Target 5 (32 page)

The cabin began to rotate, to whirl like a top, and the
two men inside rotated with it
...
Faster and faster they
revolved on their own axis with the machine still in mid
air, spinning round and round and round at ever-increasing speed in endless gyrations. In seconds both men were dis
orientated, powerless, spinning, spinning, spinning. Strapped
into their seats, they experienced the full force of the terror,
whirling like a roundabout gone mad, at a speed no round
about out of control would ever attain.

They would have gone mad had it lasted long enough,
but it didn't last long enough. The machine lost its equili
brium, banked over sideways, fell towards the ice. The whirling rotors were still hurtling the fuselage round when
the smash came. The fuselage broke in two pieces, flew
across the ice three hundred yards away from the
Elroy
as
the rotors disintegrated. The fuel tanks detonated, sent out a sheet of flame which melted the ice on the port rails. Black smoke rose and wavered in the breeze which came from the
north.

There was another watcher who saw the Soviet helicopter's destruction. Two miles away, flying at three thousand feet,
Col Igor Papanin lowered his night-glasses and sat in silence
while the pilot beside him waited for instructions.

'What happened?' Kramer asked from the seat behind.
'What was that flame?'

'Shut up! Let me think.'

Papanin was in a state of shock. Only an hour earlier he
had flown to where the
Elroy
was hemmed in by ice to see what was happening. On the way he had received the signal
from one of his helicopters: the Beaumont party had been
found, men were being landed on the ice to cut them off
from the American ship. It had sounded like a triumph.

He had arrived in time to see the Soviet helicopter still
hovering over the
Elroy.
He had sent a signal over the radio
telephone himself, ordering it to keep its position. Then the second machine had appeared. For a few minutes Papanin
had no idea what was happening, then the helicopter over
the ship had started reporting. For once the Siberian had
listened without interrupting, without saying a single word
as the communications became more and more tense,
climaxing in a report which had chilled him as he listened to
the taut words coming through the earphones.

'Machine coming down on us ... several men inside ...
window opening . .. Gorov! Gorov! In the machine! ...
many dogs . . . three other men .. .'

Then the message ceased. Papanin saw why when he
raised his night-glasses and aimed them with difficulty,
focusing just in time to see the obscene spectacle of his own
helicopter whirling crazily in mid-air before it crashed.

Sitting behind him, Kramer saw the sagging shoulders stiffen. Papanin swung round in his seat and his expression frightened the Bait. 'Send a signal to the
Revolution \
Tell them I am on my way. Tell them to start radio-jamming at full power immediately! All vessels! We will establish our headquarters on board the
Revolution
and wait for the
Elroy
to come to us.'

'Hydrogen-Strongbow ... Hydrogen-Strongbow ...'

The two-word signal which Beaumont asked the
Elroy's
captain to radio immediately to Curtis Field the moment he arrived on board reached Dawes close on midnight. 'Hydrogen-Strongbow . ..' The signal told Dawes everything -
or almost everything. 'We have Gorov, we are aboard the
Elroy.'
He asked for a call to be put through to Washington immediately on the hot line.

The hot line went through Curtis Field on its way to Iceland and Europe; the other way it went back through
Dye Two, a remote Distant Early Warning Station perched
on the icecap, before it continued its long journey to
Washington. When the call came through Dawes spoke to a
man in the Defence Department and Adams listened, hear
ing only one end of the conversation.

'Sure we've got Gorov aboard an American ship,' Dawes said at a later stage in his call, 'but for the third time I'd feel
a lot happier if we could send an escort ship to take the
Elroy
home ...'

'No, I'm not suggesting they'd board an American
vessel...' he growled at an even later stage.

Two minutes later he slammed down the phone and
absentmindedly lit his cigar, the first live smoke he'd enjoyed in seventeen days. 'They won't give her an escort,' he
said. 'They say it's all over.' He began pacing the over
heated office and staring at the wall map which showed the position of all ships in the area south of Target-5. 'All they
can think of is that the President is at this moment in Peking
clinking glasses with the Chinese.'

'You lit your cigar,' Adams pointed out. 'You're cele
brating?'

'Not yet.'

When Adams had gone to bed Dawes was still pacing
slowly, still gazing at the wall map, so uneasy that he knew he wouldn't sleep even if he did go to bed. And in this foreboding Dawes showed more insight than the man in Wash
ington who had said it was all over. It was, in fact, just
beginning.

Checkmate

THE KILLING GROUND

Wednesday, 23 February:
1am.-5am

'Take her down! You have to land on that blasted thing one
day!'

Papanin shouted the command to make himself heard above the drumming of the rotors as the helicopter hovered uncertainly, hovered over the i6,000-ton research ship
Revolution.
The aircraft canted sideways, caught by a gust of wind, and Papanin, standing up, grabbed at his seat to save himself. Bloody amateur! The so-called pilots the flying schools turned out these days were a disgrace. Behind the pilot Kramer clung nervously to the flap seat he was perched on: he hated flying and this had been a very rough ride. The pilot regained control of his machine and spoke to the Siberian without looking at him.

'It would be safer if you sat down. Colonel!'

'It would be safer if we were already aboard that ship!
Take her down, I said!'

'Landing conditions are very dangerous. I have enough
fuel left to stay up .. .'

Papanin sat down next to the pilot in the observer's seat, put his face close to the pilot's, enunciated the words care
fully. 'I am ordering you to land on that ship. I have not
got the time to hang about in mid-air because you require
the sea to be as smooth as a baby's bottom! Take her down!'

He turned away from the pilot and looked down at the
ocean. The view was scarcely encouraging. The huge research ship, the showpiece of the Soviet merchant marine,
her vast radar dome aft of the bridge gleaming in the moon
light like some strange seaborne mosque, was heaving slowly
in a considerable swell. Three hundred feet below them, she
rode great sea crests trundling south, her whole structure
tilting and then falling, the spike at the top of the radar
dome tipping sideways, pausing, climbing again as the seas
lifted the vessel. Close to the icefield, ice floes drifted in the
surging waves, climbed a crest, slammed down against the
bows. The helicopter began to descend.

The pilot, his facial muscles tight, leaned well forward for his first sight of the radar dome. Under these dangerous con
ditions the dome was his only guide to the whereabouts of
the landing pad, immediately aft of the dome. He had to
touch the pad at just the right moment; - when it was level -
otherwise they would tip over sideways. Spume, caught by
the wind, came up and splashed over the perspex, obscuring
his view. Feeling the Siberian's stare, he continued the
descent. Something like a huge pendulum swivelled beyond
the perspex. The masthead, topped by a radar wing. The
mast was laden with electronic gear. The
Revolution,
launched officially as the world's greatest research vessel, was really the Soviet Union's largest spy-ship.

The machine went lower. The dome filled the view now, sliding with the massive sea swell, but
the pilot hardly saw
it; he was watching the masthead beyond, swinging
towards the vertical. When it reached the vertical, paused
there for brief seconds, the invisible landing pad would be
level. The skids below the undercarriage hit the pad,
slammed into it. Waiting technicians
rushed forward,
clamped the anchor rings tight. The Siberian opened the
door while the rotors were still whirling, looked back at the
pilot.

'You see! You never know what you can do until you
try!
5

He jumped to the deck as the pilot glared at him,
crouched to avoid the rotors, splayed his huge legs to hold
his balance, then he was clawing his way along the rail when
the sea sent an avalanche inboard. He clung to the rail, holding his breath until the water receded, and there were
frozen spits of ice on his sleeves as he hauled himself up the
tilting ladder leading to the great bridge. Captain Anatoli
Tuchevsky, the ship's commander, opened the door to let him in.

'Colonel Papanin!' The Siberian, dripping water, took
off his sodden parka and dropped it on the floor. 'You are
Tuchevsky? Good. A change of clothing, please! Something
belonging to the largest rating aboard! Why are you head
ing north at this turtle pace?'

Tuchevsky, a lean, self-contained man with a beard,
grim-faced and thoroughly alarmed about what was hap
pening to his ship, gave an order for fresh clothing to be brought and then led Papanin to the chart-room behind the bridge. He sent away an officer working over a chart with a pair of dividers, shut the door and faced the Siberian.

'I have to protest most strongly ...'

'Protest noted f

'I haven't told you what I'm protesting about yet...'

'I'm not interested!'

'These are dangerous waters for a vessel of this size . . .'

'Now tell me something new!' Papanin stripped off his
outer gloves, peeled off his mittens underneath, dropped the
sodden articles on a side-table. Taking out a pair of steel-
rimmed spectacles, he stared at the chart on the table,
picked up a pencil, made a cross. 'The American icebreaker
Elroy
was about there when I last saw her. She will now be smashing her way out of the ice. She will sail due south . . .'
He scrawled a brutal line down the chart. 'We continue
sailing due north.' His pencil went straight back up the line.
'So get on this course. And make this old tub of yours move!'

Tuchevsky took off his cap, dropped it on the chart so the Siberian could make no more markings, folded his arms and
stared straight at Papanin. 'I command this vessel. I have an
order to receive you, to carry out your instructions - but I
am still in command . . .'

'Of course!' Papanin towered over the five-foot-six
Tuchevsky as he beamed down at him. 'I fashion the bullets,
you fire them!' Sitting down on the floor, he tugged off one
boot and then the other, still grinning at the captain.