The last to report in were the units not involved with the B-52’s operations—base security, individual building security and standing flight-line checkpoints. It took several minutes, by which time all units had reported in as ordered... all except Five Foxtrot.
That did it. Definitely something wasn’t right here. Hal Briggs stopped his car dead in its tracks and picked up the mike: “Five Foxtrot, this is Hotel. Check in immediately. Over.”
* * *
He couldn’t wait any longer—Lovyyev could hear the irritation in the voice of whoever this Hotel character was. Orlov had disappeared into the hangar. For an instant he thought that Orlov was running, escaping before the security patrols closed in, but he knew better. Orlov was one of the best KGB operatives in North America. He would never run out on a mission unless it was completely hopeless, and he certainly wouldn’t run out on another operative.
He had to answer, but he needed to sound convincing. What was the nationality of the security guard they killed? Spanish? Mexican? Why didn’t the United States use one damned race in the military like most of the rest of the world? In the Soviet Union they used Russian soldiers. Other nationalities swept floors or collected garbage.
Taking a deep breath, he composed his reply in his mind, as taught to him in an all-day cram course by Orlov, and keyed the mike: “Five Foxtrot, all secure. Over.”
* * *
A chill ran down his spine. Hal had a tough time hearing the faint response, but even if it had been a whisper it wouldn’t have made any difference.
That was not Rey Jacinto on the mike.
The Old Dog had now reached the end of the runway. It paused for a few moments as it aligned with the runway centerline. For an instant Hal thought that now would be the perfect time to strike—here, away from the ramp, isolated and vulnerable—but as he began to issue orders to cover the bomber from attack, the engines slowly accelerated to full thrust and the huge plane rolled down the runway.
Hal Briggs stared transfixed at the huge dark creature blasting down the runway. He could see huge puffs of dust and sand erupting from the edge of the semi-camouflaged runway, those could be mortar rounds impacting near the plane— which conjured up the memory of the last time he had seen the Old Dog take off eight years ago, not five hundred yards from this very spot, when there were mortar rounds exploding all around them. The same sense of fear gripped him . . .
But this time it turned out to be huge dust clouds kicked up by the wingtip vortices generated by the Old Dog. A few moments later the bomber was airborne, the gear was up, the SST nose retracted into flight position and the Old Dog was racing skyward once again. It climbed nose-up, more like a light fighter plane than a half-million-pound strategic bomber.
In minutes the B-52 was out of sight. No alerts, no warnings. Members of the M113 Rover crews had gotten out of their ACVs to watch the takeoff. Hal checked Five Foxtrot once again. He could see clearly inside the hangar, but there was no sign of any munitions maintenance men in there, and the missiles were still on DreamStar’s handpoints beside the air intake. A power cart was hooked up to DreamStar, with hoses and cables snaking around to the fighter’s service panel, and now that the Old Dog had departed, Hal could hear the roar of the external power cart’s jet engine. It was as if the MMS crew had simply left the plane alone and on power to watch the Old Dog’s takeoff. That was a major breach of security, not to mention good sense. You never left a plane unattended with power and air on. Jacinto knew that—where was he during all this? And whose was that voice on the mike? Or was he imagining ... ?
The upper hatch on the armored car was open, and Briggs noticed that a fifty-caliber machine gun was now mounted on the armor-shielded gun bracket on the car’s roof. Still no sign of Jacinto. Maybe he had watched the takeoff, after all. But why mount his machine gun now? Or had he done it during taxi?
Briggs picked up his microphone. “Five Foxtrot, report status and location of the work crew at your location. Over.”
No reply.
“Red Man, this is Hotel, radio check.”
“Hotel, this is Red Man. Five by.”
It wasn’t his radio. Was there a radio “blind spot” out here? Was Jacinto’s radio malfunctioning? If it was, he should have gotten a replacement long ago—if it was Rey Jacinto in there.
“Roger. Break. Rover Nine, meet me at Five Foxtrot on the double. Over.”
“Rover Nine on the move.” Briggs could see the two alert crewmen run back inside the ACV. The low-slung, eleven-ton mini-tank made a tight turn and headed back toward the parking ramp on its twin-steel tracks.
Briggs put his car in gear and headed toward DreamStar’s hangar. Somebody was screwing up by the numbers here, it was past time to find out who and what.
* * *
Lovyyev was silently screaming at himself. Only a few hours in place, he speaks three words on the radio and is discovered.
Be calm, he told himself. Things were happening out there on the flight line—perhaps there was still time to bluff his way out of this. This Hotel person may get too busy to check on him.
But one glance out the bulletproof windscreen told him that his luck was running out. A staff car was heading his way. It was still three hundred yards off, perhaps more, but it was coming fast.
Lovyyev jumped out of his seat and crawled up into the armored open turret on the roof. He yelled back into the hangar, “Orlov. Skaryehyeh! Etah srochnah! Hurry. They’re coming!”
“Shut up, Crowe!” Orlov was hiding against the inner front wall of the hangar, his M-16/M-203 in his arms and the remote- control detonator around his neck. “Get down!”
But it was too late. In a panic, Lovyyev swiveled the machine gun turret around, released the safety, aimed it at the approaching staff car, pulled and held the trigger.
* * *
Hal Briggs was thinking about what he was going to say to Rey Jacinto about his strange behavior when he saw what looked like exhaust smoke rising from the Commando armored car. Just as he was wondering why Jacinto was starting up, he saw a line of explosions and shattering concrete race across the tarmac directly at his car. He slammed on the brakes and dived for the floorboards under the front seat just as his windshield exploded in a shower of glass. Instantly he felt a wall of fire envelope him, and realized that the engine compartment was on fire.
His synthetic fatigue shirt began to melt on his back. He clawed for the door handle, found it, shoved the door open and crawled out of the burning car. He landed only a foot from the flaming remains of the car’s hood, which had been blasted apart by the explosion, and half-crawled, half-stumbled away from the car. Thick black smoke was everywhere. He inhaled a lungful of the gas, gagged, fell to the concrete. Pieces of red-hot metal were all around him. But at least the smoke hid him from the gunner in the V-ioo. He stayed on his hands and knees and began to crawl to where he thought the security checkpoint was ... He guessed right. A few moments later two guards rushed out and hauled him to his feet. He let the guards carry him to the guard shack but resisted when they tried to lay him down on the floor. He picked up the radio, switched the channel selector to one, the base-wide emergency channel, and clicked it on:
“Attention all HAWC security units, this is Hotel on channel one. Execute code echo-seven. Repeat, code echo-seven. Intruder alert, Hangar Five. Repeat, intruder alert, Hangar Five. This is not an exercise. Shots fired in front of Hangar Five by intruders from a V-ioo armored vehicle. Number of intruders unknown.”
Briggs paused, rubbing a pain in his right temple. Massaging it, he found a gash in his head and his hair burned off. “All Foxtrot guard units, secure your posts and stand by to repel. Break. Rover Seven, converge on Hangar Five, secure the V-ioo parked there, block the front of the hangar by any means possible. Break. Red Man, notify Colonel Towland and General Elliott in Mission Control of situation, use channel nine, and have them order the flight crew on the airborne B-52 to remain clear of the area and notify the crew of the standby B
-52 to prepare to evacuate. Deploy all available personnel in full combat gear to security checkpoint alpha and launch helicopter air security units one and two. Break. Rover Nine, pick me up in front of security checkpoint alpha. I will take control from Rover Nine. All units, execute . . .”
Orlov knew it was no use berating Lovyyev—he might have even saved them by keeping that sedan away from the hangar until Maraklov, or James, or whatever his name was now, could get ready. They had been out there for hours. Was Maraklov ever going to be ready?
The security forces were moving faster than Orlov ever thought possible. Seconds after Lovyyev opened fire, he was receiving return fire from Hangar Four, although Lovyyev was in no danger except from a lucky shot. M-16 rounds were pinging off the armor surrounding the turret, forcing Lovyyev to shoot from a more protected position inside the cab. But it was working. He was holding down any deadly return fire, keeping the first wave of defenders back. It wouldn’t last long, but he was buying Maraklov time . . .
* * *
As was always the case, the first device to be activated under the Advanced Neural Transfer and Response System was on the radios. Usually they were quiet. This time, there was so much chatter on the area air-traffic control frequency that at first James thought he had dialed in two overlapping Las Vegas AM talk stations. The words were almost unintelligible, which at first confused him. Then he realized that the voices were talking about them—half the military security forces in Nevada were being called on to attack Hangar Five . . . they had already been discovered by Dreamland’s security forces. If he’d spent two more minutes completing the ANTARES interface they’d all be dead.
A millisecond’s mental inquiry told him all he needed to know: Sergeant Howard, if he was still alive, had done his job well. External air and power were on and available. DreamStar’s body tanks were full—he had much more fuel than he had hoped for. Apparently they had drained the wing fuel tanks but left the body tanks and their thirty thousand gallons of jet fuel intact.
Both AIM-120 Scorpion missiles were loaded and even responded to a fast connectivity and continuity check—which meant they could be launched or jettisoned at any time. Whether they were armed or capable of defending him was a question that would have to wait. The twenty-millimeter Vulcan cannon was empty—a fully loaded cannon would have been too much to hope for.
Howard had removed the inlet covers, safety pins and landing gear downlocks, and had closed all the maintenance covers except for the external power cover. The man was really efficient. He’d have to thank him someday, if they made it . . . ANTARES’ automatic flight-data recorder recorded the thought for later retrieval.
DreamStar had the ability to go from complete power off to full military takeoff thrust in moments. Fighters in the twenty- first century would routinely have it—now only DreamStar did. James again placed his life in the hands of a computer— only a machine could control the enormous amount of power that he was about to unleash. It was the ultimate in combat speed and efficiency—but it could just as easily turn the one hundred-thousand-pound fighter into a huge bomb.
Power, fuel, air—all engine start systems activated with a single thought. Lights and transmitters off—no use in making it easier for Briggs and the Air Force to find him. A compressed air tank, filled from the external power cart, collected twenty thousand cubic feet of air at five thousand pounds PSI pressure, then emptied it onto the sixteenth-stage compressor in DreamStar’s turbofan engine in less than a second. At the same time fuel was injected into the combustion chamber and the high-voltage ignitors activated. The blast of compressed air spun the engine turbines at three thousand RPMs, mixing air and fuel in the proportions to create a huge explosive ignition equal to the force of a ton of TNT.
In ten seconds DreamStar was ready for flight. With full power available, his only concern now was to get off the ground as fast as possible.
* * *
Orlov, as Sergeant Howard, had been briefed on DreamStar’s fast-reaction-start capability, but he never quite believed it. One moment the fighter was silent, cold, without power— the next, the engine was at full power with a huge shaft of fire burning out the engine exhaust, expelling dangerous unburned gases. It reminded him of watching a tiger being fed at the Moscow Zoo—one moment the tigers were sleeping soundly, but at the first scent of blood they were unstoppable dynamos of motion and energy.
The external power cables and air hoses dropped off the service port by remote control, and before he could rush to the side of the cockpit to see if Maraklov needed anything, DreamStar was moving forward—ready to fly.
Orlov didn’t hesitate. He reached up to the remote-control trigger device, pressed the button, then threw the device away in the hangar and sprinted for the V-ioo armored car.
He reached the car just as columns of fire lit up the gloomy early morning sky. Orlov hadn’t counted on how bright those magnesium mortar shells were—he had, though, tightly closed his eyes just as he heard the loud puff's when the mortar rounds were launched. Lovyyev, inside the V-ioo, had neglected to shield his eyes, and Orlov found him rubbing and blinking furiously.
“Move, get out of the way!” Orlov ordered. Lovyyev followed Orlov’s grasp and tumbled into the clear area under the gun turret as Orlov scrambled into the stiff driver’s seat, put the V-ioo into gear and hit the gas pedal.
“Can you operate the machine gun?” Orlov called to Lovyyev and checked his assistant as he hauled himself into the gun-turret brace. Lovyyev was still trying to blink away the flashblindness, his face red and puffed, but Lovyyev, longer on courage than brains, was the kind who would say he was okay if both arms were blown away. All Orlov could do was drive. Either Lovyyev was up to the task of holding off the response forces, or they would die.
“Just don’t shoot behind you,” Orlov told him. “Maraklov and his fighter are right behind us. Shoot at anything else that moves. Don’t waste a single shot. Our only hope is—”
Orlov’s voice was drowned out by a rhythmic hammering sound on the hull of the armored car. He thought it was from Lovyyev’s gun until he realized that the sound came from outside. He was about to warn Lovyyev to take cover when the young KGB agent’s body, minus his handsome blond head, slumped into the bottom of the gun turret. Orlov stomped hard on the gas pedal. Never leave a pretty corpse for the enemy.
Dreamland’s security forces had reacted much faster than Orlov had anticipated. Now the last obstacle lay ahead—the long moveable steel gate that enclosed the fence surrounding the research hangars. Orlov had to work fast. Once fully closed, huge steel pilings would be lowered into place and the gate would be unmovable.
Driving with one hand on the wheel, gas pedal to the floor,
Orlov reached up and swung the fifty-caliber machine gun back facing forward, then fumbled with the remote trigger mechanism, finally clipping it into place on the rifle’s trigger. He was less than a hundred yards from the gate. Firing in short bursts, he swung the wheel back and forth, pointing the gun’s fire at anything that moved near the gate.
To his surprise, the gate was already fully closed. Time had almost run out. Two soldiers were low-crawling along the gate, trying to reach the locking mechanism.
Orlov swung the V-ioo toward them, trying to rake the fence with fire to pin them down, but the Americans refused to stop. Orlov caged the fifty-caliber forward and headed for the lock mechanism, spraying the area with bullets. But that lasted for only a few seconds—the shell-feeder on the machine gun jammed.
It was too late. One guard was dead but the other threw the handle on the locking mechanism and dropped the steel post into place.
One chance left. Keeping the throttle full open Orlov aimed the Commando right at the gate opening. If the lock could be broken and the gate dislodged from the piling he could use the V-ioo to push the gate far enough open for the XF-34A to get through.
Under a hailstorm of bullets from all sides, Orlov’s V-100 plowed into the gate’s locking mechanism at
well over sixty miles an hour—the four-ton armored car had built up enough force to demolish a house. But it was still not enough to Snap the five-inch steel post securing the gate. Instead, the force of the impact snapped the motor mounts off the armored car, and the heavy armored plating in the car’s nose acted like a giant piston, driving the engine and transmission into Gekky Orlov’s body. The bones in his body were pulverized like dry twigs under a steam roller. The V-100 exploded, starting a fire in the electric and hydraulic lock systems and killing the second security guard. But the gate held fast.
And DreamStar was trapped.
* * *
A quick mental command, and DreamStar’s attack-radar flashed on, then off, at precisely two hundred and twenty yards from where Kenneth Francis James, Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov, had stopped his fighter short of the burning gate ahead. Six hundred and sixty feet, then over a twelve-foot-high obstacle. Another mental command: DreamStar’s computers sampled the external air temperature, inertial winds, pressure altitude, relative humidity, aircraft gross weight, engine-trim- and-performance variables, then computed takeoff data at max performance best angle of climb over the obstacle.
Not good enough. DreamStar reported that it needed at least one thousand feet to clear the obstacle.
James’ reaction was instantaneous. He brought DreamStar’s turbofan engine to full power, moved the vectored thrust- nozzles to full reverse and released the brakes. DreamStar began to move backward toward the taxiway throat leading to the ramp in front of the hangars—back toward the melee he had just escaped from. At the same time he activated DreamStar’s radar system, which scanned in every direction around the fighter.
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