Day of the Cheetah Read online

  exact same ones. In precisely the same position right own to

  the inch. "

  "We've known the Russians have been working on high-

  "

  performance STOL fighteT-aircraft for years, sir .

  "Right. Exactly as long as we've been working on them here

  at Dreamland. We launch Cheetah, they launch an STOL fighter.

  We develop a supercockpit for DreamStar, and four months later

  65

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH

  we intercept plans for nearly the same design being smuggled

  into East Germany. The Joint Chiefs will close down Dreamland

  if we don't stop the leaks around here."

  "I'm rechecking the backgrounds of every person remotely

  connected with the project," Briggs said. "DIA is rechecking

  thousand

  the civilian contractors. But that adds up to over five

  people and more than a hundred and fifty thousand man-years'

  worth of personal histories to examine. And we do this every

  year for key personnel. We're just overloaded--

  ,I know, I know," Elliott said, picking up the phone again.

  "But we're running out of time. For every success we have on

  the flight line we have one defeat with intelligence leaks. We

  can't afford it." He keyed the switch on the telephone handset.

  "Storm Flight, this is Alpha. Clear for engine start. Call for

  clearance when ready for taxi."

  "Roger," McLanahan replied.

  Elliott turned to Briggs. "Join me in the tower when you've

  gotten the overflight update on those two Russian satellites. Be-

  fore I have you work your tail off to find our security leaks, the

  least you can do is watch a little of our success."

  -Wouldn't miss it for all the stolen STOL plans in Ramen-

  skoye," Briggs said, and immediately regretted it as Elliott gave

  him a look and limped out of the command post.

  -Storm TWo starting engines," James reported to Powell. The

  pilot of the F-15 Cheetah barely had time to acknowledge when

  the whine of the engine turbines pierced the early morning still-

  ness.

  Engine start was triggered by a thought impulse that selected

  the "engine start" routine from the "home" menu transmitted

  to James by ANTARES. Computers instantly energized the

  engine-start circuits and determined their status; since no exter-

  nal air or power was available, an "alert" status would be per-

  formed.

  Less than a second later the ignition-circuits were activated

  and a blast of supercompressed nitrogen gas shot into the

  sixteenth-stage compressor of DreamStar's engine. Unlike a con-

  for one compressor

  ventional jet engine, it was not necessary

  stage at a time to spin up to full speed-all compressor stages

  Of its engine were activated at once, allowing much faster starts

  Less than twenty seconds later the engine was at idle power and

  66 DALE BROWN

  full generator power was on-line. Once the engine-start choice

  had been activated, the computer knew what had to be done

  next-James just allowed the results of each preprogrammed

  check to scroll past his eyes as the on-board computers com-

  pleted them.

  "Storm Two engine start complete, beginning pre-takeoff

  checks.

  "Amazing," Powell murmured in Cheetah. He had begun his

  engine-start checklist at the same time James had, but he had

  barely had his left engine up to idle-power by the time

  DreamStar's start-sequence was completed.

  Immediately after James made his report to McLanahan

  11u

  Powell, he commanded the start of an exhaustive computer check

  of all of DreamStar's systems. With the engine powering two

  main and one standby hydraulic pump, energy was available to

  DreamStar's flight controls. Outside, the check made Dream-

  Star's wing surfaces crawl and undulate like the fins of a manta

  ray. From outside the cockpit the flight-control check was almost

  surreal . . . each wing bent and unbent in impossible angles,

  stretching and flexing more like a sheet of gelatin rather than

  hard fibersteel. The process from hydraulic system power-up to

  full flight-control certification had taken fifteen seconds.

  Next was an electrical system check. Total time for a complete

  check of two generators, two alternators, one emergency gen-

  erator, and two separate battery backup systems: three seconds.

  James stayed immobile during the checking process, allowing

  his senses to be overtaken by the rush of information.

  The aircraft itself was like a living thing. Personnel were not

  allowed near the aircraft during the preflight because damaging

  radar, electromagnetic and laser emitters were being activated

  all around the aircraft at breakneck speed. The throttle advanced

  and retarded by itself. The mission-adaptive wings continued

  their unusual undulations, arching and bending so wildly it

  seemed they would bend clean in half or twist right off the fu-

  selage.

  Through it all James was constand informed about each sys-

  tem's exact status and operation. He could no longer feel his feet

  or hands, but he knew which circuit in the superconducting radar

  was energized, and through that system he knew down to the

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 67

  millimeter how far Cheetah was parked from him. He knew the

  position of Drearnstar's canards, the pressure of the fluid in the

  primary hydraulic system and the RPMs of the ninth-stage en-

  gine's turbine, just as one might know which way his toes were

  pointing without seeing them or the way one picks up a pencil

  and begins to write without consciously thinking about the ac-

  tion. ANTARES had cut James off from monitoring his own

  body, had relegated that function to a deeper portion of his brain

  and had shifted his conscious mental capacity to the task of

  operating a supersonic fighter plane.

  Suddenly, DreamStar ceased its wild preflight movements, and

  the engine throttle returned to idle . . .

  "Storm One, TWo is in the green, ready for taxi," James

  reported.

  "My radar's not even timed out," Patrick said to JC. Pow-

  ell. "How are you coming on your preflight?"

  "Few more minutes."

  "How can he accomplish an entire systems preflight in just a

  few minutes? "

  "How long does it take you to wake up from a nap?"

  told him as he put the finishing touches on the preflight he had

  begun long before. "How long does it take you to ask yourself

  how you feel? That's what ANTARES is like. If something was

  wrong with DreamStar, Ken would feel it just like he'd feel a

  sprained ankle or a crink in his neck."

  Where Ken had banks of computers to check his avionics,

  manually had to "fail" a system to check a backup system,

  or manually deflect Cheetah's control stick and have the wing

  flex checked by a crew chief to verify the full range of motion

  of the fighter's elastic wings. But after a few,minutes of setting

  switches and checking off items in a checklist strapped to his

  right thigh, he was ready to go.
/>
  Patrick keyed his microphone: "Storm Control, this is Storm

  One flight. Wo birds in the green. Ready to taxi

  General Elliott was now on top of Dreamland's portable con-

  trol tower, a device fifty feet high that was set up and taken

  down for each mission to confuse attempts by spy satellites to

  pinpoint Dreamland's many disguised dry-lakebed runways.

  Major Hal Briggs had just come up the narrow winding stairs

  and handed Elliott another computer printout when Patrick made

  his call.

  68 DALE BROWN

  "Those Cosmos peeping Toms start their first pass over the

  range in fifteen minutes," Briggs said. "They've got our test

  time scoped out almost to the minute. Those satellites will be

  overhead every fifteen minutes for the next two hours-exactly

  as long as this scheduled mission."

  "Another damned security leak. And I scheduled this mission

  only two days, ago."

  "But those spy birds weren't up there two days ago," Briggs

  said. "I checked. You mean-?" I

  "I mean the Soviets took only two days-maybe less-to

  launch two brand-new satellites just for this test flight, 'I Elliott

  said. "Well, at least they won't catch our planes on the ground.

  He picked up his microphone. "Storm Flight, this is Alpha.

  Taxi to hold point and await takeoff clearance. Winds calm,

  altimeter . . . " Elliott checked the meteorological data readouts

  on an overhead console ". . . three-zero-zero-five. Taxi clear-

  ance void time is one-zero minutes. Over."

  "Storm Flight copies ten minutes. On the move." Moments

  later both fighters emerged from the satellite bluff and -fell in

  behind a jeep with a large sign that read "FOLLOW ME." The

  caravan moved quickly across an expanse of hard-baked sand to

  another smaller satellite-bluff hangar that had been towed out to

  the end of one of the disguised runways that crisscrossed Groom

  Lake in the center of the Dreamland test range. Now Cheetah

  and DreamStar pulled alongside each other and set their parking

  brakes while technicians and specialists did a fast last-chance

  inspection of each.

  "Pre-takeoff and line-up checks," Patrick said over inter-

  phone.

  "Roger," replied. "In progress."

  "Storm Tvo ready for release," James suddenly radioed in.

  "Amazing," Patrick said to "He's already done with a

  pre-takeoff checklist twice as complicated as ours." He keyed I

  the UHF radio switch. "Standby, Storm Two."

  "Roger.

  "MAW switch set to V-sub-X, max performance takeoff."

  read off the most critical switch positions for the mission- I

  adaptive-wing mode, and Patrick saw that the leading and trail- I

  ing edges of the wings had curved into a long, deep high-lift

  airfoil.

  "Canard control and engine nozzle control switches set to

  T_

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 69

  AUTO ALPHA,' continued. "This will be a constant-alpha

  takeoff." JC. Powell always briefed his back-seater on the

  takeoff, abort, and emergency procedures, even though he and

  Patrick had flown together for almost two years and Patrick knew

  the procedures as well as JC. "Power to military thrust, brakes

  off and power to max afterburner. We'll expect negative-Y push

  after five seconds, with a pitch to takeoff attitude. After that we

  monitor angle-of-attack throughout the climb and make sure we

  don't exceed twenty-eight alpha in the climb-out. I'm looking to

  break my previous record of a seventeen-hundred-foot takeoff

  roll on this one . . . In case we don't get the push-down I'll

  cancel auto-alpha and switch to normal takeoff procedures-

  accelerate to one-sixty, rotate, maintain eight alpha or less, ac-

  celerate to two-eight-zero knots indicated and come out of

  afterburner. Same procedures if we lose vectored thrust after

  takeoff . . . All right. " Powell slapped his gloved hands to-

  gether, finished off the last few items of the checklist: "Circuit

  breakers checked. Caution panel clear. Canopy closed and

  locked. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses?"

  "On and on," Patrick intoned.

  "Checked up front. Lights set. Helmets, visors, oxygen mask,

  oxygen panel."

  "On, down, on, set to normal."

  "Same here. Parking brakes released." JC. touched a switch

  on his control stick. "Takeoff configuration check."

  "Takeoff configuration check in progress, " responded a

  computer-synthesized voice. It was the final step in Cheetah's

  electronics array. A computer, which had monitored every step

  of the pre-takeoff checklists being performed, would make one

  last check of all systems on board and report any discrepancies.

  "Takeoff configuration check complete. Status okay. "

  "I already knew that, you moron," murmured to the

  voice. He never relied on the computerized system although he

  consulted it. It was, as he would frequently remind everyone

  within earshot, another computer out to get him. "We're ready

  to go, Colonel," he said.

  Patrick keyed the radio switch. "Storm Control, this is Storm

  flight of two. Ready for departure."

  Hal Briggs, on the narrow catwalk of the portable tower, spoke

  four words into a walkie-talkie. "Sand storm, one-seven."

  70 DALE BROWN

  His cryptic message activated a hundred security officers

  spread out within some four-hundred square miles of the takeoff

  area. They were the last line of defense aga ' inst unauthorized

  intrusion or eavesdropping on the test that was about to begin.

  Each man checked and rechecked his assigned sector with an

  array of electronic sensors-sound, radar, heat, motion, electro-

  magnetic-and once secure, reported an "all secure" by send-

  ing a coded electronic tone. Only when all of the tones were

  received would a "go" signal be sent to Briggs.

  Five seconds later he received that coded tone. "Good sweep,

  General," he reported to Elliott. The general took one last look

  at the satellite overflight schedule, picked up the mike:

  .'Storm flight of two, clear for unrestricted takeoff. Winds

  calm. Takeoff clearance void time, five minutes. Have a good

  one."

  Patrick hit a switch, and the faint hum of the big gyrostabilized

  video camera mounted on Cheetah's spine could be heard. "Ca-

  mera's slaved on DreamStar, ," he said. "Don't lose him."

  "A cold day in hell before any machine can outrun me."

  They saw DreamStar taxi a few feet forward just ahead of

  Cheetah, until the tip of DreamStar's forward-swept right wing-

  tip was just cutting into JC.'s view of Ken James.

  "Comin' up," said. He brought the throttles forward,

  keeping his toes on the brakes. Cheetah began to quiver, then

  shake with a sound like the distant rumble of an earthquake.

  "Turn 'em loose, baby," murmured. He scanned his

  engine-instrument readouts on the main display, running down

  the graphic displays of engine RPM, fuel flow, nozzle and louver

  position, turbine inlet temperature and exhaust gas temperature.

  Each bar grap
h lined up in the normal range, everything right

  smack in the green-both engines in full military power, one

  hundred and nine percent of rated thrust, sixty thousand pounds

  of power. His grip on the stick and throttles unconsciously tight-

  ened "Turn 'em loose .

  James also performed a last-second engine instrument check.

  But he had no bar graphs to check out with his eyes. ANTARES

  reported information not only through the visual nervous system

  in the form of words, numbers and symbols that he could "see,

  but, to avoid overload of the visual senses, also as sensations

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 71

  that he could detect with his other senses. He could feel the

  power of the engine as clear and as real as air inflating his lungs

  or strength rippling down his arms. He knew in an instant that

  the engine was at full military thrust. At a thought-command,

  a computer that metered fuel flow performed a retrim of the

  engine to compensate for pressure altitude and outside temper-

  ature, which yielded a few hundred pounds extra thrust. The

  engine-fuel trim would be accomplished every six seconds there-

  after as DreamStar began its test flight, accomplished as easily

  and as subconsciously as a person might ride a bike or drive a

  car along a much-traveled highway.

  James briefly activated the search radar, which transmitted its

  signals as visual images-no obstructions or targets within thirty

  miles. A fast scan of VHF or UHF frequencies-no emergency

  calls, air traffic control challenges, no abort call from the tower.

  One quick check of hydraulic systems-all running normally.

  Electrical-one generator on the engine running a bit hot. On a

  mental suggestion, a digital flight-data recorder logged the time,

  conditions and readouts on the left generator for the crew chiefs

  to analyze after the flight.

  The check of the secondary systems, including the flight-data

  recorder entry, had taken less time than it took JC. Powell to

  tighten his grip on his throttle quadrant.

  James now ordered the brakes to be released . . .

  saw DreamStar shoot forward. "Here we go," he said.

  Patrick took a firm grip on the steel "handlebars" surround-