Which could only mean… yes, he realised with a mounting excitement, could only mean that his refuelling point lay to the north of the Soviet Union, in the Barents Sea, or above it. He looked up.
The First Secretary had not moved. 'Well?' he said, softly.
'If you will look at the map, First Secretary,' Vladimirov said, sensing Kutuzov at his shoulder, 'I will try to explain my deductions.' Swiftly, he outlined Gant's probable course. When he had finished, he added: 'We can track him, despite his radar-immunity, First Secretary.'
There was a silence and then Andropov, arms folded across his chest and standing behind the First Secretary, said in a soft, ironical voice: 'How?'
Vladimirov explained, as simply as he could, the manner in which the infra-red weapons-aiming system could be used as a directional search-beam. Kutuzov clapped him on the shoulder, and Vladimirov sensed the quiver of excitement in the old man's frame. More distantly, he sensed that he had somehow sealed the succession, that he would be the next Marshal of the Air Force. The prospect did not affect him. At that moment, he was concerned only with the elimination of Gant as a military threat.
'Good — that is good, General Vladimirov,' the First Secretary said. 'You agree, Mihail Ilyich?' Kutuzov nodded. 'This needs no mechanical adjustment?'
'No — merely a coded instruction to that effect from you, or from Marshal Kutuzov.'
The First Secretary nodded. 'What, then, do you suggest, Vladimirov?'
'You must alert units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, First Secretary. They must begin looking for a surface, or subsurface…' He paused. No, it had to be a surface craft, and even that was unlikely. 'More probably, an aircraft, waiting to refuel the Mig in mid-air, First Secretary.' The Soviet leader nodded. 'Then, we must put up "Wolfpack" squadrons nearest to our northern coastline, to seek out the mother-plane.' He glanced round into Kutuzov's keen eyes. The old man nodded. 'And we alert all missile sites along the First Firechain to expect Gant. They, too, must use their infra-red aiming-systems to search for him, in concert with the "Wolfpack" units.'
Suddenly, his finger stabbed at the map, almost immediately in front of the First Secretary. 'There,' he said. 'Just there. If he follows the Urals to their northernmost point, then he will use the Gulf of Ob, or the gulf to the west of the Yamal Peninsula as a visual sighting, before altering course for his rendezvous with the mother-aircraft. As you can see, First Secretary, there are two fixed units in the First Firechain within range, as well as the mobile link between them, and our "Wolfpack" squadrons based on the peninsula.' He looked up, and there was a smile on his face. 'It will take only minutes to organise, First Secretary — and the American will walk into the most powerful trap ever sprung.' He was still smiling when he said: 'Will you give permission for any Soviet aircraft who gains a visual sighting to act as a target for the missiles — if it becomes necessary?'
Vladimirov heard Kutuzov's indrawn breath, but kept his eyes on the First Secretary. In the man's grey, flinty eyes he could see the succession confirmed. This time, it moved him with a distinct, though momentary, pleasure. The First Secretary merely nodded.
'Of course,' he said.
'Very well, First Secretary — then Gant is dead.'
The journey through the Urals had taken Gant little more than two hours, since in covering the sixteen or more hundred miles from Orsk to Vorkuta through the eastern foothills, he had never exceeded six hundred knots, keeping his speed sub-sonic in order to conserve the fuel he now wished he had not burned in his panic-dash to the cover of the mountains. The lower speed would also stop his presence being betrayed by a supersonic footprint across the sparsely-populated ground below. The foothills had been wreathed in mist, which made visual detection almost impossible, either from the ground or from the air.
Knowledge concerning military installations in the Urals chain was sketchy. Buckholz and Aubrey had been able to provide him with very little in the way of fact. It had been assumed, dubiously, that the eastern slopes of the mountain chain would be the less heavily armed and surveyed. Once he had taken a visual sighting on Orsk, to obtain a bearing, he had fed the coordinates of his northward flight into the inertial navigator, and slotted the aircraft into its flight-path. Then he had again switched in the TFR and the auto-pilot, and passed like a ghost into a grey world of terrain-hugging mist, chill to the eye, featureless as the moon, or the landscape of his memory.
He had feared a return of the dream or, at least, of some of the physical symptoms of the hysterical paralysis — even the nausea. Yet, it had not happened. It was as though he had passed from shadow into light, as if the person he had been before the take-off had been shed like a skin. He spent no time in marvelling at his new, recovered integrity of mind, calmness of thought. It wasn't unfamiliar to him. Even in Vietnam, towards the end, he had been able to fly almost perfectly, leaving behind him, like the uniform in his locker, the wreck of an individual sliding towards the edge.
His ECM instrument for picking up radar-emissions from the terrain below had recorded nothing since the beginning of his flight through the mountains. He had moved in a world cut off, entirely separate, the kind of isolation he had heard NASA men talk about after orbiting the earth in one of the Skylabs, or returning from testing the newest re-entry vehicles. Once he had met Collins one of the lunar astronauts. He had said the same. In his own way, Gant had always felt that removed when his aircraft was on auto-pilot. There was nothing, except a cabin, pressurised, stable, warm — and the human multitude and their planet fled by formlessly as the mist through which he had travelled. That utter isolation was something he had never rid himself of on the ground, not even in violent drinking-jags, or in the relief of Saigon prostitutes. And the reason he sought that lonely superiority of the skies was because the ground had never offered him more than an inferior copy of the same empty isolation. It was just after nine and the mist was clearing at his height, shredding away from the cockpit, so sunlight glanced from the perspex, and the faded blue of the morning sky was revealed. Oh his present heading, he knew he would pass over the Gulf of Kara, that sharp intrusion of the Kara Sea to the west of the Yamal Peninsula within minutes, at this present speed. With the cross-check of a visual bearing on the neck of the gulf, he would be able to feed in the next set of coordinates to the intertial navigator.
He looked ahead. Visibility was not good. There was no sign of water, only the hazy, grey absence of a horizon. He knew he would have to drop down as low as he could, risking visual sighting from the ground, risking the gauntlet of the Firechain which looped across this northern coast. Nevertheless, he had to do it.
The last northern strand of the mountains, limping towards the sea, neared again as he changed altitude, sliding down towards the pockets of mist not yet dispersed by the strengthening sun. He saw the small town of Vorkuta away to port, and knew that his heading was correct and that the sea lay only minutes ahead of him.
Suddenly then, the edge of his radar screen showed the presence of an aircraft, higher and away to starboard; big, probably a Badger long-range reconnaissance plane no doubt returning from a routine patrol out over the Kara Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
Moments passed in which he seemed content just with the knowledge that he was closing on the Badger, judging he would pass well behind it. He assumed that, with a minimum of luck, most of the electronic detection equipment on board the Badger would be shut down that close to its home base. Then, almost with disbelief, three bright orange spots registered on the screen, glowing, climbing, nearing. An infra-red source. Someone on the ground had loosed a bracket of missiles from a Firechain station.