“Okay,” Shaw yelled back. They would be going deeper into Russian airspace, but that couldn’t be helped now. It was better that he should do it on his own personal initiative than that the Air Forces should go in fighting.…
Still nothing.
Nothing but a complete blank, and they were tired and cramped now, fingers almost numb, faces blue with the cold that crept into their very bones. They passed over the ice-bound sea, over upwards of a dozen tiny islands without seeing the smallest sign of man. And after a while, MacAllister began to worry about the fuel. “We’ll have to head back for base any time now,” he shouted in Shaw’s ear. “We can fuel up and come out again and head direct for any places we haven’t reached this leg. All right, Commander?”
“If we have to, that’s it,” Shaw told him. This wasn’t the area for a forced landing. MacAllister turned for home and it was as they were passing over the last of the islands well west of the main and larger group that the incredible thing happened.
TWENTY
MacAllister said, “Something’s up.” His voice was sharp and high, edgy with alarm, and his sunburned face had gone suddenly yellowish. He was fighting the controls.
“What is it, Mac?”
“For Chrissake… I don’t know! She’s just not responding. Can’t you feel it?”
Shaw said, “Yes, I’m beginning to.” There was a curious drag on the helicopter, a totally alarming feeling. Shaw glanced at Ingrid and slid his hand into hers. Her face was pale, her Ups sUghtly parted as she stared at MacAllister. MacAlHster shouted, “She’s losing height and I can’t get her back. It’s like someone else has taken over… a car with dual control.” A moment later he said, “Speed’s coming off… for Chrissake, mate, we’re going to do a flaming belly-flop any minute!”
He was still fighting the controls but there was nothing he could do; the machine was completely helpless, as if in the grip of some force stronger by far than herself. Shaw, his heart thumping hard, watched the landscape reel past as the helicopter side-slipped, lurching downward fast. He took Ingrid in his arms, braced both himself and her for the crunch of the impact that was now inevitable. He looked ahead at the instrument panel in front of MacAlUster. The needles of the dials were moving, again as though they were under some kind of control from outside, and now the helicopter had steadied and was going down straight, fast and flat like a dropped stone. Once again Shaw looked down through the windows and this time he made out a small group of men, men who were staring up at the machine and making no move for cover. Then, suddenly, the fast descent slowed, slowed as if they had met a cushion of air, and a moment after that they hit the ground flat, in the belly-flop that MacAlUster had predicted. In spite of that last-minute cushioning effect they landed hard. Shaw hit his head on the metal-work of the cabin and passed out cold.
When Shaw came round he had been Ufted out of the helicopter and was lying on the bare ground and standing over him with a gun was Rudolf Rencke. The gun was smoking and MacAlUster was lying in a heap, blood pouring from his shattered chest, dead as mutton. The helicopter was resting, apparently undamaged, on a vast round metal plate that was slightly raised from the ground and seemed to be protruding on a thick stalk from a silo. As Shaw watched dazedly, there was the sound of electrically-operated machinery and the metal plate, with the helicopter still on it, descended into the earth. After it had vanished, a heavy, stressed-concrete cover slid slowly out from just below the surface of the ground to seal the silo. After this Rencke snapped an order and the men with him began rolling a camouflage net across the concrete slab.
Rencke grinned down at Shaw. “Welcome, my dear Commander,” he said, sounding happy. “I congratulate you on finding your objective, even if the finding of it was somewhat involuntary. Now — get up!”
Shaw’s head felt as though it had been hit by a ton of lead, but he wasn’t damaged otherwise. He climbed to his feet and saw Ingrid being held by one of the men behind him; this man was a Chinese, as were two other men, both armed, with their guns covering the girl and himself. He asked, “I assume you brought us down, Rencke. D’you mind telling me how?”
Rencke said, “This you will find out later. For now, you will follow me.” He called out to the Chinese to bring the girl and then he pushed his gun into Shaw’s stomach. “Turn around,” he ordered brusquely. When Shaw had done so Rencke went on, “Walk straight ahead where you are facing now and you will come to some steps. You will go down these. Move.”
Shaw shrugged and moved. Rencke kept the gun hard in his spine. The cold was intense now; it was like walking through a refrigeration chamber. Shaw’s breath condensed into a frozen film in front of him. Ingrid Lange was alongside him now, her teeth chattering. She looked blue and pinched already. As they moved on Rencke said, “You know, of course, where you are, Commander. You will know how remote the inner Kuriles are — you will know that your searching forces will never find us here, even if they are bold enough to violate Russian airspace and pass over this very island!”
Shaw said, “I wouldn’t be too confident. My pilot sent out a signal before we landed, and by now—”
Rencke’s sneering laugh cut him short. Rencke said, “Do not waste your breath, Commander! Your pilot sent no such signal. Our monitoring equipment would have told us instantly — besides which, the device that brought down the helicopter also inhibited your radio so that no transmission whatever could be made from the moment you came within the beam field.”
“Beam field, Rencke?”
“You will find out,” the Swiss said impatiently. Shaw walked on, crossing the perimeter of what appeared to be a large circle of round holes in the ground, holes lined with metal and roughly a foot in diameter. Outside this circle they passed other holes of varying sizes, all of them now covered with concrete slabs and more camouflage netting. Under yet more netting they saw what looked like heavy earth-moving equipment — excavators and bulldozers, all well screened from the air. It was complete anonymity. The general aspect was that of total desolation and Shaw felt as if they had arrived at some other planet, some nightmare world derived from the imagination of a film script-writer. An icy wind was howling over all, and, again in the distance, the surrounding sea was grim and grey and motionless in its ice; this was the bleakest thing Shaw had seen since his days on the Kola Peninsula some while before. He knew that all the Kurile group were of volcanic origin and as barren as a fiddler’s bitch. Ahead of him a group of Chinese came out from what seemed to be another hole in the ground and began stripping the camouflage netting from a number of the sealed pits, and then, after the stressed-concrete lids had been moved aside, a network of radar scanners and tall radio masts, plus two television cameras, began to ascend slowly from the silos. This, no doubt, would be part of the monitoring system, the means whereby the Communists would be watching out for the searching forces of the West. Around the whole area was set a perimeter fence — a high, treble-banked barricade of thick wire, heavily barbed, which Shaw didn’t recall seeing during their descent. Since this God-forsaken island seemed the most unlikely place in all the world to have intruders, the fence was most probably there to contain any of the workers who might have become disillusioned with their lot.