Day of the Cheetah Read online

  had seen him in the hallway at the elevator. They raised their

  glasses toward him, smiling.

  "Well, Romeo," the waitress said. "What are you waiting

  for? I I

  Slowly, carefully, Maraklov rose to his feet. To his surprise,

  he found his legs and knees quite strong. Without thinking, he

  reached into his wallet, extracted the first bill he touched and

  handed it to the waitress as he picked up his cocktail. It was a

  twenty dollar bill.

  "Thank you, Mr. James," she said. "A real gentleman, as

  always." She lowered her voice, moved toward him. "If those

  waihilis don't do it all for you, Mr. James, why, you just leave

  a message for me at the front desk. Mariana knows what you

  want'

  Still feeling shaky inside, he made his way toward the bar,

  smiling. Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov was about to experi-

  ence his first night as an American named Kenneth James.

  Now he was the real Ken James. The only one.

  30 DAIE BROWN

  McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas

  August 1994

  "Required SATCOM reports are as follows," Air Force Cap-

  tain Ken James said. He motioned to a hand-lettered, expertly

  rendered chart beside him but kept his eyes on his "audience"

  and did not refer to it. "As soon as possible after launch we

  transmit a sortie airborne report. If we launched on an execu-

  tion message we transmit a strike-message confirmation re-

  port." He pointed to a large map on another easel. That

  depicted the strike routing of his B-IB Excalibur bomber as it

  proceeded on its nuclear-attack mission.

  "After each air refueling we transmit an offload report, ad-

  vising SAC of our aircraft status and capability to fulfill the

  mission. On receipt of a valid execution message, if we weren't

  launched with one, we would acknowledge that message as

  well as any messages that terminated our sortie. After each

  weapons release, if possible we, transmit a strike report that

  gives SAC our best estimate of our success in destroying each

  assigned target. The message also updates SAC on our progress

  and advises them of any difficulties in proceeding with the mis-

  sion. Of course, staying on time, on course and alert has pri-

  ority over all SATCOM or HF message traffic. All strike

  messages can wait until we climb out of the low-level portion

  of the route and are on the way to our post-strike base. These

  messages can also be delivered to other SAC personnel heading

  stateside, to U. foreign offices, or to overseas military bases

  capable of secure transmissions to SAC headquarters."

  He pointed further along the route. "Other messages will

  include launch reports from the post-strike and each recovery

  base: NUDET-nuclear detonation-position reports, GLASS

  EYE combat damage reports, severe weather reports,

  continental-defense-zone entry reports and sortie recovery and

  regeneration reports.

  James lowered his pointer and stepped away from the charts.

  "SIOP communications are extremely important, and the SAC

  aircraft involved with the execution of our Single Integrated

  Operations Plan are a front-line asset in keeping the Strategic

  Air Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Corn-

  mand Authority advised of the progress worldwide of any con-

  flict. We feel we have the' world's most up-to-date and

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 31

  surviva ble communications networks, but of course it's no good

  unless each aircrewman uses it effectively." He looked around

  the empty briefing room. "That concludes my annual Mission

  Certification briefing, Colonel Adams. Any questions, Sir?"

  "Not bad, not bad-for a pilot," came a voice from the back

  of the room. Kenneth frowned at the man who came in now

  and began to pack up the briefing charts and diagrams.

  "Kiss my ass, Murphy," Ken said. "It was a perfect brief-

  ing-even for a navigator."

  Captain Brian Murphy, James' offensive-systems officer on

  his B-1 crew, had to admit it. "Yeah, it was, Ken. No doubt

  about it. But why are you spending so much time on that

  stuff? On an Emergency,War Order certification, briefing is

  done by the radar nav or the defensive-systems operator. Not

  by the pilots."

  "I heard Adams likes to hit his mission-ready crews with

  little surprises," Ken said. "His favorite is mixing up the usual

  briefing routines to make sure each guy on the crew is familiar

  with the other guy's responsibilities. He likes to hit navs with

  pilot questions, too-how well do you know your abort-decision

  matrices? "

  Murphy shrugged. "I'll bone up on that stuff before the brief-

  ing tomorrow. These briefings are bull anyway . . . Coming to

  the Club with us for lunch?"

  "In a while, it's only eleven-thirty. I'll meet you there at

  noon.

  "Man, you are so dedicated."

  "Knock it off."

  "No, really, I mean it," James' crew navigator said.

  "You're always studying. You know your stuff backwards and

  forwards, and you know everyone else's too. If it's not EWO

  communications procedures it's security or avionics or corn-

  puters or target study. You got your hands in everything.

  "That's my job, Murph.

  "Well, at least you're getting some reward for it. Making

  commander of a B- I Excalibur in less than two years was moon-

  talk until you came along. They're saying you might make

  flight commander in a few weeks. You're really burning up the

  program.

  James slapped his pencil down on the table, smiled. "You're

  32 DALE BROVIN

  buttering me up, man. Okay, okay, I'll buy lunch. Just let me

  finish.

  "Hey, hotshot, can't you take a compliment? I know atta-

  boys are rare around here, but I think you can still recognize

  one. "

  James raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Thanks,

  Murph, but I'm not doing anything special here. I do this stuff

  because it's my job and because it really interests me, and

  because my ass will be grass if I don't learn this communica-

  tions staff by tomorrow morning."

  "Message received. I'm outta here." Murphy stood and

  headed for the door, then stopped. "You're an Academy grad,

  aren't you?"

  "Right.

  "Top of your class, from what I heard."

  ames looked at Murphy. "Get to the point, Murph."

  J. thought so, I just want to know why you chose B -Is

  You

  could have had your pick of any hot jet in the inventory, but

  you picked B- Is."

  .'I liked them. I always did. They're big and sexy-just like

  your wife . . . "

  "Asshole.

  ... and I still have a stick and afterburners and Mach-one

  speed like a fighter. I hated it when Carter canceled them. I

  think they should build another hundred of them. At least. An-

  swer your question?"

  Murphy nodded. "But you seem a little, I don't know, out

  of place."

  "Out of place?" His stomach tightened as he look
ed closely

  at his radar nav.

  "Yeah. Like B-Is are just a jumping-off place for you I

  mean, you're not advertising it or anything, but somehow, Old

  buddy, I get the feeling you're on your way somewhere. Care

  to tell?

  Ken James forced himself to smile. This big Irishman was

  hitting too close. "Just between you and me and the fence-

  post?

  "Sure, man.

  "I did get an assignment, I think. When I filled out my last

  dream sheet I was sort of . well, daydreaming. Appropriate,

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 33

  huh? Anyway, I put down that I was interested in the High

  'Technology Advanced Weapons Center--

  "HAWC! You got an assignment to Dreamland? I don't be-

  lieve it! Do they actually give assignments there?"

  "I didn't think they did, either. Like I said, it was a long

  shot. And I don't have any assignment yet. But I did get a

  letter back from the deputy commander, a Brigadier General

  Ormack. He sounded interested. It was sort of a don't-call-me-

  I'll-call-you letter, but at least I got an answer back."

  "I don't believe it," Murphy said. "Dreamland. You real-

  ize that all of the world's hottest jets and weapons in the past

  thirty years went through there? Those guys fly planes and test

  weapons out there that are years ahead of anything that exists

  in the real world. And you're going to be assigned there-"

  "I said I don't have an assignment, Murph. So keep this

  under your hat, okay? Besides, how do you know so much

  about Dreamland?"

  "I don't know much of anything, except that anybody who

  even accidentally overflies Dreamland gets sent to our version

  of the old Gulag Archipelago. Every now and then you hear

  about an ex-Los Angeles Center air-traffic controller telling

  stories about Mach-six fighters or planes that fly vertically to

  fifty thousand feet over Dreamland. It's got to be the assign-

  ment of a lifetime."

  "Well, like I said, keep all this under your hat," James said.

  . Now take off. I want to polish my briefing before we do our

  dry runs this afternoon."

  After Murphy left, James got up from his seat, went to the

  door, locked it, put a chair in front of it. He returned to the

  small pile of red-covered books and manuals on the desk

  the front of the conference room and selected one marked:

  "COMBAT CREW EMERGENCY WAR ORDER COMMUNICATIONS

  PROCEDURES-TOP SECRET/NOFORN/SIOP/WIVNS." It was the

  master document used by all the American strategic combat

  forces all over the world-aircraft, submarines, intercontinen-

  tal missile sites, and command posts-outlining every one of

  their communication sources and methods, procedures, fre-

  quencies, timing and locations of the nation's domestic and

  overseas communications facilities. The hieroglyphics after the

  title warned that the document was top secret, not releasable

  to foreign nationals, pail of the Single Integrated Operations

  34 DALE BROVIN

  Plan-the master plan on how the United States and its allies

  would conduct "the next world war." This particular volume

  was dated I October 1994, some two months from now, be-

  cause it belonged to the new SIOP revision scheduled to take

  place at that time. The procedures in that manual would be

  used by all strategic forces for the next twelve months after-

  ward.

  It made it convenient for him and the KGB, Ken thought, to

  have to do these once-a-year briefings for the wing corn-

  mander. The annual Mission Certification briefings were re-

  quired by law. The wing commander of each SAC base with

  nuclear missions had to certify to the Commander-in-Chief of

  SAC, and he in turn to the President of the United States, that

  each crewman knew precisely what his duties were in case the

  SIOP was "implernented--a euphemism for the so-called un-

  thinkable, the declaration of World War Three. Normally the

  certification briefings were given once, when a crewman be-

  came mission-ready. But the SIOP was revised each year, re-

  flecting new rules, new tactics, and so every year each crewman

  had to dig out the changed books, study them, then brief the

  wing commander on the revised mission. The top-secret books

  were trotted out for the certification, studied for a week, then

  locked away, usually never to be seen again except for base-

  wide exercises or inspections. The opportunities were rare to

  have such free access to these manuals, and Ken had to work

  fast.

  He opened the manual to section four, "ELF, LF, HF and

  SATCOM SIOP Frequencies and Broadcast Schedules," and

  ped the pages open with a couple of books. This section

  prop

  detailed all of the frequencies used by aircraft and submarines

  to broadcast and receive coded messages from SAC and the

  Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with what time of the day these

  broadcasts would be made. Anyone knowing these frequencies

  and times could jam or disrupt them, specific broadcasts could

  be intercepted and decoded. The crew charts had stickers that

  had only one frequency, but this book had all the frequencies

  for the nuclear strike force of the United States.

  James unzipped a leg pocket of his flight suit and took out

  what looked like a thick-barreled marking pen. Moving his

  chair so his body would cast no shadows across the pages, he

  twisted and pulled the cap, held the device a couple of feet

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 35

  r the pages, and pressed the pocket clip to activate the shut-

  ove

  ter.

  Murphy was close, James thought as he worked. He would

  have liked to get assigned to F- I 5s or F- 16s, or the new F- 1 17

  Stealth fighter unit, but he went where Moscow told him to go,

  and that was where he could learn as much as possible about

  the new B-I's nuclear-strike mission. Drearnland was the most

  secret base in the country. B-I Excalibur bombers were fine,

  but he would give anything to get his hands on the United

  States newest fighters.

  Two minutes later Kenneth James had finished photograph-

  ing the entire chapter and its accompanying appendices with

  the tiny microdisk camera. He wrapped the device in a hand-

  kerchief to help protect it, then zipped it safely away in his leg

  pocket, out of sight so no one would be tempted to ask to

  borrow his "Pen."

  Satisfied, he packed up his charts and books and turned them

  back to the vault custodian. He would put the camera in his

  car outside the alert facility to prevent discovery during one of

  the commander's frequent no-notice locker searches on the alert

  pad, then deliver it to the prearranged drop point for his KGB

  contact from St. Louis after he got off seven-day alert.

  Dreamland, Nevada

  Monday, 3 December 1994, 0730 PDT (1020 EDT)

  stiff, uncomfortable

  Ken James was strapped securely into a

  chest bound by heavy leather

  steel chair, wrists, ankles and

  stra
ps. His head was immobilized by a strong steel beam. The

  room where he lay on the rack was dimly lit, buzzing with the

  sound of power transformers and smelling of the ozone created

  by electronic relays and microcircuits. Two men in Air Force

  blue fatigues rechecked his bonds, making sure they were extra

  tight; one of them adjusted a tiny spotlight directly onto James'

  right eyeball, smiling as James tried to squint against the glare.

  The sergeant knew there was nothing James could do to him.

  James had been sweating in the steel chair for nearly an

  hour, the two technicians hovering over him, before another

  man entered the room. Tall and lanky, he looked considerably

  older than his mid-thirties, thanks to a bald head and a few

  36 DALE BROWN

  stray shocks of gray hair that seemed to be haphazardly stuck

  onto his skull. He spoke briefly with the techs, then walked

  over to the rack and inspected the fitting and bonds. He stuck

  his face close to James, smiled and said, "Now, Captain James,

  I'll ask you once more-where were you on the afternoon of

  August eleventh?"

  In fact, Ken James was photographing top-secret documents

  in a vault at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. He rolled

  his eyes in exasperation. "Very funny, Dr. Carmichael. Now

  can we get on with this?"

  "Couldn't help it, Ken," Alan Carmichael, the white-coated

  researcher, said. "Seeing you trussed up gives this place the

  look of some futuristic interrogation chamber."

  Which was precisely what Maraklov was thinking himself.

  He was wearing a heavy suit made of thick metallic fabric. The

  suit had several thick cables and conduits sewed into it that ran

  all through his arms, legs, feet, hands and neck. A raised metal

  spine ran along his backbone from head to tail, so thick that a

  channel had been cut into the chair to accommodate it. There

  was a bit of cool circulating air flowing through tubules in the

  suit, but it did little to relieve the oppressive heat and stuffi-

  ness.

  "Have you been practicing your deep breathing exercises9

  Carmichael asked.

  "Don't have a choice. I either breathe deep in this getup or