272 DALE BROWN

The President shook his head in frustration. "Great. In that case we'll keep it a photos-only session and cut it down to five minutes.

"Senator Myers and the committee members might have some questions about the incident-"

"We'll give them what we give the press-the crash is under investigation, we have no information on any KGB agents being involved.

Cesare finished writing. "One more thing, sir-the Russians.

That wire story said we weren't going to do anything. Should we make a comment about that?"

"To hell with them." The President massaged his temples, then added, "They can think what they want. If we come out with any comment directed at the Russians we'd be admitting that they had something to do with the B-52 crash-"

The phone rang again. "Cesare here . . . Ted, what's up?

. . .what? . . . any details? . . . all right. You're ten minutes away? All right, I'll pass it on."

"What now?"

"Ted just got off the phone with the Post. They're now saying that they have a tape of the conversation between the B-52 and the XF-34 aircraft during their engagement. The radio conversation was on a channel called GUARD, an international emergency frequency used by planes, ships . . . They have the whole thing-including the pilot of the XF-34 saying that he's a colonel in the KGB. He said the guy from the Post even said, 'XF-34.'

That designation was top secret-until now."

"Dammit all to hell, less than twenty-four hours after our meeting and the whole country, whole world, knows about it.

All right, all right," the President said. "Cancel the Cabinet meeting agenda, get the NSC and CIA and have everybody in the conference room no later than seven-thirty, briefed and ready to discuss this, but for Christ's sake do it quietly-don't make it look like we're circling any wagons. This is a routine Cabinet meeting. Make sure we get tapes of any news broadcasts about this thing."

"We should change the press statement," Cesare said. "I suggest-

"The change is easy. The word now is 'No comment.' That's it, and it goes for Ed Drury and the networks and everybody.

DAY OF THE CHEETAH 273

We've got to get a handle on this thing before it gets completely away from us .

Cesare got on the phone again and while he was waiting, the President turned to him and said, "Paul, I want General Elliott at the meeting, too. Has he left Washington?

"I believe so, sir.

"Then we'll set up a secure teleconference and . . . no, I want him here. He had some ideas about this DreamStar thing that I want to hear. Wherever he is, have him back here soonest.

"Yes, sir." Cesare dialed the office of the military communications liaison and issued the President's orders, then turned back to President Taylor, who was standing near the treadmill, staring at the news item on the big screen.

"Any idea who leaked this, Paul?"

"Well, that news item mentions a military source." He paused, then asked: "Do you think it could be Elliott? Is that why you're bringing him back to Washington?"

"A guy that's just been stripped of his command and being forced to retire can do some very strange things, but no, not Elliott. He's by-the-book. I want him back in Washington to hear what he has to say about this DrearnStar thing. It's been his baby."

"Are you considering a military response?"

"Maybe I won't have any choice. If we can't get control of this leak, we may have to do more than just protest to the Russians-"

The phone rang. Cesare picked it up. "Military communications, sir, " Cesare said. "General Elliott had made a stopover at the Air Force Aeronautical Laboratories in Dayton. He can be here for the staff meeting."

"That's very good of him. I can't wait to talk to him."

"This was a deliberate information leak on someone's part, President Taylor said. "I want someone's butt, and I want it now. "

He paused, scanning the faces of his Cabinet and senior White House staff members. "I expect whoever did this will have the courage to come to me later and explain why he or she felt it was necessary to reveal classified information like this. I will 274 DALE BROWN

not tolerate this in my staff. I'll shit-can the lot of you, and senior staff, if I have to."

He let his words linger on the wide cherry conference table for a few moments. No one appeared ready to confess or throw themselves on the sword. He also saw a few faces that allowed themselves to appear skeptical when he had mentioned dis-missals. But he had no choice, the President thought-someone had to get fired over this. Someone had to take a fall if I for no other reason than credibility, or deniability, as in Iran-scam.

"The official word on this incident is 'No cornment,' " the President said. "And I don't mean any of that 'Neither confirm nor deny' stuff. I mean 'No comment. 'You're not authorized to discuss anything dealing with Dreamland, the B-52 crash, experimental aircraft or any military or civilian personnel. Is that clear?" A few nodding heads. "If you have any difficulty with that order tell me now. I won't hold any questions against you, and I won't think that anyone who has a question has to be the guilty party. Speak up."

Silence.

"All right. If any problems come up, refer them to Ted Walters, Paul Cesare or myself. But I want a lid on this. And I want it on tight. We've got news about the Summer Olympics and the elections to take the media pressure off this incident, and that's what I want to happen - "

The President turned to General Kane. "Update on that DrearnStar aircraft, General?"

"Very little, Mr. President," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs told him. "Increase in message traffic on the Soviet satellite-net out of Sebaco Airbase near Managua. We haven't been able to decode it yet but our analysts believe this reinforces our estimation that DreamStar is at Sebaco."

"How long would it take them to take that aircraft apart, General?

Kane was anxious to get out of the sudden glare of attention and have the spotlight focus on the principal of this incident.

He said, "I can't give you an accurate answer, Mr. President." He turned to General Bradley Elliott sitting beside him. I Brad? " I

"It's hard to say, Mr. President." All eyes were on Elliott, but not because they were waiting to hear what he said-they all DAY OF THE CHEETAH 275

believed he was the one who had leaked the information on DreamStar to the press in the first place. "If they wanted to, they could have DreamStar in pieces in hours-it could already be crated up and ready to ship. But I don't think they would just t up. The XF-34 is the most advanced aircraft in the wo hack i r1d.

The Soviets will want it intact'

"Then why take it apart at all?" William Stuart, the Secretary of Defense asked. "Why not just fly it to Managua and load it onto a large freighter?"

"That can be done, sir," Elliott replied. "But they know that it would be easy to spot once it arrived in Managua, and very difficult to conceal. We could detect which ship it was loaded onto and intercept or destroy-"

"Destroy a Russian fteighter? " from Attorney General Richard Benson. "In peacetime? That's crazy! "

"Mr. Benson," Elliott said, "that is one thing we should never reveal. "

"I don't understand."

"Sir, many other military powers in the world would kill to keep an aircraft like DreamStar from falling into enemy hands.

To the Russians, the Chinese, the French, the Israelis, the British, destroying a freighter with a torpedo from several miles away to keep that freighter from escaping with their country's most valuable military aircraft would be no big deal. They wouldn't hesitate-"

"That's them, not us."

"Mr. Benson, if we really want our fighter back we must at least appear ready at any time to commit such an act. We must convince the Russians that we are ready to do anything necessary to get our aircraft back. If we announce we will never shoot at a Russian freighter in peacetime, we invite them to load DrearnStar on that freighter and sail it right under our noses back to Russia. If we tell them we'll blow your ass out of the water if we find out our plane is on board, and we convince them and the world that we mean it, well, they may just look for a different way to get it out of Nicaragua." He was also thinking about the Cuban missile crisis but didn't bring it up.

Heads nodded around the conference table; Elliott had apparently gotten through to most of them, at least enough to see the 276 DALE BROWN

logic of what he was saying. And the President was at least attentive if perhaps not convinced.

"If they don't want to risk discovery by loading the entire aircraft onto a ship," Elliott pressed on, "and they don't just quickly chop it up into pieces, they have two other options: they can take their time dismantling it, making careful records and notations about how to put it back together, or they can fly it out of Nicaragua. It wouldn't take long to dismantle DreamStar-a day or two, pull the engine and the black boxes, dissect and discard the rest. If they choose to fly it out, it may take them a few days, three at the most, to configure it for overwater flight with extra fuel tanks."

"What's keeping them from just flying the thing onto one of their new aircraft carriers?" Deborah O'Day asked. "From what I understand DrearnStar can land on a carrier without an arresting hook and take off again without a catapult."

" All true," Elliott said, surprised that she knew so much, careful to use the same tone of voice with her as with the President and Stuart and the other members of the staff. He had to fight himself to keep from smiling at her. He was all but convinced that she was the one who had leaked information about DreamStar to the press to force the President's hand. He knew her feelings and those of the NSC. It was a risky maneuver but it could pay off-and it could also result in both of them being sent to Leavenworth or Eglin for ten years for conspiracy . . .

"Again, they'd be exposing themselves to a great degree of danger if they tried to fly DreamStar onto a carrier. It's a tricky operation under the best conditions; for James in DreamStar it would be that much more difficult, even with his advanced flight-control system. And the Soviets know they would risk attack if it was discovered that they had DreamStar on board. They would not, I feel, risk one of only six Moscow-class aircraft carriers for one fighter plane, even this one.

"These are all conjectures on your part, Elliott," the President said. "Sheer speculation not surprisingly biased in favor of a military response."

" Yes, sir, I agree. I am speculating on all of this, and I am leaning in favor of a swift, decisive, direct response-but only for the sake of time. If we could count on the Russians taki ng weeks to carefully dismantle DreamStar I would not even consider a direct military response. Certainly not at this point. If DAY OF THE CHEETAH 277

you recall back in 1976, when Viktor Belyenko flew his then-top-secret MiG-25 to Japan, one of the first reactions by the Ford administration was to guarantee that we would turn the MiG over to the Russians intact immediately after our investigation of the matter was completed-which, of course, gave us time to study the thing. We made that guarantee, sir, because the Russians had one-fifth of their navy within five hours' sailing time of the MiG's landing spot and the administration was convinced that the Russians would militarily intervene in Japan to get their MiG-25 back. I'm saying, sir, that is the threat we need to project to the Soviets in Nicaragua. It comes down to how badly we want DreamStar back."

The President was silent, staring at Elliott. "Did we give the MiG-25 back?"

"Yes, after we deten-nined that the MiG-25 wasn't all our intelligence and their propaganda said it was. The MiG-25 was simply two huge jet engines with wings, built for speed at any cost. Our F-15 was operational by then, and the F-16 was in production. Both those aircraft could fly rings around the MiG-25. But DreamStar is different, sir. DreamStar is our only flying model of that concept of aircraft. It would be a huge loss for us and a quantum leap in technology for the Soviets. It would take two years to build another XF-34, and we'd be right back where we are now. Meanwhile, the Soviets would take several giant steps forward in their technology, and with their advantage in military budget and production could field a squadron of XF-34

aircraft before we could--

"Excuse me, Mr. President," William Stuart broke in. "General Elliott has made several broad statements that Defense doesn't find supportable. He's making DreamStar seem like the ultimate weapon, when in fact it's nothing more than an advanced technology demonstration aircraft. Congress hasn't voted to deploy the XF-34, nor will DreamStar even be ready for deployment for another five years. Agreed, it's an extraordinary machine, but it is not our next fighter aircraft. Far away from it. "

"So you're saying that it's not worth going after?"

"My point is simply that DreamStar in the hands of the Russians is not the terrible threat that General Elliott is making it out to be. It is a setback, true, but no more of a setback than if 278 DALE BROWN

DreamStar had crashed on a test flight or if the program had run out of funds and was canceled."

"General Elliott?"

"I disagree with Secretary Stuart, sir. Seriously disagree. The technology transfer alone in the DreamStar theft is enormous.

it's certainly of such great military importance to us that. its return, or if it comes to it, destruction, is of the highest pnor-ity-"

"Not my highest priority," Stuart interrupted.

"It may be true that we were several years from deploying DreamStar, Mr. President," Elliott said, "but the Soviets could follow an entirely different timetable. We have the F-32 fighter in preproduction that will be our front-line fighter for the next five to ten years. The Soviets have their MiG-33 and Sukhoi-35

fighters operational or in production that will serve them for the next decade. Neither of those fighters can match our F-32-and that is a DOD assessment, not mine. With the XF-34 fighter in production in the Soviet Union, they will easily have the capability to counter our front-line fighters for the next ten years until we redevelop our own XF-34-and then we will only be matching the Soviets' capability. We will instantly be five years behind the Soviets if we don't react."

"General, you're blowing this whole thing out of proportion-"

"All right, enough," the President said. "We don't need to get into arguments about the future. The fact is, they got the damn plane. What do we do about it now?"

"I think we need to examine this problem from another per-spective, Lloyd," Attorney General Benson said, "the political side. This thing's about to be splashed all over TV, newspapers and videotext terminals around the world. We can avoid feeding fuel to the fire by not providing any details, and it may indeed fizzle out over time, but the opposition is going to use this against us when their convention opens in Seattle next month. We need a strong, positive step to show the voters that we're in charge-"

"So you favor a military response?"

"Not necessarily, Lloyd," Benson said, leaning sideways toward the President and scarcely making himself heard in the conference room. As the President's brother-in-law (he'd taken plenty of heat for that), he was one of the few Cabinet members DAY OF THE CHEETAH 279

who called the President by his first name; when he did it usually meant he was separating himself from the Cabinet to make an especially strong point. "But we're playing catch-up ball here-the press has the advantage and we can't let that situation continue. You've got to make a move that shows that you're ready to handle the situation. We don't have to decide on an offensive against Nicaragua right now-I think it would be a bad move anyway. But you do have to make a move, and something stronger than a diplomatic protest. Five months from now when the voters ask what you did about this, you want to be able to point to something substantial, positive."

Benson decided after the meeting he would tell the President that the first step would be to get rid of Elliott. After all, he was the one who lost the damn plane . . .

The President held up his hand, indicating that he was going to reserve judgment, and turned to William Stuart. "Outline our responses, Bill. "

"I think it's a problem for State or CIA, Mr. President,"

Stuart said. "We can't attack Nicaragua. It's just not an option for us. CIA might be able to suggest something, a covert operation maybe, but in my opinion it's out of DOD's hands. We can't put out a candle with a fire hose."

"That's it, Bill?"

Defense Secretary Stuart looked at Elliott. "If I may say so, the problem should have been handled long ago by General Elliott and his unit, and the aircraft should have been properly secured, We lost the aircraft. Now General Elliott wants to go in, as usual, with six-guns blazing. But if we confront the Soviets, they will probably agree to turn the aircraft over to us. It may take a few weeks, or months, but we will get the aircraft back from them. And if we do, well, that's the bottom line. "

"So you'd just let them have it? They kill four of my flyers, two security guards and two interceptor pilots, and you're saying that we should let them alone until they've done What they want with it? "

"Don't put words in my mouth, General Elliott." Stuart's voice had risen. "What I'm saying is t at we can t go o and start a war over our screwups or-rather, your screwups. I agree with the President. The X-34 is great but it isn't worth-"

"Isn't worth what? That aircraft is the most advanced in the mm