Firefox (24 page)

His fingers tapped at the table edges as he waited. The map dissolved, and then re-formed. The Urals spread like a livid scar down the centre of the projection. To the south was the brown, dusty-coloured expanse of Iran, and to the north the deepening blue of the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Still ignoring the First Secretary, who sat at the table like a carved figure, Vladimirov traced his finger across the map, first southwards, towards the Middle East and the Mediterranean; then, more slowly and thoughtfully, the slender, long-nailed finger tracked northward across the map, up the chain of the Urals. It paused over Novaya Zemlya, then pushed on north, then curved in an arc to the north-west into the Arctic Ocean.

When he looked up, it was only to hear the radiooperator who had informed him of the sound trace, saying: ‘Trace confirmed, sir. Aircraft, which refused to answer a demand for identification, heading northeast into the mountains. They lost the trace within thirty seconds, but they confirm heading and speed.’

Vladimirov realised that Gant had made his first mistake, had made what might be promoted into a fatal error. He had ignored the demand for identification, and that made him suspicious. Also, he was travelling far too fast, running for shelter … his fuel could not last as long as he must have hoped at first, at that speed. He studied the map again, realising that Gant was seeking the shelter, from visual and sound detection, of the eastern foothills of the Urals.

Which could only mean … yes, he realised with a mounting excitement, could only mean that his refuelling point lay to the north of the Soviet Union, in the Barents Sea, or above it. He looked up.

The First Secretary had not moved. ‘Well?’ he said, softly.

‘If you will look at the map. First Secretary,’ Vladimirov said, sensing Kutuzov at his shoulder, ‘I will try to explain my deductions.’ Swiftly, he outlined Gant’s probable course. When he had finished, he added: ‘We can track him, despite his radarimmunity. First Secretary.’

There was a silence and then Andropov, arms folded across his chest and standing behind the First Secretary, said in a soft, ironical voice: How?’

Vladimirov explained, as simply as he could, the manner in which the infrared weapons-aiming system could be used as a directional search-beam. Kutuzov clapped him on the shoulder, and Vladimirov sensed the quiver of excitement in the old man’s frame. More distantly, he sensed that he had somehow sealed the succession, that he would be the next Marshal of the Air Force. The prospect did not affect him. At that moment, he was concerned only with the elimination of Gant as a military threat.

‘Good - that is good. General Vladimirov,’ the First Secretary said. ‘You agree, Mihail Byich?’ Kutuzov nodded. ‘This needs no mechanical adjustment?’ Vladimirov shook his head.

‘No - merely a coded instruction to that effect from you, or from Marshal Kutuzov.’

The First Secretary nodded. ‘What, then, do you suggest, Vladimirov?’

‘You must alert units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, First Secretary. They must begin looking for a surface, or subsurface…’ He paused. No, it had to be a surface craft, and even that was unlikely. ‘More probably, an aircraft, waiting to refuel the Mig in mid-air, First Secretary.’ The Soviet leader nodded. ‘Then, we must put up “Wolfpack” squadrons nearest to our northern coastline, to seek out the mother-plane.’ He glanced round into Kutuzov’s keen eyes. The old man nodded. ‘And we alert all missile sites along the First Firechain to expect Gant. They, too. must use their infrared aiming-systems to search for him, in concert with the “Wolfpack” units.’

Suddenly, his finger stabbed at the map, almost immediately in front of the First Secretary. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Just there. If he follows the Urals to their northernmost point, then he will use the Gulf of Ob, or the gulf to the west of the Yamal Peninsula as a visual sighting, before altering course for his rendezvous with the mother-aircraft. As, you can see. First Secretary, there are two fixed units in the First Firechain within range, as well as the mobile link between them, and our “Wolfpack” squadrons based on the peninsula.’ He looked up, and there was a smile on his face. ‘It will take only minutes to organise. First Secretary - and the American will walk into the most powerful trap ever sprung.’ He was still smiling when he said: ‘Will you give permission for any Soviet aircraft who gains a visual sighting to act as a target for the missiles - if it becomes necessary?’

Vladimirov heard Kutuzov’s indrawn breath, but kept his eyes on the First Secretary. In the man’s grey, flinty eyes he could see the succession confirmed. This time, it moved him with a distinct, though momentary. pleasure. The First Secretary merely nodded.

‘Of course,’ he said.

“Very well. First Secretary - then Gant is dead.’

The journey through the Urals had taken Gant little more than two hours, since in covering the sixteen or more hundred miles from Orsk to Vorkuta through the eastern foothills, he had never exceeded six hundred knots, keeping his speed sub-sonic in order to conserve the fuel he now wished he had not burned in his panicdash to the cover of the mountains. The lower speed would also stop his presence being betrayed by a supersonic footprint across the sparsely-populated ground below. The foothills had been wreathed in mist, which made visual detection almost impossible, either from the ground or from the air.

Knowledge concerning military installations in the Urals chain was sketchy. Buckholz and Aubrey had been able to provide him with very little in the way of fact. It had been assumed, dubiously, that the eastern slopes of the mountain chain would be the less heavily armed and surveyed. Once he had taken a visual sighting on Orsk, to obtain a bearing, he had fed the coordinates of his northward flight into the inertial navigator, and slotted the aircraft into its flight-path. Then he had again switched in the TFR and the autopilot, and passed like a ghost into a grey world of terrain-hugging mist, chill to the eye, featureless as the moon, or the g landscape of his memory.

He had feared a return of the dream or, at least, of some of the physical symptoms of the hysterical paralysis - even the nausea. Yet, it had not happened. It was as though he had passed from shadow into light, as if the person he had been before the take-off had been shed like a skin. He spent no time in marvelling at his new, recovered integrity of mind, calmness of thought. It wasn’t unfamiliar to him. Even in Vietnam, towards the end, he had been able to fly almost perfectly, leaving behind him, like the uniform in his locker, the wreck of an individual sliding towards the edge.

His ECM instrument for picking up radar-emissions from the terrain below had recorded nothing since the beginning of his flight through the mountains. He had moved in a world cut off, entirely separate, the kind of isolation he had heard NASA men talk about after orbiting the earth in one of the Skylabs, or returning from testing the newest re-entry vehicles. Once he had met Collins one of the lunar astronauts. He had said the same. In his own way, Gant had always felt that removed when his aircraft was on autopilot. There was nothing, except a cabin, pressurised, stable, warm - and the human multitude and their planet fled by formlessly as the mist through which he had travelled. That utter isolation was something he had never rid himself of on the ground, not even in violent drinking-jags, or in the relief of Saigon prostitutes. And the reason he sought that lonely superiority of the skies was because the ground had never offered him more than an inferior copy of the same empty isolation.

It was just after nine, and the mist was clearing at his height, shredding away from the cockpit, so that sunlight glanced from the perspex, and the faded blue of the morning sky was revealed. On his present heading, he knew he would pass over the Gulf of Kara, that sharp intrusion of the Kara Sea to the west of the Yamal Peninsula within minutes, at this present speed. With the cross-check of a visual bearing on the neck of the gulf, he would be able to feed in the next set of coordinates to the intertial navigator.

He looked ahead. Visibility was not good. There was no sign of water, only the hazy, grey absence of a horizon. He knew he would have to drop down as low as he could, risking visual sighting from the ground, risking the gauntlet of the Firechain which looped across this northern coast. Nevertheless, he had to do it.

The last northern strand of the mountains, limping towards the sea, neared again as he changed altitude, sliding down towards the pockets of mist not yet dispersed by the strengthening sun. He saw the small town of Vorkuta away to port, and knew that his heading was correct and that the sea lay only minutes ahead of him.

Suddenly then, the edge of his radar screen showed the presence of an aircraft, higher and away to starboard; big, probably a Badger long-range reconnaissance plane no doubt returning from a routine patrol out over the Kara Sea and the Arctic Ocean.

Moments passed in which he seemed content just with the knowledge that he was closing on the Badger, judging he would pass well behind it. He assumed that, with a minimum of luck, most of the electronic detection equipment on board the Badger would be shut down that close to its home base. Then, almost with disbelief, three bright orange spots registered on the screen, glowing, climbing, nearing. An infrared source. Someone on the ground had loosed a bracket of missiles from a Firechain station.

They knew where he was. He realised this, his mind crying out at the jolt its apparent immunity from attack and detection had been given, the sudden draining of confidence.

He could not believe it. The missiles had to be heatseeking, homing on the exhaust gases of the sky’s hottest point. Somehow he was visible to them. And he knew how. The Firechain station had to be using its infrared equipment to search for the imprint of his exhaust. He was invisible on radar; on an infrared screen, he would be revealed as a point of orange light.

Radar immunity of something which yet gave off hot exhaust gases - it would have to be him. They would have been told that much on the ground. The removing of his immunity stunned him. He watched in paralysed fascination as the cluster of three glowing orange spots on his own screen enlarged as the missiles closed on the Firefox.

SEARCH AND DESTROY

Contact time, - seven seconds. The moment of Gant’s stunned failure to respond passed. He pulled his gaze from the three orange spots on the screen. Also registering on the screen was the bright green blip of the Badger, now no more than a few short miles away and moving away below him now and to port. The single screen which constituted the detection ‘eye’ of the Firefox’s .electronics was built to register infrared emissions of heat as orange spots, while radar images appeared as green blips. The missiles behind him were in the lower half of the screen, while the Badger ahead was in the upper half. He was still heading towards it, and it lay along the central ranging bar of the screen.

The Badger was the key to his safety, he realised. Here was a way he could misdirect the seeking missiles. He had to create a hotter spot than his own engines in the sky on to which they would home. He had to destroy the Badger, let it burn like a bonfire.

He pulled the Firefox onto a collision course with the Russian plane. He ignored, with every effort his mind could make, the three orange blips closing towards the centre of the screen. Contact time, five seconds. He pushed open the throttles; he had to be closer to the Badger before he loosed one of his own missiles. The anti-G suit tightened round him, then relaxed as it countered the increased pressure of his speed and dive. The three orange blips slipped across his screen, then centred again as they followed him. The green spot of the Badger enlarged. Gant nicked the ‘Weapon Arming’ switch on the console to his left. His thumb then flicked the switches to activate the thought-trigger and -guidance systems. These switches safeguarded against the inadvertent firing and guiding of the weaponssystem, at any time. Gant could guide his missiles visually by direct observations of missile and target, or on the screen. What he saw with his eyes, and required the missile to perform, was converted in the brain into electrical impulses, detected by the electrodes in his helmet, and fed into the weaponssystem which transmitted a steering signal to the missile. As the distance-to-target readout indicated the optimum moment for a hit, the thoughtguided system automatically launched one of the missiles under the wing. The missile left its bracket, then pulled up and away from the track he had been following. For a moment, light flicked at the corner of his eye as he caught the firing of its motor.

Three seconds to contact time. He began to hope. He saw the outline of the Badger clearly for a moment, directly ahead of him, an enlarging slim grey shape. He pulled the Firefox into a sudden turn to the right, away as acutely as possible from the Badger. Two seconds. On the screen the orange spot almost seemed to be merging with, overflying, the single green blip.

The Badger was in the centre of the screen: it was like a flower opening, a hu^e flower, orange, the hottest part of the sky as his own missile detonated. Contact time, zero seconds. The flower bloomed even brighter, just below the centre of the screen as he left the maelstrom behind - full bloom as the missiles detonated amid the inferno of the Badger’s destruction.

He realised he was sweating freely inside the pressuresuit, and he felt a wave of relief, sharp as nausea, pass through him. Below him on the ground, the infrared screens which had picked him up would now be confused, filled with light from the massive detonation. When it cleared, he would be out of range. He hoped they would draw the conclusion that he had himself perished in the explosion.

He checked his speed. Just below seven hundred mph. He could not go supersonic as he neared the coast. Too many trained ears, listening for the supersonic wake of his passage.

Now that he had survived, he began to take stock of the Firefox. The thoughtguided weaponssystem worked, as he had been certain it would. It had been Baranovich’s project and, despite the fact that it was difficult to recall his face and the sound of his voice, as though a gulf of time separated them, there had been an unconscious, deep assurance that had been associated with the Russian Jew. He’had seen only the tip of the iceberg. He had not needed to react at the speed of thought, but had had to make a conscious decision. But, when he had formed the thought, regarding the port wingtip missile, the advanced Anab-type of AAM it had fired. All he had felt was the slight roll as the missile had detached itself.