Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  “How is Rod doing?”

  Rodriquez jumped as if O’Malley had stabbed with a needle.

  “Don’t mention him to me. He’s sucking up to the Shannons, after I warned him about them. I think he’d go to work for them, too, if he wasn’t scared that I’d cut him out of my will.”

  “Come on, Bob, that’s nonsense! Your son is doing well with Lockheed, why on earth would he deliberately offend you? He’s just being civil, that’s all.”

  Rodriquez sat silently for a while, obviously offended, then asked, “How come you couldn’t get admitted to the flight line? I thought you had an in here at Long Beach?”

  “Not anymore, and it’s a damn shame. I’ll bet Russ and I walked a hundred miles together in corridors at the Pentagon, trying to sell the concept of a tanker that could do so much more than the KC-135, and getting a deaf ear everywhere. Now they are going to buy sixty, when they ought to be buying six hundred. But the wheels in St. Louis are pissed off at me now. You know how the rivalry goes between McDonnell brass and the poor remaining guys with the old Douglas company.”

  Rodriquez nodded. The five-sided wheel of the Pentagon rotated on the axle of advocacy, and it took dedicated advocates like Schleeh and O’Malley to sell a program. The problem was that not all the products being sold were as worthwhile as the KC-10, which was effective as a tanker and a cargo plane. If the advocates had good personalities and were skillful, they could sell a bad product and waste a lot of the taxpayers’ money. The human factor. It was the same with the companies. The McDonnell Douglas merger had been billed as two equals coming together, but McDonnell rapidly took control of all of Douglas’s activities, and there was still a lot of bad blood between the employees of the two firms.

  O’Malley said, “I thought the accident in Chicago would kill the program.”

  The previous May, an American DC-10 crashed right after takeoff from O’Hare Airport in Chicago, killing 273 people. It brought back all the memories of the 1974 DC-10 accident near Paris, when 346 were killed.

  “It damn near did! McDonnell Douglas was still working hard to fix things from the Paris crash when the Chicago accident came. I remember years ago, when we were still friends, Harry Shannon said that the DC-10 was rushed and had too much old DC-8 technology in it. I hope they caught up with the KC-10.”

  Nodding, O’Malley replied, “I know for sure that they did. Russ and I spent a lot of hours with their engineering bigwigs, checking out the changes they came up with after the accidents. You can never be 100 percent safe, even with the changes, but the tanker will be flying a different flight regime than the airliners. Far fewer takeoffs and landings, far less time in the air over the years.”

  They were quiet for a while, both men sensing the other had something he wanted to say, but was hesitating. Still stalling, Rodriquez spoke first.

  “What do you think of the Iranian rescue fiasco?”

  “It dooms Carter; he can’t win the next election after this.”

  In April, the United States had attempted a military operation to rescue the fifty-odd hostages still held prisoner by the Iranians in the American embassy in Tehran.

  “I understand you were called in to investigate. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Bad planning, bad luck, and bad weather ruined it. They were too cocksure of themselves . . .”

  “They?”

  “The White House, Carter and his staff, kept interfering, wouldn’t allow enough assets—they wanted to do it on the cheap, and when they ran into trouble there were no reserves.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Well, you know that eight men died and there were a lot of injured. What happened was that they planned to stage it over two nights, which was stupid in the first place. On the second night they were going to send in eight helicopters with troops to locate and rescue the hostages. The helicopters were to fly them out to where C-130s were prepositioned, and the C-130s would fly them to safety. Then two choppers got lost in a sandstorm and one had mechanical problems. They wound up without enough helicopters to carry out the mission. Worse luck, a helicopter crashed into a C-130—that’s where the eight were killed. The shrapnel from the crash damaged five of the RH-53 choppers and they had to be left behind, filled with information that the Iranians used to run down CIA spies in Tehran. It was a complete fiasco.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I don’t think Carter will try anything anymore. They won’t negotiate with him, he hasn’t the guts to call for a declaration of war, which is what it would take now. We’ll have to wait it out.”

  They sat quietly now, watching the huge KC-10 ease down the taxiway, nose bobbing. This was not like a typical first flight, when there was always an escort of camera vehicles, fire engines, and communication vans. The basic KC-10 airframe had been proven in commercial service, so it was just another delivery to another customer as far as McDonnell Douglas was concerned.

  Rodriquez pulled out a notebook and wrote down the date and tail number, 79-0433.

  “I do this every first flight I attend. When I’m old and cranky, I’ll go back in and look at the dates and the numbers, and remember how things were back in the good old days.”

  “You’ve always been cranky, Bob, you don’t have to wait. Do you know who’s flying it?”

  “No, I’m just like you, out of the loop with the McDonnell Douglas people.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shame. But between the GPS and the . . .”

  O’Malley instinctively looked around, checking to be sure there was no one nearby. He knew the music from the radio would mask his voice—that’s why they were playing it—but he still had to check before saying, “. . . stealth bomber, I don’t get to cruise the companies anymore. I leave most of that to Dennis nowadays; he’s a good schmoozer and he picks up a lot of good information.”

  Rodriquez nodded, waiting for him to go on. The conversation had finally gotten to the point O’Malley had been waiting for.

  “Bob, I’m sorry to say that I think we’ve picked a loser in this stealth game. I’m especially sorry, because the concept tied in with so much of your work on precision munitions.”

  Rodriquez had been in the forefront of precision guided munitions for the past ten years. He saw PGMs, as they were called, as the only answer to the immense Soviet superiority in armor in Europe. If the Soviets ever decided to invade West Germany, on their way to the English Channel, there wouldn’t be time for conventional warfare to work. There had to be target-specific bombs created, so that every bomb would kill a tank, not just one bomb out of a hundred.

  “As you know, the DOD wanted an ‘assault breaker’ force—aircraft and helicopters armed with laser-guided bombs that could range back behind enemy lines and take out targets while they were still in their bunkers. And to do that, they asked for a stealth battlefield surveillance vehicle—they called it ‘BSAX’ for short—one that could loiter over the lines, invisible to the enemy radar, and pick out targets for the attack aircraft.”

  Rodriquez twitched impatiently. So far O’Malley wasn’t telling him anything new. Most people in the business already knew, you could pick up so much, just reading the trades, if you knew what to look for. Put that together with casual conversations as you worked the companies, and it all came together.

  “The DOD gave Northrop a ‘pity’ contract for the BSAX after they lost out to Lockheed on the Have Blue project. And Northrop blew it! Their BSAX design didn’t cut it. But you know Fred Oshira?”

  “Yes, he’s a first-rate engineer.”

  “Well, Oshira saved them, he redesigned the aircraft, using totally new stealth ideas, and won a new contract for a flying prototype. They’re calling it ‘Tacit Blue’ for some reason. I’ve seen the drawings, and it’s an ugly bastard. Never thought I’d say that about an airplane, but there it is.”

  “How are they coming?”

  “I’ve got no idea. The prototype won’t fly for a couple of years. But if it’s successful, it will
be far more advanced than Lockheed’s stealth fighter—a second generation of stealth, so to speak, third if you count the SR-71.”

  “Is it faceted like Lockheed’s Have Blue?”

  “No, and that’s why I wanted to see you. Instead of facets, it’s going to rely on sweeping curves in the structure and loads of radar absorbent material. That means the big bomber will probably be a flying wing, just like old Jack Northrop wanted.”

  Rodriquez waited for O’Malley to get to the point.

  “And that’s where I think we have to go. We’ve got to develop radar absorbent material, RAM—some that can be used structurally, some of it that just goes on easy and is durable. The stuff they have now reacts to heat in flight, and it can’t take weather. A hailstorm will turn a stealth airplane from invisible to big as a barn door in just a few seconds.”

  “Do we have any specialists in this? This is brand-new stuff for ActOn. What’s the market going to be?”

  “I don’t know. They are talking about buying 275 Advanced Tactical Bombers in the out years, you know ten years down the road. They’ll be big, but the thing is, they will require intensive maintenance. We can’t get in on the manufacturing subcontracting, not right away, but we can position ourselves for the future with new materials.”

  Rodriquez looked doubtful. There was something eating him. O’Malley had never seen him acting like this.

  “I don’t know, Steve. Sometimes I think we are too smart for our own good. We are out there, pushing GPS, pushing precision guided munitions, pushing stealth, while guys are making a fortune making nuts and bolts and spare parts. I buy stock in those types of companies, those and fast food chains, big hardware stores, and that sort of thing.”

  “Bob, you worrywart, I can’t see you getting all worked up making nuts and bolts! You’d be out of your gourd in weeks. You’re never happy unless you are on the next page, ahead of everybody else, including me. You’d rather go broke pushing something futuristic than making a fortune pushing something ordinary. Besides, the Air Force won’t be the only customer. The Navy will need it for missiles and ships, and the Army will need it for missiles and tanks.”

  “Stealth battleships and stealth tanks. That will be the day.”

  “Maybe not battleships, but smaller missile launching ships for sure. And cruise missiles have to be redesigned for stealth. They are hard enough to shoot down now, but if you can give them stealth characteristics, they’ll change the face of warfare.”

  Rodriquez seemed to sink deeper into his morose reserve.

  “You know, Steve, I made a big mistake in bailing Tom and Harry Shannon out. I sold almost a million shares of Vance Shannon, Incorporated, at four dollars a share, and it’s up to eight now.”

  O’Malley shook his head. Rodriquez had never talked about money before. Now it was all he was talking about. There was something going on with him. Still, he had always acted strangely when there was a big, tough project coming up.

  “And what do they do after I bail them out? They go directly against my wishes and hire Mae.”

  O’Malley thought, Ah, just as I suspected. It has nothing to do with money. He’s still hurt over them hiring Mae. Jesus, how can I get out of this?

  Rodriquez went on, talking faster as he did when he was excited, a little spittle showing at the corner of his mouth.

  “And now they are going to clean our clock in the stealth business. Well, I’m not going to let them. I haven’t touched a penny of my money since the divorce. Like I said, Mae got half then, but my end has built back up, way up. I’m going to round up some investors and go back and make a hostile takeover bid for Vance Shannon, Incorporated. Then we’ll see who hires who. Are you with me on this?”

  This was the last thing O’Malley wanted, but he knew better than to cross Rodriquez when he was in a mood like this.

  “I guess, Bob, if you think we can do it, but we’ve never done anything like this. I don’t even know what a hostile takeover means. And I don’t know if we have the resources to do it and keep our own business going. You know better than anyone how competitive it is in technology nowadays; you miss one thing and you’re obsolete. And we’ve been way too rigid in our control, not delegating, keeping our hands in everything. We could take a lesson from Vance Shannon’s book. You’re where you are today because he delegated responsibility and authority and, best of all, control of the budget.”

  “That’s exactly why we have to do this. We’ll take them over, fire the old guys who are holding them back, and make some real money. We’ll run the place like Vance used to do.”

  “Old guys? You mean Tom and Harry Shannon? We’ve got no beef with them. Tom is my hero, always has been since before I went to the Academy. And Harry has always been straight with us.”

  “Not so straight that he didn’t OK hiring Mae. Don’t tell me that Nancy did something they didn’t approve of. You know better than that.”

  There was an edge to his voice that O’Malley had never heard before.

  “You don’t mean all this, Bob. You’re just upset. We’re not corporate raiders, we’re just a couple of ex-pilots who like to make big new toys that go bang for the military.”

  “Not anymore. Like the old Hitler joke, no more Mr. Nice Guy; I’m going to run them into the ground, or die trying.”

  There it was, down and dirty.

  “Well then, Bob, you’ll probably have to do it without me. I don’t want to get involved in something like this, not when there is so much important stuff going on in the defense industry. We could wind up spending all our money and have two ruined companies instead of one. You only have to be out of the business for six months nowadays, and you are out forever. What the hell would happen to our GPS contracts, our PGM business, our simulators, not to mention stealth?”

  “If I have to do it without you, Steve, I will. You know the terms of our partnership.”

  The two men had a simple verbal contract. If one offered to buy the other out, he had to name a figure; if the other man chose, he could reverse the process and use that same figure to buy the first man out.

  O’Malley nodded. “You mean you’ll buy me out or make me buy you out?”

  “You’re right as usual, O’Malley. Think it over. Let me run some numbers and I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, you better watch this takeoff. The KC-10 was your baby, and don’t you forget it.”

  O’Malley turned to watch the tanker move swiftly down the runway. Maybe he’d made a mistake leaving the Air Force. Better to be a gray-haired colonel running the halls in the Pentagon than a corporate vulture trying to raid a friend’s company.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE PASSING PARADE: United States breaks diplomatic ties with Iran; Shah dies at age 60; Somoza thrown out as Nicaraguan ruler; Ronald Reagan elected President; John Lennon killed; Reagan inaugurated, Iran frees hostages; Sandra Day O’Connor becomes first woman on Supreme Court; air controllers strike; IBM personal computer marketed; Iraq wages war on Iran; AIDS is identified as killer disease; Cats on Broadway; laptop computers appear; Nintendo markets Donkey Kong; Chariots of Fire wins Oscar as best picture; the “mouse” introduced for computers; U.S. hockey team beats Russia for the gold in the Winter Olympics; Columbia space shuttle launched; John Hinckley attempts to assassinate Ronald Reagan; Princess Grace of Monaco dies after a car accident.

  June 9, 1981

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  Sweat stained the back of O’Malley’s shirt as he hurtled down the hallways, elbowing past idling three-stars and jumping over a long low trailer hauling stacks of unread computer printouts. It was sort of funny—everybody else ran—two-stars, one-stars, and below—but the three-stars just ignored everybody as they strolled along, their major and lieutenant colonel worker-bees awkwardly following behind, unable to run because their bosses walked. You rarely saw a four-star in the hallways.

  Puffing, he thought to himself, Here I am, not gray yet, but an old colonel running down the corridors, jus
t like I said I would never do.

  He pulled up short outside “the Tank,” the classified briefing room in the basement of the Pentagon, to check that his ID was hung around his neck, reflecting with pleasure as he always did, But at least I’m the richest son of a bitch of a colonel running around here!

  O’Malley, as usual, arrived ten minutes too early for the meeting. He could have sauntered down, maybe had a cup of coffee, for meetings here in the bowels of the Pentagon always started late. But he ran for the sheer joy of being back in the Air Force and away from the bitter infighting between Bob Rodriquez and the Shannons over control of Vance Shannon, Incorporated.

  His mind flashed back to the previous September. Bob Rodriquez had not yet made a formal offer to buy him out, but O’Malley knew that his partner was neglecting ActOn business to fly around the country, gathering support for his planned takeover raid on the huge business Vance Shannon had founded. Then, early one Saturday morning, Rodriquez turned up at his little two-story house in Manhattan Beach. Steve’s wife Sally (the bane of her life were the inevitable bad jokes about Sally O’Malley—she was born Sally Brennan) was at church, and he wished he’d gone with her.

  Rodriquez didn’t fool around, going straight to the point, refusing an invitation to come in—he just stood on the little porch, feet spread in a pugilist’s stance, face intent with barely suppressed emotion.

  “Steve, I’ve gathered support all around the country from enough shareholders to have ActOn make a buyout bid to take over Vance Shannon, Incorporated. Are you with me?”

  “You know how I feel about that, Bob. You are going to force me out of our company. I won’t participate in a hostile bid on a friend’s firm.”

  “They are not my friends, and if they are your friends, you are no longer my friend. It’s just as well that you get out now. Can I assume that you will abide by our verbal agreement about a buyout?”

  O’Malley was tired. He knew this was coming, and resented it.