Firefox Down

rest.

He groaned aloud. The noise disturbed, magnified the silence of the forest. He studied the map. Ahead of him a country of patchy forest, narrow valleys, dotted lakes. Like Alaska.

He hefted the pack's weight to comfort, shivered with cold and anticipation, listened to the brooding, continuous silence, and turned to face northwards.

He began to walk.

* * *

Squadron Leader Alan Eastoe turned the AWACS Nimrod in a slow arc as he completed the southerly leg of his patrol at twenty-five thousand feet above the road which straggled across the Norwegian Finnmark from the Tanafjord to the small town of Karasjok. The road marked the border between Norway and Finland. The aircraft was above the cloud layer as it once more headed north-east, following the wriggling line of the unseen road.

It had been almost two hours since they had reported what Eastoe suspected had been the pursuit and destruction of the unseen MiG-31. He had immediately been ordered by Aubrey to remain on-station and to begin this idiotic patrol in the ridiculous hope of either picking up a signal from Gant's PSB — and they hadn't done that because Gant was dead — or evoking some response from a piece of sophisticated gadgetry that must have been destroyed with the Firefox.

Yet Aubrey needed to be convinced. Thus, they had to keep on attempting to make the Firefox's homing device emit a simple carrier wave on which they could take a bearing. According to Farnborough, the homing device would be capable of responding to their pulsed radio signal for at least eighteen hours. Eastoe did not believe they would ever pick up the carrier wave. No one but an uninformed civilian like Aubrey would have expected to do so. There wasn't a ghost in the machine. The Firefox was just — dead.

Eastoe yawned and adjusted his tinted glasses on the bridge of his nose. At their altitude, the sunlight still gleamed from the surface of the cloud-layer below, even though below the clouds it would be getting dark.

'Christ, Terry,' he murmured, looking towards his co-pilot, tossing his head in dismissal, 'bugger this for a ball of chalk. The poor sod's dead — and I'm sorry he's dead — and the plane's a write-off, and I'm sorry about that because I'd like to have seen it, just the once…But-!'

The co-pilot shook his head, smiling. 'You've worked with Aubrey before, skipper…' he began.

'Worked for, Terry — worked for Aubrey. There's all the difference in the world. He's never bloody convinced. I can see him in the Garden, swearing blind the risen Christ is only the gardener!' Eastoe laughed, despite his exasperation. He heard a crewman's chuckle in his earphones. 'Come on, then, he'd say — just one or perhaps two miracles to prove you are who you say you are — no, perhaps three miracles will suffice. Silly old sod!'

'Why worry? In half an hour, we'll have to go off-station to refuel at Bardufoss. He won't order us up again tonight, surely?'

'Don't bet on it,' Eastoe grumbled.

Except for their voices, the flight deck of the Nimrod was almost silent. As in all its endurance flying, the aircraft was using only two of its four engines. It was, in every way, a routine, empty day's flying. Yet exasperating to Eastoe-sad, too, because the Yank had almost got away with it. he'd almost pulled it off. Something had gone wrong — damage during the earlier dogfight when the second MiG-31 had been destroyed, probably — and he'd been caught on the hop, and finished off. Poor bugger.

'Anything at all, John?' he asked, almost wailing into his microphone, addressing himself to the tactical navigator seated before his displays in the first of the major compartments aft of the flight deck. 'What's that bloody stupid Russian doing?'

'Who — Pissed-off Pyotr in the Tupolev?'

'That's the one.'

'He's running up and down his bit of the border, doing just what we're doing, skipper. He's having about as much luck, by the look of it. No changes of heading, except when he comes to the end of a leg. He's now at — '

'I don't want a bloody fix on him, for Christ's sake! Is there nothing else?'

'Nothing. Not even a Finnish fighter. Keeping their heads down on orders from Helsinki, I should think. Anyway, they've been proven right. Ignore the problem and it'll go away. No MiGs anywhere over Finnish airspace. They've gone home for tea.'

'They've got their snaps of the wreckage. They'll be analysing those. Perhaps we should have…?'

'We're approaching optimum distance from the point of the explosions,' the routine navigator offered like a grinning tempter. 'Are you thinking of having a look, skipper?'

'I'm numb with boredom, but I'm not stupid,' Eastoe replied. Why bother? Aubrey would have arranged something with Finnish Intelligence, or an American satellite. If he'd wanted proof of the crash from photographs, he'd have asked for them.

Why bother? The same silent answer would be forthcoming. There was nothing to find. The captain of the Tupolev knew that's all there was just as surely as he did himself.

And then, the thought popped into his head. Why not? The Russians had been encroaching into Finnish airspace all afternoon. What if-?

The colder thought was -

We could be out of range of the bloody homing device. They might have already triggered the carrier wave, but they could be out of range by ten miles, or even a mile, if it was transmitting on very low power.

If he changed course, then the Tupolev would assume he'd found something. But, if he photographed the crash site at low level, then the bluff might work — and the snaps would be useful, more useful than tooling up and down the border.

'Anything, John?'

'Nothing, skipper.'

Eastoe glanced at his co-pilot. 'Everybody stay alert. I'm just taking a little short-cut here — a little corner off the map. I'd like some souvenir snaps. OK?'

The co-pilot watched Eastoe, then remarked: 'You really do like working for these cloak-and-dagger bods, don't you? Deeds of bloody derring-do. When are you going to grow up?'

'Like you?' Eastoe was grinning. 'Beats routine patrol. Who'll ever know? Who'll ever make a fuss? We can have our own snaps of the wreckage, and a closer listen for that bloody carrier wave — then, I promise, we'll go home.'

'Three or four minutes in Finnish airspace doesn't constitute the crime of the century, Terry,' the tactical navigator offered.

'Bob?'

'Yes, skipper?' the routine navigator replied.

'Give me a course for the crash site.'

'Roger, skipper.'

Eastoe grinned. 'Blame me at the court-martial. Terry,' he offered.

'You bet.'

Eastoe nudged the alteration of course through the rudder. The Nimrod's blunt head swung to starboard. The cloud layer beneath the aircraft was devoid of nationality. Simple, Eastoe thought, feeling the tension stiffening in his frame as they crossed into Finnish airspace.

'Twenty-four kilometres from the crash site — right on course.'

'No transmission, skipper.'

'ETA — fifteen seconds.'

Eastoe dipped the Nimrod's nose. 'I'm taking her down slowly to avoid creating any suspicion — then we'll turn and come back over the crash site. Everyone ready with their Brownies, please.'

The cloud layer rose up to meet the nose of the Nimrod, almost touching it.

'That's it!'

'Christ, what-?'

'The carrier wave. We're locked on now, transmission steady. It's her all right!'

'I'll alter course for the fix.'