Elliott hit his intercom button. “Communications, this is Elliott. I want a secure satellite link direct with JCS set up soon as possible. Get Air Force on the line, Secretary Curtis direct — he should be standing by for a report on transponder kilo seven. Set up the call with JCS on that channel if possible.”
“Yes, sir. Kilo seven is active. I should be able to conference JCS and Air Force in a few minutes.”
The mission had gone sour, but its objective, no matter how terrible the price, had been achieved — to intercept the XF-34 and prevent it from leaving Nicaragua. The question remained — would the price Elliott paid to reveal the Soviet Union’s deceit be too high for the President of the United States to accept? And what would he do about it?
Orbiting at five thousand feet over the marshy northeast coast of Nicaragua, Maraklov watched as, one by one, crewmen bailed out of the stricken Ilyushin-76 AWACS transport. Because the aircraft was no longer structurally sound, ditching was not recommended; instead, they decided to crash the aircraft in the peat bogs of the Mosquito Coast after the crew bailed out. The Ilyushin had been trimmed for a shallow left-turning descent to allow time for the pilot to run back to the cargo door and jump out. Maraklov watched each crewman bail out, electronically measuring and recording the location of each man as he hit the marshy ground, then watched as the huge transport, still streaming smoke from its mangled tail and ruptured fuselage, continued its left turn, pointed itself toward the ocean and pancaked in just a half-mile offshore.
They had hoped to retrieve the aircraft relatively intact and salvage as much of the expensive electronic gear on board as possible, but their estimates of the aircraft’s poor structural integrity were on-target. Even though the plane made a rather gentle belly-flop into the warm Caribbean, the weakened fuselage cracked and tore apart as if made of balsa wood. The last Maraklov saw was the huge wings of the Ilyushin flying and spinning in the air; then the sea swallowed the plane and it quickly disappeared from sight.
“Control, this is Zavtra,” Maraklov reported as he electronically recorded the impact point and the point at which the fuselage disappeared from view. “Ilyushin is down and submerged. Stand by for transmission of impact coordinates for possible naval salvage. Requesting immediate clearance to land.”
“Request approved, Zavtra,” the controller replied in English, then added: “Plenty of parking space available now.”
The reply, a bitter one, underscored the fast-worsening situation Maraklov faced. Sebaco was virtually defenseless. All four of the MiG-29s assigned to Sebaco had been destroyed — the only aircraft available were borrowed MiG-23 fighters from the Nicaraguan Air Force at Managua and possibly some of Nicaragua’s Sukhoi-24 swing-wing fighter-bombers to counter any naval forces that might threaten Sebaco. Sebaco did not even have Russian pilots to man these twenty- to thirty-year-old aircraft — they’d have to rely on poorly trained Nicaraguan or Cuban pilots until Russian pilots could be flown in.
As Maraklov approached Sebaco he noticed the small antiaircraft artillery guns at the end of the runway. They had piled up more sandbags and scrap-armor plates around the gun’s bunker to protect the gunners. but the extra buttresses decreased the gunner’s visibility and reaction time. Those too would be useless in a fight.
Tret’yak and his men, isolated for so long in this damned never-never land, had no conception of what was about to be unleashed on them.
Whatever, Maraklov was determined not to allow their shortsightedness spell the end of DreamStar.
7
Brooks Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas
McLanahan was awakened from a fitful sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder. “Colonel McLanahan? Colonel?”
It was Wendy’s doctor. His face looked weary. Patrick’s heart began to race and he leapt to his feet. A nurse was removing the plastic airway in Wendy’s throat, and aides were wheeling in a gurney. “Wendy …?”
The doctor immediately held up his hands. “She’s all right, Colonel, at least for the time being.” He paused, referring to a chart he had brought with him. “She has some extensive damage in her lung tissues … pneumonectomy may be necessary. I doubt we can wait any longer.—”
Patrick watched as the orderlies moved his wife onto the gurney and began attaching a portable respirator. “How long will it be?”
“Several hours. I suggest you go home and get some rest. We won’t know until morning.”
“Call if there’s any news.”
“I will.” The doctor followed Wendy’s gurney and the technicians out of the intensive care unit.
It had been an exhausting two-day vigil over Wendy’s bedside, waiting to see if she would ever regain consciousness. He wandered in a near-daze out of intensive care and down the silent corridor toward the exit.
Usually victims of an airplane crash were assumed to be dead — the human body was simply, not designed to survive the crushing force of a plane crash. The doctors and nurses, although hard-working and very professional, carried out their duties as if they were demonstrating to the victim’s family that the Air Force was doing everything possible, while trying to steel the family into accepting the worst. It was evident in the damned attending physician. He seemed more concerned with making the family comfortable than with saving Wendy’s life-
McLanahan stopped dead in the hallway. He realized that he had been walking very fast down the middle of the corridor, storming past patients and nurses, his fists tight-clenched. Get a grip, McLanahan, he told himself as he stepped aside and slowed his pace through the corridor. This is no time to go bananas.
As he passed an open doorway on his way out to the parking lot he heard the words “Air Force” from the room’s television set. He stopped outside the door to listen:
“… today would not comment on reports from a Mexican news service that U.S. Air Force jets were shot down by Russian fighters today in the Caribbean Sea south of Cuba. Pentagon officials will only confirm that American military planes were in the area on routine training missions, and that those aircraft were harassed by Soviet, Cuban and Nicaraguan military aircraft. Air Force officials say the aircraft were part of a month-long exercise called Tropical Thunder, an annual joint U.S.-Central American military exercise …”
McLanahan turned away to look for a telephone. “Tropical Thunder” was the name of a joint U.S.-Latin American military exercise, but it rarely involved more than a few dozen Marines and a few transports, and it was usually conducted in the United States or Panama. This had to have something to do with DreamStar.
He found a telephone, and got the base operator, who dialed the command post number at Dreamland.
“Command Post, Captain Valentine.”
“Kurt, this is Colonel McLanahan—”
“Yes, sir,” Valentine, the senior controller at HAWC interrupted, “General Elliott is expecting your call. Can you stand by, sir?”
“Yes; this is not a secure line.”
“Understand. Stand by.” He heard clicks and digital dial tones in the background; then a voice said, “Barrier, Charlie one go ahead. Over.”
The HAWC command post had hooked him into a UHF or satellite phone patch with some ship or aircraft. McLanahan considered using his Dreamland call sign on the open frequency, but this guy wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He said: “Barrier, this is Colonel McLanahan. Connect me with General Elliott.”