Curtis returned it. "Let me guess . . . you're not going to use a bomber-that was my first guess. What's the hottest ma- chine on your flight line right now? Cheetah. And McLanahan

7.

285.

and P - well go with it. How'm I doing? Don't answer that ...

You had Cheetah in mind from the start. You've got some sort of camera pod rigged up on it, self-protection devices up the ying-yang-you're going to have to take the missiles off, the President said no." Elliott allowed a smile. The Secretary had hit it right on the mark. "Cheetah's been ready to go ever since last night . . . Ever since O'Day agreed to help you.

Right? "

"No comment, sir."

"I like it, General, I like it. You want to send a message- Cheetah will do it."

F-.

Sebaco Nfilitary Airfield, Nicaragua Friday, 19 June 1996, 0643 CDT (0743 EDT) WORK HAD BEGUN on DreamStar less than three hours after the last transmission from Moscow, and even though he had diverted the plan to dismantle his aircraft, every minute that Andrei Mar- aklov watched DreamStar's refit was like another twist of the knife that seemed to be stuck in his gut.

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

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

Each twist of the worker's wrench brought home another re- 287.

ality to Maraklov-that along with the delivery of DreamStar to the Soviet Union came the end to his own usefulness. General Tret'yak was correct, of course-DrearnStar would be disman- tled in ultra-fine detail once it was safely delivered to the Ra- menskoye Test Facility near Moscow. It might be flown once or twice, but more than likely its avionics would be activated arti- ficially and all its subsequent "flights" would be confined to a laboratory. If there was no DreamStar, there would be little need for a DreamStar pilot, especially one who would seem more American than Russian. They might create an ANTARES ground simulator to study the thought-guidance system and train future pilots on how to fly DreamStar, but that would not last long.

After that, he doubted very much that the Soviet military would allow him to fly or even participate in any way, except as some glorified figurehead . . . until his usefulness there ran out too.

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

"Speak slower, Sergeant," Maraklov said in halting Russian.

The technician squinted at him. "Mahtor sestyema smazki nyee khod@aht, tovarisch Polovnik. Vi pahnyemahyo? "

"I don't understand what the hell you're saying," Maraklov exploded in English. The startled sergeant stepped back away.

"You're tearing my damned aircraft apart and you want me to tell you from here if it's okay? Is that it? Get out of my face."

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

"What did you tell him?"

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

"My thoughts exactly."

"They say they will have the aircraft ready for a test flight in twelve hours," Musi said. Maraklov looked at her, then turned 288 .

the flight line. Musi followed.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No," Maraklov said. "I just feel .

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

"Not really, Andrei. It is, after all, a machine-"

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

"You will be honored as a hero of the Soviet Union-- "Bullshit. Tell me what's really going to happen." She seemed to avoid his eyes. "Come on, Lieutenant."

"I I don't know, Andrei." Her voice now seemed to lose its easy tone, to become almost stiff, as though she were recit- ing. "You will be welcomed, of course . . . following that, you will be asked to participate in the development of the aircraft for the Air Forces-- "I want to know what kind of life I'll have in Russia. I want to know if I'll have a future."

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

"I'm not a foreigner." Or was he?

"Andrei, I know what you are, but you know what I mean ...

You do not speak Russian. You must understand that there will be less trust at first." She took his hands in hers. "Could it be, Colonel Andrei Maraklov, that it is perhaps you who do not trust us? "

Maraklov was about to reply, stopped himself. She was right.

The U. bias toward the Soviet Union had taken hold and was his now-distrust, fear, the works, in spite of the show of glas- nost and perestroika.

away from the open front of the hangar and began walking down Could he trust her?

289.

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

"I am not so smart, Andrei. I think I understand how you feel. Living in Nicaragua for a year, feeling the resentment from the people, isolated in this little valley-it is easy to mistrust, even hate, those you do not understand or who seem not to understand you." She moved in closer to him, her lips parting.

"I love it when you say my name. I wish you'd do it more often. "

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

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

Over the Caribbean Sea 0825 EDT.

"She's about as maneuverable as an elephant," JC. Powell said irritably, "and five times as heavy."

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

had the throttles at full power to keep up with the KC- 10, but after a few minutes the KC-10 pilot noticed the trouble.

the loaded F-15 fighter was having and backed off on its power.

There was plenty of reason for Cheetah's sluggish performance.

In addition to sixteen-hundred-gallon FASTPACK fuel tanks near each wing root, Cheetah carried an AN/ALC-189E reconnais- sance pod mounted on the centerline stores station. The two-ton 290 .

recon pod carried four high-speed video cameras that pointed forward, aft and to each side, along with data transmission equipment that allowed the digitized imagery from the cameras to be broadcast via satellite directly back to Dreamland for anal- ysis. On each wing Cheetah also carried a 600-gallon fuel tank, which non-nally gave it a cruising range of nearly three thousand miles.

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

After flying close to the coastal radar sites, the drones would fly northeast toward recovery ships near Jamaica-if they survived the expected Nicaraguan air defenses.

"You boys sure go around looking for trouble," the pilot of the Phoenix-based tanker said over the scrambled VHF radio.

"Twenty-four hours ago I thought we'd all be in the stockade.

You must lead charmed lives."

"We found a few regs we haven't violated yet," JC. said.

"You're coming up on your start-descent point," the nav on the KC-10 said. "One minute."

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

"I think we've had enough," said. "Thanks for the gas."

"Thank your boss for getting us out of trouble with the brass, "

the pilot said. "I saw what was left of my retirement flash before my eyes. You boys take it easy down there. Sun Devil starting a climbing left turn. Out." The KC-10 wagged its wings once, then began a steep left turn and a sharp climb, heading toward its destination in San Juan.

"Nav computer set on initial point," McLanahan reported.

On 's laser-projection heads-up display a tiny "NAV" indi- cator flashed on the screen, indicating that the computer was directing a turn. hit the voice-command switch on his con- trol stick.

291.

"Autopilot on, heading nav.- "Autopilot on, " the computer-generated voice replied.

"Heading nav mode. Caution, select altitude function. " The computer reminded that no autopilot function had been se- lected for holding altitude. Cheetah started a right turn, heading southwest.

In the aft cockpit McLanahan was completing his checklist items for drone release. "Release circuits safety switch to con- sent, " he told Powell. JC. flipped a switch far down on his left instrument panel.

"Release switch to CONSENT."

"Checklist complete. Stand by for drone release."

"Ready up here."

"Clear for zero-alpha maneuver," McLanahan said.

pushed forward on the stick and throttles. As the speed increased and pitch decreased, the angle of attack, the difference between the wing chord and relative wind, moved to zero-this was zero alpha; the wings were knifing through the air with minimum disturbance or deflection, giving the cleanest airflow for the two drones to separate from Cheetah and begin their flight.

"Zero alpha . . . now.

At that moment McLanahan hit the release button. Remote- controlled clips on the drone's carrying racks opened, and the drones began flying in formation with Cheetah.

"Showing two good releases, clear to maneuver," Mc- Lanahan announced.

"Here we go." Powell gently, carefully pulled back on his control stick, and the drones dropped away from sight. did not yank Cheetah away; the sudden turbulence could throw the drones out of control. He eased back on the stick, allowing the distance between mothership and drones to increase slowly.

"'Showing good autopilot program-startup on both drones,"

McLanahan reported. A few moments later they saw both drones banking away to their right as they began their computer- controlled flights.

"Drones are clear to the right."

"Got 'em." verified. He watched the drones for a mo- ment to make sure they were far enough away, then said, "We're goin' down." He hit the voice-command stud on his stick. "Au- topilot attitude hold.

292 .

"Attitude hold mode on, " the computer acknowledged.

pressed the pitch-select switch on the control stick and pushed. Cheetah started a twenty-degree descent. When he re- leased the select switch, the autopilot held the pitch angle.

"Overspeed warning, " the computer announced. pulled the throttles back to seventy percent to avoid overstressing the recon pod and external fuel tanks as Cheetah approached the speed of sound in the steep descent.

"Autopilot altitude select two hundred feet," corn- manded.

"Autopilot altitude command two hundred feet.

"We should be entering early-warning radar coverage in a few minutes. We need to be down below two thousand feet by then. "

"No sweat," said. "We're descending fifteen thousand feet per minute. This baby feels like a real jet with those two loads gone."

Suddenly a tiny indicator blinked on a newly installed panel in Cheetah's aft cockpit. "Radar-warning indicator from one of the drones. Some radar's got them. He'll start jamming any min- ute. "

"We've got five thousand feet to level-off at two hundred feet," said. "We should be ready."

And Cheetah did level off as planned. By the time it reached the San Andres y Providencia Atoll east of Nicaragua, they were at two-hundred feet above the Caribbean, traveling five hundred miles an hour. The Nicaraguan early-warning radar site at Islas del Maiz, fifty miles off the coast of Nicaragua, never had a chance to see the sea-skimming aircraft. Cheetah's automatic jammers activated once when the radar site was only a few miles away, but the Russian-built radar did not lock on or reacquire the aircraft. Fifteen minutes after passing the island radar site Cheetah was over the marshy lowlands of the east coast of Nic- aragua.

"Where's all this Russian hardware the Nicaraguans are sup- posed to have?" JC. said.

"We haven't hit the worst part yet. " They were riding the military crest-the point on a hill where observation was the most difficult-of the lush, green Cordillera Chontalena moun- tain range in southern Nicaragua, heading northwest at five hun- dred fifty miles an hour. "We should be safe from Managp 293.