Winter Hawk

Priabin shook his head. If he was that certain, then it was Lightning.

'I'll come. Straightaway.'

'One other thing, sir. He says he won't let you in. You'll have to talk to him from here — stand where he can see you. Talk over the phone.'

'Why?'

'Who knows, sir?'

Priabin was puzzled, but that was unimportant. Dudin could go to Katya's assistance with a team. They could watch until he could get there himself. First he had to hear what Rodin had to say. Katya's maps and notes lay on the desk, scattered like archaeological evidence of some lost civilization. He could hardly think of Kedrov now; Rodin was the prize. Rodin had had Viktor killed, and Rodin wanted to talk to him about Lightning—and he would know so much more than Kedrov. Anticipation raced in his mind, clear and quick as glimpses into a certain future.

'No one's with him?'

'He's alone, sir. No one's rung, either. He hasn't called anyone else. He's just waiting, sir.'

'The waiting's over,' Priabin announced excitedly. 'Ill be there as soon as I can. Is he up or down?'

'Neither. Suspended, sir.'

'Good. I'm on my way.'

He dialed Dudin's number immediately. He would make sure Katya was safe and didn't go in single-handed — as she just might if no one turned up soon — and ensure, too, that Kedrov couldn't slip away. His heart bumped and his forehead felt hot. His cheeks burned as if with embarrassment.

'I promised, Viktor,' he murmured as he waited for the telephone in Dudin's office to be picked up. 'I promised.'

Midnight.

Gant touched the rudder pedal with his left foot to maintain his heading, eased the column, maintained his height with the collective pitch lever in his left hand, and listened to the fluctuating, reluctant rpm of the two Isotov engines. He was aware of each of his tiny movements, most aware of the engine noise as the Hind moved at thirty feet above—

— that. On the main road between Urgench and Tashauz. Closed, apparently deserted. Lifeless. A gas station, windows boarded, weeds moving in the downdraft all over the pavement. He had seen nothing else except a few parked trucks, lights extinguished and drivers presumably asleep in their cabs, a couple of cars streaming white light along the ribbon of the road. The lights of Urgench were the palest smear in the mirrors.

He was beginning not to believe. He was beginning to sweat again, to panic. The gas station should have been open. Its remains were there, sliding into ruin; it was shown on the moving map, but who in hell would have thought to update the positions or financial viability of gas stations?

It was closed. Thirty feet below the Hind's belly, with boarded windows. It had been deserted years before. Gas pumps, hoses bent hand-on-hip, a corrugated plastic roof that was dirt-covered, clumped with mosses, a wooden garage with drunkenly leaning doors, the single-story wooden house that was lightless, where—

— lights flicked grubbily on behind a thin curtain! His heart lurched with relief. Not lightless, not abandoned. Immediately, he dropped the Hind carefully toward the courtyard. The engine noise was fragile, uncertain, like the beat of an ancient, weakened heart. He felt the wheels touch, the helicopter bounce as if pleased; then he throttled back to ground-idle.

The low house — shack, no more — needed painting. It had looked so dilapidated he thought it must have been empty. Its door opened. A man in a thick coat and dark, baggy trousers stood in the light of Gant's main lamp, hand shielding his eyes. Gant adjusted the lamp so that it shone directly on the man — garage manager or whoever he was, it didn't matter; there was fuel beneath this weed-strewn, dusty concrete.

Stay smart, he told himself. Stay smart. Tension coursed through him, indistinguishable from relief.

Hie man walked into the light, waving at the beam as if fending off insects or repeated blows.

Gant moved the throttle levers to flight idle, and the rotors growled reluctantly into a dish. He eased the column forward and gently raised the lever until the helicopter shunted forward, waddling and uncertain in its progress. He watched the edge of the shining rotor dish as the Hind moved toward the corrugated roof.

He watched the pumps intently, watched the roof's hp, watched the rotor dish, whirling—

— satisfied he was as close as possible, he lowered the lever, eased back the column, applied the brakes. The helicopter sank, bounced, stopped. He altered the throttles — noise boomed around the cockpit from the roof and the pumps — and stop-cocked the engines and applied the rotor brake.

Check the tires, get the windshield… He grinned. The Hind was drawn up like a huge, grotesque car. Dust settled on the cockpit and shimmered downward around him. He could do nothing for the foment except stare at the gauges, then glance at the gas pumps, premium Grade, they announced in Cyrillic and some other script did not recognize. He could use gas instead of paraffin or aviation fuel without short-term damage to the engines. He had to.

The garage manager — in Soviet Central Asia he might even be the owner — ducked beneath the drooping, stationary rotor blades with inordinate care and suspicion. They rested more than ten feet above his head.

As he approached the cockpit, Gant swung his door open and called out, beginning to control the situation, damp down suspicion: 'Gauges must be out — ran out of fuel. Sorry, comrade, to disturb your well-earned rest or whatever else you were doing back there.' He was grinning broadly, but his features adopted command, the expectation of quick and questionless assistance. 'Your stuff will have to do until I get home. Fill her up.'

The engine noise had died out of his head now. Around him, the night seemed to spread outward like a black pool stained with moonlight. He sensed distances, and isolation beneath his relief. The man looking up into his features was an Uzbek with a narrow, dark, unshaven face. His eyes glinted reflections of the cockpit lights. Tiny rows of green, red, amber, blue from the still-alive panels made his pupils those of an automaton.

'Who pays me?' the man asked, seemingly unaware of the cold or the wind. His accent coated the Russian words thickly like a rough varnish. His thin, hook-nosed face stared impassively up at Gant, as if it were indeed a car that had drawn alongside the pumps. He was simply waiting to see money.

Gant glanced at his watch. Midnight plus five. Three hundred and forty miles to Baikonur. Two hours, maximum, with full tanks and a full auxiliary tank. He could still make it — just — if Kedrov was waiting for him; ingress and egress before daylight. Hopes, estimates, tension tumbled together in his mind and invaded his frame, even as he maintained his disarming, superior, expecting-to-be-accommodated smile toward the surly Uzbek. He gripped the door handle with his right hand, his thigh with his left, and calmed himself.

'You'll get paid — what's your worry, comrade?' He leaned over the Uzbek, his rank and uniform overalls evident. So, too, the holster on his hip containing the Makarov pistol. 'I'll write you a recipe, OK? You'll manage to read it?' he added with a small sneer. The Uzbek was unimpressed, more reluctant than before. Evidently, he owned the garage. It would be his loss. Gant snapped: 'The army pays, comrade.'

Then he jumped down from the cockpit, landing close to the man, and was immediately taller than the Uzbek, who understood the change in their relationship. He flinched. Gant was still smiling, but his hand was lightly on the holster now. The flap was unopened as yet, just as his lips were unopened in the smile.

The night chilled through the thin flying overalls after the hothouse of the cockpit. His sweat dried like forming ice. The moon-sheened darkness oppressed, unrelieved except where headlights rose and fell over a dip of the road, perhaps a half mile away; a vehicle heading for the garage. He looked up, picking out the distant navigation lights of a slow-moving aircraft. A commercial flight out of Tashkent, he guessed. He shivered, desiring movement, assertion; the headlights flicking into view once more at the periphery of his sight. Bouncing nearer like a ball.

He bent over the Hinds flank as if it were that of a car and flicked open the fuel cap.

'There you are, comrade. Fill her up. Then fill the auxiliary tank in the main cabin.' One hand still on the holster flap, the other on his hip in challenge. 'Your hose won't reach from the pump,' he observed with continuing casualness. 'Find an extension hose and a funnel — get on with it, comrade.'

The Uzbek seemed to subside slowly into his coat, shrinking. Then he shrugged and turned to the nearest pump, dragging the hose from its rest. He unlooped a length of hose from a hook on the side of the booth, and picked up a tin funnel from the shelf inside. The door banged in the wind. The Uzbek cursed softly as he thrust the nozzle of the hose into the extension, then dragged it toward the Hind. The headlights of the approaching vehicle bounced against the cockpit. The funnel clattered into the fuel tank; the man returned to the nozzle of the pump