Winter Hawk (63 page)

Priabin's face was a white, pleading mask in the cabin door. Gant realized that Priabin's shock would delay him. He felt a resistance mounting within him, but he accepted Priabin's priorities for a few moments longer. He did not want to look at the woman, as if he had contributed to her—

He had, he admitted.

Clambering up and into the MiL-2's dark main cabin, he heard his own breathing, heard Priabin's, too. The woman became reduced in importance. He did not enjoy his renewed sense of his own priorities, but accepted the necessity of disregarding her death.

Priabin had covered her body. She was, Gant made himself believe, no more than a heap of coats on the cabin floor. He stood very still for some moments, staring at the fuselage. Guilt lessened, faded. A heap of coats.

Slowly he realized Priabin was murmuring her name, over and over. The sound contained grief, guilt, affection. He could not tell Priabin it was time they departed.

Maps, torch, the gun, flares, even the radio? At least, if he couldn't remove one of the sets, he had to listen. He had wasted time here, he thought ashamedly, yet he was convinced he was right. The woman was dead; he had to survive. He had to know where they were, what they were doing. He jumped down to the litter of fir needles and broken branches on the plantation floor. He listened again. They were still safe. He looked at his watch, holding its dial close to his face. Six-fifteen.

He clambered back into the cockpit. Snatched out the folded, heavily creased maps from the pocket beside his seat. Found the flashlight, snapped the rifle out of its clips behind his head, high
up
on the cockpit bulkhead. Cradled these things like precious
posses
sions. He needed to use the radio. Reserve battery power only—tf the aerials had not snapped off, if the set had not been damaged. He checked the code cards in the slot beside the set. The
helicopters
regular KGB pilot had scribbled the military channel frequencies below his own codes . . . Wednesday. He hesitated, then
switched
on. Voices leaped into the cockpit's silence.

Almost at once, he realized their error. Some
unidentified
aircraft? No, vehicle moving on the north-south road
beyond

Dzhusaly. As much as fourteen or fifteen miles away to the northeast. What was it?
Patrol tried to stop a truck, no camouflage or insignia—broke through the barrier, patrol vehicle damaged, unable to pursue ... All helicopter units to proceed immediately . .

Black marketers, drunken soldiers, thieves, it didn't matter which. Time had opened like a carelessly left window, and they could climb through it like burglars. They had to take advantage of it.

Gant continued to listen. Different crises signaled like lamps in a storm. The three remaining gunships of the Baikonur
zveno
had already acknowledged, and detailed their changes of course to rendezvous to the northeast, where the truck had broken through the barrier. They each reported no contacts in their current sectors. Serov—he recognized his voice easily—was too eager, too ready to believe; deceived by his need to recover the situation. Rodin, the general, was riding on his back. Gant savored Serov's error. He listened to the man divert a troop-carrying MiL-8, a couple of road patrols in light vehicles. He heard him direct units to erect roadblocks, order UAZ light-vehicle patrols to cordon off areas. He listened for a moment longer, then turned off the radio.

As he climbed down from the cockpit, he carefully cradled the rifle, torch, maps, bars of chocolate. He paused for a moment, then climbed reluctandy into the MiL's main cabin.

Even the exercise of power in desperation was a source of satisfaction, Rodin realized. His voice raged with insistence, unreasonableness, even threat, his features were highly colored, but none of them dared sustain their objections in the face of his determination; his power.

"The launch will take place in nine and a half hours from now," he repeated like the closing of a door on some argument in a distant room. "Not tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen, but before dawn. The weapon will be placed in its orbit one hour later. It will be used as soon as possible thereafter. Do you understand me clearly? You all have your tasks." He had not paused for an answer to his question out plunged on. "Your responsibilities. See that you carry them out. ^ is now"—he glanced at his watch—"six-thirty. Launch time is set
^at
four
a.m.
tomorrow. Very well. Dismissed, gentlemen, dismissed."

They moved away from him, their boots echoing on the catwalk ^here he had gathered them. He did not concern himself with their *
^ac
*s, the expressions they might now allow themselves. He had issued his orders. It was simply a matter of telescoping the launch schedule from twenty-four hours to nine and a half. The task could be accomplished—

—must be. The American was still loose, and his sense of Serov s ability to stop him had diminished. His sense of other and larger failures had increased. He felt the distance to Moscow as tangibly as the black thread of a telephone cable, and Stavka at the other end of the connection. He would have to tell them, but not yet. His goal was clear. He must achieve the object of
Lightning
before there was any possibility that the American could reach a friendly border— reach anyone at all. Priabin might have persuaded him that it was best to try for a KGB office within the flight radius of the stolen helicopter.

Their—their freedom maddened him like a goad. He was diminished by their being at large, hampered and confined by it. While they were at liberty, he had only the illusion of action the illusion of choice. They had evidence for the old men of the Politburo, including Nikitin the social reformer, the open hand of our society as
Pravda
called him again and again. Rodin's hands whitened in their intense grip on the guardrail of the catwalk. He was blind to the scene below, as if undergoing some strange fit or blackout. Nikitin and the others would raise their hands in horror and back away— disown the army and the laser weapon and the research and development program and continue with their emasculation of Russia's defenses. They would not stop until they had butchered the army, just as the pig Stalin had done—for other reasons—in the thirties. Hie motive did not matter; the country would be weak, ineffectual, unable to defend itself. The open hand of our society . baubles, television sets, cars, packaged food, was what Nikitin offered them, and, and they seemed to want it.

Rodin shook his head. His vision cleared. The weapon was directly beneath him, loaded and locked into the shuttle craft's
cargo
bay. In minutes, the cargo doors would be closed, the signal
would
be given, and the shuttle would begin its journey on the transporter. It should take thirteen hours for the transporter to reach the launch gantry, twelve at best, and another three hours to hoist it atop the booster stages. He had ordered the whole operation to be completed in seven hours maximum. Beyond that, fueling
would
take another two hours, and final checks a further half hour. Then— launch. Nine and a half hours. Impossible, they claimed. Do it, he had insisted.

Power, emanating from the scene below, the renewed urgency he saw and sensed, the speed of movement, the first noises of the closing of the cargo doors of the gleaming shuttle. Power—

The logic of what he intended was inescapable, yet it seemed elusive. It was his responsibility. He had to demonstrate the weapons capabilities, like a crude sideshow trick to capture to attention of peasants. Otherwise, the Politburo 'would retreat, renounce—

He nodded his head. The transporter s locomotives roared and howled below. Still-life for a long moment, everyone watching. Then, with a tremor like anticipatory nerves, the shuttle moved inches, then a foot, then more ... A cheer, echoing in the vast spaces. He looked up rather than down, at the splinters of wood and the crazed metal that hung from the shadows of the roof. The American had broken in like a vandal, stealing evidence. The glimpse of the broken skylight, the vague future it sketched, confirmed his decision. Serov had to recapture them. Meanwhile, he would put the weapon into orbit—then think, consider the consequences of his decision. The shuttle was moving slowly, inexorably now toward the gaping main doors. He smelled diesel, ozone, metal, heard the cry of mechanical effort.

If the American lived, if Priabin proved—? Russia would be vilified, the situation thrown back in their faces—and the army,
he,
would be responsible. He would have caused—what? War? No, not with the Americans, not war. What, then? He shook his head, not knowing, knowing only that if he did nothing, if
Lightning
were to be foiled and defeated, there would
be
nothing—a weak army, a weak Russia. Surely they would understand, as he did. He nodded
his
head this time. The locomotives were halfway through the doors into the night. Stavka would agree with him, and, in time, so would
Nikitin
and the others.

Bleakly, he qualified his optimism. Even if they didn't understand, he was not prepared to leave his country and his service defenseless, as the Americans seemed ready to do. He could find a calming sense of purpose in that.

"I want to know which way out they plan to take—now!"

Drugs—no. Beatings—no. Electrodes—no. Sensory deprivation—too long, and no. He wanted to employ the instruments of his
^c
raft. With Priabin, he had underestimated, miscalculated. Not taken the man seriously because he looked little more than a boy and had messed up badly in the past. Here, with Kedrov, it was different. He wanted to use the skills . . .

But it was a matter of power, the power of his presence, his will. Like recovering a lost faculty. He knew that this was part of a program of recuperation, like a special diet for an invalid, and however much Serov wished to ignore insight, he could not avoid that debilitating image of himself. Priabin had held a knife at his throat and he could all but feel its vile trickle now as his throat constricted with remembered fear and present hate. His broken arm throbbed, but he could easily have clenched his fist and beaten it time and again into Kedrov's face, lying there on the pillows and looking helplessly up at him. He had to gut Kedrov by will and presence alone, without the other aids.

Kedrov's eyes blinked a number of times. Serov could see his soft, exposed throat swallowing, again and again. Antiseptic and the other disliked hospital smells filled the small, narrow room in which Kedrov had been restored to something like his former self; drained of the drugs, his mind put back together.

Eventually, Kedrov said in a hoarse whisper, his throat evidendy sore from tubes: "I don't know. I don't know anything." He shook his head slowly from side to side like an uneasy sleeper to emphasize his denial.

"You must know," Serov snapped, then controlling his voice. "The American was coming for you. You must know the route."

"I—don't." Kedrov sighed. Fear trembled on the point of overcoming lassitude, but failed. His eyes appeared weary arid damp, his skin almost translucent.

Serov felt an itch of anxiety that he had to prevent from becoming a shudder. The truck that had crashed through the
roadblock
had been a false alarm—drunks. They'd crashed into a ditch; he'd see they got years for what they'd done. Afghanistan was too good for them. His hand clenched behind his back, his nails biting into his palm. When he heard they were drunks, he had felt deeply unnerved, almost too weak to stand upright. He hadn't yet reported to Rodin—Kedrov and the idea that he knew the answer had come like
a
desperate last gleam of daylight. And the man didn't know!

Must know . . .

"You must," he murmured in a voice he would normally have disclaimed as his own. "You know, Kedrov, you know."

Again, Kedrov shook his head slowly, sleepily, like a child not wanting to hear any more of a story, wishing to sleep. Christ, had he had himself driven like a madman from mission control just for this? It was ten minutes since they'd found the drunks, since the gunship
zveno
and the other patrols had been scattered once more to resume the search; ten minutes wasted. He wanted to shake, beat, terrorize, but knew he needed the self-respect that only Kedrov's breaking at the sound of his voice would give him. And Kedrov hardly heard, hardly cared that he was in the room with him.

Priabin and the American had made a fool of him. He knew the story of his humiliation had become common gossip, common property in GRU headquarters. People sniggered behind his back; out of earshot. Serov wanted to beat—

"I don't," Kedrov confirmed.

"Who was your American contact? How did he get in and out?"

"Train . . . car? I don't know. He brought the transmitter to Orlov's, then we never saw him again." Kedrov was willing to talk freely now, without drugs or fists. It confirmed that he was telling the truth when he claimed to know nothing. Of course he knew nothing.

"What about the others?" Serov cried. "How were you recruited in the first place? Not by the old man, surely?" He felt the edge of the bed press against his thighs. He stared down into Kedrov's open, amiably uninvolved features. The man might have been smoking hashish, or lying back smugly after coitus.