Day of the Cheetah

by Dale Brown

  Powell gave Patrick a thumbs-up. "Storm flight station check,

  lead's in the green with forty minutes to joker"-"joker" being

  the code for the minimum fuel reserves necessary on a normal

  training flight, about fifteen thousand pounds.

  "Tvo has twenty minutes, all systems nominal."

  said: "He's sucking gas. He's got a bigger jet, more

  capacity, only one engine, but half the fuel."

  "And two kills," Patrick shot back. "We're not concerned

  about saving fuel here, I know you'd give every drop of

  JP-4 we've got left to get one good shot at him."

  "Then turn me loose, let's get to it."

  "I want you to be the fox this time, ," Patrick said. "I

  want him on the pursuit."

  "Fine, but open 'em. up this time. Let's see what the boy

  wonder over there can really do."

  had a point. They had really not pushed DreamStar to

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 79

  the edge of the envelope. And if there was anybody who could

  really force DreamStar to perform, it was JC. Powell.

  "All right, JC., you got it. But don't break the bubble .

  Patrick lined it out. "This time lead will be the fox. We're com-

  ing up on the southeast comer of the area. Lead will come left

  heading three-zero-zero toward the center. TWo, give us fifteen

  full seconds-then start your pursuit. Stay heads-up. Lead's

  coming left .

  JC. Powell turned hard left. Patrick had time to grab hold

  of his handlebars before being squashed into his seat by the turn.

  stayed on the northwesterly heading for five seconds, then

  rolled inverted and pulled the nose earthward, pushing the throt-

  tles to full power, aiming the nose directly for Lookout Peak

  twenty thousand feet below.

  Patrick watched as the altimeter-readout clicked down faster

  than he'd ever seen it before. "I swear, Powell, you have got to

  have some kind of death wish"-Patrick's attention was drawn

  to a blinking red warning light near the radar altimeter, which

  read the distance between the ground and the belly of the jet.

  II Watch it!"

  Powell checked his threat receivers-no signals from any-

  where. He began to level off, pointing Cheetah toward a wide

  cleft in the jagged peaks below. "Colonel, if I stay at high al-

  titude with DreamStar he'll hose me again. Let's see how he

  does in the rocks." He hit the voice-recognition computer

  switch-"attack radar standby," and threw his jet into a

  screeching right turn, arcing around the rugged peaks. "Fifteen

  seconds-he should be in his turn toward the northwest by now. "

  Powell selected a flat valley in the desert, staying as close to the

  rocks as possible. Patrick stared out the top of the canopy ex-

  pecting the tops of Cheetah's twin tails to scrape along the face

  of those rocks any second.

  rolled out of his steep turn, passing only a few hundred

  yards from a lone craggy butte. "You're going to wait down

  here for him to come after you?"

  "Not exactly, sir. " He steered Cheetah into the narrow valley

  he had selected, set the autopilot, then began searching the skies

  far overhead. "Wondering why I selected thirty-nine thousand

  feet back there?"

  "It's a higher altitude . . . better fuel economy-"

  "Contrails.

  80 DALE BROWN

  Patrick followed JC.'s pointing finger out the top oi the can-

  opy. Far above, they saw a thin white line against the dark blue

  sky, heading northwest. "You think I never listen to the morning

  weather briefings?"

  "You're always asleep."

  "I always manage to catch the contrail forecasts. The center

  of the vapor level was thirty-nine thousand feet. That's where

  we left him and that's where he is."

  Patrick took a firm grip on the handlebars. had aimed

  Cheetah for the center of the southern ridge of the Shoshone

  Mountains, in the center of Dreamland's southern restricted area,

  and now was moving the throttles up to full afterburner. Ten

  seconds later they were at Mach one and building.....

  Attack radar on . . . spherical scan . . . radar off.....

  James checked in seconds over a half-million cubic miles of

  airspace for Cheetah. His superconductor technology allowed

  the power of a standard fighter's nose radar to be transmitted

  into an antenna the size and thickness of a playing card so that

  the antennae could be spread out all around DreamStar's skin

  instead of located only in the nose cone. A thousand of such

  micro-miniature radar arrays made a complete spherical sweep

  of the sky within two hundred miles of the aircraft. But except

  for commercial and civilian aircraft outside Dreamland's re-

  stricted airspace, the radar scan came up negative. Cheetah had

  disappeared!

  ANTARES immediately suggested a data link with Dream-

  land's powerful ground-based surveillance radar, but James

  squelched that idea. Although DreamStar could integrate data

  from a variety of outside sources, he'd been ordered not to use

  them-and McLanahan could detect the link with his equipment

  on Cheetah. Never mind, he wouldn't nee-d outside help to find

  Cheetah.

  A pause as ANTARES weighed alternatives to an outside

  data-link, then suggested a ground-map scan.

  Nothing. The Shoshone Mountain range was bright and prom-

  inent directly below, surrounded by dry lakebeds and non-

  reflecting sand. DreamStar's high-resolution radar picked out

  power lines, roads and tiny buildings scattered all across the

  desert floor. Nothing moving faster. than sixty miles an hour

  anywhere within range.

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 81

  James shut down the scan. Cheetah was obviously hiding in

  the Shoshone Mountains somewhere, probably ridge hopping

  among the rocks, staying in the radar clutter as much as possi-

  ble. But this was supposed to be an air-to-air attack. Powell was

  screwing up big-time.

  James mentally ordered another spherical radar sweep of the

  skies. McLanahan would probably direct Powell to climb out of

  the low-level regime, and then he'd-

  ANTARES broke in with its warning: "Radar contact, di-

  rectly below and climbing. "

  ANTARES suggested a roll and a ten-G push-over to' an emer-

  gency descent. But just as James ordered the maneuver he heard

  on the interplane channel, "Fox four, Zero-One, three-niner

  thousand. Underneath you, Ken. " Powell had already started

  shooting . . .

  What was happening? Why didn't he see Cheetah coming?

  The questions brought spikes of pain that shot through his head

  and reverberated through his body. For the first time that James

  could remember, DreamStar had no options. The pain intensi-

  fied as he continued polling the database, hunting for answers-

  Abruptly the confusion that had lasted only a few seconds

  ended as DreamStar's sensors continued to track Cheetah. Sud-

  denly the pain in James' head disappeared and he found himself

  presented with a series of maneuvers.

  DreamStar inverted and began a tight
descending vertical roll.

  If Cheetah was in a high-speed climb underneath him,

  would be out of airspeed at the top of the climb and would have

  to go inverted and begin a descent to regain lost airspeed. Now

  DrearnStar had the power advantage. All it had to do was com-

  plete the roll and Cheetah should be dead ahead and directly in

  his gun sights.

  But as James hit the bottom of the roll the G-forces reached

  their peak. Air tubules in the legs of James' flight suit inflated,

  which helped force blood back into the upper part of his bQdy,

  but it wasn't fast enough. James' vision went to a gray-out as

  blood was forced out of his brain, then darkened completely as

  he lost consciousness.

  ANTARES detected the elevated blood pressure and the in-

  terruption of theta-alpha. The computer immediately lowered

  the back of James' ejection seat so that his head was below heart

  level to improve blood flow back to the brain. Oxygen shot into

  A

  82 DALE BROWN

  his face mask as he fought to regain theta-alpha. With his face

  mask flooded with oxygen, his breathing was slowed, making

  him feel light-headed.

  It took a few seconds more for James to take control of AN-

  TARES again. He countermanded the computer's suggestion to

  raise the seat upright-he would need several more hard turns

  before he could get within firing range of his adversary and he'd

  be in less danger of blacking out if the seat-back stayed down.

  He began a hard seven-G turn back toward Cheetah, but by then

  he had lost his advantage. Cheetah was in a dive at nearly Mach

  one.

  DreamStar pulled in six miles behind Cheetah and James tried

  for a radar lock, but Cheetah executed a vertical scissors and

  darted away-even though Cheetah did not have DreamStar's

  sophisticated high-maneuverabilities her large foreplanes and

  temporary speed advantage allowed her to execute such a move.

  DreamStar easily performed the same inverted vertical scissors

  to pursue. Cheetah had moved out to nine miles by then, and

  James ordered the throttle into min-afterburner in the descent to

  catch up. With the throttles up in the steep descent, the lighter,

  aerodynamically cleaner DreamStar fighter quickly regained the

  speed advantage.

  Closure rate five hundred knots, ANTARES reported. James

  "heard" the stream of computer-generated reports as if he was

  listening to the sound of his own breathing. Range seven miles.

  Action: High-maneuverability configuration, maintain speed ad-

  vantage, ANTARES infrared pursuit, deactivate attack radar, la-

  ser lock, attack, close to gun range, attack, constant AOA wing

  mode, maintain gun range, attack. The messages began to re-

  peat, informing him of altitude, closure rate, weapons status,

  external heating, stress factors, power demands, air-conditioning

  faults. James accepted ANTARES' engagement suggestions-

  the computer had already decided how the battle would be fought

  several minutes in the future-why not let it go?

  Using its infrared tracker and laser rangefinder, ANTARES

  had predicted the moves Cheetah could make in its present flight

  attitude and airspeed and had devised an attack for those ma-

  neuvers. There were also reversals Cheetah could make, and

  ANTARES had computed how to defeat them. The final moves

  of this aerial chess game were now being played. Cheetah was

  making a hard left turn, but DreamStar had the cutoff angle and

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 83

  the power advantage. DreamStar did not need to snap over in a

  hard bank to make the kill-her high-maneuverability canards

  and strake flaps pulled the laser rangefinder onto target and held

  it there. Cheetah tried another hard turn, this time to the right,

  but the XF-34s guns were locked on solid now-Cheetah was

  just burning up airspeed in each high-G turn. DreamStar was

  flying "uncoordinated," sideways and downward at the same

  time-

  Suddenly James heard McLanahan over the interplane chan-

  nel: "Storm Flight, knock it off, knock it off! Storm Two, pull

  up! I I

  Ground-map radar, James immediately ordered. The phased-

  array radars snapped on . . . revealing a sheer rock cliff no more

  than a thousand feet away and straight ahead. Cheetah had flown

  directly at two tall buttes, diving and banking away just before

  reaching them. ANTARES faithfully computed the deadly

  news-DreamStar would impact in exactly eight-tenths of a sec-

  ond.

  Which was like eight minutes to the ANTARES computer.

  James canceled high-maneuverability mode and threw Dream-

  Star into a hard left bank. DreamStar's large canards and

  computer-controlled rudders kept her nose from pushing in the

  opposite direction in a hard turn, and she slipped between

  the twin towering buttes. ANTARES reported the data from the

  ground-mapping radars: DreamStar had missed the right butte

  by eight feet.

  James cleared the left butte and rolled to the right, only to

  find Cheetah directly in his gunsights less than two miles away.

  He quickly lined up on him, switched to his twenty-millimeter

  cannon to activate the gun camera and called, "Fox four, Storm

  Two, your six-o'clock."

  "I said knock it off!" McLanahan ordered. "Storm Flight,

  route formation, station check. Weapons on standby. Move."

  James raised his ejection seat back out of the reclined anti-G

  setting and activated the radars that would help keep DreamStar

  in formation with Cheetah. "Two has twelve minutes to joker,

  all systems nominal."

  "Lead's in the green, nine minutes," Powell reported.

  "Storm Flight, right turn heading zero-four-three, direct bea-

  con red five at ten thousand feet. " Powell executed the turn, and

  DreamStar stayed with him in route fon-nation.

  84 DALE BROWN

  "What the hell happened, Ken?" McLanahan said as they

  rolled out on the new heading. "You passed out of theta-alpha

  for a few seconds but you pressed the attack anyway. We watched

  you side-slip behind us right into that butte. You almost got

  yourself killed and destroyed--

  "I had contact with the ground at all times," James lied. "I

  was conscious during the entire attack, except at the bottom of

  my loop when ANTARES took over. I had clearance between

  the obstructions. " Another lie-James would not soon forget the

  rivulets of ice and the lichens he saw growing on the sides of

  the rock . . . he was that close to it. If Patrick hadn't yelled

  out . . . "I had the last shot after passing between the buttes," he

  insisted, "and I processed the shot before you called--

  "Save it for the debriefing," Patrick said, "and the data tapes.

  Storm Flight, fingertip formation. Prepare for penetration and

  approach. "

  DreamStar and Cheetah were now to demonstrate their land-

  ing abilities. Powell redeemed himself for his poor takeoff.

  Keeping Cheetah in perfect balance, he guided the fighter to a

  pinpoint land
ing and stop within five hundred feet-he could

  have landed Cheetah on an aircraft carrier without the use of a

  tail hook or arresting cables. But DreamStar's landing was even

  better-it was as if the one hundred-thousand-pound fighter was

  a bee alighting on a flower. The combination of the large ca-

  nards, mission-adaptive wings in their long-chord, high-lift con-

  figuration and thrust-vectored nozzles, all controlled by the

  fastest "computer" extant-the human brain-and James had

  DreamStar stopped within four hundred feet of touchdown, a

  hundred feet better than Cheetah.

  Hal Briggs replaced the phone in its cradle and turned to General

  Elliott, who was watching the landing through binoculars from

  on top of the portable control tower. "Those Russian birds are

  still several minutes from their flyby," he said. "Good thing our

  guys landed early-"

  "The hell it is. They even knew when the test was supposed

  to terminate. If they had landed on time the satellite would've

  been right there taking pictures and there'd be nothing we could

  do about it." He ran his fingers through silver hair that, Briggs

  noted, seemed to grow thinner every year. He turned toward

  Briggs. "I want you to pull out all the stops, Major." The tower

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 85

  controllers as well as Briggs caught Elliott's ominous tone. "Do

  whatever you have to do to find the leak on this installation. You

  have an unlimited budget, unlimited resources, and very little

  damn time. Search anywhere and everywhere. Go off-base with

  federal authorities to investigate-I'll back up whatever you do.

  I want answers, Briggs. Fast."

  Briggs knew that at least off-base activities needed huge

  amounts of cooperation, hard to come by, from state and federal

  law enforcement. He needed some clarification, but now wasn't

  the time to ask for it.

  Elliott thumbed the microphone on the command frequency.

  "Storm Flight, taxi without delay to parking. Over."

  "Lead.

  Two.

  Ken James had been disconnected from his fighter and hoisted

  out of DreamStar's cockpit. He was wheeled to an air-conditioned