Firefox Down (2 page)

He watched, edgy as a feeding bird, as the altimeter needle ascended through the fifties, then the sixties - seventy-two, seventy-four thousand. The sky darkened; deep purple-blue. Almost space. Eighty. He listened to the Turmansky engines. They roared steadily, healthily. Eighty-four, eighty-six…

Come on,
come on -

His left hand twitched on the throttles, and he had to restrain himself from pushing them forward. It was an illusion. His speed was OK, all he needed to reach the required altitude.

Ninety-eight thousand feet. Purple-black above and ahead and around. The curve of the earth was evident even in the mirror. One-zero-nine.

The engine note remained steady, comforting. Not quite empty. One hundred and twenty thousand. Almost there, almost…

He pulled back the throttles, retaining only sufficient power to keep the generators functioning. He almost heard the thin, upper-atmosphere slipstream outside the cockpit. The Firefox quivered in its flow as he began his glide.

Yes. He'd make it now. They'd need the new Arrestor Barrier at Bardufoss to help him brake. He'd have no reverse thrust by the time he arrived. The last of the fuel was trailing behind him now in a thin crystal stream.

It didn't matter. Then a warning noise bleeped in his headset. He saw that two bright blips of light had appeared on his passive radar screen. Two aircraft, climbing very fast towards him. The power used in the zoom climb must have betrayed his position to infra-red. Two jets, small and fast enough to be nothing else but high-level interceptors. The closest one was already through ninety-five thousand feet and still climbing at more than Mach 2.

Foxbats. Had to be. MiG-25s. And if they were Foxbat-Fs, they had a high enough ceiling to reach him. Two of them. Closing.

He could see them now, far below him. Gleaming.

The read-out confirmed contact time at six seconds.

The windows in the fuselage of the Tupolev Tu-144, the Russian version of the Concorde, were very small, no larger than tiny, oblong portholes. Nevertheless, Soviet Air Force General Med Vladimirov could see, in the clear, windy afternoon sunlight, the crumpled, terrified figure of KGB Colonel Kontarsky being escorted from the main security building towards the small MiL helicopter which would return him to Moscow. In the moment of the destruction of the second prototype Firefox, KGB Chairman Andropov had remembered the subordinate who had failed, and given the order for his transfer to the Lubyanka prison. His dismissive, final tone had been as casual as the whisking away of a noisy insect. Watching the defeated and fearful Kontarsky climbing into the interior of the green helicopter, Vladimirov witnessed an image of his own future; bleak, filled with disgrace and insult, and short.

He turned reluctantly to look back into the cigar-shaped room that was the Soviet War Command Centre. The map-table was unlit and featureless. Already a box of matches, a packet of cigarettes, a full ashtray, an untidy sheaf of decoded signals had invested the smooth grey surface. It was a piece of equipment for which there was no further use. The personnel of the command centre remained at their posts, seated before consoles, encoders, avionics displays, computer terminals. Motionless. Machines no longer of use. Air Marshal Kutuzov leaned his elbows on the map-table. The Soviet First Secretary of the Party stood at attention, strong hands clasped together behind his back, pinching the coat-tail of his grey suit into creases. His head was lifted to the low, curving ceiling of the room, cocked slightly on one side. He listened as if to music.

The only sound in the room, loud enough to mask the hum of radios and encoding consoles, was Tretsov's voice. The First Secretary had ordered the tapes of Tretsov's last moments to be replayed, almost as if he could edit them, alter their message, create victory rather than defeat. Despite himself, Vladimirov listened as Tretsov died in playback. The command centre was hot. He was certain of it. It was not himself nor the rush of anticipation through him, it was the ambient temperature. The air-conditioning must have failed. He was hot.

'I'm behind him… I'm on his tail… careful, careful… he's doing nothing, he's given up…' It was the excitement of a boy regaling his parents with the highlights of a school football match in which he had scored the final, winning goal. 'Nothing… he's beaten and he knows it…' Caution,
caution
, Vladimirov's thoughts repeated. He had silently yelled the thought the instant he heard the tone of delight in the young test-pilot's voice. The boy thought he had a kill, had already counted Gant a dead man, had begun to see the hero's reception…
caution
. Even had he shouted the word into the microphone, it would have been too late. Tretsov would have been dead before he heard him.
Caution
… 'I've got- '

That had been the end of it. A crackle of static and then silence. Total and continuing, leaking from the receiver as palpably as sound. Tretsov had not known Gant, had not understood him and the American had fooled him. He had triggered the tail decoy, in all probability, and one of Tretsov's huge air intakes had greedily swallowed the incandescent ball. 'I've got - ' the tape repeated. Not quite the end. Only the moment when. Vladimirov had known it was the end. He'd sensed the change of tone before the last words. 'Oh
God'
the tape shrieked, making Vladimirov wince once more, hunch into himself. The static scratched like the painful noise of fingernails drawn slowly down a pane of glass, and then the silence began leaking into the hot command centre once more. Oh
God -
!

'Switch it off- switch it off!' Vladimirov snapped in a high, strained voice. 'Damn, do you want to
revel
in it? The boy's
dead
.'

The First Secretary turned slowly to face Vladimirov. His large, square face seemed pinched into narrowness. His wide nostrils were white with anger, his eyes heavily lidded.

'A communications failure,' he announced. Even Andropov beyond him seemed surprised and perplexed.

'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 image.