by Thomas Craig
The operator typed frantically at his keyboard. The map, like a rectangle of stained glass upright on a trestle, changed in a series of eye-hurting jolts. Each time, the area covered by the map enlarged. It was the effect of a camera rushing away from a place, a jerky, interrupted view such as the cosmonauts aboard the shuttle might have had, if they ever looked down and back. Finally, when the operator looked up, the blue smear of the Caspian's eastern coastline soiled the left-hand edge of the map, yellow desert filled the bottom half, the Aral Sea was little more than a large puddle, and mountains began to rise in the southeastern corner. Millions of square miles; hundreds of thousands, at the least.
Rodin studied the map, then turned on Priabin.
"You think he's won?" he said. It was hardly a question.
"No," Priabin admitted. "I think he's lost."
As if to confirm some pessimistic hospital diagnosis, the voice of the shuttle commander was suddenly loud in the room.
"Baikonur Control, this is Kutuzov. We have OMS cutoff." The voice warmed Rodin's chill features.
"I think you're right," he said, and turned back to the map. "He could still be anywhere in that nowhere," he added in a murmur.
"Flying low and on an erratic course," Priabin replied. Again, they seemed the only two insomniacs in a room of sleepers; the only two who understood each other and the situation. "There's no one out there to see or hear him — hardly a soul, anyway. He's gone." He sensed the pleasure in his voice, but did not regret it. And Serov Was dead.
"You think so?" Rodin asked.
The general had turned to him now, not as to some trusted adviser but rather to an opponent who had somehow earned his reject. And who would be beaten and eliminated, Priabin realized. There was a cold and malevolent glitter in the old man's eyes. Valery and Serov were both dead. His son was off his conscience.
Priabin, nevertheless, nodded in a studiedly casual way.
"I think so," he repeated, moving closer to Rodin. He pointed at the map. "It will be dark for another three hours and more. Hes amid ground clutter as far as radars concerned, this whole area is uninhabited for the most part. He's the best pilot they have — we know that only too well. He's gone, General. He's gone, all right."
Rodin paused, then his fingers clicked and he snapped out: "Fuel! He exploded the fuel store, you said. How much fuel did he take on board — any? Well, do you know?"
Voices leaking from the radio, as depressing as continuous rain against summer windows. Not here, gone to earth, no trace, not here, gone…
Their content never varied. Gant had, to all intents and purposes, disappeared. Almost, Priabin thought with an irony that he savored, as if the aircraft he flew were invisible.
"Sir — I have an answer," the lieutenant announced breathlessly.
"Well?"
"Most of the store was destroyed. Some empty drums were away from the fire — the aircraft would have been fueled up, anyway, comrade General, sir. So what—?"
"What has he done? I don't know, lieutenant, but I am willing to stake that he has more than enough fuel for his journey. Wouldn't you, Priabin?"
Rodin nodded. "Oh, yes, this American is trying to make it all the way home."
"Which means," Priabin realized, blurting out the words as if they were a cry of pleasure, "you have to stop, cancel Lightning until you catch him."
"I shall cancel nothing."
"Unless you catch him it doesn't matter if it takes him a month to get home. He has the proof."
"Then he must be found."
"You have to stop it."
"No!" Rodin thundered. 'The American has to be found!"
"You won't be able to do that, General."
Rodin studied Priabin with a malevolence that distorted his features. He rubbed his chin feverishly. His eyes gleamed.
"You think not? That's some old agricultural variant of an Antonov he's flying — a crop-spraying aircraft. Wherever he is headed, south or west — and however deviously — he can't travel fast enough-He's racing daylight, and he can't win." He turned his back to study the enlarged area shown on the map. His left hand waved vaguely yet repeatedly, as if he were conjuring something from the computer image. In the center of the display, the maddened insects of the search continued to buzz and jerk and twist in their separate courses. Rodin continued speaking, addressing no one other than Priabin. "I calculate he will have to run for a full hour in daylight, whichever route he takes." He turned back to Priabin. "Which means we shall set a trap for our friend. Using every aircraft and helicopter we can lay our hands on. West and south — slam the doors in his face. Mm?" His confidence had become amused. "Well, Colonel?"
After a long silence, Priabin said: "I see. You'll be waiting for him. However—"
"However nothing. We'll find him — and kill him. Meanwhile, there's work to do." He glanced at the men in the room as if for the first time. "Lieutenant — you will continue the search within the Baikonur perimeter. His aircraft may have been damaged in the— explosion." There was only the merest hesitation in his voice. "Responsibility for coordinating the larger search will pass to me."
"Sir," the lieutenant snapped out.
Rodin turned to his staff officers, who became animated, full of small, impatient movements.
"Gentlemen, we have a laser weapon to place in orbit. Shall we go?" Heartiness answered by smiles and the bright eyes of younger men than they were. Rodin was blithe. He had no doubt that Gant would be caught, Priabin thought, no doubt at all.
I'm in no doubt, either, he was forced to confess. Gant would be running for Turkey, he wouldn't risk Afghanistan again, the way he had come in. He was going west. Where the forces that could be mounted against him were massive, the entire Caucasus and Transcaucasus military districts. They were frontline, not like Central Asian district. Aircraft, missiles, helicopters. And Gant would be running the gauntlet to the border for a whole hour of daylight. The desperation of their need to destroy him would ensure their success. By the time it was daylight, Rodin would have destroyed the American shuttle. From the moment that happened, the whole country couldn't afford Gant's survival.
Rodin waved his hand; dismissing everything with the gesture except Lightning and Gant.
"You will accompany us, Colonel," he snapped, leaving the room.
The hidden light over the bathroom mirror gave his features an unhealthy, exaggerated pallor. He inspected his face minutely, reminding himself to use the eyedrops to clear the red streaks from the whites of his eyes. He tossed his head without amusement. Nikitin and his entourage were waiting until they saw the whites of his eyes. They were in no hurry to open fire. He rubbed his chin. Get rid of the stubble, the shadow, too. If he slept — take the pills— the dark stains beneath his eyes might fade enough. If not, then makeup would do it.
At the banquet given by the president of the Swiss Republic for the visiting dignitaries, he had waltzed with his host's plump wife, her white, smooth arm resting lightly on his shoulder, heavily manacled with diamonds. Their glancing lights had become almost hypnotic. While they danced, he automatically moving and responding to the woman's platitudes, he had recalled the Inauguration Ball and the first dance with Danielle as First Lady. The roars of applause and inebriated and triumphant voices had drowned the quieter whispers and imperatives of the lobbyists and place-seekers and time-servers. Later, Joni Mitchell had sung; people had talked of another Camelot. Ridiculous, but possible to believe then, that first night.
Invitation to the dance; of folly. He had tripped as lightly as Dorothy down a yellow brick road of his own devising. It was in reality a Soviet illusion, dazzling him like the diamonds on the wrist of the Swiss President's wife. The prize had been peace and a place in history. He had made a greedy snatch at both of them; and lost both.
He shook his head. No, you haven't lost your place in history, he instructed himself. Just switched roles, hero-into-villain. You'll be remembered, boy, and how…
The sun had come up, cl
ear and cold, that morning after the Inauguration Ball. On the White House lawn, heavy, clean snow. The Washington Monument like an inverted icicle, the Lincoln Memorial, distant, clean and massive against the pale sky. He'd breathed deeply, and he could hear, as if in his blood, Martin Luther King's speech from the steps of the memorial and the vast murmur of the crowds. Portentously, he had murmured, clutching his arms across his chest because of the cold, I have a dream, too.
… not anymore you don't, he told the now-haggard image in the mirror that was tiredly cleaning its teeth. Not anymore.
The satellites and the shuttles were obsolete. As from tonight, with the launch of the Soviet Raketoplan. The U.S. was ten years behind, however much money Congress and the administration approved once the truth came out. From tonight, while he had waltzed with a platitudinous, plump Swiss wife with too many diamonds on her throat and wrist, they could do anything they wanted — shoot down satellites, shoot down Atlantis or any of the shuttles, anything they wanted. He couldn't call their bluff. He had no proof, there was no proof.
Dick Gunther had whispered in his ear, during the fish course, that the Soviets had confirmed the launch from Baikonur. A historic occasion… a glimpse of the future—was there an irony in that statement? Nikitin had joked about the rendezvous in orbit with Atlantis. Exchanging comic books and chocolate bars, was that what he had said? Yes, adding while we make the real exchange here, my friend.
He spat toothpaste and saliva into the wash basin, swilled out his mouth. Strangely, there was still that stale taste.
The scent of the turbine fuel was heady and sweet on the chilly, dark desert air. The smell hung about the Antonov because the late night was windless and empty. The faint hissing of the fuel in the hose and the whirring of the pump could not be heard above the Antonov's feathering engine. The wing quivered beneath his feet. He had to keep the engine idling to operate the pump driving the fuel from the chemical tank into the tanks in the wings. He had squatted on his haunches on the wing, the light of the flashlight dimly illuminating the pages of the school atlas open on his knees. The yellow-brown of desert stretched around the position of his index finger. He was two and a half hours from Baikonur and four hundred miles to the southwest of the complex — there, still more than a hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea. He fixed the point in his mind where he would cross the coast, then traced his route toward the oil wells marked southeast of Baku. Their flares in what remained of the night would give him a visual fix as he passed to the south of them, just above the water.
He closed the atlas with a snap, listening to the noise of the engine. Everything was familiar, gave confidence. The noises of an airplane, the empty night. He stood up and stretched.
Stretched away tiredness and cramps. The five hundred and more miles ahead of him, the four hours' flying, distanced him from Past and future. They would not find him, not while it remained dark and the land was empty; and he had no need, not yet, to consider the dawn and the trap waiting to be sprung at first light. It was easy to understand what Rodin would decide, and easy, for the moment, to ignore it. It was like a time-out called by both teams. He'd seen the distant navigation lights of aircraft against the stars. Heard voices on the radio, picked up glimpses of them on radar. But it had all been unreal, not dangerous.
He looked up at the night. The moon had gone. Five in the morning, local time. His westward flight extended the night, as if he carried darkness with him like a cloak, which would disappear a hundred miles short, almost an hour before he reached the Turkish border. As soon as they saw him — and he knew they would — he would scream Mayday on the broadest wave band; scream the whole story.
Gant shook his head.
He had begun to believe in his survival. He did not want to envisage daylight. He rubbed his eyes. Navigating by compass and the stars — and the school atlas — tired him, the noise of the Antonov was a constant assault, but those things did not matter. They were elements of surviving, and familiar. He could cope. Distance from Baikonur was like a constant, measured flow of adrenaline.
In every direction, emptiness undulatingly stretched away from him. The uninhabited northern part of the Kara Kum Desert. Somewhere, a rock split, the noise like gunfire, startling him. The shock had no reverberation. He was calm. The whole ballgame now, that was what he wanted. The videotape cassette delivered; the means of winning. It meant he had to survive, cross the frontier. It was him now, against everyone and everything, and the idea did not unnerve him. Not yet.
The wing tanks should be almost full by now.
"One half-orbit distance achieved, Kutuzov "
"Roger, control. Forty-five minutes since satellite release. Countdown to PAM ignition at — fifteen seconds and mark. Over."
"Roger, Kutuzov. Fifteen seconds and counting."
Rodin was smiling. It was as if there were two smiles on his lips at the same moment. The small one at the fiction of referring to the laser weapon as a satellite — in the event of transmission interception and decoding — and the larger satisfaction of the countdown, like that of a cat with cream on its whiskers. Ten seconds were all that remained until the payload assist modules small solid-propellant motors automatically fired to lift the laser battle station toward its thousand-mile-high orbit over the Pole.
Kutuzov was in a two-hundred-mile-high orbit, circling the earth every ninety minutes. Its cargo doors had opened an hour and a half before, the shuttle had maneuvered into position, the laser weapon on its motors had been set spinning in the hold, then unlocked to drift away from the shuttle. Now, half an orbit later, its motors were about to fire. Five seconds.
Priabin stood at the back of the narrow command room like a newspaper reporter allowed to observe events without playing any part in them.
Everything had gone smoothly, there had been no hitches. Rodin was winning his race with Gant and with his own country. To watch him was like being told that one's calm, elderly neighbor was a dangerous madman, then becoming alert for signs of disorder, irrationality, even violence. But there was nothing. The general was blithe, tense at moments, jocular, expansive, silent in turn. There were no signs of madness, simply the sense that this room and the vast control room below its windows were his entire world. Institution. They were all mad here. And unstoppable. He knew that with only too great a certainty. He was there because it amused Rodin to have him witness his own helplessness. Watching history unfold, mm, Priabin? he had snapped at him at one moment, when the cargo doors of the shuttle opened and the camera displayed the action on a dozen screens at once. A rare privilege, he had added, for a mere policeman. Laughter in the crowded, orderly room.
They had no thought of consequences, only of authority. The demonstration of their power. Outside this institution of theirs, with its intoxicating illusion of omnipotence, there existed only the Politburo. No other world, no populations, no enemy country, no other superpower. They were engaged in a struggle with their political masters — soon their servants? Priabin nodded in gloomy confirmation. If they didn't cause a war, they'd win what they wanted. The institution would control everything.
The madhouse. The efficient, normal-seeming, clubby madhouse.
Ignition of the PAM's motors. Priabin winced and waited for the voice of the shuttle's commander to confirm motor ignition. He could clearly envisage the laser weapon flashing up into the darker darkness, away from the earth. Rodin was as remote as Kutuzov and the now moving Lightning weapon.
T plus ten seconds.
"Baikonur, this is Kutuzov."
"Go ahead, Kutuzov
The voices were uttering feed lines to arouse the pleasure of this room's inhabitants. He glanced at a screen beside him.
Before the shuttle commander could reply, he heard someone say in a surprised, even pained voice: "Comrade General, we're not getting a confirm signal from the PAM."
Then the Kutuzov voice: "Baikonur, PAM ignition nonfunctional. Repeat, we do not have PAM burn."
Rodin's cry broke i
n the room, startling men who, a moment earlier, had been somnolent with anticipated pleasure.
"What has happened? Answer me. What's wrong, Kutuzov— what has gone wrong?" It shook Priabin to attention. On the screen beside him, the fiber-optic map showed the twin wiggles, red and white, of the two shuttles' orbits, separated by half the world. On a second screen, the open cargo doors of the Kutuzov and the empty cargo bay.
No ignition, then—
No ignition!
"Baikonur, this is Kutuzov. We're showing a nonignition on the PAM's motors."
"Backup!" Rodin cried.
"Backup systems show nonignition, sir."
"Manual emergency trigger!"
"No response from the PAM motors, sir."
There was a tight, stifling silence in the room, the only chatter from machines, the humming and clicking of electrics.
"Sir, telemetry reports tracking the — satellite." The officer remembered the fiction. "It hasn't left orbit, sir. It's not moving."
Priabin glanced toward a clock on the wall. Six forty-five. Recognition of time made him think of Gant. Two and a half hours or more since he had taken off, incinerating Serov and a gunship crew to enable him to do so. Perhaps he was halfway, or less, to Turkey. Time, time… delay.
"Not moving?" It was a challenge rather than a question.
"Telemetry confirms the weapon is stationary in its original orbit."
"Where it cannot be targeted and fired!" Rodin stormed.
Time…
Had the solid-fuel motors on the weapon fired, there would have been a maximum of two hours before the battle station reached its final altitude and been ready to fire at the American shuttle. Time-" how much time now? A systems failure in the ignition of the PAM had elongated time like elastic, stretching it in—
Gant's favor?
No, Gant would be stopped at the border. Daylight would be the brick wall with which he would collide and die.