North Cape

As he-did, so, the computers took over total control of the aircraft. He saw the red, flashing DESTRUCT light come on just as the metal shields slid down between him and the instrument panel. The two halves of the flattened hemisphere joined together with a solid thunk and the blowers switched on with a high-pitched whine. Teleman settled himself securely into the acceleration couch as it adjusted to a semireclining position. He took a secure grip on the handholds and drew a deep breath, just as the bottom of the A17 exploded away and the ejection capsule was jettisoned downward. As he fell he could see the distorted bottom of the fuselage pass over him. The capsule began to tumble end over end in the high winds, but not before he saw the lightened plane, huge and sleek in the dead light, bound up, corkscrew, and then recover as the autopilot caught hold of the control surfaces.

Teleman did not see the aircraft bore on into the Barents Sea, where five miles off the coast it erupted into a burst of white flame and plummeted into the icy seas. Pieces of wreckage were blown in every direction, much of it burning fiercely as it hissed into the waves.

The ejection capsule smashed upward, jerking Teleman cruelly against the restraining belts. Through the observation slit Teleman could see the orange and white parachute pop open wide. The ejection capsule bounced several more times, then settled down to a steady swaying. Inside, Teleman was powerless to control the descent or landing area, in fact helpless to do little more than lie there while the capsule was swung and jostled at the mercy of the winds. From fifteen hundred feet it should not have taken more than two minutes to make the descent. Instead it took eight — eight minutes of endless swinging, and Teleman 'had no idea in which direction.

When the capsule did land it hit with such force that it ruptured the inflated air pods beneath. The wind caught at the parachute and began to drag the capsule. The automatic chute release did not go off as it should have. As he grabbed for the manual release Teleman had a confused impression of trees and rocks roiling past the observation slit. Teleman yanked several times on the manual release before it finally gave and the capsule rolled free and came to a rest with a grinding sound that presaged the blast of wet snow and air that barreled in.

Teleman tore the straps loose and wiggled around in the seat to peer at a foot-long gash in the metal beneath his feet. The capsule had stopped against some obstruction, so that it was canted over at a steep angle. The close confines of the interior gave him little room to move about, but he managed to reach the emergency pack strapped beneath the seat and haul out the sleeping bag, cursing fluently under his breath. He got the sleeping bag jammed into the hole and at once the shrieking sound of the wind died away to a thin whistle. Teleman struggled back into the couch, breathing hard. The amp meter showed a full charge in the batteries that should be good for several hours of steady heat output, providing he ran nothing else at the same time. The interior temperature was already down to twenty-two degrees above freezing, and unless he wanted to freeze to death while he slept he had to bring it back up. Forcing his fuzzy mind to work, he did a rough calculation on how long it would take the RFK to reach the coast. As near as he could tell, he could not be farther than five miles from the cliffs, probably three hours hiking in this miserable storm. He felt the best the RFK could make in the seas that he had glimpsed briefly from the air was about twenty knots, this close to the Cape. At two-hundred-odd miles that would be at least ten to eleven hours. Teleman knew that he had to get some sleep, no matter what happened. His heart was thudding painfully again and his eyes refused to focus. Hell, he thought, he would make it six hours of sleep. They would wait for him.

Painfully, he brought his arm up and fumbled with the alarm on his wristwatch, setting it for six hours. The last thing he remembered was trying to peer out of the narrow slit to see what the terrain was like. The roar of the wind in the trees and the delicate shuddering of the capsule knocked him out as effectively as a blackjack.

CHAPTER 13

The storm crested a few hours after Larkin turned the ship to run before the heavy seas crashing down on the battered, ice-shrouded shape with winds of gale force as it ran toward the coast at twenty-three knots. Teleman's call had come just after she had reached the rendezvous point. As soon as Teleman had bailed out, the radar operator had done his best to track the ejection capsule as it plummeted into the thick forest edging the coastal cliffs. They now had the pilot's location pinpointed to within a mile and were running for the location as fast as they dared in the heavy seas. Larkin motioned Folsom over to his console and handed him a flimsy that had just come in.