Firefox Down (9 page)

A clean, well-lit, comfortable place. His place. It would have been criminal to throw it away.

'Put me through to Antonov - over the cabin speaker,' he announced calmly, soberly. A moment later, he was given the signal to proceed. 'Major Antonov - this mysterious signal of yours… what do you suppose it is?'

'Yes, Comrade General,' he heard the distant, crackling voice begin, 'we don't know what to make of it - any of us.'

'When did you first pick it up?'

'Fifteen minutes ago-but we lost it-then found it on a different frequency… the third time, only five minutes ago, we managed to get a line on it, but we haven't been able to pick it up since.' The tone was apologetic, but it managed to include the entire crew of the Tupolev in any consequent blame.

'Find it again, Major I beg of you.'

'Yes, Comrade General.'

Frequency-agile - a signals or communications emission, but without a message or code… a somehow-still-operating piece of clever electronics thrown well clear of the crash site…? How far - this was too far… some Finnish ground installation we don't know about? Unlikely. There had been no Personal Survival Beacon signals from either pilot, so Gant and the Foxbat pilot were both dead… neither of them had ejected in time.

Personal Survival Beacon -
Beacon -
secure signal, he
remembered
, secrecy when all the pilot would want was the loudest scream across the widest band. Because of the MiG-31 project there was secrecy surrounding the aircraft, the pilots, the ground crews, the instruments, the pressure-suits… the obsession of the Soviet state, how many times had it enraged him!

The PSB for Firefox test pilots was frequency-agile, and intermittent, to ensure that only those instructed how to listen would ever hear… and Gant was wearing dead Voskov's pressure suit!

'It's
Gant
!' he roared. Shoulders and heads twitched with shock. Vladimirov beat his fists against his thighs. 'He's
alive
. He's been alive all the
time! You
!' he barked at the officer who had brought him the scribbled transcript of Antonov's message. 'Get me the details of the frequency-code for the PSB in a Firefox pressure suit-get it now!' He hurried to the door. Turning, he added: 'Transmit it to Antonov as soon as you have it. And tell Antonov he
must find
that signal again and obtain an exact fix. No excuses!'

He went through the door, slamming it behind him, already knowing, without careful analysis, what must be done. The First Secretary and Andropov were emerging into the hospitality room at that moment. Immediately, Vladimirov pointed his long forefinger at Andropov as at a recalcitrant and untrustworthy subordinate.

'I want your Border Guards, Comrade Chairman!' he snapped. 'I want a helicopter patrol, three ships, ready to cross into Finland immediately - Gant's been alive all the time!'

The contents of the survival pack from the Firefox were spread around him at the foot of the fir tree. His eyes were gritty with tiredness, and refused to focus for any length of time. Tension and weariness produced bouts of violent yawning. His body shivered almost constantly now, with cold and reaction. He had escaped. He had walked perhaps a little more than three miles in a north-westerly direction, keeping to the cover of the forest. He wanted only to sleep now. The pressure suit creaked and groaned as it froze into stiff, awkward sheets and folds around his body. His toes and fingers were numb. He had to sleep.

He would repack the survival kit except for the sleeping bag, which lay like an orange and blue brick near his left knee. If he got into it, perhaps only for an hour - surely he could afford the time. He hadn't heard the noise of a searching aircraft for perhaps twenty minutes now…

He had to sleep. He could not form ideas, make plans. He could not stay awake. There was good overhead cover here. The sleeping-bag, tight around him, would eventually warm him, restore the circulation. He would be able to continue, if only he slept now.

A white Arctic hare watched him from the other side of the fir tree. Its nose twitched as it assessed the intruder. Gant watched it dully, head hanging forward, staring at the small, still animal from beneath his furrowed brow. Even to hold the white hare in focus against the snow required vast concentration.

Automatically, the Makarov pistol came out of its holster, took aim, and fired once. The noise was deafening, frightening in the silence to which he had become totally accustomed. It seemed to invite pursuit, creat lurid images of capture. The hare leapt backwards with the force of the 9mm bullet at such close range, its powerful back legs flicking up. Then it lay on its side. A small stain spread from beneath its fur, darkly red, It would supplement the rich cake, the chocolate and biscuits in the rations of the survival pack. He was tiredly, exaggeratedly saddened by the killing of the hare, and immediately he entertained the emotion it became self-pity; he was utterly weary. He could not, now, gather up, skin, cook the hare.

He began shivering again. Furiously, as if to punish himself, he rubbed his hands on his arms, trying to warm himself. Or scrape away from his skin some guilt or paralysis that clung to it.

An object. Hard. Inside one of the pockets. Left arm. He unzipped the pocket, and withdrew a small orange cylinder. He recognised it at once. His PSB, his distress signal transmitter.

He stared at it, unbelievingly. He had forgotten it, hadn't even attempted to locate it. It would have been activated - without the shadow of a doubt it would have been activated and begun transmitting - the moment it was immersed in the waters of the lake. He looked up at the sky, wildly. Nothing. The search had been called off -

Relief in his mind was a clean image of the grey, darkening sky. Intruding upon that was the white dot of the Tupolev AWACS airplane as he had seen it on his screen. The transmitter in his cupped hand would undoubtedly have the power to beam a signal the thirty or more miles of distance and the forty thousand feet of altitude to the Tupolev. They must have heard it. They knew he was alive, where he was…

Panic removed weariness with a rush of adrenalin. He stood up, swayed, then dropped the PSB. He stamped on it, grinding it out of shape, puncturing the skin, smashing the transistors and wiring within. Killing it. The hare lay beyond the distress he had made in the snow, unmoving. He knelt again, scooping the scattered items back into the survival pack. The brick of his folded sleeping-bag, the folded .22 rifle and its half-dozen rounds, the chocolate and biscuits, the compressed rations, the solid tablet stove.

He watched the hare. He couldn't -

He dragged a plastic bag from the pack, scooped up the hare with apologetically gentle hands, and thrust it into the bag, then the package into the survival pack. As he stood up, he kicked fresh snow over the small, darkening smudge of blood.

His tracks would not show because he had been beneath the forest roof for the greater part of his journey. Eventually, he would have to sleep, but now he must strike in a more northerly direction. He slipped the harness of the pack over his shoulders, wearily assuming a fully-upright posture when he had done so. He swayed with tiredness. He looked at his watch. Darkness was still as much as two hours away. Two hours, then, before he could rest.

He groaned aloud. The noise disturbed, magnified the silence of the forest. He studied the map. Ahead of him a country of patchy forest, narrow valleys, dotted lakes. Like Alaska.

He hefted the pack's weight to comfort, shivered with cold and anticipation, listened to the brooding, continuous silence, and turned to face northwards.

He began to walk.

Squadron Leader Alan Eastoe turned the AWACS Nimrod in a slow arc as he completed the southerly leg of his patrol at twenty-five thousand feet above the road which straggled across the Norwegian Finnmark from the Tanafjord to the small town of Karasjok. The road marked the border between Norway and Finland. The aircraft was above the cloud layer as it once more headed north-east, following the wriggling line of the unseen road.

It had been almost two hours since they had reported what Eastoe suspected had been the pursuit and destruction of the unseen MiG-31. He had immediately been ordered by Aubrey to remain on-station and to begin this idiotic patrol in the ridiculous hope of either picking up a signal from Gant's PSB - and they hadn't done that because Gant was dead - or evoking some response from a piece of sophisticated gadgetry that must have been destroyed with the Firefox.

Yet Aubrey needed to be convinced. Thus, they had to keep on attempting to make the Firefox's homing device emit a simple carrier wave on which they could take a bearing. According to Farnborough, the homing device would be capable of responding to their pulsed radio signal for at least eighteen hours. Eastoe did not believe they would ever pick up the carrier wave. No one but an uninformed civilian like Aubrey would have expected to do so. There wasn't a ghost in the machine. The Firefox was just - dead.

Eastoe yawned and adjusted his tinted glasses on the bridge of his nose. At their altitude, the sunlight still gleamed from the surface of the cloud-layer below, even though below the clouds it would be getting dark.

'Christ, Terry,' he murmured, looking towards his co-pilot, tossing his head in dismissal, 'bugger this for a ball of chalk. The poor sod's dead - and I'm sorry he's dead - and the plane's a write-off, and I'm sorry about that because I'd like to have seen it, just the once . . .
But-
!'

The co-pilot shook his head, smiling. 'You've worked with Aubrey before, skipper…' he began.

'Worked
for
, Terry - worked
for
Aubrey. There's all the difference in the world. He's never bloody convinced. I can see him in the Garden, swearing blind the risen Christ
is
only the gardener!' Eastoe laughed, despite his exasperation. He heard a crewman's chuckle in his earphones. 'Come on, then, he'd say - just one or perhaps two miracles to prove you are who you say you are - no, perhaps
three
miracles will suffice. Silly old sod!'

'Why worry? In half an hour, we'll have to go off-station to refuel at Bardufoss. He won't order us up again tonight, surely?'

'Don't bet on it,' Eastoe grumbled.

Except for their voices, the flight deck of the Nimrod was almost silent. As in all its endurance flying, the aircraft was using only two of its four engines. It was, in every way, a routine, empty day's flying. Yet exasperating to Eastoe-sad, too, because the Yank had almost got away with it. he'd almost pulled it off. Something had gone wrong - damage during the earlier dogfight when the second MiG-31 had been destroyed, probably - and he'd been caught on the hop, and finished off. Poor bugger.

'Anything at
all
, John?' he asked, almost wailing into his microphone, addressing himself to the tactical navigator seated before his displays in the first of the major compartments aft of the flight deck. 'What's that bloody stupid Russian doing?'

'Who - Pissed-off Pyotr in the Tupolev?'

'That's the one.'

'He's running up and down his bit of the border, doing just what we're doing, skipper. He's having about as much luck, by the look of it. No changes of heading, except when he comes to the end of a leg. He's now at - '

'I don't want a bloody fix on him, for Christ's sake! Is there nothing else?'

'Nothing. Not even a Finnish fighter. Keeping their heads down on orders from Helsinki, I should think. Anyway, they've been proven right. Ignore the problem and it'll go away. No MiGs anywhere over Finnish airspace. They've gone home for tea.'

'They've got their snaps of the wreckage. They'll be analysing those. Perhaps we should have…?'

'We're approaching optimum distance from the point of the explosions,' the routine navigator offered like a grinning tempter. 'Are you thinking of having a look, skipper?'

'I'm numb with boredom, but I'm not stupid,' Eastoe replied. Why bother? Aubrey would have arranged something with Finnish Intelligence, or an American satellite. If he'd wanted proof of the crash from photographs, he'd have asked for them.

Why bother? The same silent answer would be forthcoming. There was nothing to find. The captain of the Tupolev knew that's all there was just as surely as he did himself.

And then, the thought popped into his head. Why not? The Russians had been encroaching into Finnish airspace all afternoon. What if- ?

The colder thought was -

We could be out of range of the bloody homing device. They might have already triggered the carrier wave, but they could be out of range by ten miles, or even a mile, if it was transmitting on very low power.

If he changed course, then the Tupolev would assume he'd found something. But, if he photographed the crash site at low level, then the bluff might work - and the snaps would be useful, more useful than tooling up and down the border.

'Anything, John?'

'Nothing, skipper.'

Eastoe glanced at his co-pilot. 'Everybody stay alert. I'm just taking a little short-cut here - a little corner off the map. I'd like some souvenir snaps. OK?'

The co-pilot watched Eastoe, then remarked: 'You really do like working for these cloak-and-dagger bods, don't you? Deeds of bloody derring-do. When are you going to grow up?'

'Like you?' Eastoe was grinning. 'Beats routine patrol. Who'll ever know? Who'll ever make a fuss? We can have our own snaps of the wreckage, and a closer listen for that bloody carrier wave - then, I promise, we'll go home.'

'Three or four minutes in Finnish airspace doesn't constitute the crime of the century, Terry,' the tactical navigator offered.

'Bob?'

'Yes, skipper?' the routine navigator replied.

'Give me a course for the crash site.'

'Roger, skipper.'

Eastoe grinned. 'Blame me at the court-martial. Terry,' he offered.

'You bet.'

Eastoe nudged the alteration of course through the rudder. The Nimrod's blunt head swung to starboard. The cloud layer beneath the aircraft was devoid of nationality. Simple, Eastoe thought, feeling the tension stiffening in his frame as they crossed into Finnish airspace.