Firefox

'How much d'you need — how much of this wall you want to come down?' Peck said.

Gant turned his head, recognising the challenge in the big man's voice. He smiled humourlessly, thought for a moment, and then said: 'Thirty feet.'

There was a leaden silence for a moment, then Seerbacker said:

'Don't bullshit, Gant. You're not going to waste my time and wreck that bird just to prove something to my chief engineer!' His eyes flickered between the two men, sensing the challenge and response, its origins in Gant's earlier momentary panic in front of Peck.

'Thirty feet,' Gant said. 'That's all I'll need.'

'Then it's thirty fuckin' feet you'll get, mister!' Seerbacker spat back. 'Now you pick out the spot, man — and Mr. Peck and his team will get to work for you!'

Gant strolled away from them, and the four men tagged wearily behind him, as if unwilling. Seerbacker regretted the way he had handled Gant, bridling him, making him say something which he would obviously regret. Yet there was no sign of doubt on Gant's face, no fear that a margin for error of four feet on either side of the main undercart in the visibility now available to him was almost like cutting his throat with a blunt knife.

Damn him to hell! Seerbacker thought. He gets right under my skin!

Gant stopped, waited for them, and said: 'Here.'

He kicked a boot hard into the ice at the crest of the ridge at stomach height, and chipped the crest slightly. Peck reached into the pocket of his parka, pulled out an aerosal can, and sprayed it on the ice. Part of the chipped portion of crest sagged under the impact of the alcohol-based de-icing fluid. Gant paced out thirty feet, and waited for Peck to mark the ice. Then he nodded. Seerbacker sensed they were almost in the centre of the ridge, near the centre of the floe. Gant had picked the longest north-south axis for his take-off.

'How long to clear thirty feet, Mr. Peck?' Seerbacker asked.

'An hour, sir — if you include the spraying-down.' -

Gant wanted to tell them it was too long — but there was no point in futile protest.

'An hour?'

Peck nodded. Seerbacker was silent for a moment, then tugged his handset from his pocket. He pressed the button, and said: 'Waterson — hook me up to the ship's address system, huh?' He waited until his request was accomplished, and then he said: 'This is the captain — hear this. It will take one hour for the pressure-ridge to be cleared, and that means we have to stay on the surface for that length of time. I want utmost vigilance at all time; air, surface, and subsurface searches to be thorough. If any of you guys misses something, you kill all of us — understand that. You won't just be shitting on yourself or your service record! And you stay rigged for silent running — we're going to be making enough noise up here for all of you, so keep it quiet. You guys on the plane — just keep it de-iced and ready to roll the minute you get the word. Mr. Peck is in charge of the shore-party to work on the ridge, and I'll let him tell you who's volunteered, and what equipment he wants out here. Just a minute — Doc?' There was a pause, then:

'Yes, skipper?'

'What about our casualties?'

'Harper's concussed — hit that hard head of his on the deckplates. Smith lost a couple of teeth fighting the ice, and I'm putting four stitches in the back of Riley's skull. Anything else is less dramatic than that.'

'Thanks Doc. Tell Riley it should improve his brain — and Smith's looks will definitely have improved! O.K., here's Mr. Peck, you guys. Hear him good.'

He switched off and pocketed his own handset, and left Peck calling out his list of names, the catalogue of brawn that the Pequod was able to muster.

Seerbacker joined Gant. He stared at him for a moment, then said: 'You are sure?'

Gant nodded.

'Don't worry — Peck doesn't get to me. I can get out through thirty feet of clear ice.'

'In visibility like this?'

'In worse.'

'Hell, man — O.K., but it's your funeral.'

There was a silence, then Gant said: 'Thanks, Seerbacker — for the hour.'

Seerbacker felt awkward. Gant, he sensed, was making a real effort, meant what he was saying.

'Yeah — sure. I wouldn't do it for just anybody, though,' he said, and grinned.

'I–I'll go take a look at the plane.'

'Sure, you do that.'

Gant nodded, and walked away. Near the Pequod, he could see figures hurrying through the grey curtain of the mist, wrapped in the white breath of their effort Peck, he thought without rancour, was a taskmaster, and when he said jump, they jumped. It wasn't his business. Peck knew what he was doing.

It had been his suggestion, from the beginning. The crude hacking out of a section of the ridge, then the smoothing process to follow, the former accomplished by brute force and axes, the latter by spraying the broken section of the ridge with the superheated steam that drove the turbines of the submarine, directed onto the ice by pressure hoses.

The Firefox was clear of ice. Alongside, looking as if it had strayed from some gigantic toolshed, was a ten-foot piece of equipment resembling nothing so much as a garden-spray. This was linked by a hose to a fluid tank in the sail of the Pequod, and from it, pumped by a small electric motor, gushed a stream of alcohol-based anti-icing fluid — the 'booze' as Seerbacker's crew referred to it. This kept the wings and fuselage free of ice. Four men operated the sprayer — two men pushed it on its undercarriage, and two others directed the fine, pressurised spray from two small hoses tucked beneath their arms. They went about their task with a mechanical, unthinking precision, and Gant could see the light indentations of the wheels beneath the sprayer where they had ceaselessly circumnavigated the plane.

Gant stood and watched the Firefox for a long time, as if drawn to the machine, as if feeding through his eyes. He had had no time until now, no moment of being outside the plane with time to absorb its lines, its design, its functional wickedness of appearance. The first time — there had only been the confused impression of noise, and light, and the fire at the far end of the hangar, and Baranovich's white-coated figure lumped on the concrete… Now he watched in silence, taking in the slim fuselage, the bulging air-intakes in front of the massive engines, larger than anything Turmansky had ever thought of fitting to an interceptor-attack plane, the seemingly impossible stubbiness of the wings, with the advanced Anab missiles slung in position beneath them. He saw the scorch marks where he had fired two of them — one to bring down the Badger, the other to goad the captain of the Riga into premature action. He walked closer. The two missiles had been replaced, making up his complement of four.

This didn't really surprise him. A Mig-25 had been captured from the Syrians in the dummy-run for this operation. Presumably, it had been armed and its missiles, Anabs, had been assigned to Seerbacker, for delivery. Buckholz, Gant realised, missed nothing.

The refuelling had been completed even while he, Seerbacker and Peck had discussed the ridge. The hoses had been withdrawn, the bonding wire removed from the nose-wheel strut Presumably, the refuelling crew were now taking their turn at the ridge.

He walked away with reluctance, then, as the distance increased, and the Firefox became a shadowy, insubstantial bulk in the mist, he lengthened his stride.

It took him almost half-an-hour to walk from the Firefox to the southerly end of the floe and then to traverse the floe from south to north, along the line of his visualised runway. The collision of the floes had not damaged the runway, other than by the ridge. He was returning from the northern edge of the floe when the handset that Fleischer had issued him bleeped in his pocket.