North Cape

But the Soviet Falcon was not through. This was the last chance and both pilots knew it. Neither had anything to lose. Teleman judged the Soviet pilot had passed his point-of-noreturn when he went into the dive after him. Now he was rapidly closing the gap in one last desperate try. And there was nothing remaining that Teleman could do about it. He now had barely enough fuel to make the rendezvous point. Even if the tanker was waiting, he doubted whether enough flying time remained to complete refueling. The Soviet pilot was pulling out all stops. He closed on Teleman at Mach 4.5, boring straight in, then lifting abruptly to pounce from above. As he neared, his guns opened up. He kept his thumb down on the firing button and walked a stream of tracers across the A17. Where were the missiles? Teleman screamed silently. Twisting his head to glance back through the rear observation slit, Teleman could see the sheet of tracers marching toward him. The aircraft rocked violently as at least one cannon shell smashed through his starboard wing without exploding. Then the Falcon slipped below to come streaking up from beneath. Teleman sheered away but the Russian remained locked on. He slammed the A-17 from side to side, nursing every last bit of speed he could from the engines. For seconds both aircraft twisted and wrenched through the frozen air with tracers from the. Falcon's cannon probing around the A-17. Like a wounded snake, they thrashed through the Finnish skies. A second burst chewed into the tail structure. The A17 fluttered like a wounded bird and went out of control. The Falcon edged up, cannons waiting for the optimum moment, the Russian pilot waiting hungrily, with the patience of death, for the A-17 to line up crosswise in his gun-sights, waiting to place the last burst. Then Teleman knew why there had been no missile. Because of their bulk and weight the missiles had been removed and replaced with electric cannons, to save fuel and add speed. Now both pilots were waiting for the inexorable closing of their flight paths. The milliseconds turned into minutes for both as they approached the invisible spot in the sky that would nebulously mark Teleman's grave.

The Falcon fluttered, arced up slightly, and fell off, arrowing down until lost in the clouds below. The Soviet pilot had waited perhaps a second too long.

CHAPTER 11

Teleman watched the black dot of the Falcon on his radar screen disappearing into the black night until the Russian aircraft vanished into the carpet of cloud. Beneath were the heavily forested northern reaches of the Kjolen Mountains and the empty taiga surrounding the Ounas River, an area inhabited only by Lapps who still followed the migrations of their reindeer herds. Unless the Finns had picked up the final moments of the Falcon on their own radar, it could be years before the wreckage was found. Teleman stared at the screen, sick with exhaustion,and despair. The Russian crew's suicide had been for nothing. The gamble, their fuel load, against his, coupled with their ability to knock him out of the sky, had been lost. Now both were dead. Teleman knew that, if they had managed to eject, they could never have survived the buffeting of the gale and its sub-zero fury. He examined the fuel gauge. There were eight hundred pounds of the liquid hydrogen fuel remaining in the reserve tanks, another fifteen minutes flying time. If the commanding officer of the battle cruiser was as intelligent and resourceful as he had shown himself to be in the past, there would be a tanker waiting at the rendezvous point. He might be able to make it after all… unless more trouble showed up.