Gant glared at him, then turned and mounted the steps. He swung his legs over the sill, and settled into the pilot's seat. After a moment, he looked down at Moresby, his face white and bleak.
'I understand you good, Moresby,' he said. 'Real good. She could break down, fall to pieces, any time. You don't know, you can't say — ' He broke off, seeming to stare at the instrument panel in front of him. His hands reached out towards the control column. 'How long are you going to be refuelling her?' he asked eventually in a clipped, professional tone.
'Thirty to forty minutes.'
'Then I want her out on the ice — now.'
'What-?'
Gant snapped: 'If I'm not sitting there at the end of the runway when they come over, they may never give me the chance. Get her out onto the ice.'
'Quite right,' Moresby replied, unabashed. 'OK — sit tight.' Moresby moved away, already raising his voice, summoning and briefing his engineers and technicians.
Gant sat in the pilot's couch. The tremor in his hands subsided. It hadn't been fear. Anticipation. Moresby's warning had had no effect apart from a momentary anger. Now, all he felt was an impatience to be gone. There was an arrogance like that of a bird of prey. The activity around him was no more than the means of returning the aircraft to his control. Anna seemed to have retreated from him, down a long, narrowing perspective. Other figures followed her; the dead and the living alike.
He heard the tractor tug's engine start up. The bright yellow vehicle chugged along the shoreline towards him, creaking and grinding over the MO-MAT. It skirted him almost respectfully, and its towing bar was clamped to the undercarriage leg beneath the Firefox's nose. Gant turned up his thumb, the driver of the tug returned the signal, then exhaust fumes billowed as Gant felt a shudder through the airframe. Reluctantly at first, the Firefox began to move backwards. As the tug manoeuvred him, he used the mirror like a car-driver almost as if he were reversing into a parking place. The Firefox rolled protestingly along the MO-MAT.
Buckholz stood watching the aircraft move. Other people, too, had paused in their tasks. Incongruously, it was moving backwards. For a moment, he had intended protesting the moving of the airplane, before he realised that camouflage was pointless, the trees did not protect against grenades and rockets. Gant would need every second, even half-second of advantage.
Slowly, the aircraft reversed onto the ice, dropping down the shore, pausing, then settling level on the last yards of the portable runway. The tug continued to push her until the Firefox cleared the MO-MAT and turned a reverse half-circle on the ice so that her nose was facing north, up the lake. The snow had almost stopped now and Buckholz could see perhaps for some hundreds of yards before the chill, grey air seemed to solidify into a rough blanket hung across the scene. From the cockpit, he guessed that Gant could see no more than one-third of the total length of ice-runway he would require to take off.
He hurried towards the Firefox. People returned to their work, the marines took up defensive positions beside the aircraft once more. More like a guard of honour than a force to be employed, Buckholz thought.
Around the aircraft, under the supervision of the Royal Engineer captain, men began clearing the packed and drifted snow. A gang of children clearing the front path, or the driveway from the garage to the street for their father's car.
Gant was looking down at him.
'You want the take-off run cleared now?'
'Sooner the better.'
'I'll get right on it.' Buckholz turned away, then looked back at Gant. 'You don't have to do this, you know. Take a risk with this, I mean.' Gant did not reply. Buckholz moved back towards him, and touched the side of the fuselage below the cockpit. 'Moresby must have told you about the risks involved. I'm just telling you, Mitchell — you don't have to go through with it.'
Gant looked down at him. There was something uncomfortably distant and arrogant about his face. 'Get those choppers aloft, Buckholz…' He paused, then added without grace or warmth: 'And — thanks.'
'OK — I just don't want you beefing at me when she falls out of the sky like a black brick.'
'I promise.'
Buckholz waved, and then undipped his R/T from his parka. 'Come in, Gunnar — Gunnar?'
Gunnar's reply crackled in the freezing air. 'I hear you, Mr. Buckholz — go ahead.'
'Get the brushwork done — man here has to get to work on time,' Buckholz said with a faint grin. Then he turned to watch the far shore of the lake, a misty, uneven line. The trees were emerging from the thick air like spars of an old pier. He could hear, quite clearly, the rotors of the two Lynx helicopters starting up, and waited for them to lift out of the grey, dirty haze.
Gant watched as Moresby's technicians wheeled the trolley-pump down the shore towards him. Two of the air transportable fuel cells were clumsily rolled forward onto the ice. A hose from the first of them was dragged to the port wing and attached to the fuel filler pipe. Gant waited, almost stirring in his seat with impatience, until the noise of the pump starting up calmed him. Moresby watched the whole operation with an unchanging grimness of expression. Fuel began to flow into the port tanks.
Moresby swiftly crossed the ice to the aircraft and climbed the pilot's steps until his head was above the sill and he was looking down on Gant. He activated the stopwatch on the main instrument panel. Its second hand moved jerkily. Moresby glanced at his own stopwatch, hung around his neck.
'Right,' Moresby announced. 'We've been working our backsides off for nearly eight hours now, laddie. Let's see how quickly you can get things done, shall we?'
Gant looked into the senior engineering officer's face, and nodded. 'OK, Moresby. Let's get started.'
'And don't switch on the ignition while we're pumping in fuel, will you?'
'Sure — but if I call for hot refuelling…'
Moresby growled. 'Don't — if you can avoid it.' He raised his eyes, and then added, 'Sixteen minutes and twelve, thirteen seconds have elapsed since you look off from Kirkenes. Let's get cracking, shall we, old man? We've been through everything we can… you'll know if the read-outs seem different in any way.' Moresby glanced down from the pilot's steps and paused in his instructions until the auxiliary power unit had been wheeled up to the aircraft's flank and reconnected to the Firefox. Then he said, 'Right — run through the pre-flight check, taxi and pre take-off as far as you can — I'll keep the tally.'
Gant hesitated, savouring the moment. Then his hands moved. He switched on the Master Electrics, and immediately heard a whirring noise that slowly mounted in pitch.
'Good. Gyro instruments winding up,' Moresby murmured. 'Emergencies pressure normal-check… Flying controls. Normal feel and full travel…?'
Gant's thumb left the throttles and depressed a spade lever. 'Sixty degrees, and indicating,' he announced as the flaps lowered.
As he raised the flaps again, the heel of his left hand nudged a lever and the airbrakes extended with a mild thump which gently rocked the airframe. He waited, then. Moresby sensed his uncomfortable impatience. He looked away from Gant as the two Lynx helicopters lifted above the trees on the opposite shore and moved across the ice towards them, perhaps two hundred feet above the lake. Gant, too, had turned his head.