force hurled fifty-foot rotors away like thrown sword blades, and the Halo pitched over into its death dive, the white ice and black water of the pack below filling the shattered windscreen as it rushed toward them.
Anton Kretek screamed like the trapped animal he was. Emptying his pistol into the pilot, he denied the Canadian an extra second or two of life.
They watched as smoke and sparks streamed back from the Halo's engine bays; then the rotor assembly came apart and tore away, and the massive helicopter assumed the flight dynamics of a filing cabinet.
Pitching over onto its nose, it plummeted toward the sea ice. With gravity's tension off the sling tether, the bioagent reservoir seemed to float beside the falling hulk of the heavy lifter, the maimed aircraft and its canister of death tangled in an entwining, dream-slow dance.
Then they hit, and a mushroom of black and scarlet flame sprouted and grew over the huge hole blasted through the ice.
"What about the anthrax, Jon?" Valentina inquired, watching the fireball.
"Flame and seawater," Smith replied. "You couldn't ask for two better spore destroyers."
"That's it, then?'
"That's it." Smith looked forward into the cockpit. His throat was raw from yelling and his lungs burned from the cold. As his adrenaline load burned out he was suddenly aware of the aching bruises from the previous night's icefall. It was becoming harder to force the words out. "Randi, do you think you can find the Haley from here?"
"With the radios working, it shouldn't be too much of a problem."
"Then take us back to the ship. Somebody else can pick up the pieces back on Wednesday."
"I hear that!"
Smith slammed the side hatches shut and collapsed with his back to the pilot seats. Unbidden, his eyes closed, and he was only dimly aware of a warmth beside him: Valentina's head resting lightly on his shoulder.
Chapter Fifty-two
Ascension Island
It was early spring in the South Atlantic, but a storm had rolled in with the sunset. The ghost blue runway lights of Wideawake Field glowed through a watery mist, and rain dripped from the wings of the two huge jet transports sitting side by side on the most isolated parking apron of the joint UK/US air facility. One, a Boeing 747 wearing the blue and white livery of the Presidential Squadron; the other, an Ilyushin 96, it's opposite number from the Russian Federation.
The world at large did not know of the presence of the two aircraft here, nor of the meeting between the two national leaders they carried. As armed sentries circled the sodden parking apron, a confrontation without records or witnesses took place in a soundproof, electronically screened briefing room aboard Air Force One.
"I recognize it's sometimes necessary for a President to lie to his constituency," Samuel Castilla said coldly to the lean, aristocratic figure seated across the conference table from him, "but I damn well don't like having to abuse the privilege. I especially don't like having to lie to those people about how their family members died. It leaves a sick taste in my mouth."
"What other choice do we have, Samuel?" President Potrenko replied patiently. "To rip open the healing wounds of the Cold War? To set the rapprochement between our nations back by decades? To play into the hands of the hardliners on both sides who say the United States and Russia are meant to be hereditary enemies?"
"You spin that line very smoothly, Yuri, and so do my advisors and the State Department, but even if I accept it, I still don't have to like it."
"This I can understand, Samuel. I know you to be a man of conscience and honor"-the corner of the Russian's mouth quirked-"possibly too much so for the realities of our profession. But we need more time. We have to let more of the old Cold Warriors die, and we have to move the fear further into the past. But at least you will have the consolation of knowing the truth will come out in the end."
"Oh, it will, Yuri. You can bank on it. We're in agreement that in twenty years' time all documentation on the Wednesday Island incident and the March Fifth Event will be unsealed and there will be a full joint disclosure by both governments."
"It is agreed."
Castilla pressed the point home. "Said pact to be made over our signatures and with the two of us accepting the full responsibility for the secrecy lockdown and the whitewash."
Potrenko's eyes flickered toward the tabletop; then he nodded. "It is agreed. Until