North Cape (7 page)

He was now almost directly over the location of the cannon emplacement. The new flight plan called for two passes, one at forty thousand feet to survey the countryside and, if he could manage it safely, a second lower pass over the impact area for closeups. The altitude was left up to him. Teleman looked pained—that was their polite way of telling him to get right down on the deck if he could. To make the fastest possible approach with the least amount of time over the target area, he resumed manual control and fell off fifty miles to the east. He would make a quick pass straight down the valley and pull up hard to eighty, thousand feet. The pass should carry him over both the cannon site and the impact site with less than one full minute spent below sixty thousand feet. The second pass he would worry about later.

Teleman made the first run across the target in a straight pass while all of his surveillance equipment—infrared, ultraviolet, topographical laser, and telephoto visual light—ground away. There was little activity on the ground, with the exception of two Red Chinese Mig 21 patrol crafts rising from the vicinity of Ala-Kul to the north. He had nothing to fear from the Chinese interceptors even if he came within visual sighting distance. His speed was more than a match for any armament they carried. The ground control map flew across the screen, a green streak acting as the pointer to the first of the locations.

The sensors picked out the exact location of the 210-mm gun from the satellite coordinates and displayed the area beneath on the scope. The gun emplacement was covered with camouflage netting and he shifted to the IR panel. On the scope he thought he could pick out several trenches and some activity close to the gun itself. Then he was away and past, hoping that all of the sensors combined had been able to pick out a coherent picture. The laser panel was signaling for attention and he switched it up. The laser had spotted a diffuse cloud on the order, of two hundred parts per million some thirty miles east. Quickly he reran the instructions from AR-7 until they matched the location.

When the shell from the gun had exploded it had released a cloud. Of what, AR-4 was not equipped to tell. But it was still there after twenty minutes, and spreading slowly, apparently on the prevailing wind. The laser indicated particulate matter as the main composition of the cloud—thin droplets of liquid. That pretty well ruled out an atomic shell, he thought, even if it had failed to explode properly. Teleman paused for a moment, then deciding, he boosted power to the turbofans and swung the wings forward a few degrees and headed quickly for the deck. At a little less than Mach 1 he bore westward toward the cloud, flying up the valley

and losing altitude as fast as he could shed it. "Gas?" he wondered aloud. If the Chinese were using gas, the Soviets might not be so reluctant to initiate a nuclear conflict. In this godforsaken area it could be done fairly safely, that is if they could limit the exchange to the war area and not extend it to each other's cities. The Soviets might be trusted to do that, but not the Chinese. They would have to escalate if they were to remain effective. The valley seemed outwardly calm in the early morning sunlight that was beginning to touch the snow-covered slopes. But he knew that the snow and convolutions of the land hid masses of troops and weaponry. He knew that the radar operators on both sides of the border must be wondering about the peculiar blank spots in their radar that kept recurring over the war area and along the lengthy border. He was sure that conferences were being held by phone between the radar sites and headquarters areas to decide whether to scramble investigating fighter aircraft. Teleman was reckoning that he would have less than ten minutes more before the first aircraft appeared. It would be dangerous to the project, but probably not fatal to him if he was spotted visually. The A-17 could outclimb and outrun anything either side could throw against him.

As Teleman neared the open plain where the shell had impacted and scattered its mysterious cloud, the lasers indicated that it had spread to cover an area at least twenty miles square. The single shell fired had exploded over the western crest of the last ridge separating the valley from the plains, and the prevailing westerly winds had swept it down and across the plain. Teleman warmed up the Terrain Avoidance Radar for the second pass and settled into the northern end of the wide, bowl-shaped plain for samples. The wing scoop covers slid open and he throttled back until the wings were fully extended and he was flying at less than five hundred miles an hour. He completed a first pass at five hundred feet and saw nothing visually although the flickering display from the monitoring consoles assured him that the sensors were faithfully recording every blade of grass and tree leaf for later analysis.

He swung up in a tight turn over the southern end, dipped the port wing, and lost altitude until he was down on the deck at little over two hundred feet and lumbering along at 14o knots. He

turned into a lazy zigzag pattern and put all of the sensors •to work and the aircraft on automatic pilot. Teleman rubbed his face and sighed, then picked up the binoculars to search the snow-covered meadows and hillsides beneath while the aircraft went into the rolling jolting pattern calculated by the TAR to maintain an even two-hundred-foot altitude over the undulating land below.

There was plenty of evidence of past battles on the ground: numerous shell holes, trenches, shattered tanks and personnel carriers, and long stretches of churned mud left by maneuvering vehicles. A fierce battle must have swept through the area only yesterday, as several of the destroyed vehicles were still sending up thin columns of smoke from fire-blackened hulks. The snowfall of the preceding night had spread a thin layer of white over the battle area, but it had not been heavy enough to cover all traces. The overcast sky and the banked, heavy blue clouds to the east suggested another snowfall and fierce winds in a matter of hours, and he thanked the weather control satellite system that had provided the data that had brought him to the battle area before the new snowfall began.

Then, off to the right, at the base of a gentle slope, well hidden by a thicket of aspen, he caught a flicker of movement. Cutting out the autopilot, Teleman continued the zag around until he could make a straight pass. The ungainly 12o-foot A-17 pivoted delicately and !loped across the plain.

Watching the scope now rather than looking through the glasses, he could see a vehicle resembling a jeep jerk out of a stand of aspen and head erratically into the meadow. As he watched, the jeep struck a patch of thick, churned -mud *and bounced to a stop, thoroughly mired. The driver struggled to get out, then collapsed •backward across the seat. From the padded uniform and hat, he was obviously Chinese.. Teleman cut in the autopilot again and checked the valley floor to the west with the binoculars while the aircraft resumed its interrupted search pattern. He had now been down in the valley at two hundred feet for a minute and a half. Safe-time was getting mighty short. Whatever that shell carried, he thought, they did not seem to care whether or not they hit their own troops as welL Then he saw what he had missed on his first and higher pass: a Soviet tank sat astraddle a point where several muddy tracks converged. Its turret gun was pointed in the direction of the

hills off Teleman's starboard wing and he could plainly see two mortar emplacements concealed by its bulk. The powerful glasses showed figures clad in green Soviet uniforms, some with white snow coverings, scattered like dropped firewood. The turret hatch on the tank was open and he could see a body, half in, half out. Other troopers lying on the ground were twisted into grotesque postures, some still jerking spasmodically.

Teleman's first thought was of nerve gas. He 'keyed the telephoto lenses on the visual cameras to the scene and boosted the image Up on the scope, closing on the Mortar emplacement While he put the aircraft into a tight orbit at three hundred feet. He swore as he checked the chronometer readout. One more minute and he would have to get out whether he had everything or not. Now he could see the bodies of other soldiers, some in foxholes, some scattered around the meadow as if they had tried to stagger toward the river. The faint footprints in the fresh snow were silhouetted in the dawn sun, indicating unsteady trails. A single trooper lay on his back, arched over the lip of a foxhole, one arm thrown across a pile of mortar shells. His helmet had tumbled back off his head, leaving his face exposed to the dead light of the early sun. Teleman could even see the man's long blond hair stirring in the vagrant breeze that reinforced the prediction of the impending storm. The image of the hair registered subconsciously. Teleman peered at the face, framed in the scope: it was covered with blood and vomit and the eyes of the man were open, staring directly, it seemed, into the cameras. For a long moment Teleman could not tear his eyes away from the face as the cameras recorded the scene in minute detail. Then he broke the aircraft out of its orbit and dismissed the rest of the flight plan. He had all of the information he needed. judging from the evidence he had seen so far, the Chinese were using either gas or germ warfare.. For some reason, with the image of the dead Russian soldier's face before him, he was betting on bacteriological agents.

Teleman wondered how many shells had been fired' before the satellite surveillance system had spotted the 210-mm cannon. This one appeared to have been timed for just after dawn; probably so, that the Chinese could gain a quick estimate of its effectiveness as well as initial Soviet reaction.

So far, there did not appear to be any. He checked the atmosphere sampling tanks and the lights glowed green, showing that the covers were sealed. Now it would be up to Washington to extract what they could from the samples.

A quick scan of the radar panels indicated that there had been no unusual air activity recorded in the nine minutes he had been below forty thousand feet. But deep in the valley as he had been, his radar was shadowed by the hills to the east. He considered a moment, then pulled the nose up sharply and cut in afterburners. He came out of the shallow valley, clearing the hills like a rocket. In less than thirty seconds he had passed sixty thousand feet and switched the engines to ramjet. The sudden explosion of thrust kicked him back into the acceleration couch. The pressure suit accommodated itself to the change caused by the sudden acceleration while the PCMS adjusted stimulant flows. Off to the east, the surveillance radar had two Chinese Migs spotted, heading for the broad valley. As he climbed, the Chinese pilots, now far below, pulled up sharply, caught by his surprise exit. They chased him upward for a short while, but by the time they reached_ sixty thousand feet he was leveling off at 120,000. Teleman caught the flicker of air-to-air missiles reaching for him as the Chinese

aircraft tried a last frantic measure to bring him down. But there was never a chance. There would be, he knew, some soul-searching at their intelligence headquarters later on—if the pilots were believed. There would certainly be no radar sightings to confirm their story and the Thoughts of Mao would provide no sensible answers. Teleman grinned to himself as the A-17 pulled out of the climb and settled into a searchand-photograph flight mode, then turned to the monitoring console to run through the information the sensors had so far picked up. As the data, reduced to language forms and equations, streamed across the screen, he found more information than he had hoped for. The laser topographical radar had managed to build a thorough map of the war area. Also spotted were several Soviet and Red Chinese missile installations that he suspected were previously unknown to U. S. Intelligence. Near the town of Lepsinsk on the Kazakh SSR side, a cleared site with camouflaged bunkers betrayed a VTOL fighter airdrome.. That meant that the Soviets had moved their air operations closer to the border than had been suspected. The vertical takeoff and landing fighters were limited in operating range, but they were Mach 2.1 fighters and could react and be over the selected target or engagement in a lot less time than conventional jet aircraft. By moving them into the area around Lepsinsk, the Soviets could meet the threat of the heavy Chinese airbase at Nordach, located well into the jut of the Sinkiang border, from which they could bring fighter bombers within striking distance of Alma Alta.

The IR sensors had located vehicle weapon parks on both sides of the border, including a number of heavy artillery sites, well dug in and virtually invulnerable to counterartillery attacks. Both sides had prepared well, Teleman thought, and obviously for a number of years. Much of the fighting on the plateau would have to be done by infantry troops supported by aircraft. It, was still short of o800, local time, only forty minutes after local sunrise. Except for probing patrol actions, the bulk of the day's fighting was probably still to come.

The action earlier in which the two Soviet troop carriers had been knocked out would furnish ample evidence that a shooting war was actually going on. That revelation would make quite a stir in the United Nations, particularly to certain neighboring and nervous countries. The more sophisticated nonvisual sensor data

would be pored over eagerly by the attaches of many nations. But the dangerous information, the data that really counted, lay safely in the atmosphere-sampling tanks. Either gas or bacteriological agents, it would make no difference. Either would be enough to bring world condemnation of the Red Chinese, even by nations friendly to her. It was doubtful if their usual pattern of denial would avail them in this instance. The doubt would be there, and there would be calls for an international monitoring team. And the evidence could not be hidden. Teleman was well pleased with the morning's work. And so would Washington be.

Teleman was completing the final leg of the search pattern preparatory to shaping a course northeast for_ rendezvous. He was flying at eight thousand feet in the vicinity of Lach Rom on the Chu River. The aircraft was on automatic, following the irregular border by star-fix coordinates when Telemen caught a tiny flicker on the trailing edge of the surveillance radar screen. The blip showed at sixty thousand feet near Pezhevalsk, on the Soviet side of the border. As he watched, the blip was read out as an Ilyushin Falcon, closing the four-hundred-mile gap at Mach 2.5. For long seconds he continued to watch, wondering where the Soviet aircraft was going in such a hurry. The Falcon was the latest Soviet interceptor, capable of Mach 3.2 and carrying an armament consisting of four Mach 4.8 air-to-air missiles that could be armed with small nuclear warheads. The aircraft was only recently being distributed to the Soviet Tactical Air Command as a high-speed, high-altitude interceptor with a ceiling of a little less than 180,000 feet. Its major task was to act as defense against the new, high/low-level Mach 3