and the two gunships were treading slowly, like men in a minefield, through the tracking and power grid network. The remaining two Hinds, the other members of the gunship helicopter flight, stayed outside the network, awaiting orders and a clear field of fire. The American could not remain there indefinitely. As long as they tracked him closely, carefully, they would have him. More gunships would have helped, but Baikonur had had no need of them. Security at Baikonur had been, until now, an internal matter, and had been effective. Should he call up units from air bases to the west and northeast? MiGs would be unusable here; more gunships? Flying time? Too long. He would destroy the American with what he already had in the air and on the ground.
The colored trails glowed and diminished in brightness on the screen. A slow, balletic dance, like the streamers used in a Cossack wedding dance, whirling, curling, twisting in the air… He was clever, the American.
Serov attended to a voice in his headset, nodding occasionally, his face grayly satisfied within the pain it registered. Then he announced to Rodin:
'Aral'sk KGB office is out of commission. Permanently. No doubt the work of terrorists,' he added with a flash of his former vivid competence.
'What did our people discover?'
'A recording of the transmission we monitored from the surveillance camera on the MiL.'
'It had not—'
'No. No onward transmission. The recording was destroyed. There is no shred of evidence, outside Baikonur itself.'
Rodin nodded, his cheeks flushing slightly at the ease of success. His hand closed into a fist, squeezing air or an image in his mind.
'Good. Then it is contained.'
Something on the screen struck his attention, then riveted it, as if the trails of light were whirling hypnotically. He became fascinated, absorbed; and there was an edge of excitement, too. Gants MiL had increased speed, weaving and dodging like a cornered rat; the two gunships lumbered more slowly, picking their way through or over the obstacles in their paths.
The voice of the Hind's pilot was breathless and excited. Rodin Pressed the headset close against his head with both hands, as if to keep the words secret. He smelled the ozone from the electrical equipment festooning the floor, growing around him like a small, rank garden, felt his heart pause, his breath fade.
'He had to lift over the cables — a moment… there's a patch of empty ground beyond… bring him down there?' the voice yelled. 'He's lifting now — a hundred feet up, a clear shot—'
'No!' Rodin shouted into his microphone. 'Wait. He must be over clear ground.'
'… turning now, high-G turn… he's over the open area, now — waiting…? He's banking and turning as tight as he can, spinning like a top — why? Clear shot, General — clear!'
'Make absolutely certain,' Rodin said. 'Damage must be avoided at all costs. Kill only the American — not our project.' Then he waited. He stared at the map, listened to the voice, his hands gripped on the earphones of his headset like claws. His chest ached with tension.
'… climbing, twisting to get away, I'm following him. Yes — no, almost, yes… climbing and turning, descending again now, climbing again, turning, turning, tight high-G turn again, yes, gone…..' The pilot was waiting to use one of the missiles slung beneath the wings, radio-guided. At that range, it could not miss, but the pilot was waiting for the optimum moment while Gant squirmed and wriggled like a fish on a hook.
Rodin sighed loudly.
'… tighter turn, in a descent… now he's climbing again, we've got him now — tight turn, follow, then—' There was the noise of a thud. It was quite distinct, as distinct as the alarm in the pilot's voice, which became a cry that was all but a scream of terror. Then his voice disappeared, there was a grinding, rending assault upon the metal of the gunship, then the hissing ether.
'What happened?' Rodin roared.
'… crash,' he heard dimly a few moments later. The pilot of the second, observing gunship had begun to report, his voice distant with shock.
'High-G maneuvers — like the early days in Afghanistan,' he murmured. 'The American made him follow a high-G turn the Mil-24 just can't make, the rotor struck the tail boom — seen it happen before in the mountains — he forgot it. He cut off his own arse, shredded the rotors, comrade General.'
'Is, is—?'
'Burst into flames when it crashed, comrade General. The American fined them, sir!' It was an outraged wail.
Rodin tugged off his headset and threw it aside. He raged at Serov, as if in pain: 'Kill the American! I don't care how, just do it now! Understand? Do it now!'
Flames spurted and died quickly fifty feet below and a hundred yards away. The gunship was incinerated, out of the game. His body was wracked with the pitch of tension the maneuvers had effected.
Now, carefully… Their low-light TVs and thermal imaging and infrared were all blind; flaring into indistinctness because of the fire on the crashed gunship. That had been a bonus. He could not have planned the lurch of the stricken Hind into a radio mast, then a radar dish, its tail broken but still flailing like that of a maddened insect, its rotors churning the icy ground — its fuel tanks erupting into a volcano.
Quick, then. He had drawn in the other three, they had converged like an audience acquired by a juggler, wondering what sleight of hand was in progress. He had twisted and turned and lifted and dropped the agile little Mil more and more puzzlingly, more and more hypnotically. And always over that bare, dark space of sloping ground where the Hind would think it safe to kill. Until it had begun to attempt to match his movements, to get behind or above or alongside for long enough to ensure a kill. Following him, turning tighter and tighter. He'd seen it happen on guerrilla film smuggled out of Afghanistan by the CIA. Finally, the pressure on the rotors from the created G- forces was sufficient to slap the rotor tip down onto the tail boom like a knife of dramatic sharpness slicing through flesh. A stagger in the air, a maddened, dervish whirling, then the crash and the explosion…
… seconds ago already. He edged the Mil-2 through and beyond a sprouting clump of subsidiary radar dishes. Firelight flickered and washed over them, threw his shadow.
Tracer roared and flashed past the cockpit, the fuselage of the Mil jumped and bucked, struck by cannon fire. He lowered the helicopter even closer to the slightly undulating ground, his airspeed minimal, his body twitching and shifting in his seat as if he were trying to maneuver only his physical form through the jungle of cables and pylons and dishes that confronted him. He attempted to steady the MiL, tense against a renewed burst of firing. Changed course once, again, again, as he waited for the damage to the Mil to become apparent, even deadly. Instinct compelled him to dodge ^d evade even as his mind explored his body, the cockpit, his sense of the main cabin. Something was wrong with the MiL; his shadow had been spotted, one of the gunships had loosed off cannon rounds more in desperation than certainty, but something was wrong with the Mil — the sensation of tight bonds becoming looser, the sense of a car's brakes becoming spongy, its steering soft, unresponsive. He could feel it in his hands, in — in his feet!
The rudders were slow in responding, the helicopter had acquired a determination, growing every second, to drift to port. He touched at the rudders with his feet. The Mil was drunk, hard to keep on its heading or to maneuver.
He emerged from the tracking network's forest almost at once. The passive radar warning had been improved on this helicopter; none of the gunships behind him had radar locked on. For the moment they'd lost him, just as he had hoped.
The Mil yawed, almost zigzagging as he struggled to bring it back onto its heading, southeast toward the road and the river that marked the boundary of Baikonur. Darkness, space, lack of habitation, he'd seen it on the moving map and decided to lose himself and the pursuit there, then—
But the lack of plan no longer mattered. He wrestled with the increasingly drunken helicopter, his injured hand on fire, the veins standing out on his wrists, his muscles in arms and now legs aching like overstretched—
No radar pickup anywhere. They were still blind. Tyuratam glowed away to starboard, but darkness pressed on him. Undulating ground, gritty sand flying in the downwash of the rotors. Stars overhead — he could see them now. He groaned aloud as it took whole seconds to swing the blunt nose of the helicopter back to face the heading he demanded of it. Southeast. He was flying much too slowly, much too drunkenly. If the remaining three gunships
