Firefox Down

TWELVE: Through The Window

She had swivelled in the passenger seat to stare back through the car's rear window at some excitement on the road behind, just like a child. And it was as if he were gently remonstrating with that child when he turned her in her seat. Except that by turning her he could not prevent harm from coming to her. She was already dead. Gant knew that even as he gently moved her. He knew before he saw the neat blue hole in her forehead, just at the hairline.

He had told her to keep down, had tried to push her back into her seat; but her arm had become limp and unresponding. Anna had turned to look back at Priabin, standing in the middle of the road, waving his arms. Gant had heard one of the two Kalashnikovs on automatic. The bellow of sound had unnerved him more than the concussions of the first bullets; the thuds against the boot and into the rear seat.

He stared at her face for only a moment. Very pale. Her eyes were open. They hardly registered shock, were without pain.

He let her body fall back against the seat and wished he had not done so. She looked very dead the moment he released her. Her head too rapidly flopped onto her shoulder, the hair spilled over her cheek, and there was a snail-track of saliva at the corner of her mouth. He withdrew his hands, holding them against his chest, afraid to touch her again. They were shaking as he bunched them into fists. He groaned.

The Vietnamese girl, burning…

He grabbed the door handle. His hand froze for a moment, then flung open the door. Two bullets immediately thudded into it, making the plastic of the panel bulge near his knuckles. He knelt behind the door. The two rifles ceased firing. He straightened, smelling on the freezing air the exhaust from the Finnish car moving towards him. He ran. He heard Priabin shout something; the voice sounded almost demented above the noise of Gant's breathing and heartbeat and squeaking footfalls. He hunched his body against the expected impact of rifle bullets.

Then the Finnish car, a long Mercedes saloon, swung across the road behind him, skidding to a halt. He heard the doors open. He tried to stop and turn, but slipped and fell onto the snow-bound road. His buttocks and hands ached. The Vietnamese girl was incinerated in an instant beside the car he had abandoned. Two men were kneeling behind the open doors of the Mercedes, yet not expecting trouble. The two border guards had stopped firing, stopped running.

Another man was still moving, charging towards the abandoned car, arms flailing as if he were combating the freezing night and the falling snow. Headlights from the Mercedes glared towards the lights of the abandoned car. The brightness hid Anna; hid Priabin the moment he stopped and ducked his whole body almost frenziedly into the car's interior. Gant closed his eyes. The image of the Vietnamese girl had vanished, but he could clearly discern the blue hole in Anna's forehead. He shook his head, but her surprised, hardly shocked face would not leave him. He breathed in deeply and opened his eyes. A man was extending his hand, offering to help him to his feet.

'Major Gant?' he said.

Immediately, as if the action would help to establish his identity, or remove Anna's image from his retinae, Gant tugged the hairpiece from his own closely-cropped hair.

'Yes,' he said.

'Quickly,' the Finn instructed, clutching Gant's elbow, forcing him to his feet. Gant's legs were foal-like, awkward. 'We must get you away from here — I do not think there will be trouble, but — '

'Yes,' Gant repeated dully, brushing down his overcoat and trousers. The other two Finns had also stood up. One of them, the driver, had climbed into the Mercedes. The engine was still running. The incident was over. The two guards had retreated to the customs hut, where their officer stood on the wooden steps, watching through night-glasses. 'Yes.'

He was ushered to the rear door of the Mercedes. He paused and stared into the other car's headlights. It was as if he had been trapped in a searchlight's eager beam. Beyond the lights, he saw Priabin. He was out of the car, his arms wrapped around Anna's body. Gant could see the splash of fair hair against Priabin's dark clothing. Priabin's face was white, aghast, lost.

Quickly, Gant got into the car, which reversed across the road, turned, and headed back towards the red and white pole on the Finnish side. Gant turned his head, wincing as he realised he was imitating Anna's last living movement, and watched the figure of Priabin diminish, the splash of blonde hair against his chest no more than a trick of the light. Priabin did not move, seemed incapable of volition. He simply stared in his lost way after the receding Mercedes.

Then the Finnish border post was behind them, the glow from the overhead lights retreating behind the falling snow. Gant shivered, realising that the car was warm, realising that it was over.

He did not dare to close his eyes. Open, and Anna remained only a tumbled trick of the light against Priabin's chest; closed, and the white face with its blue hole would return. He stared at the back of the Finn in the front passenger seat like a nauseous drunk attempting to defeat the spinning of his head.

Waterford watched the sky. The cloud had thinned, the snow had almost stopped; desultory and innocent, as on a greetings card. The window in the weather had arrived. Out on the lake, a huge cross formed from orange marker tape indicated the dropping point. A single smoke flare betrayed the wind direction. It climbed like a plume from the ice, then bent as it reached the wind, straggled and dissipated. There was no sky above, no colour except grey, but the cloudbase was high enough to allow the Hercules's first run to be at a sufficient altitude for the parachutists to jump safely. The lake was strangely silent against the slow, creeping grey dawn that revealed its far shore, the sombre snow-bound country and the pencilled margin of trees.

Then he heard the baritone murmur of the aircraft's four engines. Other heads turned with his, towards the south. He glanced to check the smoke plume, which rose strongly before the wind distressed it like long yellow hair. He turned his face back to the clouds and saw it, at little more than fifteen hundred feet, seeming to drift up from the indistinct horizon, enlarge, then hang above them. The expectant silence around him was all but palpable. The Hercules was a plump, full shape overhead.

Then the parachuting Royal Marines appeared, dots detaching themselves like laid eggs from each side of the bulky fuselage. Parachutes opened, and the black eggs slowed and swayed. Waterford counted them, urging them to be more, wanting to go on counting. Twenty, twenty-one, two, three, four, five, six…

And then he reminded himself that not all of them were soldiers. There were also engineers and technicians from the RNAF Tactical Supply Squadron at Bardufoss. They and the pallets of supplies required had limited the number of marines that could be carried. The Hercules would return to Bardufoss at high speed to attempt to take on a second detachment of marines, but Waterford doubted they would be able to drop. The window in the weather would have closed once more before the Hercules could return.

Thirty-two, three… already, the first jumpers were drifting against the grey horizon like unseasonal dandelion clocks. The Hercules vanished beyond the limit of visibility at the far end of the lake. The drone of its four engines had become a mild hiss; the noise of a distant saw. The first marine landed on his feet, ran after his billowing, closing 'chute, wrapping it into a bundle as he moved. Then the second landed, rolled, came up grabbing the 'chute to himself. Three, four, five…

Perhaps two dozen marines, Waterford thought, assessing the degree of comfort he felt at the figure. Not much. The Hercules would have been tracked on Russian radar. Its run would be too pattern-like, too intended to be mistaken. They would know men and supplies had been dropped into Lapland, and they would know where. The weather window had to be slammed shut against them before they could act on the knowledge, even if its shutting did lock out a second detachment of marines.

Already, every parachutist had landed and was moving quickly off the ice. The air force experts trudged in a hunched, somehow child-like manner, the marines moved more quickly, already identifiable as a group. Everyone was wearing Arctic camouflage or long grey-white parkas. They looked like members of an expedition.

Waterford returned the salute of the captain in command of the marines, then turned away from him. The last stragglers, 'chutes bundled untidily beneath their arms, had moved off the ice. Among marines and technicians and experts alike there was a muted, intense murmuring as they climbed the slope of the shore and confronted the Firefox, now at the rear of the clearing beneath the camouflage netting. The noise of the Hercules's return moved towards them from the northern horizon.

Then the aircraft appeared, a flattened, murky, half-real shape at the far end of the lake. The smoke flare had already bent further, like the unstable stem of a heavy-flowered plant. The wind was picking up. There would be no second drop of marines. The clouds, too, already seemed lower and heavier, and the snowflakes blew sideways into Waterford's face, as if the storm were sidling up to him in some surprise ambush. He shook his head. The Hercules moved slowly and steadily up the lake. Then the pallets emerged in turn from the cargo ramp in the rear of the aircraft. Waterford realised that Moresby was standing beside him. It was as if he had taken no interest in the men who had parachuted, only in the lifeless supplies and equipment now to be unloaded.

The tractor tug was bright yellow. Its pallet thudded distantly into the ice, skidded and ran to a halt. A second pallet with tarpaulined equipment emerged, then a third. Then the fourth, bearing great rolls of MO-MAT, a second pallet of rolled portable runway followed it. The Hercules was almost level with them now. The smoke from the flare streamed out horizontally, a few feet above the ground. The trees on the far shore were shrouded in what might have been a freezing fog. Then shapes like great, tyred undercarriage wheels appeared one after the other from the gaping cargo ramp. Waterford thought he glimpsed the figures bundling them out, even the supervising Air Loadmaster at the mouth of the hard-lit tunnel that was the interior of the Hercules. Then the aircraft was gone, lost beyond the trees around the lake, heading south. He saw a vague, dark shape lift into the clouds, which were lower and thicker than before. The Hercules vanished, leaving Waterford with a momentary sense of isolation.

The black fuel cells bounced awkwardly and rolled strangely, like trick balls weighted with sand. Slowly, they came to a halt, giant woods searching for a jack. The air transportable fuel cells had been landed safely; huge rubber containers filled with the various oils and the vital paraffin required if the Firefox was ever to take off from the lake.

The farthest of the pallets, with its bright yellow tractor tug, was already almost obscured by the driving snow. A window — ? Nothing but a glimpse of something through the storm. At least, Waterford thought, the Russians can't do anything. They won't be able to move.

Nor will we.

He watched as men detailed by Moresby moved out onto the ice to recover the pallets and the fuel cells. It would take no more than half an hour to get everything stowed under cover, camouflaged. Just in case -

'You'd better come with me,' Waterford said. His voice was pinched in his throat. He growled it clear. 'Come on, captain, we've got work to do. Your blokes aren't here to hold spanners for these buggers.'

'No, sir. But — '

Waterford turned to face him. The captain was staring at the Firefox, stranded amid trees and beneath camouflage netting; out of its element.

'What?'

'Hell of an aircraft, sir.'

'One problem with it — it doesn't fly!'

The Russian major tugged the hood of his camouflage blouse further forward, as if to conceal completely the fur hat with its single red star in the centre. He smiled at his nervous gesture, as if he really had been fearful of their being spotted through the weather from the other side of the lake.

His Border Guard reconnaissance party had heard the distant noise of the Hercules transport while they were breakfasting. He was fairly certain it was one of those big turboprop transport aircraft used by the Norwegians and the rest of NATO. His unit had made good time, even with the poor weather. The moment it cleared they had rested, hoping to make a quick, scrappy meal, then push on before the weather closed in again. Of course, once they reached the trees, the weather ceased to matter as much, inconvenient though it was. But the noise of the aircraft, muffled and distant and to the east, alerted them, created fears and prognostications and they had broken camp at once and pushed on with all possible speed. Somehow, each of his men and himself had known that the transport aircraft, even though it had not landed, had business at the two lakes.

The smaller, more westerly of the two had been empty of activity, supplies and people. The plane had made two passes, one at a reasonably high altitude as far as they could discern, the other much lower. The major had his suspicions; they were almost certain enough to report them to Moscow. But, he hesitated. He would be reporting directly to Andropov himself; his ultimate superior, his Chairman. He wanted further evidence before committing himself — yet, he should alert the reconnaissance aircraft, there should be an investigation. However, the weather had closed in again and he knew that no flights would now be possible to investigate the activities of the transport aircraft. But, surely it had been picked up by the border Tupolev AW ACS plane and reported? Had the weather closed in too quickly?

His party of twelve men moved behind him on the long crosscountry skis across the surface of the smaller lake. Out in the open, the wind was noisy again now; buffeting and yelling around them. The snow drove horizontally across the lake. The clouds were dark and heavy and seemed to hang like a great smothering cushion just above their heads. What was going on at the other lake? What had the transport aircraft been ferrying in? Men, supplies, equipment — why? The questions hurried and blustered in his thoughts, with a cold excitement like that of the wind. He felt on the verge of answers, but would not reach out to grasp them.

They moved off the ice, pausing for a short rest at the edge of the trees. Then they headed across the half-mile that separated the two lakes, climbing slowly and gently through the crowding pines and spruces that were heavy with snow. Birds called from a distance. Snow dropped with dull concussions from the overweighted branches of trees. His men spread out into a curving line of advance with himself at the centre, and began to move more cautiously. He could hear the slither of his skis and those of his sergeants on either side of him. The Kalashnikov rifle in its white canvas sleeve bobbed on his chest.

He crested a ridge, and the trees seemed to straggle more, with brighter snowy spaces between them. The morning was advanced, the light was pale grey. Slowly, he urged his body forward down the slope towards the unseen shore of the larger lake. He felt tense and excited, as if approaching some important promotional interview. He skirted the bole of a fir, glimpsed a stretch of snow-covered ice clear of trees, and came to a halt. He heard the slither of other stopping skis. By hand signals, he urged his men to cover. Rifles were quickly unwrapped and checked, ski-sticks planted like the cross-poles of wigwams for rifle rests. Trees became cover, the hardware of an ambush.

The major raised his binoculars, adjusted their focus, and stared into the flying snow which swept across the lake. Disappointed he could not see the farther shore, he felt he was gazing into a new and unearthly sunrise. He leant against the bole of the tree, a sergeant on the other side of it, and waited. He knew the answers would emerge from that glow, if there was a momentary change or drop in the wind and the snow was moved aside. He was prepared to wait, even though his jumpy, tense body was little more than an impatient net of nerves.

He waited for ten minutes, perhaps twelve. He heard the muffled noises at first. Compressors, a saw, no, two saws, the cracking, thudding fall of trees. The grind and creak of machinery, the whine of drills and what he presumed might be other power tools. He was reminded of his grandfather's hut at the bottom of the garden where the old man enthusiastically concocted gadgets that never worked, or badly repaired household utensils that had been damaged or broken. The tapestry of sounds comforted and excited him, but supplied no answers to his insistent questions. The voices of men, too, were carried faintly towards him by the wind.

Then he saw it. The snow seemed to retreat across the lake like a curtain, and he fine-focused his glasses after raising them quickly to his eyes. He stretched his eyelids, cleared his throat, then saw -

It had to be the MiG-31. It had to be exactly what they had been sent to find. It left him breathless. A black shape at the back of what might have been a stage set. Men half-swallowed by the cockpit or swarming over the tail section and the main fuselage. Great trailing hoses blowing air or supplying something, lay about the aircraft. A wide snail-track of portable runway ran down to the edge of the water — yes, water, where the ice had been broken…

'My God,' he whispered. 'My God, it was in the lake! Do you see, that, sergeant? It was in the lake!'

'Yes, sir. What are they doing to the aircraft, sir?'

'I don't know. They must be dismantling it. Yes, they must be taking it apart, ripping out all the secret stuff, the stuff they want…'

The black shape, the men, the noises and the now visible machinery… he scanned along the shore. Trees being cleared, more huge rolls of portable runway, a yellow — what was that? — yellow. Small tractor… where had he seen those before? Towing aircraft — ? Yes, at airports and airfields. One black — football? — almost hidden in the trees, certainly camouflaged from the air, and other, similar shapes behind it. Then the curtain was drawn once more just as he saw the rifles worn by a handful of the men around and in front of the aircraft. Troops, armed troops -

And then it was gone, the noises now the sole indication that they were not alone on the shore of the frozen lake.

There are too many of them, he thought. Then — do I tell Moscow what I fear?

'Sir?' the sergeant began, his voice seeming to possess a weight of insight.

The major nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'Get Melnik here with the radio — quickly.' The sergeant turned and moved off, but the major continued speaking softly, as if answering the sergeant's unspoken question. 'Yes, they're going to try to fly that plane out!'

Vladimirov stood before the tall fibre-optic map in the control gallery. His body quivered with excitement. He assessed his appearance as being like that of one of his family's hunting dogs; a luxury' his rank and income had enabled him to resurrect from the family's past. The scent of the game, the dog's rippling excitement which the noise of the gun and the fall of the bird would convert to speed, to capture.

Andropov stood next to him, rubbing his spectacles heavily and repeatedly, as if to re-assess the information on the map and the transmission from the reconnaissance party. Lights and indicators had been bled into the map, and the projection of Finnish Lapland had been altered. Now, an enlargement of the area of the two lakes almost filled the entire surface. The cleared site the major had seen was marked, as was the position of the major's party.

Andropov had not congratulated Vladimirov, but there had been a surprised, almost mocking respect in his pale eyes, before both of them had abandoned their coffee and hurried across the gallery to the map.

As if unable to bear the proximity of the map, the Chairman of the KGB wandered away from Vladimirov. When the general turned to look at him, he realised that Andropov, having replaced his spectacles, was simply looking through the glass down at the main floor of the underground command centre. His gaze was fixed upon the huge map table surrounded by operators; a table displaying the same large-scale images of the two lakes, the position of the major and his party, the location of the MiG-31.

Eventually, as if aware of being observed, Andropov turned to Vladimirov and said, 'Do you agree with the major's prognostication, General Vladimirov?' It was a complex, subtle question asked in a direct, neutral tone. It prompted Vladimirov to accept responsibility, it was genuinely undecided, it hovered on the verge of disbelief.

'Yes,' Vladimirov said. 'I incline to. His descriptions of equipment, of what he saw, even when I questioned him, were too detailed to be misinterpreted. Transportable fuel cells — his black footballs could be nothing else. Compressors and hoses.'

'But, could they do it? Could they possibly do it?'

Vladimirov shook his head. 'I would have thought their attempt likely to end in failure — '

'But not certain to end that way?'

'Are you prepared to be certain?' Vladimirov countered.

Andropov, as if suddenly made aware of the others in the room, the majority of them military personnel, seemed to scuttle across to Vladimirov's side. To create a fiction of competence, he adjusted his glasses to make a renewed study of the map. Its colours palely mottled his features. Eventually, he turned to Vladimirov and said quietly. 'You realise what this means? You realise everything?

'I realise.'

'Very well, then. What do we do?' There was no emphasis on the plural, but it was a commitment from Andropov. Out of necessity, Vladimirov concluded. The man had no idea how to deal with the situation. He was no longer seeking a scapegoat; rather, he required a skilled, expert assistant. Vladimirov felt himself burn with purpose, what he would have mocked in a younger officer as crusading zeal. It was at once both ridiculous and gratifying.

'We can do nothing-for the moment,' Vladimirov said calmly, glancing through the sheaf of papers that represented the detailed Met. reports he had requested as soon as the major's report had been relayed to them. Andropov's face was angry, and also he seemed disappointed. 'We can only prepare for action — we cannot act. Unless you wish to bomb the area from high altitude?' Vladimirov added, smiling. Andropov glowered at him.

Vladimirov pondered the map. He could, hopefully even in this foul weather, continue to assemble troops ready to move them into Lapland. In the hours after his first realisation that Gant must have landed on a frozen lake, and as a preliminary to the location of the MiG by the reconnaissance party, he had ordered the Leningrad Military district to place Engineer Troops and desant commandos from one of their advance Airborne Divisions, on alert. Already, some units were at the assembly point, the military airfield near the town of Nikel, at the meeting point of the Soviet, Finnish and Norwegian borders. The facilities at Nikel were adequate, just, for a swift helicopter assault across the border in the required numbers to guarantee success. But, the commandos mobilised and at present at Nikel, were fewer than seventy. They had been intended only as a guard for the more vital Engineer Troops who would salvage, with the assistance of a huge MiL flying crane, the MiG-31 from whichever lake contained it. Now, any salvage operation would necessitate an armed attack; a rescue by force.

Strangely, perhaps because it so closely paralleled his own embryo plan, he had recovered swiftly from the shock of discovering that he had been beaten to the site, beaten to the recovery of the aircraft. He had clenched his fist the moment he received the news, felt his nails digging into his palm until the pain became numbness. Then he realised that the weather had closed upon the lake. They were isolated. They could not be reached. They were locked in, immobile. If they intended to fly the aircraft out, they would need another break in the weather. It was a stalemate…

To his advantage. The British and Norwegians and Americans had done much of his work for him.

Andropov had moved to the door of the room. He was in conversation with a tall, dark-haired young man with an easy, confident manner which now seemed harassed and half-afraid. Vladimirov returned to his map and his thoughts.

To fly the aircraft to Norway, to somewhere like Bardufoss, was a distance that could be covered in minutes. The aircraft would need to be no more than half-airworthy for that short hop. Was it possible? Someone — Aubrey, perhaps? — evidently thought it was.

They needed a window in the weather. They dare not risk a take-off with a patched-together aircraft in the kind of weather that now prevailed. It would kill the pilot, lose them the MiG.

So -

They were waiting for the break that was promised for late that afternoon. He glanced at his watch. Perhaps in seven or eight hours' time.

The site had to be occupied by Soviet troops and the secrets of the MiG protected. If they had been photographed, stripped down, examined, discovered, then -

No one could be allowed to leave with that knowledge, with those secrets. He had to put troops into the area, for every possible reason.

It would be close. His helicopters would move just as the weather cleared. According to the Met. people, they would have the disadvantage. Thirty minutes' delay as the weather cleared from the west.

Now his excitement was intense. He sensed the danger, the knife-edge, and welcomed it. He was combative, certain, aggressive. The prize was tangible. His troops must surround the clearing beside the lake, prevent damage to the airframe, prevent take-off if that was feasible.

Kill-

Andropov approached him, his face grim. Vladimirov allowed a smile of triumph to appear on his lips, then said gruffly, 'What is it?'

'I–I have received a report that the American has been allowed to escape. He crossed into Finland hours — hours ago!' Andropov was sweating. His forehead shone in the lights. He would be blamed; the KGB had failed.

Vladimirov blenched inwardly at the news. He understood fully now.

Gant.

Vladimirov knew that Gant was the intended pilot of the MiG-31, as he had been before. He could not envisage, even wildly imagine, how he could be transported to the lake. But he knew that that was the intention.

Somehow, when the first Soviet gunships drove down on that clearing, when the first commandos dropped from their transport helicopters, Gant would be there. With a lifting triumph filling his chest and stomach, Vladimirov knew that Gant would die.

The snow had turned to sleet soon after first light, sliding away from the wipers to the edges of the windscreen. The Mercedes had become a cocoon for Gant; warm, moving, self-contained. The Finnish Intelligence officers, though he sensed their curiosity, were respectfully quiet. They supplied him with vodka and coffee, had bought him breakfast at a service station restaurant — coffee, eggs, herring, cheese, rolls, jam. He had resisted at first because of the pungent unexpectedness of the fish so early in the morning, but then his hunger had insisted. Anna retreated; she was no longer present in the warmth and quiet bustle of the restaurant.

The military airfield was north-east of Helsinki. The Mercedes turned in, papers were checked at the guardroom, and then they drove directly out onto the tarmac. Through the windscreen, through the sleet and against the grey cloud scudding low across the runways and hangars, Gant saw a Harrier in RAF camouflage, standing like a fleeting visitor apart from the planes bearing Finnish markings. The aircraft surprised him, now that his next movement, the coming hours, were forced to his attention. He was reluctant to leave the Mercedes and the quiet, respectful, reassuring company of the Finns.

A drab-painted trailer was drawn up near the Harrier. It had been towed into position by a Land-Rover. The arrangement of the vehicles and the aircraft disturbed him. It appeared temporary; a beginning.

'Major Gant?' the Finn next to him on the rear seat enquired politely, as if to re-establish some former identity. 'Would you please leave the car now and go to the trailer?' The Mercedes drew up a matter of yards from the trailer with its blank windows and dark-grey, wet flanks. 'Please, Major Gant — '

He gripped the door handle. All three of them were watching him with a patient curiosity. Already distancing themselves.

'Thanks,' he said.

'Our pleasure,' one of them said with an engaging smile. 'Good luck, Major.'

'Sure.'

He got out of the car, hunching his shoulders immediately against the cold sting and splash of the driven sleet. He hurried the few yards of wet concrete to the trailer. The door opened, as if at some electronic signal from himself. He climbed the two steps, wiped his feet on a rough mat, and only then looked up as the door closed behind him.

He recognised neither man in the room. There was a smell of wetness from the olive-green flying suit worn by one of them. He seemed to appraise Gant more quickly, but less expertly, than the one in the fur hat and the leather overcoat. A pilot's helmet lay on a plain wooden table, flanked by two cups.

'Coffee?' the man in the overcoat asked, holding out his hand. 'Forgive me — my name is Vitsula. I am a — friend of Kenneth Aubrey. My men were the ones who met you at the border. Oh, this is Flight Lieutenant Thorne of the British Royal Air Force.' The pilot nodded. 'That is his transport parked next to us.' Vitsula smiled. 'Coffee?' he repeated.

'Uh-oh, yes. Sure.'

Gant remained looming near the doorway, ill at ease. He was assailed by premonitions. Vitsula moved and talked with the ease of seniority. By 'friend' he meant counterpart. Hence the trailer. Vitsula was helping Aubrey, but Finland was neutral. No, there wasn't anything to concern him here. No more than a covert exit from Finland in the second seat of the Harrier trainer. He moved towards the table and sat down. Vitsula, pouring coffee from the percolator's jug, nodded in approval.

As he sat down, the Finn said, 'You realise, of course, Major, why we must have these precautions? I'm sorry it is cold. The heater is not working.' Vitsula sipped at his coffee. 'Apparently, you are required — cigarette? No? Ah — required in Oslo, at NATO Southern Norway headquarters. Your people wish to talk to you urgently. I can understand that.' He smiled, exhaling the blue, acrid smoke. It filled the cramped trailer at once. 'I have been in contact with Kenneth Aubrey — who is in Kirkenes at the moment. They have been trying, very unsuccessfully I gather, to rescue the aircraft.'

Gant appeared shocked. 'How?'

'By winching it out of the lake where you left it, Major.'

'They didn't manage it?'

'Yes, they did. But, they cannot get it out of the area. Their helicopter didn't arrive. The weather — a breakdown.'

'Shit,' Gant breathed, passing from surprise to disappointment in an instant, almost without registering the implied events of the past days. 'It's out, you say?'

'So I am led to believe.' He shrugged, blowing a rolling cloud of smoke at the low ceiling. 'Do the Russians know its location?' Gant glanced at the pilot, who nodded.

'Not from me,' Gant replied slowly.

'That will be welcome news to my minister,' Vitsula sighed. 'Very welcome. Excellent, in fact. Yes, excellent. Of course, we shall inform them in due course — we shall have to…' He held up his hand as Gant's face darkened and his lips moved. 'Kenneth Aubrey and your Mr. Buckholz know all this. It is not my decision. The aircraft will be without certain systems, I imagine, by the time it is handed over. You will not quite have wasted your time, Major.' Vitsula stood up. 'Excuse me, now, I have arrangements to make. When you have finished your coffee, you may leave at your leisure. Do not concern yourself. Major, at the fate of a machine. You, after all, are alive and safe. That should be enough. Good morning. Good morning, Flight Lieutenant.'

Vitsula adjusted the fur hat on his head, opened the door and went out. Gant turned his head from the door towards Thorne.

'What the hell's going on?' he snapped in a tight, angry voice. 'They've got the damn thing out of the lake?'

'So I'm told.'

'Who's Vitsula?'

'Director-General of their intelligence service. The top man.'

'Why a Harrier?' Gant snapped. 'I know what they do. I've flown our AV-8A. Why a Harrier?' He looked around him, then, and added: 'Is this place safe?'

'I think so. Vitsula said it was. I don't think he'd want to listen, anyway.'

'To what?'

'What happens next.' Thorne was smiling. The smile of a young man, his fingers dipped gently, pleasingly, into the waters of covert work. It was evident on his features that he was enjoying himself immensely.

'What happens next?'

'We take off for Oslo — '

'And when we arrive?'

'Just in case — would you like to get changed? I brought a spare suit. Your bonedome is in the cockpit…' Thorne heaved a pressure suit, folded and compressed, onto the wooden table from the floor of the trailer. 'Get into that — then we can talk in the privacy of my aircraft.' It was lightly said, with an English confidence, a sense of joking, of game-playing. The tone angered Gant quite unreasonably, Anna came back. Blue hole, surprise. No anger. She should have been angry -

He leant across the wooden table and grabbed Thorne's forearm, gripping it tightly. Thorne's narrow, dark good looks twisted, became dislike.

'Before we fucking go anywhere, friend — tell me what happens when we get there! I don't give a shit if this trailer's bugged by the Kremlin — answer the question!' He squeezed Thorne's arm. The pilot winced, tried to pull his arm away, groaned.

'All right — all right, you bloody crazy Yank! Let go of my arm, damn you!'

Gant released his grip. Thorne immediately applied himself to rubbing his forearm, beneath the suit's sleeve. He kept his face averted. Eventually, when he had ceased rubbing, he looked up.

'You're not going to Oslo. We drop off the radar as if making an approach, then I turn the Harrier north.' The confusion on the American's face lessened the threat he posed. Thorne appeared to remember other superiors, more pressing priorities. 'Look, I shouldn't be telling you any of this until we're airborne — ' he protested.

'Why only then?' Gant snapped. 'I could still pull the cord and go out on the bang-seat! Tell me now.'

Thorne hesitated. Gant leaned towards him again. Thorne's arm flinched onto his lap like a startled cat. Gant picked up the folded suit and dropped it heavily on the floor.

'All right. But it's your fault if anything goes wrong-!'

'You don't think Vitsula's worked things out? Man, they all know everything that's going on. It's just one big game. The most dangerous game — people get killed. If Vitsula can't make the right guesses about your airplane, then he won't be in his job for long. Even I can guess…but I don't want to. Now, tell me.'

Gant stood at one of the small, blacked-out windows. Peering through it, he could see Vitsula had taken his place in the back of the Mercedes. An old turboprop transport lurched upwards towards the cloud. He listened to Thorne's voice as if to something reiterated and already known.

'We turn north — heading up the Gulf of Bothnia into Lapland. Across the Finnmark to Kirkenes. She's almost fully fuelled — we have the range to make it in one hop.'

'Aubrey's at Kirkenes,' Gant murmured.

'Yes, old man-'

Gant turned from the window, glaring at Thorne. 'What the hell does he want me at Kirkenes for?'

Thorne shrugged, seemingly with a renewed awareness of their surroundings.

'I — look, I'm just the cab driver. Get into the suit, Major, and I can brief you fully when we're airborne. I don't know much more, anyway — '

'The hell you don't! You know and I know. How does he — how can he possibly believe that airplane can fly out of there? It's crazy.'

'Maybe. But that's what they want you for.' Thorne's face was pleading. 'Please, Major — get changed. We have a schedule to keep.'

Gant realised that his fists were bunched at his sides. Standing, he was aware of the weariness of his body, the confusion of his thoughts. He wished idly for the movement and warmth of the Mercedes once more, Vitsula knew. Of course he knew.

'What about the Finns?'

'There's a deadline. Midnight tonight.'

'For anything Aubrey might want to try?'

'I don't know. But the weather's very bad up there. There's a small window — a pantry-window, no more — it's expected this afternoon. Before dark. It's the one chance you have.'

'They want me to break out, through a weather-window? If I don't make it?'

'I don't know. They'll destroy the airframe, I imagine. You're the only chance anyone's got. I have to get you to Kirkenes. If the window doesn't open, you won't be stranded when the deadline expires. At least, Aubrey will have you. If it does open, I'm to drop you in at the lake. If you say you can't fly it out, then I bring you back. And a Chinook, if one can get in, will bring out the best of the stuff they can salvage. Look, Major, I was told to tell you everything. Tell him everything, he said. Be honest with him. Ask him to do it. Tell him we need him. Now, you know it all.' Thorne shrugged, staring at the crumpled, stiff heap that was the pressure suit.

'Aubrey wants me to save his ass for him,' Gant growled. 'He's painted himself into a corner and can't get out, so he had this great idea — really great idea. Get Gant to fly the airplane out of Finland, just like he did out of Russia.' Gant's tone was scathingly ironic. Thorne stared-at him as if he had only just realised the identity and recent history of the other occupant of the trailer.

Gant walked to the window, looked out, then returned to the table. 'All right,' he said heavily. 'Get me there, sonny. Get me to that asshole Aubrey!'

As the Harrier T.Mk4 lifted into the scudding, dark cloud, Vitsula leaned back from straining to look upwards through the windscreen, and sighed. He picked up the telephone from the central armrest compartment, and dabbed at the numbers he required. It was time for him to inform his minister of the departure of Gant. Time to suggest that the first advance units of Finnish troops should set out overland from Ivalo and Rovaniemi to rendezvous at the lake.

He would have to inform his minister of his suspicions concerning Gant's eventual destination, of course. Also, he could not avoid the suspicion that the Russians might know, might suspect, or might discover…

It was unlikely Finnish troops would arrive by midnight in any strength. If the Russians knew, if there was an attempt to fly out the Firefox — he must consult air force experts as to its feasibility — if Aubrey's people were stranded at the lake by the weather…?

His minister must be in full possession of the facts before any or all of those things happened.

Yes, he would tell him. He cleared his throat and requested to speak to the minister urgently.

Gunnar rechecked the ropes lashing down the two Lynx helicopters. It was a nervous reaction, checking them again and again. But he could not abandon the tiny clearing, its snow-weighted trees, its stormswept open space, its two huddled, shrouded helicopters. The wind cracked and snapped the shrouds over the two aircraft as if trying to open two parcels with rough, greedy fingers. He worried more than ever now, as the morning wore on. The two Lynxes represented the only means of escape from the lake. They could not be flown in this weather — it would be suicide to try — and they could not fly everyone back. But Gunnar knew that Buckholz would order him, if all else failed, to remove as much as possible of the most secret equipment aboard the Firefox in the two helicopters. He might be asked to fly in impossible conditions. For the moment, he simply had to continually reassure himself that the two Lynxes were safe, lashed down and undamaged.

He let go the taut nylon rope which stretched away to the nearest tree, and thrust his mittened hand back into the pocket of his parka. Reaching the edge of the clearing, he turned back for a last glance. Two grey-white mounds, like igloos. He moved away through the trees, clumping over the snow with broad snow-shoes. As he skirted the shore of the lake, he could see it was little less than a blizzard that was raging across the open ice. Snow rushed as solidly as a white wall seen from a speeding train or car. He would skirt the shore, keeping out of the worst of the storm by staying under the trees.

He settled into the slow momentum of his journey. He was cold, and becoming hungry again. Energy was being used up at a ridiculous speed. The storm thumped and cried at his hunched back as he walked with slow, exaggerated footsteps. Gunnar could not believe that a second weather window would bring the American pilot, or allow them time for escape. They were stranded at the lake. By the time the weather improved, the Finns would have arrived and it would all have been for nothing.

There was only one advantage in the weather. Nothing could fly in it — nothing Russian. They couldn't have moved a single helicopter, a single platoon, even if they knew where the Firefox was…

He was colder now, and he tried to move more quickly.

A freak of the wind brought him the voices. A piece of good luck he appreciated only when he dismissed the idea that the wind had snatched the sounds from the other side of the lake and flung them in his direction. These voices were close to him. Russian voices.

Cold, he distinguished. Fed up… the Major… balls to …

Then no more. He leaned against the bole of a tree. He was shaking, almost gripping the tree for support. His hands spread inside his mittens as if to locate and tear at the bark beneath the snow. Fingers twitching -

Russian voices. Soldiers, grumbling about their location, their duties, their officer. They'd been there for some time, they had a purpose which was already beginning to bore them — surveillance without action, his mind supplied — a major was in command. There might be a dozen, two dozen, three.

He turned, his back pressed against the trunk. He saw his breath curdle before it was whipped away by the wind. He was emitting signals as he breathed — where were they? He studied the darkness beneath the trees around him, studied the snow for footprints… the big tennis-racquet patterns of his own were already being covered. Where — ?

He strained to hear, but there was only the wind. Which direction? Over there? Near the shore. Between him and the shore -

He slid around the tree with exaggerated caution. He craned forward, staring towards the rushing white wall beyond the trees. White, white, white. He could see nothing other than the snow. Then someone moved. A white lump raised itself into a hunched back, then settled again. He could hear no words, no sound of voices. Once the lump stopped moving, it could no longer be distinguished from the ground, the trees, the white storm. Gunnar shivered.

What to do. what to do? He was unarmed. He turned his back to the tree once more. Had he already passed any of them? Was he surrounded and didn't yet know it?

It was some moments before he was able to think clearly. Then, minutes later, he moved away from the tree, scuttling as swiftly and cautiously as he could back the way he had come. He heard his own breathing, his heartbeat in his ears, the wind; imagined pursuit. He turned to his right before he reached the clearing, only then realising that they had not discovered the two helicopters, that his trail must not lead anyone to the clearing…

He reached the shore. Beyond him, his original tracks had been erased. The Lynxes were safe for the moment. He felt chilled and frightened by the rushing wall of snow, which was closer now. He had crossed the lake to the clearing only an hour before, but now…

It was as if he had dived slowly, grotesquely out of the trees into a different and alien element. The wall enveloped him, made him blind and breathless. He pulled his hood around his face, then kept his arms about his head, as if running from a fire. He was buffeted and bullied, flung off-balance seven or eight times. Even when he fell to the ice, or onto small ridges and drifts of snow, he felt the wind dragging or pushing him; inflating his parka like a balloon in order to move him on his back or stomach across the ice. Because of the Russians, because of the distance yet to travel, because of the utter isolation he felt in that wind and flying snow, Gunnar was deeply, acutely frightened. He was lost, completely lost.

He sat on a wind-cleared patch of ice, hunched over his compass. It was only a few hundred metres, metres, hundreds of metres, hundreds — a few hundred metres, only a few hundred metres, to the shore. He got onto all fours, having removed his snowshoes, and began to crawl.

He met a low hard ridge of snow and climbed it until he was half-upright. With a huge effort, the wind charging against his side like an attacker, a bullying ice-hockey opponent, he stood fully upright -

And ran. Floundering, charging, slipping. Ice-hockey opponent. It reduced the wind to something he knew, something he could combat. He blundered on, as if skating the barrier, charged again and again by his opponents. They blundered and bulled into him, but he kept going, arms round his head, hood pulled over his numbed face, lips spread in a mirthless grin. Another and another charged him, but he kept going. Slipped, recovered, almost tripped over softer snow, skidded on cleaned ice, knowing he was being blown like a small yacht on a curving course across the lake.

Then the shore. He blundered onto it, and fell. He could hear the very, very distant hum of one of the chain-saws. He had made it. Quickly, before the elation deserted him, he crawled towards the trees on all fours, scampering like a dog through the snow. His hands climbed the trunk of a tree until he was standing pressed against its solidity, its unmoving, snow-coated strength. His body was shuddering with effort. Then he turned his back to it.

Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…

His mind chanted the word over and over until his breathing slowed and quietened. Then he listened, heard the chain-saws stop, and the crack of a falling tree followed by its dull concussion into the snow. He walked towards the sounds, nodding almost casually to the men clearing the fallen trunk. One of them — his companion pilot? — waved. Gunnar waved back. He hurried, then, along the cleared shoreline but just inside the remaining trees, towards the main clearing and Waterford. He forgot his R/T. Crossing the lake had somehow stripped him of any sense of technology, of being able to do more than speak face to face with anyone.

Waterford was talking to Buckholz. The Firefox was beyond them, as sheltered and camouflaged as it possibly could be in the circumstances. Men swarmed ovei it, lay upon the airframe, busied themselves beneath it. Gunnar was aware of the nakedness of the clearing, of eyes behind him. He turned to look. Nothing. Only the rushing white wall passing the clearing. Had they seen — ?

Must have seen -

'Major Waterford!' he called, realising only when he spoke how small and ridiculous his voice sounded. It was like an echo of the past minutes. He coughed. 'Major Waterford!' he called more strongly, hurrying forward. Waterford turned to him, quickly alert. Even Buckholz's features mirrored the concern he evidently saw on Gunnar's face.

'What is it? What's wrong with the choppers?' Waterford snapped.

'Nothing, nothing,' Gunnar blurted out. He could hear Moresby cursing something, above the noise of the wind.

'Then what is it?'

Gunnar was aware of the arm he pointed across the lake, as if it would be seen by the Russians. He snatched it back to his side, but Buckholz and Waterford were already staring into the snow, in the direction he had indicated.

'Russians — '

'What?'

'Russian soldiers — I don't know what unit… I heard only two voices, saw movement from one man — '

'Where?'

'The other side of the lake — ' They had all three turned now to face towards the blind western shore of the lake. 'On the shore. They must be — '

'Watching us? Yes.' Waterford's face had already absorbed shock, and closed again into grim lines. 'How many?'

'I don't know-'

'Did you look?'

'I thought I should get back as quickly — '

'Damn! Damn it!'

Buckholz said, 'We have to know how many.'

'We have to eliminate them,' Waterford replied.

'What-'

'Work it out! If there were enough of them, they'd be sitting in our laps by now. No, there aren't very many of them. They're a recce party, keeping tabs on us.'

'Where have they come from?'

'Those bloody choppers that crossed the border before the weather closed in! They've backtracked along bloody Gant's hike — and found us! They'll have a radio and they'll have told Moscow by now.'

'Could they have seen us?'

'They must have done! Christ, don't count on them sitting there just because it's snowing and they don't like the weather!' Waterford stared at Buckholz. 'Get Moresby and his people working as fast as they can — no, faster than that. If Moscow knows, then they'll be dropping in for tea if that weather-window arrives. Oh, shit — '

'And you?'

'I'm going to find out who's over there. Invite them over for a quiet game of bridge. Gunnar, you come with me!'

Gunnar glanced around at the rushing snow, and then nodded silently at Waterford's back. The soldier was already speaking softly and swiftly into his R/T, summoning marines and SBS men. Gunnar hurried after his determined footsteps.

Buckholz moved towards the back of the clearing, into the false shelter of the remaining camouflage netting and the windbreaks. Like a stage, he thought. Lit, peopled, props and furniture set out. Now, they had an audience.

Welding torches flared around that area of the fuselage which had been damaged in the dogfight with the second Firefox; beneath the ruptures in the skin, the fuel-lines had been punctured, bringing the airplane here. Moresby was standing up, waist-deep in the cockpit, a conductor in a white parka directing a noiseless orchestra. His arm movements appeared like semaphore, signalling for help.

They wouldn't do it, Buckholz thought. No way would they do it now, with the Russians knowing everything.

Aubrey watched the storm through the running window. The winds, turned and channelled by the fjords and mountains, flicked the snow towards the hut and away again. For moments, the town of Kirkenes on a headland above the Langfjord which separated it from the airfield, was almost entirely visible. The roots of the peaks on Skogeroya could be seen, as could the creased grey surface of the Korsfjord. Then, for longer, gloomier periods, nothing, except the snow lying heavily on the grass, and the gleam of the nftiway. A yellow snowplough moved across his line of sight, hurling the latest snow aside, preparing for the Harrier's attempt to land.

Aubrey was no longer even certain that Gant would arrive, would share this room with himself and Curtin and the radio operator. He turned from the window, his eye passing over the rucked sheets and blankets of the camp beds on which they had spent some of the long night. He crossed to the table and its heaps of paper. Beneath a rough-hewn paperweight, beside the maps and charts and other implements of their desperation, lay the sheaf of transcribed signals he had received since setting up his headquarters at Kirkenes. He lifted the paperweight in a gingerly fashion. The last two signals, one from Eastoe and the other from Buckholz, were little short of unbearable. Yet he was drawn to re-read them, as if to punish himself for his mistakes and his pride. Mortification by coded transmission.

Eastoe reported troop movements, in extreme weather conditions, along the Soviet border with Finland, near the southern end of Lake Inari. Buckholz confirmed that a reconnaissance party had reached the lake's western shore, and had been identified as Russian. Waterford had taken a party of marines to intercept them. Now, Aubrey waited for the report of that intervention.

No, he told himself. He was not waiting for that. He already knew what would be learned. A party of Russians had discovered the location of the Firefox, had discovered that it had been retrieved from the lake — in effect, had cancelled his every advantage. He and whoever controlled the operation in Moscow were now on level terms. Utterly level terms.

His rage of self-recrimination had passed, leaving him spent and tired. If the window in the weather appeared at all over the lake, then it would appear over those gathering Russian troops at the border no more than thirty minutes later. Thirty minutes…

Ridiculous. He was beaten. When Buckholz asked him to make a decision, he would accept defeat with ill-grace and snapping, waspish irony, but he would accept it nevertheless. He would instruct Buckholz to rip out the choicest pieces from the cockpit and airframe and try to get them away in the Lynx helicopters. Yes, he would do that. A Chinook would never get to the lake from Bardufoss before the Russians. His party at the lake would be outnumbered, captured, but probably not harmed. He would order them to display no resistance.

Perhaps he should tell Waterford not to engage the reconnaissance party?

Too late to interfere.

Very well. They must salvage what they could. Something of the MiG-31's secrets, at any rate.

'He's coming in now!' Curtin announced from the other side of the room. Both he and the operator were wearing headsets. They were listening to the dialogue between Thorne, the Harrier pilot, and Kirkenes Tower. Instinctively, like a man opening his own door sensing that he has been burgled, Aubrey-glanced at the window. Skogeroya, barely visible, the town almost hidden. The snow flying -

No! he wanted to say. Don't take any chances now -

But he said nothing, merely nodded at Curtin, who stared strangely at him. Watching the lead of his headset, the American moved towards the window. The radio operator, too, had turned in his seat for a better view. Aubrey put the signals back on the table and banged down the paperweight. Then he joined Curtin.

The Harrier seemed to appear suddenly, a darker dot against the wet greyness of the mountains. It was there, a moment after there had been nothing to see except a few wind-flung gulls. It seemed to rush towards the airfield and its single runway, directly towards them. Behind it, the weather seemed to hurry in pursuit, closing around the mountains and the grey water of the Korsfjord. Aubrey could hear the chatter of voices dimly from the headset clamped over Curtin's ears. He did not wish to listen, and stepped away. He felt his body tense, his hands clench.

The aircraft raced the weather in from the fjord. The dot of the Harrier became something winged, something steady which then wobbled dangerously, as light and naked as one of the gulls being swept about.

Curtin audibly drew in his breath through his teeth. A high eerie whistling sound full of anxiety. Aubrey wanted to tell him to stop. The noise hurt his ears like fingernails drawn down a blackboard. The Harrier enlarged, racing towards them. The runway stretched out like a grey, wet finger towards the approaching aircraft and its pursuing storm. The wings waggled again, uncertain.

Again, Curtin drew in his breath. The runway lights shone feebly in the gloom. There was nothing except the Harrier, poised against the oncoming darkness. Then it dropped, almost as if falling, towards the end of the runway. It touched, seemed to bounce, then rolled across their line of sight. The weather swept over the aircraft, obscuring it, blanking out the entire scene.

'It's OK, it's OK,' Curtin repeated. 'He's OK… he's slowing, yes, he's OK — Christ!' He was grinning.

THIRTEEN: Outside the Rock Pool

Waterford exhaled audibly through his teeth. Brooke, lying next to him on the crest of the rise, waited for his description of what he could see through the MEL thermal imager.

He continued to traverse the area below them, his face pressed behind the curving grey box of the imager, its rifle-like grip clenched in his mittened hand. Eventually, he appeared satisfied, and rolled onto his back.

'Want a look?'

'You tell me,' Brooke replied.

'I count twelve of them… you can even see the sap in the trees with this toy. It's warmer than the bark.' Brooke grinned. 'Shame of it is, you can't see what weapons they're carrying.'

They had rounded the southern end of the lake, well wide of the shore, then turned to encounter the rising ground between the two lakes. Waterford and his men were now above and behind the Russians. The surrounding trees were all but stripped of snow. The wind hurled itself between the massed trunks, flinging the snow horizontally before it. It was impossible to obtain any sighting of the Russians without the use of the thermal imager which was capable, on its narrowest field of view, of picking up a human body's emissions of warmth at a range of a thousand metres.

'We're going to have to get closer,' Waterford continued with a seeming lack of enthusiasm. 'You and me. Brief your men to stay put. I'll wait for you, ducky.'

Brooke slipped off into the murky, snow-blown light, crouching just below the crest of the rise as he hurried from tree to tree. The shore of the lake was two hundred yards away. Visibility was little more than fifty — yes, Brooke had already vanished, after pausing to speak to the first two-man SBS unit.

Grenade launcher, he thought. Or mortar. Even an RPG-7 rocket launcher. If they had all or any of those, and they well might, coupled with a laser rangefinder, then at the first sign of trouble they could put the Firefox on the scrap-heap. Their weaponry was more important than their numbers, their knowledge, even the radio with which they had undoubtedly communicated with Moscow.

He waited for seven minutes, then saw Brooke emerge from the snow-haze between the firs, and move towards him in a crouch. He slid into a prostrate position next to Waterford.

'Well?'

'OK. Sergeant Dawson's got our friends on the other imager. His count is thirteen, of course.' Brooke smiled. His breath was still hurrying from him. 'They're to give us fifteen minutes, no more. Dawson's doing some pinpointing for the others. I told them I wanted the radio operator alive, if possible. OK?'

Waterford nodded. 'That's about it. He's more likely to talk than the officer or the sergeants. OK, let's go.'

Waterford raised his head, and closed the thermal imager to his face once more. Satisfied, he slung the device at his back and moved the Heckler & Koch caseless rifle to greater accessibility across his chest. He gripped its bulky, almost shapeless form with both hands, climbed over the crest of the rise and began to descend. Brooke moved a few paces behind and to his left. They slipped from tree to tree as quickly and silently as they could. Waterford counted the yards they gained towards the shore, waiting for the moment of visibility. Twice he stopped to check the images revealed through the MEL device. Strange, firelit, patchy ghosts, forms that danced and wavered and changed shape.

He was suspicious of a small group hunched around each other, but not around any central image. No fire, no heater brewing coffee or tea — that was fifty yards away to the left of the group on which he focused. The radio might be there. In the freezing air around each body, each patch of warmth, each heater and cigarette, produced an image. But, in the middle of the group that attracted his attention, there was nothing.

Waterford believed that a grenade launcher or mortar sat, barrel elevated, in the centre of the three shifting flame-shapes he could see through the imager. If such a weapon was there, then it wouid have to be destroyed; its operators killed.

He motioned Brooke forward, pointing out his exact direction. Then he followed. They had covered perhaps a hundred yards of forward movement. Within another forty or fifty yards at the most, he would be able to see them. They would be able to see him. Ahead, Brooke moved with greater caution, with something almost comic in the way he lifted and placed his feet, held his rifle, hunched his shoulders. A cartoon robber. Waterford followed the same pattern of movement. Then Brooke suddenly stopped and whirled behind the trunk of a fir, rifle almost vertical, hand extended to warn Waterford. Waterford ducked behind the nearest tree.

Lower down the slope, the trees were heavy with snow. The wind was less fierce and insistent. Each time he exhaled, his breath moved upwards for almost a second before it was whipped away. He peered round the trunk. Brooke waved him forward. He scampered the few yards separating them.

'Well?'

'Laughter from the tea-party,' Brooke replied. 'Didn't you hear it?' Waterford shook his head. 'Trick of the wind. Catching the noise, I looked. Saw one figure at least. Off over there.' He indicated the gloom to their left and ahead of them with the barrel of his Armalite rifle. Waterford strained to see further into the soft, shifting fuzziness caused by the light and the blowing snow. Something moved, less distinct than the flame-shapes he could see through the imager. He put the MEL against his face. Yes. Two-no, three soldiers, at a brew-up. The thermal image of the heater was clear between them. The mugs of tea or coffee moved like lumps of burning coal. Blue, red, yellow. He swung the imager. A single figure, almost directly ahead, then two more, then the group of three around a cold, empty space, then paler, more distant images. One figure moving, corning closer. Probably the officer.

'To our right,' Waterford said. 'See anything? There — ' He pointed his arm like a sight. Brooke craned forward, then shook his head. 'OK, let me get closer with "What the Butler Saw" here, and then you move up behind me when I give the signal.' He checked on the moving man, and on the.group of three, then stepped from behind the tree. Ninety yards, no more than that now. He crouched and ran, dodging from tree to tree, pausing behind each trunk to listen for noises. Snatch of laughter or jocular abuse from the tea-party, a muffled cough into a mitten.

He rechecked the moving man. Closer, pursuing an orderly, steady progress. The officer. Now, pausing at the group, his flame-shape bending over something -

Had to be. Had to be rocket or grenade launcher, or a mortar. Laser rangefinder. Goodbye, MiG-31. Just in case, Waterford supposed, anything intolerably wrong occurred, they would have the option of-preventing the aircraft's removal. Did he hear their voices then, just as he turned to wave Brooke forward — ?

No. Nothing. He pointed the MEL imager back towards the rise, scanning along it, picking up Sergeant Dawson's kneeling, burning shape, using another MEL imager. Dawson would be watching him. He would see the first shots fired. Bright, burning blobs leaving one flame-shape, entering another. Strangely, though, the change in body heat of anyone killed would not show for some time.

Brooke looked and listened. He shook his head.

'Four of them now. No more than seventy yards. Next tree should do it. Ready?' Brooke nodded. They hurried to another fir, less than ten yards ahead of them. Brooke looked once more, and nodded.

'What is it? Can you see what they've got there?'

Brooke was silent for a time, staring through the short, stubby barrel of his PPE Pocketscope. The light conditions made its use necessary, though it was most effective as a night sight. He lowered the instrument and said, 'It looks like one of their ACS thirty millimetre jobs.'

'Effective range, eight hundred metres. Enough. Anything else?'

'Laser rangefinder, I'm pretty sure.'

'Right. Let's take them all out. Who knows, we might get the rest of them to surrender if we get the officer as well? You — work round that way. I'll outflank them on the other side. Wait until I start firing before you open up.'

'OK.'

Brooke moved off immediately, working his way from tree to tree, threading his path inwards and ahead, towards the shore of the lake. When he was little more than a shadow, Waterford raised the MEL Imager. Brooke's form burned in bright colours. He swung the instrument. Yes, Brooke was close enough. He moved away from the tree, working to his right for perhaps fifty yards until he was satisfied that he had chosen the optimum position.' Immediately he had finished firing, he would make for the position of the radio and its operator. The man was perhaps thirty or forty yards from him. He used the MEL to check. Yes, no more than forty. A straight run. Eight or nine seconds — say ten. How many Russian words can you say in ten seconds?

He checked the group around what he, too, could now see was an ACS 30mm grenade launcher on a tripod, with its round drum, like a heavy case of film, attached to the barrel. The laser rangefinder sat on top of the barrel. Waterford had no doubt that the elevation of the barrel would direct a grenade into the clearing where the Firefox sat.

The officer stood up, addressing a last remark. Someone laughed, a noise above the wind. The officer made to move away. Waterford gripped the ribbed plastic of the rifle's barrel, and fitted the stock against his shoulder. He squinted into the optical sight. He set the selector level for three-round bursts. There were fifty caseless, polygonal rounds in the magazine. He breathed in, held his breath. The officer moved slightly, straightening like an awakened sleeper, hands on hips. One of the others was looking up at him. It was the moment. Waterford squeezed the trigger of the G. 11.

The officer leapt across the barrel of the ACS, turning a half-somersault. Waterford felt the very slight kick of the slow recoil. The officer had taken all three rounds of the burst, fired within ninety microseconds. Waterford refocused on the man looking up from the ground, his head not yet swinging to follow the leap of his dead officer over the grenade launcher. He squeezed the trigger once more. The man's face disappeared from the optical sight. He heard Brooke's Armalite open up on automatic, turned, and began running.

The radio operator was half-upright, staring towards the man running at him. Four seconds. He was already bent once more over the radio, his fingers flicking at switches, turning knobs. Waterford skidded to a stop twenty yards from the Russian, flicked the selector switch to automatic, and raised the G. 11. The remaining forty-four rounds left the rifle in a brief, enraged burst of noise. The soldier and his radio disappeared in a cloud of snow, the man lifted from his feet and flung away, the radio disintegrating. -

In the ringing silence after the rifle emptied itself, Waterford cursed. Twenty yards more, and the man would have been alive. But, he was opening a channel, about to inform Moscow.

'Damn!'

Now, they needed one of the Russians alive.

Brooke's rifle had stopped firing. Already, Dawson would be moving the rest of the SBS team down the slope at the run. Waterford slipped behind a tree trunk and waited. They needed one of them alive — but only one.

'It has begun,' Aubrey announced sombrely as he put down the headset and turned to Gant and Curtin. 'Waterford reports four taken prisoner, the rest dead. The killing has begun.'

'It began days ago!' Gant snapped at him, sitting on one of the camp beds, still dressed in his flying suit, Thorne was lying on another bed, holding a paperback novel above him, reading. He seemed uninterested in Aubrey's announcement, indifferent to the surge and swell of emotion between Aubrey and Gant. 'Days ago,' Gant repeated. 'It killed Anna, too.'

Aubrey glared in exasperation. 'You have already made your point most eloquently concerning Anna,' he remarked acidly.

'The hell with you, Aubrey — the hell with you. Anna's death is as pointless as those poor bastards spying on your people at the lake. Just — dead. Like that.' He clicked his fingers. 'Just like that. And what the hell for? Why didn't you tell the poor slobs you'd given up on this idea before you had them shot? Just so they could know what they were getting killed for!'

'Be quiet, Gant — !'

'The hell I will!' Gant stood up, as if to menace Aubrey. Curtin watched him carefully, analytically, from the other side of the room, near the radio operator's console.

'There is nothing I can do!'

'Then there was no point at all in it.'

'I can't admit that…'

'Because you can't live with it.'

'I have tried, dammit — I have tried…' Aubrey turned his back and walked to the window. Skogeroya's mountain roots were visible. Gulls were blown like scraps of paper over the grey water of the fjord. Kirkenes huddled on its headland. Another glimpse through the storm, but not the weather window that was still promised for later in the afternoon. Still promised, still on time. It could, they now said, last for as long as an hour. Aircraft could fly in it. 'Pointless,' he announced to the room without turning from the window. Then, as if called upon to explain something, he faced Gant.

'I — these events have been uncontrollable, Mitchell,' Gant sneered at the use of his first name. 'The original operation worked just as planned — yes, even to the unfortunate deaths involved. They were not planned, but they were taken into account. No one was forced to work… but these events — the past days — they are happenings outside the rock pool. Do you understand? Intelligence work takes place in a rock pool. In this case, the marine creatures there, in their sealed-off world, have been disturbed, flung violently about by a storm. There is nothing I can do. I am sincerely sorry about the woman's death, but I did not cause it. Yes, yes, she was blackmailed into assisting you, but I intended — just as you promised her — that she would be safe from her own people and from ours afterwards. I would have persuaded Buckholz to set her free. She could have returned to her lover — that foolish, tragic young man who was the real instrument of her death!'

He broke off, as if he disliked the pleading tone of his own voice. He hated the confession he was making, yet it forced itself upon him not so much because of Gant's accusations but because the guilt had returned. It was filling his chest and his thoughts. There was only one justification in the rock pool — success. But, he could not control these events, he had failed to tailor them to the parameters of intelligence work. Soldiers, equipment, a timetable, weather conditions, repairs, the very location of the Firefox — all had conspired to flood the calm rock pool and fling them all into the raging water. He could now only admit defeat, pack and leave.

'I do not need lessons in guilt from you, Major,' he said tightly, surprising himself.

'I wonder.'

'There's nothing more to be done. Acknowledge Waterford's signal.' He crossed to the charts on the table, shuffling through them. 'Curtin, if you please,' he said. 'Now,' he continued when the US Navy officer had joined him, 'the weather window is such as to prevent the Chinook making it all the way, in and out, from Bardufoss. Therefore, the two Lynx helicopters must be used. We must instruct Moresby to salvage what he can — a list of items from his own descriptions of the on-board systems must be drawn up. Everything must be loaded aboard and flown out the moment the weather clears. They will have perhaps less than half-an-hour before the first Russians arrive, probably in force…' His hand skimmed and dusted at the map as he spoke.

It was swift, decisive, false, and he knew it. The imitation of action. The retreat. 'Our people, those who can't be got on board the two helicopters, must move out to the nearest crossing-point into Norway… that's north-west. Waterford can be relied upon to organise everything in that area…'

He looked up. Gant's shadow had fallen across the chart. His knuckles were white as he leant on them. His face was bleak and angry; a remote anger, something Aubrey could not lessen or turn aside.

'Yes?' Aubrey asked in a voice that quavered.

'Send me in,' Gant said. His eyes did not waver, nor did he blink. There was no colour in his cheeks.

Aubrey shook his head, preparing a smile of quiet, grateful dissent to disarm the American. 'No — ' he began.

'Send me in.'

'Impossible, Mitchell — quite impossible…' He essayed the smile. It appeared to have no effect. Thorne had put down his paperback, and was sitting up against the pillows like an interested invalid. Aubrey sensed that Curtin, beside him, was divided in his opinion.

'Send me in.'

'I cannot risk you — '

'So now I'm valuable?'

'You always were.'

'I doubt it. Send me in the Harrier. Thorne can fly it — I'll fly it if you want to cut down on possible waste… if I can't get that airplane out of there before the Russians, then I come back in the Harrier… look, Aubrey. I can tell them which pieces to remove, which systems. I'm the only one who can!'

'The senior engineering officer is quite capable of doing — '

'The hell with you, Aubrey!' His fist banged savagely on the table. The paperweight on the sheaf of signals jumped to one side. Gant looked at his watch. 'You've got less than two hours to decide. I can be on-site in five or six minutes from take-off. That gives me twenty minutes, maybe more, before the Russians can even move. Tell them to get the airplane ready — find out if they can get it ready. Tell them I'm coming.'

'If they wait, they'll have no time to dismantle — '

'Is that what you want from this — bits and pieces? Is that what anyone wants? Washington? London? They want the airplane. They want the balls that comes from pulling this thing off. They don't want bits and pieces, they want the whole damn thing!'

'I just can't risk it-'

'You try. You'll find it easier than you think. It isn't your neck. Ask them if the airplane will be ready. Tell them I'm coming.'

'It's no more than a machine, Mitchell.'

'It always was. It's too late to remember that now.' He stared into Aubrey's eyes, and lowered his voice. 'Baranovich, Fenton, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Pavel — and Anna,' he whispered.

Aubrey's face whitened. From the corner of his eye, he saw Curtin's quick gesture to silence Gant. Gant's face remained unmoved.

'How dare you…' Aubrey hissed.

'Do it, Aubrey. Give the word. You said it — we're outside your precious rock pool. Give the word. Get that airplane ready for me to fly.'

Aubrey stared into Gant's eyes for a long time. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel and snapped at the radio operator. 'Get "Fisherman",' he said. 'I want an updated report on the repairs. At once!'

'I'm afraid, Comrade Chairman, that we have to assume that your reconnaissance party was surprised and overcome. Which means, in simple terms, that they know that we know. We are each equally aware of the other.' Vladimirov buttoned his greatcoat and descended the steps of the Palace of Congresses. Andropov, in a well-cut woollen overcoat made in Italy, walked beside him. 'It's hard to grasp what the weather must be like up there,' Vladimirov added, deflecting the conversation.

'Mm?' Andropov murmured, watching the placement of his feet; his expensive shoes were protected by galoshes. Frozen snow crunched beneath Vladimirov's boots. Andropov looked up at the general. 'What did you say?'

'The weather-in Lapland,' Vladimirov murmured impatiently. He was angry with Andropov, though relieved to escape the claustrophobia of that glassed-in, underground tunnel of a control room for at least a few minutes.

'Oh, yes.'

Andropov's mind reached into the political future, towards failure, while his own thoughts anticipated at least a qualified success. The capture or death of the reconnaisance party was of little importance now. The weather conditions prevailing at the lake and along the border, controlled everything; defined action, timetabled events.

The strategy, the tactics, did not satisfy, even interest Andropov. Already, he was attempting to anticipate how anything other than complete success might be used against him, used to thwart his ambitions within the Politburo and beyond it. For Andropov, the weather, more than a limitation, was a prison, a promise of failure.

'The weather-window we are expecting in — less than two hours — ' Vladimirov pulled down his sleeve over his gold watch ' — will reach the forward units of the Independent Airborne Force approximately thirty-two minutes after it reaches the lake. With luck, helicopters can be airborne twenty-six or seven minutes after the weather-window reaches the lake. At top speed, their flying time in the conditions would be — no more than twenty minutes.' He raised his gloved hands, as if to appreciate the windy blue sky, the swiftly moving high clouds, the raw, clean air. Or the massive, crowding buildings of the Kremlin around them as they walked the concrete paths. 'That means they will have less than forty-five minutes of better weather before we arrive — '

'Forty-five minutes,' Andropov repeated, deep in thought.

'Gant is not on-site, he can't be. Nothing can get in or out. Probably, he is in Kirkenes — coded signals traffic suggests Aubrey is there, some kind of temporary control centre, I imagine. Gant may take as long as fifteen minutes by helicopter or aircraft to arrive. That leaves thirty minutes or less. The MiG-31 cannot be ready for him the very moment he arrives… that lake cannot be utilised as a runway without preparation. Even if the MiG is fuelled, armed and pre-flighted when he arrives, he will have to wait.' He stopped and turned to Andropov. Behind the Chairman of the KGB, the Trinity Tower, topped by its huge red star, loomed against the sky. 'Do you see? We have him. We have the pilot and the aircraft in our hands.'

Andropov adjusted his spectacles. 'I seem to have heard that cry all too often before,' he replied sharply. 'You have a second line of defence, I take it, General?'

'Defence?'

'Against failure.' Andropov's narrow face was chilled white.

'I see.' Vladimirov felt uncomfortable, almost guilty; as if he had joined some unscrupulous conspiracy against his friends. 'Of course,' he continued brusquely. 'Border squadrons will be airborne. Interceptors from "Wolfpack" squadrons on the Kola Peninsula will be in the air as soon as the weather breaks sufficiently for them to take off. As a line of defence.'

'You still think you can capture the MiG-31 intact?'

'Why not? I don't believe its destruction should be our first objective.'

'The Finns will try everything to arrive the moment the deadline expires,' Andropov announced tiredly.

'If they get there, and find the aircraft, they will hand it over to us. As long as it remains where it is, it is ours. Obviously.'

'As long as it remains where it is.'

'We shall have to contrive that it does so,' Vladimirov snapped. Lost sleep, concentrated thought, continual tension seemed to overtake him for a moment. He rubbed his forehead. Touching the peak of his cap made him aware of his shoulder boards, his greatcoat, the medal ribbons he wore. They revived him, reasserted his superiority over the ambitious politician beside him. 'I have computer predictions of a timetable for repairs, drying out, replacement, preparation… all of them suggest that, with limited equipment, they will be hours behind their self-imposed deadline. Andropov, they can't fly the MiG out. It won't be ready.'

'So you hope.'

'So I believe.'

'Mm.' Andropov turned away, like a camera scanning the walls and towers and buildings of the Kremlin. The fortified encampment in the wilderness, Vladimirov thought. His mind was filled with contempt for Andropov and what he represented. Protected by their walls, he continued to himself, afraid of the wild tribes outside the palisade. They don't belong -

'I see our revered First Secretary heading this way,' Andropov murmured, smiling thinly as Vladimirov's head jerked up and his lips trembled slightly. Then anger at his own weakness darkened the soldier's features. 'You can't be above it all, you see,' Andropov added.

Vladimirov felt as if the Soviet leader had been watching them from his office window and had pounced, hoping to catch them at some conspiracy, or simply off-balance. His trilby hat was jammed onto his head, his coat with its astrakhan collar was wrapped around him; his bodyguards hurried after him. Both men moved towards the Soviet leader, preparing their minds and faces.

'What is happening?' the First Secretary asked accusingly, looking at each of them in turn. The bodyguards loitered. 'I rang the command centre, only to be told that you had gone for a walk.'

'It is all decided — everything has been worked out,' Andropov replied calmly, indicating Vladimirov. The First Secretary appeared to make an immediate pact with the Chairman of the KGB. His face darkened when he turned to Vladimirov, ready to accuse.

'Well, General-well?'

'Comrade Chairman Andropov and myself have made our decisions, First Secretary. We were on our way to inform you privately.'

Andropov's glasses caught the sun, and glinted. It was like a surrogate smile, a small signal of congratulation. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'We differ in some essentials, however.'

'I will tell you what is to happen,' the Soviet leader announced, walking on down the path, careful of his footing, waiting for them to fall into step at either side of him. Vladimirov clenched his fists for a moment, then caught up with the older man. Andropov was already to his left.

'We would value your opinion, of course — ' Andropov began.

'You will listen to your orders.'

'First Secretary, I have to say that you are not — '

The gleam in the First Secretary's eyes silenced Vladimirov. It was more eloquent than the threats which followed. 'Orders. Do you really want me to produce the Minister and Deputy Ministers, the Military Council in force, the General Staff, the Commander-in-Chief of Warsaw Pact Forces, members of the Politburo — more than enough to form a quorum — half the Central Committee…?' The Soviet leader waved his arms in the air, as if conjuring his supporters. 'All of them will tell you that I am right, even before I say anything! What is it you want, Vladimirov? What proof do you require before you realise that this business — all.of it — falls under my control? I have allowed you to lead. Now, you will follow. Do you understand me?'

Vladimirov stared over the trilby hat, towards the Archangel Cathedral and the great bell-tower of Ivan the Terrible. He fought to control his features; to prevent his lips from twisting in ugly, frightening contempt, to prevent a blush of anger and shame entering his skin. Eventually, without meeting the Soviet leader's gaze, he nodded stiffly. 'I understand you, First Secretary.'

'Good.' Clouds moved swiftly behind the trilby hat, behind the bell-tower and the cathedral's domes. Shadow for a moment or two, then cold sunlight again. 'Good.'

'What is it you wish to be done?' Vladimirov asked. It was evident that the First Secretary had been in consultation with members of the General Staff and the Military Council. He was certain of himself. He had a scenario prepared. A consensus had been reached.

'You have one attempt — just one — to recapture the MiG-31. If that fails, then the aircraft is to be destroyed where it stands. Do you comprehend?'

Vladimirov nodded miserably. The First Secretary had ensured his backing for such a decision. The wasted billions, the wasted high technology, the wasted lives, did not matter. Safety first. The General Staff and the Council had accepted the wisdom of erasure. Better no one than the Americans. Obviously, he already had given guarantees that the project would be continued, and that continuity of funding was assured. In exchange, the General Staff had agreed that no one be held responsible for the theft of the MiG. A fresh start would be made. The matter would be forgotten.

Vladimirov wondered who had been on his side. The Minister of Defence — Kutuzov, certainly, but who else? He still had some influential allies, otherwise he would never have been granted even one chance to recover the aircraft. Someone would have ordered a small, powerful bomb to be dropped, or a stand-off missile to be fired -

And then he saw the trap, opening up at his feet. Realisation raced like the clouds beyond the domes of the cathedral. He was expected to fail. He would be disgraced, and removed. The First Secretary — perhaps even Andropov, too — would be revenged upon the insubordinate soldier. A warning to others. He dropped his gaze and met the Soviet leader's eyes. And saw that his insight was a true one. This man wanted his head.

Summoning as much bravado as he could, he said, 'One chance, First Secretary? Then I shall take it, gladly. We'll capture the aircraft and our friend, the American!'

The MO-MAT creaked with frozen snow as a great bale of it was slowly unrolled along the cleared shoreline. The trees there had been cut down and the bases and roots grubbed out to make an open flat area which stretched away to a point where the ice would bear the weight of the Firefox. The portable runway covered rutted mud, pockmark holes, frozen slush.

Buckholz stood on the shore, his back to the soupy, refreezing water beneath which the aircraft had lain. He could hear the creaking of the MO-MAT, and the noise disturbed him. At that distance, he should not have been able to hear it. The wind must be dropping. He turned his face into it, and his cheeks were numbed almost instantly. But he could hear the MO-MAT, hear distinctly the chain-saws, even hear the voices of the mechanics and engineers who swarmed over the airframe. There should be nothing else but the wind. He pulled back the cuff of his parka, and looked at his watch. According to updated reports, they had another hour.

Runway, he told himself. Runway. He would need Moresby to check that. They needed upwards of four thousand feet of clear ice, and God alone knew what lay out on the lake. He had an image of Gunnar stumbling, tripping and falling against small ridges of drift that had frozen. The aircraft could never achieve its take-off speed, maintain its heading or preserve its undercarriage intact if the obstacles were too numerous, too solid…

He moved towards the aircraft. It was like entering a warm and familiar room. Cannon ammunition was being fed into the huge drum aft of the cockpit. Two AA-6 missiles had already been fitted beneath the wings. The ammunition was NATO in origin, but fitted the drum and the calibre of cannon aboard the MiG-31. The two missiles were a bonus, Buckholz admitted. Salvaged from a MiG which had crashed, killing the pilot, on the Varanger-Halvoya while trying to get back to its Kola Peninsula base with an electrical fire on board. The wreckage had been returned, together with the pilot's remains. The missiles had ended up at Bardufoss with the RNAF Tactical Supply Squadron.

Beneath the aircraft lay a crude timber support and a deflated black airbag. They had been used to lift the airframe off the ground to test the undercarriage. To one side, the hot-air blowers lay waiting for re-use. Much of the MiG's airframe was covered by temporary shrouding when operations began, and the air blown around the airframe to dry it. The shrouds remained around the engine intakes. One engineer had only minutes before completed his slow, patient journey around the aircraft with a smaller, more portable blower, drying off every hinge, flap, and lock on the airframe.

The fuselage had been patched where it had been torn by cannon fire. The fuel lines had been repaired. Oxygen had been loaded aboard. The aircraft looked like an expensive model, as far as Buckholz was concerned. Somehow, it no longer seemed designed to fly. Sinister yes, beautiful in a dangerous way. But — a copy. A fake. He could not believe that the avionics, the hydraulics, the instruments, the engine itself, even the flaps and rudders — would operate. More than seven hours after the drop, after work had begun on the Firefox, Buckholz could not believe.

He signalled to Moresby, who seemed reluctantly to detach himself from a conversation with two of his team leaders. Yet the Englishman hurried the short distance between them.

'What is it, Buckholz?' he snapped, glancing back towards the aircraft. 'Not just a polite enquiry, I hope?'

'No.' He turned to face the snow-swept lake. Visibility, he realised, was improving. He could see the ice, the patches of snow, the ridges, stretching away from the shore. 'The runway,' he explained.

'Ah, yes. Been thinking about that.' Moresby glanced back at the aircraft, and shouted, 'I don't want that radio tested until we know we're going for the real thing!' One of the two men to whom he had been talking raised his hand in acknowledgement. 'Can't trust the bloody Russians not to be listening, mm? Even if they know, I don't want them knowing any more… that way, they might think we haven't got a hope!' His smile was like a wince. 'Come on, let's have a look at this runway!'

They walked out onto the ice, hunching against the wind and the intermittent snow.

'Four thousand feet-better give him a little more…' Moresby murmured, studying a compass, changing direction almost mechanically. 'Swings here… Ah, clear ice. Just a spot of paint for the moment.' He drew an aerosol from his parka and sprayed red paint onto the ice, a curving arrow in shape. 'There — nice touch.' Then he began striding in measured steps away from Buckholz, heading north up the lake. Buckholz caught up with him, and they walked together, faces protected from the wind, goggles now in place to cover their eyes.

'How're things?' Buckholz asked eventually. Moresby appeared to be counting. Every hundred paces or so, he sprayed the snow or ice with a blotch of red paint.

'Wife's fine thank you. Wants to go to Venice this year… not keen myself.'

'The airplane, dammit!'

'Oh-so-so. Good and bad, yes and no.'

'I see.'

'It won't be ready in the next hour, nor the next two,' Moresby announced. 'Except by a miracle.'

'Hell — what's wrong?'

Moresby sprayed a patch of clear ice. Then he bent near a ridge of snow, and poked at it. It was only fifteen inches high. 'Mm,' he murmured. 'Some of these will have to be levelled off-hot air, and all that. The rest can be blown off with a downdraught.'

'Downdraught?'

'We have two helicopters, old man. If they fly up and down this runway you want, they'll blow most of the snow clear. What's too stubborn to move, we'll have to melt! Come on, let's get on with it.'

'What's wrong with the aircraft?'

'Oh… Look, Buckholz, let me take you through it, nose to tail, as it were — then you'll see the problem. The problem that is now increased by the fact that the Russians know where we are and what we're doing… I really don't think, do you, that a short slow hop into Norway is going to be enough?'

'Maybe not — I just hope…'

'Well, you do that, Father, and the rest of us will work. That aircraft has to work — it has to be capable of speed, altitude, combat tactics, firepower. Just like when it came from the factory. And that is taking a little longer to achieve!'

'Can you?'

'No. Nowhere near. Look — ' He sprayed a ridge with red paint. 'That's three thousand feet. The whole airframe is dry… the air-driven back-up instruments and systems — they all work… hydraulics and flying controls, OK… We can't even begin to tinker with the thought-guidance or the anti-radar — we don't know how they work. We've checked the connectors, the switches, the wiring, in case of shorts or damage…' They paced on through the flying snow. Visibility stretched suddenly to perhaps seventy or eighty yards, then closed in again just as quickly. Moresby continued: 'Patching up the battle damage was relatively easy, so was draining the water from the fuel tanks. The radar and the other avionics in the nose section-well, we've done what we can. Checked it out, replaced just about all the multi-connectors and some wiring that looked a bit dodgy… that's about the limit of what we can do here-without the workshop manual!' Moresby smiled, sprayed red paint, paused to kick a low ridge that extended to either side of them, then moved on. 'The manual firing systems seem OK. Your man could shoot. However, down at the tail, those decoys are not what the Russians were using, but they might work, they come off the ejector rails OK, and they ignite, of course, they might just give enough of a showing on infra-red to fool a missile — perhaps.'

He was silent, then, and eventually Buckholz said, 'And yet you won't be ready?'

Moresby sprayed paint and announced, 'Four thousand. Where are we?' He stared into the snow and wind. 'Mm. Visibility, fifty yards. Let's have a look and see what he's got left before he hits the north shore and the trees!' They walked on for some paces, and then Moresby replied to Buckholz's question. 'No, we won't be ready. She has to be fuelled up, for one thing. The radio, the electrics, the engine all has to be tested. We're less than half-way through the full instrument check. I wouldn't give this aircraft a chitty by the end of tomorrow.' He paused. 'Ah, there we are. Just a bit less than four and a half thousand feet. He'll be lucky.'

'How long will it take to strip out the most important equipment from the aircraft?'

'Two hours minimum.'

'Then-'

'We're committed, one way or the other. Once the weather clears, your man will have to take off, or else we blow up everything, without salvaging even the anti-radar and the thought-guidance systems. I can't put it any more kindly than that.'

Buckholz stared at the trees fringing the curving shore of the lake. It was visible now, a vista that retreated into the snowy haze. The weather was improving. There was less snow, even though the wind did not seem to be dropping.

'Can we clear this runway?'

'Oh, yes — I think so. Not too much trouble, using our two Lynx helicopters. And a hot-air blower for these bloody-minded little ridges. The ice underneath was OK. If he's any good, he could get off…' Moresby glanced up at the sky. Cloud, heavy and grey, was revealed above the lessening snow. 'But, now that they know, what is he going to meet up there, even-if he does get off? I wouldn't give that aircraft any chance in a dogfight with a Spitfire, never mind a MiG-25!'

'Yes, Moresby, I understand that. Yes, yes, it's my decision. Thank you. I'll be in touch.'

Aubrey walked away from the console towards Curtin, deliberately ignoring Gant, who was staring out of the window at the returning landscape of mountains and fjords.

'Well, sir?' Curtin asked.

Aubrey wobbled his hand, a signal of dubiousness. 'Moresby is keener on salvage than on flight,' he said. 'What do you have from Eastoe and North Cape?'

'The traffic they've picked up at North Cape indicates at least one troop helicopter has crashed on landing. No details, but it happened at Nikel, which seems to be their main assembly point.'

'Mm. What estimates of current strength?'

Curtin shrugged. 'Now we're really into the guesswork area. Maybe upwards of one hundred commandos… that's predicting the time they found out, the weather then and since, the known locations of units of the Independent Airborne Force… just about everything. But it's still pretty vague, sir.'

'A hundred-I see.'

'And gunships. Our people haven't got Blowpipe or any other missile. They're sitting targets for a gunship attack — so's the Firefox.'

'I know that — !' Aubrey snapped, then added: 'Sorry. Go on.'

'Eastoe's reporting movements all the time. It's very difficult for them… hence the helicopter crash. That will teach them a little caution, sir, if nothing else. There are troop movements on the ground — hard to make out, but it's safe to assume there are some…'

'And nothing has crossed the border as yet — nothing?'

Curtin shook his head. 'We don't think so…'

'But, no one can be certain.'

'No.'

'Well?'

'It looks like they're settling for one big push — a hundred men or more, perhaps two or three gunships besides the transport helicopters…'

'Activity at Kola Peninsula bases?'

'Plenty. No flying — there's no weather for that — yet. The first forward base, at Pechenga, will clear soon after we do, sir. We know what will happen then.' Curtin suddenly detached himself from detail, and said, 'Mr. Aubrey-they know everything. They must know about — him,' he added, nodding his head towards Gant, 'and they know what we're trying to do at the lake with "Nessie"… it's a race, sir. One we can't win. If all they want to do is destroy the Firefox, they'll have an easy time of it.'

'If that's what they want,' Aubrey replied, but it was evident that his features expressed his mind's agreement with Curtin's arguments. He glanced towards Gant's back, then into Curtin's face. He shook his head as a signal of doubt rather than denial. 'The weather is about to open, Curtin. I have ten minutes, little more, in which to decide. It's — difficult…' He pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, cradling his elbow with his free hand. 'So difficult,' he murmured. 'We would have an hour, perhaps less, of sufficiently good weather… after that, he could not take off anyway. Half of that time we will be safe-the Russians won't be able to move. Then perhaps another ten or fifteen minutes before their first units arrive. Three-quarters of an hour. And Moresby swears the thing won't be ready…' He looked up again. 'It is ready, in one sense. Ready for a low-level two hundred mile flight at sub-sonic speed to Bardufoss. He won't guarantee anything more than that. Worse, he cannot tell whether or not the anti-radar is working, or will continue to work, during any sort of flight.'

Curtin nodded his agreement. He dropped his voice, and said, 'You would be sending him up in an airplane which might break down at any moment, which won't do what he wants, hasn't the speed to run away… and may be seen on every radar on the ground and in the air for hundreds of miles around him. That's the gamble, Mr. Aubrey — the real gamble!'

'You think I'd be killing him?'

'I do.'

'Then I can't ask it of him — can I?'

'No, I don't think you can.'

The door of the hut opened. The wind's noise entered, seeming to blow Thorne into the room. As he closed the door, he said, 'It's just about possible — now. In two minutes, even better. What do you want, sir?'

The smell of paraffin was heavy in the air. Blue smoke rolled near the low ceiling. Gant had turned from the window. He crossed to the nearest bed and picked up his flying helmet.

'I'm afraid — ' Aubrey began.

'Me, too,' Gant replied, standing directly in front of Aubrey. His stance was somewhat challenging.

'I meant — '

'I know what you meant. It doesn't make any difference.'

'Mitchell — listen to me, please. You can't be forced to do this… in fact, I'm beginning to believe that you shouldn't even try. Time — time has run out for us. You couldn't survive even if you take off. You know that.'

'Maybe.' Gant's face was bleak. 'I'm not letting them all be wasted, Aubrey. I don't care what it was all for, or whether it really matters a damn — but they're dead and I owe them.' He tucked his helmet under his arm. 'Wish me luck.'

Aubrey nodded, but could not speak. Curtin said, 'Good luck, Mitchell. Great good luck.'

'Sure.'

The door closed behind Gant. Aubrey remained silent. There was a clock on the wall of the hut, an old, bare-faced electric clock with two thick black hands and a spider-leg, red second hand. Aubrey's gaze was drawn to it. The clock of the operation's last phase had begun running. Gant's clock. The second hand passed the figure twelve, beginning a new minute.

An hour, he thought. In an hour, it will be all over. Everything…

FOURTEEN: Whirlpool

The Harrier was an approaching roar which became a misty, uncertain shape against the heavy cloud; a falcon about to stoop. Waterford felt himself able to envisage the scene that confronted the pilot. Whiteness; little more than white-out. A picket-fence of pencilled trees fringing the lake. Contourless, featureless almost.

The shape enlarged, dropping slowly. Roundels, camouflage paint, a grey shark's belly. The undercarriage legs, almost at the wingtips like a child's approximation to their position, hung ready to contact the ice. The fuselage wobbled. Two hundred feet, a hundred and fifty feet…

Now, Gant and the pilot could see their faces; begin to see the ridges and bumps of the ice and drifted snow. See Moresby's splashes of red paint.

Waterford saw the wings flick, the descent unsettled by a whipping reminder of the wind. Snow flurried across the ice, flew through the clearing air. Fifty feet. He wondered whether the pilot would abandon the attempt and rise again as if riding a funnel of air until he was at a safe altitude. But the Harrier continued to drop. Hovering, hesitating…

An image from his boyhood; the stoop of the falcon, then its violent, brute rise back up from the long grass, the rabbit beneath it kicking feebly, wounded through by the talons. The Harrier's port undercarriage touched an instant before the starboard. Then the nosewheel dropped with an audible thump. Someone — perhaps as many as half a dozen — cheered. Others ran to secure the aircraft through another flurry of snow.

'He's here,' Buckholz said to Waterford, unnecessarily; merely expelling tension.

'Who? Superman?' Waterford turned to look at the Firefox, then back towards the lake. Two men were already clambering over the Harrier's coekpit sill. 'Yes,' he added more quietly. 'Poor bloody Superman. How the hell does Aubrey con them?'

'Us, you mean?' Buckholz asked, smiling. Without waiting for an answer, he moved down to the ice, raising his arm to signal to Gant, who was removing his flying helmet.

'Us,' Waterford agreed.

Buckholz opened his arms to welcome Gant.

'Buckholz.'

'Mitchell — am I pleased to see you, boy!'

'Later.' Gant was already looking beyond Buckholz, towards the Firefox. Snow petered out against his flying suit. The wind was a thin, high whine. 'Is she ready?' he asked.

'No-'

'Then get her ready, Buckholz!' Gant snapped.

'Wait a minute, Gant — '

'Later.' He hurried past Buckholz and Waterford towards the aircraft. Moresby stood protectively in front of it, his technicians and engineers still clambering over the fuselage and wings, and crouching beneath its belly. An auxiliary generator hummed, providing power to test the aircraft's electronic systems. Gant hesitated in front of Moresby, as if the man demanded respect, politeness. 'Moresby?' he asked.

'Yes, lad. Now, up with you into the cockpit — tell me what it looks like. You have a lot of work to do in the next half-hour.' The tone was light, but Gant saw that Moresby's face was grim and uncertain.

He said, 'Buckholz said she isn't ready.'

'Yes, sir — had a lot of cars in today.'

'How unready?'

'You have to do all the final checks — we have to refuel… that shouldn't take long. You're not going far.'

'What have you got?'

'Trolley-pump — bit slow, I'm afraid.'

'Fill the tanks.'

'You only need enough for a short hop to — '

Even as he prepared to climb into the cockpit, Gant pointed his thumb at the clouds. 'You know what they'll have waiting up there — fill the tanks.'

'You're right, Gant — but, then again, you're wrong. There's no warranty on the vehicle…' He paused, seeming to lean his face towards Gant, as if to confide some secret. Then he said, 'I wouldn't guarantee this aircraft for the couple of hundred miles to Bardufoss. Anything could happen — ' He raised his hand as Gant appeared about to interrupt. 'Listen to me, Gant — please listen carefully. Any kind or amount of damage could have occurred to any or every part of that aircraft while it was submerged. It all looks all right — it all checks out. But — under stress — combat conditions…' He paused again, calculating the effect of his next words. 'You may not break up under combat stress, Gant — but I wouldn't say the same was bound to be true of the Firefox. Do you understand?'

Gant glared at him, then turned and mounted the steps. He swung his legs over the sill, and settled into the pilot's seat. After a moment, he looked down at Moresby, his face white and bleak.

'I understand you good, Moresby,' he said. 'Real good. She could break down, fall to pieces, any time. You don't know, you can't say — ' He broke off, seeming to stare at the instrument panel in front of him. His hands reached out towards the control column. 'How long are you going to be refuelling her?' he asked eventually in a clipped, professional tone.

'Thirty to forty minutes.'

'Then I want her out on the ice — now.'

'What-?'

Gant snapped: 'If I'm not sitting there at the end of the runway when they come over, they may never give me the chance. Get her out onto the ice.'

'Quite right,' Moresby replied, unabashed. 'OK — sit tight.' Moresby moved away, already raising his voice, summoning and briefing his engineers and technicians.

Gant sat in the pilot's couch. The tremor in his hands subsided. It hadn't been fear. Anticipation. Moresby's warning had had no effect apart from a momentary anger. Now, all he felt was an impatience to be gone. There was an arrogance like that of a bird of prey. The activity around him was no more than the means of returning the aircraft to his control. Anna seemed to have retreated from him, down a long, narrowing perspective. Other figures followed her; the dead and the living alike.

He heard the tractor tug's engine start up. The bright yellow vehicle chugged along the shoreline towards him, creaking and grinding over the MO-MAT. It skirted him almost respectfully, and its towing bar was clamped to the undercarriage leg beneath the Firefox's nose. Gant turned up his thumb, the driver of the tug returned the signal, then exhaust fumes billowed as Gant felt a shudder through the airframe. Reluctantly at first, the Firefox began to move backwards. As the tug manoeuvred him, he used the mirror like a car-driver almost as if he were reversing into a parking place. The Firefox rolled protestingly along the MO-MAT.

Buckholz stood watching the aircraft move. Other people, too, had paused in their tasks. Incongruously, it was moving backwards. For a moment, he had intended protesting the moving of the airplane, before he realised that camouflage was pointless, the trees did not protect against grenades and rockets. Gant would need every second, even half-second of advantage.

Slowly, the aircraft reversed onto the ice, dropping down the shore, pausing, then settling level on the last yards of the portable runway. The tug continued to push her until the Firefox cleared the MO-MAT and turned a reverse half-circle on the ice so that her nose was facing north, up the lake. The snow had almost stopped now and Buckholz could see perhaps for some hundreds of yards before the chill, grey air seemed to solidify into a rough blanket hung across the scene. From the cockpit, he guessed that Gant could see no more than one-third of the total length of ice-runway he would require to take off.

He hurried towards the Firefox. People returned to their work, the marines took up defensive positions beside the aircraft once more. More like a guard of honour than a force to be employed, Buckholz thought.

Around the aircraft, under the supervision of the Royal Engineer captain, men began clearing the packed and drifted snow. A gang of children clearing the front path, or the driveway from the garage to the street for their father's car.

Gant was looking down at him.

'You want the take-off run cleared now?'

'Sooner the better.'

'I'll get right on it.' Buckholz turned away, then looked back at Gant. 'You don't have to do this, you know. Take a risk with this, I mean.' Gant did not reply. Buckholz moved back towards him, and touched the side of the fuselage below the cockpit. 'Moresby must have told you about the risks involved. I'm just telling you, Mitchell — you don't have to go through with it.'

Gant looked down at him. There was something uncomfortably distant and arrogant about his face. 'Get those choppers aloft, Buckholz…' He paused, then added without grace or warmth: 'And — thanks.'

'OK — I just don't want you beefing at me when she falls out of the sky like a black brick.'

'I promise.'

Buckholz waved, and then undipped his R/T from his parka. 'Come in, Gunnar — Gunnar?'

Gunnar's reply crackled in the freezing air. 'I hear you, Mr. Buckholz — go ahead.'

'Get the brushwork done — man here has to get to work on time,' Buckholz said with a faint grin. Then he turned to watch the far shore of the lake, a misty, uneven line. The trees were emerging from the thick air like spars of an old pier. He could hear, quite clearly, the rotors of the two Lynx helicopters starting up, and waited for them to lift out of the grey, dirty haze.

Gant watched as Moresby's technicians wheeled the trolley-pump down the shore towards him. Two of the air transportable fuel cells were clumsily rolled forward onto the ice. A hose from the first of them was dragged to the port wing and attached to the fuel filler pipe. Gant waited, almost stirring in his seat with impatience, until the noise of the pump starting up calmed him. Moresby watched the whole operation with an unchanging grimness of expression. Fuel began to flow into the port tanks.

Moresby swiftly crossed the ice to the aircraft and climbed the pilot's steps until his head was above the sill and he was looking down on Gant. He activated the stopwatch on the main instrument panel. Its second hand moved jerkily. Moresby glanced at his own stopwatch, hung around his neck.

'Right,' Moresby announced. 'We've been working our backsides off for nearly eight hours now, laddie. Let's see how quickly you can get things done, shall we?'

Gant looked into the senior engineering officer's face, and nodded. 'OK, Moresby. Let's get started.'

'And don't switch on the ignition while we're pumping in fuel, will you?'

'Sure — but if I call for hot refuelling…'

Moresby growled. 'Don't — if you can avoid it.' He raised his eyes, and then added, 'Sixteen minutes and twelve, thirteen seconds have elapsed since you look off from Kirkenes. Let's get cracking, shall we, old man? We've been through everything we can… you'll know if the read-outs seem different in any way.' Moresby glanced down from the pilot's steps and paused in his instructions until the auxiliary power unit had been wheeled up to the aircraft's flank and reconnected to the Firefox. Then he said, 'Right — run through the pre-flight check, taxi and pre take-off as far as you can — I'll keep the tally.'

Gant hesitated, savouring the moment. Then his hands moved. He switched on the Master Electrics, and immediately heard a whirring noise that slowly mounted in pitch.

'Good. Gyro instruments winding up,' Moresby murmured. 'Emergencies pressure normal-check… Flying controls. Normal feel and full travel…?'

Gant's thumb left the throttles and depressed a spade lever. 'Sixty degrees, and indicating,' he announced as the flaps lowered.

As he raised the flaps again, the heel of his left hand nudged a lever and the airbrakes extended with a mild thump which gently rocked the airframe. He waited, then. Moresby sensed his uncomfortable impatience. He looked away from Gant as the two Lynx helicopters lifted above the trees on the opposite shore and moved across the ice towards them, perhaps two hundred feet above the lake. Gant, too, had turned his head.

They curtsied and sidled as they hovered near the Firefox, before dropping slowly like fat black spiders at the ends of invisible threads. With Gunnar's helicopter in the leading position, they moved slowly away up the lake. Snow billowed around them in the downdraught, rolling like dust thrown up by a scything, horizontal wind. When it cleared there were ridges of frozen snow amid the smoother, cleaned expanse of ice.

'It's working,' Moresby commented.

'Annunciator panel and warning lights — test,' Gant prompted.

He pushed switches on the panel. The noise of the helicopters drummed and echoed around the lake. Royal Engineers were already using hot-air hoses and shovels to flatten and disperse the low, sword-edged dunes of frozen snow. He saw that most of them were already marked with something that might have been red paint.

The check lights on the panel glowed in the correct sequence.

Eventually, Gant said, 'Anti-G control — on… and check.'

'Now the UHF,' Moresby announced. 'Select the Soviet Tac-channel. Then we can listen to what our friends are up to. No transmission test yet.'

'OK — then what day is it?'

'Thursday.'

Gant removed a small card from its holder on the radio control box. He required the sequencing code to lock onto the secure Soviet Tac-channel, since the pattern of frequencies was altered each day.

'Got it,' he announced.

He switched on the radio, then slipped the Russian flying helmet onto his head. He plugged in the communications and thought-guidance jackplug at the side of the couch. Then he pressed the selector buttons, keying in the sequencing code, and almost at once the two red dots locked on, stuttering as they followed the changes of frequency. Moresby was looking at him. He concentrated on the crackling lash of voices in his ear. Activity, activity, he waited, hardly breathing. The stopwatch informed him that eighteen minutes had passed. Nothing was airborne. Everything was, however, fuelled and ready, awaiting the order to take off. Repeated references to the location of the lake, of tactics, of the pattern of overflights, selected squadron altitudes and search areas…

He switched off. 'It's OK,' he announced. It wasn't. He felt a creeping numbness, a reluctance to go on. They would be waiting for him. Perhaps ten or fifteen aircraft, expecting him to be visible only on infra-red, waiting in specific, clever patterns, as if they held nets between them and would cast for him the moment they saw the heat of his exhaust as he lifted from the lake.

The cloud of snow was retreating. Ridges and drifts were being smoothed and erased. The two Lynx helicopters were distant, unreal black dots at the far end of the lake.

He would have no chance.

There was no other way. He swallowed, and in a dry voice, he said, 'Repeat.'

'I asked you about the anti-radar and the thought-guidance. We don't know how they work so we can't reassure you as to whether they will work or not. Was there anything on the panel in connection with the anti-radar?'

Gant shook his head. 'There was no electrical or mechanical action to be taken.' He looked at Moresby. 'I don't know — '

The Lynxes were lost again in the cloud that was now moving slowly down the lake towards them.

'Damn,' Moresby muttered. Then he punched one mittened hand into the other. 'Got it!' He bent his head, placing his lips close to his R/T. Thorne — Thorne?' His voice was eager and querulous. Gant glanced across at the Harrier. He could see Thorne's hand wave in acknowledgement.

'Yes, sir,' he replied punctiliously.

'Be a good chap and see if you can see us, will you?' Moresby asked with affected casualness. 'On your radar, naturally.'

'But-'

'No buts. Just do it, my boy.'

'Sir.'

'Meanwhile,' Moresby said to Gant, 'you can check out pressurisation and air conditioning.'

'OK,' Moresby climbed down the pilot's steps as Gant closed the cockpit. He heard Moresby attach a lead to the landline. socket on the fuselage, so that they could communicate. He locked the canopy. He was isolated in the Firefox. He connected his oxygen supply. The oxygen content and pressure were satisfactory. All that remained was to check the warning systems for pressurisation, since cockpit pressure could only be checked at altitude. The lights all glowed comfortingly as soon as he summoned them. He could not check heating and demisting until the engines were ignited and running. Again, he checked the warning lights. They, too, glowed instantly. 'All check,' he said.

'Good. Now, wait a minute while we unload these missiles, then you can check the thought-guidance system. I'll give you the word…' Gant felt the two jolts as the AA-6 missiles were removed from their wing pylons. Then Moresby's face appeared outside the cockpit hood, his thumb erect in front of his features. Gant hesitated, then gave a mental command in Russian to fire a port wing missile. The sequence of lights stuttered across the panel. He counted them, remembered them. It appeared to work.

He opened the canopy. 'OK,' he said, removing the helmet.

'Right. Get those missiles back on their pylons,' Moresby called down to his technicians. 'Life-support?'

'OK.'

'Thorne here, sir,' they both heard from Moresby's R/T.

Gant's hand twitched on the sill of the cockpit.

'Yes?' Moresby snapped.

'It's difficult, sir-hard still object on a hard still surface against a cluttered background — '

'But?' Moresby said sombrely.

'I shouldn't be able to pick up anything, should I, sir?'

'No,' Gant said heavily.

'I — it's… I do have an image on radar, sir. Of the — Firefox. In flight, on the moving target display, I'd expect a strong reading…Sorry, sir.'

Moresby stared at Gant. 'That's it, then.' Gant felt a shudder run through his body. 'That's sodding it!' Moresby shouted. 'The anti-radar's been damaged — it doesn't work! You'll be a sitting duck as soon as you're airborne.'

'But-'

'No buts! I can't repair it — I don't know how it works!'

Aubrey turned away from the communications console. Eastoe, already supplying reports on all signs of movement along the border, especially at Nikel, and at the closest Kola Peninsula fighter bases, had relayed to Aubrey Moresby's discovery of the failure of the anti-radar system.

Curtin thought Aubrey looked ashen. He did not know what to say to the Englishman. He was relieved when Aubrey moved away towards the farthest corner of the room. It was as if he wished to hide. But the corner seemed to repulse him, for he backed away from it. When he turned, his face was determined.

'Thorne must get him out of there!' he said, coming back towards the console. He glanced up at the clock. Twenty-three minutes since the weather had begun to clear. The window must be close to the Russian units at Nikel by now. The interceptor bases on the Kola Peninsula would be free of the foul weather later than Nikel, but there, within minutes, the first helicopters would be airborne, carrying the first wave of commandos. They would take less than twenty minutes at top speed to reach the lake. Less than thirty minutes, then, before there was absolutely no possibility of rescue for Gant. What could they salvage of the aircraft in that time, prior to destroying the airfrarne…?

And getting the people out.

Waterford would have to organise a retreat on foot, to some prearranged point where they could be picked up when the weather cleared. Vital personnel land equipment must come out aboard the two Lynx helicopters -

'He must get him out of there,' tie, repeated, grimacing. 'Get "Fisherman" at once.'

The radio operator swivelled in his chair and faced the smaller rack of radio equipment which they used to communicate with the lake. He repeated Buckholz's call-sign, and was answered. Aubrey muttered and paced while Buckholz was summoned to the radio. As soon as he heard the American's voice, Aubrey snatched the microphone with a trembling hand.

'"Fisherman",' he said. Then realising the futility of codes, he added, 'Charles — get Gant out of there at once. Thorne is to bring him back here immediately.'

'The anti-radar, you mean?' Buckholz replied. 'Look, Kenneth, we have maybe twenty minutes… what other way do we have? He has to fly the plane out — !'

'Without the anti-radar, he hasn't a chance…'

A stray flash of sunlight lit the room. Dust-motes danced, as if. mirroring Aubrey's agitation. Then the sunlight disappeared.

'What about the helicopter force?' Buckholz asked.

'No movement yet. Charles, order him to get out of there. Salvage what you can. Get Waterford to organise the loading of the two Lynxes… and the withdrawal — Charles, do you hear me?'

Instead of Buckholz's voice, Aubrey heard Gant. His voice was distant. 'No way, Aubrey. No way.'

'Mitchell, please listen to me…'

'I heard. The anti-radar doesn't make any difference.'

'You haven't got time — !'

Gant was suddenly speaking to someone else — presumably Moresby. Aubrey strained to catch the words. 'Hot refuelling… the hell it does! Hot refuelling — '

'Jesus!' Curtin breathed. Even the radio operator appeared abashed.

'What — ?' Aubrey began.

'Refuelling while the engines are running. He's going to start the engines while they're still pumping in fuel. One mistake and — '

'Charles — stop him!' Aubrey snapped.

'Why?' he heard Gant ask. 'Does it matter who blows this airplane up — me, you, Buckholz, the Russians?'

'Let me speak to Moresby.'

'No. There isn't time — he's busy right now.'

The radio operator was scribbling busily. Curtin held one earpiece against his head, nodding as he listened. Then he said, 'Three heavy transport helicopters have just taken off from Nikel. They're already across the border. Gant has less than twenty minutes.'

'Charles — they're on their way.'

'Three small helicopters — probably gunships,' Curtin reported. 'One of them's moving faster than the other two. It's probably unarmed and carrying no passengers. Reconnaissance.'

'Charles, give him a direct order. Tell him the mission is aborted!'

'Conditions at the Pechenga airbase should be good enough for flying in no more than seven or eight minutes.'

'Charles,' Aubrey said levelly, his face white, his lips thin and bloodless, 'Gant may no longer have twenty minutes. It is less than one hundred miles from Pechenga to you. A Foxbat could cover that distance in — ?' He glanced at Curtin.

'Maybe another seven, eight minutes at low altitude with half-fuel…' He wobbled his hand to indicate the degree of guesswork involved.

'Once any of those front-line airbases is clear, he has no more than seven minutes. Even if he could take off within fifteen minutes, he has no chance of escaping the attentions of Soviet aircraft. They will simply be waiting for him. Do you understand me?'

'It's all too late, Kenneth. We don't have the time to strip the airframe of even the most valuable equipment.'

'We can't lose Gant — '

'This way there's a chance — '

'There's no chance!'

'I'm not prepared to have him shot in order to stop him, Kenneth.'

'ETA of leading gunship at the lake — thirteen minutes.'

'And when they see the aircraft on the ice,' Aubrey snapped at Curtin, 'and a runway strip blown free of snow — what will they do then?'

'Shoot first, talk later?'

'I would imagine so. Charles, please obey my instructions. I demand that Gant be flown out immediately in the Harrier. Then — destroy the airframe!'

'We're getting Eastoe's reports, too. The reconnaissance MiL should be with us in twelve rninytes. That's the time we have — '

'No!'

'Dammit, yes! We're going to give it our best shot. Now, I'm busy, Kenneth. Out.'

Aubrey was left standing with the microphone in his hand. He stared at it in disbelief, then dropped it as if it contained an electrical charge. He wandered away from the console towards the window.

The clouds were already massing again beyond the mountains, to the north and west. The light was thicker. Snowflakes drifted. The Norwegian army guard passed the window.

Aubrey knew he had failed. His final, desperate throw of the dice had, effectively, cost Gant his life. He had lost both the aircraft and the pilot. Killed people, too — Gant was just the last of his victims. There was nothing he could do now to affect the consequences of his actions. Nothing at all.

'ETA of the reconnaissance helicopter, ten minutes,' Curtin recited. 'Main force, eleven minutes forty. Weather continuing to clear over Pechenga. It might permit flying in four minutes, perhaps less. Eastoe's picking up infra-red traces more strongly. They're on the runway, is his guess.'

They would build a roof of aircraft over the lake, to keep in the Firefox. Without the anti-radar, there was no possibility of escape for Gant.

'What?' he heard Curtin exclaim like a man who has been winded. 'Repeat!'

Aubrey turned from the window. 'What is it?' he asked tiredly.

Curtin held up his hand for a moment, laid down the headset and looked at Aubrey. His face was lined and defeated. 'Just to add to your pleasure,' he said, 'that was Bardufoss. Their weather is right on the margin, now. In minutes, they guess they'll have to close down. Even if he takes off, he won't be able to land.'

'ETA of leading helicopter, six minutes… ETA main force, eight minutes.'

The commpack operator was relaying the information he received to Gant via Moresby's R/T, which was still clipped to the cockpit sill. Gant shrugged, sensing the nervous tension, the urgency in his frame as he gangloaded the ignition switches, reached for the fuel cocks -

And stared in disbelief at the purple light glowing on the main panel, to the left and just below the cockpit coaming.

'For Christ's sake, I thought this aircraft was checked!' he exploded.

Ahead of him, visibility was already decreasing. The window in the weather had lasted for less time than had been forecast. The far end of the lake was dimly visible, an irregularity of the thick air rather than a landscape. The two Lynx helicopters had completed their clearance of the ice. They waited silently now, beside the Harrier, as teams with shovels and hot air blowers completed the task.

'It was,' Moresby replied grimly. He looked down at the technicians who surrounded the Firefox. 'Ramp differential light's on,' he called down. 'Port engine intake — check it now! Come on, you buggers, the intake ramp's jammed or something! Find out what's wrong.'

'How did I miss it?' Gant said, staring at the purple light. 'I missed the damn light!'

'So did we all, Gant — so did we all.' Moresby leaned out from the pilot's steps, clinging to the cockpit sill, straining to see what his technicians were doing. 'Well?' he called. Through the open R/T Gant listened to Waterford as he proceeded with the disposition of his forces. Brooke and his SBS men were to the south and east of the lake, while the marines who had parachuted in from the Hercules were on the opposite shore, where the Russians had been discovered.

'Nothing, sir — it's jammed all right.'

'Why the hell that circuit was only routed through ignition, I don't know!' Moresby snapped in self recrimination, staring at Gant. Frost had begun to rime his moustache, as if the man had been breathing more heavily. Gant's heartbeat raced. He felt his stomach watery and his chest hollow and shallow, as if there was insufficient space for his heart and lungs. 'That bloody APU snarl-up earlier didn't help — nor the bloody rush — come on.'

'ETA of leading helicopter, three minutes fifty.'

'Shit,' Moresby breathed.

'Sir — we've found it — '

'What is it?'

'ETA — three minutes.'

'Piece of sheet metal — looks scorched — it's folded like a bit of cardboard, sir. Wedging the door. Have to be careful with it — '

'Then be bloody careful!' He looked at Gant. 'Some debris from one of your military encounters, old man,' he said with forced and unfelt lightness. Gant merely nodded.

'Get me an update on the Bardufoss weather,' he said into the R/T.

'Sir.'

'I hope to God it stays no worse than it is,' Moresby murmured. 'Because, if you can't get in there, I wouldn't guarantee the vehicle for a longer distance!'

'Two hundred miles-you think I'll be safe two hundred miles away?"

'It's Norway, old man — '

'So?'

Moresby's finger flicked at his moustache. A noise of levering, and scraping, twisting metal, came from aft of them on the port side. Gant shuddered.

'Be bloody careful!' Moresby yelled.

'ETA of leading helicopter, two minutes forty,' the radio operator announced.

'Where's that weather update?'

'Coming, sir — '

Gant heard Buckholz's voice over the R/T organising the loading of the two Lynx helicopters with the Norwegian personnel who had been engaged in the operation. Women, children and allies first, he thought with bitter humour. Waterford's constant radio chatter was a muffled background, since he had left his R/T open. He had perhaps forty-five men. The three big MiLs coming behind the leading, unarmed reconnaissance helicopter and flanked by the two gunships, would be carrying perhaps forty or fifty troops each. Fewer than that only if they were bringing heavy equipment or light vehicles. Waterford dare not make the first move, even to protect the Firefox. He had to get the airplane out — ! If he managed to take off, Waterford's men could melt into the landscape, avoiding all contact with Russian troops.

'I have to get her out,' he repeated aloud.

'Weather, sir — '

'Yes.'

'They're closing Bardufoss in five minutes, sir. Within ten, they say, no one could get in.'

'OK,' Gant replied in a small, tight voice. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he saw Moresby staring at him.

'Where to, laddie? Mm — where will you take her when you get in the air?' It was not sarcasm; rather defeat.

'If I have to — all the way.'

'What?'

'You heard me. All the fucking way, man! UK or bust!' He tried to grin.

'I wouldn't advise that, Gant. Anything, everything — could go wrong. Try to get into Bardufoss — I really am serious about that…'

'ETA of leading helicopter — one minute.'

'For Christ's sake, you buggers, hurry it up!' Moresby raged.

'Sir, we're having to be very careful to avoid more damage- it's really wedged in tight.'

'Then cut the bloody thing into smaller pieces!'

'You have maybe two minutes or a little more — unless they hold back until the leading helicopter's done some spotting,' Gant announced.

'Don't tell me…'

'Maybe we can bank on an attempt to capture the airframe more or less intact?'

'You think so?'

'It depends on one thing,' Gant replied. 'Who's now in command of the operation. If it's still Vladimirov, he'll think he has a chance. If it's politicians — then kiss goodbye to your asses! They'll be blown out from under you.'

'It's coming, sir- OK- yes, it's free, sir!'

'ETA, thirty seconds

'Change to hot refuelling,' Gant snapped as Moresby rammed home the circuit breaker and the light on the panel disappeared. 'Thank God,' he sighed.

'Hot refuelling?'

'Have to now. I want to be ready to move at any moment I choose.'

'How full do you want the tanks?'

'I've got sixty percent capacity now.' Gant shook his head. 'Just keep filling them up.'

Gant glanced up, his body slightly cowered in the pilot's couch, his arm half-raised as if to shield his eyes or protect his face. He could hear the noise of the helicopter rotors.

Men had paused, as they crossed the ice towards the two helicopters, and were looking up. Visibility was closing in, heavy as a blanket. The far end of the lake was already obscured. It had begun to snow; big flakes pattering against the cockpit sill, on the shoulders 6f hi$ pressure suit. He fitted his helmet once more, and plugged in his oxygen supply and the jackplug for the thought-guidance system.

The ugly MiL-24, probably unarmed to increase its speed, appeared like a squat beetle above the clearing. Gant cursed their lack of Blowpipe missiles. Even had they possessed them, he doubted whether Waterford would have opened fire first.

The MiL drifted out over the lake, over the two Lynx helicopters and the unarmed Harrier. Gant could see Thorne's helmet raised to watch it. The gunship floated above the Firefox, as if taunting her,

Moresby's voice instructed his technicians. 'Hot refuelling. Let's get one of the fuel cells close to the wing, along with the pump unit. I want everyone clear of the front intakes, and well clear of the tailpipes. An arc of men with extinguishers — ' He glanced at Gant, but addressed no words to him. ' — on either side of the aircraft. And keep alert!' Then he turned to Gant. 'You listen to me over the landline. I'm staying well clear, thanks very much. Keep your engine power as low as you can, but not below generator power level…' Gant nodded. 'Good.'

Gant watched the technicians rolling one of the huge rubber fuel cells towards the aircraft and abeam of the starboard wing. He heard the connections made with the hose nozzle and the tank. Then the technicians retired. Moresby, standing perhaps a dozen yards away, signalled him to start the engines. The noise of the MiL above them pressed down upon him. The helicopter had been there for twenty seconds, perhaps half a minute. The main force was a minute behind it now. When they saw the engines ignite, having seen the fuel cell coupled, they would guess at hot refuelling and know he was speeding up the preparations for take-off. Would they still wait, when that was reported, or would they move in — ?

He could not expect any more time, whoever controlled events. The Firefox was a sitting target they would not be able to resist. He switched on the master start, pressed the start button and turned on the high-pressure cock.

Behind him, halfway down the fuselage, there was the sound of a double explosion; the discharge of a shotgun's two barrels. In the mirror, he saw the two rolls of sooty smoke drift into the air. He heard the whirring of the turbines as they built up. He switched in the fuel booster pump, and eased the throttles forward. The rpm gauges mounted to twenty-eight per cent. He eased the throttles back as far as he dared, and steadied them. Both huge Turmansky turbojets roared steadily. He grinned with relief. Moresby hand-signalled his team to recommence pumping.

'Thank God,' Moresby said.

Waterford appeared a little distance from the Firefox, at the edge of the clearing. He raised his planklike rifle, and fired several three-shot bursts at the hovering, shifting MiL. Immediately, the gunship flicked away over the trees. Waterford spoke into Moresby's microphone. 'Fucking tourists!' Then he added, 'OK, Gant — they'll be back in force in a couple of minutes at the outside. What they do then will depend on what you're doing. Good luck.' Immediately, he walked away, re-checking the disposition of his marines.

Gant watched the fuel gauges. When should he tell them to stop? When should he end the risk of hot refuelling? How much spare fuel capacity would he require?

He was oblivious of the scene around him. He scanned the instrument and systems panels, checked the centre console, the left-hand console. He operated the rudder and the flaps. Stiff, sluggish by comparison with before, but they would have to do. Then he heard the commpack operator's voice.

'Weather has cleared sufficiently at Pechenga. Two squadrons of interceptors airborne. ETA — six minutes.'

He looked up. Visibility perhaps seven hundred yards, maybe seven fifty. He would be rushing towards a blanket of what might have been fog, except that it was grey-white and falling slowly. The snow was heavier. Only the wind was missing. One of the Lynxes took off, being almost immediately swallowed by cloud. The second Lynx drifted towards the Firefox, to await the rescue of Moresby's technicians.

'OK, that's everyone except your people, Moresby,' he heard Buckholz announce. Gant could see him beside the commpack. The rotors of the Lynx died down. 'We can leave our four prisoners tied up where they are. Their friends will be along any minute. So — let's go…?'

Moresby nodded. 'Thank you, Mr. Buckholz. We'll be aboard in a moment or two.' Then he addressed Gant. 'They've split into two groups — south of us and east, as Waterford suggested. But the gunships are still airborne. They're obviously awaiting orders.'

Gant checked the fuel gauges. And shook his head. 'Not yet,' he said. 'I'll tell you when to stop.' Moresby's face was tired and angry; even frightened.

'Those bloody gunships,' he murmured.

'Gant?' he heard in his earpiece. 'Gant — this is Thorne. I've got an idea.'

'What?'

'A double take-off — let me take off first… it might keep some of them off your back.'

'What are the gunships doing?'

'Holding — agreed?'

Gant flicked on the radar. On the scope, amid the clutter from the worsening weather, he could just make out two heavy, glowing blips of light in close formation. Range perhaps two or three miles. There were paler, higher dots beyond them, at the very edge of the screen, but he disregarded them. They were still as much as five minutes away.

'Good idea — but no thanks. They know which is which. You move out now before they get their orders. Good luck.'

There were puffs of snow from beneath the Harrier which became small billows as she rose on the downward-directed thrust of her engine. The Harrier wobbled aloft, lights winking beneath her wingtips and belly, glowing as much as at dusk. The aircraft turned in the air like a clumsy dancer, then the thrust of the engine was vectored to forward flight. The aircraft slipped behind the snow and was gone.

Gunnar in the second Lynx had watched the Harrier's disappearance avidly. Now, he returned his attention to the Firefox. Gant saw the turn of his head. He was the only Norwegian remaining, waiting for the last handful of technicians. Around the lake were perhaps forty-five marines, all of them hidden except for the white-clothed figure of Waterford outside the windbreak which protected the commpack and its operator. He knew they were waiting for the aircraft to take off so that they could disappear deep into the forest, and make for the Norwegian border in small, quick-moving groups.

The lake was suddenly isolated and lonely. Gant wanted to stop the refuelling that moment, let the technicians go, let Moresby go. Take off-

Two heavy, nearby glows on the radar; other paler dots moving steadily closer above the clouds. In minutes, they would be above him, poised like birds of prey. The encounter was inevitable.

He watched the fuel gauges. He glanced down at Moresby. The two dots on the radar remained motionless.

'Advance units report no contact, General.'

Vladimirov listened with his head cocked slightly on one side as the reports began coming in from the airborne troops set down to the south and east of the lake. The British troops must be slowly falling back to the lake itself, with orders not to engage. A quick thrust now — a surprise outflanking movement around the tree-lined southern shore of the lake, and they might yet have the airframe intact -

The two MiL-24 gunships had been ordered to hold their position, despite the reports from the reconnaissance helicopter that Gant had started the MiG-31's engines and the Harrier and one of the Lynx helicopters had departed. There were only moments left. They must push forward now.

The microphone was in his hand, to give the order. His lips had begun to frame the first words. He had summoned saliva into his dry mouth -

The First Secretary's hand fell heavily on his, startling him. He turned from the communications console. The Soviet leader was framed by the fibre-optic map. The scene upon its surface looked like an indictment.

'What are you about to do, General Vladimirov?'

'I — want our troops to push forward to the lake with all speed-' he began.

There was scorn in the heavy face of the First Secretary. 'No,' he said quietly. Then, more loudly: 'No! Your time has run out, General Vladimirov — run out! There is no time left for you. You — are dismissed!'

The silence in the long gallery was intense, almost audible. Andropov had turned away. No one looked in Vladimirov's direction, although he knew by their stance and lack of movement that they were all listening.

'What do you mean…?'

'I mean you are dismissed, Vladimirov — I mean you are to get out.'

'But — '

'Go! Give me the microphone — ' For a second, they struggled for possession of it like two children quarrelling over a toy. Then Vladimirov wearily, defeatedly released his grip. The First Secretary cleared his throat and said simply; 'Gunship commander — you will begin an attack at once. Destroy the runway, destroy the MiG! Do you understand my order? Destroy!'

Buckholz was standing next to Moresby, looking up at him. Beside him was a large briefcase. He appeared like a traveller eager to be gone.

'Mitchell!' he said through Moresby's microphone. 'Let's get the hell out of here — all of us!' He waved his arms towards the east for emphasis. Gant checked the radar -

And saw that the two glowing dots, in close formation, had begun to move. At high speed.

He waved his hand in agreement. Immediately, Moresby dashed forward to the fuel cell, and switched off the pump. Then he jerked the landline free with a violent tug. As the pump's noise subsided and the first distant hum of approaching rotors reached them, Gant pulled down the cockpit canopy, checked his straps, switched on his oxygen supply, checked the anti-G device of his pressure suit, and pushed the test button. He checked the gauges. The pump was abandoned, the empty fuel cell, like a huge collapsed black aircraft tyre, beside it. Then he saw Buckholz, Moresby and the technicians scurrying across the ice to the open door of Gunnar's Lynx. They climbed in hurriedly.

Gant checked the temperatures and pressures. The dots on the radar hurried through the mist of ground-clutter towards the scope's centre, closing on him. Runway, he thought. Runway first, airplane second. The Firefox strained against the brakes. He eased the throttles forward once more, paused, caught a glimpse of two helicopters — the Lynx lifting and sliding away towards the western shore of the lake and into the obscuring snow, and the first of the armed MiLs, a hundred yards ahead of him, at the edge of the trees. A gauntlet.

He released the brakes. The Firefox skipped forward, like a dog kept too long on its leash. It raced at the unfolding smooth runway of ice. Visibility, perhaps six hundred yards — snow blowing across the lake once more. He switched on the wipers. He thrust the throttles fully forward, and felt the power of the Turmanskys punch him in the back. The ice rushed beneath the nose of the Firefox. Fire bloomed beneath the stubby wing of the MiL-24, and snow and ice cascaded over the fuselage of the Firefox as he raced on.

The wipers cleared the cockpit screen. In the mirror, he saw the ice open up, but the black snaking branches of the cracks caused by the rocket's impact lagged behind him, out of breath and tired.

Fierce elation. Almost delight. The airspeed indicator read one hundred and twenty knots. He still could not see the far end of the lake. The airframe was shaking as the wheels careered overridges and bumps. His teeth chattered painfully, his hand shuddered as it gripped the control column. One hundred and forty knots. The aircraft was almost skipping and bouncing as the wheels discovered every tiny indentation in the ice. One ridge that had been missed, he thought — then quashed the idea. It persisted for another moment-just one, and the undercarriage would snap -

One-fifty, one fifty-two -

He began to ease back on the column, beginning to lift the aircraft's nose. In the mirror, he saw the MiL loom up again as it pursued him. Fire billowed from its wing-pods; rockets. They struck the ice behind him, around, ahead. He was showered with fire which burst into boiling snow and ice. Something clattered against the fuselage. A huge crack in the ice to starboard snaked towards him at terrible speed — then he was past it. The scene behind him was completely obscured.

One-sixty knots.

Then he saw the second MiL, directly ahead of him, the end of the lake behind it; the trees like pencil-marks against the white-grey sky. The MiL wasn't moving. Hovering. Helicopter and shore filled his vision.

It was directly in his path. He was airborne, accelerating through one sixty-five knots. The MiL had positioned itself — it had shunted slightly a moment earlier — directly in the path of his climb-out. It enlarged, an enormous black beetle, hanging there.

He hauled back on the column, sweat bathing his body, his lips stretched to point at the clouds.

The MiL rushed forward anticipating his action, prepared for suicide. Missiles armed. He pulled the column back almost against his chest. The Firefox seemed to stand erect on its exhaust and stagger into the air as if tearing free of a swamp rather than a frozen lake. The MiL was huge in his vision. He retracted the undercarriage as the helicopter seemed to move its nose in, so that he almost expected a shark-mouth to open and tear at the belly of the Firefox. The aircraft leapt at the low cloud. The MiL had vanished; become no more than a wide dot on his scope. A missile's infra-red trail pursued him for a moment, then fell away, unable to match his rate of climb. It would have been wire-guided, for use against ground targets.

He was at ten thousand feet, climbing at the rate of five hundred feet a second. The airframe quivered and shuddered, like a human body that was chilled and growing rapidly colder, as the storm thrust and battered outside the aircraft. His fingers trembled on the control column. The throttles were all the way forward, through the detent and into reheat. The Mach-meter clicked rapidly upwards. Mach.8, 9, 1.0, Mach 1.2…

Eleven thousand feet. He studied the radar. Three glowing dots were moving towards the scope's centre. He demanded contact time from the computer, and the read-out appeared almost immediately. Twenty seconds. They were at fifty thousand feet, and they could see him on radar -

He would break through the cloud ceiling at twenty-four thousand feet, into a searing blue sky, and he would be under a roof of interceptors. Already other, paler dots were appearing at the edge of the screen. His body was still shaking from the aftermath of the almost-collision. Had he kept the Firefox beneath the MiL, he would have ploughed into the shore and the trees and exploded…

He tried to dismiss the past.

Don't think about it, don't think about it, his mind kept repeating. Don't think about it…

He pulled back on the throttles and scanned the instrument panel. No warning lights. Fuel-flow, rpm, radar, avionics, inertial navigator, armaments. The airplane functioned. It was an airplane again, not salvage.

Altitude, eighteen thousand feet and climbing. The grey cloud slid and writhed past the cockpit. The bright white blips on the screen were nearer. Ten seconds to contact.

No anti-radar. They can see you, he reminded himself.

Remember that -

The MiGs were too close to outclimb. Stand-off missiles, heat-seeking, would overtake him even if the fighters that launched them could not. Six aircraft, all closing. All of them could see him. Already, they would have reported that fact, and would have deduced the failure of the anti-radar. The adrenalin would begin to flow, now that they knew. They would consider it easy, consider it already accomplished…

Hide.

Ground-clutter -

Dive.

Course — Bardufoss.

Twenty-one thousand feet. Contact time six seconds. Feverishly, he punched in the co-ordinates to the inertial navigator, and began to alter course. Hide — ground-clutter. Deceive the radars. Five seconds, four-and-a-half, three.

He saw the infra-red flare. A missile launched at Mach 3, then a second and a third. He banked savagely, flinging the aircraft into a steep dive, twisting into a roll so that the thicker, heavier grey cloud was now beneath his canopy. Then he completed the roll and the nose of the Firefox was driving through the cloud, the altimeter unrolling, the streaks of the missile exhausts still pursuing him across the screen. The white blips behind them had altered course and were following him down.

He banked savagely again, feeling the G-pressure build until it was painful. The suit he was wearing, not tailored for him or the aircraft, was slow to adapt to the abilities of the Firefox. His head hurt, his vision was hazy for a moment. Ten thousand feet. The missiles were pursuing a different course, dropping away towards the ground because they had lost his infra-red scent. The effects of the savage turn drained away. He eased the aircraft into a steeper dive. The three closest white blips still pursued him.

Five thousand feet. He began to pull out of the dive, slowly and easily. Four thousand feet. Three, and the aircraft was beginning to level out. Two-five, two, one-five, then he was flying level. He flicked on the terrain-following radar, then the autopilot. The inertial navigator altered the aircraft's course immediately, directing it towards Bardufoss. From the readout, he knew he was already in Norwegian airspace. Somewhere over the Finnmark, inland of the Porsangerfjord.

The Russians, too, were inside Norwegian airspace.

The Firefox twisted, banked, flicked like a dart through the unseen mountains. Gant felt as if he were watching a grey blank screen ahead, through the haze of. snow swept aside by the slipstream. There was nothing. Except the sense of the mountains of the Finnmark around him intruding, seeping like a gas. He could not help but feel their solidity, their massive obstruction. They were a maze through which the TFR and the autopilot flung him. He was like a runner off-balance on a treacherous surface. So long as his flight was headlong, arms flailing, he kept upright, leaping from foot to uncertain foot. TFR — autopilot. Keeping him alive. He felt, too, the constant, chilly quivering of the fuselage as it met the impact of the storm outside. It was as if his own body was growing colder and colder; shivering violently.

The three Russian interceptors followed, but they were slowly dropping back. They might have been MiG-25s, or even MiG-27s. They were not the Firefox. They were confused by ground-clutter, they had to trail him at an altitude above the mountains, they had to employ their manual skills. With each change of course, he gained upon them. He glanced at the map strapped to the thigh of his suit. His finger traced his course. Over the mountains east of the Lyngenfjord — flicking through that valley there, wings trembling as the aircraft banked and banked again through the turbulent air, following the valley's turns and twists…

A hundred miles from Bardufoss

The Firefox banked steeply, almost turning into a roll, then changed course again to follow a valley before lifting over an unseen ridge and then dropping lower into another fold of the land. Rock faces on either side crowded upon the slim black fuselage. He could not avoid imagining the landscape or tracing his course on the map. He knew it was reaction; reaction to everything — the MiGs that were dropping further and further behind him, the MiL helicopter that had filled the whole of his vision, the steep climb, even the hours before the take-off.

And it was Bardufoss. If the weather closed in, clamped down with high winds and nil visibility — a blizzard, close to white-out — he would never be able to land.

The thoughts unrolled like the images flicking upon the TFR screen; the blurs and lumps and flashing glimpses of radar-imaged mountains, rock faces, valleys -

The TFR screen went black. Grey. Empty. The aircraft was halfway into a steep turn, following -

No time! Much too late, a row of warning lights had rippled across the autopilot panel. No time -

The Firefox seemed to hang. Grey screen, grey beyond the perspex of the cockpit. Without instructions from the autopilot, the column did not move, the engine note did not change, the angle of bank remained. The two Turmanskys were driving him towards a terrain he could not see. Into it -

He sensed the storm outside the aircraft more vividly. The fuselage seemed to shudder, as if anticipating impact. He imagined the noise of the wind, felt he would be tumbled from the cockpit when the aircraft struck and would hear the wind — before…

Still his hands hesitated, clenched almost into claws. Choose — He couldn't. The Firefox maintained the steep change of course the autopilot had initiated on the instructions of the TFR. Where-?

Valley! Lift-

He levelled the aircraft, pushed the throttles forward, cancelled the autopilot by pressing the button on the column, then pulled it towards him. Grey ahead of him, nothing, nothing, nothing…

The nose came up, the Firefox climbed. Four thousand feet. Four-and-a-half, five -

He was above the mountains. Sweat ran from beneath his arms. His facemask was fogged. On the radar, the MiGs seemed to have surged forward, away from the bottom of the screen towards its centre. They could see him clearly now; a target upon which to home. Gant shuddered uncontrollably, gripping the column as he levelled the aircraft at six thousand feet. He forced himself to look at the map on his knee, at the tiny printed heights of the peaks. Then he pulled back on the stick once more, lifting to eight thousand feet as quickly as he could. Now he was above them; the mountains no longer threatened him.

The MiGs closed. He demanded a read-out from the computer. Contact time, fourteen seconds. He pushed the throttles forward, forcing the Mach-meter past Mach 2; flying blind.

He flicked on the UHF set. He would be over Bardufoss in minutes now. He had to know.

'Bardufoss Approach — this is Firefox. Over.' He listened. Checked the frequency. Listened. The UHF set was on, it should be working. 'Bardufoss Approach — come in, Bardufoss. This is Firefox. Over.'

The MiGs seemed to have halted, dropped back to near the bottom of the screen. He knew they would be listening. It was not a high-security channel. They were waiting. He shivered. They were waiting until he made hisapproach, slowed down, presented himself to them helplessly as he went in to land.

The UHF set crackled. A distant voice with a Scandinavian accent spoke to him. His hands jumped on the column, as if it had been a Russian voice. But he recognised the word 'Bardufoss'.

'Repeat, Bardufoss. Say again your message. I wish for landing instructions. Over.'

He waited, the aircraft at Mach 2. His positional read-out from the inertial navigator showed him sixty miles from Bardufoss. He was aware of the turbulence outside the aircraft, almost as if it was a warning.

'… is closed, repeat closed,' he heard. 'Estimated ceiling fifty feet in heavy snow. Runway visual range twenty yards with eighty-degree crosswind gusting to forty-five knots.' Then, in something of a more human tone. 'I am sorry, Firefox, but a landing at Bardufoss is impossible. We have blizzard conditions.'

And they would have heard.

'Thank you, Bardufoss — '

'Good — ' He cut off the hope, turning at once to the Soviet Tac-channel. Immediately, he heard the Russian chatter, the almost-glee, the agreement, the request for instructions, the decision, the tactics -

The MiGs surged towards the centre of the screen. He stared numbly at their advance upon him. They were at more than Mach 2, closing rapidly.

He was locked out by the storm. Already, other pursuing Soviet fighters were at the lower edge of his scope. But these three, closing so quickly — missile launch time, seven seconds — knew he was locked out. They were closing for the kill. He hesitated, expecting the leap of bright infra-red dots towards him as they fired their first missiles. No -

He moved his hands slowly, almost finding, finding.

He groaned aloud. As he lifted his head, he drew the column towards him and thrust the throttles forward. The nose of the Firefox lifted, wobbling in the increasing turbulence. He had ignored it, ignored the weather worsening around him, because he had not wanted to understand, had not wished to admit that Bardufoss would be closed down.

The Mach-meter passed 2, then 2.2, 3, 7… The altimeter mounted through fifteen, then seventeen thousand. The MiGs below him altered course, striving to catch him. The Firefox raced up wards.

He broke out of the turbulent, snow-filled clouds at twenty-six thousand feet, into a searing eye-hurting blue sky. In the mirror, the cloud was massed and unbroken beneath him. The sun was low to the west. He climbed through forty thousand feet. Fifty-

The first of the Soviet fighters broke out of the cloud, a gleaming dot far below; a white blip at the lower edge of the scope. Then another gleaming spot joined it in the mirror, then a lagging third.

Gant levelled the Firefox at seventy thousand feet, and accelerated. The Mach-meter passed 4.5. The gleaming dots faded from the scope. The cloud lay unbroken over the Lofoten Islands. He crossed the Arctic Circle. Almost idly, he listened to the last fading chatter from the UHF. Within minutes, he would change the frequency to the principal NATO secure Tac-channel, so that he could identify himself to RAF Strike Command and obtain clearance to land at Scampton, his original destination. He altered course in order to gain a visual sighting over Shetland, still five hundred miles to the south — eight minutes' flying time. He grinned. He was a blur, a meteor, travelling a thousand miles an hour faster than any other aircraft in the world. He would have crossed the North Sea in another seven minutes; he would be over Shetland. Mach 5.1. Almost four thousand miles an hour.

It was over. He felt exhilarated. The radio chatter faded. He heard — what was it? Rostock? Whatever that meant… It didn't matter. Radar clear. Empty. He was alone. The Soviet exchanges faded and were gone.

Anna -

No. He put her carefully aside. The others were paler ghosts. They no longer troubled him. He was alive. He was in the Firefox. He had done it -

He looked down through a tear in the cloud. He was high over the North Sea. He was too high to see the flares burning off on the rigs. More gaps in the cloud. He was suspended above the flat, calm-looking sea. Elite; alone. Alone he had meant to think — alone. Not elite, alone…

He would be over Shetland in no more than three minutes.

Time to open the Tac-channel. It wouldn't be much of an ending, getting shot down…

Rostock? Who was Rostock…?

Fuel-flow, check. Altimeter, radar Mach-meter -

Radar — nothing…

He felt light-headed. He reached forward to retune the UHF. He was alone; elitely alone. Drifting at four thousand miles an hour.

Rostock — ?

Radar — nothing… Glow — ?

He leaned forward. He felt even more light-headed; almost delirious. He screwed up his eyes, trying to focus. Flickering glow on the — panel — ? He was floating. The nose of the Firefox dipped and the aircraft began to dive. He leaned forward against the control column, gripping the wheel but unaware of the pressure of his body pushing the column forward. He couldn't see clearly, and leaned further towards the panel. His eyesight was misty. He clutched the control column to his chest like a drunken man seeking support. As the nose of the Firefox dipped, the steepness of the dive was controlled only by his one-armed grip on the column and the straps restraining the forward movement of his body beyond a certain point.

Rostock — ?

Vladimirov asked him what it meant. He was being beaten, but he felt nothing. Only numb. Warmly numb. Drugged… he remembered his father, shambling into the house on the, the — Mira Prospekt? Yes, yes, Mira Prospekt…

He heard voices, speaking Russian. Change channels. He did not understand — who was Rostock?

Glow on the — panel? Glow-?

He did not understand. The Firefox began to fall out of the sky. Unnoticed, the altimeter unrolled with increasing speed as he slumped towards the panel. The throttles were still set at high cruise power.

He saw dots — blips not glows. Right and left of the screen, converging on him. Rostock — ? His helmet was almost against the panel, and his hanging face opposite the scope. White blips, rushing at him.

Thirty thousand feet, twenty-five, twenty-two… The altimeter unrolled unnoticed.

Gant groggily lifted his head, and his hand. He felt along the panel. The Firefox bucked as he readjusted his hold on the column to gain more support. The nose came up slightly, but the stick resisted him fiercely. He believed in it as a solid, unmoving thing to which he could cling. He tried to focus. The radar was filled with closing blips which immediately became a blur. Flickering glow…? Rostock, Ro — stock…? What did it mean? Glow -

He touched the flicker of light, and tried to count. Tried to remember. It was important, like Rostock. But he could answer this question — he was trained to do it -

He clutched at a switch and threw it with a convulsive jerk of his body. Then he lolled wearily upright, still holding the column, aware now of the restraint of his straps. As his head came above the cockpit coaming, he could see that now the sea had huge, tossing waves. There were fires burning below and around him, flares warning of -

He saw the Vietnamese girl swallowed by fire. He saw Anna with the blue hole in her forehead. His arms ached, seemed close to being pulled from their sockets with the effort required to hold onto the control column.

The girl, Anna — himself…

'No — you bastard — !'

He fought the column, trying to heave it towards him with a fierce, sudden strength. He dragged the throttles back, then pulled further on the column. It moved more easily. His lungs gulped the emergency oxygen supply. The altimeter unrolled more slowly, the Mach-meter descended. The aircraft began to level out. He continued to fight the column, clutching it back against him. The horizon jolted, wobbled, the waves accelerated less than a thousand feet below. The flames from the oil-rigs rushed beneath him. His head was filled with noises, voices speaking in Russian -

He reset the UHF feverishly. He heard it, then -

Rostock. Spoken in English, an English accent. A babble of English voices.

He raced over an oil-rig, then another, then a third. Snow flurried across the stormy, tossing water, but there were bright gaps in the cloud. Shreds of it struggled to envelop him, but the Firefox kept breaking free of them…

His head cleared. He was travelling at less than four hundred miles an hour, at twelve thousand feet, across what remained of the North Sea; towards Shetland.

He continued to gulp down the emergency oxygen supply.

The airplane had tried to kill him again. Had betrayed him. The warning light had come on too late for him to recognise its signal. Lack of oxygen had already made him dizzy and lightheaded before he noticed it. His heart pounded, his pulse thudded in his ears. His helmet was filled with English voices, themselves full of congratulation. He flicked back to the Soviet channel.

Rostock-they were calling Rostock Airbase, he remembered. It would have been the nearest front-line airbase on an interception course. East Germany. A couple of squadrons of MiG-25s had been despatched by the elite 16th Frontal Aviation Army to destroy him. The RAF had reached him first. He had been a sitting target. They might even have been just sitting back, watching him dive into the sea. The Firefox had been doing their work for them.

He sat back in the couch. Bastard. On either side of him, aircraft appeared. They waggled their wings, coyly displaying their RAF roundels. One of the pilots, the one to starboard, signalled with his thumb. Success, congratulation — something like that. Beyond the Tornado fighter, Gant glimpsed the dark coastline of Shetland rising out of the sea.

Wearily, he returned the UHF to the NATO secure tactical channel. The English voices gabbled for a moment, then one of them silenced the others and attempted to contact him. He glanced to starboard. The pilot of the Tornado was frantically signalling with his hand. He wanted him to answer, to use the radio -

Gant did not care. He was alive. He was safe. There was time enough to answer them. His heartbeat and pulse settled, receding in his awareness. Bastard. The airplane was a bastard.

It was over now.

'Go ahead, flight leader,' he said eventually, sitting more upright in the couch. 'This is Firefox. Receiving you loud and clear. Go ahead. Over.'

'Major Gant? Congratulations, Major — what happened, sir? What happened to you? Over.'

'I lived,' Gant replied. 'Now, get me home.'

At twelve hundred feet and at a speed of three hundred and eighty-six miles an hour, the MiG-31, NATO-codenamed the Firefox, drifted towards the Scottish coast escorted by six Tornado fighters of RAF Strike Command. They were the only aircraft registering on his radar.

The grey, stormy sea flowed beneath the belly of the aircraft. A stray gleam of sunlight glowed on the cockpit. Gant, at last, allowed himself a smile of success.