Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (14 page)

 
          
“Storm
Two engine start complete, beginning pre-takeoff checks.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
“Amazing,”
Powell murmured in Cheetah. He had begun his engine-start checklist at the same
time James had, but he had barely had his left engine up to idle-power by the
time DreamStar’s start-sequence was completed.

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
Immediately
after James made his report to McLanahan and Powell, he commanded the start of
an exhaustive computer check of all of DreamStar’s systems. With both engines
powering four main and two standby hydraulic pumps, energy was available to
DreamStar’s flight controls. Outside, the check made DreamStar’s wing surfaces
crawl and undulate like the fins of a manta ray. From outside the cockpit the
flight-control check was almost surreal . . . each wing bent and unbent in
impossible angles, stretching and flexing more like a sheet of gelatin rather
than hard fibersteel. The process from hydraulic system power-up to full
flight-control certification had taken fifteen seconds.

 
          
Next
was an electrical system check. Total time for a complete check of two
generators, two alternators, one emergency generator, and two separate battery
backup systems: three seconds. James stayed immobile during the checking
process, allowing his senses to be overtaken by the rush of information.

 
          
The
aircraft itself was like a living thing. Personnel were not allowed near the
aircraft during the preflight because damaging radar, electromagnetic and laser
emitters were being activated all around the aircraft at breakneck speed.
Throttles advanced and retarded by themselves. The mission-adaptive wings
continued their unusual undulations, arching and bending so wildly it seemed
they would bend clean in half or twist right off the fuselage.

 
          
Through
it all James was constantly informed about each system’s exact status and
operation. He could no longer feel his feet or hands, but he knew which circuit
in the superconducting radar was energized, and through that system he knew
down to the millimeter how far Cheetah was parked from him. He knew the
position of DreamStar’s canards, the pressure of the fluid in the primary
hydraulic system and the RPMs of the ninth-stage engine’s turbine, just as one
might know which way his toes were pointing without seeing them or the way one
picks up a pencil and begins to write without consciously thinking about the
action. ANTARES had cut James off from monitoring his own body, had relegated
that function to a deeper portion of his brain and had shifted his conscious
mental capacity to the task of operating a supersonic fighter plane.

 
          
Suddenly,
DreamStar ceased its wild preflight movements, and the engine throttles
returned to idle . . .

 
          
“Storm
One, Two is in the green, ready for taxi,” James reported.

 
          
“My
radar’s not even timed out,” Patrick said to J. C. Powell. “How are you coming
on your preflight?”

 
          
“Few
more minutes.”

 
          
“How
can he accomplish an entire systems preflight in just a few minutes?”

 
          
“How
long does it take you to wake up from a nap?” J.C. told him as he put the
finishing touches on the preflight he had begun long before. “How long does it
take you to ask yourself how you feel? That’s what ANTARES is like. If
something was wrong with DreamStar, Ken would feel it just like he’d feel a
sprained ankle or a crink in his neck.”

 
          
Where
Ken had banks of computers to check his avionics, J.C. manually had to “fail” a
system to check a backup system, or manually deflect Cheetah’s control stick and
have the wing flex checked by a crew chief to verify the full range of motion
of the fighter’s elastic wings. But after a few minutes of setting switches and
checking off items in a checklist strapped to his right thigh, he was ready to
go.

 
          
Patrick
keyed his microphone: “Storm Control, this is Storm One flight. Two birds in
the green. Ready to taxi.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
General
Elliott was now on top of Dreamland’s portable control tower, a device fifty
feet high that was set up and taken down for each mission to confuse attempts
by spy satellites to pinpoint Dreamland’s many disguised dry-lakebed runways.
Major Hal Briggs had just come up the narrow winding stairs and handed Elliott
another computer printout when Patrick made his call.

 
          
“Those
Cosmos peeping Toms start their first pass over the range in fifteen minutes,”
Briggs said. “They’ve got our test time scoped out almost to the minute. Those
satellites will be overhead every fifteen minutes for the next two
hours—exactly as long as this scheduled mission.”

 
          
“Another
damned security leak. And I scheduled this mission only two day ago.”

 
          
“But
those spy birds weren’t up there two days ago,” Briggs said. “I checked. You
mean—?”

 
          
“I
mean the Soviets took only two days—maybe less—to launch two brand-new satellites
just for this test flight,” Elliott said. “Well, at least they won’t catch our
planes on the ground.” He picked up his microphone. “Storm Flight, this is
Alpha. Taxi to hold point and await takeoff clearance. Winds calm, altimeter
...” Elliott checked the meteorological data readouts on an overhead console “.
. . three-zero-zero-five. Taxi clearance void time is one-zero minutes. Over.”

 
          
“Storm
Flight copies ten minutes. On the move.” Moments later both fighters emerged
from the satellite bluff and fell in behind a jeep with a large sign that read
“FOLLOW ME.”
The caravan moved quickly
across an expanse of hard-baked sand to another smaller satellite-bluff hangar
that had been towed out to the end of one of the disguised runways that
crisscrossed
Groom
Lake
in the center of the Dreamland test range.
Now Cheetah and DreamStar pulled alongside each other and set their parking
brakes while technicians and specialists did a fast last-chance inspection of
each.

 
          
“Pre-takeoff
and line-up checks,” Patrick said over interphone.

 
          
“Roger,”
J.C. replied. “In progress.”

 
          
“Storm
Two ready for release,” James suddenly radioed in.

 
          
“Amazing,”
Patrick said to J.C. “He’s already done with a pre-takeoff checklist twice as
complicated as ours.” He keyed the UHF radio switch. “Standby, Storm Two.”

 
          
“Roger.”

 
          
“MAW
switch set to V-sub-X, max performance takeoff.” J.C. read off the most
critical switch positions for the mission-adaptive-wing mode, and Patrick saw
that the leading and trailing edges of the wings had curved into a long, deep
high-lift airfoil.

 
          
“Canard
control and engine nozzle control switches set to
‘auto alpha,’ ”
J.C. continued. “This will be a constant-alpha
takeoff.” J.C. Powell always briefed his back-seater on the takeoff, abort, and
emergency procedures, even though he and Patrick had flown together for almost
two years and Patrick knew the procedures as well as J.C. “Power to military
thrust, brakes off and power to max afterburner. We’ll expect nega- tive-Y push
after five seconds, with a pitch to takeoff attitude. After that we monitor
angle-of-attack throughout the climb and make sure we don’t exceed twenty-eight
alpha in the climb-out. I’m looking to break my previous record of a
seventeen-hundred-foot takeoff roll on this one ... In case we don’t get the
push-down I’ll cancel auto-alpha and switch to normal takeoff
procedures—accelerate to one-sixty, rotate, maintain eight alpha or less,
accelerate to two-eight-zero knots indicated and come out of afterburner. Same
procedures if we lose vectored thrust after takeoff... All
right.
” Powell slapped his gloved hands together, finished off the
last few items of the checklist: “Circuit breakers checked. Caution panel
clear. Canopy closed and locked. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses?”

 
          
“On
and on,” Patrick intoned.

 
          
“Checked
up front. Lights set. Helmets, visors, oxygen mask, oxygen panel.”

 
          
“On,
down, on, set to normal.”

 
          
“Same
here. Parking brakes released.” J.C. touched a switch on his control stick.
“Takeoff configuration check.”

 
          
“Takeoff configuration check in progress,”
responded a computer-synthesized voice. It was the final step in Cheetah’s
electronics array. A computer, which had monitored every step of the
pre-takeoff checklists being performed, would make one last check of all systems
on board and report any discrepancies.

 
          
“Takeoff configuration check complete.
Status okay. ”

           
“I already knew that, you moron,”
J.C. murmured to the voice. He never relied on the computerized system although
he consulted it. It was, as he would frequently remind everyone within earshot,
another computer out to get him. “We’re ready to go, Colonel,” he said.

 
          
Patrick
keyed the radio switch. “Storm Control, this is Storm flight of two. Ready for
departure.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
Hal
Briggs, on the narrow catwalk of the portable tower, spoke four words into a
walkie-talkie. “Sand storm, one- seven.”

 
          
His
cryptic message activated a hundred security officers spread out within some
four-hundred square miles of the takeoff area. They were the last line of
defense against unauthorized intrusion or eavesdropping on the test that was
about to begin. Each man checked and rechecked his assigned sector with an
array of electronic sensors—sound, radar, heat, motion, electromagnetic—and
once secure, reported an “all secure” by sending a coded electronic tone. Only
when all of the tones were received would a “go” signal be sent to Briggs.

 
          
Five
seconds later he received that coded tone. “Good sweep, General,” he reported
to Elliott. The general took one last look at the satellite overflight
schedule, picked up the mike:

 
          
“Storm
flight of two, clear for unrestricted takeoff. Winds calm. Takeoff clearance
void time, five minutes. Have a good one.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
Patrick
hit a switch, and the faint hum of the big gyro- stabilized video camera
mounted on Cheetah’s spine could be heard. “Camera’s slaved on DreamStar,
J.C.,” he said. “Don’t lose him.”

 
          
“A
cold day in hell before any machine can outrun me.”

 
          
They
saw DreamStar taxi a few feet forward just ahead of Cheetah, until the tip of
DreamStar’s forward-swept right wingtip was just cutting into J.C.’s view of
Ken James.

 
          
“Cornin’
up,” J.C. said. He brought the throttles forward, keeping his toes on the
brakes. Cheetah began to quiver, then shake with a sound like the distant rumble
of an earthquake.

 
          
“Turn
’em loose, baby,” J.C. murmured. He scanned his engine-instrument readouts on
the main display, running down the graphic displays of engine RPM, fuel flow,
nozzle and louver position, turbine inlet temperature and exhaust gas temperature.
Each bar graph lined up in the normal range, everything right smack in the
green—both engines in full military power, one hundred and nine percent of
rated thrust, sixty thousand pounds of power. His grip on the stick and
throttles unconsciously tightened. “Turn ’em loose . . .”