His legs were aching, sweat was pouring into the metallic flight suit. Conditioned air from the external power cart was trickling into the suit but was hardly enough to change the temperature.
Through the canopy he could see Crowe nervously fidgeting inside the armored car, looking as if he was going to shoot himself in the face with his M-16 any second. He could also watch Howard’s careful preparations for the massive assault they knew had to come. Despite their plans, the moment they tried to start engines the full force of Dreamland’s security forces would be on top of them. Nearly fifty armed soldiers and two heavily armed tracked combat vehicles surrounding the flight line would be let loose to blow DreamStar to hell.
Amid it all James had to convince himself to relax, to empty his mind of all thoughts, to clear a path for the sleeping ANTARES computer to worm its way into his subconscious. Self-hypnosis, consciously forcing each muscle group to relax, was the simplest and usually the most effective way of achieving theta-wave state, but that seemed impossible. Muscles ached from the long climb up the platform, and the lactic acid that collected in his muscle tissue from heavy exertion would act like halon gas on a fire, blocking any conscious efforts to relax those muscles.
His mind kept straying to the thoughts of Major Briggs’ security forces — he had inspected those forces many times, acting only partially interested in them at the time when in fact he was taking careful notes on the exact numbers, equipment and deployment. He had examined the weaknesses of the force and planned possible escape routes out of Dreamland for himself should that ever have been necessary. He had devised several escape plans, depending on what, if anything, he was taking with him — one route was to be used if he was alone and on foot, another if he was driving a car, another if driving a truck, another if he was carrying a “black box” or another unit. But never had he expected to take DreamStar with him. Components, drawings, computers, electronic media, yes — never the whole plane.
Only one mind-set seemed to make sense — that morning in the cockpit he told himself he wasn’t going to make it but it was worth it to die trying. If he did beat the odds and lift off, he had to buck even greater odds to fly the eight hundred miles from Dreamland to the deserted airstrip in central Mexico for the refueling planned by his KGB contacts in Los Angeles and Mexico City. Then he’d have both the American and Mexican air forces to beat on his way to Nicaragua, plus American forces based on El Salvador and Honduras — none of them very large or effective forces, but a deadly threat to a battered and weaponless DreamStar.
But he had no choice. If he couldn’t have DreamStar, better to die in her cockpit trying to deliver her to the Soviet Union than let the Americans mothball her while they continued to perfect their research into the ANTARES interface. Were there other areas he could infiltrate, other research programs whose information could be vital to the security of the Soviet Union? Was there any other program that, if he lived, he could collect information on as valuable or as rare as his DreamStar? His? Yes, damn it, his …
The answer to all was no. Strangely, coming to that grim conclusion put him at ease, allowing him slowly to relax his knotted muscles and control his adrenaline-fired pulse and breathing.
“Do you want to live forever, Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov?” James said into his face mask. And with that he felt his body go totally relaxed, almost limp, held upright only by the tight body harness that secured him to DreamStar’s ejection seat. It was the first time in some ten years that he had spoken his given name. The words surprised him — it was such a totally Russian name. And right now he liked it, was proud of it. “Kenneth Francis James” sounded weak. He would not use it again.
He did not realize, though, that it had taken two hours for him to speak his Russian name to himself. Without warning the ANTARES interface had taken hold. He was once again one with DreamStar…
Patrick McLanahan could only stare. General Brad Elliott and Hal Briggs couldn’t speak. Applause broke out from somewhere behind them as they stared at a reincarnation.
The doors to Hangar Three of the HAWC research flight line were opened, and a yellow “mule” tow-tractor slowly chugged out of the massive structure. The mule pulled a hulking dark beast from its lair, an aircraft so large that it seemed to blot out the faint glow of the rising sun on the horizon. It seemed to take forever to move the giant machine from the hangar, but soon there it was, sitting on the concrete ramp like a winged black dragon.
“ ‘Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it,’ ” Angelina Pereira quoted. McLanahan and Briggs turned toward her. “Alan Valentine,” she added.
“Whoever … but that’s one mean-lookin’ mother,” Briggs said.
Ormack began his walkaround inspection of the Megafortress Plus, General Elliott and other members of the crew following. Actually Ormack and the engineers had already completed an extensive walkaround hours earlier before the crew briefing, and all items of the before-engine-start checklist had already been performed by ground crewmen and technicians. But no matter who performed the inspection, or when, Ormack could not resist the urge to do one last visual inspection before climbing aboard — as much a ritual as a race car driver’s kicking the tires of his car or a marksman’s rubbing the front sight of his rifle.
Elliott pointed at the Old Dog. “I still can’t believe what I’m seeing,” he said to Ormack, once its copilot. What he was pointing at was the most radical change in the Old Dog’s appearance — her huge wings. Instead of drooping in a huge downward curve from the fuselage to the wingtips, the wings stood straight out, tall and proud instead of arched and aged-looking.
“The newest in composite materials went into her,” Ormack said. “We replaced the main wing spar, the spine, the tailplane spars and other skeletal components with fibersteel beams, the largest and thickest composite structures ever cast. I remember being called out to the hangar in Alaska when they put the wings back on — it looked like a damn optical illusion, those twenty-ton wings sticking straight out like that. They sagged when we filled them up with fifty tons of fuel, though — sagged a grand total of two inches. We used to be able to look into the outboard engines just by standing on tiptoes — now, they’re all so high off the ground we need a ladder to look into them. The takeoff distance has decreased by thirty percent. It used to take forever for the Buff to lift off because those huge drooping wings would ‘take off’ first, leaving the fuselage still rolling on the ground. No more, Brad. When this beast hits takeoff speed, it’s airborne. Period.”
Ormack continued the walkaround inspection, pointing out various new changes in the huge bomber. “Only two AIM-120 Scorpion missiles on this flight, but Carter’s Dog Zero Two can take up to ten on each wing now, instead of only the six we had on our first mission — that’s twenty air-to-air missiles total, the same as on five F-15 fighters. And computer-controlled fuel management helps us avoid the fuel problems we had on our last flight when damage forced us out of the automatic mode. No more wing spoilers that dragged in the slipstream for aircraft control and wasted so much energy. Now we use engine-bleed air-thrusters on the wings for roll control. It allows us much faster turn control, eliminates adverse yaw.”