Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (92 page)

 
          
“Should
be.”

 
          
“You
think you can set up a patch with General Elliott through Puerto Lempira? He
can get the air cordon put back up around
Nicaragua
—at least get the AWACS back up there to
watch for DreamStar when it heads out.”

 
          
“I
can try. Reception is pretty poor from here but at least I can get the ball
rolling.” He began another call to Puerto Lempira as they walked. When they got
to the Dolphin, McLanahan and the chopper pilot locked up the helicopter while
Briggs stayed in as much clearing as he could find to maintain radio contact
with the Honduran military base.

 
          
“No
good,” Briggs said as McLanahan and the chopper pilot joined him on the road
heading toward Auka. “Can’t raise the base any more. We’ll have to wait until
we get to Auka and find a telephone, or just get to a clearing where we’ve got
a straight shot to Puerto Lempira.”

 
          
McLanahan
muttered as they set off on a fast walk. “After everything . . . J.C. . . .
Maraklov is still going to get away with DreamStar? And there’s nothing we can
do to stop him?”

Over the
Caribbean
Sea

Monday, 22 June 1996
, 0748 CDT

 
          
“What
the hell was that?” General Elliott said into his earset microphone. He was on
a C-21B military Learjet enroute from
Georgetown
in the
Cayman Islands
to La Cieba, where he would pick up a
helicopter from there to Puerto Lempira. The relief he’d felt as he left
Grand Cayman
to see DreamStar safe and sound in
U.S.
hands was shattered once again. “Say again
that last transmission.”

 
          
“Message
received from a Major Briggs, crewmember aboard Air Force helicopter
Triple-Echo Three-Four,” the communications man said. “Briggs requested
immediate emergency assistance. He said his helicopter was down four miles
south of Auka, approximately thirty miles south of Puerto Lempira. He reported
three survivors and three fatalities.”

 
          
“Oh,
God,” Elliott muttered. Over the radio he said, “When did the rescue chopper
depart?”

 
          
“We
dispatched your HH-3 from La Cieba immediately after receiving the call,” the
operator replied. “ETA to Auka is 0815 local.”

 
          
“From
La Cieba?
That was the only chopper
available?”

 
          
“Affirmative,
sir.”

 
          
Elliott
slammed a fist against the C-2i’s front instrument console, then keyed his mike
button. “Control, did Briggs report what happened?”

 
          
“We
lost contact shortly afterward, sir,” the operator reported. “He was calling in
on a rescue channel, apparently using a hand-held survival radio. I think he’s
been trying to call us but we can’t pick him up.”

 
          
Elliott
clicked on the C-2i’s interphone and turned to Marine Corps Major Marcia
Preston, National Security Adviser Deborah O’Day’s aide and the C-2i’s pilot.
“Major, head toward Puerto Lempira airbase instead of La Cieba at best possible
speed. We’ll fly near where Briggs went down and try to find out what’s going
on.”

 
          
“Yes,
General.” The C-21 jet banked left as Preston took up a rough heading to the
Honduran airbase, then began calling up the base’s coordinates on the inertial
navigation unit and calling La Cieba air traffic control for a change in her
flight plan.

 
          
Elliott
left his seat and went back to sit with Curtis and O’Day. They had flown from
Washington
to the
Cayman Islands
after the deal had, they thought, been set
to recover the XF-34, and Elliott had gone along with them in the C-21 for the
flight to
Honduras
. “We’ve got a big problem,” Elliott told
them. “My security chief Briggs is on the ground in
Honduras
with two other survivors and three
casualties from our recovery party. No other information. There’s a chopper on
the way, but it won’t arrive for another forty-five minutes—”

 
          
“What
are we going to do, Brad?” O’Day asked.

 
          
“I
want to get in contact with Briggs soonest—he’s on a survival radio and our
people at Puerto Lempira lost contact. I’ve told Marcia to head over to where
the pickup point will be and we’ll try to contact Briggs ourself.”

 
          
“What
the hell do you make of it?” Curtis said.

 
          
“Not
enough information to tell, but we’ll act on what you guys like to call
worst-case scenario . . . they tried to make the swap for DreamStar, the
Russians reneged, shot up our chopper and our people. Major Briggs and
whoever’s with him managed to get away across the border but not all the way
back to base.”

 
          
“So
that means the Russians still have DreamStar,” O’Day said. “And if they reneged
on the deal and went so far as to attack our people, they’ll probably be trying
to get it out of the country as fast as they can.”

 
          
“And
there’s very damned little we can do about it,” Elliott said. “We’ve got no
assets close enough to stop them. We’ve still got the AWACS and some of the
F-i6s in the
Cayman
Islands
, but we’d
have to get a tanker from
Puerto Rico
or
Florida
down here to support us—that’ll take a few
hours at least. The two F-15E ground-attack fighters we brought to
Honduras
are on their way back to
Arizona
. We’ve got some Honduran ground-attack
planes, but if the Honduran air force gets into the act we’ll start a war in
Central America
. The President will never go for it...”
Elliott paused for a moment, then: “Cheetah . . .”

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“Cheetah.
My modified F-15F fighter.
It’s down in Puerto Lempira—Powell and McLanahan flew it back to the States and
then back to
Honduras
. It can do both air-to-air and ground
attack.”

 
          
“But
you said that McLanahan and Powell went on this mission into
Nicaragua
. That means—”

 
          
“That
means that one or both of them may be dead,” O’Day said. “Can’t anyone else fly
it?”

 
          
Elliott
rubbed his throbbing right leg—the developing headache he had was starting to
rival the pain in his leg. “It’s like asking if anyone can race in the
Indianapolis
500. Sure, anyone can drive the cars, and
you
might
even survive the race
without killing yourself. But only a very few can
really
race in it . . . Only a few people can fly Cheetah well
enough even to have a chance of getting DreamStar,” Elliott said gloomily.
“Most of them, my senior test pilots, are two thousand miles away in Dreamland
right now. Two may be lying dead in the jungle in
Honduras
—Powell and McLanahan. And another turned
out to be a goddamned Russian spy—”

 
          
“General
Elliott, this is Major Preston,” the pilot said over the cabin intercom. “We’re
crossing the coast now, ETA to Puerto Lempira nine minutes. We’ve got clearance
to fly near the Nicaraguan border, but we’ll only have enough fuel to loiter
about ten minutes before we need to head back to Puerto Lempira for fuel.”

 
          
“Thanks,
Major. Take us down to two thousand feet and head south of Puerto Lempira, then
ask Storm Control on what frequency they talked to Major Briggs. We’ll scan that
frequency plus
GUARD
and hope he
comes back.”
Preston
gave General Elliott enough time to strap
himself in back in the right cockpit seat before descending quickly to five
thousand feet and getting on the radio to Puerto Lempira. A few minutes later
she had set up the radios on UHF and VHF
GUARD
and Air Force discrete emergency channel alpha. Elliott put on his earset
and keyed the microphone:

 
          
“Air
Force helicopter Triple-Echo Three-Four, this is Storm Commander on alpha. How
do you read?”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
The
three crewmen of the mission to bring DreamStar out of Nicaragua reached Auka
in less than an hour, but all hope of finding a telephone was quickly
squelched—Auka was little more than a group of abandoned old shacks, half
flooded and long overgrown by jungle. The road was still wide and paved— it was
part of the main coastal highway running through Central America—but there was
almost no traffic anywhere except for a few horseback riders and some
youngsters herding a small knot of uncooperative goats through the streets.
They had no intention of talking to a group of dirty-looking strangers, and as
fast as the children appeared, they were gone.

 
          
The
road through Auka branched out just on the north side of town off to the
west—the fork in the road was on a small cleared-away rise with a shrine to the
virgin Mary in the intersection. From that spot they could see for about five
miles in any direction before the trees shrouded the horizon. “This looks like
the best vantage point,” McLanahan said. “Hal, go ahead and—”

 
          
“Wait,”
Briggs said. He held the survival radio up to his ear, then hit the
transmit
button. “Storm Commander, this
is Hal Briggs. I read you loud and clear. Over.” To McLanahan: “It’s General
Elliott! He’s coming this way!”

 
          
“All
right.
”

 
          
Briggs
handed McLanahan the survival radio. “General, Colonel McLanahan.”

 
          
“Patrick,
damn good to hear you.” Then he realized—the third survivor must be the chopper
pilot . . . “Who did you lose?”

 
          
“J.C.,
Carmichael
and Ray Butler . . .”

 
          
Elliott
slumped back in his seat. Powell dead—that was their last hope, the man who
could fly Cheetah well enough to take on DreamStar in air-to-air combat. He
keyed the microphone: “How did it happen. Were they killed in the crash?”

 
          
“No.
They were killed by Andrei Maraklov—Ken James.”
“James?
He’s supposed to be in
Moscow
...”

 
          
“He’s
alive and he’s got DreamStar.”

 
          
“But
what about the deal? The transfer?”

 
          
“I
had the impression that James came out of nowhere, completely unexpected. Even
by the local Russian general. He killed the KGB general and two Russian
soldiers and who knows who else to get DreamStar. He might be working for
himself, or for someone else. General, DreamStar is flyable. We’ve got less
than fifteen minutes to put together an attack package and take it out before
he gets away.”

 
          
“I
see Elliott’s jet,” Briggs shouted, pointing skyward. “General, we’ve got a
visual on you. Range about three miles. Come right twenty degrees. There’ll be
an east-west road off your right wing. Follow the road until it ends. We’re
right at the intersection in the clearing.”