There was a co-pilot’s seat vacant next to Igor. I eased myself into it and strapped myself in place. He turned to me, eyes radiant.
“See, Joe? What I tell you? No sweat.”
“Do we have enough fuel?”
“Plenty fuel, Joe. Enough fuel to go to Washington and back, exactly.”
“ Washington and back,” I echoed.
“Takes less fuel to come back than to go there, Joe.”
“Why?”
“Lighter coming back. No bombs.”
“Oh.”
“You say Alaska?”
“That’s right.”
“No shit, Joe. I mean, no sweat. We go right up north to the North Pole and then we keep going. I find us Alaska, Joe. Not to worry, no sweat.”
“By now they probably have pursuit planes after us,” I said.
“Not to worry, Joe.”
“But they must know we’re leaving, they won’t just let us zip up and leave.”
“Nobody can catch this some of a bitch, Joe.” He patted the dashboard lovingly. “No plane like it. Fastest fighter-bomber in the some of a bitch Air Force.”
One of the instruments was making a blipping noise. Radar, I thought, was supposed to make blipping noises. Probably just telling Igor that the ground was still where it was supposed to be. I remembered my first jet flight, when I saw flames leaping from one of the engines and was certain that this ought to be brought to the attention of the pilot. I did not bring it to his attention, and learned subsequently that that sort of thing always happened. Not to worry, no sweat.
“Everybody all right back there, Joe? All hunky-dory?”
“Everyone’s fine,” I said.
“Those girls aren’t Russian, are they? Don’t talk Russian, Joe. Or English either.”
“They are Lettish,” I said.
“Some bunch of broads,” he said. “No shit, Joe. Some tomatoes.”
Lettish tomatoes, I thought hysterically. A Baltic salad. What other ingredients could we have? Cole slaw? We had a fairly Cold Slav in Milan. Chickory? Chickory chick, cha-la, cha-la…
I told myself sternly to stop it. And I listened to the blipping noise on the dashboard. The blips appeared to be corning closer together now.
“You’re positive no one could catch us,” I said.
“No sweat, Joe.” He laughed. “You know what this plane is? This is the MIXK-One fighter-bomber. Only one of its kind in Russia.”
“And there’s no faster plane?”
“Just the MIXK-Two fighter. Same type of engine, Joe, but smaller. Just one of them in Russia.”
“Just one of them?”
“Just one some of a bitch. Alexei Bordunin flies it. Showoff some of a bitch. Yes sir, no sir, showoff Smart Alex.”
“And it’s faster than this plane?”
“Just a tiny faster, not to worry.”
“Well,” I said, “I think it’s chasing us now. Those blips” – I pointed to the radar screen, or whatever it was – “could that be, uh, Alexei?”
Igor’s eyes narrowed. He pursed his lips, studied the instrument panel, paid special attention to the blips. “Some of a bitch,” he said softly.
“It’s him?”
“Nobody else that fast. Show off cogstocker.”
“Will he catch us?”
“Try to capture us,” he said. “Still over Soviet territory. Try to force us down, make us do a landing.”
“But we can’t-”
“Showoff some of a bitch. See this? I flip this switch, Joe, it flaps the ailerons. Let him know we surrender.”
“But-”
“No sweat, Joe. You tell everybody to sit tight. Tell the broads Igor says be cool. We go to turn around the plane.”
In Lettish I told everyone to hold on tight while we circled. Mercifully, no one asked why. Igor did something with a stick, and the plane swung round in a lazy half-circle.
“There he come! You see him, Joe?”
Through the cockpit shield I could see something small coming toward us, getting rapidly larger. We seemed to hover in the air while the object approached. It was difficult, at that range, to be certain that it was a plane, but as it came closer it was recognizable as such.
“Some of a bitch,” Igor was mumbling intensely. “Ho, boy, Alexei cogstocker. Boast about the fast plane, boast about all the girls, Alexei cogstocker. See who laughs the last time, you some of a bitch. Watch, Joe!”
He pressed a pedal on the floor of the plane. There was a brief rumble beneath us, and then, the pursuing fighter abruptly disintegrated.
“Take to that, Alexei cogstocker, some of a bitch! Take to that, boasting crud! Take to that!”
He laughed and laughed and laughed. Then, with a half-sigh, he swung the plane around again and headed once more for the North Pole.
“Lucky I guessed right,” he said after a while, when there were no more annoying blips on the radar screen.
“What do you mean?”
“The pedals. Couldn’t remember which one delivered the rockets. The plane is always loaded with some of a bitch rockets, but I never use them in experimental flying. Two pedals, one is rockets, one is not. I pick the one on the left, and goodbye Alexei!”
“What does the other pedal do?”
“Delivers the bombs. But we got no bombs, Joe, so-”
“The girls,” I said quietly.
“No sweat, Joe. I pick the right pedal.”
“The girls,” I said, “would have been scattered all over Russia.”
“I pick the right pedal, Joe.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I opened them. Then, without saying any more, I opened my seat belt and went to the back of the plane to see how everyone was getting along. They were all still there. Igor had picked the right button. Or pedal, or whatever.
Minna wanted to know what had happened. I gave her a much-abridged version, careful not to mention how close she had come to leaving the plane ahead of schedule. I told her simply that another plane had tried to catch us, a bad plane, and that Igor had blown it to bits with a rocket.
She was delighted. She wanted to know how to express enthusiasm in English if one couldn’t say son of bitch. I told her hooray or jolly good show or fabulous were all acceptable to varying degrees in various parts of the English-speaking world.
“Hooray! Jolly good show! Fabulous!”
The Lettish girls had fallen silent; one or two of them seemed to be sleeping. Milan had withdrawn entirely into his coat and might have been sleeping himself. I bundled Minna up warmly and suggested she take a nap. She smiled up at me and gave me a kiss and closed her eyes.
Then I went up front again to watch Igor fly the plane.
“Hey, Joe? That’s Alaska down there.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I used to fly over Alaska all the time,” he said. “All the time fly over some of a bitch Alaska. Take pictures, you know. Where you want to land? Air base?”
“Could you find one?”
“I know where they are, Joe. No sweat. Big one near Fairbanks. No sweat.”
He did something to slow us down, then headed the plane downward. How he found the base, I have no idea. Evidently he had flown over it often enough in the past. Perhaps our radar defenses are not as foolproof as we like to think. They’re a good deal better over Air Force bases, however; as soon as the big airfield came into view, so did a great many U.S. planes. Some of them roared up at us and hovered around us.
“I could shoot those some of a bitches down,” Igor said.
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
Other planes roared past us. For a moment I couldn’t imagine where they were going. Then I figured it out.
They were going where we had come from.
“Land as quickly as possible,” I said. “Someone has to tell those planes to come back.”
“No sweat, Joe.”
Landing was a much less furious matter than take-off. Igor might have been a nitwit in certain other areas, but he was an expert when it came to flying a plane. He set the fighter-bomber neatly down, taxied the length of the runway, and came to a smooth stop. The plane was instantly surrounded by at least a hundred armed men.