When the city of Lipetsk appeared in the haze at ten or twelve miles, Jake Grafton eased the nose of his Su-25 into a climb. He went across the city at several thousand feet and made a gentle turn to line up for the northwest runway about eight miles away.
Nothing happened when he lowered the gear handle. He found the little emergency switch and held it in the down position. The gear broke free of the wells and fell into the slipstream — he could feel the drag increase.
His numb right leg refused to put the right amount of pressure on the rudder. The nose wandered a little from side to side. Carefully playing his single engine, Jake Grafton tried to keep the speed up and fly a flat approach. Only when he was sure he could make the field did he use the electrical switch to drop ten degrees of flaps.
He cut the engine immediately after he felt the tires squeak. Without brakes this thing would roll forever; he had no idea how to engage the emergency system. He had tried turning the parking brake handle ninety degrees and it didn’t want to rotate.
When the jet was down to about twenty MPH it began to drift toward the edge of the runway. There was nothing he could do. It rolled off the edge and came to rest in the grass.
For the first time in over an hour, Jake Grafton relaxed his right leg. It was numb, shaking.
Jake used the battery to open the canopy. As the huge silence enveloped him he took off his mask and helmet and wiped the sweat from his hair. He was drained.
Somehow he managed the energy to get his gloves off and begin unstrapping. When he got the fittings released he sat there massaging his right thigh.
“Admiral! Admiral Grafton!” It was Rita, running across the grass toward him.
“Hey, kid. Am I glad to see you!”
She slowed to a walk, just fifty feet or so away. She glanced at the shattered wing pylon, then looked up at Jake. “I got the hangar, sir.”
“I know,” Jake said, and wiped his eyes with his fingers. “I know.”
20
The helicopter’s two radios were mounted on a shelf on the bulkhead between the cockpit and passenger compartment. The leads had a collar that allowed them to be unscrewed when the radio needed to be removed for servicing. Jake Grafton used his fingers to twist the collars and pull out the plugs. Then he told Spiro Dalworth to tell the pilot to land at the Lipetsk railroad station.
Not a single Russian had come out to look the Su-25s over when Jake landed at the army airfield fifteen minutes ago. He climbed down from the cockpit and followed Rita toward the helicopter.
“What happened at Petrovsk?” Jake asked.
“There was a four-engine jet transport on the mat, sir, and they were loading a missile aboard. I looked on the first pass and shot on the second. On the third the transport caught fire. I then bombed the hangar and it caught fire. I fired out the gun on the clean room.”
He wondered what thoughts went through Rita Moravia’s mind when she saw live humans and knew they couldn’t be allowed to get on that plane and leave. What had she thought when she lined up the cargo plane in her sight and pulled the trigger? All things considered, it was probably better not to ask. “Did you see any markings on the plane?”
“Arabic script, sir. They must have wanted those missiles pretty badly to risk a trip in daylight.”
“Lot of cloud cover. They might have pulled it off.”
“Saddam sent his people on a suicide mission. One man I saw on the ground wasn’t wearing a hot suit.”
The wars of the kings were much more civilized, Jake reflected. No wonder Churchill preferred the nineteenth century over this one.
The Russian chopper pilot was already in the cockpit and started the engines as they climbed aboard. Within a minute he lifted the machine from the parking mat.
Staring now at the disconnected radio leads, Jake concluded he needed a knife. He didn’t have one. He wedged the lead between the hammer and frame of his revolver and used that to strip off the collar. Now the lead could not be reconnected. He did the same with the lead to the second radio.
Someone wanted him dead. Perhaps those dead fighter pilots had orders to concentrate on the lead plane or were so ill with buck fever that they lost track of Rita at a crucial moment. Whichever, both he and Rita were fortunate to be alive. Still, with only a telephone call more fighters could be launched to shoot down this unarmed helicopter and convert their earlier escape into an alarmingly brief reprieve.
A prudent man would find another form of transportation. Jake Grafton was a prudent man.
Very prudent. After the chopper settled into the street in front of the railway station, he asked Dalworth, “What’s the pilot’s name?”
“Lieutenant Vasily Lutkin, sir.”
“Tell him to fly on to Moscow after we get off.”
He watched the helo pilot lift the collective and feed in forward cyclic. The pilot glanced once at him, then concentrated his attention on flying his machine.
Jake watched the helicopter until it crossed the rooftops heading just a little west of north.
Vasily Lutkin might make it. Maybe. If his luck was in.
Those four fighter pilots were trying to kill you, Jake, but not this guy.
Okay, so now you know how Josef Stalin did it. Just give the order and watch them go to their doom.
With sagging shoulders he followed Dalworth and Rita into the cavernous station.
And how much luck do you have left in your miserable little horde, Jake Grafton? Not much, friend. Not much. Guilt and luck don’t mix.
There was a vending booth inside the terminal building selling Pepsi in tiny paper cups, about an ounce of the soft drink for a ruble. Jake laid a ten-ruble note on the counter and while Dalworth went to buy tickets, he and Rita each drank five cupfuls of the sticky sweet liquid. Then Jake wandered off for the men’s room, burping uncontrollably.
The train was full to bursting. There were no empty seats in the car they found themselves in so the three Americans wedged themselves into a little space on the floor. Men, women, and children with everything they owned filled the car. One man had a goat. Several women had baskets that contained live chickens. A man lay in the floor between the aisles vomiting repeatedly while a woman periodically gave him something to drink from a bottle.
“Radiation sickness, I think,” Dalworth whispered.
Jake just nodded. After a half hour Rita went over to help, dragging Dalworth along to translate.
The air was thick with a miasma of odors. Smoke from Papirosi cigarettes made a heavy haze.
The train stopped about once an hour for ten minutes or so. Each time Jake stayed seated in his corner with his hand under his jacket on his gun butt watching the people fighting their way aboard. The scrambler was wedged under his legs.
No one got off the train. Moscow was the universal destination. Some of the people who clamored aboard were soldiers in uniform, but they were wrestling bags of personal articles. No one in uniform or out paid any attention to the Americans. Finally the train got under way again and all the struggling humanity somehow found a place to ride.
These Russians had endured so much, yet there was so much still to endure. When he had replayed the morning’s flight for the twentieth time and the adrenaline had finally burned itself from his system, Jake sat looking at his fellow passengers, trying to fathom their stories and their lives as snatches of Russian swirled on the laden air. Finally his head sagged onto his knees and he slept.
Every minute passed slower and slower for Toad Tarkington. He paced, he stood at the window from time to time and stared out, occasionally he turned on the television and stood gazing at the images on the screen for minutes at a time without seeing them, then snapped it off. He paced some more.