Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02

by Day of the Cheetah (v1. 1)

  And the son of a bitch had shot down the Old Dog, killed all but three on board—they had found Major Edward Frost, the radar navigator, badly broken up but somehow alive a mile from the impact area; his parachute never had time to open before he hit the ground, they said. Colonel Jeffrey Khan, the copilot, ended up at the edge of the scorched earth in critical condition but alive. And Wendy . . . she was alive, clinging to life. The investigators said there was no way she could have gotten out by herself—Angelina Pereira must have sacrificed herself to save Wendy.

  One man had caused more damage, more destruction and more death than McLanahan could have ever imagined, not to mention the military secrets he must already have turned over to the Soviet Union. And if this ... this Maraklov had replaced the real Kenneth James before his assignment to Dreamland, he would have done even more damage. The real Ken James was a B-i commander for three years. The phony one could have turned over enough data on the B-i, its mission, its routes of flight, its weapons and other top-secret information to destroy the strategic bombardment mission of the Strategic Air Command for years. And now, James—it was still hard to think of him as anyone else but Ken James—had DreamStar . . .

  “Storm Zero One, data-link checks completed,” the controller aboard the AWACS reported. “Clearance not yet received to proceed through the Monterrey FIR sector one. You can join Eagle Zero Two flight of four over Luke Range Complex Seven, or orbit within three-zero miles of REEBO intersection at flight level two-five zero until clearance is received. Over.”

  “When do you expect clearance through the sector, Tinsel?” J.C. asked. .

  “No idea, Storm. Our request had to be forwarded through Air Force to the Pentagon. Pentagon will probably pass it on to State. We lost it from there.”

  Patrick checked his charts. REEBO was just east of Yuma, very close to the border; Luke Complex Seven was farther north, closer to the tanker’s orbit point. “Take the orbit at REEBO, J.C.,” Patrick told Powell.

  “Tinsel, we’ll take the orbit point at REEBO at two-five-oh.”

  “Roger, Storm One, cleared to orbit as required at REEBO. Climb and maintain flight level two-five-zero. Orbit within three-zero miles, stay five miles north of the southern domestic ADZ until given a Mexican controller freq and squawk and cleared to proceed.’’

  “Storm One copies clearance." J.C. switched his outside radios to standby and said on interphone to McLanahan: “Now let me guess—this air machine ain’t gonna do no orbiting.”

  “You got that right. Take two-five-zero, maintain five-zero- zero knots. When we reach REEBO start a climb to three- niner-zero and switch to max speed power settings.”

  “We’ll be sucking fuel like crazy,” J.C. reminded McLanahan. “It’ll be real tight if we don’t have tanker support on the way back.”

  “We need to catch this Maraklov and get a shot at him. What counts is nailing that bastard. Right now I don’t really much care if I make it back.”

  * * *

  General Brad Elliott sat alone in the small battle-staff operations center of HAWC’s command post. A wall-size gas-plasma screen was on the far wall, depicting the southern Nevada Red Flag bombing and aerial-gunnery ranges in which the Old Dog was located. The airspace was empty except for the cluster of aircraft, mostly security helicopters and shuttles for the investigation team, around the Megafortress’ impact area.

  Hal Briggs entered the conference room. He was carrying his automatic pistol in a shoulder holster and wearing a communications transceiver with a wireless earpiece to allow him to stay in contact with his command center wherever he went.

  He studied General Elliott for a moment before disturbing him. More than ever, the sixty-year-old commander of Dreamland looked exhausted, physically and emotionally. Working out here in the Nevada wastelands was demanding for even the healthiest, but for Elliott it was especially tough. Briggs had seen the strain on him during day-to-day activities—increased isolation, moodiness. But this disaster looked as if it might push him right to the edge. He needed some close observation from here on, Briggs decided. Very close.

  Briggs dropped a piece of paper on the desk in front of Elliott. “Preliminary report from the investigation team, crewmember disposition analysis.” Elliott said nothing. Briggs paused a moment, then decided to read on: “Two members of the crew never tried to get out; Wendelstat in the I.P. seat and Major Evanston, the nav. Right side of the crew compartment was badly chewed up; Evanston may have already been dead.” Elliott winced as if struck in the face. Evanston was part of the “great experiment” of the early 1990s, the project exploring the possibility of military women assigned to combat duties. A graduate of the Air Force Academy, she was easily the best qualified for the program, and she was accepted and soon became the first woman crewmember in a B-52 bomber squadron. Because of her engineering background, she had been temporarily assigned to HAWC to participate in the Megafortress Plus project—obviously headed for promotion. What a terrible waste.

  Hal hurried on through the report to spare Elliott as much as possible: “I guess Wendelstat in the I.P.’s seat didn’t have a chance for manual bailout unless he was at high altitude.” Elliott nodded numbly. “Gunner’s seat was fired but apparently malfunctioned. Remains still strapped in place—I guess Dr. Pereira never tried manual bailout. Didn’t have a chance . . . Remains found in the debris believed to be of General Ormack; he ejected but landed in the fireball.”

  “My God . . .”

  “Khan might be okay, some bad cuts and lacerations, a broken arm but that’s it. Wendy Tork is in critical condition. She’s on her way to the burn unit at Brooks Medical Center in San Antonio. Her progress is not favorable. Ed Frost. . . died, sir. They said he never got a ’chute ...”

  Elliott rubbed is eyes. “I want Tork’s progress monitored hourly. I want to make sure she’s getting the best treatment possible.”

  “I’ll see to it, sir.”

  “What about the families?”

  “Being assembled at the base chapel at Nellis, as you ordered,” Briggs said. “Dr. Pereira listed no next of kin. All the rest are on their way.”

  Elliott shook his head, stunned. “This is the worst since the fall of Saigon.” He stared at the chart on the screen. “What the hell can I tell the families?”

  “Tell them what you just told me, sir.”

  “But they’ll never understand, and why should they?”

  “They understood the sort of job those crewmembers did, even if they weren’t told specifics. What they need is every bit of support you can give them. They’ll want to know their husbands or friends or sons or daughters didn’t die for nothing.”

  Elliott turned to Briggs. “How the hell did you get so smart?”

  “Watchin’ you, General. I—” Briggs stopped and listened intently on his communications earpiece. “Message coming in from the Joint Chiefs. AWACS and the Mexican government are reporting another unauthorized airspace intrusion by Powell and McLanahan in Storm Zero One. JCS want you to stand by for a secure video conference at five past the hour.”

  “Here’s where it hits the fan, Hal,” Elliott said. “The Pentagon probably thinks I’ve flipped out, they’ll relieve me from command—”

  “There was nothing you could have done—”

  “There was everything I could have done. Like I could have screened our test pilots better, I could have secured the flight line better, I could have forbidden Ormack to engage DreamStar. It’ll probably turn out I never should have let Cheetah go after DreamStar.”

  “They can’t hang you for something you had no control over.”

  Elliott sat quietly for a few moments, then: “As long as I’ve got control, I’m going to use it.” He picked up the direct line to the command post controller. “It’s something I should have done from the beginning.”

  “You’re going to recall McLanahan and Powell?”

  “I’ve made too many mistakes. I’ve got a responsibility here, and I’m taking cha
rge right now.”

  * * *

  J. C. Powell had taken Cheetah down from forty thousand feet to one thousand feet and just below the speed of sound as they approached the area where DreamStar’s data-signal indicated its position.

  “Showing thirty miles to intercept,” McLanahan said, reading the telemetry data being received from DreamStar’s automatic encoders. “Still showing him on the ground but with engines running.”

  “Can you get a fix on his position?”

  “Already got it,” McLanahan said. “I don’t show any Mexican airfields on my charts, but there’re probably a lot of them around here. He . . . goddamn, just lost the data-signal.” “Which means he’s got help,” J.C. said. “Someone must have deactivated the data-transmitter for him.” J.C. took a firm grip on his stick and throttles, experimentally shaking the stick to help himself concentrate—he was amazed at the extra amount of agility Cheetah demonstrated without the heavy camera on the spine. “Twenty miles. Stand by. Throttles coming to eighty percent.” Slowly Powell brought the throttles out of military power and to the lower power setting.

  “Give me a good clearing turn in each direction so I can get a look,” Patrick said. “I’ll call the target, then we’ll come back around and try for a strafing run.”

  “Guns coming on,” said J.C. He hit the voice-recognition computer button: “Arm cannon.”

  “Warning, cannon armed, six hundred rounds remaining, ” the computer replied.

  “Set attack mode strafe,” J.C. ordered.

  “Strafe mode enabled. ” A laser-drawn crosshair reticle appeared on J.C.’s windscreen, and weapon- and altitude-warning readouts appeared near the reticle. Adjusted for airspeed, winds and drift by the computer and attack radar, the reticle would position itself where the bullets from Cheetah’s cannon would impact, no matter how Cheetah moved through the air. In strafe mode J.C. could select a ground target and the computer would direct the pilot which way to fly to keep the reticle centered on the target. It would also warn of terrain or other obstacles and warn when the ammunition count was getting low.

  “Cannon’s on-line,” J.C. told McLanahan.

  “Ten miles out.” McLanahan now began to transition to visual, looking out the canopy as he could, scanning the rocks and scrub-forested hills ahead for an airfield. The inertial navigator and flight director could fly Cheetah to within sixty feet of a waypoint, but if the airstrip’s coordinates in the database were not perfect they could miss the field. And in this dense, hilly terrain it was very possible to fly as close as a few hundred yards of the airstrip and not see it.

  “Five miles.” J.C. made S-turns around the flight path, banking sharply up without turning so Patrick and he could get a clear look all around the aircraft for the airfield, including under the belly. There were lots of clearings, even several that looked like airstrips, but in the few moments they had at each, they saw no aircraft.

  “DreamStar could be hidden,” J.C. said. “They’ve had time—”

  “We’ll find it.”

  “We’ll be able to loiter only a few minutes before we have to start back—”

  “Just look for the damned—there it is, eleven o’clock low...”

  Cheetah was in a steep left bank when Patrick called the airstrip. Powell saw it immediately. It was a narrow clearing on top of a small plateau, but it was wide enough through the trees so that the edges of the tarmac could be seen. It was also difficult to miss the huge black-and-green helicopter sitting in the middle of the clearing.

  “A chopper. They brought in a chopper,” McLanahan called out. “If we can hit that Chinook, keep it from taking off—”

  “Hang on.” J.C. pulled hard, using Cheetah’s large canards to pull the nose hard-left over to the helicopter in the clearing.

  “Target lock.” The aiming reticle began to rotate. As the helicopter moved into the center of the reticle Powell said “—now!” to complete the command.

  “Target locked. ” the computer answered. A small square appeared in the center of the reticle indicating that the firing computer was now aimed and locked onto the helicopter, and a large cross, resembling the glideslope-azimuth flight director of an instrument landing system, interposed itself on the screen. “Fifteen seconds to firing range, six hundred rounds remaining . . . caution, search radar, twelve o’clock.”

  “DreamStar,” Powell said. “His search radar.” As he finished saying it the search symbol on the windscreen changed to a batwing symbol.

  “Warning, radar weapon track, twelve o’clock,” the computer announced.

  “He’s got us,” McLanahan said. But we got him first . . .”

  * * *

  “Disconnect.” The computer-synthesized voice of Maraklov boomed in Kramer’s headset. “Clear the area. We’ve been spotted. Aircraft to the east!”

  Kramer, still standing on top of the crew ladder during the refueling and rearming procedure, turned and searched the horizon behind him. He saw it immediately, bearing down on them. A single F-15 fighter, dark gray, larger than DreamStar. Even from this distance he could see the missiles hanging on the wings.

  “SkaryehyehKramer shouted to the ground crewmen. “Disconnect the fuel lines, move that fuel truck aside, launch the helicopter, move. ” He jumped off the ladder, pulled it free and threw it into the bushes beside the airstrip. The canopy closed with a bang. A crewman had disconnected the fuel line from the single-point refueling receptacle before the truck’s pump was shut off, and a geyser of jet fuel erupted near DreamStar’s front landing gear.

  Cheetah. As Maraklov issued the mental command to begin the start-sequence and prepare DreamStar for flight he knew it had to be Cheetah. He didn’t need to analyze the radar emissions or flight parameters. He could even guess who was on board: Powell and McLanahan. Only those two would be crazy enough to go on a search-and-destroy mission alone—but that matched Powell’s cowboy attitude and McLanahan’s emotional approach. They should have brought a dozen F-15 Strike Eagles or FB-111 bombers along for ground attack and carpet- bomb the area, plus another dozen fighters for backup. They were probably acting against orders—hell, they might be in as much trouble right now as he was. But he still had a chance to escape if he could get off the ground in time.

  Maraklov closed the service panel and began to retract the cannon back into its bay at the same time that he activated the cannon and checked the system. The Soviet-make ammunition fed through the chamber—then suddenly jammed. It might have been the same caliber ammunition but the feed mechanisms were barely compatible. Immediately the cannon performed an auto-clear, which reversed the belt feed, ejected the cartridges where the jam had occurred and re-fed the belt, and this time the one-inch-diameter cartridges fed properly.

  One last check as the engines quickly revved to full power. Two hundred rounds of ammunition had been loaded. They also had managed to onload full fuel in the body tanks and three-quarter fuel in the wings, about forty thousand pounds of it. It was enough for the seven-hundred-mile flight to Nicaragua at normal cruise speeds but not enough if he had to mix it up with Cheetah. This was not the time or place to make a stand—the order of the day was Run Like Hell Fight Only If Cornered . . .

  The huge blades of the supply helicopter began to turn just as several loud sharp cracks reverberated off the canopy. Dust and concrete flew near the aft-empennage of the chopper, and smoke began to billow out of the aft rotor. But the main rotor continued to spool up. The fuel truck originally high-tailing it for the cargo ramp was waved aside and ordered into the tree line out of the way.

  Maraklov set DreamStar’s wings to their maximum high-lift, then had the computers check the takeoff performance. Barely enough. The computer said two thousand three hundred feet to clear the seventy-foot trees; there were only about fifteen hundred available. Maraklov activated the UHF radio on the discrete KGB frequency: “Kramer, this is DreamStar. Order your men to clear those buildings off the end of the airstrip. I need more runway for takeoff.”r />
  There was no reply, but soon several soldiers ran out of the chopper’s cargo bay toward the end of the airstrip and a few moments later the fuel truck followed. They used the fuel truck to push the burned-out buildings into the tree line. Several of the Soviet soldiers fell, and others began firing into the trees—apparently there were still Mexican villagers in the forest surrounding the airstrip. The KGB soldiers would take care of them . . .

  * * *

  “Five hundred fifty rounds remaining, ” the computer announced. Cheetah swooped over the trees, so close Patrick thought they had flown between a few of them. “Low altitude warning ...”

  Thanks for nothing, J.C. thought. I only had the shot for a few seconds.

  “Looks like that Chinook has some heavy guns on the side,” McLanahan said. “Better hit ’em from a different angle.”

  J.C. banked sharply left, started a hard left turn, steering to put himself at a ninety-degree angle to his first strafing run to hit the helicopter from the tail. “Did you see DreamStar?”

  “Behind the helicopter about a hundred yards,” McLanahan said. “He’s right at the north end of the airstrip, almost under the trees.”

  “Had a fifty-fifty chance and blew it,” J.C. said angrily. “I won’t be able to hit him from this direction but if I can get another good shot at that helicopter while it’s on the ground it at least should block the runway enough to keep DreamStar from lifting off.”

  Powell shallowed out his bank angle to allow himself more time to extend his distance from the airstrip. But by the time he had rolled out on the flight director they saw a dark, massive apparition slowly rise out of the trees, trailing thick clouds of smoke.

  “It’s the damn helicopter—”