Firefox

'Well, my dear Vladimirov — that wasn't so bad, after all — eh?' He laughed. Behind him, like an echo, Andropov smiled thinly. Vladimirov shook his head, smiled foolishly, like a rewarded child. 'You seem to enjoy it — eh? Power… you understand, eh?' The man was leaning towards him. Vladimirov could do nothing but continue grinning foolishly, and nod his head.

A voice cut into his vacuous confrontation with the Soviet leader. 'Tretsov reports the Mig-31 crossing the coast on the line of longitude 50 degrees, near Indiga.'

It was like a single stone dropping into the flat silence of a pond. All of them around that table were suddenly reminded of the awesome potentiality, the enormous power, of the thing that had been stolen. It was little more than twenty-five minutes since Tretsov had taken off. The coast was approximately 1250 miles due north from Bilyarsk, and the Mig-31 had already reached it, passed over it, heading for its rendezvous over the Barents Sea with a tanker aircraft.

Vladimirov looked at the first Secretary, saw the momentary hesitation in the eyes.

'Shall I order Tretsov to alter course, First Secretary?' he asked tiredly.

The big man shook his head, still smiling. 'Not for the moment — let Tretsov make his rendezvous with the tanker first. When we have a sighting, we will point him like an arrow at the American — eh, like an arrow, Vladinurov?'

The First Secretary laughed. Vladinurov derived no comfort from the sound, from the over-confidence it betrayed.

* * *

Twenty minutes after he had landed, Gant was back on the surface of the floe, checking the progress of the refuelling. Despite the bitter, freezing cold, the raw wind that swirled the thick mist around him, whipped the smoking breath away from his numbed lips, Gant stood on the ice near the Firefox, as if unwilling to surrender the aircraft entirely to the attentions of Seerbacker's crew. The frost had already begun to rime the fur of his borrowed parka, which did not seem to warm him, and he stood, a hunched figure, his hands thrust into his pockets, staring into the grey, formless world of the floe, seeing shadowy, labouring figures on the ice. The two hoses, each four inches in diameter, snaked across the floe towards the plane. The crew worked like men at the scene of some desperate, frozen fire. A trolley-pump had been wheeled out across the ice, having been lowered from the forward hatch by a winch, and then a smaller hatch in the forward deck had been opened. Gant's nostrils had been assailed by the sudden, bitter-sweet smell of the paraffin. A heavy-duty hose disappeared into the hatch above the forward crew's quarters.

It would take, Gant knew, perhaps another twenty minutes to refuel. Unlike the huge pressure-pumps available at an airbase in the front line, which could transfer as much as three thousand gallons of paraffin a minute to the thirsty tanks of a warplane, this trolley-pump was an aged, short-breathed thing.

There had been a delay, while Gant devoured a plate of chili in Seerbacker's quarters, before the pump had begun to operate. The bonding wire running from the sub, which was required to earth the Firefox to prevent the danger of a spark from the static electricity in the fuselage igniting any spillage, had been too short. The sub's crew had spliced in another length of wire, and the huge crocodile clip had been fastened to the nose-wheel strut Only then had the refuelling begun.

When the two civilians carried by the Pequod — an engineer and an electronics expert — had begun work on the plane, Gant agreed to return to Seerbacker's cabin.

Once there, he sat in silence except when, after looking at his watch, he murmured, 'Ten minutes.'

A minute or two later, there was a knock at the door. 'Yeah?'

The Exec., Fleischer, stuck his head into the room. 'Weather report, sir,' he said.

Gant suddenly seemed to come awake. His eyes fixed on Fleischer's face, the intensity of the gaze making the young man falter.

'What is it?' Gant said.

'The wind's getting up, sir — gusting to fifteen knots at times.' Fleischer spoke to Seerbacker, quite deliberately. 'The fog seems to be lifting.'

Seerbacker nodded. Gant had relaxed. Fifteen-knot gusts were no real threat to take-off.

'What about the shore-party?'

'Almost through, sir — another seven or eight minutes, by Peck's reckoning.' Seerbacker nodded. Peck, the Pequod's chief engineer, would not be much out in his reckoning. He would have bullied the men into utmost effort, whatever his private considerations concerning Gant and the safety of the ship.

Fleischer withdrew his head, and Gant made to rise from his chair. The next thing he knew was the huge jolt of the deck moving beneath him, and he was flung head-first across the table. He had a brief glimpse of Seerbacker catapulting off his bunk, and then his left shoulder struck the bulkhead with a jarring blow. The ship's lights winked out, and then returned, glowing brightly again. He felt the numbness of his shoulder and side, and the weight of Seerbacker's body lying winded across his chest. He heard a clatter from the companion-way, presumably Fleischer's body being thrown to the ground. He shifted his body, and saw Seerbacker's stunned, frightened face staring up at him.

'What in hell's name…?' he said, his voice small, choking.

'What was it?' Gant said.

Seerbacker struggled to his feet, ungainly, bruised. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. He had bitten his tongue. He wiped the blood from his face, and stared at his reddened fingers for a moment. Then he seemed galvanised into action by the sound of running feet outside. He heaved open the door.

'What the hell's going on, sailor?' he bawled.

Gant picked himself off the floor, rubbing his shoulder. Feeling was returning to it, and he reckoned that nothing was dislocated or broken.

'Sir — we don't know.'

'What? Then what the hell are you doing here, sailor? Find out!'

'Sir!' The man's footsteps retreated down the com-panionway.

'The Firefox!' Gant said.

'The hell with that!' Seerbacker exploded. 'What about my boat?'

Gant followed him out of the cabin. Fleischer was leaning against the bulkhead, blood oozing from a deep, livid gash on his forehead. Seerbacker ignored him, dazed as he was, and pressed past him towards the control room. Gant stopped briefly to examine the wound, then he patted the young man on the shoulder, and followed in the captain's wake.

The control room gave a confused impression of men picking themselves up, of furniture overturned. Gant headed towards the hatch-ladder up to the bridge.

'Get me a damage report — and quick!' barked the captain.

The freezing air bit through Gant's parka, and the wind plucked his first raw breath away from him. From the top of the sail, he could see the Firefox in the improved visibility, apparently undamaged. The men who had been working on the ice were scattered, one or two still prone, obviously injured, other men bending over them, others spreading out over the ice.

Gant yelled down to a sailor near the submarine:

'What happened?'

The man looked up, saw the captain standing alongside Gant.

'Don't know, sir. We — heard this cracking sound, like a scream, and then I was trying to push my face into the floe. I thought it was a fish homing on the boat, sir!'

'It was no torpedo. Where's Mr. Peck?'

'He headed off that way, sir,' the sailor replied, pointing due north across the floe.

Gant strained his eyes, but the mist still clung to the floe in patches, and visibility was no more than a hundred yards at best. He stared in the direction of Peck's disappearance, and there was an unstable yet formless apprehension watery in his stomach. As the minutes passed, the wind, stronger now it seemed, gusted occasionally into his face, making his eyes water. And he began to be afraid.

Then he saw Peck's figure emerging from the mist. As if prompted by something in his mind, or as if Peck's appearance heralded an answer, he began to run towards the Chief Engineer.

'What is it?' he asked breathlessly, reaching the big man. 'What's wrong?'