North Cape

Trying to think like the Soviet commander responsible for bagging the Americanski spion, he knew that he would have only the reports from the downed aircraft to go on. And he doubted whether the Russian pilot had been close enough to get much of a reading on the damage his cannon fire had done. The entire sequence had taken less than two minutes, and any time the Soviet crewman would have been close enough for a detailed look would have been limited to a few seconds. And the last burst fired had come while the Russian was diving past and beneath.

So, not knowing the extent of any possible damage, they would reckon him to continue on his present course, perhaps varying a few degrees in either direction to throw them off. They would suspect, although they had no way of knowing for sure, that his fuel was running low. How low, they could only guess. And they would know that he was either heading for a rendezvous somewhere north of Norway or else for a sub-polar route to the States. Following that most logical line of reasoning, they knew he could outrun any pursuing Soviet interceptors. The last thing in the world they would expect would be a reduction in speed. Or would they? In any event it was his only chance. Fortunately, their optical tracking gear would be useless until they broke out of the storm. As it stood now, then, he could make the coast—' that is if nothing else went wrong, if no more Russian aircraft appeared, and if nothing else fell off the aircraft. Surely the Russian pilot had been sending back a play-by-play description of the onesided dogfight. The Soviets must know that their boy crashed and that the A-17 was still in the air when last seen. And with only one path open, straight north, they ought to be able to field enough aircraft to knock him down. About now, he thought grimly, one of those Russian copies of the old Steerman biplane ought to be good enough for that job. Teleman flipped the warm-up switches on the transmitters. This new development was going to force him to break the strict radio silence always maintained on overflights. To get the information to the RFK he was going to have to transmit over normal and open commercial channels. The whole secrecy bit was blown anyway, and there remained no need to preserve what faint modicum of secrecy remained. The Soviets could and would monitor all they wanted. The codes were supposed to be "breakproof," and in any event they would certainly be changed after this disastrous mission. Stiffly, he leaned forward to examine the cloud cover below. The UV Doppler gear gave him a reading of twenty-two thousand feet on the cloud tops. If he ducked down and into the upper reaches of the cloud cover, with his ECM gear he just might be able to elude Soviet aircraft long enough to reach the Cape. What he would do then, he would figure out when he got there. One problem at a time for now. Very carefully, Teleman eased the nose down into a shallow glide that would help to stretch the fuel. He eased the engine speed back until he was flying at 450 knots and anxiously scanned the sky with the search radar. So far so good. As he dropped lower the half moon illuminated the soft bosoms of cloud with a pearlish light. In spite of the hundred-mile-an-hour winds that he knew must be raging lower down, the surface of the cover appeared untroubled. The A-17 dropped lower still and the softness began to give way to scudding rags of cloud that did not look so peaceful after all. At thirty thousand feet he caught the first faint whisper of the wind and marveled at the power of this storm that sent the thin molecules of air whispering along at even this altitude. It wasn't until he was down a thousand feet into the cloud cover that he felt he had eluded, at least for the time being, pursuit by Soviet fighter aircraft eager to finish him off. Now, if the cover would only last until North Cape. The winds within the clouds were not as bad as he had expected them to be. In spite of the jolting, the A-17 seemed to be taking the ill-use without immediate danger of coming apart. The tail section, according to his instrumentation, was pretty badly chewed. The skin covering was torn, but the thin titanium was holding together quite well. He still had no,control over the rudder assembly, but was able to compensate with wing surfaces and landing flaps.

For the first time in half an hour he was able to sit back and begin to think carefully about what evasive action he might take if jumped again. He wished desperately that he could take the chance of snatching a few moments sleep before the ordeal of the ejection and landing took place. But he did not dare. After the volume of drugs he had absorbed, he knew that, in spite of everything the PGMS could do, he would not be able to wake quickly enough to deal with split-second emergencies.