After a few silent minutes McLanahan unfolded the chart he had stuck in his flight suit and pointed to the bend in the road. “Here we are, I think, about three or four miles from this town, Auka. Puerto Lempira is about twenty-five miles by this road. Hal, see if you can raise someone on the survival radio.” Briggs got out the radio, set it to emergency channel alpha and GUARD and began calling for help.
“I got Puerto Lempira,” Briggs said a few moments later. “Storm Control, this is Air Force helicopter Triple-Echo Three-Four. You are weak and barely readable. We are down zero-three miles south of town of Auka. Requesting pickup for three souls and three fatalities. Over.” He listened for a few moments, made a few responses and orders for priority assistance, signed off.
“Our base says they don’t have another helicopter at Puerto Lempira,” Briggs said. “They’ve called for one from La Cieba. They might be able to get one from private companies but we can expect at least an hour before pickup, maybe ninety minutes. We have to get to Auka, then find a clearing and vector the chopper in. That’s the soonest they can make it.”
“Too damn long,” McLanahan said. “Maraklov will be off in DreamStar before then. We’ve got to get hold of Elliott and tell him to set up the air cordon again.”
“What about fighters from Puerto Lempira?” Briggs asked. “Don’t you have that F-15E there any more?”
“They withdrew it to the States when the Russians cut their deal. We had to take down the whole air cordon out of the Cayman Islands as a sign of good faith. Let’s just secure the chopper and get moving.”
As they headed back to the Dolphin, McLanahan asked Briggs if General Elliott wasn’t supposed to be on his way to Puerto Lempira by now.
“Should be.”
“You think you can set up a patch with General Elliott through Puerto Lempira? He can get the air cordon put back up around Nicaragua — at least get the AWACS back up there to watch for DreamStar when it heads out.”
“I can try. Reception is pretty poor from here, but at least I can get the ball rolling.” He began another call to Puerto Lempira as they walked. When they got to the Dolphin, McLanahan and the chopper pilot locked up the helicopter while Briggs stayed in as much clearing as he could find to maintain radio contact with the Honduran military base.
“No good,” Briggs said as McLanahan and the chopper pilot joined him on the road heading toward Auka. “Can’t raise the base any more. We’ll have to wait until we get to Auka and find a telephone, or just get to a clearing where we’ve got a straight shot to Puerto Lempira.”
McLanahan muttered as they set off on a fast walk. “After everything … J.C. … Maraklov is still going to get away with DreamStar? And there’s nothing we can do to stop him?”
Over the Caribbean Sea
“What the hell was that?” General Elliott said into his earset microphone. He was on a C-21B military Learjet en route from Georgetown in the Cayman Islands to La Cieba, where he would pick up a helicopter from there to Puerto Lempira. The relief he’d felt as he left Grand Cayman to see DreamStar safe and sound in U.S. hands was shattered once again. “Say again that last transmission.”
“Message received from a Major Briggs, crewmember aboard Air Force helicopter Triple-Echo Three-Four,” the communications man said. “Briggs requested immediate emergency assistance. He said his helicopter was down four miles south of Auka, approximately thirty miles south of Puerto Lempira. He reported three survivors and three fatalities.”
“Oh, God,” Elliot muttered. Over the radio he said, “When did the rescue chopper depart?”
“We dispatched your HH-3 from La Cieba immediately after receiving the call,” the operator replied. “ETA to Auka is 0815 local.”
“From La Cieba? That was the only chopper available?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
Elliott slammed a fist against the C-21’s front instrument console, then keyed his mike button. “Control, did Briggs report what happened?”
“We lost contact shortly afterward, sir,” the operator reported. “He was calling in on a rescue channel, apparently using a hand-held survival radio. I think he’s been trying to call us, but we can’t pick him up.”
Elliott clicked on the C-21’s interphone and turned to Marine Corps Major Marcia Preston, National Security Adviser Deborah O’Day’s aide, and the C-21’s pilot. “Major, head toward Puerto Lempira airbase instead of La Cieba at best possible speed. We’ll fly near where Briggs went down and try to find out what’s going on.”
“Yes, General.” The C-21 jet banked left as Preston took up a rough heading to the Honduran airbase, then began calling up the base’s coordinates on the inertial navigation unit and calling La Cieba air traffic control for a change in her flight plan.
Elliott left his seat and went back to sit with Curtis and O’Day. They had flown from Washington to the Cayman Islands after the deal had, they thought, been set to recover the XF-34, and Elliott had gone along with them in the C-21 for the flight to Honduras. “We’ve got a big problem,” Elliott told them. “My security chief Briggs is on the ground in Honduras with two other survivors and three casualties from our recovery party. No other information. There’s a chopper on the way. but it won’t arrive for another forty-five minutes—”
“What are we going to do, Brad?” O’Day asked.
“I want to get in contact with Briggs soonest — he’s on a survival radio and our people at Puerto Lempira lost contact. I’ve told Marcia to head over to where the pickup point will be, and we’ll try to contact Briggs ourself.”
“What the hell do you make of it?” Curtis said.
“Not enough information to tell, but we’ll act on what you guys like to call worst-case scenario … they tried to make the swap for DreamStar, the Russians reneged, shot up our chopper and our people. Major Briggs and whoever’s with him managed to get away across the border but not all the way back to base.”
“So that means the Russians still have DreamStar,” O’Day said. “And if they reneged on the deal and went so far as to attack our people, they’ll probably be trying to get it out of the country as fast as they can.”
“And there’s very damned little we can do about it,” Elliott said. “We’ve got no assets close enough to stop them. We’ve still got the AWACS and some of the F-16s in the Cayman Islands, but we’d have to get a tanker from Puerto Rico or Florida down here to support us — that’ll take a few hours at least. The two F-15E ground-attack fighters we brought to Honduras are on their way back to Arizona. We’ve got some Honduran ground-attack planes, but if the Honduran air force gets into the act we’ll start a war in Central America. The President will never go for it …” Elliott paused for a moment, then: “Cheetah …”
“What?”
“Cheetah. My modified F-15F fighter. It’s down in Puerto Lempira — Powell and McLanahan flew it back to the States and then back to Honduras. It can do both air-to-air and ground attack.”
“But you said that McLanahan and Powell went on this mission into Nicaragua. That means—”
“That means that one or both of them may be dead,” O’Day said. “Can’t anyone else fly it?”