He touched the ignition key of the tractor. Noise blurted from the walkie-talkie against his breast, stunning him. He whirled around in his seat as if someone were behind him. The noise slowly resolved into a human voice. Into a demand for an acknowledgment from the dead GRU private.
He did not dare answer.
His eyes frantically studied the night sky, examining individual stars, expecting them to shift, move, resolve themselves into navigation lights. They did not.
"Acknowledge."
They knew the man's name, his rank, his number. They wanted to speak to him, question him.
He did not dare reply.
But if he didn't, they'd come.
17: Fires in the Night
He did not dare acknowledge.
Gant turned the ignition key, and the tractors engine roared. The noise clamored, drowning the small, insistent voice from the walkie-talkie. He put the tractor into gear, turning the wheel with a strength that surprised him; comforted him, too. The battery's bulk seemed to have increased. It dominated his thoughts. He accelerated along the side of the hangar, his eyes constantly checking the sky above and around him. Only stars, only the fading moonlight—
The voice was apparent again. While it repeated its summons over and over, it lost its threat. He turned into the hangar. The huge rear tires crushed something that cracked audibly, the wingtip of the stripped Antonov brushed against the top of the cab. He felt a tug at the tractor, heard a tearing noise. The door of the Battery Room was visible ahead of him as he turned on the tractor's headlights. Splashing light no longer mattered. He halted the tractor and stepped down.
As he entered the confined space of the room and the engine noise diminished, he realized that there was no sound from the walkie-talkie. He held it to his ear for a moment — no, nothing. He almost wanted to shake it like some clockwork toy that refused to work, but thrust it back into his breast pocket. He looked at his watch. Three thirty-eight. It had begun; suspicion, realization, counteractivity.
Breathing deeply, he checked the dials on the charger. The battery was almost fully charged. He undipped the leads, tested the bulk of the battery, felt for the carrying handle; it hardly slid more than a few inches as he heaved at it. He groaned aloud. Stood back-
The bench on which the battery rested was a few feet from the floor. He would damage the battery for certain if he dropped it.
Come on, come on, he raged at himself. Try.
He turned to the tractor, headlight eyes staring at him, making him blink and squint. Come on!
He moved behind the bench, pushing at the battery. It slid reluctantly to the edge, almost teetering there? in danger of falling. He checked, then moved alongside the battery. He was sweating feverishly. He gripped the carrying handle in both hands and tugged. The battery slid off the bench onto the floor with a hideous concussive noise. He shone the flashlight but could find no damage. Back bent, he dragged the battery by its handle out of the Battery Room, across the dusty concrete to the tractor. His breathing was like a punctuated groaning.
This was the last thing, the last task. He gripped his arms around the battery, heaving and straining at it. He staggered with the weight, lurching against the side of the tractor, thrusting the battery like a ram against the cab, against, in, into the cab… gasped for breath, back aching, arms numb. He looked at the battery resting innocently on the floor of the cab, near the pedals.
Almost at once, a sense of his peril returned, and all but doubled him up with stomach cramps. He forced himself up into the cab. Accelerated slowly, the cramps passing. He drove out of the hangar, almost afraid to look up. Then making himself quarter the sky. Stars, moon, darkness. Nothing moved. Nothing on the track, either. He rounded the hangar, heading toward the clearly visible aircraft. Drew up next to it.
Three forty-three.
He slid the tractor inch by inch alongside the open battery compartment in the Antonovs tail. His hands were light on the wheel, his foot gentle on the pedal. He watched over his shoulder. Closer, closer. He could not attend to the night sky now; his horizon had become the edge of the cab, the distance to the open flap.
Yes!
He switched off the engine and jumped down. Silence gradually seeped into his hearing. Silence, still. Only minutes now.
He would have to heft it into the compartment before rigging it. Stow and rig — how long? It won't matter shit if you don't get it into the compartment. He positioned himself, feet slightly apart, arms at each side of the battery, then he bent and strained, as if about to hurl the battery into the open flap. Paused, tried to raise his body, move his arms as they cracked with the strain. Lifted the battery, staggered in a turn, expelling his breath in a huge shout.
The battery banged into the compartment. He lurched forward with the effort and with the frantic desire to stop it from falling backward toward him. If it did, then he would never be able to hold it, would fall with it.
His imagination was feverish with anticipation, so that his hands felt as if the battery were beginning to topple. He thrust at it frantically, struggling it farther into the compartment, finally feeling it tilt into the shallow tray in which it was normally secured. Heaved it again without any sensation in his hands that its bulk had been squared as he intended, then he dimly felt it drop firmly into the tray and remain still. He kept his hands on the battery to calm them as sweat broke out all over his body, as if produced not by his effort but by the trembling weakness afterward. Christ!
He wiped his mouth with the back of one quivering hand. Three forty-five.
Where were they now? Suspicion or realization? Even counteractivity? Somewhere between realization and action, he decided. Close—
T minus fourteen minutes.
The countdown clock in the security room had been readjusted once more as Rodin shaved further minutes from the launch procedures. Serov glanced up at it. It seemed to bear little relationship to the activities of the room and its occupants; as if the tinted windows comprising the wall between himself and the rest of mission control had become completely opaque. The scenes on the television screens were unaccompanied by noise or words. Launch pad, the strange steam of vaporizing fuel, the garish lights, the images from the flight deck of the shuttle; all somehow less real than the fiber-optic map and the radio connection with one corporal driver.
"Why not?" he repeated. "Why can't you raise him?" He addressed the words to the ceiling. If the man failed to pick up his words, they would be repeated by the radio operator. He wished to remain detached.
But why did the countdown clock intrude at the very edge of his peripheral vision? It had nothing to do with the American. He could not ignore it. Thirteen minutes thirty. It was three-forty in the morning, his eyes were gritty with tiredness, his body stale and beginning to acquire an odor within its uniform. Yet his brain refused to be weary; it leaped and jumped with electricity.
He turned his back completely on the countdown clock.
"Well?" he demanded.
… no idea, comrade Colonel," he caught by way of reply.
"And there were two aircraft in that hangar?"
"Yes, comrade—"
He interrupted: "You were certain they were unusable?"
"The chief engineer explained—"
"What did he say — exactly?" Three forty-one. Time seemed to be accelerating. His mind obeyed the diminishing time, not with anxiety or fear but with a sense of keeping pace, even overtaking. His body itched for action. "Exactly."
All the checks, all the calls they had made, and only one failure to respond — this one a GRU private guarding two aircraft.