Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (41 page)

 
          
After
touchdown he discovered that Ojito was nowhere near seven thousand feet
long—another dense stand of trees and several buildings rushed up to meet him
from less than
two
thousand feet
away. Apparently a small corral and farm had been built on the little-used
runway to make it easier to load livestock onto trucks, and the surrounding
forest had been allowed to grow over the rest of the airstrip.

 
          
Maraklov
threw the vectored-thrust nozzles and louvers into full reverse power, then hit
the brakes. The left brake locked, its anti-skid system failed; it overheated
and was quickly deactivated by computer just before it fused to the wheel.
DreamStar skidded hard right, and only the lightning-fast application of thrust
in the right directions kept the fighter on the narrow weed-covered runway. The
left wing crashed into several small, rickety wooden buildings, sending
chickens and pigs scattering in all directions. One of the small buildings
burst into flames, ignited by the heat from DreamStar’s exhaust.

 
          
Maraklov
gunned the engine. DreamStar leapt forward away from the burning building
seconds before the fire reached the left wingtip. Scattering buildings in his
jet exhaust, Maraklov taxied back down the runway to the opposite end, turned
and aligned himself with the runway centerline, his engine idling. If troops or
police came, he would have enough fuel to take off and get two or three hundred
feet before flame-out—enough to nose over and crash DreamStar.

 
          
He
activated the radio on Kramer’s frequency. “Kramer, what’s your position?” he
thought, and ANTARES transmitted the query.

 
          
“Vstryetyemsah zahv dvah menootah,
tovarisch,”
Moffitt, Kramer’s assistant, replied. Maraklov wished there was
a Rus- sian-translation computer in DreamStar—once again he didn’t understand
enough of what Moffitt said.

 
          
This
was going to be a major problem, Maraklov thought to himself. They weren’t in
Russia
yet, but even in
Mexico
they were a hell of a lot closer to
Moffitt’s turf than Maraklov was. He would have to deal with Moffitt and all
the other Moffitts that he’d meet up with—the ones that didn’t trust him, the
ones who’d think he might have turned, the ones who envied his life in the
United States. He’d have to try to begin the transformation back to being a
Russian right now.

 
          
“Yah
. . .
yah nye pahnyemahyo,
” Maraklov thought haltingly. Like many before
him, he thought, Russian is
hard.
But
ANTARES did not transmit the Russian phrase, so Maraklov had to answer, “Say
again.”

 
          
“Oh,
excuse me, Captain James”—Moffitt was his usual charming self—“I forgot you do
not speak Russian any more. Our ETA is two minutes.”

 
          
Maraklov
had no time to think about Moffitt. Several villagers had begun to appear at
the opposite end of the airstrip.

 
          
Some
went to work putting out the fires to their outbuildings; others pointed at
DreamStar. Maraklov couldn’t tell if any were carrying weapons but the safe
assumption would be that they were armed and shouldn’t be allowed to approach,
even though they looked like backwoods villagers . . .

 
          
Now
a large dark-green truck rumbled up the road leading to the tiny airstrip,
about a dozen men piled in and slowly started down the runway toward DreamStar.
So much for timid villagers.

 
          
Maraklov
locked the right and the emergency brakes, set the engine louvers on full
reverse, and advanced the throttle. A huge cloud of dust rolled up from the
airstrip and almost covered the advancing truck. The truck stopped, then
several villagers jumped out and ran over to the sides of the runway. This time
Maraklov could see rifles and shotguns. The truck then began advancing slowly
toward him, the villagers with rifles advancing on both sides.

 
          
Maraklov
created another dust cloud to warn them away. It wasn’t working. He moved the
louvers back to takeoff position. The truck was closer than a thousand feet
now—he wouldn’t make it if he attempted a takeoff over the truck even if his
wings weren’t damaged. There was no way in hell he’d risk losing control of
DreamStar to these characters. If these guys came any closer . . . well, he’d
survived fighters, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, the best
of
America
’s defense arsenals. Damned if he and his plane were going to give up to
a bunch of peasants in
Mexico
armed with shotguns.

 
          
The
villagers were about a hundred yards away when a thunderous roar echoed through
the mountainous valley, drowning out the sound of DreamStar’s engines. Suddenly
the airfield erupted in clouds of dust and the crackle of machine- gun fire.
The tree-line on either side of the strip was strafed with heavy-caliber
machine-gun fire, whipping the trees and branches as if they were in the grip
of a hurricane. Not surprisingly the armed villagers bolted from the airstrip,
and soon the source of the uproar hove into view in the center of the airstrip.

 
          
Maraklov
was impressed. It was a huge Boeing CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, an old
American twin-rotor job that had to be at least forty years old. This veteran
chopper, belching smoke that could be seen for miles, was ready for action—
with a door-gunner on each side of the helicopter firing a gyro-stabilized
twenty-millimeter gun, it was more a gunship than a trash-hauler. Its huge
eight-bladed rotors, each some one hundred feet in diameter, barely made it
through the trees and brush. The KGB had at least pulled out all stops to make
sure DreamStar got out of the
U.S.
intact—no sooner had the monster landed
than twelve heavily armed men rushed out of the rear-cargo ramp. Two hit the
area where the burning buildings smoldered, the fires extinguished by the down-
wash of the chopper’s huge rotors; the rest split up on either side of the
chopper and began to secure the perimeter of the airstrip. And then from the
cargo hold of the chopper came Kramer and Moffitt riding aboard a small
black-and-green fuel truck.

 
          
As
Maraklov opened the canopy, a crew from the chopper brought a ladder up to the
side for Kramer. Maraklov ordered the maintenance access panels to open
automatically, and a crew began to attach fuel lines to the single-point
refueling adapter. Other crewmen began stripping loose chunks of fibersteel off
DreamStar’s tail section, while some scurried over DreamStar’s wings inspecting
the damage from the Bulldog AAA gun. Amid it all two photographers were taking
nonstop pictures of DreamStar.

 
          
Kramer,
now on the top of the ladder beside the cockpit ledge, plugged a headset into a
jack offered by a maintenance technician. “Can you hear me, Maraklov?”

 
          
“Yes,
I can hear you,” the ANTARES-synthesized voice replied. He did not move, nor
did he attempt to remove his helmet or raise his visors.

 
          
“Welcome,
Andrei. What you have accomplished is incredible.”

 
          
“Thank
you,” the computer-synthesized voice replied.

 
          
“Can
you move? You must be tired. Can you get up?”

 
          
“I
won’t disturb the ANTARES interface until we are safely in
Nicaragua
. The refueling can be accomplished with the
engine running. I should launch without any delay.”

 
          
“I
understand. We have begun refueling. We also have missiles and ammunition for
your guns.”

 
          
“What
kind of missiles?”

 
          
“The
best we have,” Moffitt broke in on the interphone. He had climbed up the other
side of DreamStar and was leaning inside the cockpit, watching with fascination
as the multi-function screens flickered and changed at breathtaking speed while
Maraklov monitored the refueling. “We have two hundred rounds of twenty-millimeter
ammunition plus two AA-11 close-range dogfighting missiles and two AA-14
medium-range missiles. They—”

 
          
“Neither
is enough,” came Maraklov’s ANTARES synthesizer voice. Moffitt tried to reach
inside the cockpit to touch a button on one of the MFDs, and Maraklov
immediately powered the monitor down until Moffitt withdrew his hand. “Without
proper interface the missile needs to be able to lock onto a target without
carrier-aircraft guidance. Neither the AA-11 or the AA-14
^can
do
that.”

 
          
Moffitt’s
comment was predictable. “Your American friends always build the best of
everything, don’t they?”

 
          
“Be
quiet,” Kramer told Moffitt, and then asked Maraklov, “Can’t you use the
missiles as a decoy? Perhaps they could scare off—”

 
          
“They’ll
only add additional drag, and they could cause damage. I have no intention of
letting anyone that close to me. I’ll take the ammunition for the cannon—that’s
standard size.” Maraklov ordered the cannon-bay door opened, and the
twenty-millimeter cannon lowered itself out of its nose bay, where crewmen,
along with the photographers, began to examine it in preparation for loading.
“Another important item: remove the left access panel just forward of the
canard. There’s a black box marked ‘data transmitter.’ That unit must be disconnected
as soon as possible.”

 
          
“What
is it?”

 
          
“An
automatic telemetry-data transmitter,” Maraklov told him. “It sends engine and
flight data to any airborne receivers within a hundred miles, including the
F-15F. They can decode the information and use it to track me. It can’t be
deactivated by ANTARES. Do it immediately.”

 
          
Kramer
gave the order to the senior crew chief, then: “What is your plan for escaping
to
Nicaragua
?”

 
          
So
he was going to
Nicaragua
, as he’d guessed. Okay, so be it. . . “I’ll
stay in the mountains as much as possible and avoid military bases. The main
multi-function display screen flashed on, then scrolled through
computer-generated charts of the route of flight as Maraklov continued: “I’ll
fly west of
Durango
and east of
Culiacan
to avoid those bases, through the interior to avoid Aguas Calientes and
Guadalajara
, then into the
Sierra Madre del Sur
between
San Mateo
and
Acapulco
. I don’t anticipate problems avoiding
Tuxtla Gutierrez
and
Villahermosa
military airfields, and crossing the border
I should be unopposed through
Guatemala
. The problems may come crossing through
Honduras
,” the computer-altered voice of ANTARES
said—the metallic voice did not reveal any hint of Maraklov’s real apprehension
or fear. “I may encounter large American forces from Llorango Airfield in
El Salvador
, and La Cieba and
Tegucigalpa
airfields in
Honduras
, but I believe resistance will not be
major. There are only about two hundred miles to the Guatemalan border, through
El
Salvador
and
Honduras
and into Augusto Cesar Sandino airfield—I
can transit the entire distance in less than twenty minutes if necessary. I
assume Sandino will be the final destination?”

 
          
“Ah
. . . that reminds me,” Kramer said. “The Nicaraguan government was adamant
about not allowing DreamStar into Managua—those people actually believe the
U.S. will send the
New Jersey
and
shell the city if DreamStar shows up anywhere near it. However, we have been
provided an alternate base of operations that you will find more than
adequate—Sebaco Airfield, north of
Managua
.”