Winter Hawk

He walked down the corridor toward the elevator that would take him down to his car in the basement garage — where Priabin and the American… He stared at the carpet beneath his feet, acknowledging no one. Gant and Priabin had — had undermined him. They had made his future a simple matter of a single success or failure. The knowledge burned inside him like a poison, spreading through every organ, every artery. It increased the sapping pain of his broken arm. He had to have them; had to.

Gant glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes. He knew the searchers would have discovered their mistake by now. The search would have spread out again; soon they'd be combing this sector. Their chance to escape had gone. And he still could not persuade Priabin to move, or persuade himself to abandon the Russian. Nor did he understand his indecision; it was a huge, creeping lethargy.

Priabin sat opposite him in the darkness, on the other side of Katya Grechkova's body. He had covered her pale face at last with one of the uniform parkas hanging in the cabin. Gant was slumped on a fold-down seat, Priabin sat loose-limbed on the metal floor.

'I've had it, Gant. I've resigned from the human race as of now.'

'For Christ's sake, Priabin, I need you,' he repeated for the tenth or twelfth time. 'You have to help me get this tape out of here.' He could dimly see, with the aid of filtered moonlight, that Priabin was shaking his head. A mask of wisdom seemed palely gilded on his features.

'No. I don't have to help you. There's no point anyway.' Then his voice became bitter, accusing. 'Why do people have to keep dying around you, Gant?'

'You'll die if you stay here. Listen, Priabin, get this tape to a KGB office, send the pictures to Moscow. That's all you have to do, man.'

Priabin stirred his legs, as if he might get up, but he did not rise-Shook his head once more. 'I can't, Gant. I feel too tired to make the effort.' He sighed, but Gant heard a choked-off moaning sound behind the attempt at listlessness. Sixteen minutes. Outside, the plantation and the air above it were dark, silent. But it was only a matter of time. 'Serov killed her like an animal — to stay alive. Isn't that your remedy, staying alive? Well, I'm not joining in, Gant, we can't beat them. People are too disposable around here. I feel cold and empty, and my skin feels too thin. Do you-understand? I'm not going with you.'

'Christ, I need you.'

Did he? Something like a faint and momentary spark seemed to glow in his thoughts. Did he?

'You don't, Gant. You don't need anyone.'

'Were you and she—?'

'I was fond of her, Gant, that's all. Now she's dead.' He paused, and then said: 'I used to be good, Gant. Like a hawk in the hover above a landscape, waiting for something interesting to move. I was good at what I did. But I stopped caring very much when they killed Anna, and I'm finished with it now that they've killed Katya. I don't believe we can stop it, and I don't even want to try.'

'They'll kill you, for sure.'

'Perhaps. They've killed everyone else, including that poor queer — or perhaps I did that.' His voice became quieter. 'Yes, I think I did that. But it was just another moment in my skating routine. Skating across the thin ice and never falling in. Oh, Gant, why don't you get on with it?' he suddenly snapped, dismissing an irritating visitor. 'Get on with staying alive. Who knows? You might even make it.' He laughed, short and soft.

'Get moving, Priabin, you can't stay here.'

'Gant, just go, will you? I'm tired of it. I've been through idealism, optimism, daring, excitement, all those things, in the last few hours. It doesn't amount to anything. I can't beat them. Neither can you.' His voice was stronger now, with the determination of clear insight. He waved his hands. 'I didn't expect this, you know. I assumed we'd go on — until they caught up with us or even until we made it to some safe place, but, there it is. I'm finished. I don't believe anyone but the Americans could stop it now. Even if Nikitin ^new, I don't think he'd stop it. Perhaps he wouldn't even have the Power.'

Gant stood up. The spark at the back of his mind had lit some find of fire, which glowed dimly. His body felt ready to move, ^hen to hell with you, Priabin,' he growled. He quickly slung the rifle across his shoulder, slipped the flashlight into one pocket of the parka, the emergency rations into another, the maps, the first aid kit, the spare clips for the Kalashnikov — and the cassette of videotape, then the smaller cassette from the camera Priabin had used — all as if putting on armor. His body felt chilly, but alert. 'To hell with you,' he repeated, though he might have been expressing some good wish or merely a farewell.

'Stay well, Gant,' Priabin murmured. 'Godspeed.'

Gant stood in the doorway for a moment, then said: 'You wanted to kill me.'

'Not now. I can't do any more of that. It's become too real here. I think that's it. It was something of a game until I stumbled across Lightning. It's too real.'

'Stay alive, Priabin…..' Gant's voice faded, and he said nothing more. Dropped to the ground and was gone. He was instantly absent, distant. Priabin could hear nothing of his progress.

He stared obsessively at the heap of coats that covered Katya's body, but he saw the snowbound road, the border crossing, and the dead, pale face he crushed against his uniform. Anna. He'd caused her death, caused Katya's death, too, by involving her. Caused Valery Rodin's murder because he had made him talk about Lightning.

His stomach felt queasy with guilt. Gant would not have understood, hadn't understood a word of the little he had said. The night was cold and silent. He looked at his watch. It might be hours yet before they found him. He patted his pockets, looking for his cigarettes.

Found the cassettes Serov had obtained from Mikhail and which he had given to Katya. Gant had forgotten them. He should have taken them; didn't matter. Gant wasn't going anywhere, either — not in the long term. His attempt was only an illusion of freedom.

Again, he stared at the heap of overcoats and parkas. Katya was under there. His queasiness affected his head, made him dizzy even though he was sitting. He drew up his legs, pressing his knees against his stomach gently but firmly. His throat was sweet with nausea. He was robbed of all volition, purpose, optimism. The carefully dressed imitation he had become was exposed as a fake. He was, suddenly and completely, riddled with guilt, like a cancer. The only vague surprise lay in the knowledge that it was Katya's death— someone he was merely fond of — rather than anything else that had so completely robbed him of his illusions. He was overcome by an accumulation of guilt, he told himself with a kind of desperate detachment, like the gradual, inexorable pressure inside a volcano.

He found his cigarettes and lit one quickly, clumsily. And choked on the acrid smoke, coughing violently and bringing tears to his eyes. He wiped them viciously. Then inhaled gently, coughed, exhaled and leaned back against the cold metal of the cabin fuselage. Queasy and weak. But, he thought, as long as* he remained still and did not move either physically or psychologically, staying with the wrecked Mil and his own decision, he could contain the nausea. What was it he had said to Gant in accusation? People die around you. It wasn't true. It was around himself that they died. It was he who was guilty. Now he had to be found, taken back. He had to give himself up. Meanwhile, until they came, he could imitate calm, just so long as he remained still and quiet like this.

The UAZ light vehicle was parked almost innocently, posed and silhouetted against the haze of lights from Tyuratam to the west. Its two uniformed occupants were engaging in a desultory search along the raised embankment that carried the dirt track across that stretch of the irrigated landscape. Their lamps swung and passed and waved like hands accompanying a rambling, purposeless conversation.

Gant crouched in a ditch, his eyes level with its rim, his body pressed against its slope, fifty yards from the Russian vehicles silhouette. The noise of the approaching UAZ had growled suddenly out of the darkness, taking him by surprise as he jogged along the track, himself a clear silhouette in that deserted place. He had dropped into a ditch, panting, shaking with shock, gripping the packed dirt with gloved fingers and shifting toes that sprinkled tiny pebbles and earth onto the ice at the bottom of the ditch.

It was almost eight. The temperature was well below freezing. He was perhaps six miles from the plantation where he had abandoned the MiL—

— and Priabin. He refused to acknowledge the sketchy but insistent insights, the understanding he had of Priabin. It would weaken his own resolve. Shock had drained him already, and he could spare no more of his flagging energy. He watched the vehicle, watched the lamps wobbling over sand, dirt, ice, and waited. His hooked Angers were numb with the cold, their grip feeble. Voices called, lamps turned to each other as if for company or