Winter Hawk

fly in their ointment. He wanted to survive. Even the proof and their concern over it were unimportant. There was only their need to kill him and his desire for survival. Which made the sighting through the foresight's cylinder and the open, U-shaped notch of the rearsight easy, almost like squinting into a small telescope. And made the metal of the unfolded stock as comfortable as that of a favorite hunting rifle. Single shot.

Once, twice, three times.

Surprise, although half expected, although their nerves were alert. Heads up for an instant before the inertia of training and experience threw their bodies aside from the track toward rocks or tree boles. Enough surprise for one of the camouflaged bodies to fall awkwardly and roll over, and for a second to have to lunge limpingly toward cover. The fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds missed. He quite clearly saw snow plucked up by each of the bullets.

Then he moved, farther back into the trees and to his right, body bent and weaving below and around stinging branches. Ten seconds, eleven, twelve—

They were good. Behind him, trees shuddered and split and became engulfed in fire as the projectile from the RPG-7 struck and detonated with a roar. He felt the shock wave slap at his back. One dead, a second out of the hunt, the hornet's nest stirred with the long stick of violence. He rushed on, thin branches whipping at him, the rifle swinging rhythmically back and forth across his chest, the pack containing the film and video cassettes banging softly, familiarly on his lower back. He was running north.

Above the noise of his breathing, he heard one of the gunships drive in toward the trees behind him. Noise, then light flashing on the snow lying on the branches over his head. Fierce orange light like a winter sunrise. They'd used the RPG-7's hit as a marker and demolished the immediate area around it. He stopped, and had to lean against a tree to control the shaking of his body. He turned, reluctantly.

A fire seared and glowed like the mouth of a furnace perhaps three or four hundred yards away. He felt the shock wave ebbing through the forest and through his body. His heart continued to pound. The glow began to subside but, higher up, the branches were on fire. Resinous, smoky scent, licking flame. A marker, a signal — here he is, come and get him.

Beneath the trees he was safe — no, just safer. He concentrated, remembering the scene through the glasses like a map now glanced at. He had to go down, eventually. They'd know that. And they had maps. They'd know the tracks, all the routes down; the possible, the dangerous, the impossible. The light was dying on the glinting snow above his head. The gunships rotors beat farther off now, a painter standing back from a completed canvas. The spetsnaz troops would be moving again, up toward the outcrop he had occupied and where the fire still burned.

He turned away, his breathing under control, his heart quieter. The adrenaline surged. Ducking low, he once more began running, his feet crackling like flames across dead pine needles.

Priabin hit the guard clumsily. His arms flailed again and again once the first blow had been struck because the guard still had hold of the rifle — it could not be tugged from his grasp — and the barrel kept straining toward Priabin's stomach. The guard's body banged against the metal of the double doors behind him. His face registered pain, but had moved out of shock into malevolence, fear for his life.

Again, again — face, chest, arms, most of the blows doing little damage. His knuckles numbly hurting, blood on them.

The guard slumped down the doors into an awkward sitting position, loosening his grip on the rifle and moaning softly just once. After that, the only sound was Priabin's harsh breathing, snatched between the sucking of his bruised and skinned knuckles. He was bent almost double with the effort he had undergone.

He glanced to either end of the alleyway between the main assembly building and a low shed with a corrugated roof and breeze-way still plain beneath stained whitewash. If there was anyone, if they had heard the banging against the door—?

… just caught short — have to go here, OK? The guard had followed him, amused. He had had to force a conversation with the man, through nerves and the mounting fear of the proximity of the guard and his rifle… where did you say they were keeping that poor bastard? Kedrov the spy yes that's him… He had foolishly repeated every word the guard had uttered, as if to memorize a complicated sequence of instructions. A thin stream of urine. The biting cold of the midday air because he wasn't wearing an overcoat or cap or gloves. He finished urinating. Knew he could simply go back inside and wait for the inevitable — the unavoidable. He had turned to the guard, zipping his trousers, smiling awkwardly. Rifle, guard nodding, his bulk larger than Priabin's.

The EVA was over, the crew was back aboard Kutuzov. The shut-de had used its small clusters of rockets to move away from the laser weapon. Firing of the rocket of the PAM was thirty minutes away. The countdown was at two hours.

He had lashed out at the guard's chin and missed, grazing the reacting man's ear. Moved, hit again and again, wrestled with the gun…

Two hours. At the end of that time the laser battle station would have achieved its thousand mile-high orbit above the pole and would have been aligned on its target, Atlantis. Rodin would commence the firing sequence and the American shuttle would be vaporized. It would disappear. And, and… unthinkable.

He had not intended action. He was deeply frightened now that he had done so. The guard seemed to be snoring in his unconsciousness, his face chilly with cold, his hands slackly on the rifle. Priabin snatched at it, unhooking its strap from around the man's neck. The guard's head flopped horridly, as if he were dead. Priabin flinched away from him. He had not intended — but the tension had mounted in him because of his inactivity.

The scheme was patchy. It involved Kedrov, it involved stopping the firing of the weapon. He could do nothing else, stop nothing except the firing sequence. Kedrov had to know how it could be done. If he did not, then—

Priabin looked down at the guard. Irrevocable. He was committed now. He shivered with reaction, gripping the rifle tightly, squeezing its warmed metal. Glanced to either end of the alley in a panicky, sweaty haste. His body felt hot now. He had to rid himself of the guard, put him, tie him — where?

He rolled the guard away from the double doors with his foot. If seemed a huge effort. He needed a vehicle to get to GRU headquarters, he needed a means of entering that place, he needed, he deeded—

— to get the guard out of sight, don't think ahead, just do this, do this — come on, come on, break! He twisted the folding stock of the AKMS in the chain and padlock. Sweat sheened his forehead, his muscles had no strength, the flimsy chain seemed insuperable… and parted slowly, with a slight creak like the opening of a window.

He pushed the doors open. Darkness. The light seemed to spill in slowly. It illuminated boxes, shelves, cans — of paint. He wanted to laugh. A paint store. And the doors had been seriously in need of painting.

He dragged the guard into the darkness, found the man's handkerchief and gagged him with it, tying his own around the man's mouth to keep the wad in place. The rifle was banging on his back as he worked, and seemed omnipresent. But he could not use it, not on an unconscious man. Mistake, mistake.

Everything you've done so far is a mistake, he told himself. You can't do it, anyway, so shut up about it.

The man's belt and webbing. Hands and feet together behind him, a reversed fetal position. He tightened the straps viciously, perhaps because he couldn't kill him.

He stood in the air for a moment, breathing laboredly. Hands on his hips. Then he picked up the chain and rethreaded it through the door handles. Hid the broken link as well as he could, left the lock dangling as if still effective. Glanced along the alleyway once more. Still no one. He looked a last time at the door. The chain appeared sound. He began running along the alleyway, his memory of this place playing in his mind like a very old film; stained, patchy, flickering. But there—

He forced himself to remember. Main assembly building, attendant stores, workshops, other facilities, parking lots. Parking lots. Military and civilian. He needed something like a UAZ jeep, something that would not be suspicious, not out of place, still free to move around the high-security area. Parking lot—

— left now, then right. He moved incautiously, like a rat seeking reward through its familiar maze, down the alleyways between the crowding complex of buildings. He saw no one.

Until he reached the open space of the parking lot. Civilian and military vehicles parked within regimented white lines. The lot was almost full. Two men were lounging against a wall, smoking, white lab coats beneath their open topcoats. Fur hats. They were fifty yards away, and uninterested. All they could see was a uniform; a capless officer with a rifle. Baikonur was full of officers. A military driver stepped out of a UAZ, other men were leaning out