The Devil's Alternative

“I hate their bloody patriotism. It is mere chauvinism, and always has been, since Peter and Ivan. It can exist only through the conquest and slavery of other, surrounding nations.”

He was standing over Larsen, halfway around the table, waving his gun, panting from the exertion of shouting. He took a grip on himself and returned to his seat. Pointing the gun barrel at Thor Larsen like a forefinger, he told him:

“One day, maybe not too long from now, the Russian empire will begin to crack. One day soon, the Rumanians will exercise their patriotism, and the Poles and Czechs. Followed by the East Germans and Hungarians. And the Balts and Ukrainians, the Georgians and Armenians. The Russian empire will crack and crumble, the way the Roman and British empires cracked, because at last the arrogance of their mandarins became insufferable.

“Within twenty-four hours I am personally going to put the cold chisel into the mortar and swing one gigantic hammer onto it. And if you or anyone else gets in my way, you’ll die. And you had better believe it.”

He put the gun down and spoke more softly.

“In any case, Busch has acceded to my demands, and this time he will not go back on his promise. This time, Mishkin and Lazareff will reach Israel.”

Thor Larsen observed the younger man clinically. It had been risky; he had nearly used his gun. But he had also nearly lost his concentration; he had nearly come within range. One more time, one single further attempt, in the sad hour just before dawn ...

Coded and urgent messages had passed all night between Washington and Omaha, and from there to the many radar stations mat make up the eyes and ears of the Western alliance in an electronic ring around the Soviet Union. Distant eyes had seen the shooting star of the blip from the Blackbird moving east of Iceland toward Scandinavia on its route to Moscow. Forewarned, the watchers raised no alarm.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, messages out of Moscow alerted the Soviet watchers to the presence of the incoming plane. Forewarned, no fighters scrambled to intercept it. An air highway was cleared from the Gulf of Bothnia to Moscow, and the Blackbird stuck to its route.

But one fighter base had apparently not heard the warning; or hearing it, had not heeded it; or had been given a secret command from somewhere deep inside the Defense Ministry, countermanding the Kremlin’s orders.

High in the Arctic, east of Kirkenes, two Mig-25s clawed their way from the snow toward the stratosphere on an interception course. These were the 25-E versions, ultramodern, better powered and armed than the older version of the seventies and the 25-A.

They were capable of 2.8 times the speed of sound, and of a maximum altitude of eighty thousand feet. But the six Acrid air-to-air missiles that each had slung beneath its wings would roar on, another twenty thousand feet above that They were climbing on full power with afterburner, leaping upward at over ten thousand feet per minute.

The Blackbird was over Finland, heading for Lake Ladoga and Leningrad, when Colonel O’Sullivan grunted into the microphone.

“We have company.”

Munro came out of his reverie. Though he understood little of the technology of the SR-71, the small radar screen in front of him told its own story. There were two small blips on it, approaching fast.

“Who are they?” he asked, and for a moment a twinge of fear moved in the pit of his stomach. Maxim Rudin had given his personal clearance. He wouldn’t revoke it, surely. But would someone else?

Up front, Colonel O’Sullivan had his own duplicate radar scanner. He watched the speed of approach for several seconds.

“Mig-twenty-fives,” he said. “At sixty thousand feet and climbing fast. Those goddam Rooshians. Knew we should never have trusted them.”

“You turning back to Sweden?” asked Munro.

“Nope,” said the colonel. “President of the U.S. of A. said to git you to Moscow, Limey, and you are going to Moscow.”

Colonel O’Sullivan threw his two afterburners into the game; Munro felt a kick as from a mule in the base of the spine as the power increased. The Mach counter began to move upward, toward and finally through the mark representing three times the speed of sound. On the radar screen the approach of the blips slowed and halted.

The nose of the Blackbird rose slightly; in the rarefied atmosphere, seeking a tenuous lift from the weak air around her, the aircraft slid through the eighty-thousand-foot mark and kept climbing.

Below them, Major Pyotr Kuznetsov, leading the two-plane detail, pushed his two Tumansky single-shaft jet engines to the limit of performance. His Soviet technology was good, the best available, but he was producing five thousand fewer pounds of thrust with his two engines than the twin American jets above him. Moreover, he was carrying external weaponry, whose drag was acting as a brake on his speed.

Nevertheless, the two Migs swept through seventy thousand feet and approached rocket range. Major Kuznetsov armed his six missiles and snapped an order to his wingman to follow suit.

The Blackbird was nudging ninety thousand feet, and Colonel O’Sullivan’s radar told him his pursuers were over seventy-five thousand feet and nearly within rocket range. In straight pursuit they could not hold him on speed and altitude, but they were on an intercept course, cutting the corner from their flight path to his.

“If I thought they were escorts,” he said to Munro, “I’d let the bastards come close. But I just never did trust Rooshians.”

Munro was sticky with sweat beneath his thermal clothing. He had read the Nightingale file; the colonel had not.

“They’re not escorts,” he said. “They have orders to see me dead.”

“You don’t say,” came the drawl in his ear. “Goddam conspiring bastards. President of the U.S. of A. wants you alive, Limey. In Moscow.”

The Blackbird pilot threw on the whole battery of his electronic countermeasures. Rings of invisible jamming waves radiated out from the speeding black jet, filling the atmosphere for miles around with the radar equivalent of a bucket of sand in the eyes.