Winter Hawk (56 page)

"What?"

"Fly me out of here—with the good Colonel here, of course, for company. Wonderful conversationalist."

"Why? Why do you need me?"

'Tell him, Priabin, why don't you?" Serov scoffed quietly.

Priabin's face expressed urgency. He glanced at his watch, as he had done repeatedly, ever since Gant had been brought there.

"All right. I can't get out because of the security surrounding the launch—yes, the laser weapon. Your people were right to be worried. They've done it—we've done it. We have one, and it will be loaded aboard the shuttle tonight. I have to get out of Baikonur, to another KGB office a hundred miles away—do you see?"

Gant shook his head. "Who's stopping you?"

"I am," Serov announced quite calmly.

"Why?"

"Because I have to try to stop the launch, that's why!" Priabin yelled, looking once more at his watch. One minute past three. The sunlight was pale now, sliding down the far wall of the room like splashed paint. "Don't you understand?"

"Of course he doesn't, Priabin. You could hardly expect him to, now could you?"

Priabin seemed at a loss; then his face brightened. "
Lightning—
of course, you don't know. Our precious army here intends to use the weapon!"

"How?" Gant asked after a long silence.

"Against your shuttle craft now in orbit.
Atlantis
will be vaporized on Friday—unless you get me out of here. I have to talk to Moscow. Is that enough explanation for you?"

Gant felt his jaw slacken, his mouth open. Confirmation lay exposed in Serov's smile, his glittering, watchful eyes. Wakeman, the shuttle commander, and the others, just—gone.

"I don't have time for your shock and recovery, Gant," Priabin snapped. "You'll obey my orders and fly our surveillance helicopter from here to Aral'sk, as secretly as the way you got in. Understand?"

Gant nodded. The man was giving him the pilot's seat in a MiL—a hand reaching down, two, three, four hands, into the vile water, and pulling at his numb hands and arms until they lifted him from the pit and he lay weak and exhausted and crying on the earth beside it. Fires burned all around, rotor noise howling about him, rifles on automatic . . . This Russian was going to give him control of a MiL helicopter, help him escape. He fought to prevent his relief appearing in his eyes, around his mouth. Clenched his hands behind his back.

"He's already thinking furiously how to turn all this to his advantage, Priabin," Serov remarked.

"That makes two of you," Priabin shot back, looking again at his watch. Three after three. "We'll make it, Serov—won't that annoy you."

ideas whirled in Gant's head. The laser weapon itself, the weapon being used, the shuttle and Wakeman, whom he knew, the treaty, distances, the promise of the MiL. Priabin must be used, for his safety; Priabin had to succeed. An aftershock ran through him like an icy chill. Using the battle station—Wakeman,
Atlantis
, the Soviet shuttle, that night, orbit, the treaty, the army, the distance to the nearest border . . .

. . climb, turn, loop, roll, spin, dive . . . the key to the prison was in his hand, that was his most immediate and recurrent image. Escape.

There was a knock on the door. Priabin, startled, turned the aim of his pistol toward the noise. Serov sat immediately more upright, as if about to spring.

"Watch him," Priabin demanded.

Gant moved toward the desk, hearing a voice from beyond the door. A woman's voice.

"Colonel?" Then: "Dmitri?"

Priabin hurried to open the door, almost pulled Katya into the room, slammed the door behind her. In her arms was a uniform. Serov's breath hissed between his clenched teeth. Gant caught the letter opener Priabin threw in his direction. The Russian was elated by the woman's arrival. Her wide eyes were taking in the room, its tensions and reliefs, its promised dangers for her, for all of them except perhaps Serov. Her hand touched Priabin's arm pro-prietarially, concerned. He seemed to be unaware of the contact as he turned to Gant.

"Get into this KGB uniform, Gant. It should be about your size—quickly." He turned to the woman. "Katya—the helicopter?"

She nodded. "They grumbled a lot, said you couldn't get permission to take off, they didn't want to be shot down. But it's ready for your arrival. I told them it was urgent, you'd come with the right papers."

"Good girl. I'll have the right authority, all right—him." He pointed at Serov with the pistol; he was euphoric, almost drunk with the jigsaw puzzle he had successfully put together. Gant
distrusted
his mood. "What's happening outside this room?" he asked, still animated. "Did you have trouble getting in?"

"Back stairs—poor security from the clodhoppers. I didn't see a soul. We could use—"

"Front stairs—the elevator for us down to his car in the basement garage. A nice little party on urgent business. Come on, Gant. Hurry, man."

"What about the guy I came for—don't we need him?"

"He's heavily sedated. Too hard to move him. They'll just have to take my word for it, won't they?" His face seemed struck by light. "No, they bloody well won't, will they, Serov?" Priabin crossed to Serov's desk, tugged open a drawer, rummaged in it, tried a lower drawer, rummaged, then held up three cassette tapes. '"The ones we used—even neatly labeled by Mikhail." His gaiety was dangerous, consuming all caution; in his own mind, he had already won the game. He threw the cassettes to Katya. "Look after these with your life," he quipped. "Gant, are you ready?"

"Yes." He stood to attention in the corporal's uniform to be inspected. Priabin studied him for a moment, then nodded.

"You'll do. OK, let's go. Serov, you'll walk beside me in our little party, with Gant and Katya behind us. Both armed. One false step—but you know how the dialogue goes. Don't worry about Gant, Katya, he has a vested interest in helping us. We're giving him a chance to go on living. Just in case, take the pistol from him as soon as we reach the helicopter. OK?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"I think this farce has run for long enough, don't you?" Serov drawled, smiling.

"Get up," Priabin snapped at him.

Gant saw no movement of Serov's hand, only him rising from his chair. TTien an alarm howled outside the window, answered by the baying of other alarms in the retreating distance of the corridors beyond Serov's office; all over GRU headquarters. Priabin was stunned by the noise. Gant thrust Serov aside and felt for the alarm button that had to be in one of the desk drawers Priabin had opened; found it, but was unable to stop the noise.

Serov shut the drawer on Gant's left hand. He yelled in pain and struck Serov across the temple with the gun Priabin had handed him.

"No!" Priabin wailed. His look of triumph had vanished.

Gant winced at the pain in his hand and continued to fumble clumsily around the drawer's interior. His mind was filled with the prospect of broken skin, broken bones, the uselessness of the hand • . . it touched another button. Silence.

Then he examined his hand, cuddling it, testing it. Broken skin.

The fingers bent slowly, in turn. No broken bones. Just bruising. The silence in the room, in the whole building, thudded against his ears like noise. His hand would have to be good enough to fly the MiL. Serov was satisfyingly slumped in his chair, blood seeping down his cheek from the cut on his temple.

"No," Priabin breathed. This time it was a plea.

Furniture of the room. A hurried impression as Gant's eyes roved like a quick, unfocused camera. Serving tray, glasses, chairs, wastebasket, papers,
papers\

Cigarette smoke, lighter.

"Help me," he yelled at Priabin.

"What?" came the dazed reply.

Gant flicked the desk lighter, crumpled paper into the waste-basket. Katya, eyes concentrated and squinting, watched him, then snatched vodka bottles from the tray. Handed one to Priabin, unscrewed the tight cork from her bottle, twisting and tugging at it with almost comic desperation. Priabin, understanding, tugged the cork of the other bottle with his teeth.

"Drinking bastard—spilled the stuff, lit a cigarette, we sounded the alarm, but put out. . . ."He did not concern himself with other explanation. They doused the wastebasket, then the surface of the desk. Gant flicked the lighter. Priabin soaked the front of Serov's uniform. The man's eyes cringed at the sight of the stain and the flickering lighter flame.

"Now!" Gant shouted, almost throwing the hghter at the vodka. Flames licked over the desk, dribbled to the carpet, flared in the wastebasket. "Get him on his feet."

He bundled Serov's frame out of his chair. "Move it," he bellowed. "Use the extinguisher, for Christ's sake."

Katya snatched it from the wall, inverted it, banged it on the arm of a chair, and foam sprayed wildly. Gant glared at Priabin.

"Help me get this guy to the door." Priabin was watching the foam as if mesmerized. "Damn you, Priabin, move your ass."

He threw Priabin the pistol and bundled the half-conscious Serov across the room. The man seemed unwilling to protest or resist. Gant watched the door, then opened it.

Two guards spilling into the outer office, rifles awry, curiosity as much as threat in their expressions, their eyes already glimpsing the flames and smoke beyond their colonel and the uniformed man who held him. Gant's hand ached. His was a KGB uniform, so was Pri-abin's and the woman's—three of them and the semi-conscious Serov.

"Drunk!" he yelled. "Started a fucking fire in his own office— cigarette!" The men were nodding. Gant turned. The woman had doused the flames. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils. "All right, get out of our way, the colonel needs medical attention. Quick, move it."

They began to back away from Gant and the muttering bundle in his arms, from Priabin as he pressed behind Gant, from the woman completing the group. Moved out of the outer doorway into the corridor. Gant thrust Serov forward, his feet dragging. Smoke seeped after them, stinking and choking.

The lieutenant was in the corridor beyond them, emerging from the staircase, running—

-—saw the group they made, his retreating men, his slumped superior officer. Suspected. He'd questioned Serov about the manning of the outer office; he'd come expecting something to be wrong, but not a fire.

"Wait!" he shouted, still running. "What's going on here? Wait! What is the matter with—?" He stopped, mouth opening at the sight of Priabin's face—that of a prisoner—and Priabin's gun, impossible in an arrested man's hand. Recognitions flickered. He raised his gun.

"Do it and this bastard's a dead man!" Gant yelled at him. The two guards were slowly beginning to understand. Gant saw the narrowness of the corridor, the elevator doors at the end of it, the lieutenant and the two guards. It was never going to work.

He coughed in the rolling smoke and pushed Serov toward them like a shield. Priabin thrust the muzzle of his pistol against Serov's forehead. Gant felt the man in his arms become rigid with his sense of danger.

"We mean it!" Priabin shouted. "Get back, get out of our way."

Gant moved Serov like some overlarge toy being handled by a child. His feet dragged, but otherwise the GRU colonel did not resist his bundled passage down the first yards of the corridor. Gant felt the vulnerability of his own frame behind that of Serov. Priabin's shoulder rubbed against his as they moved together, Priabin still pressing the gun against Serov's head. Come on, come on, move.

The two guards retreated into the lieutenant, and together they shuffled backward reluctantly, staring at Serov's head and the gun. Gant was sweating furiously; he felt his volition draining away. To counter the threat, he offered Serovs form like a challenging flag at the three retreating men. It seemed to hurry them.

He knew they'd be in the underground garage, they'd be everywhere in the building; no one had done anything but cut off the alarm. It hadn't been canceled by an all-clear. Serov's boots dragged like brakes on the carpet.

He glanced at Priabin's face. It contained a desperation as clear as his own.

"We mean it, we'll kill him!" Priabin shouted at the guards and the lieutenant, waving the pistol, then replacing it so hard against the man's temple that Serov groaned. "Come on, get backl"

"Get away from those doors!" Gant bellowed hoarsely, his arms aching with Serov's weight, his own unwashed scent rank in his nostrils, his heart pumping wildly. "Move it!"

"Drop the rifles—your pistol, Lieutenant."

To Gant, the elevator suddenly seemed nothing more than
a
steel box into which they were stepping voluntarily; incarcerating themselves.

Priabin had summoned it. The rifles lay like sticks of black wood on the carpet. The three GRU men were beside the elevator doors. The lieutenant was looking down an empty staircase, hoping for assistance. Katya trained her pistol on them.

Gant slumped against the wall, Serov's weight hugged to him. Priabin stood opposite the doors of the elevator, pistol held out toward the frozen trio near the stairs. A moment of suspension, as if they all floated with some deep, slow current undersea. Then the click, the opening of the doors with a sigh.