Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (43 page)

 
          
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 charge
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.

 
          
“
Skaryehyeh
Kramer 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.”

 
          
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?”