Rehearsing the old war cries kept the pain at a tolerable level.
"Where is he now, Serov?" Rodin hissed at him, his head snapping around to fix his gray gaze on the shorter man. "Where is your American and his little KGB friend? You haven't come to tell me you've caught them, by any chance?" Almost languid, almost joking. Almost.
Serov shook his head, his features grave. "Not yet, comrade General," he said with regretful confidence. "It is, of course, only a matter of time."
"It had better be." And yet Rodin was detached from the fate of Gant and that stupid little prick Priabin. The screens that curved in a crescent to their left showed the shuttle moving toward the distant launch pad, showed the waiting booster, showed the crew in their quarters, intruding on their sleep like spy cameras. The murmurs, if one concentrated, were a chorus of instructions, orders, reports, checks. Atlantis moved on the screen, the weaving line that traced its course slipping across Africa. "It will be," Rodin murmured, and turned back to one of his people, launching into an immediate discussion on the shaving of minutes from the boarding and preflight checks by the crew. Serov waited to be dismissed.
He gazed at the screens, the huge map, other maps, a chart of the pattern of radar and telemetry stations across the Soviet Union that would follow the shuttle in orbit, the banks of controllers at their screens and keyboards, rendered identical by the shadows and ty their each wearing a headset and microphone. Cigarette smoke rolled and billowed amid the suspended lights. He looked up toward tinted windows of the GRU's security room. Squinting, he real-*fed that one of his people was waving urgently to him. The immediate leap of tension and the beat of his heart enforced his fear of the Edition of his nerves. Could it—?
He nodded to the unseeing Rodin, who was insisting that another ten minutes be trimmed from the hand-over ingress routines, the crew boarded. Then Serov hurried across the cable-lit-red floor toward the door. Along the cold, concrete corridor. He clattered up an iron spiral staircase, careful not to knock his broken arm in his haste. He could clutch it now, protect it. He hurried down the narrow corridor to a single door. He thrust it open, entering the security room, surprising its half-dozen occupants. Ozone again, VDUs, radios, fiber-optic maps. The hunt for Gant was once more their business, returned to their charge by Rodin.
"Is—?" he began.
The lieutenant was nodding. "Yes, Colonel, they've found it, on the ground, too — here." His finger dabbed at a screen that displayed a map — where? South of the river? Yes.
"Thank Christ!" he could not help but exclaiming. Then: "Are Jiey still with the machine?"
"Priabin, the KGB colonel, sir — he's there."
"But Gant is not?"
The man shook his head. Serov did not even bother to recall his name; no requirement to be congratulated or commended officially. He was just the bearer of a report. Yet a small, secret pleasure welled from his stomach to his chest. He felt the knife tickle at his collar again, the pain in his elbow surged through him as he remembered — then cleared as he anticipated. Priabin would pay, he'd beat the little shit to a pulp, with one hand tied behind… He grimaced. With his one good fist then.
"What does Priabin have to say?"
"Do you want to talk to—?'
"Just give me the gist of it, man!" he roared.
"Sorry, Colonel." The man lowered his eyes and rushed on. "He said he was waiting for — our people to turn up. Sir, that's exactly what he said. The woman you wounded is dead, sir. The Mil suffered damage during its encounter with the zveno, just as they suspected — rudder controls inoperable, the report says. The American was forced to crash-land, about two and a half hours ago. Gant has a videotape of the — assembly building with him, a rifle, food. He's on foot. Priabin has no idea where he's gone, and says he couldn't less."
Serov realized how muddy, how defeated his thoughts had been-The impact of what he heard struck him only after the lieutenant had finished his summary. Then he hit his head as if to jolt his mi*1 to activity.
"Then he's on foot."
"Yes, sir.".
"Thank Christ for that. You realize what it means? He's as good as in the bag. He can't possibly get anywhere on foot. My God, we've won, we've stopped it. Tell them, the gunships, the ground patrols, everyone — two hours to find the American. Two hours."
He turned away, walking across the room toward the windows. Immediately, he located Rodin. Right, you old bastard, he thought carefully, precisely. I'm no longer here on sufferance. I have a right.
Quenching a sneer of triumph, he turned* quickly toward the door. He'd tell Rodin now.
Resolve and will had turned against him, robbing him of strength as they, too, ebbed. His imagination was using energy at a suicidal rate. His legs had become leaden, hard to move, and his head felt light. The sense that it was hopeless, that he could go on for only a little longer, waited at the door of his conscious mind, pushing it slowly open.
Moonlight, gleaming on snaking ice, sheened on the early frost glittering across the stretches of sand and dirt. Clouds moved across die sky like great dark shoulders heaving at something that resisted their solid force. The rifle banged against his ribs as he jogged with repeated, sapping blows. The others — the dead woman and the KGB man he hardly knew who had wanted so much to kill him, even Serov and the pursuit — were increasingly behind him, distant and unreal. His head was becoming fuzzy with exertion and defeat. There was nothing in front of the next few heavy thumps of his boots, nothing behind other than the slow distance he had come.
How many miles? Three, four since the last glimpse of the map? He gritted his teeth, hearing his breath roar in his ears, his blood pound. Nothing had come near him, no other vehicle, no helicopter. They had no idea where he was.
They'd find him before daylight, for sure.
The certainty grew that he was merely expending energy to no Purpose. His body ran with sweat, the rifle banged, even the videotape cassette weighed heavy in one pocket of the parka. The ground beneath his boots seemed to shift, become uncertain and ^dy. Trees filtered the moonlight darkly, as if hoarding it.
Trees.
He staggered to a halt, his head reeling like a drunks, his body Quivering. He looked around him wildly, as if he had been ordered to halt. He dropped to one knee, flicking on the flashlight, waggling j*16 maps creased folds beneath its thin beam. The map shivered in ^ hand, but not from the wind, which distressed his hair and was chilly on his damp neck and throat. His eyes traced the way he had come — flatness, flatness, a small plantation, yes, he remembered it, a narrow, clattering bridge across a main irrigation channel, two other planklike crossings, yes — this small fir plantation? His mind jogged back along the track. He did not remember, and shook his head in puzzlement and fear. Like a driver on a long straight highway, startled to realize that the last miles were a blank in his memory. At any moment, they might have surprised and taken him; at any moment. He shivered. The wind was increasingly cold, his body small and vulnerable. The track was a pale, moonlit strip running between the two dark, high banks of trees. Stars glinted coldly. Warmer light insinuated between the narrow boles of the farthest trees of the plantations — warmer light, represented a danger now to his exhausted mind, not a destination. He stood up slowly, like an old, arthritic man.