Firefox (34 page)

Gant unfolded the single sheet of flimsy within the envelope, studying it carefully.

‘What is “Harmless”?’ he repeated.

Seerbacker grinned. ‘Just our little joke - only it may save our lives,’ he said. ‘We’ll go up top in a while - you can see for yourself.’

Gant nodded, as if the answer to his question did not really interest him. His orders were simple. There was a list of map coordinates, and times, which he knew would take him at first low across the Finnish coast, east of the North Cape decoy area, across the lake-strewn landscape of Finland, towards Stockholm. Once there, where the Gulf of Bothnia encountered the Baltic, he was instructed to rendezvous with the late afternoon British Airways commercial flight from Stockholm to London. He knew why. If he tucked in behind the plane, and below it, not only would he be out of sight of the crew, but all that would show up on an infrared screen would be the single image of the airliner’s heatsource. And the airliner would be expected across the North Sea, en route and on schedule.

And he was immune to any sort of detection other than visual - an unlikely possibility. No Elint ship in the North Sea warned to watch for him would guess where he was. When he arrived at a specified coordinate off the English coast, he was to call RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire on a frequency within the general aviation band, assuming the identity of a test-flight for a commercial passenger plane receiving its Certificate of Airworthiness check-up. With luck, if it worked, the Russians would lose him, if they had ever found him, off the eastern coast of Sweden, when he linked infrared images with the British Airways flight.

He read the coordinates once more, committing them firmly to memory. Then he replaced the sheet in its buff envelope, and the envelope in its wrapper. Seerbacker had already placed a large steel ashtray on the table. Gant placed the packet in the ashtray, then ground the heel of his hand on it. Almost immediately, the fumes of the released acid rose pungently and the packet began to dissolve. Gant watched it until it consisted of no more than a few blackened, treacly specks. Then he nodded, as if to himself, and said: ‘O.K. - let’s get urgent. Captain. I want to see what progress has been made on my runway.’ His eyes, surprisingly to Seerbacker, almost twinkled for a moment, and he added: ‘And I want to see “Harmless”.’

Of course, Aubrey reflected, he could not be certain - no, not by a very long way, not just at present.

Nevertheless, he was unable quite to extinguish the small flame of hope that warmed his stomach like good brandy; the heat of success. The code activity from the Russians, combined with the success of the decoymissions around the North Cape area, and the signal from Seerbacker aboard the Pequod that the Firefox was safely down, and refuelled - all added to his barely suppressed sense of satisfaction.

Shelley, too, he could see, could hardly keep a schoolboyish grin from his smooth features. The Americans, having swung down with the graph of Buckholz’s doubts, been infected by indecision, now lifted in a rising curve again. Curtin was on the steps, adjusting the positions of Russian planes and vessels as they moved further and further into the decoy area. Aubrey glanced up at the huge map, and saw only the position of the floe, and the coloured pin representing the Firefox alongside it.

Had Seerbacker risked getting off another signal, to confirm the sonarcontact with the approaching Russian submarine, or had Aubrey been aware of Vladimirov’s intuition, and partial success in Bilyarsk, his mood might have been less equable, his ego-temperature somewhat lower. But he was still blinded by the brilliance of his own design, and Seerbacker had not informed him of the suspicious escort submarine in his vicinity. For Aubrey, the design had become now only a mechanical matter - as long as Gant followed instructions, it was in the bag.

Aubrey maintained that he was a man who never, absolutely on no occasion, counted his chickens - but now he did. The magnitude of what he had achieved, from inception, through planning, to execution, stunned him, shone like a fierce sun on his vanity, causing it to bloom.

‘Hm - gentlemen,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘I realise that perhaps this may be a little premature… ‘ He smiled deprecatingly, knowing that they shared his mood. ‘Nevertheless - perhaps we might permit ourselves a little - a modicum of celebratory alcohol?’ Buckholz grinned openly. ‘You sure put it tortuously, Aubrey - but yes, I reckon we could open a bottle,’ he said.

‘Good.’

Aubrey moved to the drinks trolley that had stood throughout their vigil in the corner of the operations room. Suddenly, the place seemed to be without the stale, almost rancid, smell of old cigar smoke and unchanged clothing. The faces were no longer strained with tension. It was merely that they were a little tired - tired with the satisfying tiredness of a job well done, of something completed.

He broke the seal on the malt whisky, and poured the pale gold liquid into four tumblers in generous measures. Then, deferentially, he handed the drinks round on a small silver tray, brought from his own flat, in readiness.

Aubrey raised his glass, smiled benignly, and said: ‘Gentlemen - to the Firefox … and. of course, to Gant.’

‘Gant - and the Firefox,’ the four men chanted in a rough unison. Aubrey watched, with mild distaste, as Buckholz threw his drink into the back of his throat, swallowed the precious liquid in one. Really, he thought the man has absolutely no taste - none at all.

As he sipped at his own drink, it seemed more than ever merely a matter of time. He glanced at the telephone. In a few minutes, no more, it would be time to order the car to transport them to RAF Scampton - if Gant were not to arrive before themselves, which would not do at all.

He smiled at the thought.

Peck was standing in front of Gant and Seerbacker, looming over them both. Sweat rimed the fur of his hood in crystals of ice, and ice stood out stiffly on his moustache. His face was pale, drained by effort.

‘Well?’ Seerbacker said, his hand still on the sail-ladder of the Pequod.

‘It’s done, sir,’ Peck said. Then he looked at Gant, and his voice hardened. ‘We’ve cleared your damn runway, Mr. Gant!’

‘Peck!’ Seerbacker warned.

For a moment, Gant thought the huge Chief Engineer was intending to strike him, and he flinched physically. Then he said: ‘I’m sorry. Peck.’

Peck seemed nonplussed by his reply. He scrutinised Gant’s face, as if suspecting some trick, nodded as he appeared satisfied, and then seemed to feel that some explanation was required of him. He said: ‘Sorry - Major…’ Gant’s eyes opened in surprise. It was the first time anyone had used his old rank. Peck meant it as a mark of respect. ‘We - it’s just the feeling, sir. Working out there on that damn pressureridge, the men and me - well, we just kept thinking how we could have been getting out of this place, instead of breaking our backs.’ The big man’s voice tailed off, and he looked steadily down at his feet.

Gant said: ‘It’s O.K., Peck - and thanks. Now, tell me where we are, what stage have you reached.’

Peck became business-like, immediately formal. ‘We’ve got a thirty-feet gap hacked out of the ridge. Now we run the hoses from the turbine on a direct-feed - we need a lot of pipe. Major - it’ll take time.’

Gant nodded.

‘Get to it. Peck - the sooner you’ve done, the sooner you can get going. When you’ve finished smoothing down the surface of the floe - and make it as smooth as possible, ‘cos I don’t want to hit a bump at a hundred-and-fifty knots -1 want you to spray steam on the ice, down the length of the runway, starting as near the northern edge of the floe as you can, running down to the Firefox - if you have the time.’

Peck looked puzzled. ‘Why, Major?’

‘Clear the surface snow. Peck - that’s what it’ll do. I don’t need to be held back by the surface-resistance…’

‘Get to it. Peck,’ Seerbacker said. ‘I’ve just got to check on the decoy procedure, and then I’m coming to take a look at your night-school efforts!’

Peck grinned, nodded, and moved away down the length of the Pequod, forward to the hatch above the turbines, where two members of the engineering crew were feeding down great serpent-loops of hose into the belly of the submarine.

‘You want to see “Harmless”?’ Seerbacker said. ‘Come take a look.’

‘Harmless’ was hurried, crude, and brilliant, Gant was forced to admit. The feverish activity of those members of the sub’s crew not working on the pressureridge at first seemed to obey no overall strategy, tend towards no definable object. Then he realised what was happening.

The submarine was being transformed into the headquarters of an Arctic weather-station. Over the transmitter in his pocket, Seerbacker snapped out orders that the torpedotubes and forward crew-quarters were to be flushed out with sea water, the evidence of the paraffin to be removed. This would be followed by faked evidence of hull damage to explain the presence of residual water in both compartments. On the ice, a hut had been assembled from its components, and crude wooden furniture carried inside. Maps and charts covered the newly erected walls, Gant saw as he peered through one of the windows. Impressive lists of figure-filled notepads and sheets attached to clipboards. Two masts had been erected, one twenty feet high, the other reaching to thirty feet. The taller of the pair was a radio mast, while an anemometer revolved on the top of the other one, and below this a vane swung, indicating direction of the measured wind.

A white chest, a Stephenson Screen, containing thermometers and hygrometers, stood beneath the smaller mast, and the disguising of the floe as a weather-station was completed by holes drilled into the ice, in some cases through to the sea beneath, into which thermometers had been lowered.

As Gant watched Peck and his men unroll the lengths of hose, slip the sections together, he saw a bright orange weather-balloon float up into the sky. Still clinging to the surface of the floe were shredding, rolling embers of mist, but above it, the cloud base began at thirteen thousand feet. A second balloon hovered a hundred feet above the Pequod, attached by a nylon line. The balloons would explain the earlier release of a signal balloon when he landed.

It took a little more than fifteen minutes to transform the surface of the floe into the appearance of a U.S. weather-station studying the movements and characteristics of a large icefloe in its southward path to immolation. The fact that the Pequod was operating in the northern Barents Sea, rather than east of Greenland, was the only weakness as far as Gant could see.

As Seerbacker said, as he joined Gant near the bridge-ladder of the submarine: ‘They can’t prove a thing, Gant - as long as you’re long gone from here before that Russian boat climbs all over us!’

Gant glanced reflectively down at the ice, and then said: ‘What about the exhaust - they’ll be keeping infrared watch on this floe. They must have tumbled something?’

‘Roll, Gant - I don’t give a cuss for your heat-trail, Just get that bird out of here, and leave me to do the worrying, will you?’

Gant smiled at the mock ferocity of Seerbacker’s answer. The man was frightened, knew he was treading a fine edge of ground steel. He nodded. ‘Sure. I’ll get out of here, just as soon as I can.’

‘Good.’ Seerbacker plucked the radio-transmitter from the pocket of his parka, pressed it to his cheek, and flicked the switch. ‘This is the Captain - you there, Fleischer?’

‘Sir.’ From the radio, Fleischer’s voice had a quality of unreality, one that impressed upon Gant the whole situation - the tiny floe, the bitter wastes of the Barents Sea, the approach of the Russian hunterkiller submarine.

‘What’s the news on our friend?’

There was a pause, then the Exec. said: ‘We’re getting a computer-prediction now, sir. Subject to a seven-per-cent error in the sonarcontact…’

‘Yeah. Tell me the bad news.’

‘The ETA for the sub is seventeen minutes.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Course and speed appear to be exactly the same, sir. She’s coming straight for us.’

Seerbacker wore a strained look on his face for moment, then he grinned at Gant. ‘You hear that?’ Gant nodded. ‘O.K. Fleischer - I’m leaving this set receive from now on -1 want you to call it to me every minute, understand?’

‘Sir.’

‘When the sub comes up on close-range sonar, call me the exact speed and distance every thirty seconds.’

‘Sir ‘

Seerbacker clipped the handset to the breast pocket of his parka, tugged at it to ensure that it wouldn’t come adrift, nodded to Gant, and headed away from the submarine in the direction indicated by the two hoses which trailed like endless black snakes away into the mist. Following him, the ridge still out of sight, the violent hiss of steam hardly audible, Gant was once more possessed by a sense of the precariousness of his position. The hunched, loping figure of Seerbacker seemed slight, almost unsubstantial, certainly not a presence capable of supporting the weight of his escape. The firm ice beneath his feet, the glimpse of the Firefox in the mist as he turned his head to glance at it - they did not reassure him. The Russian submarine was homing on the floe and the Pequod. They had sixteen minutes, give or take a little.

Two men manned each nozzle, directing a jet of superheated steam onto the ugly, unfinished plasterwork of the hole in the ridge. It was supposed to be thirty feet across. Gant’s brain measured it - to his imagination it looked small, too small. The steam played over the rough surface of the floe, over the hacked, torn edges of the gap - smoothing it out. It took them only a couple of minutes to give the gap smooth edges, a smooth, gleaming floor.

Peck had turned once, acknowledged the presence of Gant and the captain, and then ignored them. As soon as the sap was smoothed to his satisfaction, he bawled at his team: ‘All right, you guys - get this runway smoothed off!’

‘What for, chief?’

‘Because I’m telling you to do it - you’ll enjoy it, Clemens!’

The hoses snaked away into the mist, unwillingly following the men dragging at them. They snaked past Gant’s feet, slowly, far too slowly. He looked at his watch, just as Fleischer’s voice squawked from near Seerbacker’s shoulder.