Winter Hawk

'Sir,' the lieutenant snapped out.

Rodin turned to his staff officers, who became animated, full of small, impatient movements.

'Gentlemen, we have a laser weapon to place in orbit. Shall we go?' Heartiness answered by smiles and the bright eyes of younger men than they were. Rodin was blithe. He had no doubt that Gant would be caught, Priabin thought, no doubt at all.

I'm in no doubt, either, he was forced to confess. Gant would be running for Turkey, he wouldn't risk Afghanistan again, the way he had come in. He was going west. Where the forces that could be mounted against him were massive, the entire Caucasus and Transcaucasus military districts. They were frontline, not like Central Asian district. Aircraft, missiles, helicopters. And Gant would be running the gauntlet to the border for a whole hour of daylight. The desperation of their need to destroy him would ensure their success. By the time it was daylight, Rodin would have destroyed the American shuttle. From the moment that happened, the whole country couldn't afford Gant's survival.

Rodin waved his hand; dismissing everything with the gesture except Lightning and Gant.

'You will accompany us, Colonel,' he snapped, leaving the room.

The hidden light over the bathroom mirror gave his features an unhealthy, exaggerated pallor. He inspected his face minutely, reminding himself to use the eyedrops to clear the red streaks from the whites of his eyes. He tossed his head without amusement. Nikitin and his entourage were waiting until they saw the whites of his eyes. They were in no hurry to open fire. He rubbed his chin. Get rid of the stubble, the shadow, too. If he slept — take the pills— the dark stains beneath his eyes might fade enough. If not, then makeup would do it.

At the banquet given by the president of the Swiss Republic for the visiting dignitaries, he had waltzed with his host's plump wife, her white, smooth arm resting lightly on his shoulder, heavily manacled with diamonds. Their glancing lights had become almost hypnotic. While they danced, he automatically moving and responding to the woman's platitudes, he had recalled the Inauguration Ball and the first dance with Danielle as First Lady. The roars of applause and inebriated and triumphant voices had drowned the quieter whispers and imperatives of the lobbyists and place-seekers and time-servers. Later, Joni Mitchell had sung; people had talked of another Camelot. Ridiculous, but possible to believe then, that first night.

Invitation to the dance; of folly. He had tripped as lightly as Dorothy down a yellow brick road of his own devising. It was in reality a Soviet illusion, dazzling him like the diamonds on the wrist of the Swiss President's wife. The prize had been peace and a place in history. He had made a greedy snatch at both of them; and lost both.

He shook his head. No, you haven't lost your place in history, he instructed himself. Just switched roles, hero-into-villain. You'll be remembered, boy, and how…

The sun had come up, clear and cold, that morning after the Inauguration Ball. On the White House lawn, heavy, clean snow. The Washington Monument like an inverted icicle, the Lincoln Memorial, distant, clean and massive against the pale sky. He'd breathed deeply, and he could hear, as if in his blood, Martin Luther King's speech from the steps of the memorial and the vast murmur of the crowds. Portentously, he had murmured, clutching his arms across his chest because of the cold, I have a dream, too.

… not anymore you don't, he told the now-haggard image in the mirror that was tiredly cleaning its teeth. Not anymore.

The satellites and the shuttles were obsolete. As from tonight, with the launch of the Soviet Raketoplan. The U.S. was ten years behind, however much money Congress and the administration approved once the truth came out. From tonight, while he had waltzed with a platitudinous, plump Swiss wife with too many diamonds on her throat and wrist, they could do anything they wanted — shoot down satellites, shoot down Atlantis or any of the shuttles, anything they wanted. He couldn't call their bluff. He had no proof, there was no proof.

Dick Gunther had whispered in his ear, during the fish course, that the Soviets had confirmed the launch from Baikonur. A historic occasion… a glimpse of the future—was there an irony in that statement? Nikitin had joked about the rendezvous in orbit with Atlantis. Exchanging comic books and chocolate bars, was that what he had said? Yes, adding while we make the real exchange here, my friend.

He spat toothpaste and saliva into the wash basin, swilled out his mouth. Strangely, there was still that stale taste.

The scent of the turbine fuel was heady and sweet on the chilly, dark desert air. The smell hung about the Antonov because the late night was windless and empty. The faint hissing of the fuel in the hose and the whirring of the pump could not be heard above the Antonov's feathering engine. The wing quivered beneath his feet. He had to keep the engine idling to operate the pump driving the fuel from the chemical tank into the tanks in the wings. He had squatted on his haunches on the wing, the light of the flashlight dimly illuminating the pages of the school atlas open on his knees. The yellow-brown of desert stretched around the position of his index finger. He was two and a half hours from Baikonur and four hundred miles to the southwest of the complex — there, still more than a hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea. He fixed the point in his mind where he would cross the coast, then traced his route toward the oil wells marked southeast of Baku. Their flares in what remained of the night would give him a visual fix as he passed to the south of them, just above the water.

He closed the atlas with a snap, listening to the noise of the engine. Everything was familiar, gave confidence. The noises of an airplane, the empty night. He stood up and stretched.

Stretched away tiredness and cramps. The five hundred and more miles ahead of him, the four hours' flying, distanced him from Past and future. They would not find him, not while it remained dark and the land was empty; and he had no need, not yet, to consider the dawn and the trap waiting to be sprung at first light. It was easy to understand what Rodin would decide, and easy, for the moment, to ignore it. It was like a time-out called by both teams. He'd seen the distant navigation lights of aircraft against the stars. Heard voices on the radio, picked up glimpses of them on radar. But it had all been unreal, not dangerous.

He looked up at the night. The moon had gone. Five in the morning, local time. His westward flight extended the night, as if he carried darkness with him like a cloak, which would disappear a hundred miles short, almost an hour before he reached the Turkish border. As soon as they saw him — and he knew they would — he would scream Mayday on the broadest wave band; scream the whole story.

Gant shook his head.

He had begun to believe in his survival. He did not want to envisage daylight. He rubbed his eyes. Navigating by compass and the stars — and the school atlas — tired him, the noise of the Antonov was a constant assault, but those things did not matter. They were elements of surviving, and familiar. He could cope. Distance from Baikonur was like a constant, measured flow of adrenaline.

In every direction, emptiness undulatingly stretched away from him. The uninhabited northern part of the Kara Kum Desert. Somewhere, a rock split, the noise like gunfire, startling him. The shock had no reverberation. He was calm. The whole ballgame now, that was what he wanted. The videotape cassette delivered; the means of winning. It meant he had to survive, cross the frontier. It was him now, against everyone and everything, and the idea did not unnerve him. Not yet.

The wing tanks should be almost full by now.

'One half-orbit distance achieved, Kutuzov '

'Roger, control. Forty-five minutes since satellite release. Countdown to PAM ignition at — fifteen seconds and mark. Over.'

'Roger, Kutuzov. Fifteen seconds and counting.'

Rodin was smiling. It was as if there were two smiles on his lips at the same moment. The small one at the fiction of referring to the laser weapon as a satellite — in the event of transmission interception and decoding — and the larger satisfaction of the countdown, like that of a cat with cream on its whiskers. Ten seconds were all that remained until the payload assist modules small solid-propellant motors automatically fired to lift the laser battle station toward its thousand-mile-high orbit over the Pole.

Kutuzov was in a two-hundred-mile-high orbit, circling the earth every ninety minutes. Its cargo doors had opened an hour and a half before, the shuttle had maneuvered into position, the laser weapon on its motors had been set spinning in the hold, then unlocked to drift away from the shuttle. Now, half an orbit later, its motors were about to fire. Five seconds.

Priabin stood at the back of the narrow command room like a newspaper reporter allowed to observe events