Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (96 page)

 
          
The
inertial navigation computer warned Maraklov that its precision was not great
enough to find Venado with less than the usual quarter-mile accuracy, and since
the satellite-navigation unit was unavailable for use (it required a daily
code) it recommended that the attack radar be activated in groundmapping mode
to update the computer’s position. Any radar emissions were dangerous, but
Maraklov had no choice— DreamStar was not the type of aircraft specifically
designed for pilotage or for navigating by use of visual references.

 
          
He
allowed the computer to activate the radar, which transmitted in thirty-mile
range for five seconds, then went back to standby. DreamStar steered
west-southwest for a few miles, until the very rim of a beautiful mountain lake
could be seen, then began a right turn on top of a ridge-line toward Venado.
After an instantaneous mental inquiry he knew that they were exactly four point
one nautical miles from the center of the runway. One pass over the field was
all it would take to make a radar survey of the field for landing data, and the
computer would do the rest. The turbofan engine throttled back to seventy-five
percent, the canards moved from cruise position to high-lift position, and the
mission-adaptive wings began to reshape for approach speed—

 
          
“DreamStar,
this is Cheetah on
GUARD
channel.
We’ve found you.”

 
          
The
sudden radio message screamed in Maraklov’s brain like a siren. Instinctively
he increased power to ninety percent and reshaped the wings and moved the
canards back to high-speed, high-maneuverability position, ready to evade a
missile or gun attack. The attack radar also activated in air-to- air search
mode for three seconds before Maraklov commanded it to stand by—at this
altitude he would see very little on radar, while his own radar energy could be
seen for miles by aircraft at higher altitude. He also punched ofiF the Lluyka
tanks in preparation for the fight—he hoped he could somehow fool
Kalinin
into getting him another pair of external
fuel tanks. As for Cheetah, by denying DreamStar a long- range cruise
capability once again, it had already won a considerable victory.

 
          
Maraklov
found it hard to believe.
Cheetah?
Cheetah was
here?
How was that
possible?
Who was flying it?

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
“Got
him,” Marcia said. “Brief airborne search radar at
one o’clock
position. Hot damn. This time the Russians
were telling the truth.”

 
          
McLanahan
hit the voice-command switch: “Arm, missiles, arm, cannon.”

 
          
“Warning, all weapons armed, select safe to
safe all weapons. ”

           
“Weapon, select, radar, missile.”
The computer repeated the command, and on the weapon-status display one of the
four radar-guided AIM-120C Scorpion missiles on the fuselage stations was
highlighted.

 
          
“Radar,
mode, air, range, maximum. Radar on.” The attack radar came on, showing no air
targets within one hundred miles.

           
“Check your radar,” Marcia said.
“You’ve been transmitting for twenty seconds at full power.”

 
          
“I
know,” McLanahan said. “I want him to know we’re here.”

 
          
“Sir,”
Preston
said, “he doesn’t need any of
our
help to hose us.”

 
          
“The
smart thing for him to do would have been to land,” McLanahan said. “If I was
close to my destination I’d hightail it over there and hide and not risk an air-to-air
engagement. But if I look inviting enough for him, maybe he’ll come up and
fight.”

 
          
“Don’t
take unnecessary chances,” Marcia said. “You might flush him out, sure, but
then you have to deal with him on your tail. Don’t be so anxious to mix it up with
him. The fight will happen.”

 
          
He
smiled. Her words in his helmet sounded a lot like J. C. Powell. Powell had
been a skilled flight instructor, with seemingly infinite patience in spite of
some of the stupid mistakes McLanahan would make—Marcia Preston seemed a lot
like him.

 
          
“Radar,
standby,” he commanded. “Thanks, Marcia.”

 
          
“Electronic
jammers are on,” she reported. “Keep your power up. Remember, you’re the power
fighter, he’s the angles fighter. He might be able to move like greased
lightning but you have the speed and the power... You’ve been too long on this
constant heading, too,” she said. “Give me a few clearing turns. Let’s take a
look—
bandit,
three o'clock
,
low. Break right
7”

 
          
He
slammed the stick hard right. Cheetah executed a hard right full roll, then
another half-roll until he could regain control. When his eyes were adjusted
after the spin, he saw DreamStar headed right at him, less than a hundred yards
away, with its nose high in the air but tracking Cheetah’s every move as if the
two were mechanically linked. And in a way they were, now in more ways than one
... He saw DreamStar’s nose light up as he fired his cannon.

 
          
McLanahan
pushed the stick full forward, sending Cheetah in a screaming dive. He released
the back pressure almost immediately, but Cheetah wasn’t pulling out.

 
          
“Pull
up,"
he heard
Preston
yell. He hauled back on the stick. It did
not move—it was as if Cheetah’s controls were locked, which made McLanahan push
or pull harder each time. He realized that was the reason for the steep
dive—the rigid side-stick control had no play, which automatically made him
push even harder to try to move it. He zoomed Cheetah up into a climb, gaining
two thousand feet in altitude but losing two hundred knots of precious air
speed. Finally he leveled off and took a deep breath, the first one he
remembered taking since the attack began.

 
          
“He’s
right above us, still at ten thousand feet,”
Preston
said. “Be careful dogfighting with this
guy. He knew exactly which way we were going. Keep your speed up. That’s your
advantage.”

 
          
He
took a look at DreamStar’s position once more. “I’m going for a shot. Hang on.”
He pulled back on the stick and aimed the nose at DreamStar, then waited for
the radar-lock- on tone. When he heard it he moved his right thumb over to the
missile-launch button and pressed.

 
          
“
Warning
,
min range inhibit
, ” the computer announced. The AIM-120C Scorpion
was too close to its target to arm its warhead, so the computer automatically
overrode the launch command.

 
          
McLanahan
slipped his right index finger down onto the cannon trigger, but just as he
squeezed, DreamStar turned as if doing a pirouette in mid-air and dived so fast
and so sharply that it virtually disappeared from sight.

 
          
“I
see him,”
Preston
said, grasping the back of her ejection
seat to turn herself around so she could watch DreamStar. “Four . . . five ...
six o’clock
, he’s coming around on us. God, I’ve never
seen a plane
move
so fast.”

 
          
Suddenly
McLanahan and
Preston
felt
a banging and shuddering sound throughout Cheetah, as if a giant hand had
grabbed the F-i5’s entire tail section, held it fast and started shaking it
back and forth. The laser-projection screen reported a half-dozen faults.
“Right rudder actuator out,” he said. “Right radar warning receiver and ECM
antennas—looks like he shot off our right rudder.”

 
          
“Fox
Four, at your
six o’clock
,”
they heard on the radio. It was a cold, monotonous, mechanical voice, as eerie
as listening to stranger’s faraway voices in a dark cave.

 
          
“What
the hell is that?”
Preston
asked.

 
          
“It’s
his,” he told her. “His voice is computer-synthesized.”

 
          
“He’s
right behind us, right between our tails.”

 
          
“Who
is in command of Cheetah?” the eerie voice said on the
GUARD
channel. “McLanahan? Elliott?”

 
          
Before
McLanahan could reply,
Preston
called out, “He’s right beside us—”

 
          
Patrick
snapped his head around. DreamStar was precisely on Cheetah’s right wing,
flying in perfect formation. At first, a completely disoriented feeling came
over him—this was like it always had been, Cheetah in the lead, DreamStar on
the wing. They had flown like this for months, talking over a maneuver, doing
the maneuver, then forming up as they repositioned themselves, critiqued the
previous maneuver’s results and talked over the next one. But this wasn’t
Dreamland, and that wasn’t Ken James.

 
          
“Marcia,
there’s a satellite transceiver unit on your right rear panel. Ever use one
before?”

 
          
“Yes,
we have a larger version in the NSC office.”

 
          
“Send
a clear-text message to Storm Control and to the Joint Chiefs about our
location. Tell them we found DreamStar in
Costa Rica
.” On the emergency radio frequency he said,
“Maraklov, I want you to land. I’ve been in contact with the Russian
authorities. What you’re doing isn’t authorized even by your government. You’ve
got the
U.S.
and the
USSR
both wanting your head on a platter. Give it up.”

 
          
“Colonel
McLanahan, I will never give up DreamStar,” Maraklov replied. “I am ordering
you to withdraw across the border immediately. Otherwise I will destroy Cheetah
piece by piece before I put the final missile into her. Comply immediately.”

 
          
“Maraklov,
there’s no place you can run. The KGB knows where your landing base in
Costa Rica
is, and pretty soon we’ll know it too.”

 
          
As
he watched, DreamStar began to slip aft. “Patrick, he’s moving behind us
again,”
Preston
called out.

 
          
This
was it, Patrick thought. Ken James is going to shoot me out of the sky. He had
no place to run. DreamStar already had an attack planned for every climb,
descent and turn imaginable ... It was time to act . . .

 
          
No.
J. C. Powell’s words came back full
force ... DreamStar does not play defense. Act unpredictably, force her into a
defensive situation and take advantage of its programming deficiency to try to
turn the tables—

 
          
The
computerized voice of the ANTARES computer cut in: “You have been warned,
Colonel McLanahan. This is your last chance. I will open fire if you—”

 
          
He
did not wait for the rest of Maraklov’s warning. He yanked the throttles to
idle. On the throttle-quadrant on the left side-panel, a large guarded switch
read
REVERSE.
McLanahan flicked the
guard away, selected full-reverse thrust on the two-dimension vectored-thrust
nozzles and cut in full military power. The rectangular engine-exhaust nozzles
reduced down to their smallest size, and steerable exhaust louvers over and
underneath the engines opened, blowing the engine exhaust toward the nose. As
the thrust came back to full power, Cheetah’s airspeed was cut in half in a
matter of seconds.

 
          
Cheetah’s
steel and titanium airframe shrieked, and the computerized stall and airframe
overstress warning messages blasted in their helmets. McLanahan’s and
Preston
’s bodies were thrown forward against their
shoulder harnesses. Struggling against the G-forces, he waited until he was
abeam DreamStar again, then yanked the control stick over, and rolled right
into DreamStar . . .