North Cape

Teleman shut off the radio and sat staring at this last link with safety. Then he turned to the radar panel. From the activity it was showing, he had finally been spotted. At least three blips were closing fast, but not fast enough. They were still at least three hundred miles away and the eight minutes it would take them to get within cannon range would be more than enough for what he had to do now. Even if they carried visually guided airto-air rockets they would be useless in the depths of the storm clouds. He pulled the plastic-coated check list from the clip on the rim of his seat. Twelve items were listed, a matter of a few seconds. He pressed the destruct button and closed the spring-loaded clip over it to hold it firmly down. Once the ejection sequence began, the spring clip would be released, and three minutes later one hundred pounds of strategically placed deta-sheet explosive would shred the aircraft beyond reassembly. Then he removed his soft, cloth flight helmet and slipped on the hard plastic headgear and plugged the oxygen lines into the ejection module supply. When the list was finished, Teleman hunched forward and studied the ground control map. He was still a little more than hundred miles from the North Cape and the ground unrolling below was all tundra. He did not, under any circumstances, want to go down in that. In his condition even a few minutes without shelter on the open, windswept tundra would be enough to kill him.. According to the computer display describing the North Cape area, he could expect to cross a band of highlands that would end the tundra, about ten miles from the coast. On the far slopes, leading down to the cliff-barred coastline facing the Barents Sea, an open forest of fir should furnish the shelter he would need. -Teleman began to take the wounded A-17 down deeper into the storm. According to the RFK he should break out of the cloud cover, after he ejected, around two thousand feet. He did not particularly like the idea of having to bail out blind, but it was certainly preferable to hanging around until the Russians showed up. He hoped that his heading for the deck was causing the Soviet pilots as much consternation as it was him. But, then, they would have orders to get him at any cost. As long as he kept the ECM going, they would not be able to get a fix on him. If he could get down to about three thousand feet before he had to eject, then he would be low enough for the ejection capsule to be shielded against the ground.

The minutes passed slowly while the A-17 wobbled on. The, engine was cutting in and out steadily now and Teleman knew it must be draining the tanks right down to the last dregs. The North Cape was now clearly outlined by the IR panel as a white ragged line against the dark gray of the warmer water off the coast. The ground control map, with its simulation of the terrain below, was too gross to show any helpful details. The IR was all he had to go on. The ejection was going to be mighty tricky, he thought. He would have to time it so that he would land well back of the cliffs rather than in the water, yet not far enough back so that he could not walk to the beach to meet the boat. With these high winds now almost off the Beaufort scale, Larkin was quite optimistic if he expected to get a helicopter in to pick him up. It would take days before the winds abated enough for the helicopter to make it off the deck, let alone land over the strong updrafts that would be blowing off the cliffs.

He watched closely as the aircraft passed slowly over the cliffs, its speed now below 250 knots. Neither the visual nor the IR scopes told him much at all. The temperature was too low, too bone-chilling, for much warm detail to show among the granite surfaces of the coast. From the IR display there appeared to be no beach at all, but whether this was from the action of high waves he could not tell. If there was no beach he was going to have a devil of a time getting off those cliffs. They would not be able to get a boat in and he knew damned well that he could never survive three days. With these happy alternatives facing him, Teleman brought the A-17 around in a long turn that would bring him in a circle back over the cliffs. As he began his second pass over the coast he dropped the A-17 still lower until he was only fifteen hundred feet above the cliffs. Visually, he was totally blind. His instruments told him only that there was a solid surface below. Whether it was thickly forested or a mass of jumbled boulders he had no way of telling, but time was running out too fast to worry about that. Teleman wiggled his feet into the stirrups and shoved the control column into its locked position. His last act as pilot of the aircraft he had flown for the past three years was to arm the bomb that would destroy it completely.