He looked up — cover? Almost. He had driven into the firs sideways on, at a downward angle. Some of the trees had bent and slipped back like dark curtains while others had snapped or leaned drunkenly. Night — all night, perhaps. Unless they came very close, they'd see little until daylight.
Hie main cabin was intact. The tail boom had snapped off behind the aerial lead-in, a third of the way along its length. It stood like a ruined statue less than thirty yards away, masked by trees.
The door of the cabin swung open. He turned quickly to face cabin, then took off his helmet and threw it aside. Immediately he listened to the night, his ears still ringing from the headset's confinement. First, the disturbed cries of birds, then the sighing of the wind in the firs. Nothing else. Baikonur's single gunship zveno had lost his scent.
Priabin's face was a white, pleading mask in the cabin door. Gant realized that Priabin's shock would delay him. He felt a resistance mounting within him, but he accepted Priabin's priorities for a few moments longer. He did not want to look at the woman, as if he had contributed to her—
He had, he admitted.
Clambering up and into the Mil-2's dark main cabin, he heard his own breathing, heard Priabin's, too. The woman became reduced in importance. He did not enjoy his renewed sense of his own priorities, but accepted the necessity of disregarding her death.
Priabin had covered her body. She was, Gant made himself believe, no more than a heap of coats on the cabin floor. He stood very still for some moments, staring at the fuselage. Guilt lessened, faded. A heap of coats.
Slowly he realized Priabin was murmuring her name, over and over. The sound contained grief, guilt, affection. He could not tell Priabin it was time they departed.
Maps, torch, the gun, flares, even the radio? At least, if he couldn't remove one of the sets, he had to listen. He had wasted time here, he thought ashamedly, yet he was convinced he was right. The woman was dead; he had to survive. He had to know where they were, what they were doing. He jumped down to the litter of fir needles and broken branches on the plantation floor. He listened again. They were still safe. He looked at his watch, holding its dial close to his face. Six-fifteen.
He clambered back into the cockpit. Snatched out the folded, heavily creased maps from the pocket beside his seat. Found the flashlight, snapped the rifle out of its clips behind his head, high up on the cockpit bulkhead. Cradled these things like precious possessions. He needed to use the radio. Reserve battery power only — if the aerials had not snapped off, if the set had not been damaged. He checked the code cards in the slot beside the set. The helicopters regular KGB pilot had scribbled the military channel frequencies below his own codes… Wednesday. He hesitated, then switched on. Voices leaped into the cockpit's silence.
Almost at once, he realized their error. Some unidentified aircraft? No, vehicle moving on the north-south road beyond Dzhusaly. As much as fourteen or fifteen miles away to the northeast. What was it? Patrol tried to stop a truck, no camouflage or insignia — broke through the barrier, patrol vehicle damaged, unable to pursue… All helicopter units to proceed immediately…
Black marketers, drunken soldiers, thieves, it didn't matter which. Time had opened like a carelessly left window, and they could climb through it like burglars. They had to take advantage of it.
Gant continued to listen. Different crises signaled like lamps in a storm. The three remaining gunships of the Baikonur zveno had already acknowledged, and detailed their changes of course to rendezvous to the northeast, where the truck had broken through the barrier. They each reported no contacts in their current sectors. Serov — he recognized his voice easily — was too eager, too ready to believe; deceived by his need to recover the situation. Rodin, the general, was riding on his back. Gant savored Serov's error. He listened to the man divert a troop-carrying Mil-8, a couple of road patrols in light vehicles. He heard him direct units to erect roadblocks, order UAZ light-vehicle patrols to cordon off areas. He listened for a moment longer, then turned off the radio.
As he climbed down from the cockpit, he carefully cradled the rifle, torch, maps, bars of chocolate. He paused for a moment, then climbed reluctandy into the MiL's main cabin.
Even the exercise of power in desperation was a source of satisfaction, Rodin realized. His voice raged with insistence, unreasonableness, even threat, his features were highly colored, but none of them dared sustain their objections in the face of his determination; his power.
"The launch will take place in nine and a half hours from now," he repeated like the closing of a door on some argument in a distant room. "Not tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen, but before dawn. The weapon will be placed in its orbit one hour later. It will be used as soon as possible thereafter. Do you understand me clearly? You all have your tasks." He had not paused for an answer to his question out plunged on. "Your responsibilities. See that you carry them out. ^ is now" — he glanced at his watch—"six-thirty. Launch time is set at four a.m. tomorrow. Very well. Dismissed, gentlemen, dismissed."
They moved away from him, their boots echoing on the catwalk ^here he had gathered them. He did not concern himself with their *ac*s, the expressions they might now allow themselves. He had issued his orders. It was simply a matter of telescoping the launch schedule from twenty-four hours to nine and a half. The task could be accomplished—
— must be. The American was still loose, and his sense of Serov s ability to stop him had diminished. His sense of other and larger failures had increased. He felt the distance to Moscow as tangibly as the black thread of a telephone cable, and Stavka at the other end of the connection. He would have to tell them, but not yet. His goal was clear. He must achieve the object of Lightning before there was any possibility that the American could reach a friendly border— reach anyone at all. Priabin might have persuaded him that it was best to try for a KGB office within the flight radius of the stolen helicopter.
Their — their freedom maddened him like a goad. He was diminished by their being at large, hampered and confined by it. While they were at liberty, he had only the illusion of action the illusion of choice. They had evidence for the old men of the Politburo, including Nikitin the social reformer, the open hand of our society as Pravda called him again and again. Rodin's hands whitened in their intense grip on the guardrail of the catwalk. He was blind to the scene below, as if undergoing some strange fit or blackout. Nikitin and the others would raise their hands in horror and back away— disown the army and the laser weapon and the research and development program and continue with their emasculation of Russia's defenses. They would not stop until they had butchered the army, just as the pig Stalin had done — for other reasons — in the thirties. Hie motive did not matter; the country would be weak, ineffectual, unable to defend itself. The open hand of our society. baubles, television sets, cars, packaged food, was what Nikitin offered them, and, and they seemed to want it.
Rodin shook his head. His vision cleared. The weapon was directly beneath him, loaded and locked into the shuttle craft's cargo bay. In minutes, the cargo doors would be closed, the signal would be given, and the shuttle would begin its journey on the transporter. It should take thirteen hours for the transporter to reach the launch gantry, twelve at best, and another three hours to hoist it atop the booster stages. He had ordered the whole operation to be completed in seven hours maximum. Beyond that, fueling would take another two hours, and final checks a further half hour. Then— launch. Nine and a half hours. Impossible, they claimed. Do it, he had insisted.