Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (20 page)

Harry and Tom were impressed. Rod had repeatedly assured them that things were going well, but they had no idea that their leasing scheme was prospering on this scale.

Tom said, “What in the hell do you want advice from us for? You’ve got the program knocked, as we used to say in cadets. I can tell from the look on Harry’s face that he’s as amazed and as pleased as I am.”

“Well, here’s the advice I want. My mom, your friend Mae here, has been in this from the start, advising me. She has her real estate business well in hand, and a good set of managers to run it. I want her to come here full-time and run this operation, because I’ve got some other things I need to do.”

He looked meaningfully at Harry and went on. “I’ll still be here to work with her most of the time, but I’ve got to carve out some independent work time for myself. When I do, I won’t take any salary from the company.”

Harry knew immediately what he meant. Rod wanted to join him in finding out what happened to his father. It took Tom a bit longer to catch on. When he did, he flushed and said, “OK, I understand. I don’t approve—you know my problems with your dad, but I know you have to do what you have to do. After a performance like this, what can I say?”

Harry said, “You say yes, like I do. Welcome aboard, Mae, and keep up the fantastic work.”

They spent another twenty minutes discussing details, but Tom was paling, and Harry wanted to get him home. Before he left he said, “Rod, I’m proud of you doing what you are going to do. I want to help. Come see me in Palos Verdes and let’s see how we can work together on your project.”

Rodriquez was glad that they were going to let Mae substitute for him and grateful for the offer of aid in finding his father. He knew that Harry had spent a lot of time and money on this already, and he might have objected to cooperating.

“I will, Harry. And thanks. And when the time is right, thank Tom, too. I know what this cost him.”

December 31, 1983
Palos Verdes

T
HERE HAD NOT
been so much emotion in the old-fashioned tile-roofed Palos Verdes house since Tom’s return from Vietnam a decade before, when he was a newly released—if more than battered—POW. But there was an enormous difference. Then Vance Shannon had been the invalid given a new lease on life because his son was home from the wars, not well perhaps, but home. Tom’s presence had been a tonic to him and certainly made his last days happier.

Now the reverse was true. While the family gathered in the library, discussing Harry’s bombshell, Tom lay near death in the master
bedroom, not so much fighting for his life as quietly accepting his condition. Day by day, his heart condition grew worse, and both he and the family had refused any radical treatment.

With so little time left to him, Tom didn’t need to know that Bob Rodriquez was alive and well. Four long months of investigation by Harry and Rod had gone nowhere. But the team of professional detectives working for Harry had at last verified that the elder Rodriquez had neither been killed in the crash nor was he a renegade dope smuggler. Instead, the crash had been a cover story for a new assignment. The detectives didn’t know—or were not telling—what the new assignment was, but it was more than enough that they now knew that Bob Rodriquez was alive, well, and working in an honorable, if very dangerous profession.

Tom was sleeping quietly, and Nancy and Harry walked down toward the library.

“You are right to keep this from Tom; there’s no way it could make him happy, and it might well upset him. I think he derived some satisfaction from the idea that Bob was dead, and that he had met an unhappy end.”

He squeezed Nancy’s arm.

“Yes, and you know that wasn’t like the old Tom. Somehow I think he distilled all his resentment of his torture as a POW, all the years he lost in Hanoi, into his hatred of Bob. When he was a younger man, he would have shrugged off any unhappiness about a business deal, even the attempted takeover; it just wouldn’t have mattered that much to him. But he was so badly treated by the Vietnamese that he just couldn’t take the problems with Bob.”

“It’s strange, he never said anything against the Vietnamese as a people; he did talk about the evil guard—what did he call him, Rabbit?—once in a while. But somehow I think Tom began to see Rodriquez as the sum of all bad things; it was easier to hate a known, visible target.”

There were tears in Nancy’s eyes as she said, “I hope he finds some peace, now. He’s been through so much.”

The rest of the family was gathered in the library where there had been so many New Year’s Eve celebrations in the past. It had been Vance Shannon’s custom to gather the clan, put out a noble buffet, and recount the year’s happenings at his business. For the most part these
had been happy occasions, for there were only a few years when either a slump in business or outside events dampened the mood. Tonight there was an unusual mixture of sadness over Tom’s decline and euphoria over knowing that Bob Rodriquez was not only alive, but that his reputation was untarnished.

There was plenty to be happy about in terms of the results of the family’s widespread business holdings. Despite having retired, assuming a chairman emeritus role, Harry now acted as the pater familias. He had the firm’s chief financial officer prepare a brief survey of the firm’s achievements as a preview of the coming annual report. He said to Nancy, “This is so different from the early days. Dad would get up and say something like ‘Well, we made a little money last year, but we’re going to have to watch our Ps and Qs this year,’ and that would be it. Now I’ve got a sixteen-page two-color brochure to hand out, and I only understand about half of it.”

Nancy nodded. Curiously, she understood the brochure very well, for it was a sixteen-page reproach to her time as head of the company. No one had intended it that way, and perhaps no one else saw it, but she realized that the company she had run almost into the ground was now prospering as never before. It hurt, but she said nothing. She had ruined the evening on a few of these year-end briefings in the past. She would not ruin tonight’s.

Harry stood up, surveying the room. There were about the same number of people there, but the mix was different. Three seminal figures were missing, of course: Vance, Tom, and Bob Rodriquez. And the disposition of the room had changed. Where once there had been an unconscious grouping of “friends of Tom,” and “friends of Bob,” there was now a homogeneous mixture of family and friends. It reflected the corporate new look of Vance Shannon, Incorporated, with its many divisions and associated companies. Rod was there with Mae, representing the incredibly successful AdVanceAir Leasing firm. Dennis Jenkins waited quietly. He was now president of SpaceVisions, the former ActOn company. It had been a subsidiary of Allied Aviation briefly, until Dennis gained enough shares to make it a private company once again. He sat next to Anna—who was not drinking, hadn’t been for almost three years now. On the other side of the big fireplace sat the newly minted Brigadier General Steve O’Malley, talking earnestly with Tom’s grief-stricken son, V. R. And quietly in a corner, taking no
notes, but taking it all in, was Warren Bowers, who was working on a second volume of Vance Shannon’s biography.

Harry stood up, causing Anna to wince as he tapped on his Waterford crystal champagne glass with a spoon.

“Welcome again, everyone, to the annual Vance Shannon Memorial debriefing.”

They laughed, knowing that Vance would have writhed at such a remark.

“We’ll keep this short, for obvious reasons tonight. I’ve given you all the first draft of what will be the company’s annual report; there might be some changes, but this is close enough, and you’ll see that Vance Shannon, Incorporated, did very well indeed, as did our new subsidiary, AdVanceAir Leasing.”

There were subdued cries of “Hear! Hear!”

“I’d like to propose four toasts, tonight—that ought to be enough to get us oiled up. Then we’ll talk, as Vance would have done, about the big events of the last year and what might be coming up in the future. Then I’ll throw it open to questions and comments. Nancy keeps reminding me that the cold food on the buffet is getting warm, and the warm food is getting cold, so I’ll be quick about it.”

He raised his glass and gave the toast that Vance always started out with, a reminder of his days flying combat in World War I: “To those who have gone West.”

They sipped at their champagne, with Anna and Harry, as always, drinking club soda.

Then he said: “To a great American hero, Tom Shannon.”

Nancy looked at V. R.; both their eyes were filled with tears as they drank.

“To another great American hero, who did so much for his country and for this company, and who will be back with us soon, we hope—Bob Rodriquez.”

There were more murmurs of “Hear! Hear!” and Rod reached over and kissed his mother Mae.

Finally, Harry raised his glass again. “And last, to the man who started this family and these companies, an ace, a test pilot, and a magnificent leader—Vance Shannon.”

There was a spontaneous cheer as they drank.

Harry, emotional, waited a moment to gain control of his voice
and then said, “Now, let’s look back. Who has any comments they’d like to make on the year?”

V. R. stood up. “First, let’s give Steve O’Malley a round of applause for his first star! For a guy they said was washed up as a colonel, he’s done pretty well.”

It was true. O’Malley had been a fast burner, but run into a bureaucratic brick wall that seemed to doom his Air Force career. He’d stepped into civil life briefly, made a fortune with Bob Rodriquez’s help, and then wangled his way back into a slot at the Pentagon where his talents were recognized.

O’Malley waved, and nodded across the room to his wife Sally, who was sitting with V. R.’s beautiful blond wife, Ginny. Both women watched the room with wary amusement; both were “pilot’s widows,” with their husbands gone most of the time. Both had more than once teetered on the edge of getting a divorce before they finally realized that they were hooked and that there might be worse things than being married to a pilot.

O’Malley said, “Congratulations on what looks like a great year. I know it’s obvious but I want to remind us that we owe a lot to Ronald Reagan, who stopped Carter’s unilateral disarmament and started making America strong.”

V. R. said, “Roger that! It was about time, too! The stupid press makes fun of him about his Strategic Defense Initiative, calling it Star Wars and stuff, but the practical fact is that he’s going to spend the Soviet Union into the ground. They will never be able to keep up with what we’re doing. Mark my words, with things like starting the B-1 program, adding fighter wings, adding missiles, Reagan is going to win the Cold War.”

The room went quiet. V. R. was young, but his statement was exactly the caliber of the predictions that Vance Shannon used to make, and Vance was rarely wrong. Suddenly the crowd looked at him in a new light. V. R. was now the heir apparent, even though he was solidly locked in to an Air Force career.

Rod spoke up: “V. R., I hope you are right. Dennis here has been saying something similar for months. That there is really light at the end of the Cold War tunnel.”

Jenkins said, “Right on, V. R. And look on the commercial side. Boeing built almost two thousand 727s before they stopped production
and they just rolled out their thousandth 737. I’ll bet they build five thousand 737s before they’re done. And the Soviet Union cannot keep up there either; they are building some good-looking airliners, but they just don’t match the economics of a Boeing product. Their engines suck up too much fuel, they need too much maintenance.”

O’Malley broke in. “They are better at shooting them down. Did you read their account of shooting down the Korean Airline 747? It was simply murderous bureaucratic incompetence.”

They were quiet and Mae spoke up. “Steve, you must be pretty happy about the way the F-16 has gone. How many have they built so far?”

He smiled. The F-16 had been his pet project, one that had run him into the career minefield because his boss had opposed it.

“Number one thousand has rolled out. They are going to make a lot more before that line ends.”

Rod nodded happily. He hadn’t said much, but he had a point to make, and he wanted Warren Bowers to take note of it.

“Folks, it’s been a great year, and next year will be better. But things are changing. Vance Shannon was in on the start of the jet age, and he told my dad that they had witnessed only the first two stages. The first stage had been based on the novelty of the jet engine and the speed it provided. That’s why the Boeing 707, the Douglas DC-8, the Caravelle, and the rest of them were so successful. They made flying easy, fast, and comfortable. And safe, too. Vance said the second stage would be based on size—and he was right again with the 747, the Lockheed L-1011, and the Douglas DC-10. They made flying relatively cheap; it wasn’t any faster, and it was a lot less comfortable, but it brought air transport to the masses on an economic basis.”

Suddenly flushing, he said, “And my dad told me about the third phase of the jet age, the one we are just entering now. It is one that our firms will be able to take advantage of, if we play our cards right. The third phase is going to be based on ever more economical engines and on cleaned-up aerodynamics. You’ll see huge engines with 60,000 and 100,000 pounds of thrust, and more.”

He stopped and turned to Harry. “Harry, you remember telling me about watching Dick Rutan take off in his little fiberglass airplane?”

“Sure, Tom was amazed by it, just as I was.”

“Well, that is, in microcosm, the future. You are going to see exotic
aerodynamics, exotic materials, and another whole generation of engines that will carry us into the twenty-first century and beyond.”

There was a general silence, for two reasons. This was the first time Rod had ever made a prediction like this, and he sounded just like his father—which was promising in the extreme. The second was concern over whether a change of this scope was really in the best interest of their firms.