“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.