North Cape (18 page)

"Another little missive from our bosses. In spite of our health, we must put forth our ultimate effort," he said dryly.

Folsom grinned and took the flimsy. It was as Larkin had said, minus the sarcasm of course: they were to expend every effort to assure the safety of the pilot. In short, get him before the Russians did.

"They seem to be forgetting that. the Norwegians might have something to say. Allies or no, I should think they wouldn't take too kindly to such operations off their coasts, or in their coastal waters, for that matter."

"I agree. And I would also guess that if Washington had informed Oslo, they would have told us so."

Folsom nodded, then glanced at the chronometer. "About four hours yet and we should be off the point where he came down."

Already, Folsom noted, both he and Larkin had begun referring to the unknown pilot as a personal acquaintance.

Larkin got up stiffly and walked over to the forward ports. "In effect, those orders say to bring him back at any cost," he said half aloud. "At least we appear to have the weather on our side. It is doubtful if the Soviets will send surface ships out searching after him, or aircraft either for that matter. But submarines are definitely in this year and the sub pens at Murmansk are only ten, high-speed hours away."

Folsom joined him at the ports, both staring out into the sky that was beginning to lighten with a gray dawn that only made the seas and the cold that much more oppressive. "Well, it at least is going to give us a chance to test our own ECM gear under what you might call semicombat conditions. To this point, I hope, they do not know that we are out here. Or rather," he amended, "they don't know who and where we are. It's very likely that they picked up part of the transmission and so they will know that somebody must be out here to pick it up."

Larkin nodded agreement with his analysis. "And it will be very important that we keep it that way."

"What about those?" Folsom indicated the silent tape console with its full reels of data from the aircraft.

"I am sending those at o800—direct—and through double-scrambled circuits. It may be that the whole ball game is over in terms of these missions. What his mission was this time I don't have the faintest idea. But the Soviets know that the pilot picked up whatever he was after. So we have to get to him before they do."

"So we go get him," Folsom said simply.

"That's right."

Teleman opened his eyes. A gray, washed-out light stared at him. The sound of the wind roaring through trees was louder than ever and the rocking of the capsule was more pronounced' than he remembered. An insistent shrilling filled the capsule and it was several moments before he could wake himself enough to realize that it was his wrist alarm. Teleman shut it off with a fretful twist and lay back on the couch. Weariness that was almost pain flowed through his body, flooding down his arms and legs with heaviness. Flashes of light obscured his vision and the control board before him swam unevenly with the residual effects

of the lysergic drugs. The batteries were just about dead and the intense cold was beginning to work its way inside. In addition to the tiredness, he was stiff and aching in every joint, both from the cold .and the cramped position in which he had been lying. Finally, his. head ached abominably.

When at last he managed to sit up, the first thing he did was to remove his helmet. With the pressure of the heavy plastic and leather gone, his head felt curiously lighter, but at the same time ached even more. Teleman groaned and rubbed his temples. After five minutes more of half sleep, half wakefulness, he managed to get himself moving. He worked the acceleration couch into a sitting position with a great deal of pulling and swearing only to find that he could not get at the lockers where the survival gear was stored without getting completely out of the ejection capsule. Peering through the view port, he was not sure that he liked that idea at all.

The narrow slit showed thick forest. He must have come down through the trees, which accounted for the terrific pounding he had taken. The snow was more than a foot deep, with deeper drifts piled up around parts of trees and brush. The branches of the trees danced wildly in the wind. Snow blown up from the surface mingled with the snowfall to create an obscuring ground blizzard composed more of ice particles than snow. Nevertheless, unless he wanted to freeze to death here, there was no help for it—he had to leave the capsule to get the gear out of the lockers.

Teleman slipped his helmet back on and fought with the hatch release until it popped open. He half fell, half climbed out into the bitter cold that immediately bent him double and made him gasp for air. The intense cold, close to twenty below zero, snatched the warm air from his lungs and for several minutes he struggled to regain his breath, breathing air warmed by cupped hands.

Once outside, it was easier to pull the seat all the way forward and open the lockers. The bundles he drew out were tightly packed and opened easily. He pulled them around the side of the battered capsule and beneath the overhanging branches of a thick fir. Here, out of the wind, he opened the first' and checked its contents, carefully piling the equipment he did not need back into the bag.

Teleman found a .22-caliber pistol, which, after a moment's hesitation, he tucked into the waistband of his trousers. VERY

pistol, field glasses, small but complete first-aid kit, rations, extra socks, gloves and boots, all went into the pile that he would take with him. He shed his lightweight flight jacket while shivering uncontrollably and pulled a set of Arctic pants and parka over• his flight pants and bare skin. Over his boots went a pair of Arctic vacuum boots. Finally, he pulled the hood of the parka over his head and tied it securely beneath his chin. Teleman managed to get the compass and, after a moment's indecision, a tube of Benzedrine tablets into the pocket of his parka. He did not want anything to do with them at the moment, but they might come in handy in an emergency. His metabolism was so low after the long flight and the steady diet of drugs that it would be disastrous to use them now. But he might need them later, he thought. If there was a later. With a pack of rations, he crawled back into the comparative shelter of the capsule. While he ate the cardboard-flavored ration he tried to figure out where he was. After choking down half the bar, he rewrapped the half-eaten pack and shoved it into a pocket. He glanced at his watch: now six hours and twenty minutes since he had radioed the RFK. They ought to be coming onto station shortly, so it was time he got going. Teleman climbed out of the capsule again and walked around to pick up the pack he had made up from the survival kit. The rest of the gear he shoved into the capsule, then closed and latched the hatch.

Set into the middle of the door was a small, spring-closed flap. Teleman opened this and dialed the switch to three minutes. Then he turned and, in an awkward, stumbling gait, ran for the trees.

The thermite bomb exploded. Teleman, watching from a safe distance, saw the flames run in streamers up and down the capsule before fusing into a single sheet. In minutes the capsule was reduced to a shapeless, hissing mass in the steady snowfall. Teleman crouched at the base of a large pine until he was satisfied that the capsule-had been completely destroyed. His last link with the aircraft, in which he had spent what he considered the most important years of his life was severed. Now, cut off from the stabilizing effect of his semi-computer-controlled aircraft and thrown onto his own, he was confused and uncertain, and the drug residues only increased the intensity of his anxieties.

For a moment he felt as if the complexity of the situation was going to overwhelm him. The windblown snow swirling about him narrowed his world to a tiny circle. Into this world, he huddled against the base of the tree and buried his head in his arms, trying to shut out its effects.

The.roar of a jet aircraft, hidden in the clouds, but low enough to be clearly heard over the wind, shocked him into consciousness. He sprang up, head cocked to one side, listening. He could hear the fading scream of tortured air as the sound went toward the coast.

Teleman stooped down to gather up a handful of snow and rub it on his face. The. Soviets had tried three times to kill him. They had succeeded in unhorsing him, so to speak, but he was not down yet, at least in any but the descriptive sense. The pilot, with grim determination, shouldered his pack and, following his compass, set off due north to the cliffs of the North Cape.

Larkin chafing at the delay, paced the bridge, back and forth from meteorological gear to helm, making short sorties onto the deck to judge the condition of the storm. Larkin would never admit it to anyone, but he trusted his own innate weather sense more than all the meteorological gear in the world. That the gale was subsiding, he was now '

certain. And as swiftly as they begin, katabatic storms, by their very nature, are shortlived, but while living are possibly the most dangerous storms-of their kind. The aftermath would still be thoroughly dangerous, and the blizzard it •would bring would be both a help and a hindrance. It would at least keep the Soviet surface craft snug in port since the high seas would continue to run for quite some time yet, subsiding slowly over a matter of days, even after the winds had blown themselves out. Larkin was worrying about the pounding the bow was again taking as they. plunged toward the Gape at high speed. Each time the forefoot smashed, into a wave, the shock could be felt through the entire ship.

The engineers, still at work in the bow cofferdam, were complaining more and more frequently, and finally Larkin ordered the tank evacuated. The bow plates and patches had been restored earlier. Everything that could be done had been. At 0500 the heavy seas began to abate. The temperatures rose above the freezing mark and the heavy snow turned to sleet. It poured down in buckets, ending -Larkin's tensioninduced deck watch for the time being. In two hours the deck heaters were able to clear away most of the accumulation of ice. The wind, still Mowing Force 9, in combination with the heavy seas, peeled and ripped the remainder of the ice away in great chunks, and the ship slowly became more responsive to the helm as she rode higher. The cruiser beat its way southwest, now a gray shape slipping through the snow and rain and running seas, rolling thirty degrees to either side in the mountainous waves as it sought the shorter waters of the coastal shelf and the tiny indentation in the cliffs that was as close to the downed pilot as she could get.

Teleman had been trudging north for an hour when the wind died abruptly. One minute he had been leaning directly into the forty-mile-an-hour winds, struggling against the solid hand that barred his way, and the next he was standing beneath the trees wrapped in the eerie silence that heavy winds leave when they depart. He glanced up at the swollen cloud cover, lowering over the barely seen tops of the trees. With the disappearance of the wind, the snowfall began to thicken, and in a few moments he could barely see trees less than ten feet away.

He 'strained forward, listening for the boom of waves against the cliffs, but heard only the peculiar whisper of snow falling through the fir trees. A few moments later Teleman resumed his slow pace. The snow beneath the trees was almost mid-calf deep, but dry and powdery, and he had little trouble plowing through it. What bothered him most was the cold. He knew the temperature must be at least thirty below zero. The emergency kit had not included a face mask and Teleman rubbed his cheeks continually with his gloved hands to maintain circulation. The thin scarf tied across his mouth had crusted with ice from his exhaled breath and was practically useless.

The exertion of walking and fighting the wind was pure torture. Muscles and nerve endings screamed at the agony of movement after so many hours of physical inactivity. Teleman knew he was weak beyond belief, and the deep cold biting into his body was taking a dangerous toll on his already overloaded metabolic system. Earlier, he had briefly considered using the radio and trying to contact the ship to give them an exact position fix. Then he could hole up in the lightweight tent in his pack until they 'got to him. The only trouble was that it-would give the Russians an exact fix at the same time. A couple of bombers and a saturation bombing run on the area would take care of him once and for all. The fact that the Soviets had tried to shoot him down three times had more than convinced him they were playing for keeps. If they could not have him, they did not want the Americans to get him back either. He had seen too much of their optical tracking system. Since no hint of the system had come out of the Soviet Union from Western intelligence operatives, he surmised that it was one of their most closely guarded secrets. The United States was too far ahead of the Soviets in electronics for radar and other sensor countermeasures for the Russians to compete effectively. The important computer, transistor, and circuitry technologies had been developed to a very high degree in the United States while the Russians were not concerned with the miniaturization and microminiaturization techniques that required advanced circuitry and electronic concepts.

All of this passed through Teleman's exhausted mind in a very abstracted form. Yet he was well aware of every detail, every ramification. For two years his life had depended on his ECM gear. The optical tracking system was obviously the mainstay of Soviet hopes against an invasion force of supersonic and hypersonic aircraft. Teleman knew enough about the system to enable the American intelligence and scientific communities to analyze and develop optical countermeasures. The race would be evened up again. The Soviets wanted him badly, but would kill him if there was no other way to shut him up—all of this coincidentally with their war on the Sino-Soviet border. Teleman rubbed his ears vigorously with both gloved hands, cap tucked under one arm, and sighed. It was going to be rough on his ears, but there was no hope for it. He had to be able to hear aircraft coming enough in advance to duck under the closest tree.. If he did not and was spotted, he could expect the aircraft to make *an immediate pass over the area with rockets, napalm, bombs, cannon, or whatever devilish weaponry it carried, and that would be the end. He shifted the pack to a more comfortable position and started slogging forward once more.