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.
"Tvo has twenty minutes, all systems nominal."
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, 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, ," 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."
had a point. They had really not pushed DreamStar to
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 79
the edge of the envelope. And if there was anybody who could
really force DreamStar to perform, it was JC. Powell.
"All right, JC., you got it. But don't break the bubble .
Patrick lined it out. "This time lead will be the fox. We're com-
ing up on the southeast comer 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 .
JC. Powell turned hard left. Patrick had time to grab hold
of his handlebars before being squashed into his seat by the turn.
stayed on the northwesterly heading for five seconds, then
rolled inverted and pulled the nose earthward, pushing the throt-
tles to full power, aiming the nose directly for Lookout Peak
twenty thousand feet below.
Patrick watched as the altimeter-readout clicked down faster
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.
II Watch it!"
Powell checked his threat receivers-no signals from any-
where. He began to level off, pointing Cheetah toward a wide
cleft in the jagged peaks below. "Colonel, if I stay at high al-
titude 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 ex-
pecting the tops of Cheetah's twin tails to scrape along the face
of those rocks any second.
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.
80 DALE BROWN
Patrick followed JC.'s pointing finger out the top oi the can-
opy. 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. 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 re-
stricted airspace, the radar scan came up negative. Cheetah had
disappeared!
ANTARES immediately suggested a data link with Dream-
land'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 nee-d 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 prom-
inent directly below, surrounded by dry lakebeds and non-
reflecting 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.
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 81
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 possi-
ble. 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-
ANTARES broke in with its warning: "Radar contact, di-
rectly below and climbing. "
ANTARES suggested a roll and a ten-G push-over to' an emer-
gency descent. But just as James ordered the maneuver he heard
on the interplane channel, "Fox four, Zero-One, three-niner
thousand. Underneath you, Ken. " Powell had already started
shooting . . .
What was happening? Why didn't he see Cheetah coming?
The questions brought spikes of pain that shot through his head
and reverberated through his body. For the first time that James
could remember, DreamStar had no options. The pain intensi-
fied as he continued polling the database, hunting for answers-
Abruptly the confusion that had lasted only a few seconds
ended as DreamStar's sensors continued to track Cheetah. Sud-
denly the pain in James' head disappeared and he found himself
presented with a series of maneuvers.
DreamStar inverted and began a tight
descending vertical roll.
If Cheetah was in a high-speed climb underneath him,
would be out of airspeed at the top of the climb and would have
to go inverted and begin a descent to regain lost airspeed. Now
DrearnStar had the power advantage. All it had to do was com-
plete the roll and Cheetah should be dead ahead and directly in
his gun sights.
But as James hit the bottom of the roll the G-forces reached
their peak. Air tubules in the legs of James' flight suit inflated,
which helped force blood back into the upper part of his bQdy,
but it wasn't fast enough. James' vision went to a gray-out as
blood was forced out of his brain, then darkened completely as
he lost consciousness.
ANTARES detected the elevated blood pressure and the in-
terruption of theta-alpha. The computer immediately lowered
the back of James' ejection seat so that his head was below heart
level to improve blood flow back to the brain. Oxygen shot into
A
82 DALE BROWN
his face mask as he fought to regain theta-alpha. With his face
mask flooded with oxygen, his breathing was slowed, making
him feel light-headed.
It took a few seconds more for James to take control of AN-
TARES again. He countermanded the computer's suggestion to
raise the seat upright-he would need several more hard turns
before he could get within firing range of his adversary and he'd
be in less danger of blacking out if the seat-back stayed down.
He began a hard seven-G turn back toward Cheetah, but by then
he had lost his advantage. Cheetah was in a dive at nearly Mach
one.
DreamStar pulled in six miles behind Cheetah and James tried
for a radar lock, but Cheetah executed a vertical scissors and
darted away-even though Cheetah did not have DreamStar's
sophisticated high-maneuverabilities her large foreplanes and
temporary speed advantage allowed her to execute such a move.
DreamStar easily performed the same inverted vertical scissors
to pursue. Cheetah had moved out to nine miles by then, and
James ordered the throttle into min-afterburner in the descent to
catch up. With the throttles up in the steep descent, the lighter,
aerodynamically cleaner DreamStar fighter quickly regained the
speed advantage.
Closure rate five hundred knots, ANTARES reported. James
"heard" the stream of computer-generated reports as if he was
listening to the sound of his own breathing. Range seven miles.
Action: High-maneuverability configuration, maintain speed ad-
vantage, ANTARES infrared pursuit, deactivate attack radar, la-
ser lock, attack, close to gun range, attack, constant AOA wing
mode, maintain gun range, attack. The messages began to re-
peat, informing him of altitude, closure rate, weapons status,
external heating, stress factors, power demands, air-conditioning
faults. James accepted ANTARES' engagement suggestions-
the computer had already decided how the battle would be fought
several minutes in the future-why not let it go?
Using its infrared tracker and laser rangefinder, ANTARES
had predicted the moves Cheetah could make in its present flight
attitude and airspeed and had devised an attack for those ma-
neuvers. There were also reversals Cheetah could make, and
ANTARES had computed how to defeat them. The final moves
of this aerial chess game were now being played. Cheetah was
making a hard left turn, but DreamStar had the cutoff angle and
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 83
the power advantage. DreamStar did not need to snap over in a
hard bank to make the kill-her high-maneuverability canards
and strake flaps pulled the laser rangefinder onto target and held
it there. Cheetah tried another hard turn, this time to the right,
but the XF-34s guns were locked on solid now-Cheetah was
just burning up airspeed in each high-G turn. DreamStar was
flying "uncoordinated," sideways and downward at the same
time-
Suddenly James heard McLanahan over the interplane chan-
nel: "Storm Flight, knock it off, knock it off! Storm Two, pull
up! I I
Ground-map radar, James immediately ordered. The phased-
array radars snapped on . . . revealing a sheer rock cliff no more
than a thousand feet away and straight ahead. Cheetah had flown
directly at two tall buttes, diving and banking away just before
reaching them. ANTARES faithfully computed the deadly
news-DreamStar would impact in exactly eight-tenths of a sec-
ond.
Which was like eight minutes to the ANTARES computer.
James canceled high-maneuverability mode and threw Dream-
Star into a hard left bank. DreamStar's large canards and
computer-controlled rudders kept her nose from pushing in the
opposite direction in a hard turn, and she slipped between
the twin towering buttes. ANTARES reported the data from the
ground-mapping radars: DreamStar had missed the right butte
by eight feet.
James cleared the left butte and rolled to the right, only to
find Cheetah directly in his gunsights less than two miles away.
He quickly lined up on him, switched to his twenty-millimeter
Two, your six-o'clock."
"I said knock it off!" McLanahan ordered. "Storm Flight,
route formation, station check. Weapons on standby. Move."
James raised his ejection seat back out of the reclined anti-G
setting and activated the radars that would help keep DreamStar
in formation with Cheetah. "Two has twelve minutes to joker,
all systems nominal."
"Lead's in the green, nine minutes," Powell reported.
"Storm Flight, right turn heading zero-four-three, direct bea-
con red five at ten thousand feet. " Powell executed the turn, and
DreamStar stayed with him in route fon-nation.
84 DALE BROWN
"What the hell happened, Ken?" McLanahan said as they
rolled out on the new heading. "You passed out of theta-alpha
for a few seconds but you pressed the attack anyway. We watched
you side-slip behind us right into that butte. You almost got
yourself killed and destroyed--
"I had contact with the ground at all times," James lied. "I
was conscious during the entire attack, except at the bottom of
my loop when ANTARES took over. I had clearance between
the obstructions. " Another lie-James would not soon forget the
rivulets of ice and the lichens he saw growing on the sides of
the rock . . . he was that close to it. If Patrick hadn't yelled
out . . . "I had the last shot after passing between the buttes," he
insisted, "and I processed the shot before you called--
"Save it for the debriefing," Patrick said, "and the data tapes.
Storm Flight, fingertip formation. Prepare for penetration and
approach. "
DreamStar and Cheetah were now to demonstrate their land-
ing abilities. Powell redeemed himself for his poor takeoff.
Keeping Cheetah in perfect balance, he guided the fighter to a
pinpoint land
ing and stop within five hundred feet-he could
have landed Cheetah on an aircraft carrier without the use of a
tail hook or arresting cables. But DreamStar's landing was even
better-it was as if the one hundred-thousand-pound fighter was
a bee alighting on a flower. The combination of the large ca-
nards, mission-adaptive wings in their long-chord, high-lift con-
figuration and thrust-vectored nozzles, all controlled by the
fastest "computer" extant-the human brain-and James had
DreamStar stopped within four hundred feet of touchdown, a
hundred feet better than Cheetah.
Hal Briggs replaced the phone in its cradle and turned to General
Elliott, who was watching the landing through binoculars from
on top of the portable control tower. "Those Russian birds are
still several minutes from their flyby," he said. "Good thing our
guys landed early-"
"The hell it is. They even knew when the test was supposed
to terminate. If they had landed on time the satellite would've
been right there taking pictures and there'd be nothing we could
do about it." He ran his fingers through silver hair that, Briggs
noted, seemed to grow thinner every year. He turned toward
Briggs. "I want you to pull out all the stops, Major." The tower
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 85
controllers as well as Briggs caught Elliott's ominous tone. "Do
whatever you have to do to find the leak on this installation. You
have an unlimited budget, unlimited resources, and very little
damn time. Search anywhere and everywhere. Go off-base with
federal authorities to investigate-I'll back up whatever you do.
I want answers, Briggs. Fast."
Briggs knew that at least off-base activities needed huge
amounts of cooperation, hard to come by, from state and federal
law enforcement. He needed some clarification, but now wasn't
the time to ask for it.
Elliott thumbed the microphone on the command frequency.
"Storm Flight, taxi without delay to parking. Over."
"Lead.
Two.
Ken James had been disconnected from his fighter and hoisted
out of DreamStar's cockpit. He was wheeled to an air-conditioned