Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (56 page)

 
          
“Don’t
play dumb with me. The lady is quite taken with you, personally and
professionally. Don’t ask me why—anyone who’d get involved with a pilot can’t
have all their marbles. I wouldn’t be surprised if she cooked up this morning’s
bombshell in the press. Am I close?”

 
          
“Don’t
know what you’re talking about, sir,” Elliott replied with a straight face.

 
          
“Okay,
we’ll leave it that way—it’s safer for her too. Besides, everyone around this
place has a pipeline to some reporter. There’d be more double-dealing and
backstabbing in this place than in the Kremlin if there wasn’t the occasional
leak. But get
caught
at it, suddenly
you’re a leper.”

 
          
In
the garage they moved into waiting sedans. “I assume you’ll want to use the
command center to run this operation, Brad,” Curtis said as they drove off.
Elliott gave him a surprised long look.

 
          
Curtis
returned it. “Let me guess ... you’re not going to use a bomber—that was
my
first guess. What’s the hottest
machine on your flight line right now? Cheetah. And McLanahan and Powell go
with it. How’m I doing? Don’t answer that... You had Cheetah in mind from the
start. You’ve got some sort of camera pod rigged up on it, self-protection
devices up the ying-yang—you’re going to have to take the missiles off, the
President said no.” Elliott allowed a smile. The Secretary had hit it right on
the mark. “Cheetah’s been ready to go ever since last night . . . Ever since
O’Day agreed to help you. Right?”

 
          
“No
comment, sir.”

 
          
“I
like it, General, I like it. You want to send a message— Cheetah will do it.”

Sebaco Military
Airfield
,
Nicaragua

Friday, 19 June 1996
, 0643 CDT (0743 EDT)

 
          
WORK HAD
begun on DreamStar less than
three hours after the last transmission from
Moscow
, and even though he had diverted the plan
to dismantle his aircraft, every minute that Andrei Maraklov watched
DreamStar’s refit was like another twist of the knife that seemed to be stuck
in his gut.

 
          
He
was standing a few meters in front of DreamStar’s hangar, just a few dozen
meters from the flight-line ramp leading to Sebaco’s runway. The hangar doors,
which had remained closed to guard against sabotage or espionage, were now wide
open because of the huge volume of trucks and workers scrambling in and out.
The hangar was guarded by KGB border troops, two stationed every ten meters
around the perimeter, along with a manned BMD armored vehicle or BTR-60PB
armored personnel carrier on every cardinal point. Workers carried large
picture I.D. cards slung around their necks, which allowed the point guards to
check I.D.’s against wearers without the workers stopping.

 
          
The
technicians and engineers assembled to do the job seemed to be even more
ham-handed than General Tret’yak had described. They tore at fasteners they did
not understand how to open, yanked at delicate data cables, got greasy hands
all over the superconducting antennae arrays. They made notes about everything,
in writing and by video camera, but mostly they cared about getting their jobs
done on time, not on how well the fighter flew after leaving Sebaco.

 
          
Each
twist of the worker’s wrench brought home another reality to Maraklov—that
along with the delivery of DreamStar to the
Soviet Union
came the end to his own usefulness. General
Tret’yak was correct, of course—DreamStar would be dismantled in ultra-fine
detail once it was safely delivered to the Ramenskoye Test Facility near
Moscow
. It might be flown once or twice, but more
than likely its avionics would be activated artifically and all its subsequent
“flights” would be confined to a laboratory. If there was no DreamStar, there
would be little need for a DreamStar pilot, especially one who would seem more
American than Russian. They might create an ANTARES ground simulator to study
the thought-guidance system and train future pilots on how to fly DreamStar,
but that would not last long. After that, he doubted very much that the Soviet
military would allow him to fly or even participate in any way, except as some
glorified figurehead . . . until his usefulness there ran out too.

 
          
The
workers were struggling with a service-access panel on DreamStar’s engine
compartment. The senior non-commissioned officer, Master Sergeant Rudolph
Artiemov, spotted Maraklov standing outside the hangar, came over to him, gave
him a half-salute, pointed to the engine and said something unintelligible to
Maraklov.

 
          
“Speak
slower, Sergeant,” Maraklov said in halting Russian. The technician squinted at
him.
“Mahtor sestyema smazki nyee
khodyaht, tovarisch Polovnik. Vi pahnyemahyo?”

 
          
“I
don’t understand what the hell you’re saying,” Maraklov exploded in English.
The startled sergeant stepped back away. “You’re tearing my damned aircraft apart
and you want me to tell you from here if it’s okay? Is that it? Get out of my
face.”

 
          
“He
said the engine-lubrication system access-panel is stuck, Andrei,” a voice
said. He turned to see Musi Zaykov beside him, her attractive smile momentarily
piercing his gloom. Musi said something to the technician in a stern voice and
the sergeant saluted, turned and trotted back to the workers.

 
          
“What
did you tell him?”

 
          
“I
told him that you said he is an incompetent fool, and that you will kill him
first and report him second if he is not more careful.”

 
          
“My
thoughts exactly.”

 
          
“They
say they will have the aircraft ready for a test flight in twelve hours,” Musi
said. Maraklov looked at her, then turned away from the open front of the
hangar and began walking down the flight line. Musi followed.

 
          
“Did
I say something wrong?”

 
          
“No,”
Maraklov said. “I just feel...” Could he trust her? He was beginning to feel he
could. She had become something of a confidante over the past few hours. If she
was a KGB operative assigned to watch him, she was either doing a very good
job, or a very poor one ... “I feel a terrible mistake is being made here . . .
they don’t trust or respect my judgment. I brought them the
U.S.
’s most advanced fighter, and all they can
seem to think of is taking it apart. Musi, that is no ordinary aircraft. It is
. . . alive. It’s part of
me
. . .
Can you understand any of that?”

 
          
“Not
really, Andrei. It is, after all, a machine—”

 
          
“No
...” But he knew it was useless to try to explain. He changed the subject. “You
tell me, Musi, what will they do with me after I return to
Russia
?”

 
          
“You
will be honored as a hero of the
Soviet Union
—”

 
          
“Bullshit.
Tell me what’s
really
going to
happen.” She seemed to avoid his eyes. “Come on, Lieutenant.”

 
          
“I
... I don’t know, Andrei.” Her voice now seemed to lose its easy tone, to
become almost stiff, as though she were reciting. “You will be welcomed, of
course . . . following that, you will be asked to participate in the
development of the aircraft for the Air Forces—”

 
          
“I
want to know what kind of
life
I’ll
have in
Russia
. I want to know if I’ll have a future.”

 
          
“You
ask me to predict too much, Andrei.” Her tone changed again. “In my eyes you
are a hero. You have done something no one thought possible. But there are . .
. people who are distrustful of any foreigner—”

 
          
“I’m
not a foreigner.” Or was he?

 
          
“Andrei,
I know what you are, but you know what I mean .. . You do not speak Russian.
You must understand that there will be less trust at first.” She took his hands
in hers. “Could it be, Colonel Andrei Maraklov, that it is perhaps
you
who do not trust
us?”

 
          
Maraklov
was about to reply, stopped himself. She was right. The
U.S.
bias toward the
Soviet Union
had taken hold and was his now—distrust,
fear, the works, in spite of the show of
glas-
nost
and
perestroika.

 
          
He
smiled at Musi, pulling her closer. “How did you get so smart, Lieutenant Musi
Zaykov?”

 
          
“I
am not so smart, Andrei. I think I understand how you feel. Living in
Nicaragua
for a year, feeling the resentment from the
people, isolated in this little valley—it is easy to mistrust, even hate, those
you do not understand or who seem not to understand you.” She moved in closer
to him, her lips parting. “I love it when you say my name. I wish you’d do it more
often.”

 
          
And
then she kissed him, right there on the little service road next to the flight
line. “I know you don’t trust me, Andrei, not yet. But you will. Just trust
your instincts and I will mine ...”

 
          
Without
another word they turned their backs to the flight line and headed back to the
officer’s quarters hidden in the trees beyond. They shut themselves in her
quarters, and Maraklov gave himself up to the remarkable skills of this woman
who exorcised all his earlier doubts and made him, for the moment, even forget
about DreamStar . . .

Over the
Caribbean
Sea

0825 EDT

           
“She’s about as maneuverable as an
elephant,” J. C. Powell said irritably, “and five times as heavy.”

 
          
Powell
and McLanahan had just completed their second refueling from a KC-10 Extender
refueling aircraft from the 161st Air Refueling Group “Sun Devils” out of
Phoenix, the same unit—and, in fact, the same crew—that had refueled Cheetah
just in time after their flight through Mexico. They were now at twenty
thousand feet, still flying in tight formation with the tanker, so close that
on radar screens from
Texas
to
Florida
to
Cuba
to the
Cayman Islands
to
Jamaica
they seemed like one aircraft—which was
what they wanted.

 
          
J.C.
had the throttles at full power to keep up with the KC-io, but after a few
minutes the KC-io pilot noticed the trouble the loaded F-15 fighter was having
and backed off on its power. There was plenty of reason for Cheetah’s sluggish
performance. In addition to sixteen-hundred-gallon
FASTPACK
fuel tanks near each wing root, Cheetah carried an
AN/ALC-189E reconnaissance pod mounted on the centerline stores station. The
two-ton recon pod carried four high-speed video cameras that pointed forward,
aft and to each side, along with data transmission equipment that allowed the
digitized imagery from the cameras to be broadcast via satellite directly back
to Dreamland for analysis. On each wing Cheetah also carried a 6oo-gallon fuel
tank, which normally gave it a cruising range of nearly three thousand miles.

 
          
That
cruising range was considerably shorter with the recon pod mounted; it was even
shorter with Cheetah’s other special stores: two QF-98B Hummer electronic drone
aircraft, small single propfan-engined aircraft that carried several computer-
controlled radar jammers. The two Hummer drones, one mounted on each wing, were
preprogrammed to follow a specific flight path after being released. They
carried no weapons. Their flight paths would take them close to known
Nicaraguan and Soviet early warning radar sites, where their jammers would
disrupt the radars long enough for Cheetah to make its run toward Sebaco. After
flying close to the coastal radar sites, the drones would fly northeast toward
recovery ships near
Jamaica
—if they survived the expected Nicaraguan
air defenses.

 
          
“You
boys sure go around looking for trouble,” the pilot of the Phoenix-based tanker
said over the scrambled VHF radio. “Twenty-four hours ago I thought we’d all be
in the stockade. You must lead charmed lives.”

 
          
“We
found a few regs we haven’t violated yet,” J.C. said.

           
“You’re coming up on your
start-descent point,” the nav on the KC-10 said.

           
“One minute.”

           
“Time for one more fast sip before
you leave?” the pilot asked.

 
          
“I
think we’ve had enough,” J.C. said. “Thanks for the gas.”

           
“Thank your boss for getting us out
of trouble with the brass,” the pilot said. “I saw what was left of my
retirement flash before my eyes. You boys take it easy down there. Sun Devil
starting a climbing left turn. Out.” The KC-10 wagged its wings once, then
began a steep left turn and a sharp climb, heading toward its destination in
San Juan
.