Firefox mg-1

by Craig Thomas

  He wondered how he might bluff his way out. The nervous reaction had jolted him awake, and his pulse was hammering in his head, and he found it hard to catch his breath. Though he only half-suspected it, this latest, unexpected jolt was drawing vastly on his reserves of control. Clearly, above the levels of the blood's panic, he thought that Voskov would be a pampered individual, one likely to take unkindly to such an intrusion.

  Loudly, irritatedly, he called out: 'I am having a shower, whoever you are. What do you mean by disturbing me with your stupid questions?' To him, his voice sounded, in the steam-filled curtained hole, to be weak, high-pitched, unconvincing. He heard a cough, deferential, abashed, from the man in the rest-room. He peered through the steam and the shower-curtain. There was a shadow, against the light from the door into the bathroom. It was two or three steps across the space of tiles between himself and that shadow.

  'Sorry, Colonel, but…'

  'This is your idea, of course — soldier? It is not Colonel Kontarsky's direct order that the rest-room should be searched, and myself questioned?' He felt his voice gaining power, arrogance. He could play the part of Voskov — it was a part close to his own professional arrogance, expressing his own contempt.

  'I — orders, sir?' he heard, and knew that the man was lying.

  Gant hesitated, until he thought the moment was almost past and he was too late, then he barked: 'Get out, before you find yourself reported!'

  He waited. No doubt the man could see his shadow, as the shower-curtain wafted against his skin, drawn in by the heat. He wondered whether the man would dare cross that space of cold tiles, just to be sure. He had left the gun, Chekhov's regulation Makarov automatic, in the pocket of Voskov's bathrobe, hanging behind the bathroom door. He cursed himself for that lapse, and wondered, at the same moment whether he could kill the man with his hands before a shot was fired.

  The moment passed. Again, Gant had the sense of something massive, a whole world in orbit, turning over, leaving him spent, tired, drained.

  'Sorry, sir — of course. But — be careful, sir. The Colonel issued us with instructions to kill — the man's dangerous. Good luck with the flight, sir,' he added ingratiatingly. Gant felt his blood pumping like a migraine in his temples.

  He hardly heard the bathroom door close behind the man who had been only a voice, and a shadow against the light. When he realised that the patch of light which had outlined the KGB man was no longer there, he stepped from behind the shower-curtain, and fumbled in the pocket of Voskov's bathrobe. He clutched the gun in both hands, then pressed the cold metal of the barrel against his temple. Then he held his left hand in front of his face. He saw the tremor, faint, but increasing. His face registered the fear, as if he were looking at something outside himself, something inevitable that he could not prevent. He sagged, dripping wet, onto the seat of the lavatory, head hanging, gun held limply between his knees.

  Gant was terrified. He knew he was about to have the dream again, that the last minutes had drained him of his last reserves of bravado, self-deception, and nerve. He was a limp rag, an empty vessel into which the dream would pour. He could not stop it now.

  He felt his muscles tightening behind his knees, in his calves. He knew he had to get dry, get into Voskov's pressure-suit while he could still move, before the paralysis that inevitably accompanied the images trapped him where he sat. He tried to get up, but his legs were a long, long way from his brain, and were rubbery and weak. He sagged back onto the seat. He punched at his thighs, as if punishing them for a rebellion — he struck himself across the thigh with the barrel of the gun, but he felt little. The hysterical paralysis had returned, taken over…

  He was trapped, he knew. He could only hope that the dream, and the fit, would pass in time.

  He could smell burning in his nostrils, and the noise of the shower crackled like wood on a fire. He could smell burning flesh…

  * * *

  There was a kind of grotesque, mocking courtesy about the way in which Baranovich, Kreshin, and Semelovsky were served with their coffee and sandwiches at the side of the aircraft itself. While the technicians, including the still-grinning, obsequious, ironical Grosch, left the hangar for the restaurant in the adjoining security building, the three suspected men were ordered to remain by the junior KGB officer in command of hangar security. Guards stood with apparent indifference ten yards from them.

  Baranovich, as he sipped the hot, sweet liquid, was grateful that the KGB, as yet, seemed to have little idea of what to do with them. It would seem, he thought, that they had taken the easiest path, making sure that a number of eyes were upon them, at every moment. Baranovich smiled at Kreshin, whose lip trembled as he attempted to imitate the gesture.

  Baranovich said: 'I know, Bya, that it looks very much like a firing-squad, with the three of us with our backs to the plane, and the guards with their rifles at the ready.' Kreshin nodded, and swallowed, still trying to smile. 'Don't be afraid,' Baranovich added softly.

  'I — can't help it, Pyotr,' Kreshin replied.

  Baranovich nodded. 'I gave up being afraid many years ago — but then, it was when the flesh no longer seemed to call so very strongly to me.' He placed his hand on Kreshin's shoulder as the young man stood next to him. He felt Kreshin's frame trembling beneath his strong grip. Kreshin looked up at him, wanting to face the truth, and wanting to be told comfortable lies. Baranovich shook his head sadly. 'You love her very much then?'

  'Yes…' Kreshin's eyes were bright with moisture, and his tongue licked at his lower lip.

  'I — am sorry for that,' Baranovich murmured. 'That will make it very hard for you.'

  Kreshin seemed to come to a decision. Baranovich's hand was still on his shoulder, and the older man could feel the muscular effort the man was making, to control the tremor.

  'If — you, you can do this — then, so can I…' he said.

  'Good. Drink your coffee now, and warm yourself. That guard over there thinks you are afraid. Don't give him the satisfaction.' Unable to complete the heroic fiction, he added: 'Even if such ideas are nonsense, to an intelligent man…'

  'What do we do?' snapped Semelovsky, as if eager to complete the whole process, including his own demise. 'We have little time left. Kreshin and I have slowed the work on the tail-assembly as much as possible — but it is nearly complete.'

  Baranovich nodded. 'I understand. Grosch, my bête noir, my devil — he, too, will become suspicious if we do not finish within half-an-hour, or a little more.' He sipped at his coffee, and then took a bite from a hefty ham sandwich that had been brought down to him. 'Of course, you realise that our friends over there are indicating in no uncertain manner that — the game is up?' He looked at Semelovsky.

  'Of course — we knew that. The weapons trials would be our deadline.'

  'And — you don't mind?'

  'Do you?' Semelovsky asked pointedly.

  Baranovich looked at the muttering guards for a moment — at each of the four faces turned to him. He wanted to answer in the affirmative, to explain that life becomes harder to throw away, the older one gets, not easier. That it is the young who make glad sacrifices, for good causes or for bad. He wanted to explain that the old are tenacious of life, on any terms. Instead, feeling a heaviness of responsibility, and of guilt, he gave the answer he knew they both needed, and wished to hear.

  'No,' he said.

  Semelovsky nodded. 'There you are, then,' he said.

  Baranovich swallowed the bile of guilt at the back of his throat. He, it was, who had led them here, to this place, and who would lead them, in time, to the cellars, and the questions, and the pain.

  Baranovich was ruthless, with others, as with himself. He shrugged the guilt away and decided that he would, at least, grant them a quick death.

  'It has to be the fire we talked about — over there. No, don't look about like that… by the second prototype. One of us has to be over there for some reason at the time we decide the operation will start. What do yo
u think — what time shall we decide?'

  'Six-thirty is the latest possible!' Semelovsky snapped in his habitual fussy, irritated manner. 'I guessed it would come to that,' he added.

  'It is the only sensible place,' Baranovich said. 'Right in the area around the second prototype. As I said, it may damage the second plane, which will be to our American friend's advantage. Certainly, it will mean that this aircraft…' he tapped his hand on the cool metal of the fuselage at his side. 'This one will be ordered out of the hangar. If Gant appears at the right moment and climbs into the pilot's couch, no one will ask to see his papers, or his face.' He studied their reactions, saw the inevitability of death looking out from their eyes.

  Semelovsky nodded, his features softening. He said: 'I, for one, have no great relish at the thought of Colonel Kontarsky taking out on my skin the anger and frustration of his ruined career.'

  'You understand what I'm saying, Dya — also?' Baranovich asked.

  The young man was silent for some moments, then he said: 'Yes, Pyotr Vassilyeivich — I understand.'

  'Good. You have your gun?' Kreshin nodded. 'Good. That means that you, Maxim Dyich, will have to start the fire. Besides,' he added, smiling, 'you look the least dangerous.'

  'Mm. Very well. At — six-ten, I shall excuse myself, and make for the toilets. If a guard accompanies me, so much the worse for him!' The little, balding man seemed ridiculous as he puffed out his narrow chest, and squared his stooping shoulders. Yet Baranovich knew that Semelovsky was capable of killing, if necessary. In some ways, he was the most desperate of the three of them, the newly-converted zeal never having seemed to cool. He was a crusader.

  'Only if necessary are you to kill the guard,' Baranovich warned. 'We don't want you hurt.'

  'Not before I start the fire — eh?' Semelovsky's eyes twinkled. Baranovich could sense the challenge that the little man felt, the same kind of bravado, though Baranovich did not know it, that he had revealed at the gate when Gant was in the boot of his car.

  'No, not before.' Baranovich relaxed into the partial honesty of the moment. 'When you come out from the toilet, you will find the necessary materials stacked against the wall of the hangar, behind Prototype Two — some drums of fuel.'

  'I don't need to be told how to start a fire, Pyotr Vassilyeivich,' Semelovsky said, bridling.

  'I agree. Just make it big, and bright.'

  'It will be done.'

  'At six-twelve,' Baranovich said. 'Then you and I, Ilya, will have to cover the path to the second aircraft until the blaze is sufficient to distract all the security guards — all of them. Understand?'

  'Yes. We — are part of the distraction?'

  Baranovich nodded. He looked beneath the fuselage of the aircraft as he heard the sound of returning voices in the echoing hangar. 'Time to get back to work,' he said. He looked at his watch. 'Start counting the seconds now,' he said. 'It is five-twenty-three now. Synchronise your watches when you can do it without being observed.'

  He looked back at his two companions. Suddenly his eyes felt misty. 'Good luck, my friends,' he said, and turned to the pilot's ladder and began to ascend. Kreshin watched his back for a moment, and then he followed Semelovsky towards the tail of the Firefox. He glanced once in the direction of the guards, now being relieved and reporting back to their officer.

  Concentrate your hate on them, he told himself. Hate them, and what they represent, and what they do. Hate them…

  * * *

  Kontarsky looked at his watch. The time was seven minutes past six. He had just received a directive from the Centre that the Tupolev TU-144 airliner carrying the First Secretary, the Chairman of the KGB, and the Marshal of the Soviet Air Force had left Moscow, and was expected to land at Bilyarsk at six-thirty. Kontarsky had been profoundly shaken by the news. The plane was not scheduled to arrive until after nine. He could do little but wonder why the First Secretary should be precipitate in his arrival. He suspected that it was some kind of pressure put upon him, a calculated insult. The Tower had been put on stand-by, to land the aircraft. There was nothing else he could do, except what he was engaged in at the moment, futile recriminations, coupled with the more practical step of once more contacting Priabin and, through him, receiving a progress report on the foreign agent who had penetrated Bilyarsk, and who was still at large.

  * * *

  A team of men sat at rickety tables in the bare duty-room in the security building, each analysing the reports of the teams who had combed the project area thoroughly. The final search had just been completed. Like the others, it had drawn a blank.

  Below them, in a smaller roorn, with white walls and powerful lights, Dherkov and his wife were being questioned. Each had been made to watch the other's suffering — and neither of them had told him what he wished to know. He was unable to admit the possibility that they knew nothing of importance. There had been too many frustrations, too many blind alleys. To him, and to the interrogators, they were merely stubborn.

  The doctor had used drugs. He had ruined the man's mind almost immediately, sending him into deep unconsciousness from which he had emerged incoherent. The woman, despite the massive jolt to her resistance that such damage to her husband must have been, still refused to betray the whereabouts of the agent, or his identity. Kontarsky had ordered the doctor to use the pentathol again, on her, but the doctor had been unwilling. Kontarsky had raged at him, but he suspected that the dosages were too small.

  Kontarsky's fingers drummed on the desk as he waited for his connection to his office at the Centre. Priabin could not be found, for the moment. Kontarsky's call was being transferred to the computer-room. As he waited, his eyes roved the team of men bent at their tables, in shirt-sleeves for the most part, intent, driven. No face turned up to him with an answer, with a possible line of enquiry. Kontarsky felt the bitter, selfish anger of a man who sees a fortune turn to ashes in his hands. He had felt, throughout the night, that he had only to reach out and he would grasp the answer. Each answer, each source of knowledge, had crumbled between his fingers. He felt trapped.

  Priabin was out of breath when he answered his superior's call. Kontarsky heard his voice clearly, though there was some quality of distance about it that might have been elation. His own stomach jumped at the proximity of a solution.

  'Colonel — we've got him. He's been identified!' he heard Priabin say, 'Colonel, are you there?'

  'Quickly, Priabin — tell me?' One or two of the nearest heads looked up, at the sound of Kontarsky's choked, quiet whisper. They sensed that the breakthrough had come.

  'He's a pilot… Mitchell Gant, an American…'

  'American?' Kontarsky repeated mechanically.

  'Yes. A member of their Mig squadron, the one they built to train their pilots in combat with Russian machines, the Apache group, they call it, designated by the Red Air Force and ourselves as the Mirror-squadron.'

  'Go on, Priabin. Why him?'

  'Obviously, sir, he knows our aircraft as well as anyone. He'd be a good choice for sabotage, or for analysis of information. Perhaps he intends a — close inspection of the Mig-31?' There was a silence at the other end of the line. The truth, huge and appalling, struck both men at the same moment. In the silence, Kontarsky's voice dropped like a feeble stone.

  'He — he can't be here for that…?'

  'No, sir, surely not. They couldn't hope to get away with it!'

  Kontarsky's voice trembled, as he said: 'Thank you, Dmitri — thank you. Well done.' The receiver clanged clumsily into its rest as he replaced it Kontarsky looked out over the team for a few moments, then he picked up the receiver again. He dialled the number of the guard-post at the hangar, and drummed his fingers as he waited.

  'Tsernik — is that you? Arrest Baranovich and the others — now!'

  'You've had news, sir?'

  'Yes — dammit, yes! I want to know from them where this agent is — at once. And let no one near that aircraft — no one, understand?'

  'Sir.' Tse
rnik replaced his receiver. Kontarsky looked around the room again, at the men at their futile paperwork. Then he looked at his watch. Eleven minutes past six. 'Some of you — all of you!' he shouted. 'Get down to that hanger now — no, half of you there, the rest search this building — quickly!'

  The room moved before him, as men gathered their coats, checked their weapons.

  One voice, distant, said: 'Who are we looking for, sir?'

  'A pilot — dammit, a pilot!' Kontarsky's voice was high, piercing, almost hysterical.

  * * *

  Baranovich watched the slight figure of Semelovsky as he emerged from the lavatory at the end of the hangar. The little man stepped away from the door and began crossing the hangar, unconcernedly it appeared at that distance: Baranovich waited. A guard had followed Semelovsky to the lavatory. Baranovich wondered whether he would emerge.

  Semelovsky reached the shadow of the PP Two, and the guard had still not appeared. Baranovich smiled, a smile of fierce success. Semelovsky, probably with a spanner or wrench, had killed the guard. He loosened the white coat which he wore on top of his overalls, not against the temperature, but to conceal the automatic thrust into the waistband of his trousers. Then he nodded, without looking in Kreshin's direction. He knew he would be watching for his signal.

  The work on the aircraft had been completed a little after six. Grosch, suspecting that Baranovich was dalaying completion of the work, but misconstruing the motive as simple fear, had returned to the restaurant, together with most of the other technicians and scientific team-leaders. One man, Pilap, an electronics expert like himself, had deliberately passed him as he left, nodding rather helplessly in his direction. Baranovich had been touched by the gesture, despite its futility.

  He reached into the pocket of his coat, and flipped over the switch on a tiny transmitter. Inaudibly, it transmitted to the beeper taped to Gant's arm, a one-to-the-second noise that would alert him to the fact that the diversion had begun. When Baranovich turned the switch over, the signal would become a continuous bleep, Gant's signal that he was to make his way to the hangar as quickly as possible. He turned his head to survey the distance between himself and the nearest guard. He estimated it at about twelve yards. The guards were still much in evidence — he counted four within twenty-five yards and, despite the hour of the morning, they did not seem tired, or inattentive. They had been changed too frequently to become thoroughly bored or fatigued.