The Foxbat leapt the ridge a split-second ahead of him; its pilot similarly surprised by the valley wall ahead, his speed no more than a few mph faster than that of the Firefox.
But he was there. For a moment, he was there — !
Gant banked savagely and pulled tighter, then fired. The Foxbat, caught like an athlete half-way through a jump, seemed to hold, even stagger in the air. As Gant closed on the silver shape, he continued firing. The cannon shells raked through the cockpit and down the spine of the fuselage.
Gant passed beneath the Foxbat, buffeted by its slipstream as it continued to climb. There was a minor explosion — Gant saw it as he pulled round to attack once more — and the cowling of the port engine was breaking up. The Foxbat lurched, staggered, but continued to climb. Gant followed, overtaking it as it reached the apex of some already-dictated parabola. He could see the pilot dead in the cockpit, beneath the cracked and starred canopy. The nose tilted, began to drop…
The Foxbat stalled at five thousand feet, dropping back towards the ground with as little weight and independence as a leaf. Gant glanced at his radar. The white dots of searching MiGs were scattered across it like crumbs from a meal untidily eaten. Fire was streaming from the Foxbat's port engine. In a matter of seconds, the aircraft would explode -
And he would, with it…
He grinned. He would disappear. The Foxbat fell towards a hillside, spinning. It would bury itself in deep snow. He spiralled down, following it. It was a second from impact and burning like a torch. He loosed a tail-decoy and it ignited, glowing on his infra-red screen, to be matched then surpassed by the explosion of the Foxbat at the base of the hill behind him.
Two fireballs in close succession. Two kills.
The cockpit was silent, except for the jabbering Russian as Bilyarsk and the search squadrons tried to raise the dead Foxbat pilot. He switched off the UHF set. It was silent.
Christ -
Then it happened. The sudden sense of the Firefox slowing that he had dreaded. His rpm was falling rapidly. In his headphones, he could hear the chatter of the auto-igniters. Altitude four thousand feet, fuel non-existent…
He could see the snowbound landscape beneath. He had no more than minutes in which to decide to eject or to land. Then the engines caught for a moment as the pumps dredged the last of the fuel from the tanks. He pulled back on the column. He needed all the altitude he could muster. Three seconds later the engines died again, the rpm dropped, the gauges presented zero readings. The engines were silent, empty. Again, he had to decide — eject or try to land…?
He wouldn't eject, he told himself. Not now, not after everything that had happened.
He banked the Firefox over the wilderness beneath the grey sky, searching for a runway that did not exist.
'AWACS Tupolev reports losing all trace, Comrade General.'
'We can't raise the pilot, sir. He's not answering.'
'No infra-red trace after the two explosions, sir.' Two explosions, Vladimirov thought, and immediately found himself trapped in the Byzantine labyrinth of his own qualifications and guesses and instincts. It was a maze which was inescapable every time he appeared to be presented with evidence that the American had died, that the Firefox had been destroyed. And again now, when it seemed certain that the second Foxbat, itself shot down, had caused an explosion aboard the MiG-31, he doubted. He hesitated, he would not look up from the map-table, he would not listen to the First Secretary's gruff sense of relief.
And yet, he could no longer express his doubts. He had learned that much diplomacy. He had learned silence.
'Very well,' he replied to the now-finished chorus of reports, still without looking up. 'Very well. Institute a reconnaissance search for wreckage of the two aircraft — and possible survivors…' He looked up into the First Secretary's face and at Andropov behind the Soviet leader. 'Just to make certain,' he added. 'Routine.' He hated the apologetic tone in his voice. This new role did not suit him, but it was the only one which offered itself. He had, at last, begun to consider his own future. 'It should not offend our friends, the Finns — if they ever discover our over-flights.'
The Soviet leader laughed. 'Come, Vladimirov — the game is over. And to you; yes, it was only a game? Played with the most expensive toys?' His hand slapped the general's shoulder and Vladimirov steeled himself not to wince at the contact. Kutuzov appeared tired and relieved. The operators began to relax. The cabin speaker had been switched off.
Nothing, Vladimirov told himself without hope of conviction, nothing… There is nothing there now except wreckage. The American is dead.
'Chairman Andropov — some drinks, surely?' the Soviet leader instructed. Andropov smiled and moved to summon a steward. 'No, no — we'll leave this crowded room — come, some comfortable chairs and good drink before we land — mm?'
'Yes, of course, First Secretary,' Vladimirov murmured, following the Soviet leader out of the War Command Centre into a narrow, deceptively spacious lounge filled with well-upholstered, deep chairs, a television screen, a bar. Already, drinks were being poured…
Kutuzov appeared at his elbow and whispered, 'You've shown good sense, Med — at last.' His voice was a dry whisper. He'd been operated on, successfully, for cancer of the throat some years before. 'It's over now.'
'Do you think so?' Vladimirov asked in an urgent whisper. 'Do you?'
Kutuzov indicated Andropov and the First Secretary, backs to them, already at the bar. 'It would be foolish — monumentally stupid-for you to think otherwise at this moment,' he whispered. Then he smiled. 'Come on, drink with them, listen to them — and remember to smile.'
'It was-such a beautiful aircraft,' Vladimirov announced abstractedly. 'And the American showed us how good it really was.'
'Perhaps they'll build us some more — but don't count on it.' Kutuzov's laughter clogged and grated in his throat. The First Secretary offered them vodka.
'Come,' he said. 'A toast.'
Two frozen lakes. Silence except for the clicking of the automatic ignition with no fuel with which to work. Gant switched it off. Silence. Two frozen lakes, lying roughly north-south, one larger and more elongated than the other, both surrounded by birch and conifer forest. Snowbound, isolated, uninhabited country in the north of Finnish Lapland.
Little more, according to the map on his knee, than forty miles from the border with the Soviet Union. His escape from the Foxbat had taken him further north than he had wished and turned him unnoticed back towards Russia.
Silence. Wind. Out of time.
He was gliding, the heavy airframe wobbling and quivering in the stormy airflow. Altitude, two thousand five hundred feet. The lakes moved slowly southwards behind him. He banked sharply and glided towards them once again.
He would not eject, would not… He'd come this far. The airplane stayed in one piece.
Two thousand feet. The larger of the two lakes was perhaps more than one mile long — long enough to be a runway. The second lake was fatter, rounder, and he would have to land diagonally across it to be certain of stopping the Firefox with room to spare. There appeared to be a lot of surface snow which would effectively slow the aircraft. It would have to be the larger lake.