Tomahawk (6 page)

Dan stared at the wall. The trouble with that was that the only other cruise missile the United States had going was the Boeing design. It was triangular in cross section, to fit in a rotary launcher on a bomber. It wouldn't go out of a torpedo tube, or a shipboard launcher.

A thought shuffled about in the basement of his brain. If
the problems hadn't started till the Air Force had revived their missile, if a General Dynamics failure meant a Boeing success—could something other than technical bugs be responsible? He wanted to reject it as paranoia,
but hadn't Munford said something like that—about watching out for the Air Force?

Finally, he got up and stretched. The time was 1050, and still no one had called about the meet with Niles. “What do we do for lunch?” he asked Vic over the partition.

“Call down to Roy Rogers, usually. Or if you're in a hurry, there's a hot dog guy down in front of the Buchanan House. He's got a propane-fired cart.”

“A hot dog cart. You serious?”

“Hey, you want glamour, we'll call the Cedar Deli for a sub. The contractors try to get us to go over to Stouffer's, or to Restaurant Row. You can go if you want, but don't let them buy.”

Dan got up and prowled. He wasn't used to working at a desk. Aboard ship, you were always running up ladders, checking with the chiefs, watching systems tests and maintenance, being interrupted with a call to see the executive officer or by the electrifying bong of the general quarters alarm. Finally, he said, “Cedar Deli, huh? Anything I can bring you?”

When he got back the office was empty. He left the food and ran up the echoing concrete stairwell. Carol put her finger to her lips outside the director's office. “They're already in there,” she whispered.

“I'd better go in.”

“Well, all right.” She cracked the door and he slipped through.

“The late Mr. Lenson,” said a deep, familiar voice.

“Sorry, sir,” he muttered, catching Westerhouse's eye before turning to face the man at the desk.

There were others now, but Barry Niles had been the first black senior officer Dan had ever seen. Bellicose little eyes perused him from beneath freckled lids. The mustache was downturned over grim lips. The chest in the trop whites was massive, the arms well muscled, hands big as hams. The shoulder boards of a rear admiral gleamed like cast slabs of gold. A store-size candy dispenser sat on the desk. Colonel Evans leaned against the wall by the door, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other
holding his pipe. Dan noticed it wasn't lit, though.

“Nice of you to make our meeting. Atomic Fireball?” Niles pointed at the dispenser.

“No thank you, sir. I was down at—”

“Captain Westerhouse.” Niles cut him off in midsentence as he reared back in his chair. “This your entire outfit? Not many for such an important part of the program. Can you use more horsepower?”

“I don't need more rank, Admiral, but I could use more bodies.”

“Give me a memo this afternoon. Also any ramp-up in your budget you can justify. Travel, computers, equipment. I've been handed a sick program. What I ask for, I'm going to get. Let's take advantage of that.”

“Yes, sir.” Westerhouse looked pleased. Niles's next words wiped his smile off.

“Gentlemen, I'm not happy with you. The people I let go last week are not the last. That threat I just uttered includes managers, deputies, everybody down to the clerk typists. If we don't get this program back into gear, there are people one Metro stop up who will zero out the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office.”

Niles swiveled to face a window. He had two in the corner office, giving him a view down on the side ramp that went up toward National Airport, railroad tracks, and, to the east, more new buildings going up. The other looked down on Jeff Davis Highway, and, past it, the ridge of Arlington, with the pillars of Robert E. Lee's home just visible through the trees.

“I've just come from a discussion with Secretary Weinberger, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Chief of Staff, Dr. William Perry, and key members of their staffs. A grand total of twenty-six stars around that table, gentlemen. We are very high visibility right now. That means we'll be getting the resources the services have been holding up. But that also means no more excuses. If we screw this up, we'll have only ourselves to blame.

“The Secretary made it clear the ground-launched program's got first priority. If GLCM folds, Britain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands—those countries that agreed to host them—won't be pleased. If
we pull the rug out from under them, there will be consequences for the alliance. So that comes first, but the other versions are a close second.

“Now, your part of the program. The fleet commanders can't wait any longer for a long-range antiship missile. If Tomahawk fails, we'll probably license Exocet from the French, mated with a U.S. guidance package. I'm not going to let that happen, because neither Exocet nor improved Harpoon are stretchable for the land-attack mission.

“I'm ready to break my pike on this one. Because that's the part of this project they're going to remember us for. Conventional land attack. Those fools in the Pentagon don't know it, but they need this capability.

“So if there's anybody here who's not ready to put his personal life on hold for the next year, speak up.” Niles glared around at each of them in turn, including the deputy director. Evans straightened, tucking his pipe out of sight. “Is there anything else I should know? Tell me
now,
people!”

Silence. Till Dan, knowing how little patience Niles had with anything other than full disclosure, cleared his throat and said, “Uh, sir, I believe we're looking at a real problem with the battleships.”

Westerhouse stepped in then, outlining the status of the launcher design, and the near impossibility of making the delivery date. Niles listened, but his eyes grew smaller. Finally, he growled, “Captain. Why didn't you bring this up when we spoke before?”

“It was going to be in the turnover memo, Admiral.”

“Meanwhile, we've wasted a week. When I ask for something, give it to me straight! I don't want people crawling around trying to pacify me!”

Dan hoped he'd stop there, but Niles was just warming up. While they stood rigid, he subjected Westerhouse to the kind of verbal keelhauling Dan hadn't heard in years. You weren't supposed to reprimand men in front of their juniors. But Niles kept roasting till the captain grew ashen. Then he shifted his fire to Evans. He accused the deputy director of covering up problems, of not serving
Kristofferson well. The colonel defended himself in a surprised voice.

Niles fell into an ominous silence. He reached for a candy and popped it into his mouth. At last, he rumbled, “So basically we need to get somebody hot making these right away. Okay, Mr. Lenson. Tell me how.”

“Uh … we have redlines, preliminaries.” He tried to force confidence into his voice, wondering just how deep into serious doo-doo he was digging himself. “But I looked them over. They might do: If we can find the right contractor.”

“Make that ‘contractors.' I'm going to dual-source the missile. Might as well do it on the launcher. But I want to do it faster than anyone's ever run a competitive bid before. I might even go to three sources. If they all come up to spec, we'll have enough to equip the destroyer force, too. What'll we need to do that?”

Dan's mind pinwheeled. Then he noticed Vic doing something behind his back. He was holding up three fingers. What the hell?

Westerhouse said, “Sir, we'd need at least three million dollars to start out with.” Meanwhile, Burdette was folding his fingers, held out two. He inserted one finger of the opposite hand and slid it in and out. Like … a slide rule. “And another engineer,” the captain added hastily.

Niles said, “All right. Now, the tests coming up in Canada. When I briefed this morning, Admiral Willis said the White House staff's asking about them. He wanted my guess at a success rate. I told him I don't operate that way. I'm not going to pamper this thing. If it doesn't fail, we'll make it fail. Till we can't make it fail anymore. Then it's ready for sea.

“I guess that's about all, so—”

‘That's risky, Admiral,” said Evans. “That's how Admiral Kristofferson got… transferred. If we don't get those percentages up—”

“You heard me. Dismissed,” Niles barked, and all of them, civilians, Navy, Air Force, stiffened their spines, the words and the look he accompanied them with pushing them out, exhaling and jostling, into the hall.

II

THE WEAPON

5

 

 

 

Dan woke over Nevada with his head rammed against the window. Between double scotches and jet lag, he felt as if he'd left most of his neurons in the stratosphere, whirling in the slipstream of the 747. He yawned, glancing toward where Westerhouse, Burdette, and a civil servant from Contracts were sitting together. Admiral Niles was several rows forward of them, sitting alone.

The Tomahawk Program Review was a “floating” meeting that rotated among the contractors and test sites. This time, it was in San Diego, hosted by Convair. He'd worked late getting everything together for the trip, then had to rush to Dulles to make the flight.

He was still short sleep from a late date the night before. He and Mei had gone to dinner in Georgetown, then to the Folger to see
Richard III.
She said she was the daughter of an assistant economic attache. Her parents had been called back to China, but she'd stayed to finish her degree. Back at his place, she'd let him kiss her, but that was all.

Workwise, things had picked up fast. He was now in charge of a $6 million subcontracting effort, along with his integration work.

Immediately following the meeting with Niles, he'd gone to Westerhouse's office and apologized. If he'd spoken out of line, it was because he was so new. Westerhouse had been cool—no question Dan had started off on the wrong foot—but he'd unbent enough to tell him what he had to do in order to get bidding started on the ABL.

The priorities were clear, so he'd started working that issue right away. He went to Contracts to find out how to structure a competitive request for proposal, then called
Commerce Business Daily
and took out a quarter-page ad. He got three responses. The first was from FMC, a company that had gone from making doughnut machines to automatic guns during World War II and never looked back. The others were from companies he didn't know, Unidynamics, out of St. Louis, and Vimy Manufacturing, in Texas. He was going to meet the reps in Point Mugu and give them a look at what they were bidding on.

He got up and roved down the aisle. Westerhouse was slumped into his seat, a pillow clamped over his eyes. A sheen of perspiration gleamed in the light from the reading lamp. Dan was hesitating, wondering whether to disturb him, when Westerhouse lifted the pillow. “Dan. Clear that stuff off the seat and sit down.”

“You sure? You look tired, sir. Look, again, I'm sorry about putting you on the hot spot with the admiral.”

“Forget it.” Westerhouse rubbed his face with the tips of his fingers. “Water over the dam, okay? This thing's too important to let egos get in the way.”

“That's a pretty … mature attitude, sir.”

“I've been working this a long time. See down there?”

“Down where, sir?”

Westerhouse pointed out the window. “Down there. In the desert. I did the survivability testing down there, and warhead lethality…. Then off to the coast; we took a
Belknap,
tuned its systems to look like a Soviet. To try out different terminal maneuvers. I've only been in Crystal City since February, but I've been on this project, one way or another, for almost seven years.” He closed his eyes again. “You might want to think about changing your designator. There's a pretty good promotion rate in the acquisition development community.”