Winter Hawk (80 page)

He pushed the doors open. Darkness. The light seemed to spill in slowly. It illuminated boxes, shelves, cans—of paint. He wanted to laugh. A paint store. And the doors had been seriously in need of painting.

He dragged the guard into the darkness, found the man's handkerchief and gagged him with it, tying his own around the man's mouth to keep the wad in place. The rifle was banging on his back as he worked, and seemed omnipresent. But he could not use it, not on an unconscious man. Mistake, mistake.

Everything you've done so far is a mistake, he told himself. You can't do it, anyway, so shut up about it.

The man's belt and webbing. Hands and feet together behind him, a reversed fetal position. He tightened the straps viciously, perhaps because he couldn't kill him.

He stood in the air for a moment, breathing laboredly. Hands on his hips. Then he picked up the chain and rethreaded it through the door handles. Hid the broken link as well as he could, left the lock dangling as if still effective. Glanced along the alleyway once more. Still no one. He looked a last time at the door. The chain appeared sound. He began running along the alleyway, his memory of this place playing in his mind like a very old film; stained, patchy, flickering. But there—

He forced himself to remember. Main assembly building, attendant stores, workshops, other facilities, parking lots. Parking lots. Military and civilian. He needed something like a UAZ jeep,
some
thing that would not be suspicious, not out of place, still free to move around the high-security area. Parking lot—

—left now, then right. He moved incautiously, like a rat
seeking
reward through its familiar maze, down the alleyways between the crowding complex of buildings. He saw no one.

Until he reached the open space of the parking lot. Civilian and military vehicles parked within regimented white lines. The lot was almost full. Two men were lounging against a wall, smoking,
white
lab coats beneath their open topcoats. Fur hats. They
were fifty
yards away, and uninterested. All they could see was a uniform;
^a
capless officer with a rifle. Baikonur was full of officers. A military driver stepped out of a UAZ, other men were leaning out of a canvas-hooded truck. As his breathing calmed, he began to see how many people there were. He began to stroll. He was not out of place here . . . you are not, you are not out of place, you are not.

The truck drove off, smoke pluming from the exhaust. The driver of the UAZ was carrying a metal box, sealed and locked. Priabin passed him with only a single line of parked cars between them. The guard hardly glanced in his direction after saluting casually. He had not even noticed the KGB flashes.

He reached the UAZ and turned. The soldier with the metal box entered the building where the two technicians were lounging against the wall. Priabin glanced into the vehicle. The key was in the ignition. A lucky rabbit's foot dangled from it. Thank God.

He watched the technicians, but could not wait. They wouldn't know, would they? They wouldn't know which vehicle it was.

He climbed in, placing the rifle on the passenger seat. His hands gripped the wheel. They had begun shaking. He looked up at the pale midday sky. Cloudless above a cold desert. It was as if the keys had been left here, as if the guard had been unaware—on purpose. Rope with which to hang himself; a trap. Luck, he kept telling himself, luck. They're not watching you . . . luck.

He turned the key. The engine caught, and he revved it as if shouting defiantly at someone. He turned the wheel and headed for the road, bumped over the low curb, then was heading south toward Tyuratam.

Fifteen minutes, ten perhaps.

He had watched the firing of the shuttle's small auxiliary maneuvering rockets, the sliding away of the laser weapon—or so it seemed from the camera's view aboard
Kutuzov
—until it was a pinprick less bright than some of the stars. He had listened to the voices from the shuttle, the voice of mission control. He had listened to the revised countdown, he had listened to Rodin's public-address voice as he bestowed congratulations to every part of the vast room. He had looked, he had listened—

—until the lid had blown off his rage and frustration and guilt at doing nothing. He had to do something, he had to try to stop
Rodin
—who was capable of anything. There was no one else to stop him. Gant was as good as dead—he had to do something—

—and the trigger was knowing that Gant was still al
ive
~-ke s running into a box . . .toe have him all but pinpointed . . . only the *U>o casualties so far ... ten minutes and hes ours.

Priabin glanced wildly at his watch. Since he'd heard that report from the Armenian border with Turkey, fifteen minutes had passed. He knew Gant was alive and was just as certain he would soon be dead—odds of as much as fifty to one, all his opponents
spetsnaz
troops, no way out—and he had to do something, as if it were his
turn
to act.

Buildings encroaching, the darkness of the huge war memorial ahead of him. The cobbles of the square shaking the UAZ's suspension. GRU headquarters. He turned down the ramp into the underground garage from which he and Gant—and Katya—had escaped the previous day—evening—it had all happened in that little time. Now, he was walking back in—driving! Here I am!

How the hell could he avoid being recognized? It was crazy.

Slowly, carefully, he parked the UAZ. Gasoline was nauseating, the damp chill of the place reached into him at once. He glanced at the rifle on the passenger seat. Folding stock, length of weapon when the stock was folded almost twenty-seven inches. Just over two feet. He hadn't an overcoat under which to conceal it.

A greatcoat walked toward him, unsuspecting, merely observing routine. Corporal's stripes, a man smaller than Priabin. A GRU greatcoat. The corporal slapped his gloved hands together for warmth. Again, a fleeting sense of a trap—enough rope, as if they wanted him there. Then the duty corporal was at his side, hands coming together slower than before, as if to catch a moth,
because
he had seen the rifle on the seat in the moment before Priabin raised the barrel toward him. Priabin altered the aim so that the barrel pointed into the corporal's face. Shock, and recognition of the KGB uniform, perhaps even of the colonel inside it. He might have been one of them in the garage yesterday, when they had Serov as a shield, he and the American. The man's face printed out
recognition
and memory like a computer screen.

"Yes," Priabin said, nodding. "Take off your coat—no, wait. Step back." He removed the ignition key and got out of the
vehicle.
"Keep your hands down." He motioned with the gun. "Let's go
back
into your warm little booth, shall we, corporal?"

Sullenly, the soldier turned away and began walking.
Footsteps
echoed. Priabin's overlapped in the damp silence. He
watched
the elevator doors as they passed them, then watched the floor indicator. No one.

Greatcoat.

The soldier opened the door of his glass-sided sentry booth and hesitated, as if waiting—

—to be struck. Priabin hit him across the back of the head with the AKMS. Coffee spilled from a mug, against which the corporal lurched. Papers and a clipboard came off his desk shelf and fell around him. The whole booth seemed to list with the weight of his collapse.

Which was below the level of the glass, out of sight. Priabin kicked the man's legs away from the door, then bent to tug and heave at the body—should have gotten him to remove . . . doesn't matter, get on with it—until he had pulled the corporal out of his coat.

The sleeves were too short. He pulled off the man's gloves, then scrabbled in a comer for the fur hat with its small red star. Stood up and buttoned the coat. It wasn't too tight, just short in the sleeves and the length. He looked down. Distinguishing stripe on his trousers, just visible. He had to risk it. He tugged on the gloves and slung the rifle over his shoulder. Adjusted the fur hat. Studied the guard. Quick, if you're still in there by the time he recovers, you'll be too late anyway.

He grabbed up the keys and locked the glass booth. It rocked as he tested the door with a furious jerk. Glancing back from the elevator, it was unsuspicious; unless anyone officiously wanted to know the sentry's whereabouts.

The doors grumbled open. The elevator was empty. What was it the guard had said? Kedrov was in one of the hospital rooms. To him, it had been a joke, like a salacious insult. Second floor, toward the rear of the building. He pressed for the second floor. The doors closed. The image of the trap again. He heard his own breathing magnified. Stamped with nerves, his arms clutching across his chest and stomach as if he were being assaulted. There was getting out again, taking Kedrov even, then what to do? He hadn't any idea, not really, if he was brutally honest, he would not be able to stop it, he wasn't technical, not in the least.

The doors sighed open at the second floor.

19: High Frontiers

The trees were
opening out. If they caught him on exposed rock, the gunships would no longer be frustrated by the tree cover and would drive in. It would be over in moments. One of them was close over his head, hanging noisily, its din alone an effective aid to terror. They were drawing the trap close like the neck of a bag. Tight.

He'd tried, with increasing desperation, to maintain his altitude above the foothills and the plain. They wanted to drive him either down to the open ground, or up beyond the tree line. And yet, even though he'd succeeded, the
spetsnaz
troops behind and around him appeared content. He was still ten miles or more from the border, however much distance he'd traveled. He was still inside their country, moving only parallel to the border, northeast toward the haze that hung above Yerevan.

They didn't mind. He had remained in the trees, high and concealed, but they were sure of him. They couldn't pinpoint him, but they'd have thermal imagers by now. He was warmer than the
cold
sap of trees. They'd have caught glimpses of him. The
transport
MiLs had done too accurate a job of landing reinforcements for them not to be aware at least of his general direction and position.

The slopes were steepening now, there were few tracks.
The
snow was thicker as the trees thinned. They had driven him higher, and the country was changing, too. Ravines and narrow
canyons,
black knife edges
of
rock, frozen streams and waterfalls. Trees clung precariously to the landscape; as he did.

His back pressed to rock, Gant moved in a cloud of his own breath along a narrow ledge screened by a few thin trees from the pale sky. The camouflage of a gunship slid past less than a
hundred
feet away. He felt the downdraft tugging at his parka, tugging at his balance. The machine moved on, blind to his presence, simply waiting. He paused. Sweat dampened his forehead, and his armpits were chilly with it. Slowly, he moved on.

They were ahead of him. He'd seen some of the transports, sensed others. Troops had been lowered from ropes or landed in small clearings above and below, and ahead ©f him. Behind him, others had followed his trail of snapped twigs and branches, trodden litter on the forest floor, disturbed snow on the fir boles. Signs of his passage cried out for their attention.

He reached the end of the ledge. The crack of the ravine glinted with ice and a frozen stream at its bottom. He looked up, then around. Nothing. The noise of the MiLs had receded. Eye of the storm. Silence. He waited, but distinguished no noises that indicated stealth or the springing of the trap. The ravine dizzied him as he looked down into it. He would have to jump the ravine now that the ledge had petered out. Push himself outward, away from the rock at his back, as if to fly, hands grabbing the opposite side of the ravine, holding on—

He swallowed. A radio crackled momentarily, until stilled by a harsh whisper. His body shook with reaction. The trees concealed them now. The morning air magnified, made sounds louder and closer, but how close? He strained to hear other noises, boot on rock, the rustle of pine litter, the click of a round of ammunition levered into the chamber. He heard nothing, except the now-back-ground throbbing of gunship rotors. The rock arched above him like a shell. The ravine was below him. The trees were thin—too thin— above and to his left, the way he had come. They would see him easily.

He rubbed one hand over his face, which seemed unformed, loosely put together. His mouth was wet with saliva. He listened once more, looking down into the ravine and fighting the dizziness. The mouse-scrape of boots through the pine needles rotting on the ground. Eventually, he heard at least one man moving. Then a second, perhaps a minute later, and realized the neck of the bag, the trap itself—was there, precisely there.

They'd designed it that way. His sense of his immediate surroundings had enlarged, he'd noticed the way the slope fell sheer away beyond the ravine and an outcrop of bare rock. He could glimpse the plain far below through the last of the poor trees. If he reached the outcrop by jumping across the ravine, he could not go down nor continue north because the ground rose steeply and there were no trees. Below him, only the ravine, where he would lie until they abseiled or climbed down to reach the cassettes in the kit bag slung across his body.