Day of the Cheetah Read online

James' tall, powerfully built frame was covered-a better term

  might have been "encased"-in a stiff flight suit made of nylon

  and metallic thread. James had to carry around a small portable

  air conditioning unit to stay comfortable, and the suit was so

  stiff that James had to be hoisted into his steed on a hydraulic

  lift. A small army of "squires"-military and civilian scientists

  and technicians, led by Doctor Alan Carmichael, the chief proj-

  ect engineer and Patrick's civilian counterpart-followed James

  on his lift up toward his incredible steed.

  Both McLanahan's and James' aircraft were in a large open-

  ended hangar, used more to shield the two fighters from the

  ultra-magnified eyes of Soviet reconnaissance satellites than to

  protect against the weather. It was only four-thirty in the mom-

  ing, but the temperature was already starting to climb; it was

  going to be a scorcher in the high Nevada desert test-site north

  of Las Vegas known as Dreamland.

  But Patrick wasn't thinking about the heat. His eyes were on

  the sleek lines of the jet fighter before him.

  DreamStar . . .

  As McLanahan stood gazing at the fighter the senior noncom-

  missioned officer of the DreamStar project, Air Force Master

  Sergeant Ray Butler, moved alongside him.

  "I know how you feel, sir," Butler said in his deep, gravelly

  52 DALE BROWN

  voice, running a hand across his shaved head. "I get a shiver

  every time I see her."

  She was a child of the first X-29 advanced technology dem-

  onstrator aircraft built in the early and mid-1980s. Long, low,

  sleek and deadly, DreamStar was the only fighter aircraft any-

  where with forward-swept wings, which spread gracefully from

  nearly abeam the cockpit back all the way to the tail. The

  forward-swept wings allowed air to stick to the aircrafts control

  surfaces better, making it possible for the aircraft to make faster

  and wilder maneuvers than ever thought possible. She was so

  agile and so fast that it took three independent high-speed com-

  puters to control her.

  "Chief," Patrick said as they began a walkaround inspection

  of the fighter, "there's no question she's one sexy piece of hard-

  ware. Very sexy."

  Butler nodded. "Couldn't put it better myself."

  The cockpit seemed suspended in mid-air on the long, pointed

  forward fuselage high above the polished concrete floor of the

  satellite-bluff hangar. Beside the cockpit on each side of the fu-

  selage were two auxiliary fins, canards, integral parts of the

  DreamStar's advanced flight controls. When horizontal, the ca-

  nards provided extra lift and allowed the fighter to fly at previ-

  ously unbelievable flight attitudes; when moved nearly to the

  vertical, the canards let the fighter move in any direction without

  changing its flight path. DreamStar could climb or descend with-

  out moving its nose up or down, turn without banking, dart

  sideways in, literally, the blink of an eye.

  The one large engine inlet for the single afterburning jet en-

  gine was beneath the fuselage, mounted so that a smooth flow

  of air could still be assured even at radical flight attitudes and

  fast changes in direction. DreamStar had two sets of rudders,

  one pair on top and one on the bottom, which extended and

  retracted into the fuselage as needed; the lower stabilizers were

  to assure directional control at very high angles-of-attack (when

  the nose would be pointed high above the flight path of the

  aircraft) and low speed when the upper stabilizers would be in-

  effective.

  Even at rest she seemed energetic, ready to leap effortlessly

  into the sky at any moment. "She looks like a great big cat

  ready to pounce, " Patrick said half-aloud.

  They continued their walkaround aft. DreamStar's engine ex-

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 53

  haust was not the typical round nozzle on other fighters. She

  used an oblong vectored-thrust nozzle that could divert the en-

  gine exhaust in many different directions. Louvers on the top

  and bottoms of the nozzle could change the direction of thrust

  instantaneously, giving DreamStar even greater maneuverability.

  The vectored thrust from the engine could also act as added

  boost to shorten takeoff rolls, or as a thrust-reverser during dog-

  fights or on landing to bleed off energy.

  She was one hell of a bird, all right, and Patrick McLanahan

  figured he had the best job in the world-turning her into the

  world's newest and deadliest combat-ready weapon. Patrick

  "Mac" McLanahan, an ex-Strategic Air.Command B-52 radar

  navigator-bombardier-especially remembered for his role on the

  Flight of the Old Dog that knocked out a Soviet laser installa-

  tion-was the project officer in charge of development of the

  DreamStar advanced technology fighter. Once perfected, the XF-

  34A DrearnStar fighter would be the nation's new air-superiority

  fighter.

  Walking around the engine exhaust they noticed a crew chief

  running over to activate an external-power cart. "Looks like

  they're ready for power," Butler said. "I'd better go see how

  they're doing. Have a good flight, Colonel.

  Patrick returned his salute and headed toward the plane he

  would be flying that morning. If the two aircraft were humans,

  the second jet fighter, Cheetah, would be DreamStar's older, less

  intelligent cousin. A by-product of the revolutionary SMTD,

  Short Takeoff and Landing and Maneuverability Demonstrator

  projects of the last decade, Cheetah was a line F- 15E two-set jet

  fighter-bomber, heavily modified and enhanced after years of

  research and development in the fields of high performance flight

  and advanced avionics. It had come to Dreamland, this top-

  secret aircraft and weapons research center northwest of Las

  Vegas, seven years earlier. It had been at Dreamland for less

  than a day before then Lieutenant General Bradley Elliott, the

  director of HAWC, had had her taken apart for the first time.

  The changes to the airframe had been so extensive that it had

  been given a code-name Cheetah instead of keeping its original

  nickname, Eagle.

  Hard to believe, McLanahan thought, that such a machine like

  Cheetah could be outdated in so short a time.

  The remarkable enhancements built into DreamStar had been

  54 DALE BROWN

  tested years earlier on Cheetah, so Cheetah shared DreamStar's

  huge movable forward canards, vectored-thrust engines and

  computer-commanded flight controls. But even Cheetah was

  starting to show its twenty years of age. Modifications to every

  component of the fifty-seven-thousand-pound aircraft meant lots

  of riveted access panels scarred across its fuselage, performance-

  robbing patches that layers of paint could barely hide. With an

  eleven-hundred-pound remote-control camera mounted just be-

  hind her aft cockpit, her once impressive top speed of Mach two

  was now a forgotten statistic-she'd have a tough time, Patrick

  thought, of reaching Mach one
without afterburners. DreamStar

  could easily cruise at one point five Mach without 'burners.

  Where all of the high-tech components had made DreamStar

  the fighter of the future, those same enhancements had taken a

  severe performance penalty on Cheetah. But there was still one

  man who could make Cheetah dance in the sky like a brand-new

  bird. Patrick found that extraordinary young pilot asleep under

  Cheetah's nose, using the nosewheel as a headrest.

  ,. C. I I

  "Yo," came a sleepy reply.

  Patrick went up the crew-boarding ladder, retrieved a set of

  ear noise protectors from the cockpit. "On your feet. Time to

  go aviating.

  For C. Powell that bit of Air Force jargon was raw meat to

  a starving wolf-he was up, on his feet and skipping up the crew

  entry ladder like a kid.

  "Say the word, Colonel."

  "I'm stopping by to see how our boy is doing in DreamStar,

  McLanahan said, putting on the ear protectors to block out the

  noise of the external power cart. "Should be fifteen minutes to

  engine start. Get Cheetah ready to fly."

  "You got it, boss."

  In another life, Captain Roland Q. Powell, the only son of a

  very wealthy Virginia family, all five feet five and one hundred

  twenty pounds of him, must have been a barnstormer; before

  that he might have ridden barrels over Niagara Falls. "Plain

  reckless" would have been the wrong term to describe his fly-

  ing, but "reckless abandon" was close. He was totally at

  home in airplanes, always pushing his machine to the limit but

  staying in control at all times. He never flew slow if he could

  fly fast, never made a turn at thirty degrees' bank when he could

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH 55

  do sixty or ninety, never flew up high when he could fly down

  in the trees. He earned the nickname " " from his Under-

  graduate Pilot Training instructors who would mutter "Jesus

  Christ" (usually followed by "help me" or "save me") when

  they found out they had been scheduled to fly with Roland Pow-

  ell.

  He became an FAIP, first assignment instructor pilot, out of

  Undergraduate Pilot Training, but the Air Force didn't want an

  entire Air Force filled with JC. Powells, so he was assigned to

  Edwards Air Force Base. Flight test was the perfect place to

  stick Roland Powell. He knevall there was to know about aero-

  dynamics but would still agree to do anything the engineers asked

  of him, no matter how dangerous or impossible it seemed. As a

  result Powell got the hot planes. Every jet builder wanted to see

  what magic JC. Powell could conjure up with his airframe. He

  was soon enticed to Dreamland by General Elliott with the

  promise of flying the hottest fighter of them all-Cheetah. Pow-

  ell's expertise both as a pilot and as an engineer helped speed

  up the development of DreamStar, but he chose to stay with

  Cheetah. From then on, he had been her only pilot.

  But JC. Powell had had his time in the spotlight. Now, it

  was Kenneth Francis James' turn.

  When he got to DreamStar again, Patrick climbed up the lad-

  der on the hydraulic lift and watched as James was lowered into

  the cockpit. His special flight suit was preformed into a sitting

  position, making James look like a plastic doll. Once James was

  lowered into place, Patrick moved toward him as close as pos-

  sible without interfering with the small army of experts attending

  to the pilot's seat configuration.

  "Feeling okay, Ken?"

  James nodded. "Snug, but okay."

  Patrick watched as James was set into his specially molded

  ejection seat, strapped into place, and had his oxygen, environ-

  mental and electronic leads connected. The image of a medieval

  knight being readied for combat flashed in Patrick's head, topped

  off when they placed James' helmet on his head and clipped it

  into a clavicle ring on his shoulders. The helmet was essentially

  a holder for a variety of superconducting sensors and terminals

  that covered the inner surface. Once the helmet was locked into

  place, the flight suit became one gigantic electronic circuit, one

  big superconducting transistor. It became the data-transmission

  56 DALE BROWN

  circuit between James and the amazing aircraft he was strapped

  into.

  "Self-test in progress," Carmichael said. The computer, a

  diagnostic self-test device as well as an electroencephalograph

  to monitor the human side of the system, checked each of the

  thousands of sensors, circuits and transmitters within the suit

  and their connections through the interface to DrearnStar. But

  Carmichael chose not to let the computer do his work, even

  though he was the one who had designed the interface; the sci-

  entist manually ran through the complex maze of readouts,

  checking for any sign of malfunction or abnormal readings.

  He found none; neither did the computer. A few minutes later,

  Carmichael turned to Patrick, nodded. "He's ready."

  Patrick walked around the lifts narrow catwalk and knelt down

  in front of James. He could barely see a movement of James'

  eyes through the helmet's thick electro-optical lenses.

  "Ready to do some flying, buddy?"

  They looked at each other. There was no movement at all

  from James. Patrick waited, watched. James appeared to be

  trying to decide on something. He didn't seem fearful or appre-

  hensive or at all nervous. He was just . . . what?

  Patrick glanced at Carmichael. "Alan? How's he doing?"

  "His beta is pinging off the scale," Carmichael said, recheck-

  ing the electroencephalograph readouts. "No alpha or theta

  activity at all."

  Patrick turned again to James, bent down close to him. "We

  can reschedule this, buddy. Don't push it. It's not worth the

  grief .

  "No. I'll be okay. I'm just . . . trying to get ready .

  "Then relax, let it come to you, don't chase it. If it doesn't

  happen, it doesn't happen.- ,@'

  "Hell of a way to fight a war," James said-the tension in

  his voice was obvious. "I can see a fighter pilot telling his

  squadron commander, 'I know the enemy is rolling across the

  base but I can't fly today-my damn theta isn.'t responding . . I

  I've got to prove that I can go in and out of theta-alpha in a

  moment's notice."

  "Making the system operational is still a few years off, Ken,"

  Patrick told him. "Don't worry about all that. Relax, don't force

  yourself or the system. Let's just go up and have some fun

  Finish up and buy me a beer at the Club afterward. That's all.

  57

  DAY OF THE CHEETAH

  Patrick raised a hand in front of the test pilot, and James

  slapped a metallic-lined glove into it. "Punch a hole in the sky,

  buddy. That's an order, too." He gave James one last thumbs-

  up and stepped off the lift.

  By the time Patrick had stepped back onto the tarmac Dr.

  Carmichael was shaking his head in disbelief.

  "He's already under alpha-JC. parameters. I think he's getting

  to the
point where he can do it anytime. If we had him hooked

  up outside the plane, he could probably go into theta-sine A

  before we strap him in."

  "He gets nervous every now and then," Patrick added, "es-

  pecially before a big test like this one. Back me up on monitor-

  ing him, Alan."

  An external power cart was running on Cheetah by the time

  Patrick returned, climbed into the aft cockpit and strapped in.

  Aircraft power was already on, and his crew chief and test-range

  officers had already done a fast preflight of the telemetry and

  data collection instruments packed into the cockpit. Because

  Cheetah was the only jet around that could even try to keep up

  with the DreamStar, it was now used to fly photo-chase on train-

  ing and test flights. The special high-speed camera Cheetah car-

  ried tracked DreamStar as it went through its paces. Patrick

  could monitor all of DreamStar's important electronic indica-

  tions and if necessary take control of the plane by remote con-

  trol.

  With all of DreamStar's power off, however, there was only

  one readout to monitor-the EEG of Ken James himself. Like

  Carmichael, Patrick was amazed as he watched the electronic

  traces of James' different brainwave patterns. He clicked open

  his interphone.

  "He's almost into theta-sine alpha already."

  "Does that mean I can go to sleep too?" JC. Powell said.

  "How fast could ou go into theta-alpha?" Patrick said,

  watching the readouts change. "I know you've flown the

  DrearnStar simulator. Could you do any better?"

  "Patrick, I'm a pilot, not a robot." 's voice had lost its

  sardonic tone. "Seems to me ANTARES turns pilots into near-

  robots. But to answer your question: sure, I could go into theta-

  sine-alpha quickly. Couple of minutes. Staying in theta-alpha

  was another trick. I could never quite get the hang of it. But I

  58 DALE BROWN

  didn't lose DrearnStar, I gained Cheetah. I figure I got the better

  deal.

  Which was a long speech for JC. Powell; it underscored his

  dislike for ANTARES. ANTARES might be th@'great addition

  to DreamStar's already amazing array of avionics, it might be