bid?"
"Two clubs," he replied automatically. Serov's purpose — himself or Gant? It had to be one or the other. Immediately, his bruises ached again, his face a mask of dull pain. "Two clubs," he repeated like a spell.
"No bid," one of the technicians murmured, tapping ash from his cigarette, after pausing for a moment to regard the magnified voice of the countdown.
"Nine minutes thirty and counting."
The room murmured, called, moved around them like a tropical forest, its noises and activities lush and dense. Unreal. If he turned his head even slightly Priabin could see, through the glass panels of the command booth, Rodin and his senior staff grouped like visiting dignitaries. He felt anesthetized. The room worked on him like a strange new drug, inducing a pleased, satisfied tiredness. The guilt had left him; even the heap of coats under which he had buried Katya was no longer clear in his imagination. Anna and Valery Rodin had retreated to an even greater distance. There was only the room and the lunacy of playing bridge with his captors while the countdown rushed toward launch time.
"T minus nine minutes and counting."
Serov emerged from the door below the tinted glass windows of the security room. Hurrying, urgent, almost possessed. And yet he spared a glance for Priabin. And a quick, greedy smile. Priabin's head cleared. It could only be Gant.
Serov strode toward one of the control room's doors, pursued by two of his team. Overcoat over his arm, cap in hand, hurrying as if tate for an appointment. Priabin turned to where Rodin stood amid his staff officers. He hadn't noticed Serov's departure.
Serov had found Gant, at least knew where he could lay his hands on him. And seemed assured of doing so. The grin of success. Priabin was shaken out of his lassitude. Rodin — Rodin had simply walked away from him at the top of the steps, after his confidences regarding his wife. Simply walked away and had addressed no word to him since then. Obsessed with the countdown, the launch.
And now Serov, too, was preoccupied. Rodin would launch and Serov would capture G
ant. Lightning would happen.
Gant released the brake. It seemed a massive effort. The Antonov struggled forward, unleashed and awkward, then bumped and rolled across the sand and straggling grass toward the flattened, undulating runway. The wind was light, less than five knots, and blowing at an angle across the runway. No problem.
He increased the engine power. The Antonov bucked over the uneven ground. Its power was feeble, yet it was enough for him. The din of the engine banged like hammers in the cockpit and echoed down the narrowing fuselage behind him. The large-scale local maps lay open on the copilot's seat, an adjustable light dimly glowing on their contours. Beneath them, a school atlas. He had found it thrust into a door pocket, and could not imagine why it was there or what it had ever been used for. On a cramped, ridiculous scale, desert stretched away for hundreds of miles in every direction. Gant did not concern himself with it.
He bent forward, craning his head in order to quarter the dark sky. Stars still in their vast orbits, no firefly movements among them. Luck was holding, had to hold.
He watched the needle on the torque meter as the wheels of the undercarriage jolted the aircraft onto the edge of the runway. Tyuratam and Baikonur were like a false dawn along the starboard horizon. He turned the aircraft, paddling the rudders, his two hands gripping the old-fashioned, primitive column. Old-fashioned but familiar.
He sensed the fat tires sitting on the runway, sensed the engine revs reach his requirement, sensed the slipstream buffet the rudder; sensed the flaps, all and every detail of the old Antonov. He was ready. Airborne, he would quickly become lost in the vastness surrounding the Baikonur complex. His luck was holding. He increased the power to the engines, sensed the light breeze, watched the starlit sky and its few weary, lumbering clouds, released the brakes, wanted to cry out as the airplane skipped forward on its tires.
He switched on the radio. Before, he had to remain silent and unknowing so that he might effect his escape, but now it did not matter, he needed to hear where they were. — moving lights, even before he began tuning the radio. They had come. He saw the billows of the nearing navigation lights as the gunship dropped out of the darkness toward him. Ahead of him!