The noise of an RAF Vulcan taking off seemed a mocking, unnecessary intrusion into the tense silence.
'I know Eastoe — what's his best guess?' Aubrey asked quietly. 'He would have one and he would have offered it, asked or no.'
Bradnum nodded. 'They've been in the tightest formation and descending very slowly for two minutes or more. He thinks the Firefox is there, too. It's too deliberate to be for no reason.'
Aubrey snapped his fingers in an inadequate expression of anger and urgency.
'We must talk to Eastoe,' he said, addressing Buckholz. 'At once. From your Ops. Room, Group Captain. Lead on, if you please.'
At the edge of eyesight, another shaft of sunlight warmly lit the distant cathedral towers. Aubrey shivered with the cold of the wind.
'What now? What now?' the First Secretary demanded. The Tupolev Tu-144 was cruising at fifty thousand feet, almost a hundred miles of the journey from Bilyarsk to Moscow already accomplished.
Vladimirov leaned heavily on the other side of the map-table, his eyes focused upon the dark-haired wrists that protruded from beneath the Russian leader's shirt cuffs. Grey hairs, too…
The report from the surviving Foxbat confirmed that visual contact with the Firefox had been lost. Gant was hidden somewhere in the twelve or thirteen thousand feet of the cloud layer. On low power, an infra-red trace would be difficult to establish, almost impossible to pinpoint and attack. Because attack would be the next order. Vladimirov knew that. For him the game was up. Deluded by the apparent passivity of the American and the success of his two Foxbat pilots, Vladimirov had fatally delayed the order to the border squadrons on the Kola Peninsula to scramble. Now, he was once more blind, the Firefox's anti-radar concealing the American. Neither the surviving Foxbat nor the AWACS Tupolev 'Moss' could detect his presence.
Vladimirov's own future remained difficult to envisage. His pride was hurt. He had lost to the American once again, and he could not forgive himself. The anger of others failed to interest him.
Eventually, he looked up at the Russian leader. The man's face was dark with habitual anger, habitual power. Threat. The image of the bully. Yet the stupid man had no ideas of his own — had no
The scatter of luminous blips representing the scrambled interceptors, mainly MiG-25s and swing-wing MiG- 27 Floggers, moved across the bright map towards the border with Finland. Other dots scurried south-eastwards from the west of North Cape, their contact time still six minutes away. Although no more than a futile gesture, the AWACS Tupolev had changed course to patrol the hundred miles or so of border which contained the point at which Gant would have crossed —
'In two minutes we will have eighteen, even twenty-four aircraft in the area,' Vladimirov said calmly. 'Visual contact will be re-established.'
The First Secretary sneered, then compressed his lips above his clenched jaw. When he spoke, all he said was: 'And what will you do if and when he is sighted?'
'I await your orders, Comrade First Secretary…' Vladimirov announced in a quiet, restrained voice. Behind the Russian leader, Air Marshal Kutuzov nodded with the wisdom and cowardice of great age, paining Vladimirov by his assent. Andropov smiled thinly, and flicked a little nod in the direction of the general. The gesture acknowledged the acquisition of good sense, proper caution; the priority of survival. The First Secretary appeared suspicious, then mollified.
'Very well.' He leant more closely over the surface of the map, the colours of the projectedjand mottling his features. It was a parody of knowledge apeing the strategist. The First Secretary had been a Political Commissar during the Great Patriotic War. His reputation suggested, even in the sanitised, history-book version now current, that he had killed many more Russians than he had Nazis. No, no, Vladimirov warned himself, stilling the angry tremor of his hands. You've begun it-play it out. 'Very well,' the First Secretary repeated. 'We — will wait, until our forces are in the
Masterly, Vladimirov announced silently and with irony. Quite masterly. Aloud, he said: 'Contact time of closest squadrons — one minute. Warn them to concentrate on infrared search. Blanket the area. Gant is virtually weaponless, and out of fuel.' Even to himself, his optimism sounded remarkably hollow. It appeared, however, to satisfy Andropov and the First Secretary.
The room was filled with the crackles and bleeps of exchanged communications. The Kola squadron flight leaders, the surviving Foxbat pilot, the AWACS captain. An energising electronic chatter. Easy to picture them, translate the moving dots into planes and men and tactics and search-patterns. His fingers circled the area where the Foxbat had been destroyed by Gant's last missile. In there, he's in there…
The First Secretary's impatience was evidently growing. To do nothing, to abdicate the display of power, was anathema to him. Vladimirov suspected that the impotence of inactivity had determined the Russian leader's order for the Tupolev to return to Moscow. The physical location of the War Command Centre was a matter of indifference to Vladimirov. The First Secretary studied the map, he glanced from face to face, he listened to the reports. He watched the red second-hand of the largest of the room's many clocks moving like a spider-leg around the white face. He watched time pass without the search locating the MiG-31. One minute… a minute and a half… two minutes… three… Vladimirov controlled his features, controlled his sense of rising body temperature.
Gant was out of fuel — he should be hugging the ground — the weather satellite shows broken cloud, he can't run around inside the cloud forever — he should be hugging the ground, making a run… when would the American's nerve break, when would he run for cover, skimming across Finland like a flat stone before his engines sighed and surrendered…?
Four minutes… four and a half… five… six…
Then: 'Got him! He's run out of cloud!' The operator had increased the volume so that the Foxbat pilot's ringing, boyish voice was audible above the cheer in the command centre. 'He's at zero feet and travelling sub- sonic, perhaps four hundred knots, no more. I'm going down!' Then, more formally, he added: 'What are your orders, Comrade General?'
'His exact position and heading!' Vladimirov snapped, then to the room at large: 'Alert the search to home in on the MiG-25 — repeat speed and altitude just — '
'Give the order to attack!' the First Secretary announced, glaring at Vladimirov. 'No more games — no
Ground-clutter, ground-clutter, clutter, ground-clutter, his mind kept repeating as the Firefox leapt at the landscape at an altitude of less than a hundred feet, the automatic pilot and the terrain-following radar preserving it from the snow-softened folds and contours of Finnish Lapland. Invisible, invisible, he chanted almost as a prayer. The clutter of images from the landscape would mask the Firefox from any searching eyes — other than those of the MiG-25F still on his tail, less than two miles behind him.
Two pilots with no more to do than choose the moment for the kill; to select, savour, review, revise, re- select the optimum moment. Two pilots — one with four AA-6 missiles, the other with cannon fire and empty tanks. Effectively, he and the pilot of the Foxbat were alone, skimming across the surface of Finnish Lapland. The squadrons of searching MiGs above them were rendered doubly blind — the anti-radar protected him, the ground- clutter masked his pursuer from assistance. The pilot of the Foxbat was transmitting a stream of positional fixes to his newly-arrived colleagues, but he was offering old news, history. The Firefox flicked, twisted, whipped through the landscape at four hundred knots — a butterfly that refused to be pinned to the card.
Until it ran out of fuel, finally…
The threat had hung over him for so long — perhaps fifteen minutes' flying time since he had first noticed his fuel state — that he had begun to disbelieve the gauges. They claimed he could have as much as six minutes' flying time left at his present speed. Yet each evasive manoeuvre squandered fuel, and even more fuel streamed away behind him. And he still could not shake the pursuing Foxbat. It followed him indefatigably. Over his headset, Gant heard the frantic but assured reports of his pursuer. There was a gap of time to be traversed, the optimum moment for the kill still lay in the future, but there was no doubt of the outcome.
He'd heard, too, the strong voice that had first addressed him after the take-off from Bilyarsk. The Soviet First Secretary. This time, he had heard it snapping orders, not addressed to him but to every particle of the pursuit.
