Winter Hawk (71 page)

The judas door did not open. He paused, breathing deeply, then hurried once more, around the building's circumference, toward the lean-to, approaching it from the rear of the hangar. His boots brushed through straggling, icy grass. He found the loose panel 01 corrugated sheeting, knelt, then wriggled into the hangar.
Moon
light gave him enough light to see by. He moved carefully P
³
^ empty drums, cans, boxes, the fat tires, flicking on the
flashlight
only to locate the handle of the door. Touched it, breathed softly* remembered whether or not the door had squeaked when he had first opened it—no—opened the door. The pale darkness of the hangar rustled. Smell of kerosene, dust, oil, sausage. He waited

the crack he had opened, sensing rather than seeing the details of the hangar. Moonlight on the nearer Antonov.

Where? Where was the guard? Impatience surged through him. Close. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. Something scuffled, a boot heel rather than a rat. Close.

He slipped through the gap in the door. Paused, head turning slowly from left to right, right to left . . . breathing? Could he hear that much, that clearly? His shoulder quivered as if anticipating a hand felling heavily on it. He saw the door to the off-duty room was open. A poor light filtered from it like a leak of yellowish water. Rustling? The turning of pages. A grunt of what might have been satisfaction. The shuffling of feet. There was no time, no space for the complications of hitting the guard, tying him, being aware of him through the hour or so that still lay ahead. He had to kill him.

Gant studied the floor between himself and the open door. The light—of a flashlight?—seemed a little stronger, yet hardly spilled beyond the dark rectangle of the door. The man could be sitting on one of the battered easy chairs, or standing at the table. He would have no more than moments in which to locate, aim, kill. It was six steps to the open door.

Noise of gurgling, like a distant tap. The man was drinking something. There was nothing between himself and the door. He nioved on tiptoe, pausing between each step. Sigh or grunt, magnified. Rustling of pages, a muttered oath regarding the light, the scraping of chair legs, table, then . . .

He was in the doorway, the Makarov level with his hip. A pool of flashlight beam, some glossy pages open on the stained table; the bulk of the soldier already half-risen. He did not distract himself ^h a glance at the mans face, but simply fired twice.

The body began falling in slow motion, but the sense of having ^ed snapped Gant's time sense back to normality. The body slid Ward the table, moving it in a painful scrape on the floor, then *°ppled backward, half over one of the ragged chairs. To lie moonless.

Gant waited, the noise of the two shots separating then blurring f^they echoed in his ears. Over. He felt nothing. The man had no more than a voice, a dark form. His face was hanging over

chair s arm, out of sight, and Gant had never seen his features.
^e
nioved forward into the room, his hand touching the magazine—
^a
naked girl—then the flashlight located the walkie-talkie. A moment of fear because he was alone with the machine and felt its contact with the UAZ, with Baikonur.

He left the room quickly, shutting the door behind him, and crossed the hangar to the Battery Room. Flicked the beam of the flashlight, fading noticeably, at the dials. Almost, almost—certainly charged enough by the time he . . . Thoughts tumbled. He regimented them like a hand of cards.

Engineer's office. He crossed the concrete floor, collecting the lamp and its coiled lead on his way. Quickly, quickly ... his hand dabbed along a wooden board littered with keys hanging from hooks,
tractor
, one was labeled. He snatched off the keys, then the ignition keys for the Antonov. Then returned to the storeroom, wiping the glaze of the lamp around its dusty, littered space until he found a crowbar. Keys, means of opening the fuel compound; two down.

Waved the lamp again, crouched on his haunches, scuttled like
a
crab in that position, poking the light into dark corners. Webs, the hardly noticed scurry of a rat he never saw, dirt on his fingertips, spilled paint long dried—a length of rubber hose. Triumphantly, he tugged it out from behind stacked, empty boxes and drums that had once held the chemicals used in crop dusting. Hardly pausing, he returned to the hangar, climbing into the second Antonov as if returning to a familiar location. As he squeezed into the cockpit, he felt his frame too big for the interior of the aircraft; as if it could hardly contain his energy. In the light of the lamp, he inspected the panel that operated the pump for the chemical tank. Stuck-on labels.
power
On-Off;
pump
On-Off. Just the two switches and a light to register they were operating. Primitive. Familiar. He
returned
to the cabin, bending to inspect the spray outlet. No spray bars had been fitted to the underside of the fuselage. The outiet pipe ran into the floor of the plane.

He jumped down. And it ran through it. Yes, he could
fit the
hose easily, when he needed to refuel from the chemical tank to the wing tanks. He could fill the tank from the input on its top
surface,
using the hose still in his hand. He threw it into the interior of the Antonov.

Wobble pump. Or whatever they used to fill the tank with chemicals—where?

Two-fifteen. No pump. He began patrolling the walls of tn
^e
hangar for a second time, flashing and slipping the light carefiw over every surface, every shadowy gap. No pump.
Two
twenty-fi
^ve
'

He was aware of the walkie-talkie in his pocket, its link with the UAZ and with Baikonur—with Serov; aware too, of the videotape, the cassette from the camera Priabin had used; aware most of all of time. He glanced at each minute that passed on the face of his watch.

He stood in the middle of the hangar, having completed his second unsuccessful patrol. Do something else. Two-thirty. He had done nothing, nothing so far—just a length of hose and the death of a man—do something else. Shuffle the cards, do something else!

He crossed to the doors. He still could not get up the nerve to switch on the hangar's main lights. He left the lamp, at the limit of its lead—caught on something? He could not delay to check. Reached the doors. Still unlocked, left that way by the corporal, found the handle, began to wind at it, listening to the magnified creaking of the two doors as they slid apart on their protesting metal rails. Moonlight crept forward like an inquisitive, wary animal. He opened them to their full extent.

He stood looking out at the shadowy form of the tractor parked beneath the firs. The refueling pump could be at the dump, locked in with the tarpaulin-covered drums. It didn't matter. Now he had to move the aircraft.

He ran across the moonlit space. Little or no wind. His cheeks were numbed by his speed through the icy air. He climbed into the tractor's cab, hunting with his fingers for the ignition like a blind man. Held his breath, switched on. The engine coughed, died. A second time, then a third. The noise of the engine turning over but refusing to fire was a violent, alarming sound in the silence. He could not help glancing repeatedly over his shoulder, in the direction of the collective's huddled buildings almost a mile away.

The engine caught, still reluctant, then roared as he overaccele-rated. He slipped off the brake, heard the engine settle, then dragged the wheel over, turning the tractor out of the shadow of the trees toward the hangar. His head turned rapidly from side to side. Nothing.

He drove the tractor into the darkness inside the hangar. The ^o aircraft assumed identity slowly as his vision adjusted to the lack

light. He tugged on the tractor's brake and jumped down. The
^s
*lence after he switched off its engine was solid, pressing on his ^
^ar
drums like a shock wave. He inspected the towbar with his torch, it had been used to tow the Antonovs in and out of the hangar.

Snatching up the lamp once more, he inspected the second An-tonov's undercarriage. Two towing lugs. Good.

He climbed back into the tractor cab and started the engine— first time, he breathed out hugely. Very slowly, carefully, he turned the tractor—familiar again, like the airplane; a machine that belonged to his past. Then he backed it up to the Antonov's nose, juggling with the reluctant steering wheel until he heard the towbar clunk against the undercarriage strut. Stopped. Jumped out, checked the towbar's alignment with the towing lugs.

Two thirty-eight. He felt relief rob him of all strength for a moment and make his head spin with dizziness, then he raised the towbar and dropped it over the towing lugs, locking the two machines into a single unit.

Immediately he looked up at the gap of moonlight through the wide-open doors. Looked then at the wingspan of the Antonov, the four dull leading edges of the wings. He remembered the doors of the KGB hangar closing against the MiL's desperate race toward the air.

He stood for a moment, trying to retain the sense of his tasks as a hand of cards. Hose, rifle, keys, fuel outside—pump?—tractor . . . two-forty. Battery—he would have to manhandle the large battery onto the tractor and transport it to the Antonov after he had fueled up the tank in the cabin. It was charged, or almost charged—it would start the airplane. But could he lift the battery onto the tractor, then once more into the airplane? It came down to brute strength.

And the adrenaline of panic . . . leave it for the moment—leave it! He climbed with great effort into the cab of the tractor, wiping the smear of his exertions and fears from the inside of the windshield with his gloved hand, then with the sleeve of the parka. Turned to look back at the Antonov—

—jumped down and undipped the bonding wire from the undercarriage, throwing its crocodile clip and length of wire away from him like a reckless gesture of success.

He paused, then started the tractor once more, creeping the lumbering vehicle slowly toward the open doors. The image of the KGB hangar's similarly open doors kept flashing like a strobe light on the retinas of his eyes, making his body jump and tremble
with
anticipated disaster: just the tip of one wing, just the merest colli' sion, just, just ... the doors of that other hangar kept
grinding
closer together.

He gripped the wheel fiercely, yet his touch on its movements was delicate as he held the tractor to the center of the gap. Five yards, four . . . the tractor passed through the doors, they were alongside then behind him. Already, the propeller blades were glinting with moonlight in the tractor's side mirror.

He glanced back quickly, then relied upon the mirror to his right, watching the Antonov's starboard wings, watching the longer upper wing of the biplane, watching, watching ... he wasn't breathing, his head was light with concentration . . . watching . . .

Through.

He grunted aloud. The Antonov rolled gently out into the open. He immediately turned the tractor's wheels, heading the aircraft through a wide semicircle toward the fuel dump at the back of the hangar.

Sweat bathed his forehead, freezing to an ache almost at once The noise of the tractor dinned at his eardrums.

Two forty-five.

The moon was old, low, sliding toward morning near the hori zon. Daylight, a thousand miles.

"Gentlemen, another countdown adjustment—it is now T minus fifty minutes and counting."

Cheering, diffuse and roaring like a distant sea from beyond the tinted glass.

"Turn that bloody thing off," Serov barked. "For Christ's sake, you're like a bunch of fucking kids." Someone moved to switch off the only television screen relaying the scene in mission control, then to the PA speaker on one wall. Serov drew angrily on his cigarette. The ashtray on the table was filled with crushed and twisted butts. A dozen or more cardboard filters. "Let Grandpa Rodin get on with his game. You've got your work cut out right here."

The security room was hazy with smoke, stale-smelling and crowded, though there were no more than half a dozen in the search coordination team. The cheering died away beyond the tinted glass.
They
were all tired, all frustrated, all edgy, none more so than he. Childish rage brought no rewards, but seemed necessary. He waved
^a
hand.

"All right, all right—back to work, back to work." Like a hen fossing. It wasn't their fault—but it would be his fault if they didn't locate and bring in the American pilot. He looked at his watch.

Three-ten. Dear Christ, three in the morning. Gant had been out of his hands since before four-—almost twelve hours.

Had Priabin still been his prisoner—well, who could have said, he admitted with a grin, whether he would still have been alive— though why Rodin kept him hanging around him like a court buffoon, God alone knew the answer.

Was there any danger there? He'd asked himself that question fifty, a hundred times, mostly with confident indifference. But he realized Rodin could no longer believe Priabin had driven his son to suicide. Had he still done so, he wouldn't have been able to bear the sight of him, would have had him locked up, even shot.

Serov patted his pocket. The tapes from Mikhail. Should he give them to Rodin, or not? They'd convince, almost by themselves, that the pressure of Priabin's interrogation had snapped Valery Rodin's reason, driven him to a desperate act of suicide—wouldn't they? Perhaps they should be used?