by Dale Brown
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 191
Over southwest Arizona
Twenty minutes later
There were eight other pilots who wanted to put one up Ken
James' tailpipe, but he wasn't going to give them the opportu-
nity.
Ken James-that name now discarded by DreamStar's pilot,
Andrei Maraklov-could see waves of radars all around him, but
they were all search radars. He was deep within the Colorado
River valley just south of Parker Dam, following the rugged
mountain ridges as closely as he could to avoid detection. Two
longer-range F-16L cranked-arrow fighters were behind him,
their radars probing deep within the valley, but they never got a
solid lock-on and they were staying up high to try to scan as
much ground as possible. With their present tactics they were
never going to get a shot at him.
But they were no longer the main threats-they were the push-
ers, the drivers, there only to keep DreamStar headed south to-
ward the real danger. Maraklov had caught bits and pieces of
scrambled radio conversations between the F-16s and another
aircraft. It was not hard to guess which: a Boeing 707 or 767
AWACS radar plane, stationed, Maraklov reasoned, between
Gila Bend and Yuma over Sentinel Plain. From there the older
707 AWACS could scan over one hundred twenty thousand cu-
bic miles of airspace, from San Diego to El Paso, and most of
the way down the Gulf of California into Mexico. The radar
aboard the improved 767 was even better. No doubt the AWACS
would be accompanied by at least two F-15 fighters out of Davis-
Monthan AFB in Tucson for protective escort, plus at least two
more F-15s to hunt down DreamStar.
The fuel situation was critical. Less than an hour's worth of
fuej, less than an hour from the hastily arranged landing site in
Mexico. Staying at low altitude was badly sucking up fuel, but
he had no choice-the AWACS could have picked him up as far
north as Las Vegas if he was any higher.
Of course the maneuvering he did during the B-52 attack
pushed him under the fuel curve. Especially that last maneuver,
going from Mach one to one hundred knots one hundred feet off
the ground, thereby putting DreamStar in a virtual hover. That
took care of any reserve he'd had hopes of building up . . .
Well, the B-52 Megafortress was dead. They certainly nick-
192 DALE BROWN
named it right. It almost escaped, almost dodged away in time,
almost managed to decoy the AIM- 120 away. The Scorpion mis-
sile had to switch to home-on-jam guidance to finish the attack.
Ironically the massive jamming power of the B-52 was -probably
what did it in-it must have been easy for the Scorpion missile
to follow jamming power like that.
Who was on that plane? Ormack-good oflicer, better pilot,
Elliott's natural successor for the command of Drearnland.
Khan-a desk jockey. Had no business in the cockpit. Mara klov
didn't know Frost. He had dated Evanston once but that was no
more than an experiment that neither wanted to continue. Be-
sides, navs had no information of any value to anybody.
Angelina Pereira was almost old enough to be his mother, but
she liked to use men and she liked men to use her. No age limits.
She was never a target for any information or recruitment, al-
though the KGB's standard profiles fitted her. She probably
would have laughed at him, just before shootin him in the balls.
She was an unexpected job bonus, nothing else.
He would miss Wendy Tork most of all. Or rather miss never
having had a chance to try to fulfill his fantasies about her . . .
take her away from McLanahan . . . Too bad he hadn't tried to
latch onto her sooner. If nothing else she had some highly useful
information on electronic counter7neasures research . . .
He made a slight altitude and course correction to avoid ov-
erflying a group of white-water rafters less than a hundred feet
below. As he banked away to avoid them he could see several
put hands over ears against the noise, but a few bikini-clad ladies
waved. He had made that trip down the Colorado River several
times, spending a weekend shooting the rapids, getting dumped
into the swirling waters, laughing at a roaring campfire with a
beer in one hand and a pretty young lieutenant from Nellis in
the other.
Did they have rapids in Russia? Were the women pretty? Mar-
aklov had forgotten more than remembered.
Things had, people said, changed over the years. Glasnost
. . .the place was more open. But he doubted it would be to
him.
Andrei Maraklov might truly be the deepest deep-cover agent
ever produced by the KGB, but that didn't mean he could go
back to the USSR and enjoy the gratitude of his country. Would
he ever be promoted to a leadership position in the KGB or the
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 193
Mikoyan-Gureyvich Aircraft Design Bureau, the agency that de-
signed and built the greatest fighter aircraft? No. He had been
in the U. for nine years. Before that he had spent three years
in a school that spoke more English and acted more American
than parts of San Francisco and Chicago or L. They'd have
to reteach him Russian, for God's sake. If they ever trusted him
after his return he'd probably be given some know-nothing job
or a pension and watched for the rest of his life. He might be
allowed to emigrate, but he'd be safer from the CIA or the De-
fense Intelligence Agency in Russia. Which didn't say much. If
they didn't trust him they'd pick his mind clean of every scrap
of information he had, then discard him. Either way, would his
life be better in his homeland? What he really felt attached to,
more than anything or anyone, was this plane that he had be-
come part of, that was part of him . . .
Up ahead, it seemed like the entire sky had turned green.
Search radar-a big one. There was definitely an AWACS radar
plane up there. He was in the radar shadow right now, but in
only a few miles the Colorado River -valley would flatten out
into the Sonora Desert basin, and then he'd be trapped. The last
hundred fifty miles to the border was going to turn into a gaunt-
let-an unknown number of F-15 fighters in front of him, wait-
ing for him to emerge from the valley. He was also going toward
Yuma Marine Corps Air Station just ahead on the border, a base
for two squadrons of F/A- 18 fighter bombers, and F- 16 fighters
from Luke AFB in Phoenix could join in. So he could be facing
six squadrons of fighters from four military bases on this last
hundred-mile leg.
Then, he saw it: the AWACS radar plane. DreamStar's threat
receiver pinpointed the aircraft about a hundred fifty miles away,
orbiting over the center of the Papago Indian Reservation west
of Tucson at twenty-five thousand feet. And if DreamStar could
see the AWACS plane, he could see DreamStar. At a quick
mental inquiry, Maraklov had the threat-warning computer an-
alyze the rad
ar transmissions from the plane and learned it was
the older E-3B Sentry AWACS, almost twenty-five years old but
still a formidable radar platform; it was probably a drug-
interdiction aircraft based out of Davis-Monthan AFB.
Suddenly, like some eerie Martian fog, green sky descended
and engulfed him, and then the sky turned yellow. The AWACS
had found him, started to track him. Maraklov tried to dodge
194 DALE BROWN
closer to the river-valley edges to hide in any available radar
shadow. No use. Once he was spotted and identified-an aircraft
at two hundred feet above ground traveling at six hundred miles
an hour could hardly be mistaken for a civilian plane-the
AWACS would change position farther west to maintain a solid
track on him in the valley . . .
, ,Unidentified aircraft ten miles north of Blythe, altitude
twelve hundred feet MSL, airspeed five hundred forty knots.
This is the United States Air Force air intercept controller on
GUARD." The radio messa e was being broadcast "in the blind"
9
on GUARD, the international emergency frequency, to prove to
him that he had indeed been spotted. "You are ordered to climb
to ten thousand feet MSL, reduce speed and lower your landing
gear immediately." Military aircraft being intercepted were or-
dered to lower their landing gear because as a safety device the
weapon systems on most fighters were automatically deactivated
when the landing gear was down. "Contact me on two-three-
three point zero immediately, repeat, contact me on frequency
two-three-three point zero. "
DreamStar's weapon system did not deactivate unless Mar-
aklov deactivated it, gear up or down, but it was a moot point-
DreamStar had only one AIM-120 missile left and very little
fuel, not enough for any sort of engagement. The F-15 fighters
would not have much chance of catching him on their own, but
with the AWACS up and locked-on they could be vectored in
with high precision and even process a missile launch, all with-
out one watt of energy being transmitted from their own radars.
So DreamStar would have to use its attack radar to find the
F-15s, and that would give away DreamStar's position to them.
Maraklov set one of his radios to the discrete frequency but
did not reply-that would be suicidal. But he did hear:
"DreamStar, this is Colonel Han-ell, Eagle Squadron com-
mander. We're following vectors toward you. We'll be all over
you in a few seconds. Climb out of there, slow down and drop
your gear or we'll consider you a hostile and blow your shit
away. Answer up. Over."
A one-second burst of energy on the attack radar told Mar-
aklov the story-six fighters, three pairs, all at different altitudes,
arranged along the Colorado River and spaced about twenty miles
apart. The closest was about thirty miles ahead, only two hun-
dred feet above ground. The AWACS had moved northward a
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 195
few miles to get a better look down the valley and to get away
from the radar shadows from the Kofa Mountains.
"We've got lock-on, James," Harrell said. "I got you at my
twelve o'clock, twenty-eight miles. My wingmen know where
you are. The Marines have set up a little surprise for you. Hiding
down here in the mud -ain't going to help. Give it up before you
get yourself smoked."
That bit about Yuma Marine Corps Air Station was not ex-
actly true, but it came close. The Marines could easily set up a
surface-to-air missile blockade of the Color-ado River mouth from
Yuma Marine Corps Air Station. Harrell wouldn't reveal that,
though. But the odds were starting to pile up here, and they were
all against him.
There was no way to even the odds, but Maraklov decided he
wasn't going to just surrender. Giving up DreamStar was un-
thinkable. It would make everything he'd done pointless. But if
the F-15s didn't get him, his lack of fuel reserves would. Well,
he wasn't going to make it easy for the F- 15s to bring him down.
It was time to put his DreamStar through its paces.
Maraklov pushed DreamStar to full power, trimmed for max
speed and put her right down on the deck-fifty feet above the
riverbeds
"That was stupid, James," Harrell called over the radio.
"Very damn stupid. We've got you all the way. You can't get
away . . . "
Maybe, maybe not. But he wasn't about to drive right into their
laps so they could take easy shots at him. If they wanted him
they'd have to work for a shot. He had been cruising at about
two to three hundred feet above ground, popping up occasionally
to pass over bridges and power lines strung across the Colorado
River. Now, two hundred feet would seem like two thousand
compared to his present altitude. Using. his computer-enhanced
responses and DreamStar's powerful radar in terrain-avoidance
mode, Maraklov kept DreamStar less than fifty feet above
ground. He did not try to pop up over tall transmission lines-
he went under them. He could clearly see rafters and campers
lined up on the banks, plugging their ears against the sonic boom
that rolled over them as he roared past at Mach one-if he could
have seen behind him, he would have seen a huge plume of
white exploding off the Color-ado River as DreamStar's sonic
196 DALE BROWN
slammed i
wake crashed against the water. Birds pinged and nto
the canopy and fuselage, but Maraklov kept going, too close
now to be brought down by a damned duck.
Near the town of Picacho the steep mountain ranges on either
side of the Colorado disappeared. He was only forty miles to the
border. He broke away from the river and headed directly south
for Yuma.
Suddenly ANTARES screamed "missile tracking " in his
brain. The threat receivers had detected that an AIM-120 scor-
pion missile had activated its radar and was tracking him-more
likely, the F-15 had fired two missiles, since he probably was
carrying two more and had at least three other wingmen with
missiles. They had a lot of firepower on their side; they could
afford to be generous.
Maraklov commanded a hard seven-G climb, almost straight
up. He gained altitude to about a thousand feet, then flipped
over and pulled hard in a nine-G descent straight down. Fifty
feet above ground he yanked his fighter upright and pulled hard
to the left behind a hill. The missiles followed his turns but
overshot on the climbout, and when they turned to follow he had
disappeared. The missile's computer brain allowed the radar
seeker to attempt to reacquire a target for three seconds, then
tried to lock-on to any jamming signals in the area. None was
present. The missile then began following steering signals from
the E-3 AWACS radar plane and turned back toward DrearnStar,
but by then it was too late. The Scorpion missiles, designed for
medium-range engagements at higher altitudes, ran out of fuel
and s
elf-destructed seconds later.
Maraklov rolled hard right and found himself back in the Col-
orado River valley near Laguna Airfield. He commanded
DreamStar back down on the deck just in time to fly under a
transmission line. At that moment, the scanner on the aft fuse-
lage detected a growing heat source and issued a MISSILE ATTACK
warning. An F-15 had dived down from its patrol altitude right
on top of DreamStar and had quickly closed in to IR missile
range.
In the literal blink of an eye Maraklov commanded DrearnStar
from max speed mode to max alpha-the slowest speed
DreamStar could sustain. Within seconds DrearnStar's wings
went from nearly flat to steeply curled; the two-dimensional lou-
vers shuttled forward to redirect thrust down instead of aft; and
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 197
DreamStar's canards snapped upward, holding the nose high
while the plane decelerated. In ten seconds DreamStar went from
Mach one to two hundred knots-only DrearnStar's composite
structure, lighter than steel but a hundred times stronger, could
withstand the strain.
The two F-15 fighters had closed to three miles behind
DreamStar when suddenly their quarry seemed to freeze in mid-
air. At only a hundred feet off the ground there was no room to
maneuver, especially with two fighters together in close forma-
tion. The lead F-15 broke hard right to avoid DreamStar, then
managed to pull up hard enough to escape crashing into the low
hills north of Yuma. His wingman was not so lucky-not able
to keep up with the five-G pull, the second F- 15 fighter pancaked
into the desert floor and exploded before the pilot could eject.
Twenty miles to go. Gradually, Maraklov applied power and
began to transition back to max-speed, being careful not to use
gas-guzzling afterburner. He was over Yuma now, skimming
just above tall buildings and radio antennae. The F-15s were
still behind him but they weren't attacking until DrearnStar
passed clear of the city. He screamed over Yuma Marine Corps
Air Station with his airspeed nearly back at Mach one and saw
F/A-18 fighters at the end of the runway, probably being held