Day of the Cheetah

Over Nicaragua

Cheetah’s control stick felt alive, pulsating with power. Mounted on the right side of the cockpit instead of in the center as in most pre-1990s fighters, it was almost rigid. Tiny pressure-sensitive switches in the fixed stick detected hand movements and applied the inputs to the triple-redundant flight-control computers, which then transmitted movement instructions to the hydraulic systems that moved the canards and tail stabilators, as well as the micro-hydraulic systems that recurved Cheetah’s wings.

The system was ultra-sensitive, very fast — not like the old gear, bell-crank and cable flight-control systems, or even the newer fly-by-wire electronic systems. The slightest touch on the stick would send Cheetah into an unexpected pitch-up or away. He tried to loosen his tight grip on the control stick, but it was hard to reprogram his head to the realities of electronic fiber-optic controls — and J.C. had set the system to its lowest sensitivity.

To complicate matters, a universe of information kept flashing on the windscreen, changing so quickly that McLanahan didn’t have time to read it before it disappeared and another line of numbers or symbols danced across his eyes. He had experimented with turning off most of the laser-projected symbiology but found himself repeatedly calling the information back up a few moments later. Finally he decided to leave it there and just deal with it — he hoped it wouldn’t distract him too much when

the shooting started. How J.C. could assimilate all this information was beyond him.

Suddenly Patrick saw a gloved hand reach across his shoulder. “By the way, I’m Marcia Preston.” He realized only then that he had not said a word except “prepare for takeoff” to his new back-seater. With all the things going on in Cheetah’s cockpit, he managed to reach across with his left hand and shake Marcia’s extended hand.

He had just leveled Cheetah off at only five thousand feet as once again he steered it southward toward Puerto Cabezas. At full power he was maintaining just under Mach one as he raced across the lush tropical forests and salt marshes of northeastern Nicaragua. He hit the voice-command control on the stick and in a deliberate voice said, “Autopilot, on, altitude, hold.” The computer repeated the command, which reminded McLanahan to double check the autopilot status indicators. Cheetah’s voice-command system had been programmed by J.C., and although it was supposed to be adaptable to any pilot, the subtle differences in pitch, accent and volume of voices sometimes confused the computer.

“Marcia,” McLanahan said after setting the autopilot, “I’ve got a question — why the hell did you volunteer for this mission?”

‘Because you needed me, and mostly because I wanted to go.”

“There’s a chance we won’t make it back.”

“Not to toot my own horn, sir, but your chances of making it back are much better now.”

“Can the ‘sir,’ okay?”

“Okay, Patrick. Where to?”

“It’s an outside chance but it’s possible that DreamStar could still be on the ground. We need to check the shelter at Puerto Cabezas.”

At seven miles per minute they reached Puerto Cabezas in a little over ten minutes. McLanahan pulled the power back to eighty percent. “I’ll line up so I can give you a good look out the right side,” he said. “The shelter is pretty low, but you should be able to see if an aircraft is in there.”

Their arrival at the Nicaraguan military base was greeted by a cacophony of warning messages in English, Spanish and Russian, ordering them to turn away. He ignored them — and there were no radar threat-warnings anywhere in the vicinity. They had decreased speed to less than five miles per minute to get a good look in the shelter. As they approached the base McLanahan hit the voice-command switch: “Arm, cannon, mode, strafe.”

“Warning; cannon armed, strafe mode, five hundred rounds remaining.” An holographic aiming-reticle appeared on the windscreen in front of McLanahan. He switched off the autopilot, descended to one thousand feet and began to line up on the shelter.

“You’re arming the guns?”

“If DreamStar is in there I want to shoot before he gets off the ground.” He hit the command button again: “Target select.” The reticle began to blink. He moved his head until the aiming reticle, slaved to follow the pilot’s head movements, was directly on the mouth of the shelter, then hit the voice-command button again: “… Now.” The reticle stopped blinking and a series of lines drew themselves on the windscreen like an instrument-landing director. Once McLanahan centered those lines, the cannon would blast the target to pieces.

“Target designated; select target off to cancel.”

“Watch your altitude,” Marcia Preston said. “You’re less than five hundred feet AGL with autopilot off.”

“Thanks.” McLanahan put the altitude-hold autopilot back on.

As they raced across the Nicaraguan base they could see men and vehicles darting all across the airfield, even over the runway — it was much too crowded on the flightline for normal air traffic. A number of emergency vehicles crowded the throat taxi-ramp that led to the alert parking shelters.

When they were about two miles from the alert area Marcia called out, “I can see the shelters. No aircraft in any of them.” Men were running from the shelter. “They think you’re going to bomb them, I think.”

“I should put a few rounds in there.”

“Waste of ammo.”

“It would make me feel better, though.” Instead of firing, however, McLanahan hit the voice-command button. “Target off. Cannon safe.” The computer repeated and verified. He shut off the autopilot and began a shallow climb, putting in full military power once again.

“Long gone,” Marcia Preston said. “Which way now?”

“Not sure.” Patrick McLanahan climbed to ten thousand feet, well above the mountains of central Nicaragua far off to the west. “James’ original plan was to fly DreamStar to Cuba. More secure than Nicaragua. Then on to the Soviet Union …” He switched frequencies to the channel set up with the communications facility at Puerto Lempira. “Storm Control, this is Storm Two. How copy?”

“Loud and clear, Storm Two,” General Elliott replied immediately.

“Our target wasn’t at Puerto Cabezas. Is the AWACS up?”

“Affirmative,” from Elliott. “He’s got complete coverage of the Caribbean north of Nicaragua. He’s got one F-16 with him. No word from him yet.”

“Target must be heading south, back to Sebaco or Managua.” McLanahan called up Managua on the inertial navigation unit and set the autopilot on course. “We’re en route back to Sebaco to check it out, then Managua.”

“Roger. Keep us advised. Storm Control out.”

They flew on for another few minutes, then Marcia clicked on the interphone: “Colonel, you said we’re flying to Sebaco, then Managua … What kind of air defenses does Sebaco have? I know Managua is heavily protected. Isn’t Sebaco that KGB base where they kept DreamStar?”

“Yes,” he replied testily, the questions interrupting his train of thought. “Sebaco was protected by fifty-seven-millimeter guns and SA-10 missiles and a few MiG-29 fighters. We destroyed them two days ago.”

“Are they back in place?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Managua? What kind of defenses does it have?”

“Probably like Puerto Cabezas. SA-15 missiles, MiG-29 or MiG-27 fighters, probably tactical anti-aircraft artillery. Why?”

“Why? Well … do you think the Nicaraguans are just going to let us fly over their cities? Don’t you think they’re going to throw everything they got at us?”

“We’re going anyway. I don’t care what defenses they have, we’ve penetrated them before, and—”

“No, sir — J. C. Powell and you defeated their defenses. You were in the backseat—”

“What the hell does that mean?”

It means that you can’t just charge in over Managua and Sebaco without some kind of a game plan,” she said. “We were lucky over Puerto Cabezas, sir — you assumed that the defenses that were destroyed by the B-52 two days ago were still destroyed, or they didn’t bring in more fighters just waiting for you to fly over looking for DreamStar. What if they’d been replaced? We would have been dead ten minutes in the sky. You can’t assume anything.”

No response from McLanahan. “I’m not trying to chicken out. I’ll fly wherever you want, and I’ll help you defend this aircraft the best I can. But we’ve got to do this the smart way, or we’ll be dead without ever getting off a shot at Ken James …”

“You’re right. I took off from Puerto Lempira with no idea where I was going after checking Puerto Cabezas. And we did receive intelligence that the runway at Sebaco had been repaired — they could have moved in a whole squadron of MiGs by now. We could be jumped at any moment, and we have no air cover, no surveillance and only six missiles to defend ourselves. Stupid. Damned stupid …”

“The question is — what are we going to do now? We can’t just drone around in circles.”

“We’ve got to get an idea which way we went.” But how … He ordered the voice-command computer to set a frequency in the number two VHF radio.

“Sandino Tower, this is Storm Zero Two on one-one-eight point one. Over.”

“Storm Zero Two, this is Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport tower,” a controller with a thick Spanish accent replied. “State your position, altitude, type of aircraft, departure airport and destination. Be advised, we have no flight plan for you. You may be in violation of the air traffic laws of Nicaragua. Respond immediately.”

“Tower, Storm Zero Two is an American military fighter. I am in pursuit of an American aircraft piloted by a Russian criminal. I intend to overfly Sebaco and Managua in search of this aircraft. I request assistance. Over.”

“Storm Zero Two, overflight of Nicaragua by American military aircraft is prohibited. You are in violation of national and international law. You are directed to land at Sandino International immediately, or you will be fired on without warning. Over.”

“Sandino Tower, I say again; I am in pursuit of a criminal piloting an American aircraft. He is a danger to you as well as to the United States. I request assistance in pursuing this aircraft. I am not hostile to Nicaragua. Please assist. Over.”

“It’s not going to work,” Preston said. “They’re just triangulating our position. We’ve got to get out of here, head back across the Honduran border—”

“Storm Zero Two, this is Sandino Tower. Please stay on this frequency for important message. Acknowledge.”

He did not reply. A message flashed on his windscreen, warning him that a search radar was in the vicinity. From the rear seat Preston said, “We’re getting close to Managua’s search radar.”

“Storm Zero Two, contact the man on frequency one-three-one point one-five VHF. Important. Sandino Tower out.”

He began a left turn away from Managua and changed channels. Preston asked, “Are you going to talk on that frequency? It could be a military ground-controlled interceptor’s direction-finder. They could pin-point our location as soon as you key the mike without using radar.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so.” He hit the mike button. “This is Storm Zero Two on one-three-one point one-five. Over.”

“Storm Two, this is General-Lieutenant Viktor Tcharin, Deputy Commander of Operations for Soviet Central America Operations Base Sebaco. Whom am I addressing?”

“It’s a damned Soviet general,” Preston said. “What the hell does he want?”

Patrick keyed the mike. “General Tcharin, this is Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan, United States Air Force. State your request. Over.”

“McLanahan … McLanahan … “ Then, sounding as if he was reading from a script, went on: “ ‘Senior project officer, Midnight Sky. Code name for XF-34 DreamStar advanced tactical fighter aircraft flight technology validation project. Age forty-one, white male.’ Ochin kharasho. Very good. Colonel McLanahan, I believe we want very nearly the same thing. You want the XF-34. We want Colonel Andrei Maraklov. Perhaps we can make an arrangement—”

“I want Maraklov and the XF-34, General. Do you know where Maraklov is headed?”

“We have evidence to that effect, yes,” Tcharin told him. “We believe we have tracked his course on radar. But we do not have the air assets to pursue him. You reported to the Nicaraguan tower controller that you are in command of a fighter plane. Is it your intention to attack Colonel Maraklov?”

“Yes.”

“We have information that may be of use to you. In exchange for this information we want you to deliver Colonel Maraklov to us, should he survive. Is that agreeable to you, Colonel McLanahan? “

“I’m not making any deals,” McLanahan told him. “I don’t trust you any more than I trust Maraklov. But if you tell me where he went, and if he survives, 1 promise not to kill him myself. What happens to him after that is up to our governments. How about that?”

A pause, then: “I agree. Colonel Maraklov had received instructions” … he did not say from whom … “to fly the aircraft south, to an isolated landing strip somewhere in Costa Rica. He was detected flying forty nautical miles west of Bluefields in southern Nicaragua about ten minutes ago. We have no other information. He was at twenty thousand feet, flying at five hundred nautical miles per hour.”

“Copy that down for me, Marcia,” McLanahan said. On the radio: “How do I know you’re telling the truth? He could be flying north to Cuba, or east. He could even be on the ground in Managua or Sebaco.”

“You contacted us for assistance and I have given it to you. If you do not trust us, your request makes no sense.”

“Why can’t you get Maraklov by yourself? Isn’t he delivering the XF-34 to you?”

“It’s not clear what orders Colonel Maraklov has chosen to follow. Our last orders, from the Kollegiya, were to turn over the XF-34 to you at Puerto Cabezas. Why he took the aircraft, I do not know. We want to question him about that matter, as well as the killing of two Soviet officers and two soldiers. My orders are to capture Colonel Maraklov for questioning, but I have no resources to do it. That is where you can help …”

If this Soviet general was lying, every mile he flew south could be two miles that Maraklov was increasing the distance on his way to Cuba or someplace to the east. Yet he had no other possible options.

“Marcia?”

“I don’t see much of a choice. I don’t trust him either, and I sure as hell don’t like making deals with him, but it’s the only lead we have. Our AWACS from Grand Cayman is covering the north Caribbean — so south seems like a good direction for us to be heading. Might as well try it.”

McLanahan keyed the radio again as he began a right turn toward the south. “General Tcharin, if I get Maraklov alive I promise you’ll have an opportunity to question him about the murders. I was a witness to three of them in Puerto Cabezas.”

“Unfortunately an American is an unacceptable witness in our military court of law,” Tcharin said, “but I believe we have a deal … Colonel McLanahan, the XF-34 is armed with twenty-millimeter shells, two radar-guided missiles and two infrared-guided missiles — not the most modern Soviet weapons but proved effective against your F-16s over the Caribbean. One more item: Maraklov is wounded. We have tested and found his blood at a site here in Sebaco as well as the blood of one of his victims. You have clearance to transit Nicaraguan airspace west and south of Bluefields. Costa Rican approach control frequency for crossing border restricted airspace MRR Three is one-one-nine point six, El Coco Control.”

And the channel went dead. McLanahan told the computer to set the frequency, and he checked the computer flight-information database and double-checked the flight information files for Costa Rica — Tcharin’s information seemed right on.

“Well, you wanted a plan, Marcia,” he said as they approached the border. “I never expected to get it from the Russians, but we’ll take it.”

Pain. Intense, burning.

For at least the past year the pain that always came to Andrei Maraklov when the ANTARES interface was completed was fairly easy to suppress. The concentration and the exhilaration of flying a machine like DreamStar usually did the trick, but this time it wasn’t working. Obviously the shoulder wound was the culprit. Every time he thought about his throbbing left shoulder his body would receive a jolt of pain from the ANTARES system.

So far it didn’t seem to affect his flying performance or his ability to monitor his ship’s functions. In spite of the hard flying that DreamStar had done during the past week she was running perfectly. Her automatic monitors detected a higher than normal level of metal particles in the oil, suggesting an overdue engine overhaul or contaminated oil; other systems detected clogged fuel-metering systems from dirty fuel, moisture in computer components and a few loose panels. He made a mental command to have a list of these items recorded and played back to him just before the next shut-down, to remind him to have them checked. It was a long list, but Maraklov told himself he would have time to check over his bird. In any case, these minor discrepancies did not seem to be affecting DreamStar’s performance.

He was flying in the deep mountain valleys of the Cordillera de Guanacaste mountains of northwestern Costa Rica, staying as low as possible to avoid detection from radar sites at Santa Maria International Airport to the east and Lomas Guardia International to the west. Although Costa Rica had an air force deployed at Santa Maria Airport and a few other small training bases, it was made up of a handful of aging American-built F-5 day VFR fighters to scare away drug smugglers, plus several single-engine piston prop planes for surveillance. The federal military forces were very small — the nation’s popular phrase nowadays was “we have more teachers than soldiers,” and fortunately for him that was true.

It was also true in Costa Rica that most provincial and municipal security (it could not be called “law and order”) came from privately funded and equipped armies, which was legal in this country of only three million people. If you were rich enough you could own a good-sized town in Costa Rica, which could eventually turn into one’s own little nation — including one’s own army, and it was legal for certain citizens to make their own stamps, set prices, deal with other countries, appoint their own judges and mayors.

One such privately owned city-state was Venado, a thirty-thousand-acre plantation in the heart of the Guanacaste Mountains. Two thousand people lived and worked on this plantation, nearly half of whom were soldiers. The entire plantation, the well-equipped army and the airport within it were all funded and maintained by the KGB, one of dozens of secret KGB bases scattered over the world, bases so secret, so well disguised, that most party members outside of a few ranking officers in the KGB knew nothing about them. This was Maraklov’s destination.

Finding the airport was no problem, but making an approach to it in daytime without being seen was going to be difficult. Maraklov had already had to weave around scores of private airstrips dotting the San Juan Valley and the northern Costa Rican jungles to stay out of sight; he could not afford just to shoot directly into Venado, with some farmer or peasant watching his approach and blabbing to his boss or the police. Maraklov’s plan was to hug the northeast rim of the Guanacaste Mountains, stay as deep in the valleys as possible, sweep around the valleys to the southwest and then come back up over Venado from the west. This way, he should be shrouded by mountains almost all the way to landing.

There was another summer storm brewing out over the Pacific to the west as Maraklov started his low-altitude swing to the southeast along the mountain range. His holographic display showed slivers of surveillance radar above him, but most of the energy was blocked out by the tall mountains of central Costa Rica. The area was sparsely settled, but occasional glances out the cockpit showed a few very beautiful haciendas below, where men had retaken the jungle and turned it into lush fields of coffee or fruit. Maraklov throttled back on the power as much as possible, balancing his energy to avoid making as much noise as possible but keeping up his speed to avoid letting anyone on the ground get a good look at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Warning; all weapons armed; select safe to safe all weapons.

“Weapon, select, radar, missile.” The computer repeated the command, and on the weapon-status display one of the four radar-guided AIM-1200 Scorpion missiles on the fuselage stations was highlighted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Warning, min range inhibit,” the computer announced. The AIM-1200 Scorpion was too close to its target to arm its warhead, so the computer automatically overrode the launch command.

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

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

Suddenly McLanahan and Preston feit a banging and shuddering sound throughout Cheetah, as if a giant hand had grabbed the F-15’s entire tail section, held it fast and started shaking it back and forth. The laser-projection screen reported a half-dozen faults. “Right rudder actuator out,” he said. “Right radar warning receiver and ECM antennas — looks like he shot off our right rudder.”

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

“What the hell is that?” Preston asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Colonel McLanahan, I will never give up DreamStar,” Maraklov replied. “1 am ordering you to withdraw across the border immediately. Otherwise I will destroy Cheetah piece by piece before I put the final missile into her. Comply immediately.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even if the ANTARES computer had not warned Maraklov of Cheetah’s sudden decrease in airspeed, he had seen Cheetah’s engine exhaust nozzles snap closed and the ventral louvers open, and had time to react. What he wasn’t expecting was the suicide-move that McLanahan made after that. Before he knew it Cheetah had banked up on its right wing and was turning directly into DreamStar on a collision course.

Maraklov’s first decision was to roll with Cheetah and out-turn him, but the radar quickly informed him that he had no room to bank away from the sudden roll — Cheetah was so close that if DreamStar went into a right bank, his left wingtip would certainly strike Cheetah’s right wing. Maraklov was near-transfixed by the sight of Cheetah swooping in on him. He had no place to run. Only a few yards remaining …

Suddenly the pain that had been with him ever since his successful interface with ANTARES returned full-force. It was so intense it nearly blinded him. His shoulder throbbed, the pain seemed to spread out across his entire body, intensifying the electrical shock generated by the metallic flight suit. The headache that had seemed to go away when he attacked Cheetah was now like a red-hot thing buried in his head. He knew he did not black out — his seat was still upright and he was not being force-fed blasts of oxygen — but he was out of control as he tried to figure a way to escape Cheetah’s attack.

At some point during the maneuver ANTARES took control. The computer commanded full down deflection on the nose canards, full downward thrust from the vectored-thrust nozzle, full adverse pitch on the flap strakes in the tail. The effect was a rapid elevator zero-pitch descent at negative seven G’s, almost at the structural limit of DreamStar’s airframe and, more important, twice the normal safe negative-G limit of the human body. Cheetah’s right wingtip missed DreamStar’s bubble canopy by a few yards — if the canopy had been made of anything but ultra-strong polymer plastics it would have shattered from the hurricane-like force from Cheetah’s wingtip vortices.

Maraklov, already partially incapacitated by the sudden intense sheets of pain rolling across his body, was on the verge of unconsciousness from the negative G’s. He was quickly past the red-out stage, where blood was forced up into his brain. Blood vessels burst in his eyeballs and nostrils, and one eardrum exploded. The computer sensed Maraklov’s semi-conscious state, immediately reclined his ejection seat and shot pure oxygen into his face mask. But the increased pressure in his face only forced blood from his nostrils back into his throat, nearly drowning him.

Once DreamStar’s all-aspect radar detected that Cheetah had rolled well clear, it discontinued the hard horizontal descent, selected full afterburner and began a hard climb up to a safer altitude. But DreamStar was flying on full-computer control as Maraklov fought for consciousness. The pain had suddenly subsided, but Maraklov was still trying to recover from the effects of the negative G’s as DreamStar zoomed to thirty thousand feet, then leveled off.

ANTARES performed a systems self-test and prepared to issue an all-systems-nominal report — as soon as Maraklov regained full consciousness.

The system self-test never included the pilot.

“Colonel, what the hell are you doing? “ Preston called out. “Recover, dammit; recover.”

McLanahan immediately let up on the stick pressure, allowing Cheetah’s automatic roll-and-yaw damping mechanisms slow the roll rate. When he firmly saw which way his roll was going, he eased in left-stick force and rolled Cheetah wingslevel.

“Where is he, Marcia? Where did he go?”

She was still shaken from the sudden maneuver but quickly pulled herself together. “God, what a ride. I don’t see him anywhere.”

“I’ve gotta risk using the radar.” He hit the voice-command button while continuing to search the skies around Cheetah. “Radar, search, transmit, voice warning.”

“Attack radar transmit,” the computer replied. “Voice warning activated. Fifty mile range selected, no targets.”

“Get some altitude back,” Preston said. “He had the upper hand when he got above you. You can use your power more effectively if you stay above him.”

He began a rapid climb. “But remember, DreamStar is a new kind of fighter. It’s hard to explain — it took J.C. years to figure it out and months to explain it to me. There’s only one way to get him, and I just showed it works.”

“By almost killing us? By pulling a kamikaze on him? If that’s how we’re going to play, we might as well get out—”

The computerized voice cut in: “Target, range twenty miles, bearing ten left. “

“There he is,” Preston called out. “Eleven o’clock high, straight and level.”

“Tally ho. I’m going for a shot.” He hit the voice-command button. “Radar target designate …” The blinking circle-aiming cursor appeared on the windscreen, superimposed on DreamStar as the only radar target in range. “Now.”

“Radar lock. “ McLanahan hit the missile-launch button and watched as one of the AIM-120 Scorpion missiles streaked out from underneath the fuselage toward its target.

“Missile’s tracking by itself,” Preston said, scanning her weapons indications. The Scorpion missile needed guidance from its launch aircraft only until its own on-board radar locked onto the target. Then the carrier aircraft could disengage and look for other targets. “Try a left turn; get around behind him in case he gets past the missile.”

“He’ll get past it — guaranteed,” McLanahan said. To the computer: “Select radar missile. Arm missile.”

“Warning, radar missile armed.” He hit the launch button and a second Scorpion missile streaked out.

DreamStar abruptly heeled over to the right, making a turn so tight that the Scorpion missile’s automatic proximity detonation missed by over a hundred feet — the proximity detonation circuits could not keep up with DreamStar’s remarkably fast jink. McLanahan watched, transfixed, as DreamStar headed directly down at Cheetah, rapidly closing the distance even before his AIM-120 medium-range missile left the rails. Shaking himself, McLanahan banked hard right and up; selected zone-five full afterburner, trying to get underneath DreamStar, spoil his aim and get out of the way before Maraklov could finish his sudden attack.

Maraklov had recovered from the effects of negative G’s just in time to receive the new warning of radar lock-on and missile uplink — a Scorpion missile was in flight. This time there was no pain — in an instant Cheetah’s location was plotted, its direction and all three of its axis velocities were recorded and assimilated and a counter-offensive move and several alternate maneuvers processed. He selected the first choice a fraction of a second later. It had been timed perfectly, and the missile rushed well past DreamStar without detonating until it had passed out of lethal range.

In the same instant ANTARES had selected an AA-11 infrared-guided missile and had just received a lock-on signal from the missile’s seeker-head when a new threat was detected — a second missile in flight from Cheetah. A moment later he saw Cheetah head straight for him, chewing up the distance. Now two threats were closing on him — the second Scorpion missile and Cheetah itself, fast approaching optimal cannon range.

ANTARES commanded the AA-11 to launch. At the same time it made a tight right roll followed by a hard break, turning in a tight circle to align once again with Cheetah.

“Missile launch! Dead ahead!”

McLanahan hit the voice-command button. “Chaff. Flare.” As the radar and infrared decoys ejected off into space, he jerked the control stick right, descended a few hundred feet, then lit the afterburners and pulled up. But not fast enough. DreamStar’s AA-11 missile followed Cheetah’s turn and descent, then detonated its ninety-pound warhead just as McLanahan began to hard six-G pull. The missile detonated ten feet to the right and slightly aft of the right engine, piercing the engine case and sending showers of metal and compressor blades in all directions.

But at the same time ANTARES detected Cheetah’s second Scorpion missile still in flight — the two or three seconds it had taken to launch the jury-rigged Soviet missile gave the big, high-speed AIM-120 missile time to lock on and reach full speed. The all-aspect radar detected the missile still closing fast.

The radar range to Cheetah’s second missile turned into a high-pitched squeal of warning, transmitted directly to Maraklov’s already exhausted brain. ANTARES had no choice but to evade the missile — DreamStar’s jammers were ineffective against Cheetah’s radar or the Scorpion missile’s on-board radar — they had reprogrammed the AIM-120’s on-board radar to a different frequency outside DreamStar’s known jammer-range in anticipation of this fight — and DreamStar could not continue the right turn to pursue Cheetah with the missile closing in.

With Maraklov allowing ANTARES now to select the fighter’s maneuvers and counter-maneuvers, ANTARES reversed its direction of flight, went to full afterburner, and aimed its nose right at the missile, presenting its lowest radar cross-section. At the last possible moment DreamStar jinked upward hard … and the missile passed underneath.

“Engine fire on the right,” Preston called out. McLanahan yanked the right throttle to idle, lifted it out of its idle detent and moved it to cut-off, then hit the voice-command switch: “Right engine fire; execute.” The computer commanded the right-engine fuel valves and supply lines closed and fire retardant sprayed inside the engine compartment.

“I’m showing fuel cutoff and engine fire light out,” Preston said. She turned in her seat, scanning the area for damage. “We might have a fuel leak on the aft body tank. The smoke is clearing.”

“Where’s DreamStar? Is he behind us?”

Preston scanned the skies, expecting to see that unreal plane diving out of nowhere with guns blazing. But it was nowhere to be seen. “I can’t see him.”

“I’m getting some altitude. Power coming back to mil,” McLanahan said. With an engine fire and the potential of more damage in the left engine casing, the use of afterburner was unwise except in an emergency. “I’ve still got full flight control.” The engines were close enough together on the F-15 so that single-engine handling was not a problem, and the vectored-thrust nozzles, mission-adaptive wings, and canards would compensate for the loss of rudder control and the asymmetric thrust.

“Airspeed’s down below five hundred knots,” Preston said, continuing to search for DreamStar. “And you’re hardly climbing. We’ve had it; we don’t have the power to even consider dogfighting with him any more.”

“I’m not giving up. Listen, something’s happening here. If Maraklov was flying at one hundred percent we’d be dog meat by now. He’s not engaging, I think maybe he’s reached his limit …” Wishful thinking …? He began a turn back in the opposite direction and activated the air-to-air attack radar.

Immediately the computer reported, “Radar target, range twelve miles, bearing right.”

He hit the voice-command button: “Select radar missile. Launch missile. Launch missile.”

The pain that racked Maraklov’s body was constant now, rolling across every nerve ending like a brush fire out of control. The numbness in his left shoulder spread to his left arm and elbow — it was the first time in two years that Maraklov ever noticed anything about his appendages while flying under the neural-computer interface system. The sensory dichotomy created momentary confusion. He became aware of still more problems with his body — he was incredibly thirsty, weak as a kitten. He was aware of the taste of blood — he could even feel blood dripping down the side of his head and pooling inside his oxygen mask. Taste? Feel? These sensations were as foreign to him while under ANTARES as mental radar images had been when he first saw one.

At the same time, ANTARES was warning him about a hundred other things. Cheetah was in a left turn, heading back for him. Fuel state was critical — less than twenty minutes fuel left, without reserves. Oxygen was low. That last Scorpion missile’s miss was not altogether harmless — ANTARES was now reporting minor ventral fin actuator damage and a few sectors of the ventral superconducting radar arrays malfunctioning.

It was time to destroy Cheetah, once and for all.

But DreamStar had barely completed its turn back toward Cheetah when more missiles were detected in flight. And now they were in a head-on engagement, with one, then two missiles in flight. Maraklov began a series of high-speed random maneuvers, trying to make the missiles swing farther and farther away on each turn. At the same time he moved farther and farther from Cheetah, getting a few more yards of lateral separation, waiting for the moment to begin a lead turn into the F-15 to start his gun pass.

This time, Maraklov thought, he could not miss. McLanahan had become lazy — never go head-to-head with his DreamStar.

“Scorpion missile tracking … stay with him, Patrick, he’s getting outside you …”

McLanahan blinked beads of sweat out of his eyes as he nudged the control stick farther right toward Cheetah. He had a steady JOKER indication on the heads-up display — less than fifteen minutes of fuel remaining, enough to get him back to La Cieba or Puerto Lempira. If he continued to fight much longer the number of possible landing sites, itt Honduras or Panama, would steadily decrease to zero until he would be forced to put down somewhere in Costa Rica.

“Patrick, watch it,” Preston called out, “he’s turning in on you—”

He had let his mind drift off at the worst possible moment. That momentary lapse of concentration had allowed DreamStar to get the angle on him. Maraklov was now bearing in on Cheetah from the right side. A turn in either direction would expose himself even more to a cannon attack.

He lit the left afterburner and pulled Cheetah up into a hard climb. Preston hung from the handlebars in the back seat, straining against the G-forces as she tried to keep DreamStar in sight over her right shoulder.

“Warning, missile launch,” the computer threat-receiver blared. Then: “Warning, airspeed low. Stall warning. Stall warning.”

“He’s turned inside us. Missile launch. Get out of here.”

McLanahan hit the voice-command button: “Chaff … Flares,” he grunted, forcing the words out from the pressure against his lungs. He saw the decoys-eject indications on the heads-up display.

“Where is he?” he called out to Preston.

“Five o’clock low, climbing with us. He’s still coming …”

McLanahan pulled back on the stick even harder, his neck and jaw muscles quivering against the pressure. He rolled inverted, ejected more chaff and flares to decoy the missiles, then plunged Cheetah earthward. They were head-to-head once again, but this time they were fighting in the vertical, not the horizontal — Cheetah was in a full-power descent, rapidly building airspeed, and DreamStar was in a screaming climb, heading right at him…

ANTARES adjusted each flight control surface and every pound of two-dimensional vectored thrust to keep Cheetah centered in its crosshairs. Measuring by DreamStar’s precision millimeter-wave radar and calculating by computer several times a second, Maraklov commanded DreamStar to open fire seconds before McLanahan’s finger even closed on his trigger. They were still almost two miles apart when DreamStar opened fire, dead on target …

The cannon reported locked-on and firing — then stopped.

After several days of misuse, inexperienced handling, and lack of routine preventive maintenance, and because the Russian-made ammunition was not precisely compatible with its American counterpart, DreamStar’s twenty-millimeter cannon fired five rounds, then jammed solid. The M61A5 cannon’s automatic jam-clearing mechanism tried to reverse the cartridge belt-feed, spin past the portion of the belt where the jam occurred and refeed the belt through the firing chamber, but the jam could not be cleared in flight.

At the speed of thought, ANTARES transmitted several bits of data to Maraklov’s exhausted mind. The cannon jam was reported in minute detail — he knew exactly where the jam was, the status of the unsuccessful attempts to clear it and the changing status of all the attack options that had been computed using the cannon. He also knew the range to Cheetah, knew Cheetah’s Doppler-measured velocity, and knew that Cheetah was within lethal gun range. And he knew to the nearest one-tenth of a knot his own decreasing airspeed and the position of his wings and canards to overcome his speed deficit. He commanded his last AA-11 missile to launch, but it was a desperate snap-shot, with only one or two seconds guidance time and launched with a much higher launch angle of attack than the Russian missile was designed for.

With the realization that a defensive turn and descent away from Cheetah was the last available option, the pain returned full-force to Maraklov’s already tortured nervous system. This time, the pain was unbearable… He never knew that AN-TARES’ stabilization system automatically corrected the impending stall condition. He also was not conscious enough to realize that DreamStar had taken several direct hits all across its wings and upper fuselage as ANTARES pulled its nose back to the horizon.

Warning messages began flooding in from almost every system on board the fighter, but Maraklov was too dazed by exhaustion and too overloaded with pain to assimilate them all — now the ANTARES computer was forced to take over all safety and flight control functions. The computers aboard DreamStar detected a fire in the engine compartment, momentarily shut down the engine, put out the fire and restarted the engine all in a few seconds. Engine-fuel feed was rerouted to draw fuel from leaking tanks before they ran dry. The mission-adaptive wings reshaped themselves to compensate for hydraulic actuators damaged by gunfire.

But through it all, Maraklov hovered on the brink of unconsciousness. And without him, for all ANTARES’ capability, DreamStar was no longer capable of fighting.

McLanahan came out of military power and set the throttles to eighty percent. He saw the BINGO low fuel warning projected onto his windscreen — less than ten minutes of fuel remaining — but for now he ignored it. He clicked open the interphone. “He’s what?”

“I see smoke coming out of his exhaust,” Preston said. “hot heavy but I can see it. He’s flying straight and level, not maneuvering. You got him …”

McLanahan looked over far to his right and spotted DreamStar. He turned toward him. Preston said, “You’ve got two-hundred rounds remaining and two missiles. Take the shot. We’re low on fuel.”

He lined up on DreamStar, selected an AIM-132 infrared missile, aligned it, hit the voice-command button: “Safe all missiles. Safe cannon.”

“Caution; all weapons safe.”

“Patrick, what are you doing? You got to bring this guy down. There’s no other choice. He can turn on us …”

McLanahan’s reply was to click open the emergency frequency: “DreamStar, this is Cheetah. I’m at your six, five miles. I’m joining on your right side. Do you hear me?”

“Stay away …” The pain in his voice was obvious, even through the computerized distortion. “Do not come any closer …”

“It’s over, I’m joining on your wing. When you see me stay on my wing. We’re landing. Do you understand?”

He maneuvered Cheetah closer to DreamStar, finally overtaking him. “I’ve got the lead, coming right. You’re on the wing, stay there.” He began a shallow right turn.

“I am not giving up this aircraft …” the computer-synthesized voice said. “I am not … not going to surrender DreamStar … “

“It’s over. Listen to me. DreamStar is damaged, you’re hurt bad. You’ll destroy DreamStar or force me to destroy you. You’ve got a chance to live. Take it—”

Suddenly Marcia called out, “He’s turning behind us …!”

But it was only a momentary deviation. A moment later DreamStar moved into perfect fingertip formation with Cheetah. “That’s it; stay in position.” On interphone McLanahan said, “Marcia, get on the radio to any air traffic facility you can reach. Tell them we need vectors to a hard-surface runway ASAP.”

He paused, taking his first real deep breath, then added: “‘I1wo American military aircraft landing: both require assistance.”