control. Subconsciously, he had known the exact moment dawn had broken over the border and seeped through the Caucasus mountains. And every minute since then had wound him like a watch spring, tighter and tighter. His hand gripped the edge of the rickety table. He felt dizzy. Words leaked like the chants of a distant but approaching mob… hit… confirmed hit, on fire…'
'Head-on… can't get away.' Voices from headphones, tinny and stridently unreal, from remote microphones, repeated and emphasized by the group around the table. Hands tracing shapes and courses, heads bent to peer at the culmination.'… is it, sir?'
'… there.'
'… contact lost. Gunship has visual…'
'What of—?'
'Here, just here.'
'… destroyed…'
Priabin was less than halfway across the room to the table. Peripherally, he saw the two cosmonauts like great white grubs on the screen. The battle station and its PAM seemed one single object now. And that was it, all of it. Then he heard:
'Fireball — completely destroyed.'
Cheering, congratulation — nausea returning, on which he gagged. Looking up after a moment, he saw Rodin staring in his direction. The general's smile was one of cold, certain satisfaction. His right hand, slightly extended, was closed in a firm grip.
'… chute opening — there's a parachute opening, comrade General.'
Rodin seemed to falter, as if ill or dizzy.
Priabin felt his limbs unfreeze. He hurried to the table. A staff officer moved as if to interpose his body between the general and some attack. Rodin glared into Priabin's eyes like a hard, explosive light.
'What—' Priabin began.
'… devil's luck,' he heard Rodin exclaim in a pinched, cheated voice before the old man turned to the map table. His knuckles whitened on the table edge.
… gunship may get there,' someone said breathlessly. The atmosphere around the table was choking and airless. 'Two more aircraft closing quickly.' The tone was that of someone repeating an unviable alternative to a set of facts. 'Down — he's down.'
'Kill him,' Rodin managed to say. 'Kill him.'
'The gunship's going in — tricky, they've spotted him, the chute's dropping over him, marking the spot. Rocket and cannon, sir — they're using everything…'
Rodin lurched rather than walked away from the table. His hand waved the others away from him. The subliminal noises of the dialogue with the shuttle impinged on Priabin's hearing. It was as if he had lowered the volume of voices around the map, not wishing to hear.
'… can't see anything now…
'He can't survive that, surely?'
'Let the gunship take care of it. How many more in the immediate area — what? Let them wait until the snow's cleared—'
Someone had taken command for the moment. Priabin heard no more, squeezing the voices from his head like water from a sponge. Rodin was beside him, his eyes filled with apprehensions and blame.
'You,' he said.
Rodin seemed to have aged. When a lieutenant appeared beside him and saluted, it was some moments before his presence seemed to register.
'What—'
'Sir, Stavka, sir.' He held out a message form, hastily scribbled upon. 'Coded signal. They're awaiting—' Rodin waved the man away, snatching at the flimsy sheet and tearing it. The lieutenant subsided to attention some yards away. The noise at the map table had subsided, too, into a concentrated murmur. Time had dragged free of the images on the screen and raced now. Moments only before Gant was obliterated like the old aircraft in which he had escaped.
Not quite escaped.
Rodin waved the message form beneath Priabin s nose.
'Decision postponed,' he said. 'Decision postponed.' That's
Stavka's position.' He turned, glanced at the table, then faced Priabin once more. 'One man, and they're afraid of him. I shall acknowledge.' He smiled, very faintly and with evident cunning. 'I shall inform Stavka that no proof exists, that the American has no proof.'
'You can't—'
'I will. At once.'
Priabin's frame quivered. He felt a chill of fear. It was as he had suspected. Rodin was beyond logic. As if in explanation, Rodin added:
'My wife died an hour ago. She never recovered consciousness.'
It was like a bulletin rather than an expression of loss. The indifferent voice of printed lines in a column of newspaper deaths. All restraint had gone. His face displayed no signs of grief, and little shock. The man had been hollowed out like a rotten tooth. There was nothing left inside him. Only the uniform and what he believed was his duty were left.
Mad. Dangerously, frighteningly mad. To himself, Rodin was sane and certain.
Priabin whirled around to the table behind them.
'The gunships spotted him,' someone called out. 'Where's the closest backup aircraft?'
'It's twenty miles to the border — fifteen at least.'
'Not in a million years — no chance.'
Priabin turned away. Rodin was smiling, almost sympathetically. Yes, his emptiness was justified. They'd kill Gant, recover the cassettes, and no one would ever know. No one. Gant was a dead man.
'OK, Dick — what can we do?'
Shock, hope, deep anxiety all fought against the clinging of the Valium he had taken in order to assure himself of sleep. He struggled to a more erect position against the padded headboard of the bed. Gunther was still leaning over him like a doctor.
'What can we do?' he repeated, looking at his hands. They quivered to the register of a distant earthquake. The signal from Gant had shocked with its sudden glimpse of the impossible, and he felt he had not caught his breath since then.
Gunther's briefing continued to assail him, like the effect of successive waves against an old, crumbling seawall. He wanted to give in to hope, and was terrified of its illusory beauty. Gant, alive—
'We can't go in, Mr. President,' Gunther offered, as if replying to some wild suggestion already voiced. 'That's not possible. Their activity in the air, and now on the ground, is — well, sir, it's frantic.'
'Then they'll—?'
Danielle had slipped out of bed as soon as Gunther's knock had awakened her. Calvin smelled coffee, heard the plopping of the percolator. She moved against subdued lighting like an illusion. He rubbed the puttylike contours of his face with both hands.
'Sir, I don't know. We don't know whether he has Cactus Plant with him, we only know that he transmitted the Mayday signal, he used his code ID, and he said mission accomplished. Their response confirms he has something, some proof, but we can't even begin to guess what it is. His aircraft was shot down, whatever it was, but he has to be alive.'
'You're certain?'
'They're not looking for a body, not with those forces. Sure, they're putting out a smokescreen — searching for a crashed transport airplane is the story — but they're using
'And they're terrified he's going to get it out — to us,' Calvin murmured. Then he looked up into Gunther's shadowed face. 'But how in hell can we?' He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat and surrender, but slapped
