Now another kind of fear gripped Tupelov. If such a report made it to his commanding officer's desk, his military career would be finished before it even began. Now he wished he'd kept his mouth shut… But no. He'd seen those two — whatever they were — with his own eyes. That meant they were still out there somewhere. Why in the world couldn't the damn fool controllers see them? Thpelov was a bright young man, and he made a quick decision, for he knew it was fiis only chance. In order to avoid being hauled up on the carpet, branded a drunkard, and busted out of the service, he had to find those mystery aircraft and report their location. He scanned his instruments, and rapidly computed time and distance back to where the near collision had taken place. His external fuel tanks were almost empty now, but the fighter's organic tanks were full. To do what he was about do to was a violation of a ground control order. A court-martial offense. But what did he have to lose? Could jail be any worse than a humiliating dismissal from the Air Defense Force? Tupelov figured one fate was just as distasteful as the other. He gulped, jettisoned his external tanks, and whipped the Fulcrum around in a 180-degree turn to begin his hunt for the flying black batwings.
Iceberg felt the vibrations of the Progress engine cease, causing him to experience relief like nothing before in his life. Whatever the Americans had sent up from Vandenberg, it was too litde, too late, to stop the Intrepid now. In about fifty-five minutes he would be touching down on the Baikonur runway, and he was home free. He engaged the reaction control thrusters and rotated the spacecraft into the correct attitude for atmospheric reentry. The explosive holding the Progress engine in place would fire shortly.
"Monaghan!" Maj. Gen. Chester McCormack's voice reverberated in Mad Dog's earphones. "What kind of crazy stunt are you trying to pull now?"
"We missed the Intrepid, Eagle One," said Mad Dog in a flat voice, "and now we're going after it. Give me the coordinates for the Baikonur Cosmodrome."
"You weren't authorized for—"
Monaghan's voice turned mean. "Save it, Eagle! I don't have time for your bureaucratic bullshit. You want to put me in jail after we get back home, then that's just Jake by me. But if we're going to catch that son of a bitch Iceberg, I need those coordinates — now!"
"Now you listen to me, Commander—"
"Beg pardon, sir," cut in Lamborghini, "but Mad Dog is right. We've already gone through de-orbit burn, and there's no way to reverse it. If we're going to have a chance at catching the Intrepid we need the coordinates at once."
There was a pause. "All right, hang on." Another few moments passed before McCormack returned. "Okay… the coordinates for the Baikonur Cosmodrr ne are forty-seven degrees forty-one minutes north, sixty-six degrees eleven minutes east."
Monaghan rapidly punched the numbers into the Nav-Computer and engaged the digital autopilot. The two astronauts immediately felt a change in the Kestrel's attitude and a quick eight-second burn of the OMS engine. Monaghan had executed a "seat of the pants" retro burn, and now the autopilot was correcting the spacecraft's course alignment for its descent to Baikonur.
"So what's your game plan?" asked Eagle One.
"We'll try and reacquire Intrepid by radar," replied Monaghan, "then see if we can close it up enough to fire the Sidewinders before we start heating up on reentry. If not, then we'll try to pick him up after we exit the blackout."
Another few moments passed, until McCormack asked in a resigned voice, "Do you go along with this, Pete?"
Lamborghini sighed. "Call me a late convert, but yes, sir. I think we have no choice but to try to nail the Intrepid. Whatever the risks."
Now it was McCormack's turn to sigh. "Since you'll be coming down in Russia, make sure you find some way to destroy the Kestrel when you land. I would say the odds of our extracting you out of there are just about zero."
"Aye, aye, sir," replied Monaghan. "Now ifyou don't mind, we've got some hunting to do. Okay, Hot Rod, fire up your radar."
Whittenberg, Fairchild, Dowd, and Lydia Strand stood in open-mouthed shock as they monitored the transmission between McCormack and the Kestrel. It was inconceivable that Lamborghini and that loco Navy pilot were going straight into Soviet airspace to chase down the Intrepid. It was insane. But there wasn't a blessed thing any of them could do about it.
If Whittenberg had had thirty seconds' warning that Monaghan was going to try something so stupid, he could have warned the lunatic off and told him about the stealth bombers. But it was too late now. And Whittenberg wasn't going to put out word about the stealth bombers over the radio without good reason. Maybe the Russians could descramble their transmissions, too. It seemed there was nothing they couldn't do these days — and now the Kestrel was flying into their midst. The CinC felt a load of depression sink into him. He figured Lamborghini was as good as dead.
"Mad Dog," muttered Strand softly.
Whittenberg turned. "What was that, Major?"
Strand shrugged. "I understand Commander Monaghan's call sign is Mad Dog… I guess that says it all."
Whittenberg nodded. "I guess it does." He was silent for a few moments before saying, "I shouldn't have let Pete go."
Fyodor TUpelov was back in the vicinity of his encounter with the flying black batwings. The ground radar station had detected his course reversal, and the controller was now issuing shrill orders and vile threats over the radio. But Hipelov had made his decision, and he turned off his radio receiver to keep the ground chatter from distracting him.
Now then, what to do? He could chase off in the same direction he'd last seen the mystery aircraft, but that didn't feel like the right move. He remembered a holiday trip he and his father had once taken into Siberia to hunt for caribou. They'd found some tracks of a small caribou herd in the snow, and the impetuous young Hipelov had started off after them. But their Yakut guide had quickly admonished the boy. "You do not want to be where they have been," he explained. "You want to be where they are going." The old trapper had taken Hipelov and his father off on a course that was at a right angle to the path of the animal tracks, and sure enough, they'd caught the caribou as they circled around on a feeding circuit.
Tbpelov figured that was as good a strategy as any, and banked his aircraft sharply to the right. He'd travel due south for a hundred kilometers, then make a search pattern to the southeast until his fuel ran low and he had to put down somewhere. He was scared. But there was no turning back now.
He cut in the Fulcrum's afterburners.
"The explosive bolts on the engine clamps have fired," squawked the speaker box, "and I maneuvered the orbiter around so I could see if the docking collar pulled free. It did. So there should be no problem on reentry."
In a relieved voice, Mission Commander Malyshev said, "Excellent, Intrepid. Stay in contact until you reach the transmission blackout."
"Roger, Flite Centre," replied Iceberg.