The Kremlin Phoenix (31 page)

“Can we still make Alaska?” Craig
asked.

Sorokin checked the fuel levels,
made several rough calculations and shook his head. “No, Alaska is impossible
now. We’re heading for Yelizovo airport at the southern end of the Peninsula.”

“Can we reach anywhere outside
Russia?” Craig asked. “What about the Aleutians?”

General Sorokin shook his head. “There
are no airstrips large enough for this aircraft in range.”

Colonel Balard studied the
navigational display. “Alaska’s not the only choice.”

“What did you have in mind?”
Sorokin asked.

Colonel Balard pointed to the
map. “How about there?”

Sorokin did some fast fuel
calculations. “We might make it,” he said, then quickly reset the auto pilot.
Slowly the A320 banked further to the south, turning towards the Sea of Okhotsk
between mainland Russia and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

An indicator light suddenly
turned red as air was sucked down into the avionics bay through the floor hatch.
General Sorokin looked up surprised. “The port landing gear compartment door
just unlocked!” He pressed a switch several times, trying unsuccessfully to
lock the gear door.

“What’s the altitude?” Craig
asked.

“Four thousand meters,” his
father replied, surprised.

“Is that low enough to jump?”

“It’s possible, but this is a
civilian plane,” General Sorokin said. “It’s not equipped with parachutes.”

“But Bratsk Airbase was!”
Valentina said. “Right?”

“Yes, but whoever’s in the
landing gear compartment couldn’t jump at this speed,” the general said, “even
if he had oxygen.”

“Spetsnaz are just crazy enough
to try,” Valentina said, “without oxygen.”

“Dropping the gear would slow us
down,” Sorokin conceded.

“We should go lower,” Colonel
Balard said. “We’re depressurizing at this altitude.”

“But that will make it easier for
him to jump,” Valentina said.

“If we stay over water,” Craig
said, “he can’t jump. And if he plans to destroy the plane, he’ll die with us.”

Sorokin reset the autopilot to
two thousand three hundred meters. Slowly, the airbus began a gentle, computer
controlled descent.

“We can’t leave him down there,
whoever he is,” Craig said, producing the pistol Siyansky had given him at
Zamok Branka and opening the hatch down into the avionics bay. He peered into
the darkness a moment, then climbed down.

Valentina drew her Makarov pistol
and started down after him

“Don’t let my son do anything
stupid,” Colonel Balard said. “I’d hate to lose him again, so soon after
finding him.”

Valentina gave him a reassuring nod,
then lowered herself into the cramped avionics bay, followed by one of General
Sorokin’s guards. Craig had already pulled himself through the narrow crawlway to
the forward cargo compartment, where he found an empty rectangular space large
enough to hold three cargo containers. A panel was pried open in the rear wall,
providing access into the undercarriage housing and the rear cargo compartments
beyond. Air was being sucked out through the open panel as sunlight reflected
off metal surfaces from the undercarriage compartment. Over the roar of the
engines, Craig heard a mechanical creaking as the undercarriage door was being manually
cranked open.

He had to stoop as he crept
towards the open panel, shivering in the freezing cold air as it was whistled
out through the wheel bay. Behind him, Valentina and the soldier emerged from
the avionics crawlway and hurried to his side as he stole a look through the
open panel. The wheel bay was filled with thick metal struts, shock absorbers
and four large black wheels. Below the wheels, the port undercarriage door was already
down sixty degrees, revealing a cold, dark blue sea sparkling below. Chernykh turned
a crank handle at the back of the compartment, unaware Craig was watching him, while
the parachute he’d brought aboard lay at his feet.

Craig raised his gun, and opened
his mouth to shout an order for Chernykh to stop, but Valentina clamped her
hand over his mouth and pulled him away from the open panel.

She released her grip and
whispered, “Never warn them! Never give them a chance!”

Valentina nodded to the soldier.
He crept to the open panel and took aim with his rifle. Just as he fired, the
aircraft shuddered, causing his shot to go wide, grazing Chernykh’s shoulder. A
moment later two shots cut through the cargo compartment’s thin metal skin, one
taking the soldier in the hip. He fell back, hand pressed against his wound as
his rifle skidded across the cargo deck.

Valentina dragged the soldier
back as Craig stole a look through the open panel. The manual crank stood
abandoned and the surrounding metal deck was sprinkled with red droplets. A bloodied
hand appeared on a black rubber wheel, then a head and a gun popped up together.
Craig fired, striking a metal shock absorber, filling the confined wheel bay
with a reverberating metal clang.

Chernykh braced his lightly
wounded shoulder against a wheel and fired, but the bucking of the aircraft
through turbulence sent the shot whizzing past Craig’s face. The aircraft
lurched sharply, sending Chernykh stumbling towards the open gear door, forcing
him to reach for the landing gear. He dropped his gun to grab the lock stay, a
cylindrical strut along the top of the wheel gear. The weapon clattered against
a wheel, then fell through the open door way. Fear showed on Chernykh’s face as
he pulled himself up onto the landing gear, and threw his blood soaked arm over
the top of the main strut. The aircraft shuddered again, and he dropped down a
little, sliding on his own blood. Frantically, he pulled himself back up as freezing
air clawed at his clothes.

Craig had a clear shot, but
hesitated.

“Help me!” Chernykh yelled over
the screaming wind, clearly helpless.

Craig lowered his gun uncertainly,
then stepped into the wheel bay. “Hold on,” he said, pocketing his pistol and
approaching the undercarriage. He grabbed a strut with one hand and offered Chernykh
the other. “Take my hand!”

The Spetsnaz soldier used his
bloodied arm to hold the strut, moving his good arm as if preparing to reach
for Craig’s outstretched hand. Suddenly his good arm snapped above his shoulder
in a lightning fast motion, a shiny sliver of metal now in his hand. Before he
could hurl the knife at Craig’s throat, a shot rang out. Chernykh’s head
snapped back. For a moment, the Spetsnaz soldier hung lifelessly from the wheel
strut as blood welled from the bullet hole in his forehead, then he dropped the
knife and fell like a rag doll through the open undercarriage doorway. The
moment he hit the air outside, his body was swept out of sight by the gale
force wind below.

Craig looked back at Valentina,
kneeling at the open panel with the soldier’s rifle braced against her shoulder.
She lowered the gun and climbed into the wheel bay. “Have you learnt nothing?”
she demanded. “No matter what you think, they’re never helpless! Never give
them a chance, or they will kill you!”

“He was wounded, and he’d dropped
his gun,” Craig said helplessly, knowing how foolish it sounded the moment he
said it.

“And he was a second from
slitting your throat!” She snapped as she pushed past him angrily. “Come on,
there might be more of them!”

Valentina edged around the wheel
bay, giving the open door a wide berth. She approached an open control panel,
labeled in Cyrillic, and threw a switch from manual to automatic. A moment
later, the gear door lifted up and locked into place. The wheel bay immediately
fell silent while the air pressure and temperature began to rise as the
compartment pressurized. She crossed to the far side of the wheel bay, to a
small access hatch. When she tried it, she found it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” she said, deciding
there must have been only one saboteur.

Without another word, they returned
to the cargo compartment to help the injured soldier back to the flight deck.

* * * *

Nogorev had been in the tail section
of the plane assessing the chance of sabotaging the auxiliary power unit when
the shooting had begun. He ran forward, cracking open the hatch into the wheel
bay in time to see Chernykh fall and glimpse the water below. From the angle of
the sunlight on the landing gear door, he realized they were heading south over
the sea, making a jump impossible.

He heard voices, so he closed the
hatch and used the barrel of his gun to wedge the handle shut. Soon, the handle
rattled several times as Valentina tried to force the hatch open. Nogorev
waited twenty minutes, after the hatch fell silent, before entering the wheel
bay. He assumed the flight deck was now guarded, preventing a second attack on whoever
was flying the plane, and he was equally sure that if he touched the wheel bay’s
door release again, his hiding place would quickly be swarming with armed men. He
was trapped, even if the people controlling the aircraft didn’t know he was
aboard.

All he could do was wait for the aircraft
to land, so he locked himself in the rear cargo compartment and rested, preparing
for his one last opportunity to deal with Craig Balard.

* * * *

The 55,000 tonne heavy aircraft
carrying missile cruiser,
Admiral Kuznetsov
, was on a long range deployment
in the Sea of Japan when it received a coded message from naval headquarters in
Saint Petersburg. The navy high command had remained neutral throughout the
crisis, and there were no naval officers on the Emergency Committee, so the
Captain of the
Kuznetsov
was surprised to receive an order to destroy an
Aeroflot aircraft crossing the Sea of Okhotsk. The order had been issued by one
of the most senior officers in the Russian Navy, and so appeared valid. The
Captain was not to know the order was a forgery, and the officer in question
was unlawfully held by the SVR at a secret location on the outskirts of the
city.

All air force aircraft in the Far
East provinces had been grounded, with specific orders only to fly in defense
of their air bases, and to ignore any orders from the Emergency Committee. That
left the
Kuznetsov’s
MiG-29K fighters as the only aircraft able to reach
the Aeroflot A320. The aviation cruiser launched two fighters equipped with
external fuel tanks and air to air missiles shortly before sunset. They had
good intelligence as to the A320’s course, from ground based radars and
satellite tracking, but there was still an element of guess work without
airborne radars tracking the target. If the A320 was late, or changed course,
the fighters would have to return to the
Kuznetsov
without firing their
missiles, leaving little margin for error.

A nervous wait began in the
Kuznetsov’s
Air Warfare Center as the two fighters raced to the interception point at their
most fuel efficient velocity. Behind them, the ship steamed to the north east at
flank speed, reducing the distance for the fighter’s return flight. By 8.05 PM,
the MiG-29K’s were on station, sweeping the sky with their radars and burning
through their precious fuel reserves. The Captain and his Air Operations Commander
watched the telemetry apprehensively, even as they wondered why it was so
critical to shoot down a civilian airliner.

After just three minutes on
station, the speaker crackled in the ship’s Air Warfare Center. “Radar contact,
bearing two seven nine!”

* * * *

“They’re turning towards us,” General
Sorokin said watching the radar screen. “Two of them.”

Craig leaned forward from the engineer’s
seat and peered out into the night sky.

His father pointed off to the
east. “I see them!” Two dark shapes illuminated by moonlight streaked toward
them.

“I don’t suppose there’s any
chance of out running them?” Craig asked.

“No,” Sorokin said, then tried
radioing the incoming fighters. “This is Air Force General Karol Sorokin. Identify
yourself!”

There was no response as the twin
engine, twin tail plane fighters dived toward them in a shallow arc that
finished a few hundred meters behind the A320.

“They’re going to take us down
with guns,” Colonel Balard said.

The General radioed again. “I
repeat, this is General Karol Sorokin. This aircraft is operating under the
orders of Marshal Vochenko. I order you to identify yourself and your
intentions immediately.”

The two fighters leveled off as
they nosed towards the tail of the A320, looking for the optimal firing
position. General Sorokin banked slightly toward the fighters, trying to keep
them in view and the tail of their aircraft out of their gun sights.

“We can’t out fly them,” Colonel
Balard observed.

“Maybe not, but I can make them
work for their kill!”

“Is there anywhere we can land?”
Craig asked.

“Nothing close,” Sorokin said as
he leaned toward the side window, glimpsing the two fighters closing on the
lumbering passenger jet.