Firefox Down

Then he waited. Contact time diminishing, split-seconds now… Gant still climbing but he must have seen them by now… orders required… engage? What was that?

'Repeat that!' the First Secretary ordered before Vladimirov could utter the same words. The order was transmitted, and the voice of the Foxbat pilot repeated the information. Fuel droplets — a thin stream of fuel! Gant had a serious fuel-leak. He had climbed to that extreme altitude in order to stretch his fuel, and to be able to glide when the fuel ran out. Just as he must have done to find the submarine and the ice-floe. 'Engage!'

'No!' Vladimirov shouted. The First Secretary glared at him, his mouth twisted with venom. He took a single step towards the map-table. The positions of the two MiG-25s glowed as a single bright white star on the face of Finnish Lapland. Vladimirov's cupped hand stroked towards the pinpoint of light and beyond it into Russia. 'No,' he repeated. 'We can bring him back — we can bring him back! Don't you see?'

'Explain — hold that order.' The two men faced each other across the surface of the map. The colours of sea and land shone palely on their features, mottling them blue and brown and green. 'Explain.'

Vladimirov's hands anticipated his tongue. They waved and chopped over the glowing surface of Lapland. Then his right forefinger stabbed at the white star that represented the two MiG-2 5s.

'There,' he said. 'They are two seconds away…' The First Secretary's face was expressionless as Vladimirov looked up for an instant. Then the Soviet general, one lock of silver hair falling across his intently creased high forehead, spoke directly to the map-table. 'It's already beginning… they'll peel away and return without a definite order… they're good pilots…' They have to be, he thought — to be in their squadron. The aircraft are advanced Foxbat-Fs, the next best thing to the Firefox itself. 'The border is here…' The finger stabbed, again and again, as if an ant on the surface of the table persisted in maintaining life. 'Less than a hundred miles… minutes of flying time at the most. They can shepherd him!' He looked up once more. Puzzlement. The Russian leader's thoughts were seconds behind his own. 'Look — they can do this with him…' Once more, his hand swept across the map, ushering the white star towards the red border, away from dotted blue lakes to more dotted blue lakes — Soviet lakes. For a split-second, Vladimirov remembered reading the samizdat of Solzhenitsyn's short story of the lake guarded by barbed wire that represented his country, then he shook his head and dismissed the image.

His voice was unchanged as he continued. 'It will take clever flying, but I'm certain it can be done. Once he's across the border, then he can be brought down. He's almost out of fuel, I'm sure of that, he will have to land. We can shepherd him straight into an airfield… one of ours.'

He looked up. The First Secretary was, for the moment, dazzled. He nodded eagerly. Vladimirov listened. Over the speaker, the leading pilot of the two Foxbats was reporting the peel-off and the encroaching return. Contact time, four seconds.

'Shepherd — repeat, shepherd,' he snapped. A remote mike had been patched in. They could hear him direct. 'You know the procedure-it's… ninety miles and no more to the border-bring him home!' He grinned as the second of hesitation passed and the leading pilot acknowledged with a chuckle in his voice. Then he studied the map before ordering: 'Patch me into all forward border squadron commanders — all of them. And to flight leaders of 'Wolfpack' squadrons already in the air. Every commander and flight leader who can give me a Foxbat-F.' He looked up at the Russian leader — beyond his shoulder the light glinted from Andropov's glasses but Vladimirov ignored any signal they might be transmitting — and smiled confidently. 'We'll put up everything we have that can reach that altitude,' he announced. The American will feel like the last settler left alive inside the circle of the wagon-train!'

The First Secretary seemed to remember the old cowboy-and-Indian films which, as the child of a prominent Party member, he would have been privileged to see, and laughed.

Vladimirov looked down at the map once more, and breathed deeply. It would take constant dialogue with the two pilots, instantaneous communications, if he was to supervise the recapture of the MiG-31. But, he could do it — yes. It would take perhaps eight or ten minutes' flying for any other MiGs to reach Gant. The two Foxbats would be working alone — but they would be sufficient, he assured himself. No other aircraft could achieve that altitude except another Foxbat-F. And there were only the two of them in the area. The map, with its clearly- marked border and the slowly-moving white dot of the routine Early Warning Tupolev Tu-126 'Moss' aircraft travelling southwards along its snaking line, confirmed his optimism.

* * *

For a moment, as the two Foxbats at more than Mach 1.5 had peeled away from the Firefox, the single white dot that represented them had become a double sun. Now, the separate lights had once more become a single white star.

They had come sweeping up towards him, then past and above. He had loosed neither of the remaining advanced Anab missiles, slung one beneath each wing; suppressing the mental command to fire with a certain, decisive violence of reaction. The two Foxbats had broken their unity, peeling away in opposite directions and dropping away from the purple-blue towards the globe below like exhausted shuttlecocks. Then, finally, they had begun to climb again, almost touching wings as if joining hands. Aiming at him like darts. Contact time — four seconds. Their speed was slower now, as if they had been advised to the utmost caution. Gant was fiercely aware once more of the two remaining air-to-air missiles. Two MiGs, advanced Foxbat-Fs, two missiles. Fuel — critical.

Unlike the Foxbats, he had the fuel neither to fight nor to run. He had to wait, just as he suspected the two Russian pilots were themselves waiting for orders.

They bobbed up to port and starboard of him like corks on the surface of invisible water, slightly above him at one hundred and twenty-five thousand feet and hanging, like him, apparently suspended from the purple blackness above. On his screen they had converged to a single glow and at the extreme edge the dot of the slow moving AWACS plane patrolling the Soviet-Finnish border continued its flight. He had been aware of it when he began his climb, and had smiled in the secure knowledge that he was invisible to it. Now, however, it could see the two Foxbats. His position was known — to everyone.

The fear passed quickly, surprising him by its feeble hold; delighting him, too. He accepted his role. He had to wait until they attacked… One twenty-two thousand feet. His slow flight north-west had begun, but now he would not be allowed to continue. His hand gripped the throttle-levers, but he did not move them either backward or forward. Slowly, as if tired, the Firefox continued to descend.

He looked to port and starboard. The two Foxbats were sliding gently in towards him. Each of the pilots was engaged in a visual scan. By now they knew he had only two missiles. By now, they knew he had a fuel leak, and they would have guessed at the reason for his altitude. They would be confident… Orders and decisions would be crackling and bleeping in their headsets. Not long now. Gant armed the weapons systems, switched on the firing circuits, calculated his remaining flying time. He knew he would have to use the engines, use all remaining fuel, to escape the Foxbats.

The Foxbat to starboard, no more than two hundred yards from him, was now in sharp profile, Gant waited, beginning to sweat, his mind coldly clear. The Fbxbat loomed on his right, and yawed slightly towards him. Cannon fire flashed ahead of him as the Russian plane slid across and below the level of the cockpit sill and he lost sight of it. He flung the Firefox to port -

Flickers of flame at the wingtips from the cannon, the Foxbat in profile, the savage lurch of the sky, a glimpse of the port Foxbat maintaining its course, then he was below it and levelling out, watching the radar. Two dots. He watched the mirror, the radar, the sky ahead of him, the mirror, the radar, the sky…

Bobbing corks. They were on either side of him again as he flew level, the distant dot of the AWACS Tupolev now in the corner of his screen, ahead of him.

He glanced to port and starboard. He could see the pilots. He watched them as they watched him. He understood what they had witnessed. He'd dropped away from the cannon fire rather than dived. He had confirmed his fear of empty tanks as clearly as if he had spoken to them.

Port, starboard, port, starboard… Gant's head flicked from side to side. With each movement, his eyes glanced across the instrument panel, registering the dials and screens minutely as if they were small, precise physical sensations on his skin or at his fingertips. He waited for movement. Between them, he knew himself to be safe from the AA-6 missiles. They were too close to one another to be certain of hitting only him. It would be when one of them dropped away suddenly that the other would launch a missile.

Yet they remained level.