part of the game at the Academy. But mostly we were friends,
damn it, friends . . . She, apparently had been drinking an ex-
pensive Scotch whiskey. Even though she didn't have much al-
cohol in her blood, drunk driving was blamed for the accident.
But the whiskey was very suspicious. Under questioning, a truck
driver that delivered supplies to the Academy admitted that he
sold or traded bottles of contraband foreign liquor to students
and employees. One of the students he sold the whiskey to was
you.
Zaykov took a tighter grip on the weapon. "All of Katrina's
lovers were suspects in the investigation. All of us were officially
cleared-all but you. No investigation was started on you be-
cause you had just been inserted into the United States Air Force
Academy training program. After a time interest in the case
disappeared. Katrina Litkovka's murderer was never found."
"I still don't see what this has to do with anything, " Mar-
aklov said. "Are you accusing me of her murder? Now, after all
these years, you're on a manhunt for a murder that happened
over a decade ago and ten thousand miles away?"
"There is no statute of limitations on murder." She held up
the paper. "I did some more checking, Mr. Kenneth James. A
report don e by a KGB agent that assisted you in killing the rea
Kenneth James in Hawaii during the substitution. He reported
that the dying American admitted to two murders in his pres-
ence-the murder of his infant brother, and the murder of his
high school girlfriend.
444 DALE BROWN
Maraklov took a step forward. The gun did not waver. "Musi,
I still don't understand. What does this have to do with what's
going on here? Yes, the real Kenneth James killed his brother-
he admitted that. He was seconds away from death when he said
he killed his girlfriend. He was delirious-"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. My friend Katrina Litkovka used to
tell me about you, about the stories you supposedly made up,
about how realistic they were. She told me about how you told
her about how James killed his girlfriend before he went to Ha-
waii. Katrina said you were close to killing her then. Strange,
isn't it-the real Kenneth James confessed to the very crime that
you described to Katrina."
That made Maraklov stop in hopeless confusion. The parallels
between the real Ken James and what he thought was James' life
were indeed startling, but he had never thought of it as his
thoughts versus James' real life. At the very instant that he re-
alized he had been left alone in that hotel room in Honolulu, he
became the ultimate extreme of his training . . . he became Ken-
neth Francis James. He evaded the security checks, the encoun-
ters with James' friends and lovers, even related intimate details
about James' childhood because he had ceased to be Andrei
Ivanschichin Maraklov and had become Ken James. Which was
more than they wanted at the Academy.
Zaykov let the report fall to the floor and took out still another
piece of paper from her jacket. "I am detaining you so we can
speak with General Tret'yak, but I am also reopening the inves-
tigation of Katrina Litkovka's murder.
"Motive: She told me you threatened to kill her if she ex-
posed your behavior to Headmaster Roberts. That would have
destroyed your chances to go to America, something you had
spent half your life and every part of your peculiar mind training
for. I recall the talk that your mission was to be canceled be-
cause you were unprepared emotionally for the role. Opportu-
nity: The whiskey you bought two days before the accident. The
security guards testified that Litkovka was not drunk before leav-
ing the Academy. You arranged the accident, made it look like
Katrina had been drinking, then killed her, Kenneth James . . . "
I II am not Kenneth James," Maraklov said. "I am Colonel
Andrei Maraklov, an officer in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Be-
zopasnosti, a trained deep-cover agent just like yourself. And I
am not a murderer .
JL
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 445
Zaykov held up the last piece of paper in her hand. It was a
photograph. She tossed it across to him. Maraklov stepped for-
ward to pick it up, she moved backward to stay out of his reach
Look at it.
Sweat popped off his forehead as he studied the picture. It
was an old photocopy of a picture of Kenneth James, the real
Kenneth James, taken in Hawaii, obviously by a KGB hidden
camera. It appeared to have been taken not long before he had
arrived in Hawaii to make the switch-possibly it was the photo
used by the plastic surgeons to give him his new face before
replacing James.
Even though the photo was much enlarged and grainy, Mar-
aklov could still make out the drawn features, the thinning hair,
the sickly appearance. The guy had been tearing himself apart
from the inside out for ten years over the murder of his infant
brother. He had destroyed not only his own life but the life of
his natural father as well. No wonder he had expressed such
relief when he realized he was dying and had confessed the truth
to Maraklov that evening.
"What about this, Musi? We're wasting time .
She motioned to a mirror on the living room wall. "Take a
look. "
Maraklov dropped the photograph and moved over to the mir-
ror. He stared at the face in the mirror. It was Kenneth Francis
James-at least the face of James in the photograph. The plastic
surgery Maraklov had undergone before coming to America kept
most of his face looking like it was still seventeen years old, but
it couldn't hide the thinning hair, the hollow cheeks, the sunken
eyes, the thin neck and protruding Adam's apple . . . in his case,
the strain of the ANTARES interface and the other attritions in
the theft of DreamStar had chewed away at Maraklov's body,
much as the murders of his brother and girlfriend had eaten away
at James.
"I'm arresting you for the murder of Katrina Litkovka, " Musi
Zaykov said. "You come with-"
Ignoring the weapon pointed at his chest, he reared back and
hurled the Scotch bottle at the mirror. The bottle hit the glass
and exploded. Instinctively Zaykov turned at the sound, the gun
still pointed at Maraklov, but her head turned toward the shat-
tered mirror. It was the opening Maraklov needed. Forgetting
the pistol she still held, he covered the few steps between him
446 DALE BROWN
and Zaykov, and with the skill and precision developed from
years of training, turned the pistol away from his left hand and
delivered a solid roundhouse kick with his right foot. Zaykov
collapsed to the floor, but Maraklov could not take control of
the gun. As she doubled over and fell, she swung the gun back
up and squeezed the trigger.
The gun exploded, he felt his left shoulder yanked backward,
there was a loud buzzing in his ears and the blood drain
ed from
his head. His knees buckled and he dropped backward, clutching
his shoulder. There was no pain-yet-only a steady rivulet of
blood leaking from between his fingers, and the disorienting
feeling of confusion mixed with fear. The room began to spin.
He felt lighthearted, almost intoxicated.
Gasping, Musi crawled up to her hands and knees, reaching
for the pistol. Maraklov caught it first. Musi dug her nails into
the back of his left hand, raked the nails of her right hand across
his face. He let go of the gun. She tried to grab the gun but the
hot silencer-barrel burned her fingers, and before she could grab
the stock he had tumbled on top of her. He rolled her over onto
her back and sat on top of her, trying to pin her arms down.
"Musi ' don't . . . "
Blood ran down from his shoulder over her T-shirt, covering
her chest, her face and hands. He put one hand over her mouth,
ignoring the pain as she bit into it. With his other hand he pulled
the hunting knife out of his boot. "Musi, all I want is the flight
suit . . . "
Zaykov freed her right arm, punched Maraklov in the left
shoulder, then on the jaw. He toppled off her and she rolled to
her right away from him, reached out and grabbed the pistol.
She swung it up and fired.
The bullet just missed Maraklov's left ear. Before she could
get off another shot he had knocked the pistol aside, swung
around and, before he realized what he was doing, plunged the
hunting knife into her abdomen. The blade pierced her dia-
phragm and punctured the right lung. She took one more breath,
exhaled, blood coming from her open mouth in spasmodic
coughs. She shuddered slightly, stared at him with a look of
surprise, and then lay motionless underneath him.
He rolled off her, staring back at her lifeless eyes, then away.
Janet Larson, James' girlfriend . . . all over again . . .
He shook himself back to the present . . . pulled the pistol
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 447
from her fingers and crawled to the window, checking outside.
Nothing. He checked the side windows, the bedroom, the back
door. Nothing. The gunshots that had shocked him had not car-
ried beyond her secluded quarters.
He went back to the living room. Forcing himself back to her,
forcing himself to touch her, he grabbed her hands and dragged
her to the bedroom, then into her closet. There was little blood-
her heart had stopped beating almost instantly. He rested her as
best he could in the closet and closed the door. She would not
likely be discovered until morning.
His shoulder wound hurt badly now, but the bullet had only
taken a shallow, ragged gouge out of his left shoulder muscle.
Maraklov found bandages, disinfectant ointment and tape and
wrapped the wound tightly as he could. The pain began to build,
but he decided against any of the pain-killers he found in Zay-
kov's medicine cabinet-the drive would be long enough, and
any drugs might later interfere with the ANTARES interface.
The pain also acted like a stimulant, helping to clear his mind.
Fortunately, he thought wryly, he could fly DrearnStar without
a fully functioning left arm.
He found the two aluminum cases in a living-room closet and
made a fast check of the flight suit and superconducting hel-
met-both were as he had packed them the day before. He pock-
eted the pistol, picked up the two aluminum cases and headed
for the back door. After checking outside for several minutes he
brought the cases out to the car, got behind the wheel, and drove
off.
He followed the access road out from the southeast runway
hammerhead toward the destroyed anti-aircraft gun emplace-
ment, then turned onto a dirt road that led toward the perimeter.
No patrols were in sight. He followed the road right to the base
perimeter fence and found a long-unused gate secured by a chain
and a rusty lock that gave way when he rammed it open with
the sedan. Ten minutes later he was on the Isabella Highway
heading east toward Puerto Cabezas.
448 DALE BROWN
Puerto Lempira Airbase, Honduras
Monday, 22 June 1996, 0515 CDT (0615 ED7)
Powell and McLanahan had just finished refueling and securing
Cheetah in its portable hangar on the Honduran coastal airbase
about eighty nautical miles north of the concrete bunkers at
Puerto Cabezas. They were also watching the construction of a
second portable aircraft shelter right beside Cheetah's hangar.
The second hangar was for DreamStar. After leaving Puerto Ca-
bezas, Powell was to take it here to Puerto Lempira, where tech-
nicians would give it a thorough going over before Powell would
fly it first to Houston, and then on to Drearriland in Nevada.
Cheetah was still armed for combat-there had not been time
in nearly two days to disarm her. She still carried four AIM-
120C Scorpion radar-guided missiles in semi-recessed fuselage
stations, and two AIM-132 infrared-guided missiles on wing py-
Ions-two other AIM-132 missiles had been expended on Soviet
fighters during the bombing raid on Sebaco-PIUS FASTPACK con-
formal fuel tanks and five hundred rounds of 20-millimeter am-
munition.
"The Russians figured out how to put external fuel tanks on
DreamStar," Powell was saying as they watched the final parts
should be able to do it. With external tanks I'm sure I can fly
her all the way back to Dreamland. "
"I'm sure you can, but it's too risky. From what you said
yourself, you'll be flying DreamStar right on the edge of your
capabilities to begin with-it's been at least two years, ,
since you've flown her. The Russians probably didn't bother
testing DreamStar with the external tanks-they just slapped them
on and hoped they'd work. I don't know about you, but I'd
rather make a few fuel stops along the way than trust those
tanks. "
"I know. Well, I've no big desire to fly that thing all the way
from Central America to Nevada in one leg. Four hours hooked
up to ANTARES? Gives me a migraine just thinking about it."
"A bad time for a headache," McLanahan said. "We want
that plane out of there today."
"Hell, why don't you fly it out of Nicaragua then? You at
least flew in DreamStar's simulator a couple weeks ago. You'd
DAY OF THE CHEETAH 449
probably do better than me. I could fly Cheetah on your wing
and keep you company . . . "
"It's an idea. But you know what happened the last time I
flew in the simulator-1 crashed and burned, in more ways than
one. If you think you can't do it, we'll just call Elliott on the
horn and get that Navy barge in here. No, I think I'll let you
have all the pleasure of flying DreamStar. I'll be in Cheetah on
your wing."
Powell looked at him. "I'll be happy if I can just keep it
upright. "
A few minutes later they heard the steady rhythm of h
elicopter
blades approaching. An Air Force HH-65A Dolphin helicopter
swung in over the saltwater marshes, down the runway and over
to the asphalt and concrete parking area. A security guard di-
rected in the chopper with lighted wands, and it settled gently
in for a landing. As the rotors began to spin down, a fuel truck
and maintenance crew began making their way toward the
chopper, and the passengers began to deplane. Powell and
McLanahan went over to greet them.
"These helicopters have some real possibilities," Master Ser-
geant Ray Butler said as he exited the Dolphin. "But I'll take
solid wings and big turbofans any day." He shook hands with
McLanahan. "How are you, sir?"
"Okay, Ray."
"Sorry about Dr. Tork," he mumbled.
Alan Carmichael wrapped his big arms around McLanahan
before saying a word. "I called Brooks before we left La Cieba,
Patrick. Wendy's hanging right in there. Still on full respiratory
life support but she's a fighter. I thing she's going to pull out of
it. "
"Me too. Thanks for the news, Alan."
There were a few extra security guards along, plus several
cases of supplies that were hauled out. The last man off the
chopper was Major Hal Briggs. "Patrick, , things are look-
ing better," he said. "Wendy's gonna do okay, and we're gonna
get our baby back." He checked his watch. "It'll take us less
than an hour to get to Puerto Cabezas. We should plan to leave
in about forty-five minutes, right?"
"Wrong," McLanahan said. "I want the chopper fueled and
ready to go fifteen minutes max."
"But they said we can't be there any earlier than eight A."
450 DALE BROWN
"Push them. Ask for immediate clearance into Nicaraguan
airspace and clearance onto Puerto Cabezas. If they won't let us
near the plane until eight, fine-but I want to get on the base as
fast as possible. "
"You're the colonel, Colonel. " Briggs stuck his head back
in the helicopter cockpit to talk to the Dolphin's pilot and have
him arrange for clearances.
McLanahan turned to Butler. "Got everything you need? I