"What do you want, Mr. President?"
"Small, fast, light helicopters. How many do we have in the area — us, not the Turks?"
"I'd have to check that, Mr. — v
"Then do it!"
"Mr. President — John, have you thought of—?"
"Consequences, Dick? Yes, I've thought of very little else. I can assure you on that. But understand me, Dick — Gant is alone. We thought we'd lost him when he went underground. He's still alive, and their efforts to make sure he doesn't stay that way means he has something that could help us get out from under. I can't afford to lose that."
"He's in the tunnel — they're stopping the trains. They 11 go in after him even if they haven't already done so. Sir, what can helicopters do for him?"
"I don't know. Christ Almighty, Dick, I'm supposed to be the President of the United States. That ought to count for something— it obliges me to try!"
"They'll shoot anything down that's carrying the stars and stripes — maybe anything with a red cross on it, for all I know. They're down to the wire on this, just as we are, sir. John, think about it, please."
"The guy's a mile and a half from the border, Dick. What's to think about?"
"The next war?"
"Starting from this? If we don't have what Gant has, then we'll lose the next war!"
"What chance do they have of finding him?"
"How the hell would I know, Dick?"
"You'll be killing anyone you send into that — that hornet's nest over there."
"Dick, I know that. I don't need reminding."
"What about the Turks?"
"Who's to know? They'll back up anyone coming back across. While they're protesting about what we're doing, Gant will either be back here — or he won't."
"Mr. President, sir—"
"What is it?"
"We have two small Hughes Defender helicopters, observing along that stretch of the border. They could be in the area of that tunnel in — two minutes, maximum. So Fm guaranteed. From the time you give a direct order for them to cross, Mr. President."
"John—"
"Thank you. Look, Dick, the Turks are already screaming at the Soviets here in Geneva and in Moscow about the provocative troop movements' on the Armenian border. If the Defenders can find him, it might work."
"John, think about this, please."
"The time for thinking is over. General — give them the order to go in. Give them anything they need, but get them in!"
Tyuratam was little more than a smudge to the southeast. Priabin looked back along the narrow, potholed road. It was empty, like the clean and dangerous sky. He slung the rifle across his back, shifting it to comfort, then wrenched the toolbox out of the UAZ with an angry yet purposeless strength. It had taken them twenty minutes to get here, to this God-forsaken place. What would he need? What would he do?
"Come on," he growled, and began climbing the long, gentle slope in front of them.
The wind strengthened, sighing across empty country. There had been the frozen, rutted tracks of heavy trucks after they had turned off the highway. Did they mean anything? Kedrov scuttled beside him like a dog being taken for a walk, grating on Priabin's raw nerves. There was no hint of optimism in his hurried stride.
They reached the crest of the slope. The sticks and trellises of the main telemetry complex were only slightly closer than the haze of the old town. He glanced around him wildly. The country was not utterly flat, but undulated gently, pockmarked with dips and hillocks. It looked like some piece of ground that had been heavily shelled. No-man's-land.
"New wire," Kedrov murmured, his hand touching the bright barbed wire at which they had halted. A warning notice, two more farther off. Death to all intruders, or something of the kind. They put notices like that outside every officers' pisshouse. There were no guards, no dogs, nothing.
"Christ!" he cried out. "Look at it. There's nothing here except the old silos."
"New wire," Kedrov persisted.
"That's what we came out here to find?"
"No — signs of recent work," Kedrov snapped back at his cynicism.
Priabin scanned the landscape in front of him. Heavy tires, rubble heaped and scattered, but nothing, nothing real. He bent down and scrabbled in the toolbox. Found the heavy-duty pliers, checked their edges.
"Watch out," Priabin ordered. "I'm not climbing through this mess. Let's see if these will cut—" He grunted with effort, struggling and twisting the wire, attempting to cut through it. Even in the icy wind, sweat prickled on his forehead and was damp inside his shirt. The wire would not cut. Furiously, he kicked at one of the wooden posts holding the wire taut. Then kicked again and again. It struggled out of the grip of the frozen earth and leaned drunkenly, dragging the four strands of wire toward the ground.
He stepped across the sagging wire.
"Come on — and bring the toolbox." Which is no bloody use whatsoever, he told himself.
The earth and the icy puddles cracked and ripped as they hurried across the empty landscape.
"What should we look for?" he demanded.
"Signs of repair — lack of rust…" Kedrov's voice faded into uncertainty.
More ruts from heavy tires, even the tracks of a bulldozer. A hundred yards and more from the new wire, they reached a silo shaft's steel doors, which were pitted and rusting. Priabin stood on them, stamping a din from the metal, as he gazed around him. He could distinguish as many as forty — well, thirty — of these silo entrances scattered over the ground and looking like giant antipersonnel mines. They rose only a few feet above the surface, while the shafts beneath them descended hundreds of feet into the earth.
"Don't waste time. We'll split up — check as many as you can. Oh, Christ, all right, I'll take the toolbox." He bared his teeth. "Get moving."
There was a moment of pathetic doubt on Kedrov's face, and the afterdrug vacancy returned; then he turned to scan the landscape, picking out the closest silos
"I'll shout," he offered, "and wave if I find anything." It was as if he had patted Priabin's forearm to comfort him. He seemed to draw on some reserve of optimism, and smiled encouragingly.
Priabin scuttled toward another shaft, turning only once to see Kedrov blown like a brown rag across the landscape. The second and third sets of silo doors were dirt-encrusted, with stiff blades of grass appearing to spring from the metal. He hurried on.
Four now, all of them unused for years. Six, and still nothing but pitted doors and the mouths of air ducts with rusty wire gratings across them, but tire tracks and caterpillar-track indentations going everywhere and nowhere. He transferred the toolbox once more from his left hand to his right. He seemed to be staggering along now, buffeted by the icy wind. If he so much as thought for a moment about his task, it would be like colliding with a solid wall.
The wind shouted, faintly.
Groggily, he looked up. A brown scarecrow was waving its outstretched arms.
Kedrov. Waving and shouting like a drowning swimmer.
He ran toward Kedrov, who seemed to be dancing with excitement, Pieces of abandoned metal glinted in the sun. Not rusty, then — even half-bricks, oil stains, too, scraps of electrical cable.
"What?" he gasped at Kedrov, dropping the toolbox, bent double to catch his breath. "What is it?"
"These doors have been replaced — look!"
The metal doors of the shaft, shut tight, gleamed like a polished mirror. Rodin was down there somewhere, he knew it!
"Thank God," he breathed. "How do we get down there? What do we do?"
"The closest air shaft's over there, about sixty yards away. We climb down the tunnel, find the doors to the silo shaft—"
"And?"
"Get into the shaft through the service doors. Stop the thing coming up — cut the wires." It was the exasperation of a technician toward the technically illiterate. Kedrov seemed to have found his daydream of America once more. Priabin nodded.