Fighting in the horizontal, DreamStar, it seemed, was unbeatable — but DreamStar had only one engine and was less powerful when fighting in the vertical. In spite of Cheetah’s weight penalties she was still a powerhouse when it came to dogfighting in two dimensions.
“Laser to standby. Radar to transmit,” Powell spoke into the voice-recognition computer. It acknowledged his commands and gave presentations of his emitter and weapons status on the displays in the cockpit.
Cheetah was nearing the top of the altitude block when J.C. suddenly rolled her into a wild backward loop. “I’m betting he didn’t have time to break out of that hover and follow us up here. I’m betting he’s still right where we left him …”
J.C. had let the nose just barely fall through the horizon when the holographic diamond again appeared on the windscreen. “Tally ho.” He didn’t wait for the computer to acknowledge the radar lock-on but centered the electronic crosshairs on the icon. “Target, now. Arm missile. Launch missile.”
The computer acknowledged. “Radar missile launch.”
“Fox two, fox two for Storm One,” Powell called over the interplane frequency. “Storm One descending through forty thousand. Heads up, partner.”
“Fox four for Storm Two,” came the reply. “Seven o’clock, one-half mile …” And then the voice added, “Partner. Heads-up.
Still inverted, Powell looked to.his left, and right off his tail, also inverted, following as if it was Cheetah’s shadow, was DreamStar!
“But I’ve got a lock-on …”
“On a cloud of chaff,” Patrick said. “When you made your zoom, he must’ve popped a dozen bundles of chaff and climbed up with you and stayed on your tail. You just shot a Sparrow missile into a bunch of tinsel.”
J.C. rolled wings-level and lowered his oxygen visor with an exasperated snap. “The guy’s right on today.”
Patrick checked the fuel readouts, did a quick check of his equipment and warning lights. “Looks like forty minutes to go, J.C.”
Powell gave Patrick a thumbs-up. “Storm flight station check, lead’s in the green with forty minutes to joker”—”joker” being the code for the minimum fuel reserves necessary on a normal training flight, about fifteen thousand pounds.
“Two has twenty minutes, all systems nominal.”
J.C. said: “He’s sucking gas. He’s got a bigger jet, more capacity, only one engine, but half the fuel.”
“And two kills,” Patrick shot back. “We’re not concerned about saving fuel here, J.C. I know you’d give every drop of JP-4 we’ve got left to get one good shot at him.”
“Then turn me loose; let’s get to it.”
“I want you to be the fox this time, J.C.,” Patrick said. “I want him on the pursuit.”
“Fine, but open ‘em up this time. Let’s see what the boy wonder over there can really do.”
J.C. had a point. They had really not pushed DreamStar to the edge of the envelope. And if there was anybody who could really force DreamStar to perform, it was J. C. Powell.
“All right, J.C., you got it. But don’t break the bubble …” Patrick lined it out. “This time lead will be the fox. We’re coming up on the southeast corner of the area. Lead will come left heading three-zero-zero toward the center. Two, give us fifteen full seconds — then start your pursuit. Stay heads-up. Lead’s coming left …”
J. C. Powell turned hard left. Patrick had time to grab hold of his handlebars before being squashed into his seat by the turn. J.C. stayed on the northwesterly heading for five seconds, then rolled inverted and pulled the nose earthward, pushing the throttles to full power, aiming the nose directly for Lookout Peak twenty thousand feet below.
Patrick watched as the altimeter readout clicked down taster than he’d ever seen it before. “I swear, Powell, you have got to have some kind of death wish”—Patrick’s attention was drawn to a blinking red warning light near the radar altimeter, which read the distance between the ground and the belly of the jet. “Watch it!”
Powell checked his threat receivers — no signals from anywhere. He began to level off, pointing Cheetah toward a wide cleft in the jagged peaks below. “Colonel, if I stay at high altitude with DreamStar he’ll hose me again. Let’s see how he does in the rocks.” He hit the voice-recognition computer switch— “attack radar standby,” and threw his jet into a screeching right turn, arcing around the rugged peaks. “Fifteen seconds — he should be in his turn toward the northwest by now.” Powell selected a flat valley in the desert, staying as close to the rocks as possible. Patrick stared out the top of the canopy expecting the tops of Cheetah’s twin tails to scrape along the face of those rocks any second.
J.C. rolled out of his steep turn, passing only a few hundred yards from a lone craggy butte. “You’re going to wait down here for him to come after you?”
“Not exactly, sir.” He steered Cheetah into the narrow valley he had selected, set the autopilot, then began searching the skies far overhead. “Wondering why I selected thirty-nine thousand feet back there?”
“It’s a higher altitude … better fuel economy—”
“Contrails.”
Patrick followed J.C.’s pointing finger out the top of the canopy. Far above, they saw a thin white line against the dark blue sky, heading northwest. “You think I never listen to the morning weather briefings?”
“You’re always asleep.”
“I always manage to catch the contrail forecasts. The center of the vapor level was thirty-nine thousand feet. That’s where we left him and that’s where he is.”
Patrick took a firm grip on the handlebars. J.C. had aimed Cheetah for the center of the southern ridge of the Shoshone Mountains, in the center of Dreamland’s southern restricted area, and now was moving the throttles up to full afterburner. Ten seconds later they were at Mach one and building …
Attack radar on … spherical scan … radar off …
James checked in seconds over a half-million cubic miles of airspace for Cheetah. His superconductor technology allowed the power of a standard fighter’s nose radar to be transmitted into an antenna the size and thickness of a playing card so that the antennae could be spread out all around DreamStar’s skin instead of located only in the nose cone. A thousand of such micro-miniature radar arrays made a complete spherical sweep of the sky within two hundred miles of the aircraft. But except for commercial and civilian aircraft outside Dreamland’s restricted airspace, the radar scan came up negative. Cheetah had disappeared!
ANTARES immediately suggested a data link with Dreamland’s powerful ground-based surveillance radar, but James squelched that idea. Although DreamStar could integrate data from a variety of outside sources, he’d been ordered not to use them — and McLanahan could detect the link with his equipment on Cheetah. Never mind: he wouldn’t need outside help to find Cheetah.
A pause as ANTARES weighed alternatives to an outside data-link, then suggested a ground-map scan.
Nothing. The Shoshone Mountain range was bright and prominent directly below, surrounded by dry lakebeds and nonreflecting sand. DreamStar’s high-resolution radar picked out power lines, roads and tiny buildings scattered all across the desert floor. Nothing moving faster than sixty miles an hour anywhere within range.
James shut down the scan. Cheetah was obviously hiding in the Shoshone Mountains somewhere, probably ridge hopping among the rocks, staying in the radar clutter as much as possible. But this was supposed to be an air-to-air attack. Powell was screwing up big-time.
James mentally ordered another spherical radar sweep of the skies. McLanahan would probably direct Powell to climb out of the low-level regime, and then he’d—