“That was quite a speech, Hal,” he said over the rising whine of the engines.
“I got a confession, buddy. I never read the old man’s bio. But I guess I hit pretty close to home. You hang around the guy long enough, you learn a little about what goes on behind the brass. Now get outta here and bring us back some rattlesnake hide.”
Over Ojito Airfield, central Mexico
DreamStar’s database on Ojito was accurate, except it failed to account for at least a year’s worth of unchecked vegetation. Maraklov had set up a computerized instrument landing system in Ojito, which used the database’s field location, elevation and information on surrounding terrain to draw a glidescope and localizer beam into the runway.
But Maraklov had to yank DreamStar away from tall strands of dense trees off the approach end of the runway, and when he reached the airport’s coordinates themselves he could barely see the runway through the weeds and junk scattered around. He had no choice but to ignore the low fuel warnings and go missed-approach on the field; then he adjusted his ILS for the obstructions and tried again. To use every available inch of pavement he had to drop DreamStar over a stand of trees at almost a full stall, applying power at the last moment to avoid crashing.
After touchdown he discovered that Ojito was nowhere near seven thousand feet long — another dense stand of trees and several buildings rushed up to meet him from less than two thousand feet away. Apparently a small corral and farm had been built on the little-used runway to make it easier to load livestock onto trucks, and the surrounding forest had been allowed to grow over the rest of the airstrip.
Maraklov threw the vectored-thrust nozzles and louvers into full reverse power, then hit the brakes. The left brake locked, its anti-skid system failed; it overheated and was quickly deactivated by computer just before it fused to the wheel. DreamStar skidded hard right, and only the lightning-fast application of thrust in the right directions kept the fighter on the narrow weed-covered runway. The left wing crashed into several small, rickety wooden buildings, sending chickens and pigs scattering in all directions. One of the small buildings burst into flames, ignited by the heat from DreamStar’s exhaust.
Maraklov gunned the engine. DreamStar leapt forward away from the burning building seconds before the fire reached the left wingtip. Scattering buildings in his jet exhaust, Maraklov taxied back down the runway to the opposite end, turned and aligned himself with the runway centerline, his engine idling. If troops or police came, he would have enough fuel to take off and get two or three hundred feet before flame-out — enough to nose over and crash DreamStar.
He activated the radio on Kramer’s frequency. “Kramer, what’s your position?” he thought, and ANTARES transmitted the query.
“Vstryetyemsah zahv dvah menootah, tovarisch,” Moffitt, Kramer’s assistant, replied. Maraklov wished there was a Russian-translation computer in DreamStar — once again he didn’t understand enough of what Moffitt said.
This was going to be a major problem, Maraklov thought to himself. They weren’t in Russia yet, but even in Mexico they were a hell of a lot closer to Moffitt’s turf than Maraklov was. He would have to deal with Moffitt and all the other Moffitts that he’d meet up with — the ones that didn’t trust him, the ones who’d think he might have turned, the ones who envied his life in the United States. He’d have to try to begin the transformation back to being a Russian right now.
“Yah … yah nye pahnyemahyo,” Maraklov thought haltingly. Like many before him, he thought, Russian is hard. But ANTARES did not transmit the Russian phrase, so Maraklov had to answer, “Say again.”
“Oh, excuse me, Captain James”—Moffitt was his usual charming self—”I forgot you do not speak Russian any more. Our ETA is two minutes.”
Maraklov had no time to think about Moffitt. Several villagers had begun to appear at the opposite end of the airstrip. Some went to work putting out the fires to their outbuildings; others pointed at DreamStar. Maraklov couldn’t tell if any were carrying weapons but the safe assumption would be that they were armed and shouldn’t be allowed to approach, even though they looked like backwoods villagers …
Now a large dark-green truck rumbled up the road leading to the tiny airstrip, about a dozen men piled in and slowly started down the runway toward DreamStar. So much for timid villagers,
Maraklov locked the right and the emergency brakes, set the engine louvers on full reverse, and advanced the throttle. A huge cloud of dust rolled up from the airstrip and almost covered the advancing truck. The truck stopped, then several villagers jumped out and ran over to the sides of the runway. This time Maraklov could see rifles and shotguns. The truck then began advancing slowly toward him, the villagers with rifles advancing on both sides.
Maraklov created another dust cloud to warn them away. It wasn’t working. He moved the louvers back to takeoff position. The truck was closer than a thousand feet now — he wouldn’t make it if he attempted a takeoff over the truck even if his wings weren’t damaged. There was no way in hell he’d risk losing control of DreamStar to these characters. If these guys came any closer … well, he’d survived fighters, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, the best of America’s defense arsenals. Damned if he and his plane were going to give up to a bunch of peasants in Mexico armed with shotguns.
The villagers were about a hundred yards away when a thunderous roar echoed through the mountainous valley, drowning out the sound of DreamStar’s engines. Suddenly the airfield erupted in clouds of dust and the crackle of machine-gun fire. The tree-line on either side of the strip was strafed with heavy-caliber machine-gun fire, whipping the trees and branches as if they were in the grip of a hurricane. Not surprisingly the armed villagers bolted from the airstrip, and soon the source of the uproar hove into view in the center of the airstrip.
Maraklov was impressed. It was a huge Boeing CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, an old American twin-rotor job that had to be at least forty years old. This veteran chopper, belching smoke that could be seen for miles, was ready for action — with a door-gunner on each side of the helicopter firing a gyro-stabilized twenty-millimeter gun, it was more a gunship than a trash-hauler. Its huge eight-bladed rotors, each some one hundred feet in diameter, barely made it through the trees and brush. The KGB had at least pulled out all stops to make sure DreamStar got out of the U.S. intact — no sooner had the monster landed than twelve heavily armed men rushed out of the rear-cargo ramp. Two hit the area where the burning buildings smoldered, the fires extinguished by the downwash of the chopper’s huge rotors; the rest split up on either side of the chopper and began to secure the perimeter of the airstrip. And then from the cargo hold of the chopper came Kramer and Moffitt riding aboard a small black-and-green fuel truck.
As Maraklov opened the canopy, a crew from the chopper brought a ladder up to the side for Kramer. Maraklov ordered the maintenance access panels to open automatically, and a crew began to attach fuel lines to the single-point refueling adapter. Other crewmen began stripping loose chunks of fibersteel off DreamStar’s tail section, while some scurried over DreamStar’s wings inspecting the damage from the Bulldog AAA gun. Amid it all two photographers were taking nonstop pictures of DreamStar.
Kramer, now on the top of the ladder beside the cockpit ledge, plugged a headset into a jack offered by a maintenance technician. “Can you hear me, Maraklov?”
“Yes, I can hear you,” the ANTARES-synthesized voice replied. He did not move, nor did he attempt to remove his helmet or raise his visors.