The Minotaur jg-3

by Stephen Coonts

  “Yessir. Athena will allow us to convert the Jews and Moslems and pagans to God-fearing, righteous Christians who won’t start wars or—“

  “Dr. Dodgers,” Duquesne said, “I must insist. Your invention is not the only matter before this joint subcommittee. We are short of time. We have another witness to follow you.” Duquesne gestured at Jake. For the first time Dodgers turned and saw him. “We could get right to the questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “One more point, sir. The naval officer who is in charge of Athena is here today. Captain Jake Grafton. I see him sitting back there against the wall. I wish to say here and now that he is a godless sinner, a mouther of obscene blasphemies, an agent of Sa- tan. I have complained to the navy and various members of Con- gress to no avail. I am a man of God and a man of peace. I cannot continue to work with this—“

  Duquesne whacked his gavel. ‘Time! Thank you. Dr. Dodgers. We’ll get right to the questions.”

  The aides whispered fervently in Dodgers’ ear. Duquesne gave them the time. When Dodgers seemed to be settled down, Du- quesne led him through a set of simple questions about Athena: what it was, how it worked, what Dodgers projected its capabilities as being.

  “Dr. Dodgers, does the Athena device have to go on a stealth airplane?”

  “No. sir. It would work on any airplane, stealth or not. It would work on a ship, on a building, on a tank, a truck — anything that has a fixed set of radar-reflective properties that the computer can be programmed to nullify.”

  When Duquesne had finished, he opened the floor to questions from other members. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Delman Richardson, from California, went first.

  “I take it. Doctor, that you are convinced your device can be put into production cheaply and in a timely manner?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And it will work? It will do what you and the navy say it will do?”

  “Yes. That is correct. It will prevent the object that it is placed upon from being detected by radar.”

  “Yet, if I understand your earlier statement correctly, you think we should use this military advantage to convert the peoples of the world to Christianity?”

  An uproar ensued as Duquesne tried to rule the question out of order and various members all tried to talk at once. The issue seemed to be whether the members from the House could ask the questions they could have asked had they not agreed to a joint hearing to save time. While all this was going on Rob Knight nudged Jake. “Best show in town,” he whispered.

  On the threat of being abandoned by the House subcommittee members, Duquesne caved in. Dodgers was given free rein to state his views on religion, sin, and conspiracies by each and every mi- nority he could readily recall. Duquesne took it like a man, Jake thought. He should have known better. Other committee members took it less well, seeming to take offense that they had to sit through a recitation of Dodgers’ poisonous inanities.

  Dodgers was finally silenced by mutual consent and shown the door. After a ten-minute recess, it was Jake’s turn. Gazing upward at the legislators on the dais, he immediately understood the psy- chological advantage the raised platform conferred on his interro- gators.

  “Do you have a statement to make?” Duquesne asked him when the preliminaries were completed.

  “No, sir.”

  A chuckle swept the room- That’s a good start, Jake thought.

  A committee staffer passed out copies of Jake’s report and led him through it, page by page, conclusion by conclusion. It took the rest of the morning. When Duquesne announced a lunch break, Jake was surprised at how much time had passed.

  He and Knight walked back to the bagel place for a tuna salad sandwich.

  “How am I doing?”

  ‘They haven’t even started on you yet. Ask me at five o’clock.”

  “Are we going to be here that long?”

  “Maybe. Depends on Duquesne.”

  After lunch the senator resumed his questioning. “Tell me. Cap- tain, just what were your orders when you were given your present assignment?”

  “I was told to evaluate the two prototypes and prepare a recom- mendation as to which one I believed the navy should select for production as the A-12 medium attack bomber.”

  “Did Vice Admiral Henry or Secretary Ludlow tell you — let me rephrase that — did either of them suggest which prototype you should recommend?”

  “No. They didn’t.”

  “They didn’t even hint at which one they wanted?”

  ‘They discussed the navy’s requirements for a new medium at- tack bomber on numerous occasions with me, sir, and they did make it clear to me that the plane had to be able to meet the needs of the navy. But they did not tell me which plane they thought would best meet those needs. Determining that was the whole pur- pose of the fly-off.”

  “So the conclusions stated in this report and the recommenda- tions made are yours?”

  “Yessir. And the admirals wrote endorsements, and the Secre- tary of the Navy wrote one when he forwarded the report to SECDEF.”

  “Did you tell your superiors what the substance of your report would be before you wrote it?”

  “Yessir. I kept them fully informed about my activities and my opinions as I reached them.”

  “Did they suggest changes to the draft document.”

  “Yessir. That is normal practice. We were under a time crunch, and I circulated a summary of the report and they commented upon it and I made certain changes to the report that I felt were necessary based on their comments. But this is my report. I could have refused to make a suggested change and they could have commented on the matter in their endorsement. That, too, would be normal practice.”

  “Did you refuse to make any changes?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So this report is now the way your superiors in the chain of command want it to be?”

  “I believe the endorsements speak for themselves, sir.”

  “You recommended the navy purchase the TRX plane in spite of the fact that the prototype crashed during evaluation and you failed to complete all the tests you had planned?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Why?”

  “Senator, I think the report addresses that point much better than I could orally. I felt that the TRX plane had fewer technical problems than the Consolidated prototype and was a better coro- promise of mission capability and stealthiness. I also felt it was better suited to carrier operations. I thought that it would require less preproduction modifications to achieve the performance goals. All this is in the report. In short, I thought this plane gave the navy the most bang for its bucks.”

  “Did you personally fly either plane?”

  “No, sir. A test pilot did.”

  “How much experience did this test pilot have?”

  “I believe she has about sixteen hundred hours total flight time.”

  “That isn’t much, is it?”

  “Everything is relative,”

  “How much flight time do you have. Captain?”

  “About forty-five hundred hours.”

  “Do you have any previous experience testing prototypes?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did your test pilot have any previous prototype testing experi- ence?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Yet you used her anyway. Why is that?”

  “She had an outstanding record at the Test Pilot School at Pa- tuxent River. She finished first in her class. My predecessor was on the staff at TPS and picked her for this project. I saw no reason to fire her and get someone else.”

  “Yet she crashed the TRX prototype?”

  “It crashed while she was flying it. The E-PROM chips in the fly-by-wire system were defective.”

  “Would the plane have crashed with a more experienced pilot at the controls?”

  “Well, that’s impossible to say, really.”

  “You, for instance?”

  “Sen
ator, any answer I gave to that question would be pure speculation. I feel Lieutenant Moravia did a fine job handling that plane before and after it went out of control. There may be a pilot somewhere on this planet who could have saved it, but I don’t know.”

  The Minotaur

  Duquesne led him into the buy-rate and cost projections for the A-12. “I see here that you recommend a total buy of three hundred sixty planes: a dozen the first year, twenty-four the second, then forty-eight each year subsequently.”

  “That’s correct.” Jake went into the cost equations. Before he could get very deep into the subject, Duquesne moved on.

  Finally Duquesne got down to it.

  “Captain, you have also been in charge of the Athena program, have you not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This morning Dr. Dodgers testified that this device would be cheap to build”—he gave the figures—“could be in production in a year or fifteen months and could protect any object it was placed upon. In view of that, why does the navy want a stealth attack plane?”

  “Athena can be made to work, with enough research, time and money. But it’s not going to be easy. Right now the only way to determine the radar-reflective characteristics of an object is to test the entire object on a specially constructed range. And these char- acteristics change based on the frequency of the radar doing the looking- So every frequency must be tested. Consequently the data base that the Athena computer must use is very, very large. That’s why we need a superconductive computer to perform all the calcu- lations required in a minimum amount of time. Still, it is impossi- ble to build a system that could effectively counter every conceiv- able frequency. Athena will counter every frequency the Soviets are known to use. Yet if they shift frequencies quickly enough, with a semi-stealthy aircraft design we would not lose all our airplanes before Athena could be modified.

  “Secondly, Athena will not be ready for the fleet in a year. More like three or four. Third, new technology may be developed to counter Athena. We believe, based on what we know now, that we need an attack plane with at least A-6 performance and payload capabilities, state-of-the-art avionics, and stealthy characteristics. That’s the A-12. The TRX plane is the best that American indus- try can give us now, and now is the time when we need to put this airplane into production.”

  “Why not kill the A-12 program and build a conventional attack plane that uses Athena to hide?”

  “As I mentioned, Athena is added protection for our aircraft. but not the sole source, due to the limitations inherent in the tech- nology. Quick change is the rule in electronic warfare, not the exception. The Israelis almost lost their 1973 war with Egypt due to advances in electronic warfare made by the Soviets and supplied to Egypt of which the West was not aware. The United States cannot afford to lose a war with the Soviets, Senator.”

  Jake reached for his briefcase. Knight had it ready. “My staff has done some calculations. To kill this program now and start all over again on another one, writing off all the development money spent to date and adding the inevitable inflationary factor, I figure it will cost just about the same per plane. Assuming Athena works well enough to become operational. If it doesn’t, we’ll have a brand-new, obsolete airplane. Regardless, in the interim we’ll have to make do with the A-6, which is not aging gracefully. We may even need to fund the A-6G program, just to keep the A-6s in the air until the follow-on airplane arrives.”

  An aide passed a copy of Jake’s figures to every member. Jake spent the next hour defending the methodology and the numbers.

  Duquesne opened the floor to questions from other members, who had a variety of concerns. One of them asked, “I understand you were awarded the Medal of Honor by this Congress, Captain?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing it now?”

  “It’s a little gaudy, don’t you think?”

  Another congressman asked, “Why is the navy going to name the A-12 the Avenger?” The propeller-driven Grumman TBF Avenger was the plane the President flew during World War II.

  “In a survey of A-6 flight crews conducted navy-wide, that was the most popular suggestion. The people in the navy are very proud of the navy’s tradition and history.”

  “The choice of that name looks a little like bootlicking, don’t you think?”

  “Sir, I happen to like that name. The Avenger torpedo-bomber was a fine airplane in its day, with a proud name and a great combat record. We’ve named other jets after prop planes — Phan- tom and Corsair are two — so it’s a choice popular with the people in naval aviation. Should Avenger get derailed somewhere along the way, my personal second choice would be Hellcat, another good old navy name.”

  “That choice wouldn’t be popular with Dr. Dodgers,” the con- gressman said dryly.

  “I doubt if it would,” Jake agreed.

  And then it was over. He was excused. It was 4 P.M. Out on the steps Knight said, “One down. two to go.”

  That was right. Assuming the Armed Services Committees au- thorized some airplanes and the full House and Senate agreed, then the battle would begin to convince the appropriations committees to provide the dollars to pay for them.

  Jake groaned.

  “Relax. You did very well.”

  “C’mon. Let’s go get a beer somewhere. I’m dying of thirst.”

  On Sunday morning as they walked on the beach and Amy played in the surf, Jake and Caltie talked again about X. “As I understand it,” Jake said, “he’s not a mole in the usual sense of the word. He’s not a Russian who slipped in years ago and worked his way into a position of trust. He’s an American. A traitor.”

  ‘This world of espionage and counterespionage,” Callie said, “it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. Nothing is ever as it seems.”

  “What made you think of that?”

  “Ifyou lose something and look for it in all the usual places and you don’t find it, what conclusion do you reach?”

  “It isn’t in a usual place.”

  “Precisely. And if the FBI has been looking for a mole for three years, then the mole is not in the usual place.”

  “But the usual places are positions where a person would have access to the information being passed.”

  “Perhaps the mole was never there at all.”

  Jake stared at her.

  “How do you know the FBI has been looking?” she asked.

  “Henry said so. Camacho said so.”-

  “Henry merely repeated what he was told. Camacho told you what he wanted you to hear. What if there is no mole at all? What if X is merely a character, an actor assigned to play a part?”

  Amy called her to look at something that had washed up on the beach during the night, and she went. Jake stood and watched them. The surf broke and swirled around their ankles as the sea- birds circled and called.

  “You are a very smart woman,” he told her when she rejoined him,

  “Oh, I’m glad you noticed. What did I say that was smart?”

  On Monday morning at the office Jake stopped by the copy ma- chine and helped himself to twenty or so sheets of paper. In his office he closed the door and pulled on a pair of gloves he had brought from home. Spreading the pile of paper gingerly, he se- lected a sheet from the middle of the pile and slid it away from the others. It should be free of fingerprints. From his pocket he took a black government pen. He clicked the point in and out a few times as he stared thoughtfully at the paper.

  In block letters in the center of the page he wrote: “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.” He put the words all on one line.

  He inspected it carefully, then folded the sheet and placed it in a blank letter-sized envelope he had removed from a box at home this morning.

  There was a pair of tweezers in his desk, in that vanity case Callie got him for Christmas a year or so ago. He found them and dropped them in his pocket.

  He took the gloves off. With the envelope inside his shirt, he went to the men’s head. There he
used the tweezers to put the envelope on the counter. Holding his shin pocket open, he used the tweezers again to fish a stamp from the interior. He moistened it on a damp place on the sink, then affixed it to the envelope.

  Back in the office, trying very hard not to touch the envelope at all, he dug through the classified Department of Defense directory until he found the address he wanted. This he copied onto the face of the envelope in block letters.

  He put the envelope back into his shirt, put on his hat and told the secretary in the outer office he would be back in ten minutes.

  He dropped the envelope in a mailbox on the plaza near the entrance to his building, then retraced his steps back to the office.

  29

  Vice Admiral Henry’s funeral was on Wednesday in Arlington National Cemetery, held outdoors on the grass at the request of his eldest daughter. Everyone who was anyone in the Department of Defense was on hand, so Jake Graf- ton ended up seated among the rank and file. The politicians who ruled the armed forces sat on the right-hand side of the aisle, while on the left were the admirals and generals, who had been carefully seated in order of seniority as protocol demanded. A band played funeral airs and Royce Caplinger, George Ludlow, and CNO deliv- ered short eutogies.

  From where he sat Jake could see the backs of the heads of some of the heavyweights. Off to his left were the rows and rows of white monuments, marching across the green rolling terrain with fault- less precision.

  To his right was the low bulk of the Pentagon, only the top of it visible between the heads of the people and the uniformed ushers at parade rest.

  Tyler Henry had spent his adult life in uniform, and Jake had no doubt that interment at this cemetery, with all those who had also served, would have met with Henry’s approval. After all. Henry had died in combat, fighting for something he believed in.

  Half listening to the speeches, Jake Grafton once again consid- ered all he knew about X affair. It was precious little, yet it seemed to him he could see the underlying structure. Per- haps, he mused, even that was an illusion.

  The funeral was real enough. Henry was truly dead. The people involved were real, the information passed to the Soviets was real, Smoke Judy’s attempt to steal the Athena file was real. And yet …