Tomahawk (7 page)

Dan said it was worth thinking about, and soon they had their heads together, going over what they were going to present the next day.

Outside the terminal, the evening was rich with flowers. Palm trees swayed against the lustrous blue of impending
night. The very air felt lighter, sweeter, as if composed of a different gas from the heavy, wet atmosphere of Washington.

Headlights wheeled in, and Burdette, Dan, and the Contracts guy tossed their bags into the trunk. Niles, silent as ever, took a seat in front.

They had reservations at a Holiday Inn in the suburbs. Vic explained, “The contractors all stay at the Hyatt. It's a cost-plus contract. They get back whatever they spend, plus ten percent profit.”

Dan nodded, seeing the point. Why shave dollars when the more you spent, the more you made?

Westerhouse announced they'd meet in the lobby in half an hour and go to a Mexican place he knew. Dan let himself into his room and hung his uniform up to shake the wrinkles out. He sagged into the bed. He looked at his watch, then at the phone. He hadn't called his daughter since he got to D.C.

His ex-wife answered. She sounded sleepy, and for a moment he wondered if he'd miscalculated on the time zone. But she said no, she just had a cold.

“Sorry you're not feeling well. Has Nan got it?”

“She had this one already. She picks up everything at school.”

“I can't believe she's in third grade already.”

Susan's voice sharpened. “She's in
fourth
grade, Dan.”

“Maybe if I got to see her once in awhile, I'd be more up-to-date.”

“Don't give me that bullshit. You can come out here anytime you want. I've never made any objection to visitation.”

“No, you just had to drag her off to Bumfuck, Utah.”

“Archaeology jobs aren't easy to find. And I hope you don't use that kind of language to her. Where are you, anyway? This isn't a very good connection.”

“I'm in San Diego.”

“I thought you were stationed in Charleston.”

“I was, but I got transferred to D.C.”

“Then why are you in San Diego?”

“I had to go to a conference, okay? Look, is she there?
I can only take so much of the sheer fun of talking to you.”

“Fuck you, too, Dan. Wait.”

A long pause. Then a voice said, “Dad?”

“Hi, Punkin. Are you feeling better?”

“Better?” she sounded uninterested. “Better than what?”

“Mom said you had a cold.”

“Oh, that. Look, I can only talk a minute. I have to go and practice, all right?”

“Are you still in ballet?”

“I haven't been in
ballet
for years, Dad. I play tennis now.”

It went downhill from there. When he finally said, “Bye, Punkin,” he felt more distant from her than before the conversation. As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. It was Burdette, telling him they were waiting in the lobby.

The desk called at 0530 the next morning. Westerhouse said Admiral Niles had taken a taxi over early. The rest had a quick breakfast, then piled into the rental. Dan leaned back, watching the boulevards, the palms, the traffic go by.

The program review was at Kearney Mesa, in view of the mountains. As they waited at the gate, he saw immense white hangar structures. They signed in at the main office building, then filed into a second-floor amphitheater where a couple of dozen men and women stood drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. He got a cup of coffee and put a quarter beside the carafe.

He checked out the other players while he waited for the coffee to cool. The civilians were in engineer outfits, too-tight sport jackets and polyester slacks and ties. The women wore sensible suits with thick-looking panty hose. He caught introductions: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; Vitro; Williams Research. Then the lights flickered, and everyone drifted toward seats.

A white-haired executive in gray pinstripes introduced himself as Rich Larramore, the Tomahawk program manager. “Admiral Niles, military guests, fellow engineers,
ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Convair. I'd like to start with film. Jack, roll ‘em.”

The first clip showed a ship's superstructure being penetrated by a missile. Sheets of torn metal cartwheeled along the deck in slow motion. Abrupt shift to a swept-wing airplane sitting on a desert field. A blur was masked for a frame or two by smoke. Tiny black objects tumbled through the air. They detonated in a rippling dance of fire, obliterating the plane.

A jumble of images cleared, showing rugged terrain whipping past the camera. Dan tensed as it wove between bare, dry hills, so close that he could make out twisted ancient pines. Sometimes the cliffs were
above
it. Then a square loomed ahead. In the last instant, it grew into a concrete blockhouse. Then the screen went suddenly white.

Larramore cleared his throat as the lights came up.

“As you know, the original task set us by the Navy was pretty daunting. Essentially, it was to design a weapon you could fire off a submerged sub off San Diego, fly cross-country so low it had to dodge pinecones, and, on reaching Chicago, impact inside the base paths of Wrigley Field.

“Well, first we tried to weld wings on a torpedo. Then we tried to extrude an MX through a twenty-inch opening. Finally, we sat down and designed the Tomahawk. We've had to go back to the computer-aided design terminals several times. But we're finally ready to put something revolutionary in the field.”

Things got technical fast after that. Dan made notes:

Missile is wrapped in stainless-steel cocoon for launch. On exit, lanyard fires solid rocket booster after checking for correct attitude and velocity. Mk 106 booster: 303 lb. Arcadene 228E, develops 7,000 lbs. of thrust.

After launch: inlet cover jettison; wing slot/booster fairing jettison; tail control fin deployment; wing opening; booster burnout; turbofan inlet deployment; engine start and transition to cruise phase.
Time-sensitive sequence of events. One glitch can wreck launch.

Majority of structure fabricated from cylindrical forgings. Each forging automatically machined from center out to a one-piece skin with stiffeners. Internal structure attached by electron-beam welding.

Engine: 144-pound, 12-inch-diameter Williams Research F107-WR-400. Outgrowth of small engines developed for drones and James Bond-style jet belts. 600 pounds max thrust pushes 2,500-pound missile along at up to 540 mph.

“Now I'm going to pass you off to Missile Engineering.”

“Actually, Bob, you've stolen my speech. It's true, we've done some amazing things with this machine. We pump the fuel supply through the chassis of the electronics to cool them. We've used Air Force-developed high-energy fuel to get ten pounds of range out of a five-pound bag. We've designed it with modularity so we can bring new versions on-line fast. And we've already got a team at work on the ‘B' model.

“Once we had the airframe and engine, we had to find a way to navigate it accurately at a low altitude. The antiship version skims the sea fifty feet up, slipping underneath the enemy's radar coverage. Near the target, an active-radar terminal guidance head boots up. Then there's the land-attack Version—but that's the next brief.”

The McDonnell Douglas guidance guru was one of the women wearing thick panty hose. Dan kept writing as she said, “As most of you know, the Achilles' heel of previous cruise missiles has always been straight and level flight. That made them vulnerable to antiaircraft and fighters.

“Tomahawk's smarter than that, and it's designed to take advantage of the low-altitude window Soviet air defenses leave open. The land-attack missile utilizes terrain comparison-aided internal guidance with digital scene-matching terminal guidance. In essence, the missile follows a ‘road map' programmed into it before launch.”

She dimmed the lights. The slide showed a hilly terrain
as it would be seen by the eye, then sliced into digitized squares. “As it flies, the system compares its radar returns with the terrain it expected, then computes corrections when it wanders. During the last seconds of flight, an electro-optical system called digital scene-matching area correlation takes over. It compares the expected image of the target area with the actual infrared it observes.”

Dan looked around, then put his hand up.

“There, in the back.”

“I was wondering: We don't have any problem getting accurate terrain maps in California and Nevada, where you've been flying the tests. But what about Kamchatka, or the Kola Peninsula? Someplace they don't like our guys coming around with surveying instruments?”

“Good question, but that's the intelligence and mapping community's ballpark. They're assembling the data you're referring to. National security assets are involved, I understand.”

He nodded, understanding the shorthand for satellite reconnaissance.

She went on. “One of the continuing issue items in the minutes is the radar altimeter issue. I'm happy to say, the latest figures from the flight-test lab are—”

A heavy voice from Dan's left grunted, “That's a vital part of the guidance.”

Heads turned; a stir eddied through the room as through a school of jack at the appearance of a barracuda. “Yes, Admiral, it is.”

“What's your backup for it?”

“There's no backup. It's going to work.”

“Well, I have one. Litton Systems Limited, in Toronto.”

“A foreign source?”

“They're letting us test in Canada. Spending money there makes sense. Just to let you know—when you read about the contract award. Are you finished?”

When she nodded, Niles clambered to his feet. He stood amid the gray-suited executives, silent and immobile as a colossus. Finally, Larramore rose, too. “Let me introduce Rear Admiral Barry “Nick” Niles, incoming director, Joint Cruise Missile Projects Office. Admiral?”

Niles didn't respond. The silence stretched out. At last, he said, “You're responsible for the airframe, and integration of the all-up round.”

“Convair is, yes—”

“I mean you.
You're
responsible, Mr. Larramore.”

Larramore nodded. “That's right, sir. I'm the program manager.”

“Then maybe you can explain to me why your program is so screwed up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Why are you so far behind schedule? Why do we have a fifty-five percent fail rate on flight tests? Why is your program so
fucked up?”

“You're referring to the work-stoppage order.”

“Yes, among other things.”

“We don't have an input to that process, Admiral. Essentially, the Department of Defense is saying, we can keep working on the program but that we might not get paid for it. May I point that out? That at this point we're proceeding on good faith and our own money? We believe in this missile. All new weapons have bugs.”

“Not good enough,” said Niles. “I expect a few glitches early. But we're eight years into development. What I hear is, your techs are sloppy, we find rust in the actuators, cleanliness is shit, tolerances are shit, and the missiles you're sending me for test are shit.” His deliberate, heavy voice bludgeoned through the air-conditioned air. “Your product is
shit,
Mr. Larramore. Explain to me why I should buy it.”

Steel in his voice for the first time, Larramore said, “Admiral, maybe we'd better discuss this off-line.”

“Yeah, let's take it up a level. But I want everybody here to understand this: I will not permit this program to be killed.”

“We don't want that, either.”

“Shut up. We're at a critical elbow in the development process. I will not permit it to be killed due to the foot-dragging and poor workmanship of
one company.”
Larramore opened his mouth, seemed to reflect, then closed it again. “I've got authority to dual-source anything that looks chancy. That effort has begun on the ABL already.
I'm putting Litton on the guidance. And as of next week, I'm putting an RFP on the street for a second airframe production line.”

“Sir, the government paid for development of this missile. You have every right to buy it from whomever you want. But we designed it. We've fought through problem after problem. We have a proprietary interest—”

“Bullshit,” said Niles. “You nailed it the first time: I have every right, and I' m going to exercise it. This is not Convair's missile. It's not the Navy's missile. This is
my _
missile now. The minute I qualify a second source, you're going to turn over every document, every piece of engineering software, and specs on every piece of tooling. If you hold out on me, I'll cut you out of the list of competitors for every buy downstream till the end of next century.”

The engineers and executives looked at the ceiling. Niles glared around once more, like Thor facing a circle of trolls, then slowly sat down, folding his beefy arms.

Niles and Larramore disappeared after the opening meeting. The rest of the conferees broke into subgroups: missile, weapons control, launch systems. There was lots of sitting around while the engineers haggled over bit streams. Dan split his time between the launch systems group and the weapons control group. If he could get enough boxes built somehow, get them on the ship, and get the targeting and launch system debugged by next June, hell, he'd have to find someplace to sacrifice a calf.

After a cafeteria lunch, they headed over to tour the production line. It was a quarter-mile walk in the brilliant California sunshine. A fresh wind smelled of the sea, and Dan yearned for it. The open sea, free of all politicking and moneymaking. What the hell was he doing ashore, anyway?

Then he remembered. To decide what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

The hangar doors yawned, and he joined a queue for hard hats with the Convair/General Dynamics emblem.