298 DALE BROWN

Less than one hundred feet from the hangar door JC. Powell yanked Cheetah on its tail and threw in full afterburner. It cleared the hangar roof by only a few feet-Powell and McLanahan could feel the unearthly rumble of metal beneath their feet as the sonic wave pounded the tin roof. kept the climb in for a few more seconds, then rolled inverted, pulled the nose to the horizon, rolled upright and leveled off.

"Get us out of here, sir, " said.

"Right turn heading zero-one-zero, " McLanahan said evenly.

"Keep it on the deck. Ten minutes to the Honduras border."

They flew on in silence until McLanahan reported that they were crossing the border. There were some MiG-29 pursuers detected, but they were far behind them by the time they had reported in to Tegucigalpa Air Defense Control, and an entire flight of six Honduran F-16 fighters was scrambled to turn them away. ordered the voice-recognition computer to activate the IFF identification radios, then started a shallow climb at best-range power and turned northward toward home.

The roar of Cheetah's twin engines didn't subside in Maraklov's head for several minutes, until it was gradually replaced by the sound of sirens wailing up and down the flight line. Slowly he rose to his feet and surveyed the scene around him.

To his surprise, everything seemed relatively intact-Cheetah had not been carrying a bomb on its centerline station, as Maraklov had thought, or else some major malfunction had kept it from releasing. But from the quick glimpse he got, it looked more like a camera pod than a bomb. Cheetah, it seemed, had come to take pictures. Well, they definitely got what they wanted. They had caught everyone off guard, with DreamStar unprotected and vulnerable.

It had to be JC. Powell flying Cheetah. Several pilots at Dreamland were checked out on Cheetah, but only Powell would be crazy enough to fly it so close to the ground and so close to the hangar. Any other pilot would have been happy with a hundred, even fifty feet above ground. Not Powell.

For a moment it appeared that whoever was flying Cheetah was going to kamikaze himself right into DreamStar's hangar.

Cheetah and DreamStar gone together9 Maybe not such a bad ending. But how different was his situation as it was? With DreamStar gone and out of his control, his career was surely at I pp--

DAY OF THE CHEETAH 299

an end. There was no good future for him in the Soviet Union-he would be like a tiger, caged for the rest of his life, hunted by the U. and distrusted or worse at "home. " He would never be closer to Brazil or Paraguay than he was right now.

And DreamStar was still safe-though for how long, now that the Americans knew where it was? No choice but to play out this hand and see how the cards fell. Somehow the photographic attack on Sebaco gave him some hope-maybe, just maybe, DreamStar would fly again. And with the right man at the controls.

It wasn't until they had completed their final air-refueling over the Gulf that felt confident enough to approach the subject:

"We could have had them, boss," he said. "You could have done it."

McLanahan had said nothing the entire flight, except the curt, monotone checklist of responses required of him. But this time he spoke up. "I know that."

"The ACES seat would have blown us clear of the impact.

We could have made it out."

"Maybe.

"Why didn't you punch us out?"

"I don't know why. Maybe I thought it wasn't my job to waste Cheetah. Maybe I think we still have a chance to get DrearnStar back. Maybe I thought it was a dumb idea all on its own. We are still alive, we haven't been captured by the Russians, Cheetah is in one piece and we've accomplished our mission. So if you can stand it, let's leave it at that."

Sebaco Airbase, Nicaragua

"Where were your air-defense forces, General?" Maraklov said to General Tret'yak as the commander of the KGB airbase came over to the hangar.

"Ahstarozhna, tovarisch Polkovnik. Calm yourself, was anyone hurt, was there damage?"

"Do you know what that was, General? It was an American fighter. It was carrying a camera pod or some kind of reconnaissance unit-but it could have just as easily been carrying a two-thousand-pound bomb. We'd all be dead now if it was."