The Minotaur (37 page)

“When we were designing this plane, not a single, solitary air
force officer ever even breathed the word ‘gun.’ “

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. But would it be feasible?”

“With some fairly major design changes, which will cost a good
deal of money, I suppose it might be. It would take a full-blown
engineering study to determine that for sure. But why? A machine
like this? You want it down in the weeds dueling with antiaircraft
guns? Shooting at tanks?”

“When tanks are the threat, Ms. DeCrescentis, we won’t be able
to shoot million-dollar missiles at all of ‘em. The Warsaw Pact has
over fifty thousand tanks. A nice little twenty-millimeter with ar-
mor-piercing shells would be just the right prescription.”

Senator Hiram Duquesne was not philosophical when he tele-
phoned George Ludlow. “You keeping up on what’s going on out
in Tonopah?” he thundered.

“Well, I get reports from Vice Admiral Dunedin. Captain Graf-
ton reports to him several times a day.”

“I want to know why the officer in charge out there insisted on
performing maneuvers that the manufacturer did not feel the plane
was ready for, or safe to perform.”

“He’s doing an op eval. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh does he? He’s got a twenty-five-year old woman with no
previous test experience flying that plane, a four-hundred-rnillion-
dollar prototype!”

“She’s not twenty-five. She’s twenty-seven.”

“Have you seen her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what the hell is going on over there, George? A lot of
people have a lot riding on the outcome of this fly-off. And you got
Bo Derek’s little sister out there flying the planes! Is she the best
test pilot you people have? My God, we’ve been spending millions
for that Test Pilot School in Pax River—is she the best you’ve
got?”

“If you have any information that implies she’s incompetent, I’d
like to hear it.”

“I hear she intentionally shut down both engines while she was
up in the sky. Now Consolidated is spending a ton checking them
far damage. I’ll bet Chuck Yeager never shut down both engines on
a test flight at the same time!”

“I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask the air force.”

“Don’t get cute. I’m serious. Dead serious. Don’t let that hero
fly-boy Grafton and his bimbo test pilot screw this up, George. I’m
warning you.”

“Thanks.”

“By the way, the authorization for reactors for that new carrier
you guys want to start? My committee voted this morning to delete
it. Maybe next year, huh?”

The senator hung up before Ludlow could respond.

Jake Grafton changed Rita’s test profile for the last three flights.
He had her avoid all high-angle-of-attack maneuvers, though he
did let her ease toward the advertised five-G limit, where the air-
flow to the engines once again became turbulent and began to
rumble.

The three flights took another ten days. When they were finished
the navy crowd spent three more days correlating their data and
talking to Consolidated engineers, then packed up for the return to
Washington. It would be three weeks before they came back to fly
the TRX prototype.

On their last night in Tonopah the navy contingent threw a
party in the officers’ club for a very subdued group from Consoli-
dated. Adele DeCrescentis didn’t attend, which was perhaps just as
well. Along toward midnight, after Toad Tarkington had enjoyed
the entire salubrious effect of alcohol and had begun the downhill
slide, he spotted Stu Vinich in a corner putting the moves on some
woman from Consolidated’s avionics division. He strolled over,
tapped Vinich on the shoulder, and as the test pilot turned, flat-
tened him with one roundhouse punch.

21

Jake Grafton was amazed when
he saw Amy at the passenger terminal at Andrews Air Force Base.
In the three weeks he had been gone the child had visibly grown.
“Hi, Jake,” she warbled, and ran to throw her arms around him.
“Miss me?” he asked.

“Not as much as Callie did,” was the sophisticated reply.
As he and Callie waited for the luggage to be off-loaded from the
airplane, Callie visited with the other officers who had ridden the
DC-9 from Toaopah. Jake made a fuss over Amy and teased her a
little, causing her cheeks to redden. But she stayed right there
beside him, saying hello to everyone and smiling broadly when
spoken to.

“So how’d it go?” Callie asked him as they walked to the car-
Jake shrugged. Everything was classified. “Okay, I guess. And
you?’

“I stopped going to Dr. Arnold. Last Friday was my last ap-
pointment.”

Jake set his luggage on the pavement and gave her a tight
squeeze as Amy skipped on ahead, her black hair bobbing with
every bound. Callie looked happier than Jake had seen her in a
long, long time.

The next morning, a Tuesday, he spent closeted with Admiral
Dunedin going over the test results. They watched videotapes and
looked at numbers, and began writing down tentative conclusions.

“So how did Moravia do?” the admiral asked at one point

“Fine. Good stick, keeps her wits about her, knows more aero-
nautical engineering than I even knew existed.”

“So you want to keep her for the TRX bird?”

“No reason not to.”

The admiral told him about the conversation Senator Duquesne
had had with George Ludlow. ‘The secretary didn’t tell me to fire
her, or keep her, or anything else,” Dunedin concluded. “He just
relayed the conversation.”

“Let me see if I understand this. Admiral. Duquesne’s commit-
tee deleted the appropriation for reactors for the new carrier from
this year’s budget. Is he implying that if we get another test pilot
he’ll put it back in?”

“No. I think the message is that unless the navy buys the Con-
solidated plane, he’s not going to be—he’ll be less enthusiastic
about navy budget requests.”

“Sir, I don’t think Consolidated’s plane can be modified enough
to meet the mission requirements for a new attack plane. And you
have to factor Athena into the equation. With Athena we won’t
need to buy all that expensive stealth stuff on every airplane.”

“Fly the TRX plane. Then we’ll see.”

“Do you want me to get another test pilot?”

“I just wanted you to understand what’s going on. The tempera-
ture is rising. Ludlow and all the politicos in SECDEFs office are
playing politics right along with everyone else in this town. The
admirals and generals are parading over to the hill for hearings.
It’s that merry time of year.”

“I think we have to keep Moravia. After she’s flown both planes
she can make point-by-point comparisons that can’t be questioned
for extraneous reasons. Consolidated will beat us to death with
Rita’s corpse if we use another test pilot to fly the TRX plane, and
then recommend it instead of theirs. They’ll claim they got shafted
by an incompetent, inexperienced pilot. You and I will look like
blundering idiots, or worse.”

“I agree,” the admiral said.

One morning several days later Dreyfus stuck his head in Luis
Camacho’s office door. “X mailed the Russians an-
other letter.”

Dreyfus handed Camacho a copy and sank into a chair while his
boss perused it. Addressed to the Soviet ambassador, the letter was
a commentary on Gorbachev’s recent visit to Cuba. The last para-
graph contained some advice on how the Soviets should handle
Castro.

“On generic copy paper, as usual. Just like all the others.”

“Has the original been through the lab yet?”

“Nope. I just took it down.”

“Go get it. I want to see it”

“What for? That’s an accurate copy.”

“Please. Now.”

With a shake of his head, Dreyfus complied.

Camacho opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of rubber
gloves, which he worked onto his hands without the benefit of baby
powder. Then he extracted a jar from the lower left drawer. He
opened it and used a letter opener to smear a little of the blue jelly
on his desk. Oops, too much. He used a piece of paper from a legal
pad to blot the mess, then stared at the stain on the back of the
paper. After firmly closing the jar, he stowed it back in his desk.

When Dreyfus returned with the letter, Camacho was at the
window idly watching the pedestrians on E Street. He gingerly
opened the plastic bag and extracted the letter while Dreyfus
watched openmouthed. He laid the fully opened letter on the desk
and pressed. Then he turned it over and examined the blue smear
on the back. Satisfactory. Not too much, yet enough for the lab to
get a sample. He refolded the letter and replaced it m the see-
through plastic bag.

‘Take it back to the lab.”

“Did I see that?”

”No. You are as ignorant as you look.”

“You’re the boss.”

“Indeed. And while you’re at it, see if this word is encoded in
the text” Camacho seized a piece of scratch paper and carefully
printed a word. “Kilderkin.” He passed the paper to Dreyfus.

“Anything else?” Dreyfus asked hopefully.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I dunno. I’ve got the feeling that neat and wonderful
wheels are turning like crazy, though I haven’t the foggiest idea
why. Or where the wheels will take us.”

“Wbat do you want? A Tuesday-morning miracle?”

“It doesn’t have to be a miracle. A tiny little sleight of hand
would be welcome. Or a very brief explanation.”

Camacho shot his cuffs. “See. Nothing up my sleeves. No hat, so
no rabbit”

Dreyfus stood and ambled toward the door. “Kilderkin, huh?
You know, I get the impression that—“

“Never trust your impressions. Wait for evidence.”

“So what do we do with the original letter when the lab’s
through with it?” The agent fluttered the plastic bag gently.

“The usual. Stick it back in the envelope and let the post office
deliver it. I’m sure the ambassador will convey the writer’s advice
to the members of the Politburo at his earliest opportunity. This
may be the great watershed in U-S.-Soviet re—” He stopped be-
cause Dreyfus was already out the door and had closed it behind
liiqi-

At ten o’clock Dreyfus was back. He waited patiently until Ca-
macho was off the phone, then said, “Okay, how’d you know?”

“Know what?”

‘That that antique word from merry ol’ England would crack
it?”

“Kilderkin?”

“Yeah.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson. A kilderkin is a barrel or cask. It
contains something, as that letter did.”

“Shit”

Camacho extended his hand. Dreyfus passed him a small piece
of white paper containing the three words from the message and
waited white he examined it. The second word was “kilderkin.”

“That’s all,” Camacho said, looking up as he folded the small
page and stuck it into his shirt pocket. “Thanks.”

“Always a pleasure, Holmes.”

When he was again alone, Camacho dialed a telephone number
from memory and identified himself to the woman who answered.
In a moment the person he wanted was on the line and he said,
“Let’s have lunch.”

“Can’t today. Pretty busy.”

“Appointments?”

“Yep.”

“Cancel them.”

“Where and when?”

“On the mall, in front of the Air and Space Museum. Twelve or
so.”

The line went dead in Camacho’s ear. He cradled the instru-
ment. He leaned back in his chair and looked out his little window
at the buildings on the other side of E Street. He pursed his lips
and breathing deeply in and out, gently massaged his head with
one hand.

An hour later he was out on the sidewalk in his shirt sleeves,
striding along. He had left his pistol locked in his desk drawer, his
jacket and tie over the back of his chair. He was violating FBI
policy but so be it. The summer heat was palpable, a living, breath-
ing monster no doubt goaded by the sheer numbers of humans who
were defying it this midday. Where did all these people come from?
The streets were packed with cars, taxis,’snorting buses and trucks,
the sidewalks covered with swarming humanity.

Overhead the summer haze made the sky appear a gauzy, indis-
tinct white, but it failed to soften the sun’s fierce glare. Camacho’s
shirt wilted swiftly and glued itself to the small of his back. He
could fed the perspiration soaking into his socks. Little beads of
sweat congealed around the hairs on the back of his hands, and he
automatically wiped the palms on his trousers as he walked.

Every shady circle under the mall trees was home to office work-
ers and tourists who could no longer stay on their feet. Children
sprawled and played on the hard-packed dirt. The grass that had
grown under the trees so profusely this spring had succumbed
weeks ago under the impact of infinite feet. An endless stream of
joggers and serious runners pounded up and down the gravel paths
of the mall, little dust spurts rising from the thud of each foot The
combined effect was a thin brown curtain of dust that rose into the
air and tilted away toward the monolithic art museums that lined
the northern side of the open expanse.

The street in front of the Air and Space Museum was bumper to
bumper with tour buses. As he came closer, Luis Camacho
threaded his way through the hordes of teenagers and middle-aged
pink people in shorts and cutesy T-shirts.

The great American sightseeing excursion was in full swing.
Herds of Japanese tourists clad in the requisite button-down short-
sleeved shirts clustered near some of the buses and busily snapped
their cameras at each other, the huge windowless museums to the
north, the distant Washington Monument and the dome of the
Capitol rising in the east like a corpulent moon. In spite of the
oppressive heat, the mood was cheerful, gay.

Camacho found a spot in the shade near a tree and sat down
gratefully. Cigarette butts and candy-bar wrappers littered the
ground. He didn’t care. To his left a souvenir stand was doing a
land-office business in film, soft drinks and ice-cream bars. Squall-
ing youngsters and frisky youths queued like soldiers in the sun as
they waited for their turn to surrender their money to the happy
merchant.

Derelicts shuffled slowly through the human forest. They were
blithely ignored as they mined the trash bins for pop cans. A cou-
ple of alkies snoozed further away from the street in the shade cast
by the treetops, out where the grass still survived: their day had
apparently ended some hours ago when the critical intoxication
level had been reached and surpassed.

He had been there no more than five minutes when he spotted
the man he had come to meet feeling his way through the crowd,
looking about him. Camacho stood and walked toward him.

“Morning, Admiral.”

“Let’s get the hell out of this crowd,” Tyler Henry growled.

“Next time pick a quieter spot.” Henry was clad in beige slacks
and a yellow pullover with a little fox on the right breast. His eyes
were hidden behind the naval aviator’s de rigueur sunglasses.

“Aye aye, sir.”

The two men walked east, toward the duck pond at the base of
Capitol Hill. When they were out of earshot of the tourists and
drunks. Henry said, “Okay. I haven’t got much time today. What
d’ya want?”

“We intercepted another letter from X this morning.
Thought you’d be interested. Here’s the coded message it con-
tained.” The FBI agent passed him the little square of words with
the three words penciled on it.

Admiral Henry stopped dead and stared at the words on the
paper. “Kilderkin. Holy rock! The damned Minotaur is giving
away Athena!”

“Yes.”

“Awww, goddamn! Awww . . .”

Camacho gingerly removed the paper from the admiral’s fingers,
refolded it and put it in his pocket.

“And I suppose you assholes with badges just stuffed the fucking
letter back in the envelope and gave it to the postman?” When he
saw Camacho’s silent nod, Henry scuffed angrily at the dirt. He
indulged himself in some heavy cussing.

“Do you know what Athena is? Do you silly half-wit peepers
have any idea what the hell Athena is all about?”

“Will, you said—“

“I know what I told you! I’m asking if any of your superiors
have even the slightest glimmer how valuable Athena is.”

“I don’t know.”

The admiral gestured hugely in exasperation. “Just what in the
name of God is going on, Luis?”

They had reached the edge of the duck pond. Camacho stood
with folded arms and gazed across the placid surface, past the
statue of U.S. Grant on horseback, at the imposing edifice of the
Capitol building. “I can only guess,” he said softly.

“But do they have any idea what Athena is—just what the hell
they are giving away?”

“I don’t know what they know.”

“This isn’t fiber optics, or ring laser gyros, or any of that other
magic shit they’ve been letting cart out of the vault
Athena is the Hope Diamond, the mother lode, the most precious,
priceless treasure in the vault. Do those stupid, ignorant incompe-
tent half-wit political pimps have even the faintest glimmer what it
is Just laid his filthy hands OB?

“I don’t know!”

“Athena will make radar obsolete. Inevitably it will become
cheaper and well be able to miniaturize if get it so small and
cheap we can use it to hide tanks and jeeps, not just ships and
airplanes. We can hide satellites with it. In ten years or so we can
probably hide submarines with it. Athena will revolutionize strat-
egy, tactics, weaponry. And we’ve got it! The Russians don’ti Yetl If
we can keep them from getting it for just a couple years—just a
couple years—I tell you, Luis, Athena will give America such a
huge technological edge that war will become a political and mili-
tary impossibility. War will be impossible!”

“I believe you.”

“Then why? Tell me that! Why?”

Camacho shrugged.

“What could be so goddamn valuable that they would bet the
ranch, the nation, the future of mankind?”

“I don’t know for sure, and I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

The admiral exploded. Thirty-some years in the navy had really
taught him how to swear. Camacho didn’t think he had ever heard
such a virtuoso performance,

Finally Henry stopped spluttering. Bitterness had replaced his
exasperation. “I think there’s some treason going on over in your
shop, Camacho. That’s all it could be.”

“Better go easy with that word.”

“Treason.” Henry spit it out “Don’t like it, huh? By God, if
Congress gets hold of this, that may be the kindest word those
slimy spook bastards ever hear. People will go to prison over this.
You wait and see.”

Camacho lost his temper. “I showed you that piece of paper so
you could take some reasonable steps to protect Athena, you swab-
bie,” he snarled. “Like change the code or empty the file. Not so
you could shoot your mouth off about things you know nothing
about, things that will ruin you and me. Now I’ve heard all the
crap from you that I’m gonna listen to. I’ve heard enough. One
more crack out of line and I’ll come get you with a national secu-
rity warrant and you can sit in a padded cell at St. Elizabeth’s until
I think it’s safe to let you out. That may be when you’re a corpse.
Is that what you want?”

“No,” said Tyler Henry contritely, aware that he had gone too
far.

“Just one word. Admiral, just one little slip by you, and I’ll
come after you with that goddamn warrant. You’d better believe I will.
You and John Hinckley can spend your declining years together.”

Camacho wheeled and walked away, leaving Henry standing
there staring at his retreating back.

22

Tyler Henry accompanied the
ATA project crew when they returned to Tonopah in July. The
admiral shook hands with the TRX engineers and spent three
hours inspecting the plane, which occupied the hangar where the
Consolidated bird had rested, and asking questions. At his request
Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington remained beside him. Many of
his questions were directed at Rita, but when he wanted to know
something about the navigation/attack system, he asked Toad.

“Is that right, Franks?” the admiral growled at the TRX pro-
gram manager after he had listened carefully to one of Toad’s
answers.

Harry Prank nodded his assent. It looked to Jake as if Franks
had lost ten pounds or so, but the cotton of his colorful sport shirt
still seemed loaded near its tensile strength where it stretched over
his middle. Franks rolled the stump of a dead cigar from one cor-
ner of his mouth to the other and winked at Jake.

With his shoulders thrown back and his genial air of self-assur-
ance and command. Franks reminded Jake of the salty chief petty
officers he had grown to respect and admire when he was a junior
officer. Franks certainly was no modern naval officer or chief in
mufti, not with that gut. In today’s navy even the chief petty of-
ficers were slimmed down or retired, victims of rigid weight stan-
dards enforced with awesome zeal. The senior admirals liked to
think of their service as a lean, mean fighting machine, which of
course it was not. More accurately, the navy was a host of skinny
technocrats. Not only were most sailors technicians, most of the
officers spent the vast majority of their professional lives as admin-
istrators, experts on instructions, notices, regulations, and budgets.
The bureaucracy was mean but certainly not lean.

Confusing, Jake mused, glancing once again at Franks’s portico,
very confusing.

Unlike the trendy and not so trendy humans who stood admir-
ing it, TRX’s prototype was exquisite functionality. The mission
was all-weather attack. The plane would be launched from the
deck of an aircraft carrier, in any weather day or night, to pene-
trate the enemy’s defenses, find and destroy the target without
outside aid, and return to the tiny ship in the vast ocean from
whence it came, there to be refueled and rearmed and launched
again. Every form and feature had been carefully crafted for the
rigid demands of this mission, and no other.

As he stood listening to the engineers describe their creation,
Jake Grafton’s eye fell on Rita Moravia and Toad Taridngton, two
intelligent young people in perfect health with good educations.
They and others like them would have to use this machine as a
weapon, when and if. The technocrats would build it and take it to
sea. Yet the plane would never be anything but a cunning collec-
tion of glue, diodes, and weird alloys. The attack must come from
the hearts of those who rode it down the catapult into the sky.

The important things in war never change. As always, victory
would go to those who prepared wisely, planned well, and drove
home their thrusts with a grim, fierce determination.

When the F-14 chase plane was safely airborne, Rita Moravia
smoothly advanced the throttles to the stops and let the two im-
proved F404 engines wind up to full power as she checked the trim
setting one more time. The cockpit noise level was higher than in
the Consolidated plane, and no doubt the roar of the engines out-
side was also louder. The exhausts had not been as deeply inset
above the wing and cooled as extensively with bypass air from the
compressors; consequently more of the engine’s rated power was
available to propel the plane through the atmosphere. And the
noise was not the only clue: she could feel slightly more vibration
and a perceptibly greater dip of the nose as the thrust of the
screaming engines compressed the nose-gear oleo.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Toad announced.

After dictating all the engine data onto the audio recorder wired
into the ICS, Rita released the brakes. The nose oleo rebounded
and the plane rolled smartly, picking up speed.

The little thumps and bumps as the wheels crossed the expan-
sion joints in the concrete runway came quicker and quicker. The
needle on the airspeed indicator came off the peg. On the holo-
graphic Heads-Up Display—the HUD—functioning in this proto-
type, the symbology came alive. The sound of the engines dropped
in volume and pitch as the machine accelerated.

Now the weight came off the nose wheel as the stabilator and
living wing controls took effect and began to exert aerodynamic
force on the nose, trying to lift it from the runway. Oh yes. With
the joystick held ever so lightly in her fingers, she felt the nose
wheel bobble, skip lightly, then rise from the concrete as the wings
gripped the air.