Captain Kizel looked across at the general with a great deal of surprise. That was the longest speech he had ever heard the senior officer give. And it had taken its toll. What he could see of Gogol’s face was white with strain. He looked back at his display and, beyond, down to the ground. They were sweeping northwards as well as westwards because they proposed to use the River Mau as their primary navigational aid. And the tectonic basalt cliff above it would work as extremely effective protection against radar. They were going out fast and low in the early morning with the rising sun at their backs and, all things being equal, would be coming back the same way in the late afternoon with the setting sun exactly behind them. This was important, of course; they were most at risk in Maui airspace, and on Maui sovereign territory, in spite of what the general said.
‘There it is,’ said Kizel as the cliff came up over the northern horizon. He looked down briefly. They were moving at more than 250 kph through the low, still, heavy morning air. They would be there in a few moments. He glanced at his watch and checked his time-plan. Bang on time. He looked at the green read-out which gave him the position of the four aircraft flying in close formation behind him. He glanced up at the mirror above his head which allowed him to check on the disposition of the six heavily armed men occupying the seats in the body of the fuselage behind him. His eyes flicked back. The cliff was coming up fast. He pressed the button on his throat mike. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Execute manoeuvre number one on my mark … Now.’
Kizel swung the head of his chopper hard west and the others behind him fell into line astern. They were so low, their down-draught disturbed the cinder bed under the track of the Mawanga railway, so that as they sped past they were followed by a rain of pebbles and grit which spilled over the edge into the withered water below. Within a very few minutes they were hurtling over a labouring train and the smoke from its stack exploded around them and leaped into delicate whirls in their wake. A disused lift and some ruined buildings flashed past, ancient corrugated tin reverberating to the sound of their engines.
Such was the power of their passing that the first police guard hut was torn apart as though by a hurricane — but the dazed policeman managed to get through to Mawanga city with a report of what had happened.
Gogol looked down idly, recognising landmarks. There was the pulpit where he and Chala had questioned die man and woman from the train. Their bones lay scattered on that tongue of red mud below. He glanced back without thinking, and the uncontrolled movement tore his cancerous neck with such acute pain that nausea welled in his throat. But he had eaten nothing for two days; there was nothing to come up. He was never hungry nowadays. He thought that the huge tumour which they told him was growing in his stomach probably filled it well enough, and he only ate when he needed to stoke up his strength, and when he was tempted. The foul concoction called achu which the Congo Librens subsisted on did not tempt him at all. He saw his body as a machine now, it was the only way he could hang on to his sanity. A machine which was beginning to malfunction because of what had happened to it at Chernobyl.
Captain Kizel jumped and turned towards Gogol, then reached across to switch on the radio’s cockpit speaker. A woman’s anxious voice filled the cockpit at once, speaking in English. ‘… I say again, please identify yourselves. This is air traffic control at Mawanga airport calling the five aircraft closing with Mawanga city from the east at zero feet. You have no registered authorisation to cross Maui airspace, please identify yourselves at once…’
The captain looked at Gogol. The general shook his head once, carefully. Kizel pressed his throat mike. ‘Maintain radio silence,’ he ordered and switched his own radio off.
Below, a great area of grey ash overlapped the first straight pattern of irrigation ditches spreading out in geometric designs from the edge of a dry lake. Idly, Gogol wondered if the naked Kyoga woman was still down there, dead in the ditch where he had left her. No. That had been a week ago, before General Bovary’s orders had come in. The scavengers would have had her long ago. He found himself shaking his head almost with sorrow.
He was the man who had invented the shooting competition which used native girls as targets and sorted out the men from the boys. How could he be concerned over one savage woman? No. He was not concerned; he simply speculated. She remained in his memory only because she had not been the American woman who had been their quarry but some tick-ridden, fuzzy-haired, fat-faced native. Thoughtlessly, he sucked his teeth and his mouth at once filled with blood. He choked, body rigid, refusing to cough or vomit, willing himself to maintain the massive dignity which had to be associated with his rank. They had warned him about this at the institute when they had advised him to have all his teeth out. It would be better for him in the long run, they had said. They would only perish like the rest of his bones, and his gums were shot to hell in any case. And, like his hair, they would fall out in no time at all. He had been bald as an egg for six years and was mildly surprised that his teeth had lasted so long. They were another reason he ate so little nowadays; when he chewed anything even faintly solid, he could hear the roots of his molars stirring in his head.
Vodka was out of the question too, given the state of his liver.
Really and truly, now he came to look at it, there was only one thing left worth living for: killing.
The Sikorsky Black Hawk came down over the top of the cliff above them and skipped along just in front of their nose, moving at full speed — the better part of 300 kph.
‘He’s trying to make contact,’ said Captain Kizel urgently. ‘Shall I answer?’
‘Yes. With that.’ The general pointed to the weapons system control. The helicopter was equipped not only with the AS-7 Kerry air-to-surface missiles they proposed to use against the iceberg — and the ships controlling it if necessary — but also several AA-2 A-toll air-to-air missiles as well. The Sikorsky, Gogol knew, was armed with a 30 millimetre cannon. But it probably wasn’t loaded and even if it was, it would jam. And none of Chala’s police pilots would ever open fire without direct orders from their beloved leader, signed, in triplicate. The General of Police did not approve of independence of thought, least of all among such dashing characters as his helicopter pilots.
Gogol’s pilot, however, did not hesitate. Kizel launched the missile on his commander’s word. The A-22 A-toll was old, but still effective. It was one of a range of Russian designs based on the American Sidewinder. This one was armed with a high-explosive warhead and controlled by a heat-seeking guidance system. The Sikorsky had no sooner settled like a black dragon fly to race along beside the Hinds than it exploded into a dazzling blossom of red and yellow flame. Pieces of wreckage sped out and down, trailing smoke like failed fireworks. The last two helicopters in the line astern dipped and jumped over the shock wave of the explosion and that was all.
I hope Chala was in that one, thought Gogol. But he doubted it.
They raced on, unmolested for ten minutes until, far below, beyond the dry river bed at the foot of the basalt cliff, the first reception camps appeared. These had been set up by Chala’s police to look after the starving millions from the interior as they tried to get into Mawanga city itself — and, more importantly, to relieve them of anything of worth that they still possessed.
Five more minutes of thunderous flight brought them to the first shantytown outskirts of the city, hardly distinguishable from the refugee camps. A great six-lane highway sprang into existence apparently out of nowhere. Immediately, the black slope on their right fell away and the rest of the city became clearly visible ahead as it rolled down to the sea, all laid out in squares and blocks of city districts. Only the great red scar of the dry river bed, widening out into the sea-sparkling grey of the massive port, gave an impression of a design beyond the square designs of men. Gogol sat up stiffly, his eyes busy down among the desolate encampments of the destitute. ‘There!’ he said.