Day of the Cheetah

Brooks Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas

McLanahan was awakened from a fitful sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder. “Colonel McLanahan? Colonel?”

It was Wendy’s doctor. His face looked weary. Patrick’s heart began to race and he leapt to his feet. A nurse was removing the plastic airway in Wendy’s throat, and aides were wheeling in a gurney. “Wendy …?”

The doctor immediately held up his hands. “She’s all right, Colonel, at least for the time being.” He paused, referring to a chart he had brought with him. “She has some extensive damage in her lung tissues … pneumonectomy may be necessary. I doubt we can wait any longer.—”

Patrick watched as the orderlies moved his wife onto the gurney and began attaching a portable respirator. “How long will it be?”

“Several hours. I suggest you go home and get some rest. We won’t know until morning.”

“Call if there’s any news.”

“I will.” The doctor followed Wendy’s gurney and the technicians out of the intensive care unit.

It had been an exhausting two-day vigil over Wendy’s bedside, waiting to see if she would ever regain consciousness. He wandered in a near-daze out of intensive care and down the silent corridor toward the exit.

Usually victims of an airplane crash were assumed to be dead — the human body was simply, not designed to survive the crushing force of a plane crash. The doctors and nurses, although hard-working and very professional, carried out their duties as if they were demonstrating to the victim’s family that the Air Force was doing everything possible, while trying to steel the family into accepting the worst. It was evident in the damned attending physician. He seemed more concerned with making the family comfortable than with saving Wendy’s life-

McLanahan stopped dead in the hallway. He realized that he had been walking very fast down the middle of the corridor, storming past patients and nurses, his fists tight-clenched. Get a grip, McLanahan, he told himself as he stepped aside and slowed his pace through the corridor. This is no time to go bananas.

As he passed an open doorway on his way out to the parking lot he heard the words “Air Force” from the room’s television set. He stopped outside the door to listen:

“… today would not comment on reports from a Mexican news service that U.S. Air Force jets were shot down by Russian fighters today in the Caribbean Sea south of Cuba. Pentagon officials will only confirm that American military planes were in the area on routine training missions, and that those aircraft were harassed by Soviet, Cuban and Nicaraguan military aircraft. Air Force officials say the aircraft were part of a month-long exercise called Tropical Thunder, an annual joint U.S.-Central American military exercise …”

McLanahan turned away to look for a telephone. “Tropical Thunder” was the name of a joint U.S.-Latin American military exercise, but it rarely involved more than a few dozen Marines and a few transports, and it was usually conducted in the United States or Panama. This had to have something to do with DreamStar.

He found a telephone, and got the base operator, who dialed the command post number at Dreamland.

“Command Post, Captain Valentine.”

“Kurt, this is Colonel McLanahan—”

“Yes, sir,” Valentine, the senior controller at HAWC interrupted, “General Elliott is expecting your call. Can you stand by, sir?”

“Yes; this is not a secure line.”

“Understand. Stand by.” He heard clicks and digital dial tones in the background; then a voice said, “Barrier, Charlie one go ahead. Over.”

The HAWC command post had hooked him into a UHF or satellite phone patch with some ship or aircraft. McLanahan considered using his Dreamland call sign on the open frequency, but this guy wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He said: “Barrier, this is Colonel McLanahan. Connect me with General Elliott.”

“Stand by one, sir.”

There was only a slight pause, then the booming voice of General Elliott came on. “Patrick, how’s Wendy?”

“Still critical, sir. They might be operating tonight.”

“You know we’re all thinking of her … How you doing?”

“Okay … I was watching the news and heard this story—”

“I know which one you mean,” Elliott interrupted. “We need to discuss it. If you feel up to it, make your way to the electronic security command post at Kelly. I’ll leave instructions on how you can contact me directly.”

“I’ll get out there as soon—”

“Listen, Patrick. You don’t have to do this. If you think you shouldn’t leave—”

“I won’t know anything more about Wendy for several hours; she’s stable now …”

Things were obviously happening fast, he thought. There was no telling what sort of aircraft Elliott was in — it was very possible for him to be in some emergency airborne command post, much like his former Strategic Air Command position in the Airborne Command and Control Squadron, ready to take charge of a wide array of military forces. He was probably right on the scene of whatever happened in the Caribbean earlier that day.

But should he leave Wendy now? If she could, she would tell him that even now, with DreamStar in enemy hands, he was still the key in the DreamStar program. At least his place was with the people trying to get DreamStar back, not wringing his hands and letting self-pity take over … “I’ll be there in a half hour, sir.”

“I’ll be waiting for your call. Barrier out.”

He hurried back to the ICU nurse’s station, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a number on it. When the duty nurse came over he gave her a number to call in case of any change in Wendy’s condition. “Tell the controller anything you have; this is my command post number, they’ll—”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re only allowed to contact you in person. We can’t leave any message in situations like—”

“Then get your supervisor over here. I’m tired of people around here telling me what I have to do or should do or can do. Do you follow me?”

The nurse reached over and took the slip of paper. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“Thank you. Remember, any news at all.”

Sebaco Airfield, Nicaragua

Maraklov woke up with the most crushing headache he had ever had — the pain this time so great that the slightest movement of his head or the least bit of light penetrating the room made everything spin. It was severe dehydration, as always. It was like a fierce case of cotton-mouth and hangover after an all-night drunk — the ANTARES interface soaked up vast amounts of water and essential minerals from his tissues to facilitate the computer-neuron connection, causing the sickness — except this was far far worse. This was the second time he had been taken unconscious from DreamStar’s cockpit — it was getting very unnerving. He decided not to rush things, but lay in bed quietly with his eyes closed and tried to will the pain away.

A few minutes later he heard voices and footsteps. They were talking in Russian. They did not try to knock before entering, but came right in. Maraklov decided to pretend to be asleep.

“So this is the great pilot?” one voice was saying.

“After today, who can tell?” the other said. “He is the only one who returns out of six aircraft — either he is very lucky or he let the others do the fighting for him.

“Check his arm; check the drip against your wristwatch: then administer ten c.c.’s of—” Maraklov could not understand the word—”if he is not conscious …”

Ten c.c.’s …? Maraklov experimentally flexed each arm and felt the stiff tubules and dull pain of an intravenous needle in his left arm. He quickly opened his eyes. There was a plastic bottle with clear liquid suspended over his head to his left. His left arm was taped onto a stiff plastic board, and an intravenous tube ran into a vein in the crook of his elbow. His eyes focused just in time to see a white jacketed man injecting something into his intravenous feeding tube with a hypodermic needle.

“Hey, Karl, he’s awake … “

With strength Maraklov thought he wasn’t capable of, he drew his legs up to his chest, swung around to his left, planted his feet on the white-coated man with the hypodermic and kicked out as hard as he could. The man stumbled back and crashed against the far wall, slipping to the floor.

“Easy, easy …” The other man threw himself over Maraklov and tried to pin his arms and legs down. Maraklov brought the thick edge of the plastic board down on his right temple. He was still struggling)but the blow had taken a lot of fight out of him. Maraklov sat up, forcing away the rush of dizziness, rolled away from the second attacker and struggled to his feet. When the entire room seemed to sway) Maraklov dropped to one knee and tried to steady himself.

Two arms suddenly reached around him from behind and pinned his arms to his sides. “O myenya, Ivan, I have him, get—”

Maraklov bent his head forward, then snapped it backward as hard as he could. He heard bone and cartilage splinter as the man’s nose took the full force of the blow. Still on one knee, Maraklov braced himself against the bed and shoved backward. The man landed hard on his back. Maraklov rolled away from him, giving him a chop to the throat. He found a chair, and held it between the second attacker and himself — using it as much for balance as for self-defense.

The second man was done. “Stoy, stoy, “ he said, holding up his hands. Maraklov had never seen him before.

Suddenly the door to his room opened and Musi Zaykov and two KGB Border Guards appeared, all with rifles trained on the three men. Musi was the first one in. She scanned the room, then: “Colonel Maraklov, are you all right?” She saw the blood seeping from his left arm, shouldered her rifle, turned to one of the guards. “Pazavetya vrachya. Skaryeye! Call a doctor. Be quick!” She went over to Maraklov, took a towel from the bed-stand and wrapped it around the point where the I.V. needle had come out.

“What happened, Colonel?”

“These men … never saw them before … shooting me up with something …”

Zaykov finished tightly wrapping Maraklov’s arm, then helped him back into bed. As he collapsed onto the pillow she checked the two men. The unconscious one was being checked over by one of the Border Guards.

“Karl Rodovnin,” the KGB soldier said. “He is badly hurt.” Zaykov turned toward the second man. “What are you doing in here, Boroschelvisch?”

“Administering an injection,” the orderly said. “We checked his intravenous needle and were administering his mineral solution into his drip meter when the guy goes berserk.”

“I’ve found the hypodermic, Lieutenant,” one of the guards said, holding the plastic syringe. “It’s still full and intact.”

“Take it and that bag of solution to the infirmary,” Zaykov ordered, pointing to the overturned plastic bag of clear liquid seeping onto the floor. “Have them analyze it. I want to know what’s in it. Boroschelvisch, you are under arrest. Take him and Rodovnin into custody.”

Zaykov turned back to Maraklov. She had not seen him in several days because he was involved in the preparations for taking the XF-34 to Cuba — and she had never expected to see him again when he left. But even in the brief time they had been apart, the changes in the man were frightening. He looked old, emaciated, pale skin stretched over cheekbones, hollow eyes, thinning hair. “Andrei … “

She could feel his body stiffen. He stared in shock at Zaykov. “Janet?”

Musi looked puzzled. Janet? The name was somehow familiar, and she scanned her memory trying to make the connection. Nothing. Perhaps someone Andrei knew in the United States … “Andrei, it’s Musi Zaykov.”

His tongue moved across cracked lips. Slowly, his eyes seemed to focus on her instead of some shadowy figure in the distance, and he now seemed to recognize the woman sitting beside him. “Musi …?”

“Yes, you will be all right.”

He seemed to relax, let himself fall limp against the pillow, his breath coming in shallow gasps. “Water.” Zaykov poured a glass of lukewarm water for him and held the glass as he drank. She soaked a towel and wiped sweat off his face and chest.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and saw those guys shooting something into the I.V. I guess I panicked.”

“I should say,” Zaykov said with a wry smile. “You almost killed Rodovnin. I am having the syringe and the intravenous solution analyzed, and Rodovnin and Boroschelvisch are in custody. The doctor will also tell us if he ordered an intravenous feeding for you. I wasn’t notified of it.”

He rolled painfully up out of bed, taking deep breaths, trying to force his equilibrium back to normal, then turned angrily to Zaykov. “I don’t want any more damned I.V.’s stuck into me.”

“The doctor obviously felt it was necessary, you are so dehydrated—”

“I said no more I.V.’s.” He got carefully to his feet and began to test the strength of his legs. She was shocked at the appearance of his body — he looked as if he had lost well over seven kilograms since she had first seen him. Ribs and joints protruded, and his muscles, once lean and powerful, looked stringy, weak. “My body recovers just fine with rest, vitamins and water,” he told her. “I’ve never needed intravenous fluids before.”

“And I have never seen you so thin before, Andrei. Perhaps the doctor was right—”

“I’m thin because the food around here is lousy. Hasn’t the KGB ever heard of steaks? The only protein around here is from chicken and beans. Back in Vegas you could get a twenty-ounce steak dinner for five bucks. You could eat like a pig for nothing …”

Maraklov paused, resting a hand on the bedstand. He half-turned to Musi. “Vegas,” he said shaking his head. “It seems like a century ago.” Actually it was only a few days.

“Las Vegas is not your life any more, Andrei. It never was.”

“Then what is my life? When do I get to live my life? When I arrive in the Soviet Union? 1 think we both know my life will be anything but mine back in Russia …”

Musi had seen this before but never believed it could happen to a man as gifted and professional as Colonel Andrei Maraklov. It was more than the sickness caused by that machine he flew. It was common among turncoats, traitors, double agents, informers, even hostages held for long periods of time who began to identify with their captors. The feeling of profound loneliness, aloneness, invades even the strongest men, the feeling that no one trusted you then, that no one really wanted or cared about you then. But Andrei Maraklov’s situation was very different. He had been a Soviet agent pretending to become an American — actually two Americans, as a boy and as a man. Now he had to leave that part of his life and revert back to a strange new world. It was supposed to be his world, but it was now as alien — in a way more so — as America was to the young Russian teenager so long ago.

As a young graduate of the Connecticut Academy years ago, deep-cover agent reorientation and surveillance had been one of Musi Zaykov’s first assignments. She had been trained in studying the men and women who had returned from deep-cover assignments, analyzing them emotionally, seeking out any lingering loyalties to their former lives or resentments toward their new ones. Although the personalities were always different, their emotional roller-coaster rides were not. She had hoped Andrei would be different, stronger, better balanced. She was wrong. Hopelessness, paranoia, anger, loneliness, guilt, even impotence — all common symptoms.

The intravenous solutions and injections would all check out; she was sure of that. They would find no trace of contamination, no evidence of conspiracy. Rodovnin and Boroschelvisch would check out as well.

Maraklov had already made complaints about the food — that was typical. He had also complained about the Soviet worker’s sloppiness and inefficiency, about shortcomings in the Soviet government, about his new military commanders, about his clothing, water and surroundings. Telling stories about his former environment, making comparisons, was also to be expected. Unfortunately, so was violence.

The instructors at the Connecticut Academy suggested that the closer one could get to the repatriated man or woman, the better the transition would be. Strong emotional ties often resulted — but they could be negative or positive emotions. The “handler” was often the target of the repatriated person’s rage as well as his or her love and trust. In this case it was easier to accept Maraklov’s love — she hoped that she would not have to bear his hate as well.

She had thought about the Connecticut Academy several times in just the past few minutes, while in the past few years she had hardly given that place even a passing thought. What was it about that place …?

“Andrei, please believe what I say,” Musi said, “your country wants you back. They need you back. You will be the guiding force of an entire new generation of soldiers and citizens. You will be honored and respected wherever you go. And it has nothing to do with that machine out there. Military secrets are the most transient of all. It will be your strength, your courage, your determination and your patriotism that make you a hero to our people, not that plane out there.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said, turning away from her. “They want me because of what I know, not because of what I’m supposed to be.”

“That’s only partly true,” she said. “Of course, the knowledge you possess is important, even vital to our national defense and security. Naturally, imparting that knowledge will be your primary function when you return. But your usefulness as a man and as a Russian will not end with that.” She moved toward him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I can prove it to you, Andrei.”

“How?”

“Come back with me. Right now. Leave the airplane here—” Maraklov spun around. “Leave it? Here?”

“You are killing yourself every time you fly it,” she said. “Look at yourself. It drains you like some kind of electronic parasite. It will kill you if you continue. Leave it. I can order a transport to take us to Moscow in the morning. Take whatever you want from the aircraft — its most vital computers, diagrams, memory tapes, whatever. Or take nothing. The aircraft is in the hands of the KGB. You have done your duty — now let them do theirs. Come back with me to Russia and I guarantee you, you will be treated like the national hero you are.”

He stared at her, apparently considering her words. Her message finally seemed to be getting through to him, she thought. He was finally beginning to believe her …

“So that’s it,” Maraklov said. “You don’t think I can deliver. That’s it, isn’t it? The Politburo doesn’t think I can deliver DreamStar—”

“No, Andrei, that is not—”

“They don’t want me flying DreamStar any more,” he continued angrily. “They never did. I delivered it. They think they can debrief me and get rid of me. Now you want me to go back to Russia immediately. Bring him back before he snaps, is that what they said? Pick his brain before he freaks. Is that it?”

“Of course not—”

“Lady, I am the only hope of getting that bird out of here in one piece. They don’t have a chance without me.”

“I know that, Andrei,” she said. “If they want to get the fighter out of Nicaragua, must fly it. But there is a very good possibility that they will not want to fly the aircraft out of Nicaragua.”

“Not fly it out of Nicaragua …?”

“Andrei, our government tried to make a deal with the Americans for the return of their fighter. They told the Americans they would turn the plane over to them in five days. The same day they concluded that agreement we were caught trying to fly the plane to Cuba. The Americans no longer believe us. You’ve said it yourself — we can’t defend ourselves here. If the U.S. mounts an attack) they’ll destroy this base. It would seem the only way we can save ourselves is to turn the fighter over to them.”

“Like hell … “ He recalled he’d momentarily considered it himself, but only in his bitterness about what probably waited for him back “home.” But he could never seriously go through with that … “Do you know what I’ve done? Do you realize what I’ve gone through to get that aircraft here? I was the top pilot in the United States Air Force’s most top-secret research center. In ten years I could have been running the place. I sacrificed it to protect and deliver this aircraft and I will never surrender it …”

He went to the closet, found a fresh flight suit and began pulling it on. “I’ll talk to the general — hell, I’ll talk to Moscow. I doubt that the Americans will attack this base. But if they dot we can move DreamStar to another location until the attack is over. Unless the U.S. declares war, they won’t threaten the peace in Central America by bombing a base, even over this fighter. And they’re not going to declare war.” Maraklov pulled on a pair of boots and left his room.

Zaykov remained there for several minutes. The strain, she decided, was getting to him. Even more than before, the fighter was his personal possession, more than the U.S.’s or the USSR’s, and he was determined to ignore official orders and political realities and do with the fighter as he thought best. The signs of paranoia were stronger as well. She’d never thought he’d agree to leave DreamStar in Nicaragua, but at the very least she thought her words would comfort him if not altogether reassure him. It had had the opposite effect. He clearly now believed that the Soviet military would discard him like a spent shell casing after his mission was completed. (She did not consider the likelihood that he might be right …)

She had to try to convince him to trust his countrymen. That was now more important than ever. With the threat of American retaliation hanging over them, a battle-fatigued and alienated mind of Colonel Maraklov could mean disaster for himself, the mission and all Soviet personnel in Nicaragua.

He had to be brought back to the fold — or he had to be eliminated.

Maraklov went to the command post, where he found General Tret’yak in his office sitting in front of a computer terminal, staring at a half-filled screen. “I need to talk to you, General.”

Tret’yak looked up, motioned to a chair. Maraklov ignored it. “I am composing a detailed report on this morning’s incident,” Tret’yak said in a distracted tone. “Five aircraft lost. Watching that Ilyushin go in — I have never felt so helpless—”

“Sir, we have to discuss the XF-34 fighter,” Maraklov interrupted. “It’s not secure here. I recommend it be moved as soon as possible to a secret location and prepared for another flight to the Soviet Union as soon as possible.”

Tret’yak stared at the screen for a few moments; then, to Maraklov’s surprise, began typing again. “Colonel Maraklov, personally, at this moment, I don’t care what happens to our fighter,” he said without looking up from his work. “I have lost seven men and five aircraft today — that is more men and more equipment than I have lost in four years as a squadron commander in Afghanistan. I will certainly lose my command and possibly my pension. The safety and security of your wondrous aircraft is out of my hands. I have no more resources to defend it with.”

He reached over to a stack of papers, selected one and tossed it to Maraklov without looking up from the computer screen. “Here are your orders, transmitted by the chief of the KGB. You are authorized to take any actions necessary to protect the aircraft. Authorization has already been obtained to allow you access to Sandino Airport in Managua, Aeroflot hangar number twelve, and Puerto Cabezas Airport, main transient hangar. You will take weapons with you. I have already ordered my men to load Lluyka tanks, ammunition and missiles on your fighter — we suddenly seem to have plenty to spare. It’s your responsibility now.”

Maraklov picked up the message. It was true — he had been given almost unlimited authority to protect DreamStar from destruction until the chief of the KGB, Kalinin, could consult with the Soviet Kollegiya. Trucks, trains, ships, tankers, weapons, hangars, men, money — anything he felt was necessary, so long as DreamStar was safe. It was an exciting prospect, but he realized that if he failed, the Kollegiya would demand repayment — and not in money.

Maraklov almost felt sorry for the man — he had, in effect, just been relieved of command because of something he had no control over. “I understand, sir, spasiba—”

“Get out, Colonel,” Tret’yak said. “You have everything you need.”

“I want to ask your opinion, sir,” Maraklov said quickly, “about where you recommend I take Zavtra. “

The old fighter pilot looked up from his work. “You want my opinion?”

Maraklov saw the old glimmer in his eyes, at least something of the fire he’d noted when they’d met that day he arrived at Sebaco. Tret’yak wanted a piece of the action, no matter what. “I’m glad you asked, because I have given it some thought.” Tret’yak motioned to a chair, then poured a tall glass of ice water for Maraklov. “I am very, very glad you asked.”

Washington, D.C

President Taylor cursed, his New England accent, rarely heard after years in Washington, leaking through.

The full National Security Council had been summoned for an early-evening meeting at the White House conference room. They had just been briefed on DreamStar by General Elliott via two-way satellite videophone from the E-5 AWACS plane, in which he was still orbiting over the Cayman Islands. The President turned his face away from his advisers at the conference table, his jaw tight. “They just went ahead and lied to me.”

“According to Ambassador Vilizherchev, the military detachment in Nicaragua acted on their own without clearing it with Moscow,” Secretary of State Danahall said. “Vilizherchev insists there was no intention of deceiving us.”

“I don’t care what he insists. For starters, I want Vilizherchev’s ticket pulled — he’s persona non grata. And I want to make sure that the press knows he’s not being ‘recalled to confer with his government’ or any such bull — I want them to know that I’m kicking him out.”

“Do you want the press to know why?” Danahall asked.

“Because he lied to me, he lied to this government.” He pointed a finger at Danahall. “You don’t need to go into details.” Danahall shook his head as the President turned back to the image of Elliott on the three-sided monitor set up in the center of the conference table. Yes, Danahall thought, the President needed to go into detail for something as serious as kicking out an ambassador, especially the ambassador from the Soviet Union.

“So we definitely know that the XF-34 was flown back to Nicaragua, back to this Sebaco airfield?” the President asked Elliott.

“Positively, sir,” Elliott radioed back. “We’ve had continuous AWACS radar coverage of Sebaco since the XF-34 withdrew. It has definitely landed at Sebaco, and so far no aircraft have departed or arrived at Sebaco except for two MiG fighters from Managua that had tried to chase our AWACS plane away from Nicaragua. Our Falcons convinced him that it was all right for us to stay. We’ve been keeping watch on Sebaco via our AWACS plane, by satellite surveillance, and by sketchy reports from covert operatives in Nicaragua when possible.”

“But that doesn’t mean they can’t move it again,” William Stuart said testily. “It’s still a no-win operation, Elliott. So you caught the Russians trying to move the thing. They’re still not going to give it back until they’re good and ready—”

“We can stop them from moving that aircraft out of Nicaragua,” Elliott said, “if we act fast enough.”

“Is it true, General,” the President asked, “that we can’t detect them if they move it out of Sebaco?”

“I’m afraid so, sir. We have satellite overflights every ninety minutes to scan the base, and our radar plane can track anything in the sky. Our agents in the field are keeping watch on the area surrounding Sebaco, but the Russians have stepped up security around that base and our agents can’t get too close. There are gaps … But we don’t have to know the XF-34’s exact location,” Elliott added, readjusting his headset. “We know they have it — we don’t need to know anything else—”

“You’re recommending that we bomb Sebaco, regardless of whether we know that fighter is there or not?”

“Yes, sir, I am. It would help if the plane were returned to its hangar where it was first spotted, but there’s not too much chance of that. I’d expect them to hide it in the jungle or transport it to Sandino Airport, where we’d be less inclined to attack—”

“ ‘Less inclined’ is right, General,” Stuart said. “We will not attack a civilian airfield.”

“Sandino is a military airfield, sir. The Nicaraguans don’t operate any civilian airfields. Sandino is operated by the military but accepts civilian traffic. A surgical strike—”

“We’re getting off the point, General,” the President said. “I’ll end this right now — we will not attack Sandino Airport. It may in fact be a military airfield, but it is considered a civilian airfield. If the Soviets ship it to Sandino, then it’s just another step out of our reach.”

“Yes, sir,” Elliott said. “Sebaco is our target in any case. Our objective is to send a message that we don’t accept our fighter being stolen, our people killed and our so-called agreement being broken.”

For a brief moment the President thought about the upcoming election, the scrutiny he was under already, the criticism he could expect when the country learned that he had mounted an attack against Nicaragua. But Elliott’s carefully phrased statement seemed the bottom line — the Soviets had been banking on this election year to get away with killing American servicemen and stealing a multi-million-dollar aircraft …

“Let’s send that message, General Elliott,” the President ordered, and said a silent prayer.

Moscow, USSR

The General Secretary, as always, began the emergency meeting of his senior advisers precisely on time. He was dressed in a business suit and tie, in spite of the early hour, and bestowed a disgusted look on any of his civilian or military advisers who arrived in rumpled suits or unpolished shoes or who did not shave. The man set high standards for himself, and he expected each of those around him to measure up to the same standards. And, contrary to much of the rest of the world, Sunday was still a day of work in the Kremlin.

The General Secretary got right to business. He turned to his foreign minister, interlaced his fingers on his desk. “Comrade Tovorin, Vilizherchev has been expelled from the United States. Why?”

Tovorin looked anxiously at Kalinin, then cleared his throat. “I had intended to brief you this morning on Vilizherchev, sir. This deals with the experimental aircraft taken by Comrade Kalinin’s agent in the United States. Vilizherchev was called to the White House and questioned about the fighter. He agreed to consult with you and the Kollegiya on the Americans’ demands for returning the aircraft. Comrade Kalinin, however, was unaware of this. He ordered his agent in Nicaragua, Colonel Maraklov, to fly the aircraft to Cuba. When the Americans learned this they expelled Vilizherchev—”

“Why wasn’t I notified of any of this, Kalinin?”

“Vilizherchev met with the President very early Saturday morning, our time,” Kalinin said quickly. “The operation to fly the fighter from Nicaragua to Cuba began only a few hours after that meeting. You were in Leningrad for the day, sir — there was no time to consult you—”

“There was ample time to consult with me. Perhaps you chose not to consult me?”

“I didn’t wish to intrude on your holiday, sir.”

“Very considerate of you, Kalinin. Did you authorize any agreements with the American government yesterday morning?”

“No, sir,” Kalinin lied. “Vilizherchev consulted with me because the fighter was in our hands. I advised him to wait for a reply from Moscow before proceeding further.”

“The order expelling Vilizherchev says that he lied to the American President and gave assurances to the Americans that were not honored. Did Vilizherchev do these things?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Kalinin said, “but I doubt it. Sergei Vilizherchev is one of the most loyal and trusted of your advisers. More likely, the Americans are angry about their fighter and expelled Sergei in protest.”

“I want Vilizherchev to report to me immediately after he arrives,” the General Secretary said.

“Yes, sir.” Tovorin was relieved that the questioning on that score was over, at least for the moment.

“We lost five aircraft over the Caribbean yesterday,” the General Secretary said, “including a one-billion-ruble airborne-warning-and-control aircraft, of which we only have thirty. We have two pilots dead, two captured by the Americans, and four men from the Ilyushin transport seriously injured.” He never ranted or raved, never seemed to get too upset or angry — but the deep, resonant voice, the fixated stare that seemed to bore a hole right into your skull, the hawklike eyebrows, the knotted fists — all told their story.

He turned on Kalinin. “Your mission to bring this American super-fighter to Russia is becoming very expensive, Kalinin.”

“Our fighters were outnumbered four to six,” Kalinin said, “and we shot down four of their fighters and forced the other two to retreat. The XF-34 fighter shot down one and crippled another. If the XF-34 hadn’t been carrying long-range fuel tanks, sir, it could have destroyed all six American fighters — it is that superior, sir.”

“It’s no use to us, Kalinin, if we must kill off half our air force to get it … What’s the status of the project? Can you get this fighter to Russia in one piece without starting World War Three?”

“Yes, sir. We will make another attempt to fly the aircraft intact out of Nicaragua. Colonel Maraklov, the pilot, now believes it would be safer to fly it in a circuitous route to Moscow rather than trying to fly it first to Cuba. He tried that. It was a good plan … Cuba is more stable than Nicaragua, but—”

“When will he make the attempt?”

“Tonight, sir.” Kalinin stood and walked to a large chart of the region. “I have arranged a diversion — a large formation of aircraft flying from Nicaragua to Cuba, much the same as the first attempted convoy to Cuba. This force will directly challenge the Americans. At the same time, Maraklov and a small escort force will launch, stay clear of American radar sites in Panama and in the Lesser Antilles archipelago and out over the Atlantic Ocean; we can expect support if needed from Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, both of whom have been glad to accept large amounts of aid from our government in recent years, as you know. We have arranged tanker and fighter support for Maraklov over the Atlantic, well away from commercial air-traffic routes or ground-based radar sites. The force will continue north, steering well clear of known or detected naval vessels. We can expect support from Mauritania and Algeria and we can land for crew rest and replenishment in Algiers in northern Algeria or Tamanrasset in southern Algeria. After that I believe it will not be too difficult to penetrate the relatively weak NATO southern flank or the eastern Mediterranean area and recover into Tbilisi or Odessa.”

The General Secretary appeared to be only half listening. “You seem to be very confident of success, Kalinin. You were confident about the ease at which you would get this aircraft to Cuba. Yet this aircraft is still in Nicaragua.”

“I realize that this will be a difficult mission,” Kalinin said. “Maraklov must fly his aircraft nine thousand kilometers, prepared at any moment to defend himself against the Americans’ most advanced fighters, both land- and sea-based. Yet this is the fighter that can do it, sir. This XF-34 fighter has already fought its way out of the United States and survived a large coordinated assault against it. We must have this aircraft. Much of the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States depends on it.”

“I suspect you are overstating the case, Kalinin” … although for you it is crucial, he added to himself … “We have already lost five aircraft and had our ambassador declared non grata. I can’t accept much more.”

He turned away from Kalinin, considering the options … It would be a coup for both of them, he thought, if the fighter could be brought to Russia. And they would give it back, but only after all possible information on the machine was obtained and a suitable trade arranged.

Should the mission fail, Kalinin, his chief rival for power, would be ousted, an irritating memory, taking with him the blame for the incident. Should Kalinin succeed, his strength and authority in the government would surely increase, but enough for a takeover? He doubted it, but he would need to be very, very vigilant …

“What will you require?” the General Secretary asked.

“Because of the time involved, sir, very little,” Kalinin said. “Authorization for another Ilyushin-76 radar plane, another Il-76 tanker aircraft, six MiG-29 aircraft with our pilots from Cuba, and landing rights and defense arrangements with Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritania, Algeria, Libya and Syria. These forces to be placed under my authority for the next seventy-two hours.”

The General Secretary shook his head. “ ‘Very little,’ you say, Kalinin?” He turned to the chief of staff. “Marshal Cherkov, can these be provided in so short a time?”

Marshal Boris Cherkov, one of the oldest members of the General Secretary’s senior staff, pondered the question so long and without any apparent reaction that for a moment Kalinin and some of the others thought he was asleep. Then: “I trust young Comrade Kalinin has investigated the source of the Ilyushin aircraft and the fighters? From Cuba, I understand?”

“Yes, sir. There are a total of two Il-76 radar planes at Havana, four Il-76 tankers and twenty-one MiG-29 fighter aircraft.”

Cherkov nodded. “It seems he has his aircraft. Obtaining landing rights from any of these nations mentioned will not be a problem. Obtaining mutual-defense operations will be virtually impossible without days of precise planning — half the government of Trinidad and Tobago is on holiday, and it sometimes takes a whole day for our embassy to contact anyone in Mauritania’s government. Besides, none of these nations has any appreciable air or naval forces. I would not expect any resistance to your operation from these nations, but neither would I expect any assistance.”

Kalinin nodded. He had hoped these governments would exclude American fighters from their airspace while allowing Russian fighters to land, but obviously that wasn’t to be. “Never mind,” he said. “Permission to cross their airspace and landing rights for our jets will be enough.”

“As for the radar aircraft, tanker and fighters,” Cherkov went on, “that must be your decision. The forces are available. Of course, if the Americans launch some sort of attack against Cuba in retaliation, then those aircraft would be needed for defense …”

Kalinin was pleased. He had thought Cherkov, a close ally of the General Secretary, was going to raise a lot more problems …

“However,” Cherkov said, as if on cue, “I feel I must object to this operation.” The bastard did not let him down, Kalinin thought grimly.

It is extremely dangerous to provoke the Americans in their own ‘backyard.’ Remember the Cuban missile crisis and that fool Khrushchev. We could invite retaliation and open conflict in an area of the world where we are hardly dominant—”

“The U.S. is in no position to retaliate,” Kalinin said angrily. “If I had decided to put the aircraft on an ocean-going vessel or even a transport plane, I will admit the danger of attack in those cases would be high. If we were holding the fighter in place for some sort of trade, there would be danger of attack by the Americans. But the fighter is a moving target. The Americans will not blindly lash out and attack unless they know precisely where the aircraft is located. Besides, they are not in good standing with most of Latin America …”

Cherkov’s hands shook with emphasis. “Nicaragua is hardly an ideal safe haven. Your base at Sebaco is a prime target — you must feel the same way, judging by the haste with which you want to fly the fighter out of there. I expect Sebaco will come under attack. It is an isolated base, obviously not part of the Nicaraguan armed forces, and now nearly unprotected. The President can call it a ‘communist-terrorist headquarters,’ a rallying cry for most Americans. If I were Secretary Stuart or General Kane, I would order an attack on Sebaco immediately.”

“Then it is even more urgent that the fighter be moved without delay,” Kalinin said. “It’s too late for talking about what should have been done. I have instructed Colonel Maraklov, the XF-34’s pilot, to do everything in his power to see that the aircraft survives. I want to order him to fly the aircraft to the Soviet Union, and I want to provide him with all available military support. If we hesitate, we are, as you say, inviting defeat. If we act now, we can be successful …”

There was silence around the conference table. The General Secretary stared at Kalinin, and from across the table Kalinin forced himself to return the General Secretary’s icy stare with one as determined and convincing as he could manage. He was sure that the General Secretary was trying to think days and weeks ahead, assessing possible consequences of defeat and failure for both of them. But he also realized that the General Secretary really had no choice — to back away from this operation now, when the Americans had given them such a lengthy chance to recover and regroup, would show indecision and timidness. Over time that lack of initiative could be translated into political weakness, which would mean a further loosening of his tenuous grasp on the reins of power.

“Very well,” the General Secretary said, “you are authorized to requisition and command the forces you have outlined to bring this aircraft home. But understand, I am not convinced that this one fighter is worth a major confrontation with the U.S., no matter how advanced it may be. Be prepared to terminate your operation and obey the orders of the Kollegiya should you be so ordered. Am I clearly understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Kalinin said automatically. The General Secretary had relented, as Kalinin expected. His caveat was pro forma, face-saving.

Vladimir Kalinin’s rise to power had begun.

Over the Caribbean Sea

“Tegucigalpa Control, Sun Devil Three-Two is with you at flight level one-eight zero, position one-zero — zero nautical miles north of La Cieba. Over.”

The Honduran military radar operator checked his display and quickly located the data block, then the primary radar return belonging to the American aircraft one hundred miles north of the military airbase on the north coast of Honduras. He crosschecked the information with the newcomer’s flight plan. The aircraft, he knew from the flight plan, was a modified McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 belonging to the U.S. Air Force — that would explain the very large radar return even at this distance.

Satisfied, he replied in thick Latino-accented English, “Sun Devil Three-Two, this is Tegucigalpa Control, radar contact. Clear to intercept and track airway Bravo eight-eight-one until overhead Goloson Airport, then follow airway alpha seven-five-forty to Toncontin International, maintain flight level one-eight-zero. Over.”

The copilot of the KC-10 Extender tanker from the 161st Air Refueling Group, the very same group unlucky enough to get involved with all these “questionable” (for which read technically illegal) missions into Central America, checked the clearance with his computer flight plan and nodded to his pilot — it was the clearance he had been expecting. “Sun Devil Three-Two, roger. Out.”

The pilot switched over to the scrambled number-two radio. “Storm Zero Two, we’re in contact with Tegucigalpa. Cleared on course.”

“Roger, Mike,” J. C. Powell replied. “Right on time.”

The KC-10’s copilot said, “You expected something else?”

McLanahan scanned outside Cheetah’s bubble canopy at the huge gray-green tanker, a massive, shadowy figure in the growing twilight. The tanker aircraft was on its third mission for him and J.C. in almost as many days — they had gotten to know each other very well during their videophone flight-planning sessions. Although Tegucigalpa and all the other Central American radar operators only knew of a single aircraft on this flight plan, there were actually two — McLanahan was borrowing the tactic the Russians had used the morning before to try to get DreamStar to Cuba. The two aircraft were sticking tightly together in order to merge their radar returns.

Cheetah was right on the tanker’s left wingtip. She was carrying two conformal FAST PACK fuel tanks for added range, and she was armed with four AIM-120 Scorpion missiles in semi-recessed wells along the underside of the fuselage, four AIM-132 infrared homing dogfighting missiles on wing pylons, and five hundred rounds of ammunition for the twenty-millimeter cannon. Cheetah also carried a combination infrared and laser seeker-scanner under the nose that could provide initial steering signals for the AIM-120 missiles without using any telltale emissions from the attack radar.

It was armed and ready for a preemptive strike against the KGB base at Sebaco. The mission was to retaliate against the theft of DreamStar and the Soviet reneging on the deal struck between Moscow and Washington. It was also to try to flush out DreamStar and engage it in one last aerial battle. Better a dead bird than in Soviet hands to copy …

But Cheetah was on this mission only if DreamStar or other high-performance fighters challenged the strike aircraft. The original plan proposed by General Elliott had Cheetah armed as both an air-to-air and air-to-ground fighter, but surprisingly J.C. had vetoed the idea — surprising because Powell rarely backed away from a challenge, and because he was an excellent air-to-mud pilot. He had argued that Cheetah would be too heavily loaded down if it had to carry any bulky iron bombs or complicated laser-infrared target designators. He recognized the real possibility that the Russians would use DreamStar to defend Sebaco against attack, and he wanted to be ready with all the power and maneuverability he could get. If DreamStar was going to launch, he wanted to be right there on top of him.

There was a surprise third party on the satellite conference call involved with planning the strike mission, a project director from HAWC. He had been silent most of the conversation, until J.C. had voiced his objections. Then he had stepped in, presenting his options and his estimates for success. In short order his proposals had been approved by General Elliott, and less than an hour later approved by the Secretary of the Air Force.

This fight had become personal — it was as if the President and the DOD had agreed to let the men and women of HAWC deal with the traitor from their own ranks, because that was how they thought of him — as Ken James, not a Soviet man named Maraklov. There were more concrete reasons, of course: The unit was cloaked in secrecy, with fewer persons involved who could alert the media or enemy agents; they commanded the most high-tech weapons in the American military arsenal; and, especially during the recent events, were able to generate a strike sortie faster than an active-duty military unit.

The two men in Cheetah’s cockpit were quiet. J.C. concentrated on maintaining close fingertip formation with the KC-10, and McLanahan checked and rechecked his equipment and watched the setting sun dipping behind the low Maya Mountains near the coast of Belize off the right side of the fighter. The Islas de la Bahia island chain was off to the left, with tiny lights twinkling in the growing Caribbean twilight. It was a pleasant, romantic sight — until the view of those tranquil islands was obscured by the row of AIM-132 missiles slung under Cheetah’s wings, the missile’s large foreplanes slicing the Isla de Roatan neatly in half.

“How are you doing back there, sir?” Powell asked, finally breaking the strained silence. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m okay.”

“Radio’s free. Want to call back to the command post again?”

“No, not right now.” Since leaving Dreamland earlier that afternoon he had made one UHF radio phone-patch back to HAWC’s command post to ask about Wendy. She was, they told him, undergoing laser surgery to remove areas of scarred and damaged tissue in her lungs. The last word he had gotten was that they were searching for possible donors for a single lung transplant. Only a few hundred of these transplants had been done in the United States in the past few years, and only a handful of recipients were still alive.

“She’ll be okay,” J.C. said.

Patrick said nothing.

Silence again as they approached the Honduras coastline and the tiny city of La Cieba came into view. Then J.C. asked, “You figure we’ll run into James up here?”

“You mean Maraklov.”

“Still can’t help thinking of him as Ken James.”

“By any other name he’s still a murderer. I don’t think of him as a Russian or an American or even as a person. I won’t have any trouble pulling the trigger on him.”

According to General Elliott’s plan, Cheetah was meant to go up against DreamStar, to engage with missiles from long range, close, engage at medium range with missiles, and if necessary close and engage with guns.

“Ken … Maraklov seems like he’s still on top of his game,” J.C. said. “He scared the hell out of those F-16 Air National Guard guys. Faked one with a missile shot, follows him in a horizontal climb, then hoses him while the F-16 descends on him. He busted up one other guy—”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

But that wasn’t altogether true — in reality, McLanahan was, in a way, fascinated by him. Not just because of the amazingly successful espionage operation that he had managed all these years, but because of what sort of person was out here. He was a Russian, a Soviet agent — he must have been worried about being captured every day, yet he not only successfully penetrated the most top-secret flight research lab in the U.S. but became the only pilot of the most advanced flying machine in the whole world. How anyone could keep calm and collected through all that without going crazy was unbelievable. Add on that he had to fly DreamStar itself — and in Maraklov’s case take it into battle, with no “knock it off” calls or prearranged attack scenarios, no “wait ten seconds then come and get us” stuff. And Maraklov had proved himself in battle, handily defeating two F-16 ADF interceptors … “How the hell does he do it?”

“He’s tuned into the ANTARES computer as if it was made especially for him,” J.C. replied immediately, as if he was thinking the very same thing as McLanahan. “It’s logical, though — if he’s a Russian mole like they say he is, he had to forget completely about being a Russian and transform himself into an American. It’s like he can ram-flush his own mind and fill it with whatever he wants. The same with ANTARES — he can empty his mind of everything and allow that machine to take over. I don’t know how he snaps out of it — he must keep back a bit of his brain, enough to remind himself that he’s a human being — sort of like leaving bread crumbs behind in a maze to help find your way out …”

“But how can a guy fight like that? I’ve flown lots of different high-performance fighters, including Cheetah’s simulator, and it takes every ounce of concentration I have just to keep the thing flying straight. How can a schizy guy like that fly one?”

“Practice helps,” J.C. said. “Sure, you’ve flown a lot of fighters — always with an instructor pilot and always in ideal day VFR conditions — but you don’t have many hours. Maraklov has got hundreds of hours in DreamStar. And let’s face it — the man is good. With or without DreamStar, he’s a top fighter pilot. I’m no psychologist, so I don’t know too much about his mental state, but just because you’re schizy doesn’t mean you can’t function normally or even above norm. Hell, they say most of us fighter pilots are schizoids anyway … But ANTARES is the key, Patrick. If you had a full-time, high-speed computer telling you what to do each and every second you were at the controls, you could fly any jet in the inventory. The problem you and I have is that we can’t interface with ANTARES. Maraklov is the opposite: he’s probably at a point where he can’t exist without ANTARES. He’s not whole unless he’s hooked up to that machine. When he’s not hooked up he’s less than himself. He’s probably more dangerous when he’s not hooked up. When he’s hooked into ANTARES he’s sort of at the mercy of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, no matter how far we’ve come with high-speed integrated circuits, micro-miniature computers and neural interfaces, there’s no unlimited amount of info you can take on board an aircraft. We call ANTARES artificial intelligence, and in a way it is, but the critical difference between my brain and ANTARES’ computer is that ANTARES can’t learn. And learning creates an unlimited pool of info that you rely on in combat. There’s a lot of it available on DreamStar, but it has a limit, and we know what the limit is. James — Maraklov — can call on his own experience and training to improve his own pool of information, but we’ve seen before that he doesn’t do that. He relies more and more on ANTARES to make crucial decisions for him. So his advantage can become a disadvantage for him, and that’s a one-up for me. On Cheetah I’ve got a lot of options available. Including ones I dream up or choose. He doesn’t—”

“But ANTARES has hundreds of options available,” McLanahan said, “and it can execute them much faster than you can—”

“ANTARES executes a maneuver based on what it figures out I’m doing, true,” J.C. said, “but he also makes moves based on the probability of what I’ll do in the future, based on what I do now. ANTARES is thinking ahead and maneuvering to counter or press the attack based on what it thinks I’ll do. But what if he’s thinking the wrong thing?”

“The chances of it computing the wrong thing are slim,” McLanahan said. “It computes dozens, sometimes hundreds of combinations to any situation—”

“But it can only execute one of them,” J.C. said. “The one it executes is based on current activity and probability — highly accurate mathematical statistics and historical averages but still chance, educated guesses.”

“So if you do something different, it recomputes on that move, executes the maneuver, and computes another dozen situations …”

“You got it. And when it stops and thinks — and I don’t care how fast it does it — I have some advantage. If it’s thinking instead of fighting that’s good for me.”

McLanahan’s head was pounding. “You’ve got a machine that can think and tract faster than a human being. A lot faster. How can you get the advantage over that?”

“Because of the way it’s programmed,” J.C. said.

“DreamStar is a fighter,” McLanahan said. “It’s been programmed to fight. Attack. It can compute a dozen different ways to attack every second. Where’s the advantage?”

“What would you do?” J.C. asked, “if You were chasing down a bogey at your twelve o’clock and you had the overtake on him but you both had a lot of smash built up? What would you do? Would you go max AB, firewall the throttle, close on the guy and attack?”

“I could, but it wouldn’t be smart.”

“Why?”

“Because if I had a lot of overtake, the bogey could reverse on me easier. Then I’d be on the defensive—”

“Exactly. DreamStar does not think like that. DreamStar has not been programmed to hang back, match speed and power, maintain spacing, look for an opening. DreamStar goes for the kill when the target is presented to it. It will always engage. If you’re ever in doubt about what it will do, it will attack. You can count on it. Remember our last flight test with DreamStar?”

“Sure. James almost pancaked into those buttes.”

“He did that because even in what we would call an unsafe situation, DreamStar’s computers will press the attack no matter what. If there’s the slightest opening, the tiniest chance for success, DreamStar will use it in its attack equation.”

“I wasn’t involved with the programming part of DreamStar’s computers,” McLanahan said, “but to me it doesn’t make sense. Isn’t defense as much a part of dogfighting as offense? Why wouldn’t DreamStar’s computer programmers teach it about defense?”

“Who knows? DreamStar was probably programmed by some computer weenie who never was in a cockpit. But then again, I suppose if you have the ultimate fighter, the most agile and fastest there is, it would be easy to ignore defense and concentrate on offense. But it can afford to ignore cut-and-run options because it has the speed and the agility to turn tiny mistakes into victories. Guys lose because they’re amazed by how fast it is. It’s not fast — you’re dead because you did exactly what DreamStar figured you would do, and it was right there waiting for you. Boom. Dead meat.”

“So if you make DreamStar play defense …”

“DreamStar does not play defense, Patrick,” J.C. said, pounding on the canopy sill to drive home his point. “The only defense maneuver programmed into that system is high-speed escape, and that’s only if the ANTARES interface is broken or damaged. As long as it’s fully functional, it never thinks defense. DreamStar is always thinking attack. Always. If you force it into a defensive role you know that DreamStar is thinking about how to attack in response. And when it’s thinking, you have the advantage. True, it may only be for a second or two, but during that time you have an advantage, and that’s when you have to take him out.”

“Sounds like you got this all figured out, J.C.”

“Hey, DreamStar’s a fantastic machine; you can’t beat it in technology or maneuverability — you have to think at a level where even ANTARES has a weakness. You fly unpredictable, fly in three dimensions, fly by instincts instead of by the book or by some computer. ANTARES has problems handling that …”

As the KC-10 began a shallow turn right toward Tegucigalpa in southern Honduras, J.C. gently yawed Cheetah around to follow. They had just crossed the north coast of Honduras directly over the Honduran Air Force base of La Cieba. Even though the Hondurans had only twenty-five aircraft, La Cieba was a large, modern, high-tech base — mostly because of the U.S. military, which used the base for “joint training missions,” and subsequently “assisted” with base improvements that virtually built an American air base at La Cieba. There were often more American planes at La Cieba than other aircraft in all of Honduras.

“Storm Two, Sun Devil Three-Two is ready for your final refueling any time,” the copilot aboard the KC-10 tanker reported. “Airspeed coming back. Cleared to pre-contact position.”

“Roger, Sun Devil,” J.C. replied. “Moving to pre-contact.” J.C. pulled the throttles back to eighty percent power and watched as the KC-10 moved slowly ahead. Cheetah would get one more refueling as they transited Honduras; then Sun Devil Three-Two would land as scheduled at Tegucigalpa and refuel, and Cheetah would continue on its strike-escort route.

The refueling went without a hitch. They stayed in contact position right up until the KC-10’s initial approach fix to Toncontin International Airport at Tegucigalpa, so Cheetah could fill up to full tanks right until the last possible minute — Cheetah had to complete its mission, escort the strike aircraft out of the danger area, then return to La Cieba and land. Every drop of gas was critical.

“Well, boys, you got another ten thousand pounds courtesy of the people of the great state of Arizona,” the pilot of the KC-10 radioed after he had started his approach to Tegucigalpa, “Take care, I don’t want to read about you in the papers.”

“Likewise,” J.C. replied. “We’ll see you in about three hours if we need you. Over.”

“We’ll be waiting and ready. Sun Devil out.”

The channel went dead. J.C. ordered the voice-command computer to reset the radios to the strike mission channelization, with the command radio on the strike-aircraft frequency and a scan on all UHF and VHF frequencies for ground-controlled intercept activity in Nicaragua. At the same time, Powell started a turn toward the east and a rapid descent to five-thousand feet, which would put him about a thousand feet over most of the lush tree-covered mountains of northwestern Nicaragua. They were skirting the northern Nicaragua border, staying deep within the Cordillera Entre Rios valley to avoid Nicaragua’s main surveillance radar site situated on top of a fifty-seven-hundred-foot mountain near Cuyali in the center of the country.

“Shouldn’t we have heard from them?” J.C. asked a few minutes later. He had fitted a night-vision visor over his eyes to help him pick out the rugged peaks and valleys surrounding them in the rapidly growing darkness.

“Few more minutes,” McLanahan told him. He had the satellite transceiver unit set on the strike frequency as briefed back at Dreamland; because of the high terrain all around them, UHF or VHF communications would be impossible. “Then all hell will break loose.”

It wasn’t like the old days, Major Kelvin Carter told himself. It was a damned sight better.

He was sitting in what could best be described as the inside of a computer surrounded by multi-function, multi-color computer monitors, LED readouts and synthesized voices. The cockpit windscreen undulated with laser-drawn images describing search radars, terrain and performance data. The big two-horned yoke and massive center-console throttle quadrant were gone, replaced by static force side-stick controls, a special control stick that did not move but sensed the amount of pressure being delivered and commanded the appropriate input to the flight controls, and electronic mini-throttles.

He was sitting in what probably was the most advanced electronic cockpit outside DreamStar’s — the cockpit on the upper deck of Dog Zero Two, the second experimental B-52 M-model Megafortress Plus.

She was a more potent weapon than her predecessor, Old Dog. Every possible system in the aircraft, from flight controls to navigation to weapons, was controlled by computer — and many of those systems could be activated or monitored by voice commands, helping to reduce workload even more. The Mega-fortress Plus had been virtually rebuilt from the spine up with advanced composite materials, even lighter and stronger than fibersteel.

But her most outstanding feature was her weapons fit: she had been redesigned to carry almost every missile or bomb in the Air Force inventory. In her role as a defense suppression “super escort” battleship, as on this mission, she carried enough weapons to equip a dozen tactical aircraft — and she could carry those weapons almost eight thousand miles without refueling.

For self-defense, the Megafortress Plus carried fifty aft-firing Stinger “air mine” missiles, which had a range of almost two miles and could be steered by the fire-control radar operated from the gunner’s position, and six AIM-120C Scorpion air-to-air missiles, three on each wing pylon, for defense against fighter attack. She also carried a wide array of electronic jammers and decoys to confuse or shut down enemy radars. Her terrain-following capability, where she could automatically fly any desired altitude above ground “hands off,” was also a valuable self-protection feature.

For destroying enemy radars and weapon sites, the Old Dog Two carried four AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow anti-radar drones, two on each wing external pylon, which would home in on enemy radars from long distances. These were planned for use against the four known fixed-radar defense sites along the flight route. For unexpected threats she carried six AGM-88 HARM High-speed Anti-Radar Missiles on a rotary launcher in the aft bomb bay, designed to destroy mobile anti-aircraft guns or missile sites.

For attacking the KGB airbase itself, she carried four AGM-130 Striker glide bombs in the forward bomb bay, which could be launched from as far as twelve miles away against the aircraft hangars or other high-value targets at Sebaco. To destroy runway, taxiways and parking ramp she carried two cluster-bomb dispenser drones on the rotary launcher in the aft bomb bay, small winged vehicles that would fly around a preprogrammed or designated spot and scatter (one hundred) twenty-pound bomblets over a wide area, cratering concrete and destroying aircraft or vehicles unlucky enough to be there at the time.

Twenty-two attack weapons, plus the fifty mini-rockets in the tail — the weapons on Old Dog Two could outfit four or five modern F-15 or F-11 fighter-bombers. The aged B-52 bomber — this particular airframe first rolled off the assembly line in 1963—had been given a new lease on life, ensuring its usefulness in a major combat role beyond the year 2000.

“One minute to start countermeasures,” the navigator, Captain Alicia Kellerman, reported. The call shook Carter out of his reverie. It was so easy to slip into a sort of hypnotic trance flying this beast — it was as quiet as an airliner and as comfortable as the leather recliner back in his own living room.

Carter checked the threat radar display projected onto his windscreen after first tearing his attention away from the sight of the iridescent dark green sea rushing past as they skimmed only a hundred feet above the Caribbean. A green dome not far in the distance signified their first electronic barrier, the surveillance and GCI radar at Puerto Cabezas, the large combined Soviet-Nicaraguan airbase on the Nicaraguan northeast coast. They were aiming right for the northern edge of the dome, but because of the interference from the sand dunes and marshes of Punta Gorda they were able to fly just under the radar coverage. But in less than sixty seconds they would lose the protection of even that low spit of land.

Carter hit the voice-command button on his control stick. “Set countermeasures release switches to consent,” he said in a slight Louisiana bayou accent, reaccented and measured to make it easier for the voice-command computer to understand his voice. It was a humorous problem back in the early years of the project, he recalled — he refused to believe he was the problem when the computer continually rejected his commands during testing.

“Pilot’s countermeasures release consent,” the computer confirmed. Then to warn the rest of the crew about the move, the computer came on shipwide interphone and announced, “Caution; pilot release consent.”

“Coming up on SCM point, crew,” Kellerman said.

“Caution; radar navigator release consent,” the computer said.

“You’re all a bit early,” the electronic-warfare officer, Captain Robert Atkins, said.

“If it hits the fan up here,” Carter said, watching the green radar sky slowly inching down on top of him, “I don’t want to be fumbling with switches.”

“Amen,” radar navigator Captain Paul Scott chimed in.

Just then Carter heard, “Caution; electronic warfare release consent. Warning; weapon release consent complete.” The last safety interlock belonging to Robert Atkins had been removed.

They were sixty miles from the coastline, about seventy-five miles northeast of Puerto Cabezas. This part of the mission was almost as crucial as the attack phase. For the next one hundred twenty miles until they reached the Cordillera Isabella mountains in north-central Nicaragua, they were vulnerable to attack — no mountains to hide in, only marshes and featureless lowlands — and they would be in range of the powerful search radar at Puerto Cabezas. Although the exact strength of the defenses was unknown they had been briefed to expect SA-10 air-defense missiles, MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighters to be operating in the no-man’s land before them.

But at least this sortie had been planned to challenge those defenses. They were not relying on air cover, nor were they taking advantage of overflying friendly territory. This mission was designed as much for effect as well as results — the idea that a large American strike aircraft could make it across Nicaragua and strike a heavily defended target was planned to demoralize and confuse as much as it was to destroy.

The green radar dome had almost touched them. “I show contact with that search radar any second,” Carter called out. “Clear all weapons for release. Station check and report by compartment when ready.”

Nancy Cheshire performed the pilot’s station check, choosing not to rely on the computer to check switch positions but doing the checks visually. She was the first female test pilot at HAWC and one of the first ever anywhere; and the public attention she had attracted three years earlier at the beginning of the Mega-fortress Plus program had threatened to undermine her goal to be the best pilot in the organization.

“Offense ready,” Scott reported.

“Defense ready,” Atkins responded.

“Station check complete; Kel, warning light coming on,” Nancy reported as she hit the EJECT press-to-test button. The last item on the list.

Carter looked at the small, red-haired woman for a moment, studying her face underneath her lightweight flyer’s helmet. “How you doing over there?” he asked cross-cockpit.

She looked back at him. “I’m scared to death, Kel.” But she sounded more angry than scared. “And why don’t you ask anyone else if they’re scared?”

“Because you’re my copilot,” Carter shot back. “That’s all. Hell, I never know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong …”

His attention was pulled away from his copilot as he watched the green dome descend over his aircraft like some unearthly fog. “Caution; search radar, ten o’clock,” the computer reported.

“I’ve got a second search radar, ten o’clock, estimated range sixty miles,” Atkins reported. “Search and height-finder … looks like our shoreline SA-10. Hasn’t found us yet, though.”

“Take it out, EW,” Carter said. “Jam the search radar — I don’t want to be tracked by anyone out here over water. Kory, send a warning message on the HAWC satellite net. Tell ‘em we’re coming.”

“Roger,” Master Sergeant Kory Karbayjal, the crew gunner and defense systems officer, replied, flipping down the SATCOM keyboard and punching commands to send the preformatted message out on the satellite channel.

“Kel?”

Carter turned to Cheshire.

“Thanks for asking,” she said, giving the control stick a slight shake.

Carter nodded, lowered his oxygen visor and checked his system. “Get on oxygen.” She raised her mask.

“Stand by for missile launch, crew,” Atkins said. “Radar programming complete. I need a hundred feet, pilot.”

“Rog.” Carter pulled back on the control stick, manually flying the Megafortress Plus a hundred feet higher. “Set.”

“Rainbow away,” Atkins called out.

The Rainbow was the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow air-to-ground missile, a subsonic winged drone aircraft with a small jet engine that could seek out and destroy enemy radars. If the enemy radar was operating, it would home in and destroy it with a one-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead; if it did not detect a radar it would orbit within ten miles of the target area until a signal was detected, then fly toward it and destroy it. So even if the enemy radar was shut off or moved, the missile could still seek out and destroy.

Carter shielded his eyes from the sudden glare of the AGM-136’s engine exhaust as the missile appeared briefly past the long pointed nose of the Megafortress Plus, banked left, then disappeared into the darkness. Just then the green-radar warning “sky” projected onto the windscreen changed to yellow.

“Tracking radar,” Atkins called out over the computerized warning voice. “SA-10, ten o’clock. I’m getting warning messages on UHF and VHF GUARD channels.” The yellow sky seemed to undulate, then disappear and reappear at long intervals, showing the effectiveness of Atkins’s jamming.

Kellerman activated her navigation radar. “Land fall in two minutes. First terrain, fifteen miles, not a factor at this altitude. First high terrain twenty-five miles, starting to paint over it.” She plotted her position on a chart, cross-checked it with the GPS satellite navigation readout, then turned the radar to standby.

Carter released his back pressure on his control stick, allowing the terrain-following autopilot to bring the B-52 back to one hundred feet above the Caribbean. The radar warning had changed to solid yellow, then changed briefly to red before being blotted out.

“Did they get a missile off, EW?” Cheshire called out.

“No uplink signal,” Atkins replied. “We’re at the extreme outer range of the SA-10. I don’t think they can …”

“There, I see it,” Cheshire said. She pointed out the left windscreen. Just over the horizon was a short glowing line of fire spinning in a tight circle, growing larger and larger by the second.

Carter jerked the control stick hard left toward the missile. “Chaff, flare.” Atkins hit the ejector buttons, sending bundles of radar-decoying chaff and heat-decoy flares overboard.

Carter hit the voice-command stud: “Set clearance plane fifty feet.”

“Clearance plane fifty feet; warning; low altitude; clearance plane one hundred feet.” Carter’s turn was so tight that, had the computer set the lower clearance plane, the B-52’s left wingtip would have dragged the water.

“It’s still coming,” Cheshire called out as Carter rolled out. The B-52 dipped as the lower clearance plane setting kicked in.

“I can’t find the uplink, something must be guiding it, but I can’t find it … “

The glow was getting brighter — Carter would swear he heard the roar of the missile’s rocket-motor as it sped closer and closer, jamming wasn’t working … what …?

“Stop jamming, EW,” Carter suddenly called out. “It must be homing in on the jamming source. Go to standby. Fast.”

The result was near-instantaneous. The fast-circling flight-path of the missile began to wobble, and the tail flame of the missile’s engine began to elongate just as it burned out. Carter nudged his B-52 as low as he could safely go. It was too late to try to make a turn, too late even for more decoys …

They heard a thud against the fuselage, then silence. The B-52 shook as if a giant hammer had hit it.

“It missed,” Cheshire shouted, “that was the supersonic shock wave; it missed … “

“It must have been a SA-15 SAM,” Atkins said. “SA-15s … they just started deploying SA-15s in the Soviet Union. Now they got them in Nicaragua?”

Carter forced calm into his own dry throat. “Be ready — our intelligence briefing was obviously missing a few details.”

But Atkins was still rattled. “SA-15 … I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize it … they’re not supposed to have SA-15s in Nicaragua … I could’ve gotten us all killed …”

“Snap out of it, Bob.” But Carter understood what Atkins was going through. No one on this crew, including himself, had ever flown a combat mission — as a matter of fact, until Dog Zero Two was ready to fly two months ago, none of his crew members had been aboard a military aircraft for several months. After months or years with their mostly deskbound duties at Dreamland they had become more like engineers than combat crew members. Now they were being shot at by the Soviet Union’s most advanced surface-to-air missile. He was sure the rest of the crew was steeling a panic — Atkins was just the first one to let loose.

“All of you, settle down and pay attention,” Carter called over interphone. “They took a shot and missed. Fly this mission as briefed. But we’ve gotta pull together and back each other up. All of you know your stuff — now it’s time to put it into action. All right. Check your stations and minimize electronic emissions. Nancy, get another power-plant check.”

The radar sky had turned back to yellow. Carter maintained his new heading for a few moments, then turned back to the right and let the autopilot take control.

“Do you think we should go back on the same course?” Scott asked. “It’ll be easier to find us that way.”

“No use in doing that until we get over the mountains,” Carter said. “The faster we get inland the better. Besides, I’ll bet there’s no big secret where we’re heading. The entire Nicaraguan air force is probably waiting up there for us.”

“Crossing the coast now,” Kellerman announced. Carter checked out the cockpit window — when only fifty feet above the surface, the transition from water to land occurred very fast. He double-checked that the terrain-following system was working properly and set a two-hundred-foot clearance plane.

“Tracking radar up again,” Atkins said shakily. The yellow sky was back for only a few moments when it completely blanked out again.

“They get another missile off?”

“I don’t think so,” Atkins said. “The Rainbow indicates impact — we got it.”

Cheshire slapped her armrest. “All right.”

“Celebration over, copilot,” Carter said. “We’ve got a long long way to go.”

In a matter of only a few minutes the Nicaraguan military air-base of Puerto Cabezas was in chaos. One moment it was quiet and peaceful, a warm, lazy summer evening with a hint of an evening storm brewing. The next, air raid sirens were screaming into the night, Russian missiles raised from concrete canisters like demons rising from their crypts, and the roar of jet fighters began to fill the air with the pungent odor of kerosene.

The first SA-15 missile, installed on the coastal Nicaraguan base only a month earlier in the ongoing Russian fortification of Nicaragua, screamed off its launch rails less than twenty seconds later, filling the air with burning, acidic exhaust gas. The missile crews, Nicaraguan with Russian commanding officers, stood and watched the missile disappear into the night sky until a Soviet officer yelled an order to prepare the launcher for reload. Another SA-15 missile was completing its gyro-alignment — the Nicaraguan soldiers were skilled at aligning one missile at a time for launch …

It was this deficiency that had probably saved the crew of the Megafortress Plus. Just before the second missile was ready for launch a huge explosion lit up the small sandy hill where the SA-15 tracking and guidance radome was positioned. The golf-ball-like radome exploded like a burst balloon, scattering pieces of the antenna within for hundreds of meters.

From his vantage point in a low-covered concrete revetment near the flight line, Maraklov saw the golf-ball radome split apart and explode; now it looked like a cracked egg in a boiled egg holder. Men were running toward the flight line, but he knew the attack on the SA-15 guidance radome was a prelude to the real assault. If it was a Tacit Rainbow cruise missile, the attack would not be for a few minutes because the AGM-136 had a range of almost a hundred miles; if it was an AGM-88 HARM missile the follow-on attack could be any second. Either way it was going to be an air raid — the attackers had obviously been waiting for the SA-15 to come up before blowing it up, and with the radar gone the whole north coast of Nicaragua was open to air attack.

Maraklov took a deep pull from a plastic jug of distilled water as he watched the radar control center begin to burn. Sebaco, he was sure, was next — except whoever was staging this attack wasn’t going to stop at a radar site.

But DreamStar — it was safe. He was sitting in DreamStar’s cockpit, still wearing his flight suit, his helmet resting on his lap in front of him. Less than one hour earlier he had landed at Puerto Cabezas after a low-altitude run from Sebaco. Because he knew that the American AWACS radar planes would be looking for a high-speed aircraft leaving Sebaco, he had made the flight under two hundred miles an hour and at the lowest altitude he could muster, flying deep within mountain valleys and jungle river beds to avoid detection. His gamble that his flight-profile would resemble anything but a jet fighter had apparently worked.

To avoid detection he had landed on the taxiway at Puerto Cabezas instead of the broad ten-thousand-foot runway, taxied to the semi-underground concrete shelter and waited with engines running for any sign of pursuit. None. He shut down but maintained the ANTARES interface and remained strapped in place, configured and ready to fire up DreamStar. But still no sign of pursuit. Exhaustion overtook him, so he shut down the interface and directed the ground crewmen to begin refueling his fighter. He had been off the ANTARES interface only fifteen minutes when the attack began.

DreamStar was ready for a fight. She carried two more Lluyka in-flight refueling tanks on the wing pylons plus two radar-guided missiles on wing pylons and, this time, two infrared-guided missiles on hardpoints on the underside of the fuselage. The two IR missiles were more of a hazard than a help — if DreamStar’s canards were down in their high-maneuverability position, the missiles could possibly hit the canards after launch — but for the long ferry mission, the extra weapons were considered necessary. The twenty-millimeter cannon was also fully reloaded — DreamStar was at its heaviest gross weight ever, well over one hundred-thousand pounds.

But Maraklov himself wasn’t as prepared for either a long flight or a fight with American fighters. This had been the first time he had made two flights in DreamStar within twenty-four hours and the physical and mental strain was immense — like running the Boston Marathon, getting twelve short hours of rest, then going out and running a few more Heartbreak Hills. His body had not recovered from the first mission, but the necessity was clear — DreamStar was in danger if it was left there at Sebaco. That had just been confirmed.

The whine of high-speed jet engines made Maraklov painfully turn to scan down the runway. Four MiG-23 fighters were taxiing to the end of the runway preparing for takeoff. The Soviet government had not been able to send any more MiG-29s or Russian pilots to Nicaragua on such short notice, so those four MiG-23s were manned by Nicaraguan pilots. The MiG-23s were twenty years old, the pilots young or ill trained in night intercepts. If whoever was attacking Nicaragua destroyed the search and ground-controlled intercept radars as well as the surface-to-air missile radars, the MiG pilots would be forced to hunt for the attackers blind, using their own look-down, shoot-down pulse-Doppler radars to scan thousands of square miles of territory for their quarry.

Maraklov took another drink. It didn’t matter, he thought — he’d be out of this backwater country in a few hours. And who knew … maybe one of the MiGs would get lucky. It happened…

A soldier came up to Maraklov’s revetment, showed an I.D. card to the guard, and ran to the platform set up beside DreamStar. He was hesitant to climb up the ladder, but Maraklov saw that he had a message in his hand, motioned him up, and asked for the paper.

He got an instant headache after reading the first word. Assuming he could read Russian, the Spanish-speaking radio operators had scrawled the message out in childlike Cyrillic characters. Maraklov had enough trouble reading Russian, but reading this gobbledygook would be next to impossible. He had to get the soldier’s attention away from the interior of Dream-Star’s cockpit by hammering his shoulder.

“Read this for me,” he said in English.

The soldier looked at him in surprise. “You speak English, mister?”

“Yes.”

The soldier looked at the message for a moment, then looked at Maraklov as if he was going to hit him. “I am sorry, I cannot read this. This is Russian, no?”

“This is garbage Russian, yes. Go back to the radio operator and tell him to write the message out in English.” Maraklov grabbed a pencil from the soldier’s shirt pocket just before he scrambled off the platform — at least while he was getting the message translated he could work on deciphering this junk.

The MiG-23s were still idling at the end of the runway — that probably meant that the GCI radar was being jammed or had been destroyed, and the pilots were being held until a heading to the intruder’s position could be established. Don’t bother launching, Maraklov thought. Let the MiGs at Sebaco handle the American attackers — Sebaco was obviously the American’s target — and leave the Puerto Cabezas MiGs in reserve for when the attackers try to withdraw. If they chase the attackers they could wind up getting shot down themselves or run out of fuel before engaging the stragglers … But a moment later the MiG-23s began their runup and minimum-interval takeoffs. So much for reserve interceptors. Maraklov guessed that none of these MiGs would return.

Maraklov had the scribbled Cyrillic characters deciphered now, but remembering the phonetic pronunciations for each character was tougher, and it took a few minutes to make the message intelligible — luckily, most of it was numbers. It was a satellite message from Moscow informing him that Soviet air forces would be in place in five hours, ready to escort him out of the Caribbean basin into the open Atlantic. The message gave last-minute backup or anti jam frequency changes and other useless information. If the Americans were broad-band jamming their primary communications frequencies, they were listening in as well and were probably vectoring fighters into the source of their transmissions. With such a large force of combat aircraft involved, everything relied on secrecy and radio silence, not secondary and tertiary frequencies.

The fighters were on the downwind side of the runway, the long, bright flames of their afterburners still visible. They had no tankers in Nicaragua (except the one that was lying on the bottom of the Caribbean), so if those guys in the MiG-23s didn’t come out of afterburner they’d flame out before getting a shot off at the intruders.

Maraklov asked himself, “Why am I ragging on those pilots? DreamStar is safe — if the Americans had pinpointed DreamStar here in Puerto Cabezas, this whole base would be a smoking hole.”

Was it because he itched to get into battle? No, even if he had enough energy to take DreamStar aloft, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t risk it. With the MiG-29s gone Nicaragua was wide open to attack — for all he knew there was an aircraft carrier sitting off the coast with fifty F-18 fighter-bombers ready to take him on. It would be suicide to try.

He took another drink of water, emptying the bottle. The real problem here was that he just wanted a future, and every step being taken just seemed to drive him farther and farther from it. DreamStar, he felt, was his life. His whole being was intermeshed with it, and the thought of its eventual dismantling or, worse, destruction was as obscene to him as the idea of a mother killing her newborn baby. But he was also a soldier, obliged to obey orders — and he had been ordered to deliver DreamStar to Russia. But could he obey those orders, knowing what they would do to his aircraft — and what they would probably do to him as well? He was already suspect, … too American …

All the dead-end thoughts he was having were giving him a headache even worse than before. He tossed the plastic water bottle at one of the Nicaraguan military guards at the mouth of the revetment. “Agua, por favor”—probably the only three words of Spanish he knew. The soldier began filling the bottle from one of his canteens — no doubt more of the brackish, parasite-ridden water of this country. The thought of getting diarrhea while in the metallic flight suit made him laugh and cry, but dying of thirst and trying to withstand these migraine headaches were even worse prospects.

Soon, it would be over, he thought. He’d be on his way out of this godforsaken country and back to … Russia. Rack to … what?

He was too tired to think any more about that. As the flickering lights of the fires in the SA-15 radome subsided, exhaustion overtook him, and he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

“Rainbow two showing impact,” Atkins reported. The green search radar indication on Carter’s laser-projection cockpit display had disappeared — the Tacit Rainbow missile had destroyed the Cuyali radar site, the last large-scale search radar system before Sebaco.

“Coming up on the initial point, crew,” Alicia Kellerman announced. They were deep within the Rio Tuma river valley, which snaked out of the Cordillera Dariense mountains north of Managua and fed Managua Lake. Their initial point was, of all places, the town of Los Angeles thirty miles upriver from Sebaco.

“Bomb run briefing, crew,” Paul Scott, the radar navigator, began, “we’ll be approaching Sebaco from the northeast on the military crest of the river valley. There’s one SA-10 site on the top of Iinotega Mountain at our one o’clock position, but according to Powell and McLanahan in Cheetah it’s a mobile site.”

“The system can use infrared to acquire its targets,” Atkins chimed in. “Even though it needs radar for guidance they can launch on IR azimuth commands and then go to guidance uplink once the missile is in flight. We could see a snap-launch profile, where all we get on the threat-warning receivers is a MISSILE LAUNCH warning — we won’t get a symbol or MISSILE WARNING.” Carter was relieved to hear Atkins back on top of his game — he was pretty shook after their first encounter with the SA-15.

“Our last hazard on the run is the town of Matagalpa, where some Soviet troops could be garrisoned. Watch out for triple-A radars. SA-14 or SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles may also be a factor but if we stay low and fast we should be able to beat an SA-14.

“We’ll approach Sebaco from the southeast side of the base. Powell and McLanahan saw one antiaircraft artillery battery on each end of the runway — it’ll be worth lobbing a HARM or even a Striker in there if it engages us. They also saw helicopter gunships on the base. These can carry air-to-air heat-seeking missiles too. Our targets are the three hangars on the southwest side of the base and the underground headquarters building three hundred yards southeast from the hangars. The hangars are primary. We’ll also drop the CBU cluster-bomb units on the runway and the taxiway-parking ramp area, with emphasis on destroying any aircraft. If the defenses are minimal, we can make a circle to the north or northeast and come around for another pass. After the attack, we beat feet to the northeast, terrain-follow in the Cordillera Isabella mountains, and exit along the Honduran border. If we’re drowned and each module crew gets separated, evade north or northwest toward Honduras and get a ride to Tegucigalpa. We’ve all been briefed on the pick-up points in Nicaragua where we can maybe get assistance from Contadora sympathizers. We’re using channel Charlie on the survival radios.”

They had time to prebrief the details of the mission and talk about their recommended actions in case they were shot down or somehow separated, but it was much different this time — they were actually over hostile territory, surrounded by the military forces of two nations. It had suddenly all become very real.

“J-band search radar at six o’clock,” Atkins called out. “Batwing symbol — there’s a fighter up there looking for us.”

“I. P. inbound, crew,” Kellerman said. The Megafortress made a slight left turn, hugging the side of the rugged, tree-covered mountains.

Suddenly a green mushroom-shaped dome appeared briefly on Carter’s windscreen. “Warning; search radar, twelve o’clock.” “We’ve got something out ahead of us,” Carter called out.

“Looks like triple-A,” Atkins said, studying his threat receiver. The computer confirmed it seconds later by drawing a tiny gun-icon underneath the green mushroom. “I’ve got a HARM aligning against it.” Just then, the mushroom turned yellow.

“Warning; threat radar tracking, twelve o ‘clock.”

“Should we go around it?” Carter asked.

“No room,” Cheshire said. “We’d have to climb five thousand feet to clear these mountains.”

“Descend and accelerate,” Atkins said. “Stand by for missile launch … now.”

The yellow BAY DOORS OPEN light came on. “Caution; bomb doors open. warning; HARM missile launch command …; missile launch …; bomb doors closed.”

“Missile away.” The one-thousand-pound HARM missile was a yellow streak as it roared away into the darkness. Seconds later there was a splash of fire on the horizon and the glow of flames. The yellow mushroom was gone.

“Warning; airborne threat radar, six o’clock.”

Karbayjal activated his fire-control radar and slaved it to the threat receiver so the beam from the tail-mounted tracking radar would look in the exact direction of the threat. The readout he got made him yell into his oxygen visor. “Fighter at six o’clock, five miles, descending rapidly.” He hit the voice-command button on his armrest. “Radar lock. Airmine launch one. Launch two. Launch three.”

A warning tone sounded on interphone, followed by the hard, short thuds of the Stinger airmine rockets being shot away. “Radar lock automatic … warning; launch command issued … airmine launch … launch two … launch three.”

But moments later the fighter was still coming — all three air-mine rockets had missed. “He’s still coming. Prepare for infrared missile attack,” Karbayjal called out. “Two miles … one mile … — break left now.”

Carter yanked the Megafortress into a hard left turn. The terrain-following computer immediately commanded a climb to allow for terrain clearance. At the same time Karbayjal punched two flares and chaff out the right side ejectors.

“One mile … half mile … he’s still coming.” Nothing was decoying this guy — chaff, flares, jammers, even airmine rockets …

The fire-control radar tracked the fighter as it flew closer and closer, but a few seconds later the reason for its daringly close pass became obvious as Karbayjal watched the fighter’s altitude wind down lower and lower until it finally read zero.

“He crashed,” Karbayjal called out. “He—”

Suddenly they heard on the scrambled discrete strike frequency, “Dog Two, this is Storm Two. Your tail’s clear.”

“Powell. McLanahan.” Cheshire shouted the names. “Way to go.”

Carter let out his breath. He tasted blood and found he had bit his lower lip almost all the way through. As he steered the Megafortress back on course he opened the radio channel. “Thanks, guys.”

J.C. raised Cheetah’s nose until he was level with the tops of the tree-covered mountains, making several tight turns left and right to clear behind them, searching for a second fighter. McLanahan, his night-vision visor lowered, searched the sky behind the F-15. “Clear visually, clear on the threat receiver,” he said.

“That MiG pilot had balls,” J.C. said. “Diving down from twenty-thousand feet like that, it could have paid off for him.”

“But where’s his buddies?” McLanahan asked.

J.C. climbed another five-thousand feet, well above the mountains, and continued his clearing turns. He used the radar sparingly, relying more on the infrared-laser scanner to avoid telltale electronic emissions that could give away their location. “Nothing. One MiG working alone? Unusual.”

“They’re not up here,” McLanahan said. “That means they’ve got to be on the deck, flying down that same river valley as the Old Dog. We either use the radar to look for them …”

“Or we go down into the valley ourselves and dig ‘em out,” J.C. said. “I was afraid you’d say that.” Powell lowered the nose once more, plunging Cheetah back into the jungle abyss below.

They had to dodge far south of course, around sprinkles of ore mines and tiny villages to avoid the spot where the antiaircraft artillery gun had been destroyed by one of the Old Dog’s HARM missiles. Carter set five hundred feet in the clearance plane to allow more leeway in terrain clearance as they roared through a high valley and across a ridge-line south of the town of Matagalpa.

“We should have met up with that SA-10 site by now,” Atkins said nervously. The calm that he had restored in himself after the strike against the SA-15 site had come back full force after the MiG encounter. He was reproaching himself loud enough to trigger the voice-activated interphone, and Karbayjal had to reach across the aisle beside him and touch his shoulder, trying to calm him down. The navigators were quiet. Kellerman had to be prompted to activate the ground-mapping radar to check terrain. Scott was quiet too. He had activated his laser-scanner in preparation for the strike, but the scanner was not moving in any sort of search pattern.

“Nav, brief us on this axis of attack,” Carter said, trying to bring his crew back together any way he could think of. “You said we’re five miles south of course — how will this affect our attack plan?”

“What?”

“Alicia, get with it,” Carter said. “Brief the crew on the attack profile.”

A strained pause, then: “We … we’ll be heading more directly down the runway instead of perpendicular to it,” she replied in a ragged voice. “The triple-A will be at our twelve o’clock. It might be harder to pick out from this direction.”

“You hear that, Paul?”

“Y … yes.”

“What else, Alicia?”

“The CBUs,” Kellerman said. “We should launch the first pod down the runway after we defeat the triple-A site.”

“I can designate the hangars on that pass,” Scott put in. He could lock the gyro-stabilized laser-scanner on up to five different images, and no matter how the B-52 turned, the designated targets could be recalled and attacked at any time once they were back within range.

“And the smoke and fire should cover our turn when we line up on the target,” Cheshire added.

Carter smiled behind his oxygen visor. “All right,” he said. “We’re starting to sound like a combat crew again. Now let’s do it and get out of here.”

General Tret’yak stood in the control tower of his small airfield, presiding over preparations for the defense of Sebaco like a modern-day Nicholas I, with his almost medieval forces, defending the battlements of Sevastopol in the Crimea against the then-high-tech forces of the upstart Napoleon III and the unstoppable if inept British. He fancied the defense of Sebaco as a symbol of Soviet power in the western hemisphere, and he was going to repel the invaders of his twenty-five-square-kilometer airfield.

His forces were at the ready, poised for battle as soon as the message from Puerto Cabezas had been received. An exact number of attackers could not be determined — Tret’yak had been bracing for an entire carrier air wing of bombers, but no reports of an American fleet within striking range of Sebaco had been reported. That meant it was a smaller, less formidable strike force on the way, perhaps only a few aircraft. Good — his forces could handle that.

To counter the American attackers, four MiG-23s were idling at the northwest end of the runway, each loaded with four AA-8 missiles on fuselage stations and two infrared-guided close-range AA-11 missiles on underwing pylons, plus a twin-barreled GSh23 gun and a centerline fuel tank. Two more were in reserve, cannibalized for parts earlier but quickly being repaired and readied for combat.

In addition to the fighters Tret’yak had an SA-8 surface-to-air missile-battery brought up from Managua situated near the center of the runway on a small hill about a kilometer north of the field. The SA-8 was a small, fast missile, capable of destroying the American navy’s F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber even during a supersonic bomb run. The SA-10 missile site had been moved once again, down from the hills above Sebaco into the Rio Tuma river valley, and it appeared they had positioned it perfectly — any aircraft flying toward Sebaco from Puerto Cabezas had to fly down that valley, right into the jaws of the SA-10 system. The SA-10 was a longer-range missile, capable of defeating attackers from treetop level up to eighty thousand feet. For close-in defense, they still had the two fifty-seven-millimeter guns on each end of the runway, which could create a virtual wall of lead around Sebaco for two miles.

They had other defenses, including Nicaraguan anti-air artillery units deployed in three areas around Sebaco. One of them was located in the Rio Tuma valley, again in perfect position to engage the American attackers.

Tret’yak’s forces were in excellent position.

“Message from People’s Militia Group seven, sir,” an aide reported.

“Who?”

“The Nicaraguan militia force northeast of the base, in Matagalpa,” the aide replied. “They report they are under attack. One ZSU-23 anti-aircraft artillery unit destroyed, nine casualties, ten wounded by rocket attack.”

“I need details, Lieutenant,” Tret’yak said. “What kind of rockets? What kind of aircraft? Speed? Direction?”

As the aide turned to the radio operator, Tret’yak checked his chart of the area, then looked to the tower controller. “Clear the flight for launch, Sergeant. Send them down the Rio Tuma valley and engage the intruders at low altitude.”

The controller nodded, picked up his microphone and said in Spanish, “Sebaco flight of four, target at heading zero-nine-five, range twenty miles, cleared—”

Suddenly they saw a flash of light north of the runway, followed by a streak of fire. One of the SA-8 missiles leaped off its launch rail and roared toward the southeast, the missile so low and flying in such a flat trajectory that it looked as if it would hit one of the hangars. The first group of two MiG-23s, which had already gone into afterburner and had begun their takeoff roll, abruptly pulled their engines out of afterburner and stopped as the SA-8 missile roared across the departure end of the runway.

“Missile site two engaging low-altitude targets,” the radio operator reported. “bearing one-six-zero true, range twenty kilometers.”

“I can see that,” Tret’yak shouted. “Get those fighters airborne.”

“Missile-site two reports multiple targets, sir. They recommend holding the launch until they engage again—”

“No.” Then to be on the safe side Tret’yak said, “Tell missile site two to hold fire to let two aircraft depart. Launch aircraft one and two. Tell three and four to hold position. Get five and six ready for takeoff.”

The controller called out the new orders, and soon the first two MiG-23s were in afterburner once again and roaring down the runway.

“Afterburner blowout on fighter two,” Tret’yak’s aide called out. Only one glowing engine was visible in the nighttime sky.

Tret’yak sucked in his breath as he watched the fighter skim the trees to the southeast to build up enough speed for the climb-out. But soon both birds were climbing and turning northeast to find the attackers.

“Have missile site two reengage,” Tret’yak ordered. “If they are still picking up targets, we’ll have three and four head south to—’,

His words were drowned out by the roar of another SA-8 missile leaving its rails, following the first missile’s flight path except on an even flatter trajectory. The smoke had barely cleared from the second missile launch when Tret’yak saw a brief flash of gunfire from the southern fifty-seven-millimeter triple-A emplacement.

“What is he shooting at …?” His question was interrupted by another bright flash and explosion from the mission site, the boom rolling across the airfield and slamming into the slanted windows of the control tower — but this time no missile left the site.

Tret’yak stared in amazement at the remains of the SA-8 site on the small hill overlooking the runway — half the hill had been blown away, men and vehicles scattered around like a child’s upended toy box. The sudden destruction was clearly visible in the glare of a massive fuel fire on top of the hill.

“The missile site has been hit,” Tret’yak called out. “Launch the fighters; send units three and four south to engage the aircraft that is launching those missiles; get five and six airborne—”

Another volley of gunfire from the fifty-seven-millimeter unit, followed by an explosion and fireball not a half-kilometer off the end of the runway that lit up almost the entire base. The shock wave from the explosion knocked Tret’yak sideways. The area was littered with secondary explosions, and fires erupted in the forests surrounding Sebaco.

“We got one,” someone in the tower yelled. “We got an American aircraft … “

The celebration was cut short by another volley of gunfire from the fifty-seven-millimeter gun emplacement. Tret’yak, back on his feet, stared out to watch the gun’s tracers streak into the night. Suddenly the significance of what he was watching hit him full force: “Why is the anti-aircraft artillery unit firing tracers?” he yelled. “Their gun is radar-guided, and it’s nighttime — they don’t need tracers. It will only give away their position. Order them to—”

Too late. As Tret’yak watched, the gun site was obliterated. When the glare of the explosion cleared from Tret’yak’s eyes, he saw that the gun’s radar-trailer, located inside a bunker of its own fifty meters away from the gun itself, had been destroyed. There was collateral damage to the gun itself but it was still intact.

“Anti-radar missiles,” Tret’yak said angrily. “They are launching anti-radar missiles. Order the north gun site to use infrared and electro-optical guidance. I want an ambulance over to that south gun sight to—”

“Another missile,” someone yelled, pointing toward the southeast. In the glare of the forest fires and the burning radar trailer, Tret’yak saw it — a large, sleek, slow-moving winged-missile. It drifted lazily past the burning trees, past the fifty-seven-millimeter gun emplacement — Tret’yak could see men pointing at the missile, but the gun never slewed around and never got a shot off at the object. As if the thing was doing an approach to the runway, the missile cruised right onto the field just to the south of the taxiway, right on the northern edge of the parking ramp. As soon as the missile was over the ramp area, objects like small boxes began to eject themselves from both sides of the craft.

And then huge columns of fire began erupting from the parking ramp every ten or fifteen meters. The main taxiway was hit almost directly down the center, carving large craters in the tarmac. The bombs did the same to the north half of the parking ramp, lifting sections of concrete as if the earth itself was opening up. Bombs fell on the two fully loaded and fueled MiG-23s on the ramp, creating a destruction that spread across the parking ramp. Burning missiles from the MiGs arched across the base, and twenty-three-millimeter gun rounds pinged off the control tower, creating jagged holes in the shatterproof glass. Tret’yak, the controllers and the radiomen dove for the floor. The cluster-bomb drone continued on, dropping its load of destruction. It missed the two MiGs parked on the runway hammerhead by several meters, showering the fighters with pieces of concrete.

Tret’yak stumbled to his feet, grabbing for a microphone. “Sebaco three and four, take off.” He did not issue the order in Spanish, but the MiG pilots needed little prompting. The number three MiG put his plane in full afterburner and roared down the runway, pulling his nose up in a hard fast climb. The fourth MiG taxied up to the end of the runway but chose to wait until the third MiG was clear before starting its takeoff.

Finally the fourth MiG lined up with the runway, slapped in max afterburner, released brakes and sped away. The fighter just managed to get its gear up at the end of the runway when an explosion ripped off the MiG’s tail section. The MiG flipped up and backward, and the pilot ejected just as the fighter continued its backward spiral and slammed into the ground about a mile off the end of the runway.

A nightmare, Tret’yak thought — except this one was real. One by one, Sebaco’s defenses had been neutralized — and not one enemy fighter had yet been spotted — a blur of motion off to the south attracted his attention, and then he did see it … a massive dark shape hugging the ground no higher than the ten-story control tower. It flew diagonally across the south end of the runway about a half-mile from the tower. It was huge, one of the biggest aircraft Tret’yak had ever seen. The sound of its engines was like a freight train rumbling by at full speed.

The aircraft banked sharply left, aligning itself with the row of buildings and hangars along the parking ramp area. Tret’yak could see a few soldiers firing their rifles at the apparition, but to the KGB general it was as if they were trying to kill a whale with squirt guns. The aircraft roared down the runway with the sound of a gigantic waterfall. Illuminated as it was in the fires on the parking ramp, Tret’yak could see that the monstrosity had a long pointed nose, no visible tail-control surfaces and huge sprawling wings with missiles of different sizes hanging from them. It was not like any aircraft he had ever seen.

Just as quickly as the thing appeared it was gone, leaving in its wake clouds of dust and smoke swirling around the few remaining fires. The silence was awesome, as if the huge black craft had sucked all air and all sound away with it. Tret’yak stood in the control tower, staring through the shattered glass of the control tower at the scene below. What had been an important Soviet military base a few minutes before had been turned into chaos.

“What was that thing?” the senior controller asked, shaking bits of glass off his tunic. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It had to be some sort of bomber,” Tret’yak said, shaking his head. “But I’ve never known such a large aircraft to fly so low on a bomb run. It was obviously the aircraft that launched the anti-radar missiles and set off those bombs that cratered our ramp.

“Could it have destroyed our fourth fighter?”

“It could not have—” But Tret’yak paused. A bomber carrying air-to-air missiles? Why not? That bomber that passed by seemed to be carrying several kinds of weapons under its huge wings. Instead Tret’yak replied, “Any reports from our radar sites? Any reports from Managua?”

“No, sir, not yet. We should have communications reestablished shortly.”

Tret’yak turned to the communications operator. “I want a rescue crew out to find the pilot of our fourth MiG. And I want that ramp cleared as soon as possible. Our fighters will need to land in about an hour.” The operator nodded and began to issue the orders. Lights snapped on, further revealing the damage caused by the strange drone. But as men and machines moved out to the ramp to put out the fires, the extent of the damage was not as total as first thought.

“We have been hit, but not put out of action,” Tret’yak said. “The runway appears open, our fuel stubs and hangars are intact’ and only half our ramp space has been affected. This base is still operational.”

“We’ve been fortunate, sir,” the senior controller said, “that bomber looked large enough to carry a hundred bombs. It could have caused much destruction …”

Tret’yak was about to reply, but the words caught in his throat. He remembered seeing weapons hanging off the wings … the bomber did not drop any bombs over the base …

He suddenly turned to the communications operator. “Clear that ramp immediately; shut off the lights.”

“But, sir, the firefighters—”

“That bomber is coming back. It did not withdraw — it only found more targets. Order the gun sites to—”

Too late. An explosion erupted in the northern fifty-seven-millimeter gun-emplacement bunker — Tret’yak didn’t need his binoculars to know that the north gun had just been destroyed. “Tell the south gun to open fire. Forget the radar guidance — just fire the gun to the north; bracket the area. Quickly.”

But the radio operator froze, gaping out the windows to the north across the runway. Tret’yak grabbed the microphone and was about to push the man out of the way when he too looked up and followed the man’s stare.

The dark shape roared out of the jungle surrounding Sebaco like some sort of prehistoric bird, swooping so low over the trees that it appeared to be skimming the tops, the wing vortices and engine thrust snapping branches and parting the forest. When it cleared the trees it dropped even lower, not more than twenty or thirty meters above ground. It was headed right for the control tower, aiming its pointed nose at a spot, it seemed, right between Tret’yak’s eyes.

In rapid succession four dark streaks arced away from the bomber’s belly. The first headed straight ahead, plowing into the center of Sebaco’s two-kilometer runway. The explosion obscured the bomber for several seconds until the behemoth crashed through the column of smoke, bearing down on the control tower.

A second missile missed the control tower by a few meters, flew by and hit a building somewhere behind the tower — Tret’yak immediately thought of his headquarters building a few hundred meters directly in that weapon’s path. The missiles seemed to be massive bombs with wings, more flying whales than missiles. A third and forth explosion rocked the hangars off to Tret’yak’s left, blowing out the hangar doors, collapsing both buildings and scattering pieces of steel and concrete in all directions. Secondary explosions blew the roofs off another hangar, adding more fuel to the fires now burning out of control all along the flight line.

The massive aircraft then executed an impossibly tight left turn toward the southeast. The roar of the bomber’s engines was so great that it threatened to collapse the control tower. As it banked away, its broad jet-black fuselage missing the tower by only a dozen meters, the remaining glass panels exploded as if grenades had been set off inside the room. Tret’yak was thrown off his feet, blinded and deafened by the hurricane-like aftermath. Tables, books, chairs and pieces of equipment flew everywhere.

Tret’yak could not move for several moments, and even though he was awake and alert he felt as if he had been dismembered. Finally he shook off the piles of debris on his back and struggled to his feet. The control tower was beginning to fill with smoke as the fires in the nearby hangars intensified; the underground fuel pits, containing over forty thousand-decaliters of jet fuel, were in danger unless the fires could be contained.

He helped his men to their feet and toward the exits as he surveyed what he could see of his airbase. The runway had one huge crater in the center, leaving about nine hundred meters usable on either side of the crater — not enough to recover the MiG-23s. It would take a day to repair it; the fighters would have to land at Sandino International, Bluefields or Puerto Cabezas. The taxiway was destroyed and the parking ramp was unusable. Two fifty-seven-millimeter guns and one SA-8 missile site out of commission — the SA-10 site in the Rio Tuma valley had apparently been destroyed as well. Not to mention the one MiG-23 fighter destroyed right after takeoff. Tret’yak checked the area behind the tower and found the second American glide-bomb had hit the roof of the underground headquarters building, but caused no apparent serious damage or fire.

One aircraft had done all this. He had planned on taking on the combined might of an American carrier air group, and one bomber had wiped out all his defenses in less than ten minutes.

He needed to transmit a report as soon as possible back to Moscow. The stolen American fighter was safe, but the Americans had just raised the price of keeping it to an all-time high.

The flight out of Nicaragua was no cakewalk for the Megafortress and her crew, but the loss of all ground-controlled intercept capability over Nicaragua and the loss of contact with Sebaco seemed to take the fight out of the Nicaraguan MiG pilots. One had been destroyed by Stinger fire from the Megafortress as it tried to tail-chase the bomber at low altitude, and another was damaged by a near-miss from one of Cheetah’s dogfighting AIM-132 missiles; the rest turned around and headed for Sandino International Airport. Powell and McLanahan followed the B-52 out over the Caribbean until it was picked up by the E-5 AWACS radar plan orbiting over the Cayman Islands.

“First things first,” Bradley Elliott said when secure communications with the strike formation had been established. “Patrick, Wendy’s out of surgery. She’s still officially in critical condition. I can’t get any other information out of the hospital staff. We could airlift you from Georgetown and have you in San Antonio in four hours—”

“No … as long as she’s being taken care of. I’m where I need to be right now.”

“We’ve got other back-seaters for Powell—”

“I am Powell’s back-seater. Maraklov’s gotta break out sooner or later, and I have to be there when he does. Oh hell; of course I’d like to go to her, but I also know I can’t do her any good. Not now. And I’ve got more hours in Cheetah than anyone else. I’m the only one familiar enough with her systems to take her into combat. If DreamStar got away while I was in Texas, it would be a disaster for us all. And if I know Wendy, she’d kill me if I sat around her bedside while … well, you know what I mean.”

Aboard the E-5 AWACS, Elliott still considered pulling McLanahan, but not because of Wendy. His near-fixation on evening it up with Maraklov had come perilously close to personal, and soldiers on a vendetta made poor fighters. Still, he was right; he was the best-qualified crewman for Cheetah, and only Cheetah could hope to take on DreamStar in air-to-air combat. The time to have the first team on the line was right now, when the chances of DreamStar leaving Nicaragua were most likely…

“All right, Patrick,” Elliott said. “Agreed, at least for now. Break. Kelvin, job well done to you and your crew. Radar shows your tail is clear. Climb to flight level two-six-zero. Your tanker is orbiting over Grand Cayman at two-seven-zero. Everyone okay?”

“Affirmative,” Carter replied on the scrambled UHF channel. “We’re beat but unhurt. We might have picked up some blast damage from the last run we did — we were a little close to the explosion when we dropped a Striker on the runway, and with our bay doors open we might have picked up some fuel leaks — but we should be able to recover in Dreamland. I’d like to have a tanker meet us over the CONUS in case we have a leaking aft body tank.”

“We’ll work on that for you right away,” Elliott said.

“While you’re at it,” Cheshire cut in, “maybe you can get us clearance to land in Georgetown for a few days.”

“I thought of that, Nancy,” Elliott replied, “but we had a little trouble convincing the government to let the F-16s, the KC-10s and the AWACS in — a Buff would have been out of the question. Besides, technically the Megafortress Plus is still classified. But we can arrange a short TDY for a debriefing, I think. Break. J.C., Patrick, any problems with Cheetah?”

“We’re in the green,” Patrick told him. “I just wish our late friend had showed for the party.”

“It was a long shot, Patrick,” Elliott said. “There’s fifty-thousand square miles of nothing in Nicaragua where they could have hidden DreamStar. We’ve intercepted radio traffic that seems to indicate it might be in Puerto Cabezas but we’re not positive.”

“It’s worth a look.”

“We’re not loaded for air-to-mud, Patrick,” J.C. cut in. “There’s nothing we can do to him except wave as we fly by. Besides, we’d fly right into the teeth of that SA-15 Atkins said was there.”

“We’ve done more than the White House wanted to authorize. We’ll maintain our surveillance in case they try to fly DreamStar out. We’re changing your flight plan, though, because of this new intelligence,” Elliott continued. “We’ve secured landing rights at Puerto Lempira, a Honduran army base seventy miles north of Puerto Cabezas — that was the original base for this operation until we got landing rights in the Cayman Islands. We’re trying to get authorization now from the White House to set up a photo-run at Puerto Cabezas like the one you did on Sebaco. We’ve got fuel and weapons being airlifted there to meet you. It’s not Georgetown, but you’ll be in position in case DreamStar tries to make another run for it.”

“Sounds good,” McLanahan said. “I want to be there when he tries to get away again.”

The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR

Outside the foreboding walls of the Kremlin the bright, clear summer morning belied the internal struggle taking place. There, two of the government’s most powerful men were sitting across from each other, locked in a silent combat.

The Chief of Staff of the Soviet military, General Cherkov, had just delivered a briefing to the General Secretary and Vladimir Kalinin, Chief of the KGB. The General Secretary nodded to Cherkov, who was unsure whether or not he had just been directed to leave; he kept his seat, with no objections from the two principals with him.

“I disagree with General Cherkov’s analysis of the information provided from General Tret’yak,” Kalinin said. “He says that the American experimental fighter is safe in hiding at Puerto Cabezas, guarded by both KGB and Nicaraguan troops, but then he says that the aircraft is in danger. That is inconsistent. Tret’yak is understandably shaken after sustaining the Americans’ preemptive attack—”

“Your rhetoric is the only thing that is inconsistent here, Kalinin,” the General Secretary said. “The Americans destroyed one of our military bases, shot down two of our fighters and decimated our defenses. Yet you can sit there and say your plan is progressing well and that there is no cause for alarm?”

“We won’t know the true extent of the damage for several hours,” Kalinin hedged. “But what happens to Sebaco is irrelevant to our mission. The XF-34 is safe; it is still combat ready and can make the flight to Ramenskoye. In two hours, we will begin launching escort aircraft from Cuba, and the decoy aircraft from Managua will make their way north to—”

“Your plan has failed, Vladimir,” the General Secretary said. “Admit it before any more men are killed and we lose any more aircraft or bases.” He shook his head. “It is only a matter of time before they discover the fighter in this, this Puerto Cabezas place. Then they will proceed to destroy that airfield—” he scanned the report, tossing it away with a dramatic flourish—”with one bomber. One bomber. What do we do against one of their aircraft carriers or a squadron of these bombers?”

“The attack on Sebaco was expected,” Kalinin argued. “That was the reason why we moved the fighter out of there. Tret’yak described some sort of new bomber that carried defense-suppression weapons as well as air-to-ground weapons, and it possibly carried air-to-air—” Kalinin suddenly stopped. “The kryepahst ezometyelna,” he said half-aloud.

“The what?”

“The Megafortress project,” Kalinin said. “The highly modified B-52 bomber developed in the Nevada research area, the same place where the XF-34 was built. The American Air Force general, Bradley Elliott, flew a Megafortress against our strategic-defense laser-installation at Kavaznya eight years ago; it carried the same unusual mix of weapons as the bomber that attacked Sebaco. It must have been a Megafortress they used to beat down our defenses and attack Sebaco.” Kalinin slapped a hand on the conference table, muttering to himself. “Parazetyel ‘na! Vilizherchev said he met Elliott in Washington at the White House. We should have known Elliott would be called on to formulate an attack plan—”

“You mean you knew the man who would direct this attack?” the General Secretary interrupted, staring at the KGB chief. “You knew about this meeting — which did not appear in your report or Vilizherchev’s report — and you knew that this Elliott would be involved with the planning„yet you failed to anticipate the attack and failed to take actions to protect our base from attack. I am ending this craziness—”

“You can’t stop it now — all the forces are in place and ready—”

“Then order them to stand down,” the General Secretary said. “Kalinin, how much more do you want? The Americans want their fighter back, and as long as the aircraft is in Central America they have the resources to offset every effort we make to bring it out.”

“One more attempt,” Kalinin said. His voice softened, and he opened his hands, virtually pleading. “I ask for one more try. All our forces are in readiness; it can begin in two hours …”

“Request denied.”

“If our aircraft are detected and intercepted, I will order them to turn around and return to Nicaragua without a battle,” Kalinin said. “But if we surround the XF-34 with fighter aircraft, even if the formation is detected I think the Americans will have no choice but to allow us to proceed.”

“I disagree,” Cherkov put in. “I believe the Americans would attack the formation. Even if they didn’t openly attack, which they did not do over the Caribbean on your first attempt to smuggle the XF-34 out of Nicaragua, there is too much chance for disaster. An air battle would almost certainly result. I cannot endorse such an operation—”

“You’d do anything to save your pension and your dacha …”

“Silence, Kalinin.”

“Your defense of me is not necessary, sir,” Cherkov said. “Actions speak louder than words, and young Kalinin’s actions in this operation prove what sort of tactician he is.”

“It was not my pilot that tried to ram the American fighters,” Kalinin said quickly. “It was not my ineffective pilots that could not defeat inferior American forces.” Kalinin chose not to mention that the air-defense troops around Sebaco were all KGB. Cherkov did not bring it up either.

Kalinin turned to the General Secretary, trying to put on his best humble, earnest face. “Then allow me to bring the fighter out on one of our carriers, sir. A Kiev-class cruiser with escorts can be brought from Havana to Puerto Cabezas within the hour. The XF-34 can easily land on one, and the Americans would not dare attack a carrier …”

“But one of these Megafortress bombers could send a few of the carrier’s escorts to the bottom of the Caribbean,” the General Secretary said. “Vladimir, I have lost count of the number of fighters, transports, men, and equipment we have lost trying to bring that fighter out of Nicaragua. Even if what you say is true — if this DreamStar fighter is worth ten of our front-line fighters — we are definitely on the minus side of the ledger. We have lost six MiG fighters along with the Ilyushin radar plane, which I understand is worth ten or twenty fighters, plus the transport helicopter and its men and crew tin Mexico. If we then lost a seven-thousand-metric-ton capital ship to an American attack, we would all be deposed by the Politburo. That could still happen …”

He reached to the phone on his desk and buzzed his confidential secretary. “I am going to order Vilizherchev to open negotiations with the Americans for the transfer of the aircraft back to them. You will not move the aircraft from its present location. You will not remove or damage any of its components. I do want you to collect as much information about the aircraft as you can without damaging it — we had better get more out of this nightmare operation than a dozen caskets.”

“Sir, you must reconsider,” Kalinin said. “If we stop now, if we don’t attempt to get the aircraft to Russia, all those men will have been killed for nothing; all of our efforts will have been for nothing.”

“All of your efforts, Kalinin,” the General Secretary said. “Your operation. I must remind you that I was against this operation from the beginning. I told you it would never succeed. I will not accept responsibility for an operation that I never approved and that was conducted largely without my knowledge.”

The General Secretary’s senior aide came into the office, carrying notepaper and pencil. “Now see to it that the XF-34 is secured and ready for transport.”

“I ask you once more,” Kalinin said. The General Secretary was turned away from him. “If we succeed, and I stake my life that we will, there will be huge assets for both of us, sir. We are already committed; we must—”

“Your career is already at stake here, Kalinin,” the General Secretary said. Mine too, he thought gloomily. “I will concentrate on repairing the damage caused by your ill-conceived plan. Do as I’ve ordered.”

Outside, Molokov, Kalinin’s aide, fell in behind him. “Sir …?” Kalinin gave his instructions.

“Back to KGB headquarters,” Molokov told the driver. To Kalinin he asked, “What is the situation, sir?”

Kalinin filled him in, needing to unload his feelings. “I have no more authority in this. I am only authorized to collect as much data as possible on the aircraft without damaging it, then prepare to turn it over to the Americans.”

They drove through the streets of Moscow in silence until approaching KGB headquarters, then Molokov said, “Maraklov will not like this. Turning over that fighter to the Americans, after all he’s done, will be like asking him to turn over one of his legs to a shark.”

Kalinin suddenly turned to Molokov, an idea forming in his becoming clearer every moment. “Maraklov … yes, perhaps he can secure the aircraft for us …”

“Sir?”

“Maraklov … I need a secure satellite channel to Puerto Cabezas. The General Secretary will brief Vilizherchev in less than an hour, and Vilizherchev will ask to confer with the President by seventeen hundred hours Moscow time-1 must talk with Maraklov immediately.”

“There is a transponder set up with the command post at Puerto Cabezas now, sir,” Molokov said. “What will you do?”

“This operation is still on, my friend,” Kalinin said. “There may still be a way …”