Winter Hawk

Afghan airspace, not once they identified even one of the bodies below or some part of the ruined airframe. He was utterly trapped by the situation.

Panic surged in him. Go now, go before Kunduz begins demanding a full report — expecting one.

He felt his body flood with anger.

Mac.

No, it wasn't because of Mac; it was because he was trapped. It was like the Firefox, its fuel running out, before he reached the ice floe and the submarine that was Mother One. But there was no submarine out there in Uzbekistan, there was no fuel out there… run, run.

Mac.

Survive.

His hands moved almost automatically, and the Hind's nose whisked up. Still low and within the radar shield of the valley, he increased speed. Bowed to the pressure of the panic to survive. In six minutes, he could be across the border, inside the Soviet Union. His mind shut out the hours ahead, thought only of the next few minutes. He wasn't defeated, he hadn't lost — not yet. And he would survive.

One hundred, one twenty, one twenty-five — the Hind skimmed along the wide, dry valley, raising, as it passed, a small trail of dust no bigger than that of a single horseman. Going forward represented the prospect of opportunity. And there was something in the back of his head, something—

He could not focus, not yet, but it allowed him to expand his vision of the minutes ahead.

Nine-fourteen, local time.

Even the thought that he would never reach Baikonur could not halt or slow his northward momentum. To go back was to return to the certainty of death now rather than capture — he had killed three of theirs, five including the pilot and the gunner he had incinerated. All of them friends, acquaintances, comrades of other people.

The north promised more than that. Most of all — time; time in which circumstances might change, or might be altered to his wish; time which might focus the vague something at the back of his mind.

He looked at the gauges. Maybe as much as four hundred twenty miles before his fuel ran out.

Not enough.

President Calvin's hand swept in an angry gesture toward the screens against the wall of the Oval Office. Winter sunlight through the tinted windows paled and made more insubstantial the television images. Though the director of the CIA still found them as easy to recognize as if they were personal memories or hopes.

'Why the hell are we paying them to even bother to learn how to do that?' Calvin shouted. His voice seemed to contain as much anguish as anger, as his finger pointed accusingly at an image of the shuttle Atlantis. The transmission from the orbiter was from the camera's viewpoint along the spine of the shuttle, revealing the bulk of the Spacelab in the cargo hold, and beyond it two tire men with backpacks floating like huge white bees around the satellite they were repairing. The remote manipulator arm hung at the edge of the screen like a weak, broken limb. The earth appeared to be almost entirely ocean; virtually cloudless. The vast Pacific, impossibly blue. It was as if it unnerved Calvin for a moment, for he remained silent. Then he burst out again: 'Answer me — you, Bill, or you, Dick — why should the country pay out the billions of dollars to teach those guys how to repair spy satellites?' He glared at his two companions. Filtered sunlight glanced across his shock of gray hair and his stubborn profile, gilding his features. He raised his hands, then slapped them against his thighs. 'Those guys up there would be better employed learning how to repair Russian automobiles! A skill they could come to need. That up there is just about as advanced as a tow truck and nowhere near as useful anymore.'

On companion screens, beside the image of the Atlantis, Baikonur. Russian broadcasts to the rest of the world, demonstrating their peaceful mission in space… just like that of the American shuttle, a forerunner of future cooperative ventures, the Soviet Raketoplan shuttle will be launched on Thursday, to coincide with the signing of the treaty, the two shuttle craft will rendezvous in orbit in a symbolic gesture of peace, on Friday… The subtitled commentary seemed to mock the men in the room, enrage Calvin further. On other screens, images from around a frightened world. Frightening, frightened, beginning-to-be-relieved… hope is alive in the world again… Calvin shook his head in shame and frustration. He had said that only a few weeks before, in his State of the Union message to Congress.

He studied one screen after another like a list of indictments against him. Barbed wire being rolled back on one screen, the symbolic demolition of concrete emplacements on another. Fences, silos, missiles on others, being moved, opened, shut forever, torn down. A montage of withdrawal as potent as a magnified sigh of relief. On yet another screen, an English-language documentary on the city of Geneva and the location of the signing session, the Palais des Nations. A wide-angle view showed the snowbound city, the gunmetal-colored expanse of Lac Leman, the tiny, distant, frozen tail feathers of the Geneva Fountain.

Calvin turned away from the screens. His desk was littered with dozens of newspapers. Some of them had slipped and lay scattered on the apple-green carpet with its scroll and seal. Headlines glared and lay abandoned, like the decorations for a Christmas past. Celebration, optimism, unqualified approval and praise. Calvin began to imagine that he had surrounded himself with the newspapers and the screens in order to torment himself. Mirrors to reflect his scars.

Failure inhabited the Oval Office, though his desk and the floor were strewn with success. He knew his anger was only a bluff, a device to hold failure at arm's length. Dick Gunther knew the game was up; so did the CIA director. Their faces told him that quite clearly. Gant, that last fond hope, that last desperate stake, had disappeared. He had run into the desert sand like a trickle of water.

Calvin raised his glance as he heard the director clear his throat.

'I'm sorry, Mr. President,' he heard the director say. It was no more than a repetition of the first words he had uttered on entering the room little more than ten minutes earlier. Even before he had explained, he had begun to apologize. As soon as Calvin looked at him, the director looked down.

'OK, Bill,' Gunther soothed. 'That's the end of it. There's nothing any of us can do now.'

'Nothing? Nothing, Dick?' Calvin stormed. 'They're going to put a laser battle station into low earth orbit the day after tomorrow and you say there's nothing we can do? Find something, dammitl That battle station will be capable of taking out spy satellites, ICBMs, even Atlantis and the other shuttles. That's the hole we have to get out of.'

Gunther shook his head. He was perched on the corner of the desk. Calvin saw the gleam of calculation in his eyes; but he was only weighing the presidential mood, looking for soothing, meaningless words.

Calvin looked back at the row of screens. The blue earth shifted, as if knocked from its orbit, as the camera shot changed to a closeup of the two astronauts at their repairs to the surveillance satellite. A KH-11 type, which watched the borders of Israel. Its maneuvering rocket was failing to respond to transmitted instructions. And Space-lab. Weeks of experiments to find purer pharmaceuticals, high-strength alloys, high-purity crystals for electronic components. Not an aggressive element aboard the Atlantis.

Gant was missing, presumed dead. The long-range AWACS aircraft above the Pakistan border had lost touch with the helicopters. Gant had vanished into a whirlpool of Soviet aerial and radio activity. They must have discovered, exposed, and now finished him. It was that news the director had brought with him. It was noon in Washington, the end of Tuesday morning. On Thursday Calvin would have to sign in Geneva — or earn the world's embittered, enraged scorn. Something no President could afford.

The telephone rang. Calvin's hand jumped, then he reached out to take the reply to the call he had made on hearing the news of Gant's loss. He concentrated on keeping his extended hand steady. Gunther handed him the receiver.

At least one explosion, the director had announced. A lot of radio traffic, radar emissions, all the trappings of a search-and-kill mission.

The Soviets had indeed had a quarry. Gant.

Calvin snapped on the amplifier and placed the receiver in its cradle. The others, too, could listen to this. He spoke to the U.S. chief negotiator in Geneva.

'Yes, Frank. Yes, we all feel that, Frank. I want to know what's happening at your end.' Giordello's sympathy and the appalled, lost tone in his voice irritated Calvin.

'But, Mr. President, in view of—

'Listen to me, Frank, what is my timetable in Geneva?' He did not look at either Gunther or the director.

There was a short silence, then Giordello began reciting the litany of protocol and procedure and procession.