Firefox Down

by Craig Thomas

  'To our right,' Waterford said. 'See anything? There - ' He pointed his arm like a sight. Brooke craned forward, then shook his head. 'OK, let me get closer with "What the Butler Saw" here, and then you move up behind me when I give the signal.' He checked on the moving man, and on the.group of three, then stepped from behind the tree. Ninety yards, no more than that now. He crouched and ran, dodging from tree to tree, pausing behind each trunk to listen for noises. Snatch of laughter or jocular abuse from the tea-party, a muffled cough into a mitten.

  He rechecked the moving man. Closer, pursuing an orderly, steady progress. The officer. Now, pausing at the group, his flame-shape bending over something -

  Had to be. Had to be rocket or grenade launcher, or a mortar. Laser rangefinder. Goodbye, MiG-31. Just in case, Waterford supposed, anything intolerably wrong occurred, they would have the option of-preventing the aircraft's removal. Did he hear their voices then, just as he turned to wave Brooke forward - ?

  No. Nothing. He pointed the MEL imager back towards the rise, scanning along it, picking up Sergeant Dawson's kneeling, burning shape, using another MEL imager. Dawson would be watching him. He would see the first shots fired. Bright, burning blobs leaving one flame-shape, entering another. Strangely, though, the change in body heat of anyone killed would not show for some time.

  Brooke looked and listened. He shook his head.

  'Four of them now. No more than seventy yards. Next tree should do it. Ready?' Brooke nodded. They hurried to another fir, less than ten yards ahead of them. Brooke looked once more, and nodded.

  'What is it? Can you see what they've got there?'

  Brooke was silent for a time, staring through the short, stubby barrel of his PPE Pocketscope. The light conditions made its use necessary, though it was most effective as a night sight. He lowered the instrument and said, 'It looks like one of their ACS thirty millimetre jobs.'

  'Effective range, eight hundred metres. Enough. Anything else?'

  'Laser rangefinder, I'm pretty sure.'

  'Right. Let's take them all out. Who knows, we might get the rest of them to surrender if we get the officer as well? You - work round that way. I'll outflank them on the other side. Wait until I start firing before you open up.'

  'OK.'

  Brooke moved off immediately, working his way from tree to tree, threading his path inwards and ahead, towards the shore of the lake. When he was little more than a shadow, Waterford raised the MEL Imager. Brooke's form burned in bright colours. He swung the instrument. Yes, Brooke was close enough. He moved away from the tree, working to his right for perhaps fifty yards until he was satisfied that he had chosen the optimum position.' Immediately he had finished firing, he would make for the position of the radio and its operator. The man was perhaps thirty or forty yards from him. He used the MEL to check. Yes, no more than forty. A straight run. Eight or nine seconds - say ten. How many Russian words can you say in ten seconds?

  He checked the group around what he, too, could now see was an ACS 30mm grenade launcher on a tripod, with its round drum, like a heavy case of film, attached to the barrel. The laser rangefinder sat on top of the barrel. Waterford had no doubt that the elevation of the barrel would direct a grenade into the clearing where the Firefox sat.

  The officer stood up, addressing a last remark. Someone laughed, a noise above the wind. The officer made to move away. Waterford gripped the ribbed plastic of the rifle's barrel, and fitted the stock against his shoulder. He squinted into the optical sight. He set the selector level for three-round bursts. There were fifty caseless, polygonal rounds in the magazine. He breathed in, held his breath. The officer moved slightly, straightening like an awakened sleeper, hands on hips. One of the others was looking up at him. It was the moment. Waterford squeezed the trigger of the G. 11.

  The officer leapt across the barrel of the ACS, turning a half-somersault. Waterford felt the very slight kick of the slow recoil. The officer had taken all three rounds of the burst, fired within ninety microseconds. Waterford refocused on the man looking up from the ground, his head not yet swinging to follow the leap of his dead officer over the grenade launcher. He squeezed the trigger once more. The man's face disappeared from the optical sight. He heard Brooke's Armalite open up on automatic, turned, and began running.

  The radio operator was half-upright, staring towards the man running at him. Four seconds. He was already bent once more over the radio, his fingers flicking at switches, turning knobs. Waterford skidded to a stop twenty yards from the Russian, flicked the selector switch to automatic, and raised the G. 11. The remaining forty-four rounds left the rifle in a brief, enraged burst of noise. The soldier and his radio disappeared in a cloud of snow, the man lifted from his feet and flung away, the radio disintegrating. -

  In the ringing silence after the rifle emptied itself, Waterford cursed. Twenty yards more, and the man would have been alive. But, he was opening a channel, about to inform Moscow.

  'Damn!'

  Now, they needed one of the Russians alive.

  Brooke's rifle had stopped firing. Already, Dawson would be moving the rest of the SBS team down the slope at the run. Waterford slipped behind a tree trunk and waited. They needed one of them alive - but only one.

  'It has begun,' Aubrey announced sombrely as he put down the headset and turned to Gant and Curtin. 'Waterford reports four taken prisoner, the rest dead. The killing has begun.'

  'It began days ago!' Gant snapped at him, sitting on one of the camp beds, still dressed in his flying suit, Thorne was lying on another bed, holding a paperback novel above him, reading. He seemed uninterested in Aubrey's announcement, indifferent to the surge and swell of emotion between Aubrey and Gant. 'Days ago,' Gant repeated. 'It killed Anna, too.'

  Aubrey glared in exasperation. 'You have already made your point most eloquently concerning Anna,' he remarked acidly.

  'The hell with you, Aubrey - the hell with you. Anna's death is as pointless as those poor bastards spying on your people at the lake. Just - dead. Like that.' He clicked his fingers. 'Just like that. And what the hell for? Why didn't you tell the poor slobs you'd given up on this idea before you had them shot? Just so they could know what they were getting killed for!'

  'Be quiet, Gant - !'

  'The hell I will!' Gant stood up, as if to menace Aubrey. Curtin watched him carefully, analytically, from the other side of the room, near the radio operator's console.

  'There is nothing I can do!'

  'Then there was no point at all in it.'

  'I can't admit that…'

  'Because you can't live with it.'

  'I have tried, dammit - I have tried…' Aubrey turned his back and walked to the window. Skogeroya's mountain roots were visible. Gulls were blown like scraps of paper over the grey water of the fjord. Kirkenes huddled on its headland. Another glimpse through the storm, but not the weather window that was still promised for later in the afternoon. Still promised, still on time. It could, they now said, last for as long as an hour. Aircraft could fly in it. 'Pointless,' he announced to the room without turning from the window. Then, as if called upon to explain something, he faced Gant.

  'I - these events have been uncontrollable, Mitchell,' Gant sneered at the use of his first name. 'The original operation worked just as planned - yes, even to the unfortunate deaths involved. They were not planned, but they were taken into account. No one was forced to work… but these events - the past days - they are happenings outside the rock pool. Do you understand? Intelligence work takes place in a rock pool. In this case, the marine creatures there, in their sealed-off world, have been disturbed, flung violently about by a storm. There is nothing I can do. I am sincerely sorry about the woman's death, but I did not cause it. Yes, yes, she was blackmailed into assisting you, but I intended - just as you promised her - that she would be safe from her own people and from ours afterwards. I would have persuaded Buckholz to set her free. She could have returned to her lover - that foolish, tragic young man who was the r
eal instrument of her death!'

  He broke off, as if he disliked the pleading tone of his own voice. He hated the confession he was making, yet it forced itself upon him not so much because of Gant's accusations but because the guilt had returned. It was filling his chest and his thoughts. There was only one justification in the rock pool - success. But, he could not control these events, he had failed to tailor them to the parameters of intelligence work. Soldiers, equipment, a timetable, weather conditions, repairs, the very location of the Firefox - all had conspired to flood the calm rock pool and fling them all into the raging water. He could now only admit defeat, pack and leave.

  'I do not need lessons in guilt from you, Major,' he said tightly, surprising himself.

  'I wonder.'

  'There's nothing more to be done. Acknowledge Waterford's signal.' He crossed to the charts on the table, shuffling through them. 'Curtin, if you please,' he said. 'Now,' he continued when the US Navy officer had joined him, 'the weather window is such as to prevent the Chinook making it all the way, in and out, from Bardufoss. Therefore, the two Lynx helicopters must be used. We must instruct Moresby to salvage what he can - a list of items from his own descriptions of the on-board systems must be drawn up. Everything must be loaded aboard and flown out the moment the weather clears. They will have perhaps less than half-an-hour before the first Russians arrive, probably in force…' His hand skimmed and dusted at the map as he spoke.

  It was swift, decisive, false, and he knew it. The imitation of action. The retreat. 'Our people, those who can't be got on board the two helicopters, must move out to the nearest crossing-point into Norway… that's north-west. Waterford can be relied upon to organise everything in that area…'

  He looked up. Gant's shadow had fallen across the chart. His knuckles were white as he leant on them. His face was bleak and angry; a remote anger, something Aubrey could not lessen or turn aside.

  'Yes?' Aubrey asked in a voice that quavered.

  'Send me in,' Gant said. His eyes did not waver, nor did he blink. There was no colour in his cheeks.

  Aubrey shook his head, preparing a smile of quiet, grateful dissent to disarm the American. 'No - ' he began.

  'Send me in.'

  'Impossible, Mitchell - quite impossible…' He essayed the smile. It appeared to have no effect. Thorne had put down his paperback, and was sitting up against the pillows like an interested invalid. Aubrey sensed that Curtin, beside him, was divided in his opinion.

  'Send me in.'

  'I cannot risk you - '

  'So now I'm valuable?'

  'You always were.'

  'I doubt it. Send me in the Harrier. Thorne can fly it - I'll fly it if you want to cut down on possible waste… if I can't get that airplane out of there before the Russians, then I come back in the Harrier… look, Aubrey. I can tell them which pieces to remove, which systems. I'm the only one who can!'

  'The senior engineering officer is quite capable of doing - '

  'The hell with you, Aubrey!' His fist banged savagely on the table. The paperweight on the sheaf of signals jumped to one side. Gant looked at his watch. 'You've got less than two hours to decide. I can be on-site in five or six minutes from take-off. That gives me twenty minutes, maybe more, before the Russians can even move. Tell them to get the airplane ready - find out if they can get it ready. Tell them I'm coming.'

  'If they wait, they'll have no time to dismantle - '

  'Is that what you want from this - bits and pieces? Is that what anyone wants? Washington? London? They want the airplane. They want the balls that comes from pulling this thing off. They don't want bits and pieces, they want the whole damn thing!'

  'I just can't risk it-'

  'You try. You'll find it easier than you think. It isn't your neck. Ask them if the airplane will be ready. Tell them I'm coming.'

  'It's no more than a machine, Mitchell.'

  'It always was. It's too late to remember that now.' He stared into Aubrey's eyes, and lowered his voice. 'Baranovich, Fenton, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Pavel - and Anna,' he whispered.

  Aubrey's face whitened. From the corner of his eye, he saw Curtin's quick gesture to silence Gant. Gant's face remained unmoved.

  'How dare you…' Aubrey hissed.

  'Do it, Aubrey. Give the word. You said it - we're outside your precious rock pool. Give the word. Get that airplane ready for me to fly.'

  Aubrey stared into Gant's eyes for a long time. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel and snapped at the radio operator. 'Get "Fisherman",' he said. 'I want an updated report on the repairs. At once!'

  'I'm afraid, Comrade Chairman, that we have to assume that your reconnaissance party was surprised and overcome. Which means, in simple terms, that they know that we know. We are each equally aware of the other.' Vladimirov buttoned his greatcoat and descended the steps of the Palace of Congresses. Andropov, in a well-cut woollen overcoat made in Italy, walked beside him. 'It's hard to grasp what the weather must be like up there,' Vladimirov added, deflecting the conversation.

  'Mm?' Andropov murmured, watching the placement of his feet; his expensive shoes were protected by galoshes. Frozen snow crunched beneath Vladimirov's boots. Andropov looked up at the general. 'What did you say?'

  'The weather-in Lapland,' Vladimirov murmured impatiently. He was angry with Andropov, though relieved to escape the claustrophobia of that glassed-in, underground tunnel of a control room for at least a few minutes.

  'Oh, yes.'

  Andropov's mind reached into the political future, towards failure, while his own thoughts anticipated at least a qualified success. The capture or death of the reconnaisance party was of little importance now. The weather conditions prevailing at the lake and along the border, controlled everything; defined action, timetabled events.

  The strategy, the tactics, did not satisfy, even interest Andropov. Already, he was attempting to anticipate how anything other than complete success might be used against him, used to thwart his ambitions within the Politburo and beyond it. For Andropov, the weather, more than a limitation, was a prison, a promise of failure.

  'The weather-window we are expecting in - less than two hours -' Vladimirov pulled down his sleeve over his gold watch ' - will reach the forward units of the Independent Airborne Force approximately thirty-two minutes after it reaches the lake. With luck, helicopters can be airborne twenty-six or seven minutes after the weather-window reaches the lake. At top speed, their flying time in the conditions would be - no more than twenty minutes.' He raised his gloved hands, as if to appreciate the windy blue sky, the swiftly moving high clouds, the raw, clean air. Or the massive, crowding buildings of the Kremlin around them as they walked the concrete paths. 'That means they will have less than forty-five minutes of better weather before we arrive - '

  'Forty-five minutes,' Andropov repeated, deep in thought.

  'Gant is not on-site, he can't be. Nothing can get in or out. Probably, he is in Kirkenes - coded signals traffic suggests Aubrey is there, some kind of temporary control centre, I imagine. Gant may take as long as fifteen minutes by helicopter or aircraft to arrive. That leaves thirty minutes or less. The MiG-31 cannot be ready for him the very moment he arrives… that lake cannot be utilised as a runway without preparation. Even if the MiG is fuelled, armed and pre-flighted when he arrives, he will have to wait.' He stopped and turned to Andropov. Behind the Chairman of the KGB, the Trinity Tower, topped by its huge red star, loomed against the sky. 'Do you see? We have him. We have the pilot and the aircraft in our hands.'

  Andropov adjusted his spectacles. 'I seem to have heard that cry all too often before,' he replied sharply. 'You have a second line of defence, I take it, General?'

  'Defence?'

  'Against failure.' Andropov's narrow face was chilled white.

  'I see.' Vladimirov felt uncomfortable, almost guilty; as if he had joined some unscrupulous conspiracy against his friends. 'Of course,' he continued brusquely. 'Border squadrons will be airborne. Interceptors fro
m "Wolfpack" squadrons on the Kola Peninsula will be in the air as soon as the weather breaks sufficiently for them to take off. As a line of defence.'

  'You still think you can capture the MiG-31 intact?'

  'Why not? I don't believe its destruction should be our first objective.'

  'The Finns will try everything to arrive the moment the deadline expires,' Andropov announced tiredly.

  'If they get there, and find the aircraft, they will hand it over to us. As long as it remains where it is, it is ours. Obviously.'

  'As long as it remains where it is.'

  'We shall have to contrive that it does so,' Vladimirov snapped. Lost sleep, concentrated thought, continual tension seemed to overtake him for a moment. He rubbed his forehead. Touching the peak of his cap made him aware of his shoulder boards, his greatcoat, the medal ribbons he wore. They revived him, reasserted his superiority over the ambitious politician beside him. 'I have computer predictions of a timetable for repairs, drying out, replacement, preparation… all of them suggest that, with limited equipment, they will be hours behind their self-imposed deadline. Andropov, they can't fly the MiG out. It won't be ready.'

  'So you hope.'

  'So I believe.'

  'Mm.' Andropov turned away, like a camera scanning the walls and towers and buildings of the Kremlin. The fortified encampment in the wilderness, Vladimirov thought. His mind was filled with contempt for Andropov and what he represented. Protected by their walls, he continued to himself, afraid of the wild tribes outside the palisade. They don't belong -