No response from McLanahan. “I’m not trying to chicken out. I’ll fly wherever you want, and I’ll help you defend this aircraft the best I can. But we’ve got to do this the smart way or we’ll be dead without ever getting oflF a shot at Ken James . . .”
“You’re right. I took oflF from Puerto Lempira with no idea where I was going after checking Puerto Cabezas. And we did receive intelligence that the runway at Sebaco had been repaired—they could have moved in a whole squadron of MiGs by now. We could be jumped at any moment, and we have no air cover, no surveillance and only six missiles to defend ourselves. Stupid. Damned stupid . . .”
“The question is—what are we going to do now? We can’t just drone around in circles.”
“We’ve got to get an idea which way we went.” But how . . . He ordered the voice-command computer to set a frequency in the number two VHF radio.
“Sandino Tower, this is Storm Zero Two on one-one-eight point one. Over.”
“Storm Zero Two, this is Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport tower,” a controller with a thick Spanish accent replied. “State your position, altitude, type of aircraft, departure airport and destination. Be advised, we have no flight plan for you. You may be in violation of the air traffic laws of Nicaragua. Respond immediately.”
“Tower, Storm Zero Two is an American military fighter. I am in pursuit of an American aircraft piloted by a Russian criminal. I intend to overfly Sebaco and Managua in search of this aircraft. I request assistance. Over.”
“Storm Zero Two, overflight of Nicaragua by American military aircraft is prohibited. You are in violation of national and international law. You are directed to land at Sandino International immediately or you will be fired on without warning. Over.”
“Sandino Tower, I say again; I am in pursuit of a criminal piloting an American aircraft. He is a danger to you as well as to the United States. I request assistance in pursuing this aircraft. I am not hostile to Nicaragua. Please assist. Over.”
“It’s not going to work,” Preston said. “They’re just triangulating our position. We’ve got to get out of here, head back across the Honduran border—”
“Storm Zero Two, this is Sandino Tower. Please stay on this frequency for important message. Acknowledge.”
He did not reply. A message flashed on his windscreen, warning him that a search radar was in the vicinity. From the rear seat Preston said “We’re getting close to Managua’s search radar.”
“Storm Zero Two, contact the man on frequency one-three- one point one-five VHF. Important. Sandino Tower out.”
He began a left turn away from Managua and changed channels. Preston asked, “Are you going to talk on that frequency? It could be a military ground-controlled interceptor’s direction-finder. They could pin-point our location as soon as you key the mike without using radar.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.” He hit the mike button. “This is Storm Zero Two on one-three-one point one-five. Over.”
“Storm Two, this is General-Lieutenant Viktor Tcharin, Deputy Commander of Operations for Soviet Central America Operations Base Sebaco. Whom am I addressing?”
“It’s a damned Soviet general,” Preston said. “What the hell does he want?”
Patrick keyed the mike. “General Tcharin, this is Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan, United States Air Force. State your request. Over.”
“McLanahan . . . McLanahan ...” Then, sounding as if he was reading from a script, went on: “ ‘Senior project officer, Midnight Sky. Code name for XF-34 DreamStar advanced tactical fighter aircraft flight technology validation project. Age forty-one, white male.’ Ochin kharasho. Very good. Colonel McLanahan, I believe we want very nearly the same thing. You want the XF-34. We want Colonel Andrei Maraklov. Perhaps we can make an arrangement—”
“I want Maraklov and the XF-34, General. Do you know where Maraklov is headed?”
“We have evidence to that effect, yes,” Tcharin told him. “We believe we have tracked his course on radar. But we do not have the air assets to pursue him. You reported to the Nicaraguan tower controller that you are in command of a fighter plane. Is it your intention to attack Colonel Maraklov?”
“Yes.”
“We have information that may be of use to you. In exchange for this information we want you to deliver Colonel Maraklov to us, should he survive. Is that agreeable to you, Colonel McLanahan?”
“I’m not making any deals,” McLanahan told him. “I don’t trust you any more than I trust Maraklov. But if you tell me where he went, and if he survives, I promise not to kill him myself. What happens to him after that is up to our governments. How about that?”
A pause, then: “I agree. Colonel Maraklov had received instructions” ... he did not say from whom ... “to fly the aircraft south, to an isolated landing strip somewhere in Costa Rica. He was detected flying forty nautical miles west of Bluefields in southern Nicaragua about ten minutes ago. We have no other information. He was at twenty thousand feet, flying at five hundred nautical miles per hour.”
“Copy that down for me, Marcia,” McLanahan said. On the radio: “How do I know you’re telling the truth? He could be flying north to Cuba, or east. He could even be on the ground in Managua or Sebaco.”
“You contacted us for assistance and I have given it to you. If you do not trust us, your request makes no sense.”
“Why can’t you get Maraklov by yourself? Isn’t he delivering the XF-34 to you?”
“It’s not clear what orders Colonel Maraklov has chosen to follow. Our last orders, from the Kollegiya, were to turn over the XF-34 to you at Puerto Cabezas. Why he took the aircraft, I do not know. We want to question him about that matter, as well as the killing of two Soviet officers and two soldiers. My orders are to capture Colonel Maraklov for questioning, but I have no resources to do it. That is where you can help . .
If this Soviet general was lying, every mile he flew south could be two miles that Maraklov was increasing the distance on his way to Cuba or someplace to the east. Yet he had no other possible options.
“Marcia?”
“I don’t see much of a choice. I don’t trust him either, and I sure as hell don’t like making deals with him, but it’s the only lead we have. Our AWACS from Grand Cayman is covering the north Caribbean—so south seems like a good direction for us to be heading. Might as well try it.”
McLanahan keyed the radio again as he began a right turn toward the south. “General Tcharin, if I get Maraklov alive I promise you’ll have an opportunity to question him about the murders. I was a witness to three of them in Puerto Cabezas.”
“Unfortunately an American is an unacceptable witness in our military court of law,” Tcharin said, “but I believe we have a deal . . . Colonel McLanahan, the XF-34 is armed with twenty-millimeter shells, two radar-guided missiles and two infrared-guided missiles—not the most modern Soviet weapons but proved effective against your F-i6s over the Caribbean. One more item: Maraklov is wounded. We have tested and found his blood at a site here in Sebaco as well as the blood of one of his victims. You have clearance to transit Nicaraguan airspace west and south of Bluefields. Costa Rican approach control frequency for crossing border restricted airspace MRR Three is one-one-nine point six, El Coco Control.”
And the channel went dead. McLanahan told the computer to set the frequency, and he checked the computer flight- information database and double-checked the flight information files for Costa Rica—Tcharin’s information seemed right on.
“Well, you wanted a plan, Marcia,” he said as they approached the border. “I never expected to get it from the Russians, but we’ll take it.”
* * *
Pain. Intense, burning.
For at least the past year the pain that always came to Andrei Maraklov when the ANTARES interface was completed was fairly easy to suppress. The concentration and the exhilaration of flying a machine like DreamStar usually did the trick, but this time it wasn’t working. Obviously the shoul
der wound was the culprit. Every time he thought about his throbbing left shoulder his body would receive a jolt of pain from the ANTARES system.
So far it didn’t seem to affect his flying performance or his ability to monitor his ship’s functions. In spite of the hard flying that DreamStar had done during the past week she was running perfectly. Her automatic monitors detected a higher than normal level of metal particles in the oil, suggesting an overdue engine overhaul or contaminated oil; other systems detected clogged fuel-metering systems from dirty fuel, moisture in computer components and a few loose panels. He made a mental command to have a list of these items recorded and played back to him just before the next shut-down, to remind him to have them checked. It was a long list, but Maraklov told himself he would have time to check over his bird. In any case, these minor discrepancies did not seem to be affecting DreamStar’s performance.
He was flying in the deep mountain valleys of the Cordillera de Guanacaste mountains of northwestern Costa Rica, staying as low as possible to avoid detection from radar sites at Santa Maria International Airport to the east and Lomas Guardia International to the west. Although Costa Rica had an air force deployed at Santa Maria Airport and a few other small training bases, it was made up of a handful of aging American-built F-5 day VFR fighters to scare away drug smugglers, plus several single-engine piston prop planes for surveillance. The federal military forces were very small—the nation’s popular phrase nowadays was “we have more teachers than soldiers,” and fortunately for him that was true.
It was also true in Costa Rica that most provincial and municipal security (it could not be called “law and order”) came from privately funded and equipped armies, which was legal in this country of only three million people. If you were rich enough you could own a good-sized town in Costa Rica, which could eventually turn into one’s own little nation—including one’s own army, and it was legal for certain citizens to make their own stamps, set prices, deal with other countries, appoint their own judges and mayors.
One such privately owned city-state was Venado, a thirty- thousand-acre plantation in the heart of the Guanacaste Mountains. Two thousand people lived and worked on this plantation, nearly half of whom were soldiers. The entire plantation, the well-equipped army and the airport within it were all funded and maintained by the KGB, one of dozens of secret KGB bases scattered over the world, bases so secret, so well disguised, that most party members outside of a few ranking officers in the KGB knew nothing about them. This was Maraklov’s destination.
Finding the airport was no problem, but making an approach to it in daytime without being seen was going to be difficult. Maraklov had already had to weave around scores of private airstrips dotting the San Juan Valley and the northern Costa Rican jungles to stay out of sight; he could not afford just to shoot directly into Venado, with some farmer or peasant watching his approach and blabbing to his boss or the police. Maraklov’s plan was to hug the northeast rim of the Guanacaste Mountains, stay as deep in the valleys as possible, sweep around the valleys to the southwest and then come back up over Venado from the west. This way, he should be shrouded by mountains almost all the way to landing.
There was another summer storm brewing out over the Pacific to the west as Maraklov started his low-altitude swing to the southeast along the mountain range. His holographic display showed slivers of surveillance radar above him, but most of the energy was blocked out by the tall mountains of central Costa Rica. The area was sparsely settled, but occasional glances out the cockpit showed a few very beautiful haciendas below, where men had retaken the jungle and turned it into lush fields of coffee or fruit. Maraklov throttled back on the power as much as possible, balancing his energy to avoid making as much noise as possible but keeping up his speed to avoid letting anyone on the ground get a good look at him.
The inertial navigation computer warned Maraklov that its precision was not great enough to find Venado with less than the usual quarter-mile accuracy, and since the satellite-navigation unit was unavailable for use (it required a daily code) it recommended that the attack radar be activated in groundmapping mode to update the computer’s position. Any radar emissions were dangerous, but Maraklov had no choice— DreamStar was not the type of aircraft specifically designed for pilotage or for navigating by use of visual references.
He allowed the computer to activate the radar, which transmitted in thirty-mile range for five seconds, then went back to standby. DreamStar steered west-southwest for a few miles, until the very rim of a beautiful mountain lake could be seen, then began a right turn on top of a ridge-line toward Venado. After an instantaneous mental inquiry he knew that they were exactly four point one nautical miles from the center of the runway. One pass over the field was all it would take to make a radar survey of the field for landing data, and the computer would do the rest. The turbofan engine throttled back to seventy-five percent, the canards moved from cruise position to high-lift position, and the mission-adaptive wings began to reshape for approach speed—
“DreamStar, this is Cheetah on GUARD channel. We’ve found you.”
The sudden radio message screamed in Maraklov’s brain like a siren. Instinctively he increased power to ninety percent and reshaped the wings and moved the canards back to high-speed, high-maneuverability position, ready to evade a missile or gun attack. The attack radar also activated in air-to- air search mode for three seconds before Maraklov commanded it to stand by—at this altitude he would see very little on radar, while his own radar energy could be seen for miles by aircraft at higher altitude. He also punched ofiF the Lluyka tanks in preparation for the fight—he hoped he could somehow fool Kalinin into getting him another pair of external fuel tanks. As for Cheetah, by denying DreamStar a long- range cruise capability once again, it had already won a considerable victory.
Maraklov found it hard to believe. Cheetah? Cheetah was here? How was that possible? Who was flying it?
* * *
“Got him,” Marcia said. “Brief airborne search radar at one o’clock position. Hot damn. This time the Russians were telling the truth.”
McLanahan hit the voice-command switch: “Arm, missiles, arm, cannon.”
“Warning, all weapons armed, select safe to safe all weapons. ”
“Weapon, select, radar, missile.” The computer repeated the command, and on the weapon-status display one of the four radar-guided AIM-120C Scorpion missiles on the fuselage stations was highlighted.
“Radar, mode, air, range, maximum. Radar on.” The attack radar came on, showing no air targets within one hundred miles.
“Check your radar,” Marcia said. “You’ve been transmitting for twenty seconds at full power.”
“I know,” McLanahan said. “I want him to know we’re here.”
“Sir,” Preston said, “he doesn’t need any of our help to hose us.”
“The smart thing for him to do would have been to land,” McLanahan said. “If I was close to my destination I’d hightail it over there and hide and not risk an air-to-air engagement. But if I look inviting enough for him, maybe he’ll come up and fight.”
“Don’t take unnecessary chances,” Marcia said. “You might flush him out, sure, but then you have to deal with him on your tail. Don’t be so anxious to mix it up with him. The fight will happen.”
He smiled. Her words in his helmet sounded a lot like J. C. Powell. Powell had been a skilled flight instructor, with seemingly infinite patience in spite of some of the stupid mistakes McLanahan would make—Marcia Preston seemed a lot like him.
“Radar, standby,” he commanded. “Thanks, Marcia.”
“Electronic jammers are on,” she reported. “Keep your power up. Remember, you’re the power fighter, he’s the angles fighter. He might be able to move like greased lightning but you have the speed and the power... You’ve been too long on this constant heading, too,” she said. “Give me a few clearing turns. Let’s take a look—bandit, three o'clock, low. Break right7”
&
nbsp; He slammed the stick hard right. Cheetah executed a hard right full roll, then another half-roll until he could regain control. When his eyes were adjusted after the spin, he saw DreamStar headed right at him, less than a hundred yards away, with its nose high in the air but tracking Cheetah’s every move as if the two were mechanically linked. And in a way they were, now in more ways than one ... He saw DreamStar’s nose light up as he fired his cannon.
McLanahan pushed the stick full forward, sending Cheetah in a screaming dive. He released the back pressure almost immediately, but Cheetah wasn’t pulling out.
“Pull up," he heard Preston yell. He hauled back on the stick. It did not move—it was as if Cheetah’s controls were locked, which made McLanahan push or pull harder each time. He realized that was the reason for the steep dive—the rigid side-stick control had no play, which automatically made him push even harder to try to move it. He zoomed Cheetah up into a climb, gaining two thousand feet in altitude but losing two hundred knots of precious air speed. Finally he leveled off and took a deep breath, the first one he remembered taking since the attack began.
“He’s right above us, still at ten thousand feet,” Preston said. “Be careful dogfighting with this guy. He knew exactly which way we were going. Keep your speed up. That’s your advantage.”
He took a look at DreamStar’s position once more. “I’m going for a shot. Hang on.” He pulled back on the stick and aimed the nose at DreamStar, then waited for the radar-lock- on tone. When he heard it he moved his right thumb over to the missile-launch button and pressed.
“Warning, min range inhibit, ” the computer announced. The AIM-120C Scorpion was too close to its target to arm its warhead, so the computer automatically overrode the launch command.
McLanahan slipped his right index finger down onto the cannon trigger, but just as he squeezed, DreamStar turned as if doing a pirouette in mid-air and dived so fast and so sharply that it virtually disappeared from sight.
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