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  There was plenty of evidence of past battles on the ground: numerous shell holes, trenches, shattered tanks and personnel carriers, and long stretches of churned mud left by maneuvering vehicles. A fierce battle must have swept through the area only yesterday, as several of the destroyed vehicles were still sending up thin columns of smoke from fire-blackened hulks. The snowfall of the preceding night had spread a thin layer of white over the battle area, but it had not been heavy enough to cover all traces.

  The overcast sky and the banked, heavy blue clouds to the east suggested another snowfall and fierce winds in a matter of hours, and he thanked the weather control satellite system that had provided the data that had brought him to the battle area before the new snowfall began.

  Then, off to the right, at the base of a gentle slope, well hidden by a thicket of aspen, he caught a flicker of movement. Cutting out the autopilot, Teleman continued the zag around until he could make a straight pass. The ungainly 12o-foot A-17 pivoted delicately and !loped across the plain.

  Watching the scope now rather than looking through the glasses, he could see a vehicle resembling a jeep jerk out of a stand of aspen and head erratically into the meadow. As he watched, the jeep struck a patch of thick, churned -mud *and bounced to a stop, thoroughly mired. The driver struggled to get out, then collapsed •backward across the seat. From the padded uniform and hat, he was obviously Chinese..

  Teleman cut in the autopilot again and checked the valley floor to the west with the binoculars while the aircraft resumed its interrupted search pattern. He had now been down in the valley at two hundred feet for a minute and a half. Safe-time was getting mighty short. Whatever that shell carried, he thought, they did not seem to care whether or not they hit their own troops as welL Then he saw what he had missed on his first and higher pass: a Soviet tank sat astraddle a point where several muddy tracks converged.

  Its turret gun was pointed in the direction of the

  hills off Teleman's starboard wing and he could plainly see two mortar emplacements concealed by its bulk. The powerful glasses showed figures clad in green Soviet uniforms, some with white snow coverings, scattered like dropped firewood. The turret hatch on the tank was open and he could see a body, half in, half out. Other troopers lying on the ground were twisted into grotesque postures, some still jerking spasmodically.

  Teleman's first thought was of nerve gas. He 'keyed the telephoto lenses on the visual cameras to the scene and boosted the image Up on the scope, closing on the Mortar emplacement While he put the aircraft into a tight orbit at three hundred feet. He swore as he checked the chronometer readout. One more minute and he would have to get out whether he had everything or not. Now he could see the bodies of other soldiers, some in foxholes, some scattered around the meadow as if they had tried to stagger toward the river. The faint footprints in the fresh snow were silhouetted in the dawn sun, indicating unsteady trails. A single trooper lay on his back, arched over the lip of a foxhole, one arm thrown across a pile of mortar shells. His helmet had tumbled back off his head, leaving his face exposed to the dead light of the early sun. Teleman could even see the man's long blond hair stirring in the vagrant breeze that reinforced the prediction of the impending storm. The image of the hair registered subconsciously. Teleman peered at the face, framed in the scope: it was covered with blood and vomit and the eyes of the man were open, staring directly, it seemed, into the cameras. For a long moment Teleman could not tear his eyes away from the face as the cameras recorded the scene in minute detail. Then he broke the aircraft out of its orbit and dismissed the rest of the flight plan.

  He had all of the information he needed. judging from the evidence he had seen so far, the Chinese were using either gas or germ warfare.. For some reason, with the image of the dead Russian soldier's face before him, he was betting on bacteriological agents.

  CHAPTER 6

  Teleman wondered how many shells had been fired' before the satellite surveillance system had spotted the 210-mm cannon. This one appeared to have been timed for just after dawn; probably so, that the Chinese could gain a quick estimate of its effectiveness as well as initial Soviet reaction.

  So far, there did not appear to be any. He checked the atmosphere sampling tanks and the lights glowed green, showing that the covers were sealed. Now it would be up to Washington to extract what they could from the samples.

  A quick scan of the radar panels indicated that there had been no unusual air activity recorded in the nine minutes he had been below forty thousand feet. But deep in the valley as he had been, his radar was shadowed by the hills to the east. He considered a moment, then pulled the nose up sharply and cut in afterburners. He came out of the shallow valley, clearing the hills like a rocket. In less than thirty seconds he had passed sixty thousand feet and switched the engines to ramjet. The sudden explosion of thrust kicked him back into the acceleration couch. The pressure suit accommodated itself to the change caused by the sudden acceleration while the PCMS adjusted stimulant flows.

  Off to the east, the surveillance radar had two Chinese Migs spotted, heading for the broad valley. As he climbed, the Chinese pilots, now far below, pulled up sharply, caught by his surprise exit. They chased him upward for a short while, but by the time they reached_ sixty thousand feet he was leveling off at 120,000. Teleman caught the flicker of air-to-air missiles reaching for him as the Chinese

  aircraft tried a last frantic measure to bring him down. But there was never a chance.

  There would be, he knew, some soul-searching at their intelligence headquarters later on—if the pilots were believed. There would certainly be no radar sightings to confirm their story and the Thoughts of Mao would provide no sensible answers.

  Teleman grinned to himself as the A-17 pulled out of the climb and settled into a search-and-photograph flight mode, then turned to the monitoring console to run through the information the sensors had so far picked up. As the data, reduced to language forms and equations, streamed across the screen, he found more information than he had hoped for.

  The laser topographical radar had managed to build a thorough map of the war area.

  Also spotted were several Soviet and Red Chinese missile installations that he suspected were previously unknown to U. S. Intelligence. Near the town of Lepsinsk on the Kazakh SSR side, a cleared site with camouflaged bunkers betrayed a VTOL fighter airdrome..

  That meant that the Soviets had moved their air operations closer to the border than had been suspected. The vertical takeoff and landing fighters were limited in operating range, but they were Mach 2.1 fighters and could react and be over the selected target or engagement in a lot less time than conventional jet aircraft. By moving them into the area around Lepsinsk, the Soviets could meet the threat of the heavy Chinese airbase at Nordach, located well into the jut of the Sinkiang border, from which they could bring fighter bombers within striking distance of Alma Alta.

  The IR sensors had located vehicle weapon parks on both sides of the border, including a number of heavy artillery sites, well dug in and virtually invulnerable to counterartillery attacks. Both sides had prepared well, Teleman thought, and obviously for a number of years. Much of the fighting on the plateau would have to be done by infantry troops supported by aircraft. It, was still short of o800, local time, only forty minutes after local sunrise. Except for probing patrol actions, the bulk of the day's fighting was probably still to come.

  The action earlier in which the two Soviet troop carriers had been knocked out would furnish ample evidence that a shooting war was actually going on. That revelation would make quite a stir in the United Nations, particularly to certain neighboring and nervous countries. The more sophisticated nonvisual sensor data

  would be pored over eagerly by the attaches of many nations. But the dangerous information, the data that really counted, lay safely in the atmosphere-sampling tanks.

  Either gas or bacteriological agents, it would make no difference. Either would be enough to bring world condem
nation of the Red Chinese, even by nations friendly to her.

  It was doubtful if their usual pattern of denial would avail them in this instance. The doubt would be there, and there would be calls for an international monitoring team. And the evidence could not be hidden. Teleman was well pleased with the morning's work.

  And so would Washington be.

  Teleman was completing the final leg of the search pattern preparatory to shaping a course northeast for_ rendezvous. He was flying at eight thousand feet in the vicinity of Lach Rom on the Chu River. The aircraft was on automatic, following the irregular border by star-fix coordinates when Telemen caught a tiny flicker on the trailing edge of the surveillance radar screen. The blip showed at sixty thousand feet near Pezhevalsk, on the Soviet side of the border. As he watched, the blip was read out as an Ilyushin Falcon, closing the four-hundred-mile gap at Mach 2.5. For long seconds he continued to watch, wondering where the Soviet aircraft was going in such a hurry.

  The Falcon was the latest Soviet interceptor, capable of Mach 3.2 and carrying an armament consisting of four Mach 4.8 air-to-air missiles that could be armed with small nuclear warheads. The aircraft was only recently being distributed to the Soviet Tactical Air Command as a high-speed, high-altitude interceptor with a ceiling of a little less than 180,000 feet. Its major task was to act as defense against the new, high/low-level Mach 3

  penetration bombers of the USAF Strategic Air Command. Teleman had spotted flights several times before over the Soviet Union, but always either on training jaunts or border patrols. None had heretofore been aware of his presence.

  , This one, though, seemed to be- another matter. The Falcon was holding its course on a direct line that would cross his less than a minute after he passed over the border into Soviet territory. Ex. perimentaily, he made a small course correction that lengthened his'

  stay in Red Chinese territory. The Falcon changed to match.

  For the first time Teleman felt the cold chill of fear that not even the PCMS could cope with. That damned aircraft was waiting

  for him, he thought. How in the name of all the gods . . . frantically, Teleman lifted the A-17, ramjets flaming, and scrambled to two hundred thousand feet.

  The Russian pilot pulled his aircraft up sharply and cut in his afterburners. The long, thousand-foot cone of hot gases showed as a thin ghost image on the radar screen.

  Teleman began to increase his speed, shoving the throttle control up past Mach 2.5. The intruder was still closing. He checked the ECM unit. It put him at the center of a three-hundred-mile-diameter circle, but still the flickering image came on to meet him at the interception point, now less than two hundred miles ahead. And the Falcon had the advantage of being down-course. That damned ECM unit was working, but still the Soviet aircraft came on. Somehow, the Russian had him visually, Teleman knew.

  That left Teleman with only one other move. He switched the surveillance radar to scan to the east—nothing more than scattered Mig patrols on both sides of the border and occasional cargo craft on the Chinese side, all well below forty thousand feet. He quickly checked the Falcon. It was still there and in another few seconds would be in range to fire a salvo of twin missiles. He did not want to chance those. The PCMS, anticipating his decision from the combined inputs of his body setting itself for action and the information coming to it from the surveillance radar, began to increase the flow of amphetamine stimulants. Teleman's actions became a blur as he pulled the A-17 around in a narrow curve to the northeast. The gap between the two aircraft opened as though a knife had slashed through an invisible cord, and the Falcon fell rapidly behind as Teleman streaked for the deserted reaches of Sinkiang. Watching the surveillance radar, he felt a small measure of relief as the Soviet aircraft disappeared from the scope. At least they were not going to take a chance on trying to shoot him down over Chinese territory. They wanted the A-17, or what would be left of it, badly.

  As he streaked deeper into Sinkiang, Teleman watched the Falcon. The Soviet aircraft pulled around to the west in a tight turn that was almost a match for his, then straightened out and ran, presumably for its base at Alma Alta.

  Teleman found himself very interested in that final maneuver. A number of questions were suddenly occurring to him. Number

  one: Why did they send only one aircraft? And number two: Why did it return to base so quickly instead of loitering in the vicinity to see if Teleman would try and cross the border again? There was only one way to find out, he decided. Swinging back again toward the border, he increased his speed to Mach 4. Seconds later, as he approached the spot where he had first sighted the Falcon, a second Russian aircraft showed up from the southwest quadrant, the same quadrant from which the first had come barreling in.

  Somehow, they were tracking him, Teleman thought. They must have aircraft stacked up low down on the deck where his surveillance radar could not pick them out of the background scatter. He did not wait this time to see how close he could 'push on to the border, but swung to the east again in the same tight turn. Again the Falcon turned and headed after the first one to base. A third time he tried it, streaking for the border at less than a thousand feet and Mach 2. The sonic boom below would be enough to cause concussion- and alert everyone within fifty miles. But in this deserted desert country he was not concerned about being sighted.

  And again the Falcon showed up, cutting his flight path on a diagonal that would have the Falcon meet him as he crossed into Soviet territory. Frustrated, Teleman went into a climbing turn east and at Mach i.8 headed into Sinkiang.

  He was holding an altitude of eighty thousand feet—a comfortable level for the A-17

  that made the best use of its •fuel capacity. It was now obvious to him that the Soviets had developed some type of sophisticated, visual tracking system that could not only pick him out at great altitudes and distances, but hold him at supersonic speeds as a Falcon closed. A visual tracking system would require a second man in the aircraft; this probably explained the limited stay-time. The increased payload taken up by the observer and the visual tracking equipment would cut well into the cruising range of the Falcon.

  Although it was designed for long supersonic flight, it could sustain its Mach 4.8 speed only for short durations, for the approach and attack. During the cruise to and from the target, the speed would be well down into the more conventional ranges. But the problem confronting Teleman now was: At what range could they track him? Did they have to have flying patrols in the air, or did they have ground observing stations with much more sensitive equipment than an aircraft could possibly carry?

  The Soviets could have had plenty of opportunity to observe him while he was orbiting the fire fight involving the trucks, as well as during his pass across the valley where the shell had impacted.

  That in turn led him to the next series of questions. Did they know about the A-17?

  Obviously they did. A visual tracking system sophisticated enough to pick up what amounted to a flyspeck moving at speeds up to Mach 4.5 over even several hundred miles distance would require a substantial outlay of both men and money. And to have set-up in the vicinity of the Soviet-Chinese war zone, they would have had to know that the conflict would bring him on the run. There was nothing the Chinese could put into the sky that would require a visual tracking system. Teleman shook his head. It was all such a preposterous chain of events, but then so was the U-2 flight that was shot down over Russia in late 1959, by a missile whose existence was not even suspected by Western intelligence. And so vicious was the pace of missile development that in 1965, up-rated, second-generation versions of those same missiles were provided to the North Vietnamese for use against U.S. fighter-bombers as obsolete Soviet weaponry.

  The Soviets could very well have rushed the development of a visual tracking system in much the same way that they and the United States always had when a clear requirement arose. A-17 flights had been going on over Soviet territory for more than a year now, and the increasing appearance of dead
spots in radar warning and detection systems would be enough to indicate that something or someone was intruding over Soviet territory with alarming frequency. Even if they had not been particularly worried about intelligence-

  gathering missions, they would be seared to death that the same ECM systems could be placed in manned bombers or even intercontinental missiles. So the knowledge that the Soviets were onto the A-17 overflights, and onto them with a visual tracking system, was suddenly more important than the information he had gathered from the war zone. The problem was how to get the information back to Washington.

  By now he was six hundred miles into the northern reaches of Sinkiang and less than ten minutes from the Mongolian border. Mongolia was still firmly in the Soviet camp, perhaps not firmly enough to have the new Falcons, but it was not worth the risk of finding out. Coming up dead ahead was the faint thread of the Irtysh River. The floor of the desert was as deserted as only the

  Gobi could be. In this particular area not even Mongolian herdsman could live. The river, here near its headwaters in the low hills that lay two hundred miles off his starboard wing, was still little more than a muddy stream, not yet purified and strengthened as it would be later on during its 2500-mile rush to the Arctic Ocean. South, the Gobi cut into the province of Sinkiang, cut a• swatch of utter desolation for another five hundred miles before the land began the long climb back to the fertile steppes leading to the Tien Shan, whose eastern flank's began on the far side of the Turfan Depression.

  Teleman punched the tabs to key in the ground control maps of the Tien Shan. When the image centered, he stopped the flow and asked for the altitude overlay, then settled back to study the lofty summits. The Tien Shan was actually the northern extension of the Himalaya chain, reaching north and east for nearly fifteen hundred miles. Next to the Himalayas, the Tien Shan was the longest mountain chain on the Asian continent. The southern slopes on the west rose out of the Pamir Plateau and covered more than four hundred thousand square miles. It was a cinch that the Soviets would not be able to cover the entire range with visual tracking equipment. But he still did not know the altitude range of that equipment. And the Soviets would be expecting him to try and break through somewhere. They must know, or at least suspect, that he had to recross Soviet territory. And he did, he thought ruefully. Normally he would fly out of the fix by crossing China and refueling over either the Bay of Bengal or the China Sea. But not this time. They must have been watching the progress of the blind spots on the radar screens as he crossed Soviet territory, making educated guesses with their computers until they hit upon a familiarity with his flight schedules. He had no support waiting anywhere except in the Barents Sea. The mission was too complex and the secrecy too great to try and stretch it to alternate points. Each flight was carefully made up and very little margin of error allowed. He had no alternate landing bases outside the continental United States.