Winter Hawk mg-3

by Thomas Craig

  They were good. Behind him, trees shuddered and split and became engulfed in fire as the projectile from the RPG-7 struck and detonated with a roar. He felt the shock wave slap at his back. One dead, a second out of the hunt, the hornet's nest stirred with the long stick of violence. He rushed on, thin branches whipping at him, the rifle swinging rhythmically back and forth across his chest, the pack containing the film and video cassettes banging softly, familiarly on his lower back. He was running north.

  Above the noise of his breathing, he heard one of the gunships drive in toward the trees behind him. Noise, then light flashing on the snow lying on the branches over his head. Fierce orange light like a winter sunrise. They'd used the RPG-7's hit as a marker and demolished the immediate area around it. He stopped, and had to lean against a tree to control the shaking of his body. He turned, reluctantly.

  A fire seared and glowed like the mouth of a furnace perhaps three or four hundred yards away. He felt the shock wave ebbing through the forest and through his body. His heart continued to pound. The glow began to subside but, higher up, the branches were on fire. Resinous, smoky scent, licking flame. A marker, a signal — here he is, come and get him.

  Beneath the trees he was safe — no, just safer. He concentrated, remembering the scene through the glasses like a map now glanced at. He had to go down, eventually. They'd know that. And they had maps. They'd know the tracks, all the routes down; the possible, the dangerous, the impossible. The light was dying on the glinting snow above his head. The gunships rotors beat farther off now, a painter standing back from a completed canvas. The spetsnaz troops would be moving again, up toward the outcrop he had occupied and where the fire still burned.

  He turned away, his breathing under control, his heart quieter. The adrenaline surged. Ducking low, he once more began running, his feet crackling like flames across dead pine needles.

  Priabin hit the guard clumsily. His arms flailed again and again once the first blow had been struck because the guard still had hold of the rifle — it could not be tugged from his grasp — and the barrel kept straining toward Priabin's stomach. The guard's body banged against the metal of the double doors behind him. His face registered pain, but had moved out of shock into malevolence, fear for his life.

  Again, again — face, chest, arms, most of the blows doing little damage. His knuckles numbly hurting, blood on them.

  The guard slumped down the doors into an awkward sitting position, loosening his grip on the rifle and moaning softly just once. After that, the only sound was Priabin's harsh breathing, snatched between the sucking of his bruised and skinned knuckles. He was bent almost double with the effort he had undergone.

  He glanced to either end of the alleyway between the main assembly building and a low shed with a corrugated roof and breeze-way still plain beneath stained whitewash. If there was anyone, if they had heard the banging against the door—?

  … just caught short — have to go here, OK? The guard had followed him, amused. He had had to force a conversation with the man, through nerves and the mounting fear of the proximity of the guard and his rifle… where did you say they were keeping that poor bastard? Kedrov the spy yes that's him… He had foolishly repeated every word the guard had uttered, as if to memorize a complicated sequence of instructions. A thin stream of urine. The biting cold of the midday air because he wasn't wearing an overcoat or cap or gloves. He finished urinating. Knew he could simply go back inside and wait for the inevitable — the unavoidable. He had turned to the guard, zipping his trousers, smiling awkwardly. Rifle, guard nodding, his bulk larger than Priabin's.

  The EVA was over, the crew was back aboard Kutuzov. The shut-de had used its small clusters of rockets to move away from the laser weapon. Firing of the rocket of the PAM was thirty minutes away. The countdown was at two hours.

  He had lashed out at the guard's chin and missed, grazing the reacting man's ear. Moved, hit again and again, wrestled with the gun…

  Two hours. At the end of that time the laser battle station would have achieved its thousand mile-high orbit above the pole and would have been aligned on its target, Atlantis. Rodin would commence the firing sequence and the American shuttle would be vaporized. It would disappear. And, and… unthinkable.

  He had not intended action. He was deeply frightened now that he had done so. The guard seemed to be snoring in his unconsciousness, his face chilly with cold, his hands slackly on the rifle. Priabin snatched at it, unhooking its strap from around the man's neck. The guard's head flopped horridly, as if he were dead. Priabin flinched away from him. He had not intended — but the tension had mounted in him because of his inactivity.

  The scheme was patchy. It involved Kedrov, it involved stopping the firing of the weapon. He could do nothing else, stop nothing except the firing sequence. Kedrov had to know how it could be done. If he did not, then—

  Priabin looked down at the guard. Irrevocable. He was committed now. He shivered with reaction, gripping the rifle tightly, squeezing its warmed metal. Glanced to either end of the alley in a panicky, sweaty haste. His body felt hot now. He had to rid himself of the guard, put him, tie him — where?

  He rolled the guard away from the double doors with his foot. If seemed a huge effort. He needed a vehicle to get to GRU headquarters, he needed a means of entering that place, he needed, he deeded—

  — to get the guard out of sight, don't think ahead, just do this, do this — come on, come on, break! He twisted the folding stock of the AKMS in the chain and padlock. Sweat sheened his forehead, his muscles had no strength, the flimsy chain seemed insuperable… and parted slowly, with a slight creak like the opening of a window.

  He pushed the doors open. Darkness. The light seemed to spill in slowly. It illuminated boxes, shelves, cans — of paint. He wanted to laugh. A paint store. And the doors had been seriously in need of painting.

  He dragged the guard into the darkness, found the man's handkerchief and gagged him with it, tying his own around the man's mouth to keep the wad in place. The rifle was banging on his back as he worked, and seemed omnipresent. But he could not use it, not on an unconscious man. Mistake, mistake.

  Everything you've done so far is a mistake, he told himself. You can't do it, anyway, so shut up about it.

  The man's belt and webbing. Hands and feet together behind him, a reversed fetal position. He tightened the straps viciously, perhaps because he couldn't kill him.

  He stood in the air for a moment, breathing laboredly. Hands on his hips. Then he picked up the chain and rethreaded it through the door handles. Hid the broken link as well as he could, left the lock dangling as if still effective. Glanced along the alleyway once more. Still no one. He looked a last time at the door. The chain appeared sound. He began running along the alleyway, his memory of this place playing in his mind like a very old film; stained, patchy, flickering. But there—

  He forced himself to remember. Main assembly building, attendant stores, workshops, other facilities, parking lots. Parking lots. Military and civilian. He needed something like a UAZ jeep, something that would not be suspicious, not out of place, still free to move around the high-security area. Parking lot—

  — left now, then right. He moved incautiously, like a rat seeking reward through its familiar maze, down the alleyways between the crowding complex of buildings. He saw no one.

  Until he reached the open space of the parking lot. Civilian and military vehicles parked within regimented white lines. The lot was almost full. Two men were lounging against a wall, smoking, white lab coats beneath their open topcoats. Fur hats. They were fifty yards away, and uninterested. All they could see was a uniform; a capless officer with a rifle. Baikonur was full of officers. A military driver stepped out of a UAZ, other men were leaning out of a canvas-hooded truck. As his breathing calmed, he began to see how many people there were. He began to stroll. He was not out of place here… you are not, you are not out of place, you are not.

  The truck drove off, smoke
pluming from the exhaust. The driver of the UAZ was carrying a metal box, sealed and locked. Priabin passed him with only a single line of parked cars between them. The guard hardly glanced in his direction after saluting casually. He had not even noticed the KGB flashes.

  He reached the UAZ and turned. The soldier with the metal box entered the building where the two technicians were lounging against the wall. Priabin glanced into the vehicle. The key was in the ignition. A lucky rabbit's foot dangled from it. Thank God.

  He watched the technicians, but could not wait. They wouldn't know, would they? They wouldn't know which vehicle it was.

  He climbed in, placing the rifle on the passenger seat. His hands gripped the wheel. They had begun shaking. He looked up at the pale midday sky. Cloudless above a cold desert. It was as if the keys had been left here, as if the guard had been unaware — on purpose. Rope with which to hang himself; a trap. Luck, he kept telling himself, luck. They're not watching you… luck.

  He turned the key. The engine caught, and he revved it as if shouting defiantly at someone. He turned the wheel and headed for the road, bumped over the low curb, then was heading south toward Tyuratam.

  Fifteen minutes, ten perhaps.

  He had watched the firing of the shuttle's small auxiliary maneuvering rockets, the sliding away of the laser weapon — or so it seemed from the camera's view aboard Kutuzov—until it was a pinprick less bright than some of the stars. He had listened to the voices from the shuttle, the voice of mission control. He had listened to the revised countdown, he had listened to Rodin's public-address voice as he bestowed congratulations to every part of the vast room. He had looked, he had listened—

  — until the lid had blown off his rage and frustration and guilt at doing nothing. He had to do something, he had to try to stop Rodin — who was capable of anything. There was no one else to stop him. Gant was as good as dead — he had to do something—

  — and the trigger was knowing that Gant was still alive like's running into a box…toe have him all but pinpointed… only the *U>o casualties so far… ten minutes and hes ours.

  Priabin glanced wildly at his watch. Since he'd heard that report from the Armenian border with Turkey, fifteen minutes had passed. He knew Gant was alive and was just as certain he would soon be dead — odds of as much as fifty to one, all his opponents spetsnaz troops, no way out — and he had to do something, as if it were his turn to act.

  Buildings encroaching, the darkness of the huge war memorial ahead of him. The cobbles of the square shaking the UAZ's suspension. GRU headquarters. He turned down the ramp into the underground garage from which he and Gant — and Katya — had escaped the previous day — evening — it had all happened in that little time. Now, he was walking back in — driving! Here I am!

  How the hell could he avoid being recognized? It was crazy.

  Slowly, carefully, he parked the UAZ. Gasoline was nauseating, the damp chill of the place reached into him at once. He glanced at the rifle on the passenger seat. Folding stock, length of weapon when the stock was folded almost twenty-seven inches. Just over two feet. He hadn't an overcoat under which to conceal it.

  A greatcoat walked toward him, unsuspecting, merely observing routine. Corporal's stripes, a man smaller than Priabin. A GRU greatcoat. The corporal slapped his gloved hands together for warmth. Again, a fleeting sense of a trap — enough rope, as if they wanted him there. Then the duty corporal was at his side, hands coming together slower than before, as if to catch a moth, because he had seen the rifle on the seat in the moment before Priabin raised the barrel toward him. Priabin altered the aim so that the barrel pointed into the corporal's face. Shock, and recognition of the KGB uniform, perhaps even of the colonel inside it. He might have been one of them in the garage yesterday, when they had Serov as a shield, he and the American. The man's face printed out recognition and memory like a computer screen.

  "Yes," Priabin said, nodding. "Take off your coat — no, wait. Step back." He removed the ignition key and got out of the vehicle. "Keep your hands down." He motioned with the gun. "Let's go back into your warm little booth, shall we, corporal?"

  Sullenly, the soldier turned away and began walking. Footsteps echoed. Priabin's overlapped in the damp silence. He watched the elevator doors as they passed them, then watched the floor indicator. No one.

  Greatcoat.

  The soldier opened the door of his glass-sided sentry booth and hesitated, as if waiting—

  — to be struck. Priabin hit him across the back of the head with the AKMS. Coffee spilled from a mug, against which the corporal lurched. Papers and a clipboard came off his desk shelf and fell around him. The whole booth seemed to list with the weight of his collapse.

  Which was below the level of the glass, out of sight. Priabin kicked the man's legs away from the door, then bent to tug and heave at the body — should have gotten him to remove… doesn't matter, get on with it — until he had pulled the corporal out of his coat.

  The sleeves were too short. He pulled off the man's gloves, then scrabbled in a comer for the fur hat with its small red star. Stood up and buttoned the coat. It wasn't too tight, just short in the sleeves and the length. He looked down. Distinguishing stripe on his trousers, just visible. He had to risk it. He tugged on the gloves and slung the rifle over his shoulder. Adjusted the fur hat. Studied the guard. Quick, if you're still in there by the time he recovers, you'll be too late anyway.

  He grabbed up the keys and locked the glass booth. It rocked as he tested the door with a furious jerk. Glancing back from the elevator, it was unsuspicious; unless anyone officiously wanted to know the sentry's whereabouts.

  The doors grumbled open. The elevator was empty. What was it the guard had said? Kedrov was in one of the hospital rooms. To him, it had been a joke, like a salacious insult. Second floor, toward the rear of the building. He pressed for the second floor. The doors closed. The image of the trap again. He heard his own breathing magnified. Stamped with nerves, his arms clutching across his chest and stomach as if he were being assaulted. There was getting out again, taking Kedrov even, then what to do? He hadn't any idea, not really, if he was brutally honest, he would not be able to stop it, he wasn't technical, not in the least.

  The doors sighed open at the second floor.

  19: High Frontiers

  The trees were opening out. If they caught him on exposed rock, the gunships would no longer be frustrated by the tree cover and would drive in. It would be over in moments. One of them was close over his head, hanging noisily, its din alone an effective aid to terror. They were drawing the trap close like the neck of a bag. Tight.

  He'd tried, with increasing desperation, to maintain his altitude above the foothills and the plain. They wanted to drive him either down to the open ground, or up beyond the tree line. And yet, even though he'd succeeded, the spetsnaz troops behind and around him appeared content. He was still ten miles or more from the border, however much distance he'd traveled. He was still inside their country, moving only parallel to the border, northeast toward the haze that hung above Yerevan.

  They didn't mind. He had remained in the trees, high and concealed, but they were sure of him. They couldn't pinpoint him, but they'd have thermal imagers by now. He was warmer than the cold sap of trees. They'd have caught glimpses of him. The transport MiLs had done too accurate a job of landing reinforcements for them not to be aware at least of his general direction and position.

  The slopes were steepening now, there were few tracks. The snow was thicker as the trees thinned. They had driven him higher, and the country was changing, too. Ravines and narrow canyons, black knife edges of rock, frozen streams and waterfalls. Trees clung precariously to the landscape; as he did.

  His back pressed to rock, Gant moved in a cloud of his own breath along a narrow ledge screened by a few thin trees from the pale sky. The camouflage of a gunship slid past less than a hundred feet away. He felt the downdraft tugging at his parka, tugging at his balance. The machine
moved on, blind to his presence, simply waiting. He paused. Sweat dampened his forehead, and his armpits were chilly with it. Slowly, he moved on.

  They were ahead of him. He'd seen some of the transports, sensed others. Troops had been lowered from ropes or landed in small clearings above and below, and ahead of him. Behind him, others had followed his trail of snapped twigs and branches, trodden litter on the forest floor, disturbed snow on the fir boles. Signs of his passage cried out for their attention.

  He reached the end of the ledge. The crack of the ravine glinted with ice and a frozen stream at its bottom. He looked up, then around. Nothing. The noise of the MiLs had receded. Eye of the storm. Silence. He waited, but distinguished no noises that indicated stealth or the springing of the trap. The ravine dizzied him as he looked down into it. He would have to jump the ravine now that the ledge had petered out. Push himself outward, away from the rock at his back, as if to fly, hands grabbing the opposite side of the ravine, holding on—

  He swallowed. A radio crackled momentarily, until stilled by a harsh whisper. His body shook with reaction. The trees concealed them now. The morning air magnified, made sounds louder and closer, but how close? He strained to hear other noises, boot on rock, the rustle of pine litter, the click of a round of ammunition levered into the chamber. He heard nothing, except the now-back-ground throbbing of gunship rotors. The rock arched above him like a shell. The ravine was below him. The trees were thin — too thin— above and to his left, the way he had come. They would see him easily.

  He rubbed one hand over his face, which seemed unformed, loosely put together. His mouth was wet with saliva. He listened once more, looking down into the ravine and fighting the dizziness. The mouse-scrape of boots through the pine needles rotting on the ground. Eventually, he heard at least one man moving. Then a second, perhaps a minute later, and realized the neck of the bag, the trap itself — was there, precisely there.