Derek Lambert: The Red Dove

He activated the radio, sweeping through the wave bands in search of a contact. Nothing. The CPB might have affected it; on the other hand it might be the usual communication black-out caused by heat on re-entry.

Talin reckoned that his speed had slowed from 17,500 mph at re-entry to about 6,000 mph. He was approaching terminal descent at about 250,000 feet. Gingerly he tried elevons, rudder, speed brake and rudder controls. Dove reacted sluggishly like the wounded bird she was.

The mountains receded, a plain, then lakes.

Talin tried the radio again hoping to contact one of the VOR beacons which could guide Dove’s autopilot just as though she were a conventional airliner.

The faintest crackle reached him through his headset. Faintly he heard a voice.

‘Kennedy… Kennedy…’

Not knowing whether or not they could hear him he said: ‘Soviet shuttle Dove here… believed overflying North America… have primed nuclear warhead on board… attempting ditch in sea… please advise…’

He began to repeat the message but before he had finished he had lost contact again.

The American President slammed down the receiver linking him to NORAD.

He said: ‘Gentlemen, the situation is this: the Soviet shuttle is at this moment out of control and out of contact somewhere over the Mid-West of the United States. It is thought that it may have on board a primed hydrogen bomb but radio reception was so bad that the message was unclear.’

He paused. ‘We have two choices and you all know what they are: we let it land or we blow it out of the sky with an ABM.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Those who think we should hit it raise their right hands.’

Secretary of State Craig and National Security Adviser Fallon raised theirs; Reynolds and Defense Secretary Fryberg remained motionless.

‘So I have the casting vote. Your indulgence, gentlemen, for one moment.’ He picked up a telephone set aside from the others. ‘The hot line; I prayed to God when I was elected that I would never have to use it.’

The Russian President held the receiver away from him, one hand clasped over the mouthpiece. Nodding at Tarkovsky, he said: ‘The President of the United States wants to know if Dove is armed with a hydrogen bomb. What do I tell him?’

Tarkovsky looked at Vlasov; his face was flushed, his small grey eyes bloodshot. He hesitated, then said: ‘Tell him no.’

In the White House the President replaced the receiver and said to the four men sitting around him: ‘We don’t hit, but we do take evasive action.’

To Fryberg and Fallon he said: ‘You both know what to do, move it.’ To Craig he said: ‘You might as well stay here, Joe, there’s nothing you can do,’ and to Reynolds: ‘You too, George, the spectacular could become the disaster movie you talked about and as co-producers we have to stick together.’

He pressed his hands against his forehead. When he removed them he suddenly looked his age.

Between them Fryberg and Fallon, using the White House communications systems, rapped out a string of messages to the NSA (National Security Agency) at Fort Mead, Maryland, to NORAD, the Pentagon and the FBI. Through them police and subsidiary coast-to-coast emergency services were alerted.

All commercial and military aircraft were grounded; where possible stacked aircraft were dispersed north to Canada and south to Mexico, Central and South America. All airports were put on emergency; vessels on the Lakes and Eastern seaboard warned to stand by for a ditching.

In the visual control room at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport controllers scanned the skies through their tinted glass walls; in the approach control room the controllers searched their radarscopes for an errant blip. Elsewhere early warning radar antennae continued to track Dove’s erratic progress.

Across the central plains of the United States and to the east, people left TV and radio to search the skies. Until the media picked up the story about the bomb; then they took cover. And it was then that calls began to pour into the White House: ‘Hit it.’

‘…Kennedy… Kennedy…’

At first the rusty little voice on the radio identifying itself as Kennedy had spelled out HOPE to Talin. But in his mind he had a relief map of what the distant approaches to the space centre should look like; they were nothing like the map far below him at the moment.

Suddenly and sickeningly he understood: Kennedy Airport, New York. That was the signal he had picked up. And the sheets of water below were the Great Lakes. Beyond them lay low cloud.

Too late to even try the orbit re-entry engines.

Dove was a glider flying, he calculated, at about 80,000 feet and travelling at two and a half times the speed of sound.

Theoretically he should by now have been lined up with the landing strip. Except that now all he could see beneath him was cloud and his instruments weren’t working and he wasn’t in touch with anyone.

Tentatively he tried the glider controls. Again the response was sluggish. And for the second time in his life he found he couldn’t navigate to the right.

‘I once had a car like this,’ Sedov said.

His voice was slow and thick. Beside him the red light glowed brightly.

‘Are you all right, Oleg?’

‘An old Volga. It looked like a tank.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘And I had a son once.’ Sedov closed his eyes again.

Dove sank towards the endless field of cloud. In front of it a Boeing 747 sprang out of the crimped grey surface, like a primeval monster emerging from a marsh, and soared steeply upwards. Talin caught a glimpse of the scared faces of the flight-deck crew and the puppet heads of passengers.

By now Dove should have been below 50,000 feet poised for the final approach, landing on a twenty-two-degree glide slope.

Mist swirled past the observation windows. Behind Talin the solar scientist stirred. Sedov murmured some words but they didn’t make sense.

All I have to do, Talin thought, is to get Dove as far over the ocean as possible.

The cloud thickened.

And the salvage crews will reach us. It can’t all be for nothing.

With luck they were over the sea now. Which was when he saw the tip of a skyscraper probing the cloud and, a moment later, saw Manhattan below him.

In Rome the Pope prayed and in churches all over the world prayers were offered.

In Manhattan traffic came to a standstill as the big red and white bird sailed silently over its highrise, lower than the World Trade Center and the Empire State. It had adopted a south-south west course and was gliding over the Hudson River waterfront.

It was the chief liaison officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, whose responsibilities included Kennedy, Newark and La Guardia airports, who decided to try and coax Dove into Kennedy.

He said: ‘The sonofabitch is going to ditch in the Bay. At that speed it will break up and, if there is a bomb on board, we’ll lose Downtown Manhattan, half of Jersey City, Staten Island and Brooklyn not to mention the Statue of Liberty.’

He told his deputy to call the Control Tower at Kennedy on the direct line and, snatching up a telephone, called the New York and Jersey City electricity authorities. Seconds later lights went out all over Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Yonkers, Staten Island, Jersey City and Manhattan. In the gloom of a winter afternoon the landing lights on Kennedy’s longest runway shone brightly and enticingly.

Pictures of the runway and the crippled Dove were recorded by TV cameras and relayed by satellite throughout the world.

Secretary of State Joseph Craig said: ‘Tell me one thing, Mr President, if there isn’t a bomb on board why didn’t you release a statement to that effect?’