Firefox Down (43 page)

The cacophony of orders and responses had become muted. Calm. He waited. His body was numb; even the tremor had gone from his muscles. He felt locked into this posture, into this effort. The captain ordered the new winch to begin once more, slowly. The Firefox protested. Its nose swung slowly round, almost balefully, the wheel protesting on the waffle-like surface of the portable runway. He saw the tension in the line from the starboard leg ease. The marker flag stopped dancing and became a rag flicked by the wind. Buckholz waited.

The port winch stopped. He could not feel his hands around the wooden lever, could hardly feel the next man's body against his.

Then he heard Moresby say, 'One, Two and Three - haul away!' He groaned. Moresby added: 'OK, you lot down there - relax. And thanks. Thanks everyone…' Buckholz tried to unclasp his hands. The starboard wheel moved a few more inches from the heap of logs. They rolled after it from the pressure of the lever. Moresby continued talking, requesting a full damage report. Buckholz's back cried out in protest as he straightened up. His legs felt weak. He staggered a few steps, then bent painfully to chafe them back to usefulness. He groaned softly with every breath.

Then, when he could walk, when his feet began to hurt with reawakened blood, he hobbled as swiftly as he could towards the scene of the fire. A canvas sheet covered something. He glanced back into the clearing. There was something else, uncovered by the tree, being lifted and moved out of the aircraft's resumed path.

Two dead, then -

He looked into Waterford's face. It was blackened by smoke, but the man seemed uninjured, unlike the two SBS men beyond him, whose hands and faces were being salved and bandaged. Hot scraps of camouflage netting dropped like windborne flakes of ash from the trees above them. The ground was slushy, slippery with melted snow and foam. Waterford stared at him.

'Two dead?' he said.

Waterford nodded. 'Two - and two injured… not badly burned.' The man's face seemed to become chalky and vulnerable as he added: 'Thank God.' Then at once he was again his usual persona. 'You can help me,' he ordered Buckholz. 'Make a full damage report. Well, come on - '

Waterford strode off. Buckholz, before following him, watched the taut lines, the inching forward along the MO-MAT of the three undercarriage wheels, all of them now on the level. Moresby was once more seated in the cockpit. Buckholz, on the point of sighing with relief and delayed shock, held his breath. The auto-destruct. They were in as much danger of losing the airframe as ever. Perhaps more. Moresby had been distracted. Time had passed - how much? Minutes… perhaps seven minutes. Seven.

His body was trembling from head to foot. He hurried after Waterford on weak legs, as if hurrying away from the aircraft and the danger it now represented.

The whole clearing smelt of burning.

Priabin began to realise he was cold. He seemed to be floating. At least, part of him was floating. A much smaller part, right at the back of his head, was aware that something was wrong. But, there were no answers, only images; dreams, nightmares, visions, pictures, memories. In most of them, he was apologising to Anna.

He apologised for his work, for his colleagues, for his uniform, for his rank, and for things he knew he had never done; actions never taken, crimes not committed.

He sensed she accused him, though she did not appear in most of the pictures or memories or dreams. Not even her voice. But somehow he knew that she was accusing him, and he understood the nature of the charges. No, he had not beaten up those demonstrators in Red Square, no, he had not had those people shot for black-marketeering, no, he had not had those Jews interrogated and beaten and the one who died had had a weak heart. No, he had not refused that writer a travel visa and passport; no, he had not prevented people from leaving the Soviet Union; no, he had not ensnared those businessmen by using women to sleep with them; no, he had not operated the cameras that filmed them…

Some night-bird moved in the bush ... above his head, throwing down a weight of snow ontahis face. He opened his eyes. The snow was in his nose and mouth. He was aware of his entire body, and of its lowered temperature. His fingertips and toes were numb, his arms and legs cold, his torso chilled. He struggled to sit up, and looked around him.

The car had disappeared. He knew no more, for the moment, except that he had expected it to be there. It was a car he had approached, even sat in. His car - ?

His car was further down the road, towards the village…

Anna's car.

Harris's body. Harris? How did he know the man's name? He rubbed his arms with gloved hands, slapped his upper body, then crawled out from the shelter of the bush into the snow that was now falling steadily. The wind appeared to have dropped.

Harris?

Gant-

He remembered. Remembered, too, all the images and visions; the countless apologies to Anna, who had refused to appear in his dreaming, even though she was close at hand. Anna -?

Gant - Anna.

He knew more; all of it.

He climbed to his feet, and a great weight of ballast appeared to move in his head. He groaned and clutched his temple. The bruise was numb yet tender. He could feel a tiny amount of caked blood, like frost. Anna had gone with Gant. He staggered a few steps. The faint tyre-tracks of the car led out of the lay-by, heading west towards the border.

He knew everything now. Gant and Anna had abandoned him in the lay-by while they made their escape. But the American had made a mistake - he had left Priabin alive. He congratulated himself on Gant's error.

He began to jog, awkwardly at first, his head beginning to pound as soon as he moved. He ran, head down, through the falling snow. Out of the lay-by, onto the deserted main road. He glanced up the road, towards the border. Empty. He bent his head again and began running, chanting over and over in ragged breaths his prayer that Gant had not sabotaged the car he had commandeered from the railway police at Kolpino.

He floundered along the road, arms pumping, chest heaving. He remembered the dreams and realised their significance. Then he slipped and went flying, skidding on his back across the road. The shock woke him as it expelled the breath from his body. He climbed to his feet, brushed down his clothes, and began running again. Not far now, only hundreds of metres, no more.

He passed the telephone box where he had killed Harris. He had intended that. Isolate Gant, he had told himself. Get Anna out then kill Gant - have him killed at the border. Turn back the clock, make it five days earlier, before all this had happened.

He could have done it, but she would not
believe
him - !

He saw one or two early lights in the village ahead. His car was only a short distance now… yes, there! He slid the last steps, bumping painfully against the side of the vehicle. He fumbled the keys from his pocket while he wrenched open the driver's door with his other hand. He collapsed heavily into the seat, hesitated, then thrust the key into the ignition.

And turned the key, holding his breath.

The ignition chattered. On the third attempt, the engine fired, then stalled. He applied more choke. The engine caught, he revved blue smoke into the snow beyond the rear window. The engine roared healthily.

Just cold.

He eased his foot off the pedal and moved the car slowly out into the middle of the road. The studded tyres bit, and he gradually accelerated. Passing the telephone box, passing the place where the snow was distressed by his skidding body, passing the lay-by. He jooked at his watch, but could not estimate how long he had been unconscious. He stabbed the accelerator, and the back of the car swung wildly. He eased his foot from the pedal, turned the wheel swiftly to straighten the car, and drove on.

He had protected Anna because, in part, it preserved his own self-esteem. He was
not
a KGB officer,
not just
a policeman… He understood her clearly; even applauded her motives. He always had.

He would have saved her, got her away, but Gant had changed everything. Gant had placed her in danger. Gant had taken her away, she was in the car with him now. She was ready to cross the border with him -

Priabin wiped something from his eyes with the damp sleeve of his overcoat, then concentrated on the snow rushing towards the headlights. He knew he had peeled the onion a layer too deep.

He knew that he had not trusted Anna. From the moment when he had seen Gant on the train and realised how she was to help him escape, he had believed in his heart that she would go with the American. He had not trusted her to stop short of the border, or return if she did cross.

He wiped his eyes again, savagely.
He had not trusted her
. He had believed she could, she would leave him.

Gant had held up the mirror, had shown him the vile little heart of himself, beneath the layers of love and protection and self-esteem. He loathed his reflected image.

He had to kill Gant. More than anything, he would kill Gant.

'One, Two and Three, stop winching!'

Buckholz heard Moresby's voice over the R/T, and immediately glanced at Waterford beside him. The soldier seemed unimpressed that the Firefox had now been winched safely to the far end of the clearing. Instead, he continued to stare at the ice beneath their feet. They were fifty or sixty yards out onto the lake. The wind flung snow between them and the well-lit clearing. Fortunately, the arc-lamps hadn't been brought down from the trees with burning camouflage netting.

'Well - what is it you wanted me to see?' Buckholz asked. He wanted coffee, and he needed rest. Reaction had established itself now that their damage report was complete and his work temporarily done. Moresby's danger hardly impinged upon Buckholz's fuddled, slow thoughts. 'Well?'

'Look at the bloody ice, man!' Waterford snapped in return.

'What-?'

'Snow - dammit, snow. Bloody snow!' He waved his arms above his head and kicked at the snow beneath his feet. The weather howled and flew around them in the darkness, Waterford was haloed by the lights from the clearing - where Moresby was working against time, he remembered with difficulty. As Waterford continued in a ranting tone, a break in the wind showed him the aircraft, black and safe, showed him the ragged extension of the clearing along the shore, allowed him to hear the chain-saws at work. 'No bloody aircraft is going to be able to take off from this surface,' Waterford was saying. 'You know how long this lake is. Do you know how much runway that aircraft needs? No? Listen, then - the airspeed won't come up quick enough to give the pilot lift-off with this thickness of snow on the ice. It's as simple as that. So, what are you going to do about it?'

In the silence, which the wind filled, Buckholz heard Moresby's voice issuing from their R/Ts. 'This thing is drying out rapidly, gentlemen…' They had no idea to whom the remark was addressed. Perhaps to all of them. 'Icing up. I hope to God that whatever system they've installed, it isn't water-activated. There's nothing in the cockpit or rigged to any of the systems that looks like an auto-destruct.' Moresby paused, but his next words wiped away Buckholz's momentary sense of relief. 'But, I'll bet there is an auto-destruct, all the same. You'd all better clear the area. Gunnar - ?'

'Yes?'

'Any joy?'

'I don't know. I can't find anything in the Pilot's Notes at first look. And there's nothing marked or stencilled on the fuselage so far.'

The weather had removed them from Buckholz's sight, but he could envisage them clearly. Gunnar, who spoke good Russian, had been given the task of translating the Pilot's Notes which Moresby had found in the cockpit - a leaflet of fifty pages or more. At the same time, he was translating every stencilled word and instruction on the entire fuselage, searching for a clue to the nature and location of the auto-destruct mechanism.

'That's it, then,' Moresby continued. 'Everyone clear the area. Five or six hundred feet back should do it. Go and hide in the trees - '

'Jesus,' Buckholz breathed. 'Is there anything we can do?' he said into the R/T, addressing Moresby.

'You're not helping the situation, Mr. Buckholz,' came back the reply. 'I suggest you hurry along and see a taxidermist, if you would!' Buckholz heard Gunnar's laughter, and beside him Waterford guffawed.

'Jesus.'

'Even we can walk on frozen water,' Waterford said. 'But planes can't take off from this thickness of snow. Even if the bloody thing survives its ordeal at Moresby's hands, it can't take off. You think we'll have a nice warm, sunny day tomorrow?'

'Don't blame me - !' He was aware of the murmurs from the R/T now. Moresby and his technicians. Gunnar's translations. He knew everyone else would be listening, too. The noise of the chain-saws had stopped.

'I don't. You're just another of Aubrey's trained monkeys, just like me. That silly sod has flipped his lid this time and no mistake!'

Without conscious decision, they had begun to walk back towards the clearing. Light blazed out at them as they approached the. shore. The trees along the shore had been cleared. MO-MAT would be laid along the shore, and then the tractor tug would tow the Firefox to a point where thicker ice would bear its weight before pulling the aircraft onto the lake which would become its runway.

Which would not be usable as a runway, he reminded himself.

They trudged along the shore. The snow was blowing almost horizontally yet, in the clearing itself, there was a sense of quiet, urgent desperation. As he saw Moresby, seated in the cockpit, and the technicians gathered around the fuselage, he realised he had no idea how large an explosion there would be. What would happen. Would it be small enough not to be visible until a little black flag of smoke raised itself above the cockpit? Or would it be large enough to open the nose section of the airframe like an exploded trick cigar? Enough to kill Gunnar and Moresby and the technicians…

And himself and Waterford, he thought as they trudged up the MO-MAT towards the aircraft.

There was a film of ice over much of the fuselage and the wing areas. There were great gaps in the camouflage netting which could not be replaced. The fallen tree lay to one side of the clearing, which was empty except for themselves, Moresby's team, and the Firefox. There might have been no chaos only a half-hour earlier. It was as if everything had been no more than a dramatic prelude to the quiet desperation of Moresby's search for the auto-destruct system.