Once past Baku, with, its intensive radar net, he had made a long, sweeping turn west to cross the Russian SSR between Makhachkala and Kizlyar on the Caspian coast. The long flight across the Ukraine to Poland had been accomplished while he slept without so much as a radar bogie to disturb his dreamless exhaustion. He was about done in and he knew it, and the PCMS knew it. He had had to program specific orders into the computer or else it would promptly have dropped him back off to sleep once more. With the end of the mission less than two hours away, and that comfortable hospital bed in California only five and a half hours off, he felt he could afford to lose the extra sleep. Teleman could not explain why, but he had rather an uneasy feeling about the next two hours. The escape from the Soviet trap had been just a little too pat; that last Falcon had given up a bit too easily for all the effort it and the others had expended. He had a hunch, and in this business, he had found, you played your hunches. The ground control map showed him the narrows of the Gulf of Bothnia. The infrared gear was displaying sharply detailed pictures of the Finnish towns of Kikkola, jacobstad, and Nykarleby and the Swedish town of Umea opposite. He knew that both the Swedes and Finns had small military garrisons well hidden nearby and the Swedes had a squadron of aging Hawk antiaircraft missiles, but nothing to worry him. Both concentrated the bulk of their military establishments to the north in concert with the Norwegians to meet the threat of the Soviet armies heavily invested in the Kola Peninsula north of Finland and east of Norway.
The ground control map was beginning to describe the northern coast of the gulf when a small blip appeared on the forward edge of his radar screens, coming south from the direction of Finland and on an intercepting flight path. Quickly he checked his systems and carefully increased the ECM range.
The image grew swiftly, closing on him at near his own speed, but still a hundred thousand feet below. At first he thought it might be one of the Concorde polar flights, but the recognition pattern was all wrong and the approaching craft too small. Puzzled, he reached out and upped the ECM range even more; then he realized that he had made a fatal mistake. The approaching aircraft had to be a Soviet Falcon. By increasing the range of the ECM, he had advertised his own presence as thoroughly as if he had radioed Moscow his exact position. Teleman banked suddenly to starboard, then straightened abruptly and ran for 220,000 feet.
The Falcon maintained course for a moment, then suddenly doubled its speed and rocketed upward. Both the IR and radar screens showed the long ionization trail of the afterburner.
Teleman held for a few minutes, watching the other plane. The Soviet pilot was out to get him once and for all, and Teleman knew it. As if to prove it, the interceptor did not waver but bored steadily on, closing the four-hundred-mile range in seconds. Desperately, Teleman slammed the nose down and blasted the ramjets to full thrust. He shot away beneath the Russian and pulled up sharply behind, wishing mightily for at least a 20-mm cannon, and preferably a wing pod full of heat-seeking missiles. As he came up behind, he straightened out, running for the Arctic. His only hope was to stay as far away from the Russian as possible and outlast him.
Teleman had gained a few miles by pulling beneath and behind the Soviet pilot. But even as he was pulling away, the Russian, without a wasted second, had begun to climb into a loop. Now Teleman watched him spiral into a loop so tight that it should either have killed the pilot or torn the wings off the plane or both. At the top of the climb the Russian did a vicious wingover and arrowed down after him.
Now Teleman realized that he had been underestimating the Soviets’ desperation. Not only did they want very much to bring him down, but they were willing to violate any territory’ since he had escaped their trap in Asia. It should all have been amply clear to him in view of the magnitude of effort they had expended in shifting the Falcons around to run him down over Tashkent. His overtaxed mind finally saw what he should have realized earlier, what the Soviets had already figured out. There was no chance of the aerial fight being recorded on radar. Only the Falcon would be seen. The Russians could either ignore any protests that might be forthcoming from the Finns or Swedes or pass it off with an apology and explanation that the Soviet pilot had merely strayed while on a test flight of a new aircraft. His peculiar antics could be explained as part of the test-flight regime. Teleman himself would be invisible from the ground and there were thousands of square miles of forest-covered mountains to hide the wreckage of the A-17 from everyone but Russian search parties.
The radar panels were showing the Falcon rapidly approaching from the rear. Teleman had just enough fuel left to reach the rendezvous point and loiter for perhaps five minutes waiting for the tanker. Unless he could shake this bastard, he thought grimly, he would never make even Norway. It all depended now on who could outlast whom. The Soviet pilot must be running low on fuel as well. He had made his initial approach at Mach 2.5 and followed that up with a series of bursts to Mach 4. Figure twenty minutes flying time from Leningrad or thereabouts — maybe he could lose him yet.
Teleman decided fast. He put the A-17 into a shallow climb and rocketed to 175,000 feet at Mach 3.7. His pursuer dwindled for a moment and then came on again, afterburners flaming a long trail of ionized gas on Teleman’s radar screen. He was watching his fuel readout now as closely as he monitored the radar. He was going to have to cut the fuel load fine, yet leave enough to permit him to at least reach the ship. He had to be within radio range to transmit. If the refueling tanker was there, great; if not, it would be a short swim in those water temperatures. Teleman had had no illusions about coming out of this mission alive from the moment he recognized the Soviet aircraft over the Baltic. But the information had to be gotten back. Not that the mission was so vitally important, in fact it was probably only someone’s bright idea — we have the aircraft in that vicinity, let him go take a look. What was important was the fact that the Soviets had developed an optical tracking system that ignored the ECM efforts. The next A-17 flight was due to go out in a little less than seven hours from now. If it went, the Soviets would be waiting for it.
The Russian interceptor had caught up quickly, apparently throttling back as he came up on target. Teleman sheered violently off his starboard wing, but the Russian flier had anticipated him and came around smoothly, still locked onto Teleman’s tail. They were deep into Finnish territory now and the Russian had cut the distance to less than a mile. Teleman could not understand why he did not fire. Those damned missiles the Falcon carried had appeared to have a range of nearly two hundred miles and were optically controlled from the interceptor. Teleman twisted and turned, trying to lose his remorseless pursuer. But the Russian, with laughable ease, remained locked onto his tail. Teleman suddenly dropped his speed, cutting his engines back to idle, and dropped both landing flaps and gear. They were nearly useless in the almost nonexistent air of 175,000 feet, but every miniscule bit of drag would help. For an uncertain moment the A-17 slowed relative to the Falcon. The pilot, surprised by this unexpected maneuver, streaked past him. This brief relief in the unbearable tension caused Teleman to laugh wildly; then, regaining some measure of control, he slewed violently to the right, again falling off his starboard wing and down. He was once again behind the Russian and he meant to make the best of it. In fatal desperation, he arrowed straight down, running flat out for the cloud cover at twenty thousand feet. Ahead of him the radar showed the Falcon dropping into a full-powered dive as he pulled out of a sharp right turn and followed Teleman down.