Firefox Down by Craig Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

were being poured…
    Kutuzov appeared at his elbow and whispered, 'You've shown good sense, Med - at last.' His voice was a dry whisper. He'd been operated on, successfully, for cancer of the throat some years before. 'It's over now.'
    'Do you think so?' Vladimirov asked in an urgent whisper. 'Do you?'
    Kutuzov indicated Andropov and the First Secretary, backs to them, already at the bar. 'It would be foolish - monumentally stupid-for you to think otherwise at this moment,' he whispered. Then he smiled. 'Come on, drink with them, listen to them - and remember to
smile
.'
    'It was-such a beautiful aircraft,' Vladimirov announced abstractedly. 'And the American showed us how good it really was.'
    'Perhaps they'll build us some more - but don't count on it.' Kutuzov's laughter clogged and grated in his throat. The First Secretary offered them vodka.
    'Come,' he said. 'A toast.'
     
    Two frozen lakes. Silence except for the clicking of the automatic ignition with no fuel with which to work. Gant switched it off. Silence. Two frozen lakes, lying roughly north-south, one larger and more elongated than the other, both surrounded by birch and conifer forest. Snowbound, isolated, uninhabited country in the north of Finnish Lapland.
    Little more, according to the map on his knee, than forty miles from the border with the Soviet Union. His escape from the Foxbat had taken him further north than he had wished and turned him unnoticed back towards Russia.
    Silence. Wind. Out of time.
    He was gliding, the heavy airframe wobbling and quivering in the stormy airflow. Altitude, two thousand five hundred feet. The lakes moved slowly southwards behind him. He banked sharply and glided towards them once again.
    He would not eject, would not… He'd come this far. The airplane stayed in one piece.
    Two thousand feet. The larger of the two lakes was perhaps more than one mile long - long enough to be a runway. The second lake was fatter, rounder, and he would have to land diagonally across it to be certain of stopping the Firefox with room to spare. There appeared to be a lot of surface snow which would effectively slow the aircraft. It would have to be the larger lake.
    Pretend it's the floe, he told himself. Just pretend it's the floe. At the end of March, the ice should be thick enough, it should bear the weight of the airframe.
    It didn't matter. It was the only available alternative to a crash-landing, or to an ejection which would leave the Firefox to plough into the ground and break up once it ran out of supporting air. He would not let that happen. Instead, he would land the airplane, and wait. When he was certain the search for him had been called off, he could communicate with Bardufoss or Kirkenes - Kirkenes was much closer - and they could drop him fuel. He checked that the airbrakes were in and the booster pumps off. All the trims he set to zero. He tugged at his straps, checking their security.
    He could make it. The conifers grew down to the southern neck of the narrow lake and stretched out drunkenly over it - he could see that clearly - and if he could get in close enough to the frozen shore, he would be sheltered from any chance visual sighting. Excitement coursed through him. He could do it. He could preserve the Firefox.
    Altitude, a thousand feet. He had only the one chance.
    He nudged the rudder and the Firefox swung as lazily and surely through the chill grey air as a great bird. He lowered the undercarriage as he levelled, and operated the flaps. Four hundred feet, well above the trees which rushed beneath the aircraft's belly. The lake joggled in his vision ahead of the plane's nose. Two hundred feet and out over the ice. He'd got it right. The Firefox sagged now, in full flap, dropping with frightening swiftness, and the wheels skimmed the surface snow for a moment, then dug into it, flinging up a great wake around and behind him. He gripped the control column fiercely, keeping the nose steady. The nosewheel touched, dug