Firefox Down

Aubrey walked away from the console towards Curtin, deliberately ignoring Gant, who was staring out of the window at the returning landscape of mountains and fjords.

'Well, sir?' Curtin asked.

Aubrey wobbled his hand, a signal of dubiousness. 'Moresby is keener on salvage than on flight,' he said. 'What do you have from Eastoe and North Cape?'

'The traffic they've picked up at North Cape indicates at least one troop helicopter has crashed on landing. No details, but it happened at Nikel, which seems to be their main assembly point.'

'Mm. What estimates of current strength?'

Curtin shrugged. 'Now we're really into the guesswork area. Maybe upwards of one hundred commandos… that's predicting the time they found out, the weather then and since, the known locations of units of the Independent Airborne Force… just about everything. But it's still pretty vague, sir.'

'A hundred-I see.'

'And gunships. Our people haven't got Blowpipe or any other missile. They're sitting targets for a gunship attack — so's the Firefox.'

'I know that — !' Aubrey snapped, then added: 'Sorry. Go on.'

'Eastoe's reporting movements all the time. It's very difficult for them… hence the helicopter crash. That will teach them a little caution, sir, if nothing else. There are troop movements on the ground — hard to make out, but it's safe to assume there are some…'

'And nothing has crossed the border as yet — nothing?'

Curtin shook his head. 'We don't think so…'

'But, no one can be certain.'

'No.'

'Well?'

'It looks like they're settling for one big push — a hundred men or more, perhaps two or three gunships besides the transport helicopters…'

'Activity at Kola Peninsula bases?'

'Plenty. No flying — there's no weather for that — yet. The first forward base, at Pechenga, will clear soon after we do, sir. We know what will happen then.' Curtin suddenly detached himself from detail, and said, 'Mr. Aubrey-they know everything. They must know about — him,' he added, nodding his head towards Gant, 'and they know what we're trying to do at the lake with 'Nessie'… it's a race, sir. One we can't win. If all they want to do is destroy the Firefox, they'll have an easy time of it.'

'If that's what they want,' Aubrey replied, but it was evident that his features expressed his mind's agreement with Curtin's arguments. He glanced towards Gant's back, then into Curtin's face. He shook his head as a signal of doubt rather than denial. 'The weather is about to open, Curtin. I have ten minutes, little more, in which to decide. It's — difficult…' He pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, cradling his elbow with his free hand. 'So difficult,' he murmured. 'We would have an hour, perhaps less, of sufficiently good weather… after that, he could not take off anyway. Half of that time we will be safe-the Russians won't be able to move. Then perhaps another ten or fifteen minutes before their first units arrive. Three-quarters of an hour. And Moresby swears the thing won't be ready…' He looked up again. 'It is ready, in one sense. Ready for a low-level two hundred mile flight at sub-sonic speed to Bardufoss. He won't guarantee anything more than that. Worse, he cannot tell whether or not the anti-radar is working, or will continue to work, during any sort of flight.'

Curtin nodded his agreement. He dropped his voice, and said, 'You would be sending him up in an airplane which might break down at any moment, which won't do what he wants, hasn't the speed to run away… and may be seen on every radar on the ground and in the air for hundreds of miles around him. That's the gamble, Mr. Aubrey — the real gamble!'

'You think I'd be killing him?'

'I do.'

'Then I can't ask it of him — can I?'

'No, I don't think you can.'

The door of the hut opened. The wind's noise entered, seeming to blow Thorne into the room. As he closed the door, he said, 'It's just about possible — now. In two minutes, even better. What do you want, sir?'

The smell of paraffin was heavy in the air. Blue smoke rolled near the low ceiling. Gant had turned from the window. He crossed to the nearest bed and picked up his flying helmet.

'I'm afraid — ' Aubrey began.

'Me, too,' Gant replied, standing directly in front of Aubrey. His stance was somewhat challenging.

'I meant — '

'I know what you meant. It doesn't make any difference.'

'Mitchell — listen to me, please. You can't be forced to do this… in fact, I'm beginning to believe that you shouldn't even try. Time — time has run out for us. You couldn't survive even if you take off. You know that.'

'Maybe.' Gant's face was bleak. 'I'm not letting them all be wasted, Aubrey. I don't care what it was all for, or whether it really matters a damn — but they're dead and I owe them.' He tucked his helmet under his arm. 'Wish me luck.'

Aubrey nodded, but could not speak. Curtin said, 'Good luck, Mitchell. Great good luck.'

'Sure.'

The door closed behind Gant. Aubrey remained silent. There was a clock on the wall of the hut, an old, bare-faced electric clock with two thick black hands and a spider-leg, red second hand. Aubrey's gaze was drawn to it. The clock of the operation's last phase had begun running. Gant's clock. The second hand passed the figure twelve, beginning a new minute.

An hour, he thought. In an hour, it will be all over. Everything…

FOURTEEN: Whirlpool

The Harrier was an approaching roar which became a misty, uncertain shape against the heavy cloud; a falcon about to stoop. Waterford felt himself able to envisage the scene that confronted the pilot. Whiteness; little more than white-out. A picket-fence of pencilled trees fringing the lake. Contourless, featureless almost.

The shape enlarged, dropping slowly. Roundels, camouflage paint, a grey shark's belly. The undercarriage legs, almost at the wingtips like a child's approximation to their position, hung ready to contact the ice. The fuselage wobbled. Two hundred feet, a hundred and fifty feet…

Now, Gant and the pilot could see their faces; begin to see the ridges and bumps of the ice and drifted snow. See Moresby's splashes of red paint.

Waterford saw the wings flick, the descent unsettled by a whipping reminder of the wind. Snow flurried across the ice, flew through the clearing air. Fifty feet. He wondered whether the pilot would abandon the attempt and rise again as if riding a funnel of air until he was at a safe altitude. But the Harrier continued to drop. Hovering, hesitating…

An image from his boyhood; the stoop of the falcon, then its violent, brute rise back up from the long grass, the rabbit beneath it kicking feebly, wounded through by the talons. The Harrier's port undercarriage touched an instant before the starboard. Then the nosewheel dropped with an audible thump. Someone — perhaps as many as half a dozen — cheered. Others ran to secure the aircraft through another flurry of snow.

'He's here,' Buckholz said to Waterford, unnecessarily; merely expelling tension.

'Who? Superman?' Waterford turned to look at the Firefox, then back towards the lake. Two men were already clambering over the Harrier's coekpit sill. 'Yes,' he added more quietly. 'Poor bloody Superman. How the hell does Aubrey con them?'

'Us, you mean?' Buckholz asked, smiling. Without waiting for an answer, he moved down to the ice, raising his arm to signal to Gant, who was removing his flying helmet.

'Us,' Waterford agreed.

Buckholz opened his arms to welcome Gant.