Killing Time

CHAPTER 40

During the next several hours the hopes engendered by my shipmates' admirable scheme were summarily dashed by Dov Eshkol's seemingly inexhaustible cunning. It quickly became apparent that his admittedly brilliant plan of escape rested on four principal considerations: first, that the U.N. alliance would hardly allow someone to fly out of Malaysia in a B-2 bomber — an obsolete piece of technology, perhaps, but still a deadly one — without giving chase with a view toward capture or, when that proved impracticable, termination. And when aerial combat was joined, Eshkol would have no chance against the squadrons of more advanced aircraft that would be dispatched to intercept him. Therefore the only real weapon at his disposal was the plane itself: if he kept to the skies above populated areas and refrained from forcing an engagement, no nation in the world would risk having its air force be the one to shower the earth's surface with a flaming mass of wreckage that would conservatively claim hundreds — and potentially thousands — of lives. Finally, Eshkol's tactic would be equally effective against our ship, for while we had planned a less cataclysmic way of ending his flight than shooting him down, the chance that a failure of the B-2's electrical systems might result in a crash as devastating as any result of combat was enough to stay our hand.

What made the situation doubly frustrating was that as we followed Eshkol at a comparatively low altitude into Thai airspace, where he made a point of traveling as far north as he could above the crowded outskirts of Bangkok, the American navy apparently relayed the intricate tracking system it had designed to keep tabs on our ship to their own as well as the English air force: the naval guns that had given us such a rude shock when we emerged from the Straits of Malacca were replaced by the cannon fire of fighter jets, which attempted to harass both our ship and Eshkol's B-2 into landing without a struggle (their missiles went unused, presumably out of the same fear of collateral damage that prompted their reluctance to shoot Eshkol down). We initially assumed that this situation would go on only as long as we were within the range of the first squadrons to intercept us; but as we streaked over Bangladesh we saw fresh squadrons appear from carriers in the Bay of Bengal, and it became apparent that the Allies intended to do everything they could to put

an end to what they had no doubt decided was some sort of grand terrorist plot.

So on we went into the Indian sunset, with the Allied planes keeping up an almost incessant fire and Eshkol cleverly matching his course to the population density on the ground. His general heading seemed to be west by northwest, though it was impossible to guess at his ultimate destination due to the circuitous nature of his flight path. We of course feared that he was heading for Russia, a fear that was seemingly validated when he made a run for the Caucasus; but then he unexpectedly moved west into Turkey, flying over town after town along the Black Sea toward Istanbul.

"Can it be that he really does wish only to escape?" Julien asked as he stood with the Kupermans, Larissa, and myself behind Malcolm and Colonel Slayton at the guidance console.

Jonah shrugged. "It's possible that he wants to wait until he's under less scrutiny before he carries out whatever it is he's planning."

"I wish that were true," Malcolm answered, never taking his eyes from the great black flying wing that was cruising just below and ahead of us. The B-2 was now becoming increasingly difficult to see against the darkened surface of the Earth, a fact that, while not actually significant, still seemed somehow discouraging. "But let's not fool ourselves," Malcolm went on. "At heart Eshkol is a terrorist, with the same craving for publicity as any terrorist. The fact that he's being watched only makes him more dangerous, I'm afraid."

"We need to start thinking about options," Colonel Slayton said in a tone so steady — even for him — that I knew the situation was indeed as bleak as Malcolm was making it sound. "I know we don't want to bring him down over a populated area, but let's remember what he's carrying. Putting an end to this run could be a question of limiting losses, rather than causing them."

"I've considered that, Colonel," Malcolm answered. "And if he'd continued on into Russia we would probably have been forced to exercise that option. But until we have some better idea—"

Malcolm was cut off by an explosion near the ship, one that indicated that the Allied airmen pursuing us had come to the same conclusion as Colonel Slayton: they were using missiles now, and detonating them close enough to both our ship and the B-2 to make what they apparently believed would be a very serious point. Little came of the outburst, of course — our ship's magnetic fields could play havoc with the guidance systems of any air-to-air missiles in service, and there was certainly nothing that would intimidate Eshkol at that point — but the very ineffectiveness of the attempt was unnerving in the way that it seemed to make the Allied pilots recklessly furious. They began to edge ever closer to the B-2, greatly increasing the chances of a catastrophic collision; and as we flew on through the Balkans and north toward Poland the situation only became more violent and more volatile. The job of avoiding both the Allied planes and the B-2 without being distracted by the exploding missiles and continuing cannon fire eventually proved too much even for Colonel Slayton, and Larissa took his seat at the helm. Powerful though my feelings for and trust in her were, however, the switch did not reassure me, for I knew that Slayton would never allow anger to get the best of him, whereas Larissa? As Malcolm had said when he had first explained John Price's death to me, "Well, Larissa…"

I don't think any of the others felt any more secure at that moment, except of course for Malcolm; and it was therefore Malcolm who first noticed that our course heading had changed dramatically. "East," he said, so quietly that I almost didn't hear him over the din of the planes and explosions. "East," he repeated, much more emphatically. "He's turned east!"

Colonel Slayton leaned over to one of the guidance monitors, his voice becoming, much to my dismay, only more controlled: "If he stays on this course, he's got virtually a straight line of heavy population — Bialystok, Minsk, Smolensk—" He looked up and out at the B-2, unwilling to name the final link in the chain:

"Moscow," Malcolm announced slowly, his face becoming ashen. His next words were tight but emphatic: "Larissa, Gideon — I suggest you both get to the turret." Larissa needed no encouragement but got quickly to her feet and began pulling me toward the door to the corridor. "We'll wait until he's passed Smolensk," Malcolm called after us. "If there's no deviation—"

Larissa turned. "That's cutting it a little close, isn't it, Brother? Given his speed—"

"Given his speed, Sister, your aim had better be true…"

There is a terrible simplicity to what remains of this part of my tale, a barren brevity that I would gladly embellish if doing so would alter the outcome. Larissa and I scarcely exchanged a word as we took up our positions in the turret; and during the next three quarters of an hour, as eastern Poland and western Russia shot unrecognizably by beneath us, silence continued to reign in that transparent hemisphere, unbroken, now, even by the continued sounds of cannon fire and missile explosions; for the Allied planes had abandoned their pursuit long before we entered the unpredictable airspace of that very unpredictable ruin of an empire, Russia. I do not know what Larissa was thinking, as in the days to come I did not think to ask her; as for me, I found myself wondering what must have been going through her mind as she prepared to end yet another man's life. It seemed certain that she would be called on to do so: Eshkol's own behavior had offered us no alternative to his execution, really, since the moment we'd first become aware of him. The only thing left to do now, I mused to myself as we waited in the turret, was hope that as few people as possible would be injured or killed on the ground.

It never occurred to me that Eshkol's plane might simply disappear; yet somewhere between Minsk and Smolensk it seemed to do just that. There was no sign of the thing on any of my equipment, nor, as Malcolm soon informed us, on any of the ship's other monitoring systems. I was profoundly confused, until Larissa pointed out the simplest possible explanation: that Eshkol had crashed. My spirits jumped at the thought, but I forced myself to be skeptical: Wouldn't we have seen the flames? Or detected the descent? Wouldn't Eshkol have ejected if he'd found himself in distress? Not necessarily, Larissa answered; planes could and did crash without significant explosions, and so suddenly as to make tracking their loss of altitude problematic. And nighttime flying conditions could sometimes be so disorienting that a doomed pilot never even knew he was in trouble. All the same, a massive set of double-checks of the area and our ship's systems seemed urgent, and Larissa and I returned to the nose of the ship to assist with them. But the whole of our crew could find neither clues on the ground nor equipment malfunctions on board our vessel. It genuinely did seem that Eshkol's plane had been lost, probably in some field or forest where its hulk would not be discovered until daybreak, if then.

How could we have known? What would have caused any of us to once again turn our monitoring ears toward Malaysia, where we would have learned about the theft of more than just the B-2 bomber? And even had we by some chance learned that a pilfered American stealth system — so advanced and secret that only a handful of people in the United States knew that its design had been stolen— had been installed in that same B-2, would we have been able to meet the challenge of defeating it in time? All such questions were horrifically moot. One fact held sway, that night as this, and on all nights in between:

At the very moment that each of us began to believe that our luck with regard to Eshkol might have changed, the horizon to the northeast came alive with a lovely, brilliant light. Given that our perspective was unblocked, the sudden glow was enough to attract the attention of all of us; and, deathly aware of what was happening, none of us said a word during the inevitable denouement as the signature cloud, angry with all the terrible colors of the explosion that had just been unleashed, slowly began to form above what had once been the city of Moscow.