174 DALE BROWN

fully-without explosive warheads there would be no proximity detonation; each shot had to be a direct hit.

But up here, the possibility of anyone touching him seemed unlikely. There were still search radars all around him, resembling huge green cones rising out of the terrain, but there were large gaps between the radar cones and he was picking his way through them, using slight heading changes to put a mountain or ridge line between himself and the radar cones. Smaller yellow blobs, giant mushrooms, appeared now and then-the lethal envelope of surface-to-air missiles stationed below-but he was avoiding them as well. Now he was almost out of the Dreamland complex, accelerating past one thousand miles per hour.

Speed and stealth meant survival more than fancy flying or superior weaponry. The first time he had decided to steal DreamStar he'd imagined himself taking on the air might of the whole southeastern United States, flying rings around the best fighters and the best pilots in the world, winning out over a billion dollars' worth of hardware. Well, it wasn't going to happen that way. He was going to sneak out, hiding behind every shadow, measuring every quart of fuel.

Whatever it took . . .

For the first time he really allowed his body to relax. He had stolen DreamStar right out from under the noses of the people who wanted to give up on his baby. And now he even dared to think that he might actually make it all the way.

He was allowed that heady thought for precisely forty seconds. From out of nowhere, a green triangle of energy appeared in front of him. There was no time to evade. The green triangle enveloped him, and instantly turned to yellow . . .

This thing was truly amazing, Major Edward Frost, the radar navigator aboard the B-52 Megafortress Plus, marveled. A goddamned B-52 bomber with more gadgets and modes and functions and bells and whistles than L. Air Traffic Control.

Frost was studying a fourteen-inch by ten-inch rectangular video display terminal set on one-hundred-mile range. A circle cursor, automatically laid on a radar return that matched the preprogrammed parameters set by Frost, was tracking a high-altitude, high-speed target dead ahead. You told the system what you wanted to find and it did the searching. It was a hell of a lot different from only a few years ago when radar navs on B-52

DAY OF THE CHEETAH 175

bombers concentrated on terrain and cultural returns-mountains, buildings, towns. This B-52 was different.

Major Frost hit the mike button near his right foot. "Pilot, radar. Radar contact aircraft, one o'clock, eighty-five miles."

He punched a function key on his keyboard. "Altitude six thousand five hundred, airspeed . . . hey, he's moving out. Airspeed one thousand one hundred knots."

He hit another function key, and the display changed to a maze of arcs, lines, grids. The computer had presented a series of options for approaching the target.

Frost shook his head. Here I am, sitting in a B-52 bomber planning to attack a high-speed fighter!

"Turn right heading zero-five two to IR intercept in six-two nautical miles. Automatic intercept is available." Then to Angelina Pereira: "I'm aligned for guidance-mode transfer at any time-"

"Belay that," General John Ormack said over interphone.

"Weapons stay on safe-that's our damned plane out there, Frost. "

"Sorry, got carried away."

"Auto-intercept coming on, crew. " Ormack connected the digital autopilot to the intercept computer and monitored the Old Dog's turn, pushing the throttles up to ninety five percent power to keep the angle of attack low. The autopilot made several small corrections farther to the right as the distance between the two aircraft rapidly decreased.

"Exactly what are we trying to accomplish here, General?"

George Wendelstat, the safety observer asked. Wendelstat was firmly strapped into the instructor-pilot's seat, wearing a backpack-style parachute on his beefy shoulders. His face was cherry red and he was sweating in spite of the B-52's cool interior temperature. "Do you mean to attack that aircraft?"

"What I mean to do is everything I possibly can to turn that aircraft back," Ormack said. "If I can't get him to turn around I mean to delay him long enough for help to arrive. "

"But this is suicide," Wendelstat protested. "A B-52 against this DreamStar? That's a fighter plane, isn't it?"

"It's also a stolen aircraft from my research center," Ormack said. "I'm not going to let this guy go without trying to do something-"

"Including getting us all killed?"