The Minotaur (14 page)

She nodded yes. When he handed it to her she said, “So you are
working on the ATA program?”

“Gallie, for Christ’s sake. I told you I was. I don’t lie to you.”

She sipped her coffee for a bit. “David likes you,” she said.

It made him nervous when she shifted subjects like that “He’s a
great kid,” he said noncommittally. “Honest, Callie. I tell you the
truth. If something’s classified and I can’t talk about it, I just say
so. You know that! You know mel”

She nodded her agreement and picked up the book. He waited a
moment, slightly baffled, then wandered outside with his coffee cup
in his hand. Women! Any man who thinks he’s got them figured
out should be declared incompetent and incarcerated to protect
himself.

The cursors were running all over the scope when it occurred to
Toad to check the velocities in the inertial. They were all gone to
hell. “Hold this heading,” he growled at Rita as he consulted his
kneeboard cards. He pushed the buttons to take the inertial out of
the system, then typed in a wind he thought would work.

“Okay,” he told her. “This run, no inertial and no radar. Com-
puter dead reckoning and the IR—that’s all we’ll use. We’ll even
leave the laser off. Go in at a hundred feet and let’s see if we can hit
anything.” Below two hundred feet system deliveries in the A-6
were degraded, probably. Toad suspected, due to the trigonometry
of low grazing angles.

She lowered the left wing and let the nose sag down into the
turn. When she leveled the wings they were on the run-in line at a
hundred feet, throttles against the stops, bouncing moderately in
the turbulence as the engines moaned through their helmets.

He got the reticle, or cross hair, on the IR display onto the
tower. The cross hairs started drifting. The wind he typed into the
computer was wrong. He pushed the velocity correct switch, then
held the cross hairs on the tower bulls-eye.

“Master Arm on, in attack, and in range.”

“I’m committed,” she said. This meant she had squeezed the
commit trigger on the stick, authorizing the computer to release
the weapon.

Toad glanced out his side window. The desert was right there,
close enough to touch, racing by beneath them. He came back to
the IR scope. All okay. If Moravia got distracted and let the nose
fall just a smidgen, they would be a fireball rolling across the desert
so quickly they would never even know what happened. “Release
coming,” he advised. The cursors started to drift in close and he
held them on the base of the tower.

When the release came she eased back on the stick and Toad felt
the G press him down even as he watched the tower on the IR
scope—now going inverted—for the hit. Pop. There it was. Almost
dead-on.

That was the last bomb. He glanced at the panel in front of her.
They were climbing and heading north for Yakima. He flipped the
radar to transmit and began to adjust the picture.

“Your hit forty feet at seven-thirty.”

“Boardman, thanks a lot. We’re switching to Center.”

“Have a safe flight.”

“Yo.” Toad dialed in the Seattle Center frequency.

“Pretty good bombing for a fighter puke,” Moravia said.

“Yep. It was that,” he agreed smugly, relishing the role and
willing today to play it to the hilt. Moravia had had her fun last
night. His head was still thumping like a toothache. “Ain’t any-
body better than the ol’ Homy Toad.”

“0r anyone more humble.”

“Humble is for folks that can’t,” he shot back. “I can.”

Rita called Center and asked for a clearance to the military
operating area over Okanogan. She leveled the plane at Flight
Level 220. Toad played with the scope.

Entering the area, Rita disengaged the autopilot and looked
about expectantly. She and her pilot instructor of the previous
week, Lieutenant Clyde “Duke” Degan, had agreed to and briefed
an ACM engagement. She was right on time. Now if she could just
find him first. She dialed in the squadron tactical frequency and
gave him a call.

“I’m here,” Degan replied.

Toad caught the first glimpse of the other A-6. It was high, near
the sun. 0l’ Duke didn’t intend to give Moravia any break at all.
“All right,” Toad enthused. “Now, by God, we’re playing my
game!” Toad pointed over her left shoulder. “Up there. Better turn
under him and get the nose down for some airspeed.”

Rita knew Toad had just recently finished a three-year tour in
the backseat of F-14 Tomcats. He had ridden through literaly
hundreds of practice dogfights. Fighter crews lived for Air Combat
Maneuvering (ACM), the orgiastic climax of their training and
their existence. So she knew Toad Tarkington undoubtedly knew a
thing or two about dogfighting. She took his advice. “Think he’s
seen us?” The A-6’s radar had no air-to-air capability.

Toad kept the other plane in sight. Immediately above them—
maybe two miles above—it rolled inverted, preparatory to a split S.
“Looks like it,” Toad murmured. “Already you’re at a serious
disadvantage, assuming he’s smart enough to cash in.”

With the throttles on the stops, she began a climbing right turn
holding 340 knots indicated, the best climb speed. Toad glanced
across the panel, then cranked his neck to keep the other plane in
sight. “He’s coming down like a ruptured duck,” Toad advised. “If
you had guns you could get a low-percentage deflection shot here.
Shake him up some.”

The other plane came rocketing down with vapor pouring off its
wingtips. Now his wingtip speed brakes—boards—came open.
“He’s trying to minimize his overshoot.” The other Intruder went
dropping through their altitude with the boards still open, vapor
swirling from his wings. “Work the angles,” Toad advised. “Turn
into him and get the nose down.”

Rita Moravia did just that in a workmanlike four-G pull. “Not
too much nose-down,” Toad grunted against the G. Duke Degan
would undoubtedly use his energy advantage to zoom again and
try to turn in behind her, but he should not have left the boards out
as long as he did. That was his second mistake. His first was the
split S; he should have spiraled down to convert his energy advan-
tage to a lethal position advantage.

Degan zoomed. Moravia smartly lifted her nose into a climb,
still closing, then eased it to hold 340 indicated. “Very nice,” Toad
commented. Inexperienced pilots would just yank on the stick until
they had squandered all their airspeed. Moravia had better sense.
Patience, Toad decided. She was patient.

Degan was above them now, spread-eagled against the sky,
maybe a mile ahead and four thousand feet above. And he was
running out of airspeed.

“You got him now,” Toad said, excitement creeping into his
voice.

Apparently Degan thought so too. He continued over the top of
his loop and let the nose fall through as he half-rolled. He was
going to try to go out underneath with a speed advantage and run
away from her, then turn and come back into the fray on his own
terms. Moravia anticipated him; as he committed with his nose she
dumped hers and slammed down the left wing and honked her
plane around.

“You get another deflection shot here,” Toad advised. “You’re
kicking this guy’s ass! What a clown! He should never have come
back at you out of the loop.”

She was dead behind him now, both diving, but Degan lacked
the speed advantage to pull away cleanly.

“Fox Two,” Toad whispered over the radio. Fox Two was the
call when you were putting a heat-seeking missile in the air.
“You’re dead meat”

“Bull.” Degan’s voice did not sound happy,

“Go ahead, try something wonderful and Rita will get a guns
solution.”

“I have enough gas for one more series of turns,” Rita told the
instructor.

A long pause. Degan wasn’t liking this a bit. Part of the pain,
Toad suspected, was Rita’s well-modulated feminine voice on the
radio and the ribbing Duke knew he would have to take in the
ready room about getting whipped by a woman. Toad would have
wagered a paycheck the guys back in the ready room at Whidbey
were crowded around the duty officer’s radio this very minute.
Toad whacked Rita playfully on the right arm with his fist. He was
having a hell of a good time. “Okay,” Degan said at last, “break off
and well start again with a head-on pass at twenty-two grand. I’ll
run out to the west.”

Rita dropped her wing to turn east. Toad cackled for her benefit
over the ICS. Then he keyed his radio mike switch. “Hey, Duke,
this is Toad. I got ten bucks to put on ol’ Rita if you can spare it.”

“You’re on, asshole.”

Toad chuckled over the radio. On the ICS he said, “We got him
now, Rita baby. He’s mad, the sucker.”

“Don’t Rita-baby me, you—you—“

“Goddamn, cool off, willya?” Toad roared. “I don’t give a damn
if you’re the lesbo queen of Xanadu—but right fucking now you’re
a fighter pilot. This ain’t for fun.” He paused for air, then mut-
tered, ” ‘Fight to fly, fly to fight, fight to win.’ There ain’t no other
way,”

“You didn’t just make that up.”

“That’s the Top Gun motto. Now what’re you gonna do on this
high-speed pass?”

“I thought a turn in the same direction he turns.”

“He’ll probably make a horizontal turn as hard as he can pull.
No imagination. Wait to see which way he turns, then nose up
about forty degrees and roll hard into him, the rolling scissors. If
he’s not too sharp you’ll get a winning position advantage, and this
guy hasn’t impressed me.”

The two Intruders came together out of the emptiness at a com-
bined speed of a thousand knots. At first the other plane was just a
speck, but it grew larger quickly until it seemed to fill the wind-
shield. Toad had been there before, in a head-on pass with Jake
Grafton in an F-14 that resulted in a collision. Involuntarily he
closed his eyes.

His head snapped down and the floor came up at him. She had
the G on. He opened his eyes and used the steel handgrip on the
canopy rail to pull himself around to look behind. “Which way?”

“Left. I got him.” She was holding herself forward in the seat
with her left hand on her handgrip as she craned back over her
shoulder and applied the G.

“Get the nose up higher.” Enough advice. Either she could hack
it or she couldn’t.

The left wing sagged to the vertical and the nose fell toward the
horizon- G off as she slammed the stick all the way to the right and
the plane rolled two hundred degrees in the blink of an eye. Back
on the stick with the nose coming down. Pull, pull, pull that nose
around.

Degan was in front of them now and below, but Rita was on the
inside of his turn going down at him. Relax the stick and build up
your speed, close on him; Toad silently urged her on.

“Degan lost sight,” Toad said as he fought the vomit back in his
throat. The hangover had caught up with him. He ripped off a
glove and jerked the mask aside. His stomach heaved once. She
was set up perfectly for a downhill Sidewinder shot.

“Fox Two,” he called over the radio. “You owe me ten bucks,
Degan.” Then he puked into the glove again.

Rita lifted the nose and reversed her turn until she was headed
west “Fuel’s going to be a little skosh,” she murmured to Toad,
then called Degan and told him she was leaving this frequency for
Seattle Center.

After the debrief the duty van dropped them at the BOQ.
“Thanks,” Rita said.

“For what?”

“Coaching me during the ACM.”

“No sweat. They’re attack guys. ACM ain’t their bag.”

“Are you going to get some dinner?” she asked.

“Naw. I’m going to bed.”

“I hope you aren’t coming down with something,” she called
after him.

Jake Grafton sat in the attic beside the pile of boxes that contained
the miscellaneous junk he had collected through the years and had
never been able to throw away. Everything from high school year-
books to souvenirs from half the world’s seaports was tucked away
in some box or other. He examined the boxes and tried to remem-
ber which was which. Perhaps this one. He opened it. Shoe trees,
almost empty bottles of after-shave, buttons, spools of thread and
some paperback novels. Three worn-out shirts.

It was in the fourth box. He removed the pistol from the holster
and flipped the cylinder out. The chambers were empty. He held
the weapon up so the light from the bare forty-watt bulb on the
rafter shone full upon it. No rust. Good thing he had oiled it before
he put it away. He looked into the box to see if there was any
ammo. Yep, one box of .357 magnum, a couple dozen shells still in
the box. He closed the cylinder, worked the action several times,
then loaded the weapon.

With his back against one of the boxes, he extended his legs,
crossed his ankles and thoughtfully stared at the bolstered pistol
on the floor beside him. Camacho said it had probably been a
professional hit. Harold Strong would be just as dead if he had had
a pistol. Still, a pistol nearby would make a nervous man feel bet-
ter, sort of like an aspirin. Or a beer.

A large-frame revolver like this couldn’t be hidden under a uni-
form. Perhaps in an attache case? Then he would be the slowest
draw in the East. In the car it could go in the glove compartment
or under the seat, but it would be too far away if someone opened
fire while he was sitting at a traffic light or driving along the free-
way. And he rode the Metro to and from work anyhow. Maybe he
should keep the gun in the bedroom or kitchen here at the beach
and in the apartment in Arlington.

How would he explain the gun to Callie?

The hit man nailed Strong as he was driving to his weekend
cabin. Probably the same route every Friday night. Predictable.
Predictability was vulnerability. Okay. So what do I do routinely
every day, every week? He reviewed his schedule in light of his new
job. Boarding the Metro, driving to and from the beach, what else?