North Cape

Over the radio Teleman could hear the squeal of tape decks spinning madly as twenty-six hours of constant speed recording on sixty-eight channels was transmitted. Then he leaned back exhausted. His job was done. The strain of the mission and the almost constant skirmishing with Soviet interceptors in the last eight hours, with only a few minutes sleep at a time, and the overload of drugs in his system caused a stultifying lethargy that was interrupted only by his heart rate. His portion of the task was indeed finished. And so was he. It had been twenty hours since he had more than a few snatched hours of drug-induced light sleep, with the rest of the time occupied in intense mental and physical' concentration, again prompted by drugs. The A-17 began to fall off and he brought it back with difficulty. The tail section was beginning to vibrate badly again as he lost altitude into the storm, threatening to come loose somewhere aft of the cockpit at any moment. The engine coughed once more and resumed its dull steady murmur. The emergency reserve tank levels were pushing well into the danger zone now.

"Can you hold for tanker?" Larkin asked again. The familiar voice, was high pitched over the radio, rumbling faintly with storm-induced static.

Teleman brought himself upright with difficulty. "No… fuel almost gone… not even reach you… sorry about clear message… no difference… bandits onto everything… so don't worry…"

Teleman stopped abruptly. He was beginning to ramble and every second he continued to talk brought the Russians that much closer. "Approximately ten minutes… flight left… losing al. titude… down on… coast… destroy… plane."

"You can't," Larkin almost shouted. "Try and make it…" Then he realized the futility of what he had been going to say. At five hundred miles an hour, that meant almost forty minutes or more to the ship, and with only ten minutes of fuel left — idiotic, he told himself savagely.

Teleman's voice came again, weaker and weaker as he talked: "I'll come in low… over coast… eject… plane… destroy."

Larkin, standing on the warmly lit bridge of the RFK, could picture the lonely man in the cockpit of his damaged aircraft. He would be going slowly through the motions of setting the timer on the self-destruct charge. As soon as he ejected, it would begin to count off three. minutes. If Teleman did not eject within five minutes of setting the timer, it would go off anyway, with enough force to blow tiny pieces of. the aircraft over a five-mile area. Larkin figured quickly on a scratch pad, glancing from the Doppler distance readout to the radar operator, shaking his head.

"Target One, here. We are getting a position fix on you and will track you down. I'll bring the ship in and pick you up as soon as the storm subsides enough to get a helicopter or boat in."

Even as Larkin spoke the radio operator handed him a decoded note, which he read through and then handed to Folsom to read.

"The hell… you will.. Teleman muttered. "Get… those tapes back."

"Sorry, I've just been directed to pick you up. Obviously they are going to' want to hear about the bandits and fast. All overflights have been suspended until they can talk to you."

Teleman was now down to ten thousand feet. He glanced at the ground control panel to see the storm-thrashed tundra and forest sliding by below. He laughed bitterly. "If… I get… out… this… be… miracle. Good-bye." There was a sudden silence as Teleman's 'voice disappeared. Only the hollow hissing of static marked the open channeL Feeling strangely empty, Larkin strode to the radar console and, resting a hand to support himself against the violent motion of the ship on the back of the operator's chair, watched the screen intently. Coordinates were fed directly into the radar equipment from the communications room, but the operator, listening to The flow of words and numbers, made minute final changes in frequency, pitch, and direction.

Abruptly, he swore and sat back. "Hell, that does it. We've hit a dead area… it must be almost two hundred miles wide."

"Easy now," Larkin said. He leaned over to point to the white patch of light obscuring a large part of the screen. "Narrow your scope down to encompass this patch. That's the ECM equipment he carries. He will show up in a moment." The operator could not resist a muffled expletive. Ten minutes passed slowly while the white blur continued to fill the radar screen. Finally the radar operator muttered, "What the devil kind of equipment does he carry for God's sake… sir," he added.

'Better that you do not know any more right now," Larkin chided gently. "Just keep your eye on that…"