The Minotaur (33 page)

They were married that afternoon in Oakland, Maryland.

The glider wheeled and soared six feet above the dune, the sun
flashing on its wings. Jake Grafton sat in the sand with the wind at
his back. David and Amy sat beside him, hugging their knees. He
manipulated the levers on the radio control box without taking his
eyes from the free-flying bird.

“Remember to keep the nose up in the turns,” David reminded
him as the glider reached the tuft of sea grass a hundred feet north
along the dune where Jake had been turning. He had the technique
now, he hoped. He hadn’t crashed in ten minutes. He thought he
could stay aloft as long as the wind remained steady.

Back the glider came, crossing silently above their heads. ‘To-
tally awesome,” David murmured.

“Awesome” seemed to be the word this year in the sixth grade.

What had it been when Jake had been twelve years old? He tried to
remember and drew a blank.

Amy Carol stretched out in the sand on her stomach, her chin
on her forearms. Her figure was still a collection of straight lines.
Callie said she would start to fill out soon. David matched her
position, his big feet incongruous beside Amy’s petite ones. No
doubt his growth would also spurt in the next year or so; he al-
ready had the feet of a good-sized man, though the rest of him had
a lot further to go.

“Your dad’s gonna be a pretty good pilot,” David told her.

“He isn’t my dad. He’s Jake.”

“He’s gonna be good,” David insisted.

‘That’s not so tough to do,” she said, sitting up.

“0h no? Why don’t you try it.”

“Can I, Jake?”

“Yeah, Come over here and watch me for a minute.” He ex-
plained the controls and demonstrated how they worked. After
two passes up and down the beach with Amy watching intently, be
turned the box over to her. She overbanked and nosed the plane in
on the very next turn.

David smacked his hands together in exasperation. ” ‘Nothing
to it.’ Girls!” He pronounced the last word as if it were spelled
“gurls.”

The left wing had torn skin and a broken spar. The three avia-
tors collected their gear and trudged for the house. “Don’t worry,
Cap’n,” the boy said with a disgusted glance at Amy, “I can fix it
good as new.”

“I’m sure you can,” Jake told him, grinning.

“Girls don’t know nothin’ about flyin’.”

“Don’t bet on it, Dave. There’s a woman pilot working for me,
and she’s real dam good.”

Amy squared her shoulders, threw her head back and marched
proudly before them, at long last assuming her rightful place
among the exalted sisters.

“You’re what?” exclaimed Harriet, Rita’s horrified roommate. It
was Sunday evening and they were in the bedroom. Out in the
living room Toad had settled in to watch a Knicks game.

Rita held up her left hand and waggled it proudly. “Here’s the
ring. I’m married.”

“My God! How long have you known him? A month? How long
were you engaged?”

“A little over an hour. We were driving to Deep Geek Lake for
the weekend and around Prostburg we decided to get married So
Toad drove off the next exit and into Oakland. We found the most
delightful minister. He knew a lady in the county clerk’s office—
she was a member of his church—and she drove downtown and
opened up the courthouse just to issue us a license. Was’nt that
sweet?”

Harriet lowered herself onto the bed and covered her face with
her hands.

‘The minister’s wife gave me some flowers from her garden.
Some paper-white narcissus and tulips and multicolored butterfly
daffodils, all accented by bridalwreath in a beautiful bouquet- I
cradled them in my right arm when we said our vows.” She sighed’
remembering. “I have the best ones down in the car. I thought you
and I could press them,”

“A one-hour engagement! Rita, Rita, Rita, you poor poor child.
What do you know about this man? What?” Harriet opened the
bedroom door a crack and looked with loathing at the groom
sagged out in front of the TV with a beer in his hand. No wonder
they called him Toad.

“My God, Rita. how could you?” she hissed. “What do you
know about him? He could be AC-DC or a closet pervert, or even a
Republican! What will your mother say?” Harriet spun like a lion-
ess ready to pounce. “Have you told her yet?”

“Wellll—“

“I knew it! When are you going to tell her? After all, Rita, she is
your mother. She once told me that after buying a thousand wed-
ding presents for all of your friends, she was so looking forward to
inviting every one of them to your wedding. You’re her only daugh-
ter!” Harriet threw herself backward onto her bed and bounced
once. “How could you?” she moaned.

“It was easy,” Rita Moravia Tarkington said lightly. She dearly
enjoyed Harriet’s tantrums. “It was so romantic. Just like I always
wanted it to be. He’s so handsome, so … We’re going to be so
very happy all our lives. He’s . . . he’s . . .” She sighed again
and smiled.

“0ne thing’s for sure,” Harriet said acidly, “he’s all yours now.”

On Monday morning Lieutenant Toad Tarkington and Lieutenant
Rita Moravia entered Jake’s office together, side by side. They
stopped in front of his desk and waited at parade rest until he
looked up from the report he was working on.

“Yeah.”

“We have some news for you. Captain,” Rita said.

Jake carefully surveyed their expectant faces. He scowled. “Why
have I got the feeling I’m not going to enjoy this?”

Rita and Toad both grinned broadly and glanced at each other.
“We’re married,” Toad said.

Jake Grafton clapped his hands over his ears. “I didn’t hear
that. Whatever it was, I didn’t hear it. And I don’t want to hear
it.” He stood and leaned slightly toward them, his voice low; “I
have enough problems around here without people sniping at me
about the romantic status of my test crew- What you two do on
your own time is your business- But until we get the prototype
testing completed and I submit the report, you two puppies are
going to walk the line for me. All business. No kissy-facey or
kootchy-koo or groping or any of that other goofy hooey. No glori-
ous announcements. Strictly business.”

“Yes, sir,” Rita said.

“I warned you about this, Tarkington. No romances, I said. And
look at you! It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.”

“Yessir,” Toad said.

“I can’t let you out of my sight for a minute.”

“I just couldn’t control myself, sir.”

“You two are going to be very happy someday. But not today or
tomorrow. Right now you’re serious, committed, dedicated profes-
sionals. Pretend. Try real hard.”

“Yessir,” they both said.

“Congratulations. Get back to work.”

“Aye aye, sir.” They came to attention like plebes at the Naval
Academy, did a smart about-face and marched out, Rita leading.
Jake Grafton bit his lip and resumed work on his report.

19

Somebody explain how this air-
plane is going to be used.” Jake Grafton looked from face to face.
He had his staff gathered around while he stood at the office black-
board with marker in hand. “Who wants the floor?”

“Captain, there’s been two or three studies on that written dur-
ing the last three or four years,” said Smoke Judy.

“I know. Somebody dug them out for me and I read them. I
want to hear your ideas.”

“Seems to me,” said Toad Tarkington, “that the first thing it has
to do is land and take off from a carrier. Must be carrier-compati-
ble.”

Jake wrote that down. Obvious, but often overlooked. Any navy
attack plane must have a tailhook, nose tow, strong keel, routinely
tolerate a six-hundred foot-per-minute sink rate collision with the
deck on landing, fit into allotted deck space and accept electrical
power and inertial allignnent information from the ship’s systems.
It had to be capable of being launched from existing catapults and
arrested with existing machinery. In addition, it would have to be
able to fly down a 3.5-degree glide slope carrying enough power to
make a wave-off possible, and with a low enough nose attitude so
that the pilot could see the carrier’s optical landing system. Amaz-
ingly enough, in the late 1960s the navy was almost forced to buy a
plane that wasn’t carrier-compatible—the TFX, which the air
force called the F-111 and immediately began using as an all-
weather tactical bomber with a system identical to the A-6’s.

“Corrosion-resistant,” Tarkington added as Jake made furious
notes. “Has to be able to withstand long exposure to salty environ-
ment without a lot of expensive maintenance.”

“Maintenance,” muttered Les Richards. “Got to have easy
maintainability designed in. Easy access to engines, black boxes
and so forth, without a lot of special equipment.”

The requirements came thick and fast now, as quick as Jake
could write. Range, speed, payload and a lot of other parameters.
After ten minutes he had filled up most of the board and his staff
paused for air.

“How’re we going to use this thing?” he asked again. “What I’m
getting at is this: these stealth designs appear to be optimized for
high-altitude ingress over heavily defended territory. Presumably
at night. Are all our missions going to be at night?”

“W can’t afford to give away the day,” someone said.

“What’s that mean in the way of aircraft capability? Daytime
means enemy fighters and optically aimed surface-to-air missiles.
They’ll see our plane. Do we have to be able to engage the fighters
and dodge the missiles? How much G capability do we need? Sus-
tained turning ability? Dash speed? CHmb speed? Will we go in low
in the daytime? If so, how about ability to withstand bird strikes
and turbulence?”

The staff spent an hour on these questions. There was no consen-
sus, nor did Jake expect one. No plane in the world could do
everything, but any design must meet most of the major require-
ments for its intended employment. Shortcomings due to design
trade-offs would have to be overcome or endured.

“Weapons.” The ideal plane would carry and deliver every
weapon in the U.S. and NATO inventory, and a lot of them. Was
that a realistic goal with the stealth designs under consideration?

After four hours of brainstonning, the staff reexamined the pro-
posed test program for the prototypes. In the five nights of each
airplane that SECDEF had budgeted money and time for, they
needed to acquire as much information as possible to answer real
questions. Company test pilots had already flown both planes.
These five nights of each plane by the navy would have to produce
data that verified or refuted the manufacturers’ claims. More im-
portantly, the nights would determine which plane was best suited
to fill the navy’s mission requirements, or which could be made so
by cost-effective modifications.

“We really need more than five flights per plane. Captain,” Les
Richards said.

“Five flights are enough for what we want to find out, if we do it
right. This little evolution is just a new car test drive with us doing
the driving. Five flights are enough for what we want to find out if
we do it right, which is precisely what we’re going to do. Henry
and Ludlow and Caplinger want a fast recommendation and a fast
decision,”

“Don’t they always? Then the paper pushers in SECDEFs office
will spend a couple years mulling it over, sending it from in basket
to in basket.”

“Ours is not to reason why . . .”

The pace accelerated relentlessly in the office. Working days
lasted twelve hours now, and Jake ran everyone out and turned off
the lights himself at 7 P.M. He insisted that no one work on Satur-
day and Sunday, believing that the break would make people more
productive during the week.

The weeks slid by, one by one.

Jake spent less than half his time in the office and the rest in an
endless series of meetings with people from everywhere in govern-
ment: SECNAV, SECDEF, OPNAV, NAVAIR, NAVSEA, the
FAA, the EPA. the air force, the marines, and a host of others.
Most of the time he attended these conferences with Admiral Dun-
edin or Commander Rob Knight.

The meetings went on and on, the paper piled higher and higher.
The same subjects kept cropping up in different meetings, where
they had to be rehashed again and again. Government by commit-
tee is government by consensus, and key players from every office
high and low had to be listened to and pacified.

Jake felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice as he tried to pin people
down and arrive at final resolutions of issues. Meetings bred more
meetings: the final item on every agenda was to set the times and
places for follow-up meetings.

He discovered to his horror that no one person had a complete
grasp of the tens of thousands of regulations and directives that
covered every aspect of procurement. At every meeting, it seemed,
someone had another requirement that needed to be at least given
lip service. He finally found where all this stuff was stored, a li-
brary that at last measurement contained over 1,152 linear feet of
statutes, regulations, directives, and case law concerning defense
procurement. Jake Grafton looked at this collection in awe and
disgust, and never visited the place again.

The silent army of faceless gnomes who spent their working lives
writing, interpreting, clarifying, and applying these millions of
paragraphs of “thou shalts” and “thou shall nots” took on flesh
and substance. They came in all sexes, shapes, and colors, each
with his or her own coffee cup and a tiny circle of responsibility,
which, no matter how small, of course overlapped with that of
three or four others.

The key players were all known to Jake’s staff: “Watch out for
the Arachnid,” someone would say before a meeting. Or “Beware
of the Sewer Rat. He’ll be there this morning.” “The Gatekeeper
will grill you on this.” The staff named these key players in the
procurement process because of their resemblance to the charac-
ters in the game Dungeons and Dragons. When he returned from
battle Jake had to contribute to the office lore by recounting the
latest exploits of the evil ones.