"No—"
"It will not be your decision, Valery, but mine." He paused.
Through his misery — and relief that his father intended nothing more for the moment — Valery heard his father s stertorous breathing and his own ragged inhalations.
"Do you understand?" his father repeated. "You see no one, you talk to no one. You stay indoors. You do not answer the telephone. Is that clear?"
"I — understand."
"Good. You've babbled quite enough already. A week of silence, and then enlistment at the academy, will help all of us." The Frunze Academy, the school for elite career officers. His father's influence could get him a place there — dammit. "Very well." The voice was unsoftened, and merely pretended to familiarity, to a common humanity between them. "Now, go. Go, Valery."
Valery made a grab at the generals hand, but his grip closed on air. The hand had been snatched away like that of some czar displeased with a menial ambassador.
"Go," the general breathed from near the windows.
Through the wetness of his tears, the sky appeared almost colorless to Valery Rodin; his father's figure a looming dark shadow against it.
A map was spread near his right boot, pictures unrolled on the screen of the moving-map display like a series of hurried-through slides. He might have been thumbing through some familiar reference book for information he knew it contained.
The three hundred and fifty miles of the coastline between the Iranian border and Karachi flashed by in sections. Narrow coastal strip before the coastal range. Blue of the sea. No islands, no coral atolls, no sandbanks of any size. Just the isolated coastal strip. A few small holiday resorts, a handful of villages. His eyes glanced from the magnified images to the map on the floor, as if seeking reassurance or in growing desperation.
There were people around Gant, silent and expectant, and that expectancy was fading, turning cold and sour. He was hardly conscious of them or their changing mood. Aware only of the headset he wore as he sat in front of the display, which was no larger than a Portable typewriter.
A box with keys below a small screen — a box without answers.
He could not be sure. He had to choose blind, sensing the precise length of a beach, assuming its width between surf and palm, assuming its emptiness — all before they overflew it to check it out
If he was wrong in any of those parameters, they would have no time or fuel to find a second dropping zone. And all he had in the way of backup was one of the flight crew acting as an observer, standing between pilot and copilot, binoculars ready for the earliest possible visual sighting of the dropping zone he proposed. By the time the beach took on dimension and form in the observers glasses, it would be too late to make any changes. It would be either go or no go.
Anders was in the secure communications room behind the flight deck, talking via satellite with Langley — with the White House by now for all Gant knew. Squeezing permission out of Karachi's military and Islamabad's government. Pressuring the director and the President to bribe the Pakistanis. Offer them anything — everyone always wants guns, missiles.
Gant muttered to himself, flicking back, flicking forward once more through the sequence of map sections. Holding, weighing, discarding, hurrying on. The stain of yellow-brown was clearer through the small window. It wore a line of green above it now and, more mistily, a jagged line of brown hills. Beach, trees, hills. The dropping zone had to be on the beach, but where, along this length of coast?
The three pallets would be loosed from the rear doors — fuel, Garcia's MiL, then his own helicopter. Parachutes opening and dragging, the impact of it like landing on the deck of a carrier — and he'd done that, scores of times, though Garcia hadn't and didn't like the idea. With great good luck, the pallets would remain intact and upright and they could release the MiLs, unlock the rotors and rig them, fuel up, and take off, to rejoin the Galaxy in Karachi, always praying the transport had made it.
If he could find the beach.
One road along the coast, no more than a wide dirt track. The villages and tiny resorts and occasional isolated bungalows were strung along it like weak and intermittent fairy lights. He heard the pilot's voice against his cheek.
"It's getting critical, mister." He no longer used either Gant's name or his rank. Gant was CIA, not air force; an obscure kind of enemy. He was intent upon wrestling the mission to a new shape, and the pilot was no longer in command of the tanker crew. Gant might just kill them with his scheme. "Our best estimate is — ETA over the coast in six minutes. That will leave you, at most, another four minutes of flying at zero feet before I have to ditch, or you re out the back door and I can still make Karachi. Got that?"
"I understand," Gant replied, waving one hand to silence the fierce whispering the pilots ultimatum had created. "Where do we cross the coast, on your present heading?"
"Somewhere — Charlie?" Gant heard the navigator muttering, then: "West of some God-forsaken place called — what? Ras Jaddi— village called Pasni on a low headland. Got it?"
Gant flicked through the sections of map on the cassette loaded into the display. "I got it." Ras Jaddi, a tiny headland, a speck of atoll? No, nothing except beach, the narrow strip before the trees. That yellow smudge he could see through the window. Ras Jaddi.
"Well, mister?"
Between Ras Jaddi and Ras Shahid, then. Within that fifty-mile stretch. He flicked at the buttons, watched the map unroll backward now, from east to west. Where was there a beach?
He had told Anders to pressure Langley s satellite photography experts into some immediate response. Supply background data, consult photographs, records, files — all the while knowing that there would be time only for a blind guess, the one quick overflight and look-down, then the decision of yes or no.
Beach—
— sand.
The sea was very shallow for a long way out, just there. The beach should consist of fine white sand up near the trees. An impact on wet sand would be risky; they had to make the DZ above the tide.
"Skipper — alter course to intersect the coast ten miles west of the headland. Somewhere between there and Ras Shahid is the DZ."
"You have to be more specific, Gant. I got no fuel to spare."
"OK, OK." He flicked once more through the sections of the map in a feverish hurry. He heard breathing around him, a ragged chorus, like the noise of boxing fans believing their man is going down for the final time. Section after section passed before him, each one covering no more than five miles of coast, detailed, enlarged—
— but only drawings, sketches.
There…
He made the calculations. The beach stretched for a mile and a half in almost a straight line. High tide reached no more than — it was wide enough. Trees, no villages or settlements, no bungalows. A sandbar almost encircled a small bay.
"OK," he announced. "Seventeen miles west of Ras Jaddi — hit that beach and hope to God."
There was silence for a moment, then the muttering of the Galaxy's navigator, finally: "OK, mister, it's your funeral."