“If I get authorization . . .”
Briggs took a deep breath. “Sir, you’ve never requested authorization for half the plans you cook up. Building that Old Dog ten years ago was unauthorized—you took a B-52 air-frame, ripped off the parts and put the thing together in secret. That whole B-i bomber mission to Kavaznya was unauthorized. Launching the Old Dog was unauthorized. Continuing the mission was technically unauthorized, and so was penetrating Soviet airspace and attacking that laser installation. You did it, sir, because it had to be done and you had the people and the equipment to do it.”
“This is different—”
“Why? Because it’s the colonel doin’ the rule-breaking and not you? Let me make a wild guess here, sir—Colonel McLanahan here is sort of a carbon copy of Bradley J. Elliott about twenty years ago. He’s ready to go out there and kick some butt, just like you did more than once in your career. I read your bio, General. . .” He rushed on, afraid if he stopped he’d lose his nerve. “They stick a hot-shot ex-test squadron commander out in some abandoned Air Force test base in No- wheresville, Nevada. They tossed you out, right? You pissed someone off and they stuck you in a hole in the wall in Nevada to get you out of the way—”
“Hal, I’m trying to be patient but this isn’t getting us anywhere—”
“But you wouldn’t roll over and play dead, would you? You turned Nowheresville into Dreamland. The Pentagon started tossing iffy projects your way. What the hell, sir, if the projects failed you’d get the blame. You proved them wrong. You made the projects work—and not always by following the book and getting authorization—and you got the credit. Pretty soon every new piece of military hardware went through Dreamland ... Okay, now you’re the man, General, and you’re lookin’ at the new Bradley James Elliott—Patrick S. McLanahan. He’s pullin’ the same shit you did twenty years ago.”
Elliott knew that was right. He had been drawn to Mac McLanahan from the start, not just because the guy was the best navigator in the Air Force, but because they seemed so much alike. He also knew he got a kick out of watching the transformation of Mac McLanahan—it was almost as if he was watching a videotape of what had happened with him. It had taken a disaster for Patrick to come alive, to rise above the bureaucratic morass. Now the real McLanahan had resurfaced, the one that once treated a bomb run in Russia like nothing much more than a late-night training flight in Idaho.
Elliott turned to McLanahan. “Mac, smoke that bastard. Whatever it takes, do it.”
Elliott barely had time to lower himself off the crew ladder before Cheetah’s left engine began to spin up to idle power. When Briggs reached up to pull the ladder off, McLanahan grabbed it.
“That was quite a speech, Hal,” he said over the rising whine of the engines.
“1 got a confession, buddy. I never read the old man’s bio. But I guess I hit pretty close to home. You hang around the guy long enough, you learn a little about what goes on behind the brass. Now get outta here and bring us back some rattlesnake hide.”
Over Ojito Airfield, central Mexico
Ten minutes later
DreamStar’s database on Ojito was accurate, except it failed to account for at least a year’s worth of unchecked vegetation. Maraklov had set up a computerized instrument landing system in Ojito, which used the database’s field location, elevation and information on surrounding terrain to draw a glidescope and localizer beam into the runway.
But Maraklov had to yank DreamStar away from tall strands of dense trees off the approach end of the runway, and when he reached the airport’s coordinates themselves he could barely see the runway through the weeds and junk scattered around. He had no choice but to ignore the low fuel warnings and go missed-approach on the field; then he adjusted his ILS for the obstructions and tried again. To use every available inch of pavement he had to drop DreamStar over a stand of trees at almost a full stall, applying power at the last moment to avoid crashing.
After touchdown he discovered that Ojito was nowhere near seven thousand feet long—another dense stand of trees and several buildings rushed up to meet him from less than two thousand feet away. Apparently a small corral and farm had been built on the little-used runway to make it easier to load livestock onto trucks, and the surrounding forest had been allowed to grow over the rest of the airstrip.
Maraklov threw the vectored-thrust nozzles and louvers into full reverse power, then hit the brakes. The left brake locked, its anti-skid system failed; it overheated and was quickly deactivated by computer just before it fused to the wheel. DreamStar skidded hard right, and only the lightning-fast application of thrust in the right directions kept the fighter on the narrow weed-covered runway. The left wing crashed into several small, rickety wooden buildings, sending chickens and pigs scattering in all directions. One of the small buildings burst into flames, ignited by the heat from DreamStar’s exhaust.
Maraklov gunned the engine. DreamStar leapt forward away from the burning building seconds before the fire reached the left wingtip. Scattering buildings in his jet exhaust, Maraklov taxied back down the runway to the opposite end, turned and aligned himself with the runway centerline, his engine idling. If troops or police came, he would have enough fuel to take off and get two or three hundred feet before flame-out—enough to nose over and crash DreamStar.
He activated the radio on Kramer’s frequency. “Kramer, what’s your position?” he thought, and ANTARES transmitted the query.
“Vstryetyemsah zahv dvah menootah, tovarisch,” Moffitt, Kramer’s assistant, replied. Maraklov wished there was a Rus- sian-translation computer in DreamStar—once again he didn’t understand enough of what Moffitt said.
This was going to be a major problem, Maraklov thought to himself. They weren’t in Russia yet, but even in Mexico they were a hell of a lot closer to Moffitt’s turf than Maraklov was. He would have to deal with Moffitt and all the other Moffitts that he’d meet up with—the ones that didn’t trust him, the ones who’d think he might have turned, the ones who envied his life in the United States. He’d have to try to begin the transformation back to being a Russian right now.
“Yah . . . yah nye pahnyemahyo, ” Maraklov thought haltingly. Like many before him, he thought, Russian is hard. But ANTARES did not transmit the Russian phrase, so Maraklov had to answer, “Say again.”
“Oh, excuse me, Captain James”—Moffitt was his usual charming self—“I forgot you do not speak Russian any more. Our ETA is two minutes.”
Maraklov had no time to think about Moffitt. Several villagers had begun to appear at the opposite end of the airstrip.
Some went to work putting out the fires to their outbuildings; others pointed at DreamStar. Maraklov couldn’t tell if any were carrying weapons but the safe assumption would be that they were armed and shouldn’t be allowed to approach, even though they looked like backwoods villagers . . .
Now a large dark-green truck rumbled up the road leading to the tiny airstrip, about a dozen men piled in and slowly started down the runway toward DreamStar. So much for timid villagers.
Maraklov locked the right and the emergency brakes, set the engine louvers on full reverse, and advanced the throttle. A huge cloud of dust rolled up from the airstrip and almost covered the advancing truck. The truck stopped, then several villagers jumped out and ran over to the sides of the runway. This time Maraklov could see rifles and shotguns. The truck then began advancing slowly toward him, the villagers with rifles advancing on both sides.
Maraklov created another dust cloud to warn them away. It wasn’t working. He moved the louvers back to takeoff position. The truck was closer than a thousand feet now—he wouldn’t make it if he attempted a takeoff over the truck even if his wings weren’t damaged. There was no way in hell he’d risk losing control of DreamStar to these characters. If these guys came any closer . . . well, he’d survived fighters, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, the best of America’s defense arsenals. Damned if he and his plane were going to give up
to a bunch of peasants in Mexico armed with shotguns.
The villagers were about a hundred yards away when a thunderous roar echoed through the mountainous valley, drowning out the sound of DreamStar’s engines. Suddenly the airfield erupted in clouds of dust and the crackle of machine- gun fire. The tree-line on either side of the strip was strafed with heavy-caliber machine-gun fire, whipping the trees and branches as if they were in the grip of a hurricane. Not surprisingly the armed villagers bolted from the airstrip, and soon the source of the uproar hove into view in the center of the airstrip.
Maraklov was impressed. It was a huge Boeing CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, an old American twin-rotor job that had to be at least forty years old. This veteran chopper, belching smoke that could be seen for miles, was ready for action— with a door-gunner on each side of the helicopter firing a gyro-stabilized twenty-millimeter gun, it was more a gunship than a trash-hauler. Its huge eight-bladed rotors, each some one hundred feet in diameter, barely made it through the trees and brush. The KGB had at least pulled out all stops to make sure DreamStar got out of the U.S. intact—no sooner had the monster landed than twelve heavily armed men rushed out of the rear-cargo ramp. Two hit the area where the burning buildings smoldered, the fires extinguished by the down- wash of the chopper’s huge rotors; the rest split up on either side of the chopper and began to secure the perimeter of the airstrip. And then from the cargo hold of the chopper came Kramer and Moffitt riding aboard a small black-and-green fuel truck.
As Maraklov opened the canopy, a crew from the chopper brought a ladder up to the side for Kramer. Maraklov ordered the maintenance access panels to open automatically, and a crew began to attach fuel lines to the single-point refueling adapter. Other crewmen began stripping loose chunks of fibersteel off DreamStar’s tail section, while some scurried over DreamStar’s wings inspecting the damage from the Bulldog AAA gun. Amid it all two photographers were taking nonstop pictures of DreamStar.
Kramer, now on the top of the ladder beside the cockpit ledge, plugged a headset into a jack offered by a maintenance technician. “Can you hear me, Maraklov?”
“Yes, I can hear you,” the ANTARES-synthesized voice replied. He did not move, nor did he attempt to remove his helmet or raise his visors.
“Welcome, Andrei. What you have accomplished is incredible.”
“Thank you,” the computer-synthesized voice replied.
“Can you move? You must be tired. Can you get up?”
“I won’t disturb the ANTARES interface until we are safely in Nicaragua. The refueling can be accomplished with the engine running. I should launch without any delay.”
“I understand. We have begun refueling. We also have missiles and ammunition for your guns.”
“What kind of missiles?”
“The best we have,” Moffitt broke in on the interphone. He had climbed up the other side of DreamStar and was leaning inside the cockpit, watching with fascination as the multi-function screens flickered and changed at breathtaking speed while Maraklov monitored the refueling. “We have two hundred rounds of twenty-millimeter ammunition plus two AA-11 close-range dogfighting missiles and two AA-14 medium-range missiles. They—”
“Neither is enough,” came Maraklov’s ANTARES synthesizer voice. Moffitt tried to reach inside the cockpit to touch a button on one of the MFDs, and Maraklov immediately powered the monitor down until Moffitt withdrew his hand. “Without proper interface the missile needs to be able to lock onto a target without carrier-aircraft guidance. Neither the AA-11 or the AA-14 can do that.”
Moffitt’s comment was predictable. “Your American friends always build the best of everything, don’t they?”
“Be quiet,” Kramer told Moffitt, and then asked Maraklov, “Can’t you use the missiles as a decoy? Perhaps they could scare off—”
“They’ll only add additional drag, and they could cause damage. I have no intention of letting anyone that close to me. I’ll take the ammunition for the cannon—that’s standard size.” Maraklov ordered the cannon-bay door opened, and the twenty-millimeter cannon lowered itself out of its nose bay, where crewmen, along with the photographers, began to examine it in preparation for loading. “Another important item: remove the left access panel just forward of the canard. There’s a black box marked ‘data transmitter.’ That unit must be disconnected as soon as possible.”
“What is it?”
“An automatic telemetry-data transmitter,” Maraklov told him. “It sends engine and flight data to any airborne receivers within a hundred miles, including the F-15F. They can decode the information and use it to track me. It can’t be deactivated by ANTARES. Do it immediately.”
Kramer gave the order to the senior crew chief, then: “What is your plan for escaping to Nicaragua?”
So he was going to Nicaragua, as he’d guessed. Okay, so be it. . . “I’ll stay in the mountains as much as possible and avoid military bases. The main multi-function display screen flashed on, then scrolled through computer-generated charts of the route of flight as Maraklov continued: “I’ll fly west of Durango and east of Culiacan to avoid those bases, through the interior to avoid Aguas Calientes and Guadalajara, then into the Sierra Madre del Sur between San Mateo and Acapulco. I don’t anticipate problems avoiding Tuxtla Gutierrez and Villahermosa military airfields, and crossing the border I should be unopposed through Guatemala. The problems may come crossing through Honduras,” the computer-altered voice of ANTARES said—the metallic voice did not reveal any hint of Maraklov’s real apprehension or fear. “I may encounter large American forces from Llorango Airfield in El Salvador, and La Cieba and Tegucigalpa airfields in Honduras, but I believe resistance will not be major. There are only about two hundred miles to the Guatemalan border, through El Salvador and Honduras and into Augusto Cesar Sandino airfield—I can transit the entire distance in less than twenty minutes if necessary. I assume Sandino will be the final destination?”
“Ah . . . that reminds me,” Kramer said. “The Nicaraguan government was adamant about not allowing DreamStar into Managua—those people actually believe the U.S. will send the New Jersey and shell the city if DreamStar shows up anywhere near it. However, we have been provided an alternate base of operations that you will find more than adequate—Sebaco Airfield, north of Managua.”
Maraklov immediately activated DreamStar’s on-board database, and in an instant the computer had found the field and displayed a chart and airfield-information on Sebaco. “It’s a mining town with a dirt runway?”
“Your information is dated,” Kramer said, “although to tell the truth, we have made our own modifications only recently. Sebaco is now a functional airfield and military post, staffed by our people. The runway has been lengthened and paved and is protected by anti-aircraft missiles and artillery. The KGB Central American Command is based there, along with a small squadron of Mikoyan-Gureyvich-29 fighters. It will be home away from home for you—your first taste of homeland in some time.”
“Yes,” Maraklov replied curtly.
Maraklov, sitting immobile in DreamStar’s ejection seat, felt the life-giving flow of jet fuel into DreamStar, felt the energy and vitality as the precious liquid flowed into the fighter’s tanks—and yet, watching the efficient Soviet plainclothes agents hunting down the villagers, he also felt cornered, trapped, alone. The Soviet KGB forces out there—his countrymen—were in a way as strange to him as men from Mars. He even felt a bit of the typical American response when seeing pictures or videotapes of Russian soldiers or airmen: curiosity, puzzlement, even a little fear. They were the enemy—no, they were his countrymen, his fellow Russians. So why did he feel this way?
He looked back toward the nose of his fighter and noted the tall, beefy frame of Kramer’s assistant and chief neck-crusher, Moffitt. No matter what he’d accomplished, guys like Moffitt would always suspect him, figuring that as valuable an asset as he was to the Soviets he could be an even more valuable one for the Americans. Had he been turned? Was he
a double agent? What if the returning hero turned out to be an embarrassment? At least he hadn’t forgotten how they thought, never mind glasnost.
At a mental command, Maraklov activated DreamStar’s attack radar and concentrated the energy on the right-forward nose-sector antenna-arrays. But after a few moments he turned the radar off. He would have enjoyed barbecuing Moffitt with microwaves—or at least scaring him.
He would have to deal with Moffitt, and the other Moffitts in Russia, very soon. Even being a hero could be dangerous. But he was getting ahead of himself. He was no hero. Not yet. So far he was nothing more, or less, than an uncommon traitor to the U.S.A.
* * *
“Tinsel, this is Storm One. Refueling completed with Goalie Three-Zero, squawking normal.”
“Storm One, roger. Strangle mode two and four for IFF check.”
“Roger, Storm One.” J. C. Powell issued commands to deactivate the two military-only data channels that would help Tinsel, the E-3B AWACS radar plane, locate and identify Cheetah. One by one, Tinsel ordered J.C. to turn each transmitter on until all were activated.
McLanahan lowered his oxygen visor. The waiting was the worst part . . . waiting for special clearance for takeoff, clearance to use the KC-10 refueling tanker, clearance to join up with Tinsel and the rest of the interceptor pursuers, and now they had to wait for permission to cross into Mexican airspace. He was itching to get on with the chase. DreamStar had such a long head start... He continued to check his equipment and thought about Ken James. It was nearly unbelievable. Appar-
ently a Soviet agent had gotten an assignment into the most highly classified research facility in the United States and had gotten to be chief test pilot—hell, the only test pilot—of the hottest tactical jet fighter in the world. And had now managed to steal that fighter out from under the noses of a large security force and escape with it out of the United States right past four interceptor squadrons.
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