Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (34 page)

 
          
“Roger.
Sergeant Macynski, follow me in. The rest cover us.” Briggs got out of the
sedan, flipped off the safety lever on his M-16 and ran over to the M113. He
met up with Macynski, outlined a brief tactical plan to the NCO, then
approached the hangar door at a dead run. They scanned the interior of the
hangar, quickly sweeping their rifle muzzles around the hangar while sighting
through them, ready to fire at any sound or movement. Nothing. Briggs ordered the
M113 in closer to secure the hangar, then headed back to the sedan.

 
          
In
the backseat he said into the walkie-talkie, “Red Man, this is Hotel. I want an
investigation unit in Hangar Five and one on the Commando ACV on the ramp gate
on the double. Break. Rover Nine, secure the V-100 that crashed into the gate.
Recover any bodies from the wreckage for the investigation unit. I want an I.D.
on the occupants ASAP.”

           
“Roger, Hotel,” the security
controller replied. “Hotel, be advised, Lance One and Lance Two F-16Fs airborne
from Nellis at five past the hour. Two F-14 units from China Lake also report
airborne.
CATTLECAR
is their
controller. You can meet them on channel one-one.”

 
          
“Roger,
Red Man. Get all Dreamland air defense units on channel eleven and help coordinate
an intercept with
CATTLE- CAR.
The
last thing we need is for our guys to take shots at those
F-14S
or -16s.”

 
          
“Switching
all units to eleven, sir,” the security controller said. “Simultaneous voice
and data.” Briggs switched his walkie-talkie over as well.

 
          
“CATTLECAR,
this is Hotel on channel
one-one. Over.”

 
          
“Hotel,
this is
CATTLECAR,”
the radar
controller replied. “HAWC anti-air units are reporting in now, sir. All assets
should be on-line in sixty seconds.”

 
          
“Any
airborne radar platforms up?”

 
          
“Not
yet, sir. Nellis’ 767 AWACS is not an alert bird. I’ve requested the tac
fighter unit to recall the crew, but that may take some time.”

 
          
“We’ll
lose him without an AWACS up there to dig him out of the terrain,” McLanahan
said. “Ground radar won’t pick him up if he stays low.”

 
          
“Hotel,
this is
CATTLECAR.
Radar contact on
your hostile. I’m directing all HAWC anti-air artillery units to engage. Any
further instructions?”

 
          
Briggs
stopped and looked at Elliott. The general inwardly flinched but did not
hesitate. “If they’ve got him, destroy him.”

           
Briggs nodded and raised his
walkie-talkie.
“CATTLECAR,
message
confirmed through Alpha. Engage at will and shoot to kill. Out.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
Maraklov
was no more than two hundred feet above ground when ANTARES began to report the
emitters all around him. As Maraklov scanned outside the cockpit, visual images
were supplanted by ANTARES-generated images of catalogued terrain features
around which multicolored arcs or bands undulated, disappeared and reappeared
in kaleidoscopic waves. The colored bands were beams of radar energy—search
radars, tracking radars, and data-links—all searching for him.

           
Most of the waves of color were
above him, like curtains of fire stretching across a ceiling, but a few seemed
to slice right through DreamStar. Maraklov had to avoid those bands. The green
bands were search radars, not deadly in themselves, but they would give away
his position to the searchers. The other bands of energy were yellow—tracking
radars that would pinpoint his location and would begin to feed targeting
information to surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. If the yellow bands
turned red, it meant that a missile had been launched. If he was inside the red
band, he was within the missile’s lethal envelope and would probably die within
seconds unless the missile could be outmaneuvered—DreamStar carried no jammers,
no decoys. Maraklov had to outrun, outmaneuver or kill his attackers, or it was
over for him.

 
          
He
was finally free of the dry bed of the Groom Lake area, heading south and
almost into Papoose Canyon northwest of Emigrant Valley, when a single finger
of green light snapped out between a narrow gap between two rocky buttes and
hit DreamStar broadside. One of the search radars had found him. The band immediately
turned to yellow, but one of the buttes blocked the energy and the band turned
green once again as the beam continued its three hundred and sixty degree
sweep. But they now knew where he was—and were closing in on him. Maraklov
dodged further away from the butte, hoping to stay in the butte’s radar shadow
as long as possible.

 
          
It
wasn’t working. The terrain was forcing him to climb, but the beam of green
energy above him wasn’t rising with him. He had no time to react. The green
beam of energy, completing a full revolution every six seconds, hit him once
again as DreamStar crested a rocky ridge line. This time, it turned yellow and
stayed on him. DreamStar’s threat-warning receiver immediately reported the
contact, and after a few seconds analysis concluded that a British-made Rapier
surface-to- air-missile was locked on.

 
          
The
computer suggested a heading, altitude and airspeed to escape the Rapier
missile’s lethal radius, and Maraklov ordered the evasive maneuver just as the
band of energy went from yellow to red—the Rapier had gone from search to
missile- uplink in seconds. The missile was in the air. There was no time and
no room to move. DreamStar was bracketed by hills and mountains.

 
          
Sensing
Maraklov’s confusion, ANTARES canceled the first suggested maneuver,
immediately deployed the canards into their high-lift configuration and ordered
a hard, tight Immel- mann—a fast inverted half-loop—directly back into the
short rocky butte they had just passed. ANTARES also activated the
superconducting radar, which showed the butte only three- quarters of a mile
directly ahead. They would impact in less than four seconds . . .

 
          
A
flash of light erupted off the right wing, and suddenly DreamStar banked hard
right, pulling nine G’s in the tight turn. The Rapier missile had missed by
only a few short feet. Maraklov tried to search the sky for another missile,
but the hard nine-G turn had blurred and tunneled his vision. Another explosion
off to his right—there had, indeed, been a second Rapier missile launched at
him, but that one had exploded on the butte not three hundred yards behind him.

 
          
As
his ejection-seat back began to recline automatically, which would help blood
to flow back into his brain while ANTARES completed evasive maneuvers, Maraklov
watched as the colored bands surrounding him switched back to green. The older
Rapier missile systems surrounding Dreamland carried only two missiles on each
launch platform, and the system had switched back to search mode while the
Rapier crew reloaded.

 
          
Maraklov
watched, fascinated, as ANTARES automatically increased power to full thrust,
and began to use short bursts of its multi-directional radar to scan the
terrain around DreamStar and fly as close to earth as possible. His ejection
seat slowly returned to its upright position as the G-forces subsided, and he
actually could relax ... he would be long gone from the range of that Rapier
site by the time it was reloaded—

 
          
A
warning beep sounded in the upper-center part of his cockpit, and with it a
blue-triangle icon appeared, with a long green triangle protruding from the
front end. Answering his mental query, ANTARES reported what it was: an F-16
Falcon fighter, sweeping the skies below with its new APG-91 look- down radar.
Although pushing age twenty-five, the F-16 had undergone so many modifications
that it could hardly be considered the same aircraft as twenty-five years
earlier. Not originally designed for look-down, shoot-down, low-altitude
engagements, it now sported a multi-purpose “cranked arrow” effect, with huge
delta wings, and was capable of attacking air or ground targets at any
altitude. Its new capability was in evidence as its green triangle swept down
from the sky and in moments DreamStar had once again been discovered.

           
Maraklov commanded an immediate hard
bank and searched for terrain to hide in. He knew the F-16s rarely worked
alone; only one would activate its radar, while one or two others would take
vectors from the leader and close in on their prey, activating their attack
radars at the last possible moment . . .

 
          
Another
mental command ... and Maraklov’s heart sank. At its present low altitude,
DreamStar was gulping fuel. He could not afford to get into a situation where
he’d have to waste time and fuel dodging missiles from the F-i6s, let alone any
sort of protracted aerial battle with them. Reinforcements were surely on their
way—very likely
F-15S
from the Air
Force Reserve base at Davis-Monthan in Tucson. Maraklov’s options were running
out. There was only one real choice left to him.

 
          
Run
like hell.

 
          
At
a single request, Maraklov discovered the single best altitude to use to clear
all terrain within five hundred miles—six thousand five hundred feet. He
ordered the computer to maintain that altitude and set best-speed power
settings for the engines. As fuel was burned off and gross weight decreased,
the computer would pick the best speed versus drag settings of engine power,
trim, and wing configuration to achieve the fastest possible speed. He could
afford no more power changes, climbs, descents, terrain avoidance or defense
maneuvers. His only option was to stay at zero Q—where the sum of all
aerodynamic forces on his aircraft remained zero, the highest possible cruise
efficiency—and run for the border.

 
          
A
fast mental inquiry and the GPS satellite-navigation system checked DreamStar’s
position, computed a likely flight path around known population centers and
defense areas, measured the distance between present position and the tiny dry
lake, Laguna de Santiaguillo, where Kramer and Moffitt in north central Mexico
were supposed to be waiting with a fuel truck. Laguna de Santiaguillo was an
abandoned training facility (KGB assets utilizing locals equally receptive to
rubles and dollars) in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains,
well within range of two Mexican fighter bases at Mazat- lan and Monterrey. A
lousy location, Maraklov thought, but the only one possible on such short
notice.

 
          
The
computer had his answer after a relatively long two- second pause: three
hundred miles to the
Gulf
of California
, another
seven hundred fifty miles along the west ridge of the
Sierra Madre Occidental
mountains, then across the
Remedias
River
valley to Laguna de Santiaguillo. He was
traveling at one point one Mach, about nine hundred miles per hour, and was
consuming twenty thousand pounds of fuel an hour. He had exactly twenty-two
thousand pounds of fuel remaining. Which meant, at his current setting, he
would flame out right over Laguna de Santiaguillo. He would have more fuel
available if he used an idle-power descent and a long glide for landing, but
he’d have less if he had to dodge any more missiles or if he had to use
afterburner.

 
          
Another
mental command and he checked the two AIM- 120C Scorpion missiles, then tried a
test arming. Both were fitted with instrumented warheads, but otherwise would
launch and track like fully operational weapons. He could use them if he got
himself cornered. He would, though, have to shoot very carefully—without
explosive warheads there would be no proximity detonation; each shot had to be
a direct hit.

 
          
But
up here, the possibility of anyone touching him seemed unlikely. There were
still search radars all around him, resembling huge green cones rising out of
the terrain, but there were large gaps between the radar cones and he was
picking his way through them, using slight heading changes to put a mountain or
ridge line between himself and the radar cones. Smaller yellow blobs, giant
mushrooms, appeared now and then—the lethal envelope of surface-to-air missiles
stationed below—but he was avoiding them as well. Now he was almost out of the
Dreamland complex, accelerating past one thousand miles per hour.