prove sufficiently accurate for heat-seeking missiles to be launched in the direction of the prospective target. They would then, with their own sensors, seek out the heat-source that would have shown up on the infra-red screens on the ground. That was it! He looked at his hand in front of his face, and saw that it was quivering.
It was the answer. His staggered sector scramble did not have to rely upon the faint possibility of a clear visual sighting. Every fighter could train its infra-red weapons-aiming system ahead of the plane, in a cone. Anything with a jet engine passing through that cone, in whatever atmospheric conditions, at whatever altitude, would show up as a bright orange heat-spot on the pilot's infra-red detection screen.
He saw the face of the operator, holding one hand to his head like a man with toothache, saw the smile of puzzlement on the face.
'Yes?' he said. 'What did you say?'
'General — there has been an unidentified sound-trace from a low-flying aircraft travelling at more than Mach 2, picked up on the mobile unit west of Orsk.'
'Where is Orsk?' Vladimirov snapped, the excitement in the young face in front of him seeming to become infectious. Without waiting for an answer, the General turned to the man at the map-console, who computed the patterns and details to be fed onto the projection on the table. 'Orsk! Blow up that region for me.' He remembered. 'It's at the southern tip of the Urals…'
He slapped his hand against his forehead, not noticing the silence of the entire War Command Centre as the truth of his suspicions came home to him. Gant had
'What is the matter, General Vladimirov?' he heard the First Secretary ask. Unconsciously, he waved his hand dismissively in the direction of the voice.
'Get me a confirmation of that report — quickly!' he snapped. 'Call it out to me.'
Swiftly, he crossed to the map beneath the screen of the table, oblivious to the rising anger displayed on the face of the First Secretary. Eagerly, he studied the enlargement of the southern tip of the Urals mountain chain, realised that the area was too small and said: 'Replace this — give me a projection of the Urals, and of as much to the north and south as you can — now.'
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 radio-operator 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, atid that made him suspicious. Also, he was traveling 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 radar-immunity, 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 infra-red 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 Ilyich?' Kutuzov nodded. 'This needs no mechanical adjustment?'
'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
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 panic-dash 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 auto-pilot, and passed like a ghost into a grey world of terrain-hugging mist, chill to the eye, featureless as the moon, or the 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
