The tunnel was wide enough to take a Mil-24, not just the smaller Hughes, but they'd have to be more careful. The second gunship could hop to the other end of the tunnel, but the Hughes was armed with missiles and a Chain gun, and they'd have to be careful, too.
He was hardly conscious, because now the tunnel lights seemed hypnotic, extending into a blur. The pain in his thigh steadily mounted through his whole frame and seemed to throb in rhythm with the passage of the lights. Pruitt's wild elation was no more than a distant sighing.
The tunnel ended like a bright mouth opening.
The Plain of Ararat. Daylight and gunships. They were as unreal, as unimportant to Gant as smears on the Plexiglas. He vaguely glimpsed a border crossing, poles and booths and vehicles straggling across the highway. Then it was gone He could not be certain he had seen it, was increasingly unaware of the dimensions of the cockpit around him, the presence of the pilot. Then Pruitt jerked the helicopter up and away.
Something exploded astern of them against the canyon wall. Gant did not turn his head to look back. He felt an increase in the Defender's speed, and sensed the ground farther away below. The plain spread out ahead of them, as gray-white and unfeatured as an unrolled bale of cloth. His head felt heavy, and yet without substance.
Turkey. He knew that.
More gunships.
Hughes helicopters, and a Bell Hueycobra. Their shapes familiar, comforting. Jets higher and farther away. Turkey. The border was already invisible behind the last slopes of the foothills as the Defender skimmed the snowbound plain. The whiteness, he could see now, was smeared by the passage of a steam train and trellised by cleared roads and highways. The twin peaks of Mt. Ararat gleamed in the distance.
A second Hughes Defender slid up close to port. Its pilot raised a thumb. An unarmed Turkish air force Jetranger rose like a cork to the surface of water and took up station behind them. It was a target for any missile that might be launched across the border. The Hueycobra bobbed to starboard as they closed ranks around Pruitt, around Gant. He was protected, safe. His leg burned with a fresh agony. There was something he had to do besides sleep, besides surrender to the pain — something…
His hands groped toward the instrument panel. Pruitt, understanding his feeble efforts, thrust the copilot's headset into his hands and opened the Tac channel. As if lifting a great weight, Gant slowly slid the headset on. Voices blurted in his ears, showering the ether with congratulation.
"Come on, Major!" he heard Pruitt urge, but the pilot's voice was very faint.
The pain threatened afresh. He began talking quickly, afraid it might finally overwhelm him. They had to be told; they had to know. The cockpit was as vague and unfeatured as the pale sky and the carpet of snow. The instruments were blurred, his sense of Pruitt beside him diminished.
"… Winter Hawk" he felt himself repeating, over and over. His own exclamations of pain were more real. He heard himself grinding his teeth as a noise inside his head, as if bones were being moved in his skull."… I have the proof, yes… definite proof….." It did not matter who was listening, how far up that staircase in his mind he had climbed in less than a minute. Some general, a CIA deputy director — who cared? He remembered something else, then, with a huge, sickening effort, and said: "They have the weapon, it's — already in orbit… intend to use it, against the shuttle—Atlantis…."It was so difficult to remember the shuttle's name. A cleared road lay below him, Pruitt was following its gray line through the snow. Someone asked him a question — one of the voices that babbled at him and kept him from sleep, allowing the pain to enlarge. He merely repeated: "… the target is the shuttle, yes — I saw the launch, the weapon is in orbit at this — moment…." Then, finally: "Man, I don't give shit what you do, just do it!"
Fuzzily, as he leaned forward to cut off the channel, he saw a helicopter bearing a gigantic red cross drift like a dirigible across their course. He sighed, and surrendered to the pain and to his weariness. His head burned as intensely as his leg. It's all right now, he assured his wound. All right. He'd survived. His message and what they did about it did not matter anymore. He'd survived.
POSTLUDE
Negotiations and love songs,
Are often mistaken for one and the same.
… it is therefore in a gesture of the most profound respect for the importance of today, and out of the new friendship that exists between our two countries and across the whole of our planet, that the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wishes to include a new clause in our solemn treaty.
"We propose, out of our sincere desire for peace in the world, to include all space weapons systems, whether real, experimental, or merely theoretical, within the terms of our agreement. All space weapons and all research into such weapons will now become subject to the terms of the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty."
John Calvin applauded, together with every member of every delegation assembled for the signing session in the Assembly Room of the Palais des Nations.
Projected on a huge screen at one end of the hall, the U.S. shuttle Atlantis hung above the beauty of the blue-white-green earth. Beside it, the Soviet shuttle Kutuzov floated innocently against the planet. Calvin glanced from the screen toward Dick Gunther. Gunther shook his hand in a slight, quivering gesture.
Close, too damn close, the gesture stated.
Calvin nodded and then looked down at the treaty, waiting to bear his signature. And only then, staring at the paragraphs and clauses that were somehow out of focus for a moment, did he smile genuinely and with vast relief.