available. The eagle now floated higher, up toward the peak of the mountain, effortlessly carried by rising currents of warmer air. The wind picked at him coldly.
'Coffee, skipper,' he heard Mac repeat at his side.
He nodded and took the plastic beaker. Swallowed the hot dark drink.
Mac had interrupted the return of peace. The desert had at least given him that. Long journeys, weekends, and even whole weeks. He could recuperate. The instructorship at Nellis AFB had given him something more satisfying than companions. Now he needed to work with these people — Mac, and Garcia, who would pilot the 24A, and his crew, Lane and Kooper. They were young, inexperienced. Valens had died in Germany the month before and injured this mission in the same moment he burned to death with his experienced crew. Mac was OK — there was Vietnam to share, and reliability. The others…?
'What about that?' Mac asked conversationally, gesturing behind him.
'The men or the ship?' Gant replied, sipping the coffee.
'You ain't fair on them, Major.'
'Maybe.'
'They're good, Major, my word on—'
'Maybe.'
'You can't play loner on this one, Major, you know that.'
'Maybe.' Gant continued to sip the coffee, watching the distant frail of dust and the dot of the eagle. Mac confined him on the ledge just as certainly as the damage to the rotor head and the fact that he had been no match for a fighter aircraft, not even with the terrain working in his favor. 'Yeah, maybe, Mac. They're just not ready. Then, after a pause, he added, 'No one is.'
'Three weeks, minimum,' Mac commented sourly, spitting near his feet. Then, more brightly: 'You'll get used to us being around,! Major.'
'I have to, Mac.'
Mac walked away, back toward people he knew and understood. Gant did not turn to watch him, but continued to squint at the eagle in the dazzling morning air. Just warm enough to lift the huge bird, just warm enough. The trail of dust seven or eight miles away was fading, leaving the desert empty once more.
The mission was unlucky; hasty and unprepared. As if the acquisition of the two Russian machines was in itself enough to guarantee success. He'd flown maybe six or seven squadron missions behind the Curtain, using captured or stolen or mocked-up Russian aircraft. But not, one like this.
They should never have told them the stakes involved — not even him. They were too high, they'd never be ready. They should not have been told. Garcia and his crew hid from the risks by adopting a casual, callow arrogance. He simply tried to prepare, knowing the time was too short. Eighteen months since he'd brought home the MiG-31, the Firefox, from Russia. That mission had had more) chance of success.
He finished the last of the coffee and heard Mac's voice calling him. He realized he had half understood there was a radio call. He turned. Mac was running toward him.
'— today!' he shouted. 'Nellis on the set — skipper, they've brought the mission forward to today!'
'Crazy,' was all Gant said in reply. It made no sense. He could not believe it, despite Mac's nods, the emphasis of his eyes, and his flushed cheeks. 'Those assholes in Washington are crazy, out of their skulls, Mac,' he added as belief gripped, forcing anger. 'What the hell did they say about
'Washington don't know yet, Major.'
'Then why in hell doesn't someone tell them?'
He turned away from Mac. Not because of the message, or because Mac's face was beginning to mirror his own, but because he had seen another dot in the high, clean desert air. Not the eagle— the lumbering crane helicopter from Nellis coming to collect the
Mil-24A. Its symbolism clashed with that of the bird and the trail of dust on the desert floor. Too violently.
'There's no way,' he said breathily. 'Just no way.'
He could no longer see the eagle. The dust from the distant vehicle had finally settled. The desert before him appeared painted, a vast, empty canvas, no longer real.
Colonel Dmitri Priabin of the KGBs Industrial Security Directorate and head of nonmilitary security at the cosmodrome of Baikonur, turned away from the young man lounging with a shallow but arrogant confidence in the office's single easy chair, stifled a yawn and a desire to rub his shadowed cheeks, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared out into the darkness of the winter night.
Across the expanse of low buildings in front of him lay the main assembly complex and the vast hangar that housed the G-type heavy-booster launch vehicle. Its bouquet of huge rockets was splashed with white light within the open hangar doors; they were end-on to him like the mouths of some enormous multiple gun.
The scene was distant but by no means toylike or unreal. It was all too vast to become miniaturized by mere distance. And it was thrilling, undeniably so. At least, whenever he could forget the purely personal, could step aside from himself for a moment and discover emotions he could share with others, then it was thrilling. He could experience pride, awe, satisfaction, secrecy, even nationalism. A rainbow of cliched emotions. When he could forget Anna and his past.
His office was warm, yet he wore frill uniform, including tie and jacket. The pale self that stared back from the dark square of the windowpane was tired, drawn, but neat. The uniform was not to impress the young man who had been brought in for questioning, but rather to impress himself. To remind him of who and what he was, and to exclude other, less respectable images. The brown uniform and the colonel's shoulder boards were a plaster cast inside which he slowly mended.
The rollout of the G-type heavy booster would begin on Tuesday morning. Powerful locomotives waited in a siding near the hangar, to Pull the booster on its flatcars the six miles — a short distance by Baikonur's sprawling standards — to the new launch pad. On two parcel sets of railway fines and within a vast erector cage, the booster would make the painfully slow journey. At least, the first three stages; the
He stifled another yawn, which might have become a sigh. He felt excluded from the simple emotions aroused by the scene outside. He was excluded by the presence of the general's son behind him, lounging in his chair; excluded, precisely, by his sense of the stupid mistake he had made in arresting the boy at all. Why the devil had he? Bravado, machismo, recklessness — lack of thought? Dmitri Priabin profoundly regretted his actions.
It would take nearly twenty-four hours for the first stages to reach the launch pad, and another half a day to move the shuttle and raise it atop the remainder of the rocket. By Thursday noon everything would be ready for that afternoon's launch.
He still felt excluded, felt his own concerns press in on him. It could well be a matter of self-preservation — and yet, the boy irritated him so much. He whirled on his heels to face the young man, whose eyes were now dull with tiredness rather than drug-brightened, as they had been when Priabin had arrested him. Tired though they might be, the eyes flickered with a pale gleam of contempt, a growing fire of anticipated satisfaction — wait till Daddy hears about this, the eyes promised childishly, maliciously. Not only was this little shit a general's son — a Baikonur general's son — but he was also GRU, military intelligence. Priabin realized, with a growing nervousness, that he had opened the trapdoor to a snake pit — a can of worms, didn't the Americans say? It was the boy's expectation, almost his right, to hold the KGB in contempt. GRU really ran security at Baikonur, it was the army that was really in control.
'You still refuse to identify the — source of the drugs, Lieutenant?' he asked with careful authority. 'We really have wasted enough time on this already.'
'Then let me go,' the young man replied, pouting with thin, pale hps. Pale eyebrows, pale hair, faded blue eyes. Almost ghostly. He might have been some aristocrat's jaded, old-young offspring. Perhaps he was, in a Soviet sense — certainly the son of a powerful and dangerous man.
Why wouldn't he let the boy go? Spite? Possibly; the boy
