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.