Firefox Down (56 page)

Rostock - ?

Vladimirov asked him what it meant. He was being beaten, but he felt nothing. Only numb. Warmly numb. Drugged… he remembered his father, shambling into the house on the, the - Mira Prospekt? Yes, yes, Mira Prospekt…

He heard voices, speaking Russian. Change channels. He did not understand - who was Rostock?

Glow on the - panel? Glow-?

He did not understand. The Firefox began to fall out of the sky. Unnoticed, the altimeter unrolled with increasing speed as he slumped towards the panel. The throttles were still set at high cruise power.

He saw dots - blips not glows. Right and left of the screen, converging on him. Rostock - ? His helmet was almost against the panel, and his hanging face opposite the scope. White blips, rushing at him.

Thirty thousand feet, twenty-five, twenty-two… The altimeter unrolled unnoticed.

Gant groggily lifted his head, and his hand. He felt along the panel. The Firefox bucked as he readjusted his hold on the column to gain more support. The nose came up slightly, but the stick resisted him fiercely. He believed in it as a solid, unmoving thing to which he could cling. He tried to focus. The radar was filled with closing blips which immediately became a blur. Flickering glow…? Rostock, Ro - stock…? What did it mean? Glow -

He touched the flicker of light, and tried to count. Tried to remember. It was important, like Rostock. But he could answer this question - he was trained to do it -

He clutched at a switch and threw it with a convulsive jerk of his body. Then he lolled wearily upright, still holding the column, aware now of the restraint of his straps. As his head came above the cockpit coaming, he could see that now the sea had huge, tossing waves. There were fires burning below and around him, flares warning of -

He saw the Vietnamese girl swallowed by fire. He saw Anna with the blue hole in her forehead. His arms ached, seemed close to being pulled from their sockets with the effort required to hold onto the control column.

The girl, Anna - himself…

'No - you
bastard -
!'

He fought the column, trying to heave it towards him with a fierce, sudden strength. He dragged the throttles back, then pulled further on the column. It moved more easily. His lungs gulped the emergency oxygen supply. The altimeter unrolled more slowly, the Mach-meter descended. The aircraft began to level out. He continued to fight the column, clutching it back against him. The horizon jolted, wobbled, the waves accelerated less than a thousand feet below. The flames from the oil-rigs rushed beneath him. His head was filled with noises, voices speaking in Russian -

He reset the UHF feverishly. He heard it, then -

Rostock. Spoken in English, an English accent. A babble of English voices.

He raced over an oil-rig, then another, then a third. Snow flurried across the stormy, tossing water, but there were bright gaps in the cloud. Shreds of it struggled to envelop him, but the Firefox kept breaking free of them…

His head cleared. He was travelling at less than four hundred miles an hour, at twelve thousand feet, across what remained of the North Sea; towards Shetland.

He continued to gulp down the emergency oxygen supply.

The airplane had tried to kill him again. Had betrayed him. The warning light had come on too late for him to recognise its signal. Lack of oxygen had already made him dizzy and lightheaded before he noticed it. His heart pounded, his pulse thudded in his ears. His helmet was filled with English voices, themselves full of congratulation. He flicked back to the Soviet channel.

Rostock-they were calling Rostock Airbase, he remembered. It would have been the nearest front-line airbase on an interception course. East Germany. A couple of squadrons of MiG-25s had been despatched by the elite 16th Frontal Aviation Army to destroy him. The RAF had reached him first. He had been a sitting target. They might even have been just sitting back, watching him dive into the sea. The Firefox had been doing their work for them.

He sat back in the couch.
Bastard
. On either side of him, aircraft appeared. They waggled their wings, coyly displaying their RAF roundels. One of the pilots, the one to starboard, signalled with his thumb. Success, congratulation - something like that. Beyond the Tornado fighter, Gant glimpsed the dark coastline of Shetland rising out of the sea.

Wearily, he returned the UHF to the NATO secure tactical channel. The English voices gabbled for a moment, then one of them silenced the others and attempted to contact him. He glanced to starboard. The pilot of the Tornado was frantically signalling with his hand. He wanted him to answer, to use the radio -

Gant did not care. He was alive. He was safe. There was time enough to answer them. His heartbeat and pulse settled, receding in his awareness. Bastard. The airplane was a bastard.

It was over now.

'Go ahead, flight leader,' he said eventually, sitting more upright in the couch. 'This is Firefox. Receiving you loud and clear. Go ahead. Over.'

'Major Gant? Congratulations, Major - what happened, sir? What happened to you ? Over.'

'I lived,' Gant replied. 'Now, get me home.'

At twelve hundred feet and at a speed of three hundred and eighty-six miles an hour, the MiG-31, NATO-codenamed the Firefox, drifted towards the Scottish coast escorted by six Tornado fighters of RAF Strike Command. They were the only aircraft registering on his radar.

The grey, stormy sea flowed beneath the belly of the aircraft. A stray gleam of sunlight glowed on the cockpit. Gant, at last, allowed himself a smile of success.