Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (19 page)

“What’s that?”

“What would Dad say about it?”

“I know what Dad would say. Go for it, he’s a good kid.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE PASSING PARADE
: The Washington Redskins defeat the Miami Dolphins 27–17 in Super Bowl XVII; crippled nuclear-powered Soviet satellite Cosmos 1402 enters the atmosphere and disintegrates, Eubie Blake, ragtime composer and pianist, dies one week after his hundredth birthday. Sally K. Ride becomes first U.S. woman astronaut; Korean Airline 747 shot down by Soviets; terrorist explosion in Beirut kills more than 300; United States invades Grenada; Bell telephone system broken up; Democrats nominate Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro as presidential and vice presidential candidates; Republicans renominate Reagan and Bush.

September 10, 1983

Mojave, California

T
he weatherman was right; it must be a hundred degrees already.”

Harry looked closely at Tom, who was obviously unwell. The eighty-mile drive from Los Angeles should have taken an hour and a half. Instead, they had spent three hours on the road because Tom repeatedly had them pull over so that he could try to relieve himself, apparently without much success. Tom was both touchy and taciturn about his health problems since coming back from the Hanoi Hilton.

“Let’s cut this short, Tom. Young Rodriquez will be here at noon, and we’ll leave as soon as he shows us around.”

“No, I’m OK. We’ve got a lot of dough invested in this and in Rod. I want to see how it works.”

The Mojave flight line was busy, despite the heat, with an assortment of aircraft not to be found anywhere else. Tied down along taxiways were long fleets of woebegone-looking Boeing 707s and 727s, along with Douglas DC-8s and a handful of the slick Convair 990s.There was a strange-looking biplane, a Soviet Antonov Colt, parked with them. The forlorn airplanes had the bleak look of animals too sick to be slaughtered. Windscreens and windows were covered with plastic, engines were stopped up by wooden intake guards, and the tires were gradually going flat. Airlines that were still operating took the care to paint over their company livery, vainly trying to hide their distress. Smaller companies and those that had gone belly-up left their old colors intact, fading in the desert sun, their once-famous names a reproach to an industry in the agonies of deregulation.

Tom and Harry called their new leasing company AdVanceAir, in honor of their father, and of the more than one hundred airplanes scattered around the field, they owned twenty-three. Harry’s choice of Bob Rodriquez, Jr., to run the firm was a happy one, for he was a natural salesman like his father, and besides the twenty-three airplanes on the field, he already had another forty leased out to airlines around the world, each one churning out profits for AdVanceAir. In all the long history of the many Shannon companies, there had never been such a quick and abundant return on their investment.

“I tell you, Tom, this is a gold mine, but it won’t last. We’ve beaten the competition to the punch, but there will be others jumping in as soon as they see how well we are doing.”

Pale, Tom stepped into the shade of a hangar, leaning against the door.

“Well, we’re paying Rod plenty; his job now is to stay ahead of the competition.” He hesitated, then went on. “How are you coming with your wild-goose chase?”

Harry flinched. He knew that Tom thought that he was both crazy and perhaps even disloyal to be looking for Rod’s father. The elder Rodriquez was Tom’s old enemy, an aggressive entrepreneur who had tried to take over their company a few years ago and failed.

“No luck, Tom. I hear some crazy things, that he’s running drugs, that he’s working for the CIA, or that he’s dead. Don’t mention any of that to Rod, for heaven’s sake.”

“No, I may be old and tired, but I’m not stupid yet. Does Rod ever talk about him?”

“No, he’s never mentioned him except in the most casual way. He knows the problems his dad caused, and he’s grateful to be working with us.”

Tom grumbled something about being sentimental patsies, and then gathering his strength, walked on toward a dust-laden MiG-15 that sat near the hangar among a collection of older jet fighters—a Lockheed F-80, a North American F-86, and, curiously, a rare Douglas F4D Skyray.

He walked around the MiG, panting. “This is the first one I’ve ever seen on the ground. Ugly little bastard, isn’t it? Mean in the air, though. Tough. But who the hell would set up a museum out here?”

Harry watched him with concern; Tom’s face was red, but he wasn’t sweating in the hundred-plus-degree heat.

“I think they keep them in flying condition, Tom, for some special projects and for movies. Let’s go back to the car and get the air conditioner on. I’ve about had it with the heat. You wait here and I’ll drive it over.”

“No, I can make it.”

They walked slowly back to the car. Tom waited outside, breathing heavily, until Harry got the air conditioner going and the temperature down, then slid gratefully onto the Cadillac’s broad front seat. They watched as the doors to Burt Rutan’s hangar opened and a tiny little white airplane was rolled out.

Tom said, “That’s a strange-looking bird.”

“Yeah; canard surfaces, swept wing. It’s all fiberglass composite structure, you know, supposed to be easy to build.”

A tall, lean man scrambled into the cockpit and fired the engine up. Moments later the airplane was gone, disappearing to the northeast.

“Harry, I’ll bet that was Dick Rutan. He was a great pilot in Vietnam. Flew the ‘Misty’ fast FAC mission.” Then, grumbling, he went on. “If Rod is late, maybe we ought to just go back. Let’s wait until noon; if he’s not here, we’ll just cut out.”

At noon precisely a yellow Mercedes 380SE whirled up in a cloud of dust; Bob Rodriquez, Jr., hopped out of his seat to open the door for his mother Mae.

Harry glanced at Tom to see how he was taking this. To his surprise, his brother seemed to be pulling himself together, obviously pleased at seeing Mae again. He wondered if Tom regarded Mae as an ally, since she had divorced his longtime foe, or whether he was just registering pleasure at the sight of such a beautiful woman.

Rod stood by diffidently as Mae embraced each of the Shannons in turn.

“Mae, you are as beautiful as ever. I thought Tom’s eyes were going to fall out when you stepped out of the car.”

Their rare conversations with Mae were usually one-sided, for while she could ask about Nancy, Anna, and V. R., they could never ask about her former husband. Mae never tried to conceal the fact that she still loved him. She just could not endure his workaholic lifestyle. Talking about him with her was just too painful.

Bob Rodriquez had dropped out of their lives without a word of farewell. He had placed all of his cash—an immense amount after the sale of his ActOn stock—and his enormous stock portfolio in a trust managed by an old friend at the Bank of America. There were many sightings of him, but Harry’s investigations had proved that most of these were false. The most improbable story, but one that Harry was almost convinced was true, was that Rodriquez had been killed on a tiny island in the Bahamas. The story was that the aircraft, an ancient Cessna 310, was overloaded with marijuana, and he had crashed making an attempted forced landing. His body was never found, but there was enough identifying material to conclude that it had been Bob. Yet it was hard—almost impossible—for Harry to believe that Rodriquez, a twelve-victory MiG ace in Korea, an ardent patriot, and independently wealthy, would descend to drug running. There was no reason for him to do it, unless he was somehow undercover, working for the government.

Harry had kept Rod posted, but on the condition that none of it could be revealed to Mae, simply because he wasn’t certain himself. When he found incontrovertible evidence that Bob was either alive or dead, he would of course let them both know. Until then, he was not going to pass on any wild conjectures to Mae.

It was evident that Rod was eager to tell them some good news, and ushered them inside AdVanceAir’s more than modest office, a prefab building hauled from some construction site and nestled against
the side of a World War II hangar. Tom looked around uneasily at the office furnishings, clearly culled from some used furniture store, enjoying the welcome cool breeze provided by two wheezing, dripping, window air conditioners. Rod brought out some bottled Pellegrino water from an ancient refrigerator, poured it into reasonably clean glasses, and smiling, watched them settle into the folding metal chairs around the old table. Then he walked to a portable blackboard, covered with a sheet, and said, “Let me fill you in, military style, with a good old-fashioned briefing.”

He removed the sheet, revealing a stack of cardboard posters. The top one read simply, “AdVanceAir Leasing: Creating Instant Airlines Around the World.”

Nodding to Tom and Harry, he said, “And that is what your foresight has done: built an airline manufacturing machine. I use this room and these beat-up briefing charts to tell potential customers how they can use us. I could be fancier and use a projector and slides, but I’m trying to impress everyone with our economy of operation. That’s why the office is this clunker of a building and why I’ve chosen this beaten-up furniture. I’m trying to sell economy and profit, not just airplanes, and the economy starts here.”

Harry and Tom exchanged glances. This was the exact opposite of another important side of their business, fitting new airliners and business jets with luxurious interiors. In those offices, everything was beyond sumptuous, from the furnishings to the beautiful women whose task it was to see that every client felt like a movie star.

Rod went on. “We’re not dealing with a rich clientele. We’re working for the most part with young hustlers, guys who worked for airlines that have gone belly-up since deregulation. They know that low prices sell tickets and that you cannot get low prices with fancy extras. Here’s what we offer them.”

He tapped the first line of the next chart.

“We will sell airplanes if anyone wants to buy, and we’ll sell them cheaper than they can get them anywhere else. Only about ten percent of our business comes from sales, and that is good, because we make more money from leasing the planes.”

He tapped the second line of the chart.

“Our real moneymaker is leasing the aircraft, with one or even more crews; we pay their salaries and allowances, we take care of the
maintenance and insurance. In turn, the people doing the leasing—the so-called lessee—pays a guaranteed amount for a guaranteed amount of hours. The lessee pays the fuel costs, landing fees, crew expenses, and all the miscellaneous costs.”

Rod looked at them, beaming.

“What this means is that an airline can be set up with a minimum capital investment; all the money they raise can be used for operating expenses for the first two or three years, until they get on their feet. We really are in the business of creating instant airlines.”

Tom started to say something but Harry put his hand on his arm, nodding for Rod to go on.

“There are other ways to make money, too; we’ll do any variation on the lease the customer wants, as long as we are sure of making a good margin of profit. For example, we have what we call a ‘damp lease.’ That means we provide the aircraft but no cabin crew. Or we can give them a ‘dry lease’ meaning that we don’t provide insurance, maintenance, anything. But our bread and butter is the full lease.”

Tom couldn’t be repressed.

“Sounds good, but where on earth do you get the crews lined up and trained? How do you handle the maintenance?”

“We get them from the same source as the airplanes, older airlines with high cost structures that are going or have gone belly-up. There is an enormous pool of crews and maintenance facilities available. We have a huge file of applications on pilots, flight attendants, flight engineers, mechanics, you name it.”

He paused, took a drink of water, and went on.

“Remember, these aren’t people who were fired for incompetence, these are the people whose dreams of retirement imploded when big carriers like Braniff collapsed. They are eager to go to work, and appreciate the chance, even though the salaries are nothing like they earned before, and the benefits are minimal.”

“But how about the maintenance? We have some maintenance capacity in our company, but it’s mostly geared to business flying.”

“The beauty of it is that major airlines are still struggling to survive. They are trying not to do a Braniff and are cutting back flights and flying time. That means they have excess maintenance capacity, and are willing to run twenty-four/seven just to get our business. In fact, we are in a position to get concessions on maintenance rates because
they want our business—we give them a transfusion of ready cash they are dying for.”

Harry spoke up. “That’s got to be good politically; they may hate us for putting up rival airlines, but at least we’re giving them something back.”

Mae spoke up for the first time, surprising everyone but Rod.

“It is more than that, Harry. They are looking to the airlines we service as a model for cost cutting, for sure, but it’s tough on them because of all the built-in union agreements they have on pilot’s pay, hours worked, and so on. More importantly, they look on us as a negotiating instrument when it comes time to deal with the unions. They hold us up as an example of why they have to cut personnel slots and cut wages, and the unions don’t have much of a defense against that.”

Rod spoke. “Mom’s been helping me out. She learned so much in the real estate business and she has a fine eye for contractual detail. I’m going to show you some return on investment projections that we are making for the year, and then ask your advice.”

He pulled out the last chart and said, “As you see, if things continue the way they have, and I know that they will, you will have made something like a forty-two percent return on your investment this year. Next year it should be closer to fifty percent because of some particularly sweet deals we have coming up with foreign airlines—Africa and Southeast Asia, mainly. Farther out, it will probably decline, but I don’t think it will ever go below thirty percent, and if it does, we’ll be looking into something different. I’ve got some handouts here that you can ask your bean counters to look at. It lays it all out, down to the last dime.”