'Bring him lower,' he heard; the voice of the man in Bilyarsk who controlled the situation. 'Bring him right down.'
The order was acknowledged. Gant watched the form of the Foxbat above him as it inclined its nose more steeply, its speed exactly matched to his own. He dipped the nose of the Firefox obediently, preserving the distance between the two fuselages. Then the Russian aircraft slipped sideways, as if moved by no more than the airflow over it, and dropped suddenly towards him. At the same moment, his headset crackling with the voices of the two Russian pilots, the starboard Foxbat bobbed higher and sideways towards him, banking slightly. Then it, too, settled down towards him, as if the air were too thin to support its weight.
The two Russian fighters lowered gently, inexorably, towards his wingtips, as though applying pressure to snap them off. He waggled the wings, as if warding them off, wiping flies away. The headset gabbled at him, most of the Russian was too quick and distorted for him to understand. They were attempting to break his nerve.
Four miles — sixty-one thousand feet…
Then he heard the order, over the same frequency: 'Scramble designated squadrons.'
From the western margin of the Kola Peninsula, where the latest MiG interceptors were based, was no more than a few minutes' flying time at top speed. They had fuel to squander, literally squander.
He had run out of time, almost run out of distance. Two miles. He must be over the border by now, in Russia.
The two Foxbats pressed down upon him. Altitude now forty-nine thousand feet. The three aircraft were in what might have been termed a dive. The two Russian pilots had tilted him forward and down, throwing the Firefox over a cliff of air towards the cloud beneath.
Dive -
Gant thrust the control column forward, then rammed the throttles forward almost to the detent and reheat. The Firefox leapt at the cloud-layer, the huge Turmansky jets roaring. He saw the two Foxbats accelerate behind him, closing the gap he had opened. He opened the airbrakes, jolting the aircraft, then flung the Firefox into a roll and pull-through, suddenly changing the direction in which he was moving. It avoided the optimum firing position he had given them on his tail, and increased the time lag between them. He closed the airbrakes and pushed the throttles open as he came out of the pull-through. In his mirror, two abandoned stars gleamed and winked. On his screen, the white dot moved away from him. He forced his left hand to keep the throttles wide open. The silver trail of droplets sprayed out into a mist behind him. The white dot on the screen steadied, altered course by going through his own manoeuvre, and then began to struggle to regain the centre of the screen. His headset babbled in Russian, from the pilots and from Bilyarsk.
He jabbed the airbrakes out again, slowing with wrenching suddenness, rolled and pulled through, closed the brakes, and opened the throttles again. Once more, the two Foxbats were left further behind and away from his tail. He felt the suit around him resist the pressure of the G-forces. He was now travelling directly west, across the neutrality of Finland towards Norway. How much distance the tanks would still give him he did not know because he had no idea how quickly he was losing fuel in that sparkling, dazzling spray of diamonds behind him. But any distance between the Firefox and the border with Russia was good and right and necessary.
The Foxbats altered course and closed once more. Airbrakes, roll, pull-through, close brakes, throttles. He whirled like a falling sycamore pod once again.
Thirty thousand feet… twenty-five… twenty, nineteen… the figures unrolled on the altimeter. The white dot that was the two Foxbats still in close formation was steady in the lower half of his screen. No more than a mile away…
Fourteen thousand, and the sun disappeared and he was blind, the grey cloud slipping past as if his speed were tearing it like rags, but it was still thick enough to exclude the light. Ten thousand feet…
Eight, seven, six -
He used the airbrakes and closed the throttles. He pulled back on the column. The Firefox began to level out.
Four… three… two-point-seven, two-five. The white dot split into two tiny stars, and both moved nearer the centre of the screen. The headset babbled. Bilyarsk ordered the border squadrons at top speed to the last visual sighting, before he entered the cloud.
Cloud, cloud —
The Proximity Warning began to bleep again as the Foxbats closed.
Fifteen hundred feet, the glimpse of a sombre, snow-covered landscape, an horizon of low white hills, a uniformly grey sky now above him — he pulled back on the column, and nosed the Firefox back into the cloud. The world contracted, wrapping its shreds tightly around the cockpit. He slowed almost to stalling speed, feeling the adrenalin and nerves and fear and sweat catch up with his decisions. He breathed quickly and heavily enough to begin to cloud the facemask of his helmet. There was a heavy dew of sweat on his brow. The two white dots hurried towards the centre of his screen, blind but somehow confident. They would pass within a mile of him, to starboard of his present flight path. Other, new dots had appeared at the edge of the screen, like spectators spilling onto a football field. He demanded a range-to-target readout for the approaching squadrons. Then he altered the request — time-to-target. Two minutes seven-point-four, the computer read-out supplied. Then the distance between the two Foxbats increased, and Gant realised that one of them was retreating again above the cloud layer; a tactic designed to catch him by surprise if he suddenly increased altitude. He would pop out of the cloud into bright betraying sunlight, within missile range. He grinned.
He banked the Firefox, moving to intercept the other Foxbat as it continued to rush through the cloud. He armed the only remaining Anab missile, and waited. He cancelled the read-out, replacing it with information on the closing Foxbat. Range-to-target two miles, one-point-nine, one-point-seven… He activated the thought-guidance systems on the console to his left.
He would have to be right. Optimum moment. The Anabs that had been replaced by the submarine crew on the ice-floe were not equipped with a steering system linked to his thought-control capability. They were an earlier model, captured from a Foxbat in Syria. He had to rely on judgement, on selecting the exact moment. He could not guide the missile, once he launched it.
Point-nine… point eight-seven, six, five… six, fire. He formed the command precisely, in Russian, and felt the Anab drop, then flick forward. It was an orange glow in the cloud, then it disappeared. He watched the screen, the infra-red glow of the missile's exhaust slipping across the small gap of screen between himself and the Foxbat. The Russian fighter, blind in the cloud, continued to descend like a white meteorite, nothing showing on his radar.
Then the white dot suddenly altered course. The pilot's headset had yelled a warning. The orange dot encroached, neared, sidled towards… The white dot accelerated, changed course, dipped and weaved. The orange dot, like a faithful dog, ran behind, accelerated, sniffing the radar and other electronic emissions from the Foxbat, closed, dodged with the white dot, closed, closed -
A brief flare on the screen, and then there remained only the white dots of the second Foxbat above the clouds, the slowly-moving AWACS plane, and the more distant interceptors at the edge of the screen. Gant banked the Firefox, easing the throttles forward as he settled on his new heading, and began running west. Altitude three thousand feet, speed two hundred and seventy knots, fuel non-existent.
The crowd of white dots rushed towards the centre of the radar screen, towards the now-fading flare that had a moment before been an aircraft and a pilot. The cloud slipped past him, seemingly lighter and thiner.