North Cape

Teleman extended his radar fully and waited. The silver-green screen was empty — so far. But it was doubtful if the Soviets would depend only upon one aircraft to complete the job. They rarely played gambles or depended on half measures, and the depth of the system they had erected against him in Asia was more than proof of that. All of a sudden the A-17 rolled out of control and pitched,over into a dive. Teleman's head snapped back hard against the headrest. The A-17 began to spin wildly. A tremendous banging sounded aft in the fuselage and, twisting around, Teleman saw the starboard rudder assembly through the rear observation slit flap madly. Terrified, he slammed the throttle forward and ran out the landing flaps for the second time. The A-17 was still rolling, down through seventy, sixty-five, sixty, fifty-five, fifty thousand feet before she began to slow. Carefully, his body now under full control of the PCMS, he began to increase power, running the wings forward again. Abruptly the pounding ceased and the A-17 began to bring its nose up into a level attitude. For the next ten minutes Teleman fought furiously with the controls to maintain the damaged A-17 in some semblance of level flight. He had cut the speed back to sub-sonic and managed to fight his way to eighty thousand feet where, hopefully, the thinner, air would lessen the drag on the twisted metal of the tail section. The aircraft still had a tendency to twist into an uncontrollable wingover that would drag him down into the roiling clouds of the storm-filled night below. The computer-controlled linkages aft through the fuselage had been damaged beyond the ability of the alternate circuitry to compensate. The rudder controls were next to useless and he was forced to depend on ailerons and landing flaps for lateral control.

In spite of all he could do, Teleman was slowly losing altitude. The altimeter was circling down through seventy thousand feet with a steadiness that was almost terrifying in its deadliness. The encounter with the Falcon had taken place over the Finnish coast of the Baltic Sea and stretched into the wide margin of mountain separating Sweden from the Norwegian Sea. The Russian had crashed somewhere in Finland, and Teleman hoped to God that the Russians would have a mighty hard time explaining what an advanced Soviet interceptor with empty cannons was doing in Finland — if the Finns ever found it. And if he wasn't careful, he thought humorlessly, the Americans would be doing the same kind of explaining about him, only in spades when the Finns got a look at his equipment.

From the feel of one of the engines, he was beginning to wonder if a stray cannon shell or perhaps a piece of ricocheting metal had not blasted loose a couple of compressor blades. He was beginning to lose power in number two. A moment later his theory was confirmed when a shattering vibration wracked the aircraft. His hand darted to the cutoff switch and abruptly the racket vanished. At the same time the other engine whined up to power to carry the increased load.

Teleman rubbed his aching head and tried to think clearly. The baleful eye of the PCMS warning light glowed at him in exasperation, warning that he was overextending himself. Big news. He could certainly feel it. His head ached abominably from the overdose of drugs he had been absorbing in the past few hours as well as from the lack of any real sleep. He swore at the light and dialed an increased dosage of amphetamines. He hardly felt the new dose.

"If ever I get out of this mess," he muttered aloud, "I am going to need at least three months in the hospital to get washed out.'

Talking to himself was something he rawly did. This time it made him feel a little better. For the last twenty minutes he had been telling himself that he was not going to make it, at least in one piece. But, obviously, his subconscious had refused to accept that. He considered the computer for a moment, then began to feed in coordinates and switched the monitoring gear to add information on the aircraft's condition and fuel load. The answer that came out seconds later was worse than he expected. He was still nine hundred miles from the coast of the North Cape and twelve hundred short of the rendezvous point. By throttling back the remaining engine and staying subsonic, he could just about make it to the Cape — which was sure as hell a lot better than going down in the Barents Sea, all things considered.

As he thought about it, a germ of an idea began to take shape. Teleman forced himself to lean back in the couch and relax. He was so tensed up and worn out from the last several hours of flying hide-and-seek that unless he eased off he never would bring the idea into the open.