by Craig Thomas
'If I try and pull myself out, I'll end up on my belly!'
Looking over the side of the cockpit, he saw Seerbacker's face looking up at him. Seerbacker was openly grinning. Steam billowed around him, snow flew up around the cockpit of the Firefox as the superheated steam was played carefully over the embedded wheels. Gant had not needed to warn Peck that if he played too much steam onto the tyres, at too high a pressure, he would, literally, melt them.
Peck had understood. He emerged from beneath the fuselage, looked up at Gant, and said into his handset: 'O.K., Major Gant — now, for God's sake, get out of here!'
Gant signalled him with the thumbs-up, closed the hood once more, checked the gauges, and opened the throttles, until the rpm gauge once more showed fifty-five per cent. He released the brakes, the aircraft jolted out of the pits which the wheels and the applied steam had made, and rolled forward. Peck, Seerbacker an the others were moving away swiftly, tugging the thick, snaking hoses after them. Already, men were emerging from the Pequod, dressed in civilian parkas, the decoy scientists and technicians who should, by virtue of Seerbacker's ploy, occupy the floe when the Russians arrived. Gant turned the aircraft, and headed down the floe, directly in the line of the runway. He kept the Firefox completely straight on course. He would need his own tracks on his return.
The grey sea was ahead of him. He searched for any sign of the Russian submarine. There was nothing. Probably, the captain had decided not to surface until he arrived and stopped engines at the Pequod's position, something to do with psychological surprise. Whatever it was, Gant was grateful on behalf of Seerbacker and his crew. No one would visually sight the Firefox.
He turned the plane in a semi-circle, lined up on his own tyre tracks in the surface snow, and opened the throttles. Almost immediately, he felt the restraint of the surface snow, the inability of the aircraft with normal take-off power to accelerate sufficiently. He could not use too much power. It would have the effect of digging in the nose, changing the relative airflow over the surfaces of the plane. He would, in fact, slow the plane if he used more power. There was little impression of speed until he passed over the spot on the ice where he had parked, and joined the smoothed, polished surface of the ice-runway blasted out for him by Peck and his men. Only now could he see the ridge, a tiny hump ahead of him. He could not see, in the poor visibility, the gap of thirty feet that had been carved in its face. The undercarriage shook free of the restraining snow, and he felt the plane lurch forward as if freed from glue or treacle. Now he was able to open the throttles, push up the rpm, and gather speed. The only impression of speed was from the crinkled, roughened edge of the runway as it flowed past him at an increasing rate. He had to be right in the centre of the crude runway because he couldn't use the brakes to steer on the ice. They would have no effect. The rudder would not operate effectively until he reached a speed of eighty-five knots. At that moment he was at a little more than fifty.
As his eyes strained into the shredding mist, he heard, coming from a great distance, but with utter clarity, Seerbacker's voice.
'Good luck, man. Can't stop to talk, we've got visitors!' The voice had come from the handset.
His body was chilled, but he sweated. The second it took for him to pass into that region of speed which returned the power of steering to him seemed like an age. Then his speed topped ninety knots, and he centred the Firefox smoothly on the runway. He eased open the throttles, and the rpm needle seemed to leap with a jerk across the face of the dial. He saw the gap rushing at him; now that his eyes had a point of focus in the diffused whiteness of the floe, he was suddenly aware of his speed, transferred from his dials to the landscape. In cold air, he recited to himself, he needed less distance for take off. He did not believe it, not for a split-second.
The gap leapt at him, the distance it had been from him eaten by the huge engines. He was through the gap at 150 knots, and 170 was his take-off speed. He shoved the throttles into reheat, and pulled back on the stick. He dare not now plough back into the soft surface snow where Peck had had no time to clear the runway.
He could see the snow — he swore that he could see it, the point where the runway of ice ended. It was impossible. It passed under the plane's belly as he hauled back on the stick. He knew the undercarriage was clear of the floe, yet there was no impression of climbing.
* * *
In the rear-view mirror, Gant saw a cloud of snow belly out behind him, caused by the sudden downthrust of the jets. The Firefox squatted, it seemed for an instant, nose-high, then, like a limb tearing itself free of restraining, glutinous mud, the aircraft pulled away from the floe. Gant trimmed flaps up, and retracted the undercarriage. The airspeed indicator flicked over, and he pushed the throttles forward. The plane kicked him in the back, and he felt the anti-G suit compensate for the sudden surge of acceleration. He checked the fuel flow, saw that all the needles were in the green, and hauled the aircraft into a vertical climb.
The climb towards the cloud took no more than a few seconds. As he entered the cloud, the Mach-meter crossed the figure 1 — then 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4…
The Firefox burst out of the cloud at 22,000 feet, into dazzling sunlight, cloudless, vast blue.
He had taken off heading due north. Now he set his course, punching out the coordinates for his crossing-point on the Finnish coast. He banked the plane round to a heading of 210 degrees, still climbing. The maximum altitude of which the Firefox was reputedly capable was in excess of 120,000 feet — more than twenty-five miles high. Gant intended to use as much of that staggering height as he could. It was unlikely, he knew, that he would be able to avoid infra-red detection, even at that height. However, moving as fast as the aircraft was capable, in a vast leap over the Barents Sea, it would be impossible for any interception to take place. A little before he crossed the coast, he would descend to sea level, and begin his complicated, top-speed dash across Finland to the Gulf of Bothnia, and Stockholm.
There was no aircraft that could touch him, no missile that could home on him, at that height, that speed. He smiled to himself as the altimeter indicated 50,000 feet and still climbing. Now, he thought, now he could put the Firefox through its paces, really fly the great plane…
There was a fierce, cold joy in him, his closest approximation to an ecstatic emotion. There was nothing to compare, he knew, not with this.
He had read the army psychiatrist's report in Saigon — he had broken into the records office, late at night. An emotional cripple, that's what they had called him, though not in those words — an emotional cripple scarred for life by his early experiences. That Clarkville crap that he had fed the head-shrinker, he'd based his judgement on that, his judgement of a man who had flown more than fifty combat missions, who was the best, the judgement of a fat-assed head-shrinker hundreds of miles from the nearest 'Cong soldier, or missile-launcher.
He calmed the adrenalin that was beginning to course through his system. There was no point, he told himself, no point at all. He was the best. Buckholz knew it, knew it when he picked him. The Firefox climbed through 60,000 feet.
There was no thought for Upenskoy, for Baranovich, and Kreshin, and Semelovsky, and all the others. Since he had left Bilyarsk, they had dropped from his mind, gone more completely than faded, sepia photographs of the dead on wall and mantel.
* * *
Tretsov saw him punching through 60,000 feet, the vapour-trail ahead and below him was clear against the grey sea across a gap in the cloud. He knew it was Gant. There was infra-red, but no radar image on his screen. It had to be the stolen Mig-31.
Tretsov's mind worked like surgical steel. He knew what he had to do. He knew Gant's file, knew his experience in combat. His own combat experience, in the old Mig-21, was limited to engagements with Israeli Phantoms in the Middle East as a very young pilot seconded to the Egyptian Air Force, one of a select few reinforcing the inedequate pilots the Red Air Force had trained. Gant was better than he was…
On paper.
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Gant had flown the Mig-31 for perhaps five hours — less. Tretsov had flown the aircraft for upwards of two hundred hours. Gant wanted to complete his mission. Tretsov had Voskov to avenge. And fear — always, the fear. He would kill Gant. He had to.
He had to get into the tail-cone of the other Mig, so that the missiles would have the best chance of homing on the heat-source of the huge engines — and because Gant's infra-red would only pick him up when it was too late to do anything about it. At that moment, watching the Mig still climbing steadily, he knew that Gant was not aware of him, that crossing his path and being on Gant's starboard flank, the infra-red's blind spot hid him temporarily. He would have to slot in swiftly behind the American, and then…
The Mig moved above him now, through his own cruising height of 70,000 feet, still climbing. He changed course, still holding a visual sighting on the contrail, confirming the information of his screen. He eased the Firefox PP 2 in behind the American until the bright orange blip on the screen was directly ahead of him, along the central ranging bar. The thought-guided weapons system launched two of the Anab missiles and he watched them slide up the ranging bars, homing on the brighter blip of the American's heat-source.
* * *
The ECM equipment bleeped horrendously in Gant's earphones, tearing at his memory. He saw the two missiles, sliding up the ranging bars towards him. Impossible, but there… The mind deliberated, refused to comprehend, sought the source of the heat-seeking missiles — even as the body responded, seized the electronic means of survival, reaching back into old patterns and grabbing at an old technique.
There was one, he knew, of avoiding infra-red missiles — only one chance. It had been used by Israeli pilots in the Six-Day War, and by Americans in Vietnam. If he could change direction with sufficient suddenness, then the heat-source from his engines would be lost to the tracking sensors in the nose of the missiles and they would be unable to maintain or regain contact with the Firefox.
He chopped the throttles, pulled the stick back and over into a zoom climb, seeking to bend the plane's course at an acute angle to his former course, removing the heat-source of his engines from the sensors of the closing missiles. He rolled the aircraft to the right at the same time, and allowed the nose to drop, following a curve which brought him under the line of the missile's path. His vision tunnelled with the G-effect. He stared at the G-meter, and saw that he was pulling plus 8-G. If his vision narrowed any more, he knew it would be the direct precursor of a black-out. Ten G, and he would black out for certain, and the plane could go out of control. All his vision now showed him was the ominous G-meter, the pressure suit a distant sensation as it clamped on his legs and stomach. He cursed the fact of finding himself with a lower G-tolerance at that critical moment in time.
The missiles, suddenly and violently altered in position on the screen, slid past him on their original course, past the point in space and time of expected impact. They had lost the scent and would continue, vainly, until their fuel ran out and they dropped into the sea.
He eased back on the stick, and his vision opened, like blinds being drawn in a room. His speed was beginning to fall off, and he found himself sweating desperately. He had almost been taken; like an inexperienced boy. There was nothing on the screen. Tretsov, though Gant did not know it, was still directly behind him and in the blind spot of the infra-red detection. A sense of panic mounted in him. He had to find the enemy visually, or not at all. He was blind, a blind man in the same room as a psychopath. The cold fear trickled down his body, inside the pressure-suit. He suspected the nature of the enemy, but would not admit it yet.
The pilot of the other plane — aircraft it had to be had obviously climbed to follow him, angry no doubt at his failure to press home the surprise, make the quick kill.
In the rear-view mirror, Gant caught a glint of sun-light off a metal surface. Still nothing on the radar. Now he knew for certain. Baranovich and Semelovsky had not immobilised the second Firefox by means of the hangar fire. Somehow, whatever damage that had been done had been repaired, and they had sent it after him.
Now he felt very cold. The rivulets of sweat beneath his arms chilled his sides, his waist. Beneath the pressure-suit, he could sense the clammy coldness of his vest. The other plane was the equal of his, the mirror-image — and the pilot was vastly more experienced…
The mind proceeded, its infection of imagination unabated, raging in his system while the body calculated that if they continued on their climb turn, the Russian would intercept him. The eyes picked up the glint of light again in the mirror, the hands pushed open the throttles savagely, and the body was comforted by the release of energy from the huge turbines. The body was pressed back into the couch.
The body stopped the climb and pulled the Firefox even more sharply to the left. The Russian kept with him, coming inside him to the left, closing the range. Gant pulled even tighter to the left, then straightened out with a suddenness that caused the inertia of the head to bang the helmet against the cockpit. His hand operated the lever, and the couch dropped into its 'battle position', flattening the body almost to the horizontal.
In the mirror, the Russian stayed with him, and the body was only able to hold off the hunter behind from an optimum firing position which the Russian pilot would now be seeking, now that he had wasted two of his four missiles. He might even be closing for a cannon burst, to cripple and slow his quarry.
The man was good, the mind admitted, overheating with its own fever. It was unable to free itself from past and future, the moments before, the moments to come. He had been taken — whatever he did, the Russian would stay with him, behind him, closing the range.
The body registered the appearance of the second Firefox on the screen as an orange blip. It was old information, useless to the body. He already knew what plane it was tucked behind him.
The body tried another strategem, because the Russian's plane was coming into the 'up-sun' position. Gant flicked the aircraft to the left, then continued into a barrel-roll. At the same time, he saw in the mirror the series of ragged puffs of mist from the wings of the Russian plane, the burst of cannon fire they signified. Orange globules drifted with apparent slowness towards him, accelerating as under a great depth of water to overtake him. Tretsov had fired because he, too, was on edge, anxious to end the developing drama, make the fictitious quick kill. The power of his aircraft lulled him into precipitate action.
The Russian, now that Gant was in the roll and realising that the cannon burst had gone wide, would expect him to turn into the line of the sun. Instead, he held the roll another ninety degrees, checked and pulled on the stick — the Firefox shuddered through its length, and Gant's stomach muscles cramped up, the vision narrowing again to the long tunnel. He screamed into the face-mask to reduce the effects of the mounting, stunning G-force. The G-meter registered plus 9, he saw with his severely limited vision of the control panel.
As he came out of the roll, he saw the Russian plane ahead of him. The mind shouted with relief, the sudden prospect of an optimal firing position as his vision cleared and he saw the Russian plane emerging from the expanding diaphragm of the lens his vision had become. He was in the Russian's tail cone, at a range of six hundred yards. He thought, and two Anab missiles were launched. The aircraft shuddered again, straightened, and he watched the missiles slide home. He had aimed via the aiming system, a reflective panel in front of the windscreen, since he had no guidance just as the Russian had possessed none. The thought-guidance system was linked to the radar, not infra-red.
Tretsov had been unable to direct the missiles once he had fired, without the radar image, and Gant now saw, with a stunned sense of defeat, that he was unable to do so either. He saw the Russian pilot use his own trick, chopping the throttles and pulling the aircraft into a climb and roll to the right. The Anabs drove harmlessly past, seeking the heat-source the Russian had whisked away from them.
Gant realised that the mind had interfered wit
h the body, infected it. It was like the last days in Vietnam, before the hospital. A sense of the failure of the past, and a present inadequacy, crushed him for a moment. He was flying badly now, as then — on raw nerves and a draining supply of mental energy. He was afraid again. He could be dead — already the matrix of circumstances which had made his death inevitable might have been established. It might already be too late to initiate an action that would save him.
The body, functioning a split second below its unimpaired best, wrenched the plane to the right. Again, the G-forces momentarily stupefied body and mind. Vision closed in. He followed the Russian. He had been too quick, too eager, squeezing the thought like a firing-button, loosing the missiles.
It was too late to calm himself. He was committed now. He was the electronic chessmaster who had lifted his hand from the piece he had elected to move. There was no going back, no reappraisal. He had to fly as he was, the system buckling under the flow of emotion, the adrenalin pumping through him, memory flickering on a screen as if lit by flames.
He eased the controls, and the grey Arctic Ocean swung slowly across his head as his eyes quartered the airspace. The search was frantic because he had lost the Russian again. The sea slid down behind his shoulder. Then his eyes caught a reflection of light in the mirror. He had found the Russian, who had used Gant's own trick of the barrel-roll. He was now behind him, closing the range rapidly, coming for the kill — and making certain that Gant would have no time, no room, in which to wriggle away; small fish from hungry predator. The body recognised that the Russian was good — the mind gibbered that he was dead already.
Gant trod the left rudder, and smacked the stick hard over, pulling the Firefox to the left, seeing as he did so a missile flick away from the Russian plane, bright, mesmeric orange. He wrenched the column back, feeling the G-forces sagging him deep into the couch, the awful pressure for a moment on legs and stomach and the mask pulling at the flesh of his face, his head pinned to his chest…