Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (15 page)

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
James
also performed a last-second engine instrument check. But he had no bar graphs
to check out with his eyes. ANTARES reported information not only through the
visual nervous system in the form of words, numbers and symbols that he could
“see,” but, to avoid overload of the visual senses, also as sensations that he
could detect with his other senses. He could feel the power of the engines as
clear and as real as air inflating his lungs or strength rippling down his
arms. He knew in an instant that both engines were at full military thrust. At
a thought-command, a computer that metered fuel flow performed a retrim of each
engine to compensate for pressure altitude and outside temperature, which
yielded a few hundred pounds extra thrust. The engine-fuel trim would be
accomplished every six seconds thereafter as DreamStar began its test flight,
accomplished as easily and as subconsciously as a person might ride a bike or
drive a car along a much-traveled highway.

 
          
James
briefly activated the search radar, which transmitted its signals as visual
images—no obstructions or targets within thirty miles. A fast scan of VHF or
UHF frequencies—no emergency calls, air traffic control challenges, no abort
call from the tower. One quick check of hydraulic systems—all running normally.
Electrical—one generator on the left engine running a bit hot. On a mental
suggestion, a digital flight-data recorder logged the time, conditions and
readouts on the left generator for the crew chiefs to analyze after the flight.

 
          
The
check of the secondary systems, including the flight- data recorder entry, had
taken less time than it took J. C. Powell to tighten his grip on his throttle
quadrant.

 
          
James
now ordered the brakes to be released . . .

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
J.C.
saw DreamStar shoot forward. “Here we go,” he said.

 
          
Patrick
took a firm grip on the steel “handlebars” surrounding the instrument panel in
the aft cockpit. Without a stick, throttles, or pedals, Patrick could do
nothing during takeoff but watch the engine instruments and hang on. He glanced
at

 
 
          
the
large yellow-and-black-painted handgrip between his legs underneath the center
of the instrument panel—the ejection handle—and mentally measured the distance
to it . . .

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
DreamStar
shot forward like a dragster popping off the starting line. James commanded
both engines to max afterburner, increasing thrust to well over one hundred
fifty thousand pounds. At almost the same instant he also commanded activation
of the auto-alpha flight mode. Louvers on the top of each engine nozzle swung
open, diverting one-third of the engine thrust diagonally upward, compressing
the rear main landing gear struts to their lowest position and allowing the
nose-gear strut to extend fully. DreamStar was now pointing ten degrees upward,
in full unstick, takeoff attitude.

 
          
The
trailing edges of the two canards deflected downward. The engines, coupled with
the foreplanes, were now shoving DreamStar’s nose skyward—its computers
controlling the canards kept the one-hundred-thousand-pound fighter from
flipping backward out of control. As speed increased and the canards began to
fly the nose, the louvers diverting the engine thrust upward gradually swung
downward, allowing the thrust to acclerate the fighter and lift the tail off
the runway. At one hundred knots airspeed DreamStar’s nose gear lifted off the
runway. The pitch attitude increased to thirty degrees, held just below the
stall by the computer-controlled foreplanes. At one hundred and fifty knots
DreamStar lifted off the runway, and because the wings, foreplanes and engines
were commanded for maximum lift, she rose like an elevator.

 
          
In
just over one thousand feet, the same distance a small general-aviation plane
used at takeoff, the fifty-ton jet fighter had left the ground. Once airborne,
thrust again was automatically diverted to optimize climb performance.
DreamStar was now a rocket, being propelled skyward at well over twenty
thousand feet per minute. By the time it reached the end of the two-mile-long
camouflaged runway, it was over eight thousand feet above the ground.

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
J.
C. Powell’s promise to keep up with DreamStar was kept for about five seconds.

 
          
He
and McLanahan saw James give the signal to release brakes. “Two good engines,”
McLanahan called out from the aft cockpit as J.C. eased both engines into max
afterburner.

 
          
“Roger.
Two good cookers.”

 
          
They
saw DreamStar dash forward, then saw its forward fuselage jut into the sky and
its canard’s trailing edges snap downward . . .

 
          
Then
DreamStar disappeared.

 
          
J.C.
cursed. “Hang on.” But try as he did, Powell could not match DreamStar’s
spectacular liftoff or climb rate. While DreamStar’s pitch, power, and thrust
controls were automatic, Cheetah’s were mostly hand-controlled, relying on
reaction time rather than electronics to trim the aircraft. When DreamStar
disappeared from view, J.C.’s first reaction was to pull back on the stick to
try to follow. But Cheetah had not reached unstick speed, and Cheetah’s
computerized canard pushed the nose down to the runway to gain speed.

 
          
“
Command override
, ” the computerized
voice suddenly interjected as Cheetah’s nose fell and the nosewheel struts
compressed.
“Stall warning
. ”

 
          
“Damn,
too much,” J.C. murmured, and let the nose fall a few feet and watched the
airspeed rise. “So much for a short takeoff record.” He let the airspeed
rebuild to one hundred eighty knots, then eased back on the stick. Cheetah
glided gently off the runway. This time, with plenty of “smash,” Cheetah’s
canards responded by pulling the nose higher into the air to take advantage of
the extra speed.

 
          
J.C.
touched the computer interactive control on his stick. “Gear up.”

 
          
Three
red
“landing gear unsafe”
lights
illuminated, and Patrick could feel the rumble as the two main wheels and the
nosewheel lifted through the slipstream. “
Landing
gear unsafe,
” the computerized voice said. Five seconds later: “
Landing gear up and locked.
”

 
          
“Gear’s
up,” Patrick said. “Two hundred knots. Passing six thousand feet.”

 
          
J.C.
began pulling the engines one by one out of afterburner to conserve fuel. “Left
engine to MIL power . . . right engine to MIL . . . Okay, where is he?”

 
          
“
Four o’clock
high, coming down—”

 
          
DreamStar
had appeared out of nowhere, it was in a full- power descent, nose aimed
straight at Cheetah’s canopy.

 
          
J.C.
jammed both throttles back into max afterburner and began a hard roll to the
right.

 
          
“Too
late, he’s gonna hit . . .”

 
          
Cheetah
lunged forward but DreamStar kept on coming, Patrick could now see DreamStar’s canards,
deployed diagonally underneath the fighter’s belly in their
high-maneuverability position. He could even see DreamStar’s thirty millimeter
Vulcan cannon muzzle screaming in closer and closer . . .

 
          
But
DreamStar did not hit. The closer it came, the more the fighter began to
flatten its flight path. It resembled a giant eagle swooping in on its prey.
The cannon muzzle never strayed off Cheetah’s canopy, even as DreamStar reached
its prey’s altitude—it began to fly
sideways
,
keeping the gun dead on target, paralleling Cheetah’s right turn. As Cheetah
began to accelerate, DreamStar snapped out of its sideways flight path and
maneuvered into a right rear quartering missile- attack aspect.

 
          
“He
hosed us,” Patrick said. “He’s at our six. He made a gun pass on us on our
climbout. He’s in infrared missile-launch position. Roll out and get him back
into fingertip formation.”

 
          
J.C.
rolled wings level, paused, then rocked his wings twice. A few seconds later
DreamStar was tucked in on Cheetah’s right wing, so close that they could have
had overlapping wingtips. “Only got a glimpse of him,” J.C. said, “but he
looked like he was haulin’ ass. Tell him to stay with the ROE.”

 
          
It
was a J.C. Powell trademark to push the rules of engagement to the limits; now
he was complaining about someone else pushing the ROE. “He’s in fingertip,”
Patrick reported to Powell. “I’m sending him to the tactical frequency.”
Patrick extended both hands in front of him, fists clenched, one on top of the
other, the signal to switch to the agreed-on scrambled tactical frequency; hand
signals, used as much as possible, prevented eavesdropping. James nodded that
he understood.

 
          
On
the new scrambled VHF frequency, J.C. called, “Storm flight, check in.”

 
          
“Two,”
a monotone voice immediately replied.

 
          
“Nice
moves, Ken,” Patrick said. “But remember the ROE. No maneuvering and no closure
rate greater than two hundred knots within one mile of your target. I’d say you
came close on both.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.” The metallic-sounding voice was James’ altered by the computer. It
sounded almost sarcastic. Or was Patrick imagining that?

 
          
“Okay,
forget it,” Patrick said, imaging Powell’s face. J.C. didn’t like being
upstaged. He wouldn’t be sore because he had been upstaged by a younger pilot
but that he had been hosed by a machine called ANTARES. “Ken, ready to start
some dogfighting?”

 
          
“Affirmative.”

 
          
“Roger.
Lead will come left, heading three-one-zero to stay inside our airspace. On
roll-out, Ken, you are the fox. We’ll give you fifteen seconds, then we’re coming
after you. Block is ten to fifty thousand feet, keep it under the Mach, please,
or the camera telemetry won’t keep up with you. And stay within the ROE, gents.
We’re all on the same team . . . Lead, come left heading three-one-zero. Head’s
up.”

 
          
“Two’s
in.”

 
          
J.C.
started a hard left turn to Patrick’s assigned heading. The roll was a bit more
abrupt than it should have been but it didn’t seem to faze James—he stayed
right in there, perhaps a few feet farther out, but still in tight fingertip
formation. The instant J.C. rolled out of his turn, DreamStar merely dropped
straight down out of sight.

 
          
“There
he goes,” Patrick said. “Straight down, I can’t see him.”

 
          
“Fifteen
seconds,” Powell complained dryly. “He could be in the next state in fifteen
seconds.”

 
          
“That’s
why he only gets five seconds. Go get ’em.”

 
          
Powell
rolled inverted, then pulled hard on the stick. Cheetah did a tight inverted
turn, losing five thousand feet. Patrick was straining against the G-forces
shoving him deep into his seat, trying to look up through the canopy to where
he thought DreamStar would be.

 
          
“Tally
ho,” J.C. sang out. “Coming up on our
twelve o’clock
. Right where I thought he’d be.” Patrick
fought a wave of vertigo as he searched for DreamStar on radar. Normally the back-seater
on an F-15E fighter-bomber would use his radar and process the attack for the
pilot, but Patrick was only along as a camera operator and observer—J.C. would
have to find and process his own targets. But J.C. already had very
unconventional help, and he quickly began working on his kill.