Target 5 (7 page)

'Rough ice, I said.'

Beaumont hadn't yet acclimatized to the bitter Arctic
air which was streaming inside the jeep, freezing his face
and making him feel short of breath. The car carrying
Vandenberg and Callard was disappearing along the main track, its red light growing smaller as another jeep came
tearing in the opposite direction, driving towards the
Boeing 707.

'Any fog about?' Beaumont asked casually as he began
reading the report.

'No fog anywhere, thank God. According to the latest
report - and that's what you're reading - there's clear
weather all the way from here to Norway.'

'You mean you've had it and it's cleared recently?' Beaumont pressed. He was thinking of the report Dawes had shown him in Washington concerning weather conditions
round Target-5-
Dense fog ... visibility nil.

'We just haven't had any fog, period. Not for the past
three weeks.'

Tillotson slowed down, glanced at Beaumont who was still
reading the report while the anger grew inside him. Dawes had fooled him, had shown him a faked weather report to get him to Greenland. Tillotson pulled up, left the engine
ticking over. 'Mitten's slipped inside my glove,' he explained. 'I'll just fix it.' He fiddled with the glove, took it
off, put it inside his coat pocket. When he withdrew his hand
it was holding a .38 Smith & Wesson. He turned sideways
and with one swift movement smashed the barrel against
Beaumont's temple. Instinctively Beaumont shifted a second
before the gun hit him and the barrel grazed rather than
clubbed him, but he was hurt. He grabbed at the ignition
key, tore it loose, threw it sideways out of the window into
the snow. Tillotson smashed the revolver down a second time. A flash of light exploded inside Beaumont's head, a
blinding flash, then a horrible wave of blackness engulfed
him.

Saturday, 19 February

Beaumont lay half-conscious in the snow, fighting to get a grip on himself as Sam Grayson's cheerful face bent over him, but there was anxiety in the American's expression as he eased the brandy flask close to Beaumont's lips. 'Take it
easy, Keith ...'

Beaumont forced himself up on his elbows, took the flask in one hand, helped himself to a drink. His head was pounding, his vision was blurred, then the strong spirit reached his
stomach and he could see clearly. He took a slow, deep
breath of the bitter night air. That seemed more potent than the brandy. 'Get me on my feet,' he said between his teeth.

'Better wait a bit .. .'

Beaumont swore, clambered unsteadily to his feet,
swayed, nearly fell over as Grayson grabbed for his arm. Tillotson's jeep stood a few yards away and Beaumont remembered he had thrown the ignition key into the snow.
Another jeep stood a few yards away, its windscreen shattered, the front right tyre flat. 'Tillotson shot at you?'

'Tillotson...?'

'Yes, Tillotson,' Beaumont rasped impatiently. 'He's Crocodile - the security leak. But you wouldn't know about that. We've got to get after him - where's he gone?' Beaumont looked towards the airfield and there was nothing in sight - only the guard-post by the gate in the wire, the orange snow-plough in the distance and the hangar beyond. Where the hell had Tillotson vanished to? 'Which way did he go?' Beaumont snapped.

Grayson, a short, wiry man of thirty-five with sand-
coloured hair, was still recovering from the
shock: he had
thought Beaumont was dead. 'We've heard rumours about a
security leak. I was late coming out to meet you off the plane
and the pilot said you'd driven off in a jeep. I couldn't be
lieve it was Tillotson when he started shooting. He ran off
towards the airfield . ..' Grayson was talking to himself -
Beaumont had started running towards the guard-post.

'He can't get away,' Grayson shouted as he followed Beaumont. 'Vandenberg declared a state of alert just before
your plane came in. The base is sealed off...'

'I think Tillotson can fly a helicopter,' Beaumont shouted
back. He was getting into his stride now, his legs carrying
him over the snow with surprising speed for so large a man.
It was willpower which kept him going; his head was aching
horribly, the blood at the side of his face had congealed in
the bitter cold, his stomach was on the verge of nausea. The
bitter air helped his recovery as he ran and took in great
gulps of it. Close to the strangely deserted guard-post he
stopped and waited for Grayson to catch him up.

'Sam, have you a gun? Good - give it to me and keep
back.'

He took the Colt .45 from, the American and approached
the guard-post. Something was lying in the snow just out
side the concrete blockhouse. An American soldier still
clutching his carbine, swathed in his parka, lay on his back staring up at the Arctic sky. Beaumont bent down, checked
the man's pulse, then heaved him over on his stomach. He
was dead and the blood patch which surrounded a rip high
up in the back of the parka was already frozen. It couldn't
have been difficult; after all, Tillotson was the security chief.
The alert meant that no one could get on to the airfield, so
Tillotson had removed the obstacle in his escape route.
'He's already on the airfield,' he told Grayson grimly as the American reached him.

'I've never heard that Tillotson can fly,' Grayson ob
jected.

'I think he can fly a helicopter - and there are helicopters inside that hangar.' Beaumont stared beyond the wire where there was no sign of movement. 'I once saw him inside a machine. That's how he's going to try and get out - by helicopter. Come on!'

'There are two guards inside that hangar,' Grayson said quickly. 'There's a phone inside the guard-post - we must warn the men inside the hangar ...'

Beaumont was halfway inside the guard-post doorway when he saw the phone-cord slashed and dangling. 'It's no use, Sam - he thought of that. But where the hell is he?' Beaumont ran to the open gateway and stared across the white desert of the airfield. The snow-plough.

It was smaller now, like an orange bug as it crept up to the
hangar where the helicopters were housed. Tillotson had
grabbed the nearest available transport to get him inside the
hangar fast. Beaumont would have shouted - anything to
warn the men guarding the machines - but he was too far
away. He took a deep breath and began running again while Grayson followed. Unlike the American, who wore boots,
Beaumont was still wearing the rubber-soled shoes he had
come in from Washington, but the snow was a hard crust and
again he was covering the ground with astonishing speed. He had run for several minutes, was near the hangar when he stumbled and sprawled head first in the snow. He clam
bered to his feet, his head aching, his face stinging, and had
to search for the revolver which had jumped out of his hand.
He found it half-buried in the snow and at that moment
heard a sound which chilled his mind: the throbbing beat of
a helicopter's motor. With the gun in his hand he ran the last
two hundred yards.

'Keep back!' he shouted to Grayson.

The orange plough was parked close to the hangar entrance and the huge, power-operated doors were open now. The mouth of the hangar was a dark cave as his tired legs carried him forward on sheer willpower, and he was within ten yards of the entrance when the machine appeared, an H-19 Sikorsky, its blades whirling at speed as it emerged from the dark shadow. Snow was whipped from
the ground, thrown across the airfield, and the machine came forward through the disturbed show, advancing towards Beaumont, its size enormous in the moonlight.

Beaumont stood quite still, braced himself, hoisted the revolver, gripping the butt with both hands to steady his aim as the machine came on. In ten seconds it would grind over him. The gunsight was aimed for the cockpit, for the blurred helmeted head-and-shoulders behind the ice-rimmed perspex. He took a deep breath, aimed carefully, squeezed. The hammer clicked. He felt rather than heard the click as the helicopter roar hammered at his eardrums. The firing mechanism was choked. The gun wouldn't fire.

'Look Out!' Grayson shouted, his warning lost in the roar.

Tillotson drove the machine straight at him and Beaumont dived sideways and downwards. As he hit the snow he rolled, took the impact on his shoulders, kept rolling over and over while the hideous roar enveloped him. The motor coughed, changed, the roar became a steady, purposeful beat, and when Beaumont looked up the machine was ascending, was already the height of the hangar roof. He climbed to his knees, wiped snow scuffed up by the rotating blades off his face as Grayson reached him.

'We've got to get after him,' Beaumont snapped. 'He
mustn't get clear - our lives depend on it. . .'

He hardly glanced at the crumpled form lying half under the terrible blades of the snow-plough. One of the guards. It had been so easy, so coldly brutal. The snow-plough was a familiar sight on the airfield - the soldier had come out to meet it - Tillotson had driven straight over him. Inside the hangar entrance Beaumont stumbled again, nearly fell over the body of the second guard. He grasped instantly how this had happened. Tillotson had simply shouted for his victim. 'There's been a horrible accident. . .' The knife had gone in before the youngster recovered from the shock, the knife showing in Beaumont's torch beam where a handle protruded from the dead man's back.

Beaumont dropped the useless Colt, picked up the carbine the soldier had never had a chance to use and ran
inside the hangar. A second Sikorsky was standing at the rear of the hangar under a hooded lamp. An electric cable plugged in to keep the motor from freezing ran from the
machine to the wall. Beaumont unplugged the cable,
climbed up to the machine, opened the door and went inside
the cabin as Grayson came up behind him. 'He's gone,' the
American warned. 'We'll never find him .. .'

'We'll find him ...' Beaumont was fixing on the pilot's
helmet and headset which was always left in the pilot's seat.
Stripping off his parka, he settled himself behind the controls. 'Shut the door, Sam - we're going up.' The instrument panel faced him - radar-altimeter, fuel gauge, rev counter,
other instruments. The collective stick - controlling ascent -
was on his left. The cyclic control stick - which changed
flight direction - was on his right. A twist-grip throttle, rather like a motorcycle's throttle, was ringed round the
collective stick. Beaumont started the motor.

The whole cabin shuddered. Sound blasted across the
inside of the hangar. The rotor blades above swivelled slug
gishly, start-stop-start. Then the machine burst into power. In the ghostly light from the instrument panel Beaumont's expression was grim as he built up more power. The heli
copter edged forward, drummed across the concrete,
emerged from the hangar. The radar mast which reached
almost to the stars came into view and Beaumont used the
throttle. The fifty-foot rotor blades tore through their ellipse,
whipped through the Arctic air, sounded as though at any second they would rip loose from the machine. The rev
counter climbed on the dial. The machine quivered like a
great bird, tethered and desperate to leave the ground, then they were going up.

Beyond the perspex dome which vaulted above them they
saw the hangar wall descending like a lift. The snow-
covered roof appeared, disappeared as a glow-worm of
vehicle lights drove close to the guard-post at the airfield
entrance. 'They've tumbled to it!' Beaumont spoke the
words into the mike hanging from the headset under his
chin. Grayson heard him through the earphones of his own
headset as he sat alongside Beaumont in the observer's seat. The helicopter gained altitude as the vehicles rushed across
the snow below and Beaumont swore as he heard reports
above the muffled roar of the motor. 'They're shooting at
us,' he said.