Wall of Night

74

Hoping to pull off one last bit of illusion, Tanner ordered the pilot to climb to two thousand feet and head southeast toward Mudanjiang, the last major city before the Russian border and Vladivostok. The Russian port was, he thought, the most logical destination for someone trying to flee China in a hurry.

“We can’t outrun the Hind,” the pilot said. “They’ve got forty knots of airspeed on us.”

“I know,” Tanner said. Despite that, he felt light, almost buoyant, and it took him a moment before he realized why: He was alive—they were alive, and with each passing minute their chances of staying that way improved. Whether they would make good their escape was another matter, but this certainly was better than being hunted like an animal through the wilds of Heilongjiang Province.

“Why don’t you just give up?” the pilot asked. “If you know you can’t make it—”

“I’m a cockeyed optimist,” Tanner said. “Keep flying.”

Once sure they were headed in the right direction, he called Hsiao to the cockpit to watch over the pilot, then went back into the cabin. Tears streaming down his face, Han Soong sat on the floor with his daughter wrapped in his arms.

He reached out a hand to Tanner. “Thank you, Briggs. Words can’t describe my gratitude.”

Briggs gripped his shoulder. “No need, old friend. I’m just sorry it took me this long to get here. Lian, are you okay?”

She raised her head from her father’s chest and nodded. “I can’t believe this is real. Are we really free?”

“Almost, but not quite.”

“How long?”

“With a little luck, two hours.”

With a lot of luck, Briggs thought.

Once they were fifty miles from the camp, Tanner returned to the cockpit. “How’re your night-flying skills?” he asked the pilot.

“I’m fully qualified.”

“Night vision?”

“I have a headset, but …”

“But it’s scary as hell.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, but you’re gonna have to get used to it. Put them on, then shut off your navigation lights and descend to thirty feet.”

“Thirty feet!”

Tanner nodded. “Don’t trim any trees.”

Once the pilot had donned his headset and began his descent, Tanner reached over to the IFF — Identification Friend or Foe — unit on the console and flipped the power off.

“What’re you doing?” the pilot cried. “They’ll shoot us down.”

“That’s a very real possibility,” Tanner said.

Regardless of nationality, all military aircraft carry some type of IFF unit designed to transmit a coded ID signal when interrogated by friendly units. By shutting down the unit, Tanner had not only turned them into an unidentified aircraft eligible for attack, but he’d made them virtually invisible to commercial airport radars that track by IFF tag rather than radar return. By ordering the pilot to hug the earth, he was hoping to also slip beneath the radar coverage of nearby military bases and get lost in the ground clutter.

If Tanner had any luck left at all, Xiang would use the Hoplite’s last known IFF position and course as the starting point for his search.

“Thirty feet,” the pilot called. “It’s too low … I can’t keep this up.”

“What’s your speed?”

“One-fifty.”

Tanner took a moment to study the map and make a few rough calculations. “Cut back to one-twenty and turn northeast … make it course zero-three-five. Once you find the Songhua River, turn north. Stick to it and stay low.”

Delayed by a refueling stop at an airstrip outside Fangzheng, Xiang’s Hind was thirty miles to Tanner’s southwest, but the Hind’s greater airspeed was steadily cutting the gap. In the cabin under the glow of red lights, Shen and his platoon of twenty-four paratroopers were checking their weapons.

“Director Xiang?” the pilot called.

Xiang knelt in the cockpit door. “You have the beacon?”

“No, sir, nothing yet. We just got word from Fangzheng Control. They have an IFF tag matching the Hoplite. It’s on our zero-seven-one, about thirty miles away.”

“Course and speed?”

“One-six-zero, speed one hundred fifty knots — almost red-line for a Hoplite.”

“He’s running. What’s in that direction?”

“Changting, Mudanjiang, then the border.”

“Vladivostok?”

“Yes, sir.”

Nearest major civilization, Xiang thought. It made sense. “How long before we intercept?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Ten minutes later: “Director Xiang, we’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

“Fangzheng reports the Hoplite stopped squawking and dropped off the radar.”

“Which means?”

“It means he’s gambling,” the pilot replied, then explained Tanner’s gambit. “If the pilot’s any good, he might be able to pull it off.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“They’ll either crash or pop up on radar.”

“Keep heading toward their last known position. What are the biggest commercial radars in the region?”

“Tieli, Jiamusi, and Hegang.”

“Can they track by return?”

“Yes.”

“Contact them and have them look for a target without IFF.”

“Yes, sir.”

Xiang walked back into the cabin and sat down. Turn on the beacon, damn you …

To his credit, the pilot had nerve, Tanner decided.

Hands white around the collective and cyclic controls, sweat rolling down his neck, the pilot kept the Hoplite at near wave-top height over the Songhua River, winding northeast up the valley, dodging trees and slipping past cliff faces.

The lights of early morning fishing boats slipped beneath the windscreen, appearing and disappearing in the same second. On either bank of the Songhua, Tanner could see the twinkling of distant lights and he tried to match them against the towns on the map: Qinghe, Hongkeli, Yongan …

Occasionally the Hoplite’s ESM panel would chirp, indicating they’d been painted by a random radar wave, and Tanner would wait, breath held, hoping against hope the tone didn’t change to a steady “lock on” pulse.

A few miles north of Jaimusi, Tanner had his head in the map when the pilot suddenly cried out.

“Oh, God!”

Tanner looked up. Before the windscreen, a massive rock spire jutted from an island in the middle of the river. The pilot banked hard. Tanner lurched against his restraints. The Hoplite’s engines roared in protest, the rotors beating the sky to gain altitude. The ESM panel began chirping. At the last moment, the pilot rolled the helo nearly onto its side and the spire flashed past the windscreen.

Tanner glanced at the altimeter: 200 feet. “Dive, dive!” he ordered. “Back on the deck!”

Once they were back at treetop height, the pilot said, “Sorry, sorry. I just.…”

“Forget it. How’s our fuel?”

“Not good. Two hundred kilometers, give or take.”

Tanner eyed the ESM panel. Had they raised any flags? “Go to full throttle,” he ordered.

Orbiting in a fuel-saving hover eighty miles south of Tanner, Xiang’s pilot called out, “Contact! We’ve got contact! Jiaumsu Control reports unidentified aircraft just popped up on their radar!”

“How far away?”

“A hundred and thirty kilometers — about ninety kilometers south of the Birobijan border. They’re smart; they’re sticking to the river valley.”

“Go after them!” Xiang ordered. “How long until they’re into Birobijan airspace?”

“Twenty-five minutes.”

“Can we catch them?”

The pilot paused to study his knee-board map. “Just barely. We should overtake them about twelve kilometers south of the border. Sir, if I may: Why risk it? Shuangyashan can scramble a pair of interceptors and overtake them in six minutes.”

“There are no interceptors, dammit!” Xiang growled. Virtually every plane the PLAAF had was committed to the Hingaan salient. “Just keep flying; we’ll get them ourselves.”

A button on the cockpit console began blinking red, accompanied by a steady beeping. The pilot pressed a few buttons and read the screen. “RFDF just popped on,” he said. “What’s the frequency of your beacon?”

“Forty-two point five gigahertz.”

“That’s it.” The pilot pressed more buttons. “Same course and speed as Jiamsu’s bogey.”

“That’s them!” Xiang shouted. “We’ve got them!”