North Cape (11 page)

A sudden flurry of the computer tapes and there on the screen, closing in from the north, was a Falcon. This time the Soviet pilot had been caught napping. Teleman was ahead of rather than behind him. It was going to be a stern chase, he thought without humor as he flicked the series of switches that fired the ramjets and scrambled to 200,000 feet. The intruder dropped behind momentarily, then increased power and began to close up. As the A-17's speed increased, the PCMS reacted accordingly, infusing Teleman with a calculated mix of hallucinogenic and barbiturate drugs. Within seconds Teleman was no longer thinking of the aircraft as a collection of metal and plastic components, but as an extension of himself. Actually, he did not feel on a conscious level that he had become the aircraft; it simply did not occur to him that there was any distinction. He was a part of the aircraft.

That bastard is gonna catch me, he thought in surprise. The contact readout chattered noisily to itself and showed less than forty minutes needed for missile range to be achieved. Teleman paused, finger on the throttle lever. It occurred to him that the Falcon could not maintain that speed and altitude for more than a few more minutes. Even as he was thinking, his body was reacting and lifting the A-17 to 225,000 feet and Mach 4.5. Simultaneously, the trailing Falcon slewed off and fell below, angling down and north to the nearest air base, while a second came streaking up from just ahead of the Last Soviet aircraft's position. The chase was now shaping up into a gigantic chess match. They were going to run him down and if they failed at that, they would chase him into an area where fate, resembling a Falcon with a loaded and ready missile, would knock him out of the sky.

Teleman's mind was working furiously, weighing various possibilities, while he tried to sort out the various loopholes in each

that would allow him to beat the odds stacking up against him. He could continue to climb to maximum altitude and speed, cutting into his remaining fuel load (already shaved to the danger point by the long flight into Tibet), to and maybe below the poundage needed to achieve rendezvous; or he could try and outfox his energetic pursuers. He checked the computers to see how much longer he dared defer the decision: ten minutes.

He was now flying at 225,000 feet at Mach 4.5 and heading due west across the southernmost part of the Soviet Union. Teleman made a small correction for the rendezvous patterns he had set up. Immediately the Falcon followed suit. He flew on, keeping a wary eye on the plane below. After five minutes, the second Falcon began to drop down in a long glide to its base, and then made an extended turn to the north, dropping lower all the time. At once, a third Falcon came roaring up to take position, still well behind, but having gained nearly twelve miles on his predecessor. The contact readout did a quick readjustment and flipped up the "comforting" news that it would now require only eight minutes before missile range could be achieved, and two minutes left to make his decision. After that, he would be committed to a stern chase across Russia. This third intruder seemed a little more impatient than the first two, Teleman thought, watching him close in faster. Probably wanted to hog the glory of bringing down the Americanski spion. Samolot. Teleman grinned. Only four hundred miles separated the two craft now, and Teleman considered it time to take some pos.. itive action.

"Enough of this fooling around," he muttered aloud, his voice sounding depressingly empty in the silence of the cockpit. Teleman went to work with the decoy missile setups, programing a new flight pattern into the computer. The computer would have to take care of the cubs, he thought. He was going to be too busy shortly to draw a decent breath. Teleman was about to give the Soviet detection systems a thorough workout. He knew that the observer would be busy with the optical tracking gear, but the pilot would have time to operate the semiautomated radar gear they would still carry. He doubted that they would remove all of that, as it would at least provide the approximate area in which to search. Obviously, the optical gear had a range of at least four hundred miles since that was the distance at which they had

picked him up as he came out of the mountains. At five hundred miles, with his own ECM now narrowed to a mile in diameter, he would be only a hole in the sky to the Falcon radar. But he could really give them a red herring to play with. Teleman chuckled. A red herring for Reds. Quite appropriate. He began to flick the ECM switch controlling the antiradar gear on and off in a haphazard pattern, hopefully making the Soviet pilot think that his own radar gear was breaking through the electromagnetic interference the American gear was causing. At the same time he put the A-17 into a steep downward curve south and continued around into a tighter and tighter spiral, all the while keeping a close watch on the digital counter clicking off the closure rate to missile range. On the radar scope, the Russian pilot smoothly followed suit, never hesitating once. The flickering image of the A-17 must have been clearly visible on the radar scope. Teleman followed the course of the Falcon, waiting patiently. He was counting on the natural impatience, coupled with anxiety over losing the target, that he knew the Russian pilot must now be feeling. He had just begun the third spiral when it happened. He saw the Falcon clearly increase speed and go into a tighter and faster curving descent than the A-17. It was so impetuous that he did hot even need the readout to tell him that the Russian had moved, moved to catch him within missile range by turning faster and steeper. Teleman waited a moment longer to be sure the Russian was committed.

He straightened the turn abruptly and pulled the nose up quickly. The ECM was in full operation again and, as he started into the climb, the A-i7 released a ghost-image missile that, traveling at his speed, began to pull away from the aircraft into the same spiral course that he had been flying. The violent turn that the Falcon had made in an effort to catch him inside should have lost the A-17 to the visual observer. The ghost image, a small, ramjet-powered affair, was further complicating matters by producing the same signal that simulated the mother A-17. Teleman could see the pattern plainly on his own radar screen as it pulled farther and farther away. After the two were separated by several mile; the computer, following Teleman's instructions, began to turn the ghost away from the spiraling descent into a straight run south, as if running from the Soviet aircraft.

Teleman hoped, hoped so hard it was almost a prayer, that

there was a terrific argument going on between the pilot and observer on board the Falcon. If this bird was going to hold true to pattern, he had about another five minutes or so to go before he would have to drop out and turn the chase over to the next in line. Teleman wondered at the organization they must have to be able to figure out what he was up to: return the Falcons from their rotating picket duty nearly fifteen hundred miles northeast, land and refuel them, and put them back into the air less than two hours later, strung out in a perfect line to intercept him as he came sneaking across the border. Then he stopped cold. Or else they had one hell of a lot more of-these specially rebuilt Falcons than he had counted on. So far, he had faced four, and that meant they must be supported by at least twelve more if the pickets were to be effective. Since they would not know for sure where he would try to cross, the Soviets would have to keep at least thirty-six modified Falcons on the ready line. One set of twelve on station, twelve on their way from the base to the line, and twelve on the ground being serviced and fueled. " Ye gods," he muttered.

Now it was beginning to look as if his long shot was going to pay off. The following Falcon began to come around on a course halfway between Teleman and' the ghost so that he could keep an eye on both until he decided which was the real intruder. He was being a little more cautious than Teleman had planned on. The gap between him and the ghost had widened to 16o miles and he instructed the computer to pour it on. Instantly, the ghost leaped ahead at close to Mach 5 and the range began to open. By now, the crew of the Falcon must be desperate. He checked his altitude and leveled off at 18o,000 feet to watch for further developments.

As he waited, a fourth Falcon appeared on the scope, screaming for altitude. The third began to drop back and finally, after a few seconds, turned sharply into a bank and began spiraling down. Overshot his fuel, Teleman thought grimly. He hoped their escape capsule was in good operating condition. The fourth Falcon moved up fast, but still was far below the altitude at which the third had fallen out. This was exactly the situation Teleman had been hoping for. He ran for the ice layer. The crystalline structure of the high altitude cloud was so tenuous as to be almost nonexistent, in fact it was detectable only by instruments, but still thick enough

to reflect radar waves. He did not have to worry about radar sighting, but the thin haze the cloud .cast would also make optical tracking that much more difficult in the strong, late morning sunlight. Seconds later he began the second phase of his plan by falling off slowly southward.

It was rare to see an ice cloud layer of this extent much above ninety thousand feet; although scattered and shredded bits of ice could always be found at this altitude. The effects of the Arctic storm, Teleman thought, even 3600 miles south. Anyway, it was here and he was going to make darned good use of it. Safely into the nebulous ice layer, he, settled back to the long chase that would lead him north and west across the Asian landmass.

His radar screens indicated that the Falcon was still tracking the ghost by radar. The readout indicated that they would close .up enough within four minutes to spot it as a phony on the visual apparatus. And when that happened, all hell was going to break loose. And sure enough, after four long minutes, in which Teleman widened the gap between the A-17 and the pursuing Falcon by nearly five hundred miles, he spotted the Soviet craft coming around in a tight half turn. Obviously they had discovered the ghost for what it was and were now running back to the projected path of the last visual sighting. When they got there, they would find him nowhere in sight—he hoped. Sure enough, here came the reinforcements. Four more Falcons were rising fast along the path where they had last sighted him. As unobtrusively as possible, he fell off .even farther south. Now that the Reds were lost in the dust, he was free for the moment to cope with other problems. Right now he was safely out of range of the visual gear. In fact, by dropping off south, he was now falling behind the fourth and rearmost Falcon. He was pretty sure the Soviets would figure that he would pull a trick like this and would right now be using all of the radar at their disposal to try and spot the blind area, now less than a mile wide, that his ECM gear was causing. That would explain the systematic spacing of the four Falcons, each two hundred miles apart. In addition, they might shortly be using their mid-continental radar line, jacked around south to search for him. It was time to increase the ECM before they did pick him up.

As Teleman reached for the ECM gear panel, he caught a flicker of light on the radar screen as one of the Falcons changed course.

The digital readout chattered quickly. Too late, he groaned inwardly. Either one of the aircraft or the ground stations had picked him up. The Falcon was heading directly for him. Working quickly, he extended the counterdetection range to its full sixteenhundredmile range. It seemed to have no effect on the approaching Falcon. He could not spot a single indication of wavering or uncertainty. Swearing softly, Teleman checked the fuel-load readouts. Mach +5 was the limit unless he wanted to crash somewhere in Poland or France, out of fuel. The contact-point readout .now gave him six minutes before the Falcon reached missile range. He checked his location quickly and found that he was south of the ancient capital of the Mongolian Khan Timur-i-leng, the city of Samarkand, less than three hundred miles from the Afghan border. Would the Soviets hesitate to cross the border, as they had north over Sinkiang? There was only one way to find out, he thought grimly, and dropped into a steep turn south, sliding down in a long glide that would bring him across the border at 14o,000 feet. It was a desperate gamble, but one that had to be taken.

The next six minutes passed slowly. Teleman fled south for the border pursued by the Falcons, slowly gaining ground by their relay tactics. As the chase lengthened, Teleman began to observe the flight characteristics of the other pursuing aircraft. His radar showed two other bandits wheeling into the flight line from the north. He could imagine them strung out in a long line, in both directions, all the way to the air base at Alma Alta. Of the two on his radar beside the immediate pursuer, one was heading back. The sudden flurry of activity involving the four Falcons when they thought they had lost him obviously had not exhausted them. Then on the horizon Teleman spotted the Amu Dar Ya, the river that formed the northeastern border, separating the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

The radar screen showed the second following Falcon almost within range, and indicated that Teleman would cross the border with seconds to spare. As if realizing that he was losing his prey, the Soviet pilot fired a salvo of missiles. Teleman watched the two rockets spurt ahead of the aircraft and begin to close in on him with deadly silence. As soon as the missiles were away, the Falcon throttled back and dropped swiftly down in a sharp turn, trying desperately to conserve fuel for the impossible run back to the Alma Alta base eight hundred miles north.

The missiles fell far short, not a serious hazard after all. Teleman bent wearily forward and programed the ECM to respread the sixteen-hundred-mile safety net around the A17. The remaining three Soviet Falcons had pulled around to the north as he crossed the border, and climbing swiftly up to his altitude was a single replacement with which the Soviets would probably try and keep him in sight. But it would be a hopeless task, Teleman knew. He now had a pretty good idea of the effective range of their visual tracking gear. Five hundred miles seemed to be the ultimate, limit and accurate tracking could be performed properly only at less than four hundred miles. Accordingly, Teleman pulled into a long arc to the southwest that would bring him out of range in less than twelve minutes, and throttled back to Mach i.9.