144 DALE BROWN

"Why can't you bozos do your little games during the day?"

Howard said. He motioned to Crowe, who seemed to be cemented in place. "Move it, Airman. We're behind schedule as it is."

"Wasn't expecting you till nine," Jacinto said.

"I wasn't expecting to be here until nine," Howard said angrily. "So naturally I get a call in the middle of the night telling me they want the plane in premaintenance right now. I know better than to answer the damned phone after nine P."

Jacinto nodded. "I hear that." He put his own wife and kids on strict instructions not to answer the phone after nine P.

He walked back to his V- 100 just as a large green M 113 Armadillo combat vehicle pulled up beside his. The back door swung ope I n and two armed soldiers jumped out and took defensive positions behind the ACV. Jacinto could see the roof turret swing in his direction, the huge twenty-millimeter Browning cannon and its coaxial 7.62-millimeter machine gun in the turret trained on the Stepvan behind him.

"Five Foxtrot, code two, report," a voice blared through the Armadillo's loudspeaker.

"Five Foxtrot, code victor ten victor, all secure," Jacinto yelled back. The security crews had been given a code sequence and number for the shift. When challenged, the guard would respond with the proper code to advise the response crew that he was not under duress. If he had responded with anything else the snipers at the back of the truck and the gunner on top of the armored vehicle with his cannon and machine gun would kill anybody in sight.

But Jacinto answered correctly. The guards behind the Armadillo raised their rifles and slung them on their shoulders.

Jacinto walked over to the truck.

"Pissing off the munitions maintenance troops again, eh, Rey?"

"I gotta do something to stay awake, Sarge. These guys have nonsense of humor."

'Yeah. You gotta hit the head or what?"

"Just let me refill my canteen and I'll be okay."

Jacinto went to the back of the Almadillo and hacked around with the two assault troops as he filled his canteen from the large DAY OF THE CHEETAH 145

water can and hooked it back onto his web belt. He gave the shift-supervisor NCO a snappy salute as the ACV drove away.

His blood flowing once again, Jacinto did a quick walkaround inspection of the hangar as the munitions maintenance troops punched in the number of the code lock on the hangar door opening mechanism. As the senior NCO went inside, the younger man hopped back into the Stepvan and pulled it around so that the rear was facing in toward the plane. Jacinto moved toward the front of the hangar so he could watch the rear of the truck and the driver. The young driver, obviously nervous around the flight line, finally got into position after a series of jerks and starts, maneuvering the missile trailer in beside the plane as close to the hangar wall as he could. Jacinto decided to help him out, and guided the driver in until the truck was ten feet from the nose of the plane and the trailer was just under the left wingtip.

"Thanks," the young airman said in a high-pitched voice. He hopped out and trotted back to help his supervisor.

"Better chock the truck," Jacinto called inside the hangar.

The airman froze. Sergeant Howard looked at Jacinto, then at Crowe, and finally at the Stepvan.

"Do as the man said," Howard yelled to Crowe. "You know all vehicles are supposed to be chocked out here." Crowe ran to the truck, pulled out a set of yellow wooden chocks and placed them under the rear wheels.

"And stop running around in the hangar," Howard yelled once more. "You know better. Or should."

Jacinto suppressed a smile. He remembered back to his first solo guard duties while he watched the two technicians set to work. He was a million times more nervous than this guy . . .

His interest was quickly drawn to the amazing aircraft they were servicing. He had never been any closer than this to the plane, even though he had been guarding it for a year now, but he was still amazed by the sleek, catlike aircraft. It looked even more deadly now with its two huge air-to-air missiles hanging on the belly on either side of the large intake. Jacinto had read every scrap of unclassified information on DrearnStar and had repeatedly asked for permission to look inside the cockpit but was always denied.

Sergeant Howard had wheeled a maintenance platform around to the left side of the cockpit and locked it into place, then 146 DALE BROWN

scrambled up the steps and opened the canopy. Meanwhile Crowe had started up an auxiliary power cart in the back of the hangar and was hauling air and power cables over to the receptacles near the left main landing gear. A few moments later Howard had flipped the right switches in the cockpit-the battery and external power switches, Jacinto recalled from his reading-and cockpit and position lights popped in all around DreamStar.

Howard stepped off the maintenance platform and walked over to the back of the truck. Noticing Jacinto watching him from the front of the hangar, he waved him over. Jacinto, and soon Airman Crowe, moved over beside Howard.

Over the noise of the power cart Sergeant Howard said, "Want to take look inside?"

Jacinto blinked in surprise. "Is it okay?"

" Don't see why not. Ejection seat's been deactivated, half the black boxes in the cockpit have been pulled out and the weapons are all pinned and safe. No better time - "

Jacinto nodded enthusiastically. He pulled the clip out of his M-16, placed the clip in a pouch on his belt, checked the safety on the rifle and leaned the weapon on the Stepvan bumper. "All right, I been waiting to do this for-"

A hand reached across his face, covering his nose and mouth and twisting his head sideways. Jacinto tried to roll away from the arms holding his head, but Howard had run up to him and grasped his chin, holding his neck fast. A split-second later Jacinto felt a sharp, deep sting on his exposed neck.

Three seconds later he was dead.

"Shto slochelosch? What the hell is the matter with you, Crowe?" the man named "Howard" cursed at his young partner. "Crowe" was staring at the body, watching Jacinto's death twitch as the poison slowly destroyed the central nervous system. "You almost let him get loose."

Crowe did not reply. Howard slapped the young man hard on the shoulder. "We must hurry, idiot. Time is running out."

Pushed toward the still-quivering corpse, Crowe began unbuckling Jacinto's combat harness and webbing, jerking his hands

,away as the last of the dead, guard's tremors left his body. Meanwhile Howard swung open the back of the Stepvan, removed several pins from the sides of the equipment racks along the inside walls of the van, then hauled the racks away from the wall.

DAY OF THE CHEETAH 147

Out from his hiding place inside the racks, wearing the ANTARES flight suit, was Captain Kenneth Francis James.

"Nechyega syerchyanznaga, tovarisch. It is all clear, Comrade Captain. We are -ready."

James raised the muzzle of the machine pistol and put the safety on. "Speak English, you idiot. And help me out of here."

Slowly, carefully, Maraklov was helped to his feet. Moving as if his joints were locked in place, he slowly walked to the edge of the Stepvan. Howard then lowered him to the hangar floor, where he made his way to the maintenance platform still set up beside DrearnStar.

By this time Airman Crowe-real name, long unused and almost forgotten, was Andrei Lovyyev-had put on all of Jacinto's combat gear and was just replacing the ammo clip in the M- 16

rifle. "Blouse your pants in your boots, Crowe," James told him as he crawled up the ladder. "And keep out of sight. You're at least thirty pounds smaller than Jacinto, someone is bound to notice. "

"Yes, sir.

"Remember, your call sign is Five Foxtrot. The duress code number is twelve and the duress prefix and suffix is victor."

"I remember, sir."

He turned to Howard. "You both have been briefed on the pickup location?"

"Yes, Captain. Good luck to you, sir."

James balanced himself on the cockpit sill of DreamStar and swung his legs inside the cockpit. Then with Howard's help, he connected the maze of wire bundles from his flight suit to DrearnStar's computers, set the heavy ANTARES superconductor helmet on his head and fastened it into place. By this time he was breathing hard, he could feel drops of sweat crawling down his arms and neck. Howard's hands trembled slightly with excitement as he fastened the thick shoulder straps around the metal-encased pilot and pulled them tight. "Tighter," James said in a voice muffled by the helmet. Howard braced himself and hauled on'the straps as hard as he could.

"Thank you, Sergeant Howard," James said. "You pulled this off very well."

"Nyeh zah shto. " Maraklov had been James too long. He could barely understand a word, but the KGB agent's soft tone of voice gave him the idea. The man was obviously pleased by 148 DALE BROWN

the compliment. He rechecked James' connections and climbed off the maintenance platform.

Meanwhile Crowe had climbed inside the armored vehicle outside the hangar, scanning the flight line-Howard could see his head jerk at every crackle of the radio. It had, he now realized, been foolish to bring such a youngster on a mission like this-it was Lovyyev's first full-scale job since sneaking across the border from Mexico via El Paso and setting up residence under cover in Las Vegas three years earlier. To put him in the lion's den like this was taking a big risk.

But it was too late for second guessing. Howard disconnected the missile trailer from the Stepvan truck and moved it out of the way inside the hangar, closed the van's rear doors and moved it out of the hangar and clear of DreamStar's taxi path. Next he took several large orange-colored traffic cones marked "DANGER

HIGH EXPLOSIVE" out of the van and arranged them in a wide arc around the hangar doors. This was a normal procedure-the cones were a warning to anyone else on the flight line that work on live weapons was going on inside. But these cones were different. Each was a miniature mortar-launcher, operated by remote control. When activated, each would fire a high-explosive magnesium flash bomb a hundred yards away. The concussions and blinding white light produced by the mortar rounds would slow and presumably stop any quick-reaction forces from moving in until DreamStar was clear of the hangar.

After carefully aiming the disguised mortars at response roads and likely targets around the hangar-being careful not to crater DrearnStar's taxi route or exit-Howard stepped inside the hangar once again and rechecked that all safing pins and streamers were removed from the aircraft and weapons. He then walked to the truck, retrieved a M-16 rifle with a M-203 forty-millimeter grenade-launcher under the barrel, a metal box full of grenades and a bag of five thirty-round clips, and went back into the hangar to wait.

His legs were aching, sweat was pouring into the metallic flight suit. Conditioned air from the external power cart was trickling into the suit but was hardly enough to change the temperature.

Through the canopy he could see Crowe nervously fidgeting inside the armored car, looking as if he was going to shoot himself in the face with his M-16 any second. He could also DAY OF THE CHEETAH 149

watch Howard's careful preparations for the massive assault they knew had to come. Despite their plans, the moment they tried to start engines the full force of Dreamland's security forces would be on top of them. Nearly fifty armed soldiers and two heavily armed tracked combat vehicles surrounding the flight line would be let loose to blow DreamStar to hell.

Amid it all James had to convince himself to relax, to empty his mind of all thoughts, to clear a path for the sleeping ANTARES computer to worm its way into his subconscious. Self-hypnosis, consciously forcing each muscle group to relax, was the simplest and usually the most effective way of achieving theta-wave state, but that seemed impossible. Muscles ached from the long climb up the platform, and the lactic acid that collected in his muscle tissue from heavy exertion would act like halon gas on a fire, blocking any conscious efforts to relax those muscles.

His mind kept straying to the thoughts of Major Briggs' security forces-he had inspected those forces many times, acting only partially interested in them at the time when in fact he was taking careful notes on the exact numbers, equipment and deployment. He had examined the weaknesses of the force and planned possible escape routes out of Drearnland for himself should that ever have been necessary. He had devised several escape plans, depending on what, if anything, he was taking with him-one route was to be used if he was alone and on foot, another if he was driving a car, another if driving a truck, another if he was carrying a "black box" or another unit. But never had he expected to take DreamStar with him. Components, drawings, computers, electronic media, yes-never the whole plane.

Only one mind-set seemed to make sense-that morning in the cockpit he told himself he wasn't going to make it but it was worth it to die trying. If he did beat the odds and lift off, he had to buck even greater odds to fly the eight hundred miles from Dreamland to the deserted airstrip in central Mexico for the refueling planned by his KGB contacts in Los Angeles and Mexico City. Then he'd have both the American and Mexican air forces to beat on his way to Nicaragua, plus American forces based on El Salvador and Honduras-none of them very large or effective forces, but a deadly threat to a battered and weaponless DreamStar.