by Craig Thomas
'No,' Vladimirov announced tiredly, shaking his head. 'The boy is dead. The second Firefox no longer exists.'
'How do you know that?' Vladimirov could sense the large hands clenching tightly behind the First Secretary's back.
'Because I know the American. Tretsov was… too eager. Gant probably killed him by using the tail decoy.'
'What?'
'Tretsov's aircraft ate a ball of fire and exploded! Couldn't you hear the horror in his voice? There was nothing he could do about it!'
A moment of silence. Andropov's features, especially the pale eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, advised caution, even apology. But Vladimirov experienced the courage of outrage and failure. His own -future was not something he could rationally contemplate or protect.
Then, in a calm, steely voice, the First Secretary said, 'And you, General Vladimirov? What can you do about it?'
Behind the Russian leader, the shoulders of a young radio operator were stiff with tension. The back of the man's neck and his ears were red. In the distance Vladimirov heard the helicopter bearing the arrested Kontarsky lift into the midday sky and drone away from Bilyarsk. Vladimirov was aware of the awesome, complete power he had held until a few moments before, and which had disappeared with the second Firefox, and then he moved swiftly to the dull surface of the map-table, his hands sweeping the ashtray, the matches, the batch of signals onto the floor. Cigarette butts spilled near the First Secretary's shining black shoes, and the ashtray rolled beneath the chair of an encoding console operator, who flinched.
'Give me North Cape and Norway - quickly!' he snapped. The operator of the map-table's computer terminal was galvanised into frantic typing at his keyboard. The dull grey faded, the blue Of the sea, the green and brown of a country - Norway - glowed, flickered, then resolved into sharpness. The operator typed in the dispositions of aircraft and ships and submarines without instruction. The First Secretary and the Chairman of the KGB both remained aloof from the map.
Vladimirov noted the positions of the missile cruiser Riga, the Red Banner Northern Fleet hunter-killer submarines, the 'Wolf-pack' squadrons aloft. They remained concentrated in the area west of North Cape.
Where? he asked himself. Where now? He's refuelled… all he needs is friendly airspace.
The long backbone of Norway stretched from top to bottom of the map, a twisted spine of mountains. Like the Urals, Vladimirov thought. He used the Urals to mask his exit - would he use the mountains again? Perhaps -
'Any reports?' he snapped. He could not be blind again, rush at this. 'Any visual sightings, infra red - ?'
'No, sir- '
'Nothing, Comrade General - '
'No-'
The chorus was infinitely depressing. However, as he glanced up, it seemed to satisfy Andropov in particular. The KGB's failure to protect the prototype Firefox was well in the past; forgotten, avoidable now. Vladimirov had volunteered himself as the ultimate scapegoat.
'Very well.' Kutuzov's watery old eyes had warned him. Expressed something akin to pity, too, and admiration for his recklessness. But he could not prevent himself. This contest was as real and immediate as if he were flying a third Firefox himself against the American. He would not surrender. He was challenged by perhaps the best pilot he had ever encountered to fulfil his reputation as the Soviet Air Force's greatest and most innovative strategist. Gant had declared the terms of the encounter, and Vladimirov had accepted them.
He was on the point of suggesting incursions into Norwegian airspace. His voice hesitated just as his hand hovered above the spine of Norway glowing beneath the surface of the map-table. And perhaps the hesitation saved him - at least, prolonged his authority.
'Something, sir…' one of the operators murmured, turning in his chair, one hand clutching the earpiece of his headset. His face wore a bright sheen of delight. Vladimirov sensed that the game had begun again. 'Yes, sir - visual contact - visual contact.' It was the eager, breathless announcement of a miracle. The operator nodded as he listened to the report they could not hear. His right hand scribbled furiously on a pad.
'Cabin speaker!' Vladimirov snapped. The operator flicked a switch. Words poured from the loudspeaker overhead, a brilliant excited bird-chatter. The First Secretary's eyes flicked towards the speaker. Heads lifted slowly, like a choir about to sing. Vladimirov suppressed a grin of almost savage pleasure.
There was surprise, too, of course. And gratitude. He had hesitated for a moment, and the moment had proven fateful. He would have said Norway - even now the country lay under his gaze and his hands like a betrayal - and it would have been an error. Gant was over Finland; neutral innocent Finland. At one hundred and thirty thousand feet - why? And he'd been picked up visually and trailed by two MiG-25 Foxbats, at high altitude themselves. Now he had climbed almost to his maximum ceiling. Why was he at such an extreme altitude? Contact time a matter of seconds… orders required… Vladimirov blessed the young map operator who had typed in new instructions. The twisted spine of Norway disappeared. The land mass fattened, blurred, then resolved. Finland, Swedish Lapland and northern Norway occupied the area of the map-table. Orders? What - ?
His eyes met the steady, expectant, even amused gaze of the First Secretary. Everyone in the room understood the narrowness of his escape from an irredeemable blunder. Andropov was smiling thinly, in mocking appreciation.
'Sir!'
'Yes?' he answered hoarsely.
'An AWACS Tupolev has picked up the two Foxbats. We - '
'Bleed in the present position - quickly!'
Then he waited. Contact time diminishing, split-seconds now… Gant still climbing but he must have seen them by now… orders required… engage? What was that?
'Repeat that!' the First Secretary ordered before Vladimirov could utter the same words. The order was transmitted, and the voice of the Foxbat pilot repeated the information. Fuel droplets - a thin stream of fuel! Gant had a serious fuel-leak. He had climbed to that extreme altitude in order to stretch his fuel, and to be able to glide when the fuel ran out. Just as he must have done to find the submarine and the ice-floe. 'Engage!'
'No!' Vladimirov shouted. The First Secretary glared at him, his mouth twisted with venom. He took a single step towards the map-table. The positions of the two MiG-25s glowed as a single bright white star on the face of Finnish Lapland. Vladimirov's cupped hand stroked towards the pinpoint of light and beyond it into Russia. 'No,' he repeated. 'We can bring him back - we can bring him back! Don't you see?'
'Explain - hold that order.' The two men faced each other across the surface of the map. The colours of sea and land shone palely on their features, mottling them blue and brown and green. 'Explain.'
Vladimirov's hands anticipated his tongue. They waved and chopped over the glowing surface of Lapland. Then his right forefinger stabbed at the white star that represented the two MiG-2 5s.
'There,' he said. 'They are two seconds away…' The First Secretary's face was expressionless as Vladimirov looked up for an instant. Then the Soviet general, one lock of silver hair falling across his intently creased high forehead, spoke directly to the map-table. 'It's already beginning… they'll peel away and return without a definite order… they're good pilots…' They have to be, he thought - to be in their squadron. The aircraft are advanced Foxbat-Fs, the next best thing to the Firefox itself. 'The border is here…' The finger stabbed, again and again, as if an ant on the surface of the table persisted in maintaining life. 'Less than a hundred miles… minutes of flying time at the most. They can shepherd him!' He looked up once more. Puzzlement. The Russian leader's thoughts were seconds behind his own. 'Look - they can do this with him…' Once more, his hand swept across the map, ushering the white star towards the red border, away from dotted blue lakes to more dotted blue lakes - Soviet lakes. For a split-second, Vladimirov remembered reading the samizdat of Solzhenitsyn's short story of the lake guarded by barbed wire that represented his country, then he shook his head and dismissed the ima
ge.
His voice was unchanged as he continued. 'It will take clever flying, but I'm certain it can be done. Once he's across the border, then he can be brought down. He's almost out of fuel, I'm sure of that, he will have to land. We can shepherd him straight into an airfield… one of ours.'
He looked up. The First Secretary was, for the moment, dazzled. He nodded eagerly. Vladimirov listened. Over the speaker, the leading pilot of the two Foxbats was reporting the peel-off and the encroaching return. Contact time, four seconds.
'Shepherd - repeat, shepherd,' he snapped. A remote mike had been patched in. They could hear him direct. 'You know the procedure-it's… ninety miles and no more to the border-bring him home!' He grinned as the second of hesitation passed and the leading pilot acknowledged with a chuckle in his voice. Then he studied the map before ordering: 'Patch me into all forward border squadron commanders - all of them. And to flight leaders of "Wolfpack" squadrons already in the air. Every commander and flight leader who can give me a Foxbat-F.' He looked up at the Russian leader - beyond his shoulder the light glinted from Andropov's glasses but Vladimirov ignored any signal they might be transmitting - and smiled confidently. 'We'll put up everything we have that can reach that altitude,' he announced. The American will feel like the last settler left alive inside the circle of the wagon-train!'
The First Secretary seemed to remember the old cowboy-and-Indian films which, as the child of a prominent Party member, he would have been privileged to see, and laughed.
Vladimirov looked down at the map once more, and breathed deeply. It would take constant dialogue with the two pilots, instantaneous communications, if he was to supervise the recapture of the MiG-31. But, he could do it - yes. It would take perhaps eight or ten minutes' flying for any other MiGs to reach Gant. The two Foxbats would be working alone - but they would be sufficient, he assured himself. No other aircraft could achieve that altitude except another Foxbat-F. And there were only the two of them in the area. The map, with its clearly-marked border and the slowly-moving white dot of the routine Early Warning Tupolev Tu-126 'Moss' aircraft travelling southwards along its snaking line, confirmed his optimism.
For a moment, as the two Foxbats at more than Mach 1.5 had peeled away from the Firefox, the single white dot that represented them had become a double sun. Now, the separate lights had once more become a single white star.
They had come sweeping up towards him, then past and above. He had loosed neither of the remaining advanced Anab missiles, slung one beneath each wing; suppressing the mental command to fire with a certain, decisive violence of reaction. The two Foxbats had broken their unity, peeling away in opposite directions and dropping away from the purple-blue towards the globe below like exhausted shuttlecocks. Then, finally, they had begun to climb again, almost touching wings as if joining hands. Aiming at him like darts. Contact time - four seconds. Their speed was slower now, as if they had been advised to the utmost caution. Gant was fiercely aware once more of the two remaining air-to-air missiles. Two MiGs, advanced Foxbat-Fs, two missiles. Fuel - critical.
Unlike the Foxbats, he had the fuel neither to fight nor to run. He had to wait, just as he suspected the two Russian pilots were themselves waiting for orders.
They bobbed up to port and starboard of him like corks on the surface of invisible water, slightly above him at one hundred and twenty-five thousand feet and hanging, like him, apparently suspended from the purple blackness above. On his screen they had converged to a single glow and at the extreme edge the dot of the slow moving AWACS plane patrolling the Soviet-Finnish border continued its flight. He had been aware of it when he began his climb, and had smiled in the secure knowledge that he was invisible to it. Now, however, it could see the two Foxbats. His position was known - to everyone.
The fear passed quickly, surprising him by its feeble hold; delighting him, too. He accepted his role. He had to wait until they attacked… One twenty-two thousand feet. His slow flight north-west had begun, but now he would not be allowed to continue. His hand gripped the throttle-levers, but he did not move them either backward or forward. Slowly, as if tired, the Firefox continued to descend.
He looked to port and starboard. The two Foxbats were sliding gently in towards him. Each of the pilots was engaged in a visual scan. By now they knew he had only two missiles. By now, they knew he had a fuel leak, and they would have guessed at the reason for his altitude. They would be confident… Orders and decisions would be crackling and bleeping in their headsets. Not long now. Gant armed the weapons systems, switched on the firing circuits, calculated his remaining flying time. He knew he would have to use the engines, use all remaining fuel, to escape the Foxbats.
The Foxbat to starboard, no more than two hundred yards from him, was now in sharp profile, Gant waited, beginning to sweat, his mind coldly clear. The Fbxbat loomed on his right, and yawed slightly towards him. Cannon fire flashed ahead of him as the Russian plane slid across and below the level of the cockpit sill and he lost sight of it. He flung the Firefox to port -
Flickers of flame at the wingtips from the cannon, the Foxbat in profile, the savage lurch of the sky, a glimpse of the port Foxbat maintaining its course, then he was below it and levelling out, watching the radar. Two dots. He watched the mirror, the radar, the sky ahead of him, the mirror, the radar, the sky…
Bobbing corks. They were on either side of him again as he flew level, the distant dot of the AWACS Tupolev now in the corner of his screen, ahead of him.
He glanced to port and starboard. He could see the pilots. He watched them as they watched him. He understood what they had witnessed. He'd dropped away from the cannon fire rather than dived. He had confirmed his fear of empty tanks as clearly as if he had spoken to them.
Port, starboard, port, starboard… Gant's head flicked from side to side. With each movement, his eyes glanced across the instrument panel, registering the dials and screens minutely as if they were small, precise physical sensations on his skin or at his fingertips. He waited for movement. Between them, he knew himself to be safe from the AA-6 missiles. They were too close to one another to be certain of hitting only him. It would be when one of them dropped away suddenly that the other would launch a missile.
Yet they remained level.
Ninety-nine thousand now. They'd followed his slow descent exactly paralleling his course. He could try to stretch them, exceed their ceiling, yet knew he would not… he had calculated that he dare not afford the fuel. Ninety-five thousand feet, still descending… They remained with him, long slim bodies dropping from the darkening arch of the sky. Twenty miles above the earth.
Ninety-four thousand feet… three-fifty… three…
The port Foxbat-F slid towards him like a huge animal turning lazily to crush him, enlarging alongside and over him, its shadow falling across the cockpit, across the instruments, the sunlight gleaming from its closing flank -
He saw the black visor of the pilot's helmet, and understood the man's hand signals. He was being ordered to follow the Soviet fighter and to land inside Russia. Alter course… follow me ... land, the hand signals read. Gant watched the pilot's turned head. He waved acceptance, his body tensing as he did so. Had he delayed sufficiently? Would his acceptance appear genuine?
He waited.
Then the Foxbat banked to its left and began a shallow descent. Gant saw it gradually accelerate. The second Foxbat remained to starboard of him, as if wary of some trick. He dipped the nose of the Firefox, following the Russian aircraft. Then he gave the command. The port wing quivered and he saw the flame at the tail of the Anab missile as it sprang ahead of him. It dropped away with terrible quickness, pursuing the descending Foxbat. Its trail quivered like the tail of an eager dog as it sought and found the heat emissions from the Foxbat and locked onto them. Gant banked fiercely to prevent the second Foxbat manoeuvring behind him. He glimpsed the engines of the descending Foxbat flare and the plane flick up and away, standing on its tail. The speed of the tactic shook
loose the trailing missile. The aircraft was already perhaps three miles from the Firefox. The missile continued its now-wavering course downwards. It would run out of fuel thousands of feet from the ground.
Gant pulled back on the control column and eased the throttles forward, beginning to climb again. He had, he realised, committed himself. He could not, with the slightest certainty of success, complete his flight to Norway. But he would not be shepherded back to Russia.
The Foxbat was closing again, its white dot moving back swiftly towards the centre of his screen. The second Foxbat had done no more than remain with him, exactly duplicating his fierce bank and levelling out, popping up again to starboard and beginning to climb with him. It remained apparently passive, as if its companion had, like a child, run to play and was now returning to a complacent parent. Evidently, neither pilot had orders to fire, to destroy, unless, no doubt, he failed to comply with their instructions, or attempted to elude them.
Bobbing cork, and the second Foxbat-F had already turned, closed up and resumed its position on his port wing. One hundred and fifteen thousand feet.
The AWACS plane was on the Soviet side of the border. The border was less than seventeen miles away. He understood what they were doing. He had run between them, cautiously and yet with as little choice as a sheep between two dogs. He was almost back in the Soviet Union. He pulled back on the throttles and levelled out, then pushed the control column gently forward, dipping the nose of the Firefox. Like mirror-images, though silver not black, the two Foxbats dipped their noses in unison, beginning to descend with him.
Fifteen miles…
One hundred and eight thousand feet…
The two Foxbats were like slim, dangerous silver fish swimming downwards with him. Once again, he imagined he could hear the noise of the slipstream against the canopy, much as if he had been hang-gliding. The wingtip of the starboard Foxbat wobbled, reinforcing the impression of fragility, of slow-motion - of powerlessness.