Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (30 page)

Rodriquez was breathing hard, and Harry watched him critically.

“You had a physical recently, Bob? Seems to me like you’re puffing a bit.”

“Well, it’s hard for an iron man like you, seventy-six and fit as a fiddle, to understand, but some of us old guys are not in the best of shape.”

Harry considered that for a while. It wasn’t surprising that Bob would have health problems, considering the tough, demanding covert life he’d led.

“You didn’t answer the question. Have you had a physical?”

Bob smiled. “Yes, and for a good reason. I’m going to start flying again, and they passed me with flying colors. I’m about ten pounds underweight, and they told me to stay that way if I could. But next week I’m going to start checking out in the company planes. I’ll begin with
the Cessna Caravan and work my way up to the Gulfstar V. I’ve cleared it with everyone, they told me no problem.”

“That’s great news. I stopped flying when they put me on Xanax a few years ago, and I miss it. I still fly with a check pilot, of course, and that’s what I’d advise you to do as well.”

Rodriquez didn’t say anything. He’d fly with a check pilot until he was current; after that, he’d be damned if he wouldn’t do his own flying.

Harry read the message on Rodriquez’s face and smiled. It was the kind of response he wanted.

“Are we ready to go for the big meeting? O’Malley wouldn’t have called us all here if it wasn’t something important.”

“When is he getting out? He’s gone as far as he can go as a four-star, and they cannot keep finding special jobs to keep him busy.”

“No, I think they will. He can stay in for another three years at least, if they still work things the way they used to. After that they might make him an Assistant Secretary or something—anything to keep his knowledge and energy in the Pentagon.”

Harry paused. This was dangerous ground. O’Malley had left the business world and returned to the Pentagon because of Bob Rodriquez’s crazy determination to take over Vance Shannon’s firm many years ago. All that was past history now, but he knew Rodriquez didn’t like to be reminded of it.

So it was quite a surprise to him when Rodriquez said, “It’s surprising how many lives I fucked up over time, isn’t it? Tom’s, maybe Nancy’s, Mae’s, Rod’s, Steve’s, probably Dennis, and maybe even you and Anna. I’m the one they should have put on Xanax, and they should have done it years ago.”

His tone was casual but it was evident he meant what he said. Harry tried to smooth it over. “That’s all in the past, Bob. You did what you had to do. We’ve all got demons driving us—look at Tom, look at Anna, look at me, for Christ’s sake, nobody’s perfect. Nancy’s a perfect example, she had her own demon and damn near ran our company into the ground. Nobody’s perfect.”

Rodriquez said nothing, just stared at the wire-splicer he still held in his hand.

Harry went on. “In a way it might have been a good thing. Our
companies actually got stronger because of your opposition, and God knows what you did for the country while you were undercover. They don’t hand out the Presidential Medal of Freedom to troublemakers.”

Rodriquez nodded, saying, “That’s the hardest secret I’ve ever been asked to keep. I want to tell everybody, and of course I can’t.”

Two months before, in a secret ceremony at the White House, William Jefferson Clinton had awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, to Rodriquez. The only people attending were O’Malley, Mae, Rod, and on Rodriquez’s special plea, Harry Shannon. Clinton was his usual charming self, pointedly remarking that while he could not say what the medal was being awarded for, he could tell those present that it was much deserved, so much so that even as well as they knew the recipient, they could never imagine what he had done.

“Someday you will be able to tell, and that will clear up everything for everybody. I’m glad Mae was there; it gives her some insight that she probably needed.”

Rodriquez stood up abruptly. “They’re due here in about ten minutes, and that crew is never late. I’m going to wash up.”

O’Malley had asked that all the central figures of what the industry called the “Vance Shannon gang” be present, and if possible, he wanted them to be able to stay over a day.

Nine minutes later the door burst open and they filed in with the precision of aviators and the deference of longtime friends, each urging the other to go ahead. V. R. Shannon and Rod led the way, V. R. slapping his uncle Harry on the shoulder and Rod unashamedly embracing his father in a long hug. Dennis Jenkins trailed after them, and the rear was brought up by an unusually boisterous Steve O’Malley, holding a videocassette over his head and yelling, “Behold the future, gents, I’m going to let you in on the hottest new weapon in aviation. But only after I give you some big news and a stern lecture.”

Rodriquez had spared no expense on turning the library into an electronic studio and there were more than a dozen leather recliners to choose from. Harry had already put out a few beers, knowing they would be passed over for the most part, and a larger set of bottled water and soft drinks.

O’Malley didn’t waste any time.

“You’ll probably remember what Norm Augustine called ‘The Last Supper’?” Augustine was chairman of Martin Marietta and one of the most articulate men in the industry.

Harry, V. R., and Dennis nodded. Bob Rodriquez said no, and his son stayed silent, not wanting his dad to be alone in not knowing something of pretty general knowledge.

“Well, briefly, back in 1993, the Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin . . .” He paused while the usual groan went up—Aspin was no friend to the military. “Moving right along, Aspin and Bill Perry invited the top aerospace people in the industry, informing them that they could expect at least a 40 percent reduction in defense spending in the future. The word was: consolidate, merge, or get out of the industry, because DOD wasn’t going to pay for overcapacity.”

O’Malley paused to drink from his water bottle and went on. “The budget had already declined from $600 billion in 1988 to $300 billion in 1993, and the companies were already hurting. Both Aspin and Perry were brutally straightforward. They said that they needed only one contractor for bombers, two contractors for rocket motors, two for tanks, one for submarines, and so on. The message was clear: the party was over.”

There was a general silence as each man sought to determine the import of O’Malley’s story to his own activities. O’Malley went on. “The trend to mergers started a year ago in March, when Lockheed acquired the General Dynamics fighter facility at Fort Worth.”

They all knew this one was close to O’Malley’s heart. He’d been a big proponent of the F-16, and he followed its success with a parent’s pride.

“Dan Tellep, Lockheed’s chairman, told me how that one came about. Bill Anders, the astronaut and chairman of General Dynamics, had come to him with a stunning proposal: he was asking to buy the Skunk Works. Bill was worried that GD lacked the engineering capacity to generate a follow-on project to the F-16. Dan refused, of course; the Skunk Works is part of Lockheed’s legend. Then Anders floored him, saying, ‘Well, how about Lockheed buying our Fort Worth facility? I’ll sell it to you for less than the value of the orders we already have on the books.’ ”

They laughed and O’Malley went on. “Dan said it took him about thirty seconds to realize what a great franchise the F-16 would be, and
suddenly, almost fifty years after the F-104, Lockheed was back in the fighter business.”

He looked around the room and said, “ ‘The Last Supper’ started a feeding frenzy. You remember that Martin acquired G.E. Aerospace in 1992, and Northrop swallowed up Grumman in March of this year. They call it Northrop Grumman, but it spells the end of Grumman except as a name. Tomorrow, they plan to announce the formal merger of Lockheed and Martin into the new Lockheed Martin Corporation. Norm Augustine calls it ‘a marriage of equals’ and the money boys on Wall Street are calling it a marriage made in heaven.”

O’Malley was a good stage manager, and he let the idea sink in. There were some individual conversations and finally V. R. spoke up. “General, what effect is all this going to have on Vance Shannon, Incorporated?”

Dennis Jenkins was usually quiet, just taking things in, but this time he said, “And how about SpaceVisions?”

“These are exactly the questions I wanted you to ask, and I’ve got the answer in this videocassette. But you both know that your firms benefit every time there is a big merger or consolidation, for the first step is always to cut costs and reduce staff; this means they have to go outside for some contracting help. But the main thing is that this merger forces a change of focus on the whole industry. Just look at who is wrapped up in the F-22, the only fighter program the Air Force has—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and two engine companies. That’s the ball game for the next few years, even if Boeing or McDonnell Douglas wins the joint strike fighter competition. Even though the field is dwindling down, we’ll see some more mergers in the near future—Northrop Grumman is already on the prowl, and you can look to some bidding wars between it and Lockheed Martin. Unless there’s a radical change we might see Northrop Grumman/McDonnell Douglas or McDonnell Douglas/Boeing or any combination of those famous names. It will just depend on the fit.”

Harry spoke up for the first time. “None of them will fit like Lockheed Martin; that’s a perfect dovetail. Maybe McDonnell Douglas-Boeing might make it, because McDonnell is mostly military business and Boeing is mostly civilian. Its new 777 is a knockout, first airplane designed entirely using a computer.”

O’Malley nodded. He had set them up perfectly for his purposes.

“As strange as it seems, the success of the 777 is a paradigm for the stuff I’m talking about. The old process of building mock-ups, prototypes, and a series of test vehicles is over for commercial aircraft, and it has to be over for other projects, too. Let’s put this merger stuff aside for a minute. I mentioned the Lockheed Martin merger because it is a macro thing in the industry. We all know the players, and it looks like a good deal—for them and for the country. But where does it put the little guy? Out in left field.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“Bob, you told me this room was perfectly secure. Any precautions we have to take?”

“Not a one. This beats the Pentagon’s tank any day for security.”

“And for ventilation, too! So let’s run the tape. There is no audio—they wouldn’t release the audio to me yet—but let’s watch it and I’ll try to answer your questions when it’s over.”

Rodriquez selected a back-projection format, and they sat quietly as the screen darkened, ran through the grainy black and white flashes of unedited tapes, and suddenly flashed on “Top Secret,” “General Atomics Corporation,” “July 3, 1993.”

No one besides O’Malley and the senior Rodriquez had ever heard of the firm before. Rodriquez had some contact with them in connection to his work for MacCready.

The first image was of a long runway. It could have been any one of a dozen abandoned World War II auxiliary landing strips that studded the desert between Los Angeles and Edwards.

O’Malley was virtually crooning as he said, “This is the airport at Adelanto—the name of the town means ‘progress’ and that’s what you’re about to see.”

What looked like an updated version of the old Ugly Stick radio-controlled aircraft rolled uncertainly to the center of the runway and waited there, vibrating.

It wasn’t a pretty aircraft by any stretch of the imagination. The long nose had a bulge at the very front where a real airplane would have had a canopy, then tapered back. The slender wings drooped slightly, and the skinny spring steel landing gear seemed as if it was made from piano wire. The undercarriage was barely able to keep the slab vertical surfaces, drooping with a forty-five-degree anhedral, from touching the concrete. In the rear, a high revving engine drove a pusher propeller.

V. R. spoke up. “Looks like an anorexic VariEze!”

O’Malley smiled, knowing that every modern design owed something to Burt Rutan even if he didn’t have a direct hand in it.

They watched as the strange little aircraft accelerated, the camera taking in a worker, clad in T-shirt, shorts, and white baseball cap, giving it scale. Another man, obviously in Army uniform, was at the side of the runway, also filming the takeoff. The drone then lifted off, climbing swiftly as models do and quickly establishing a pattern for landing. It flew back to the runway, seemed to drift to the left, corrected, touched down on the left gear first, then slammed its nose wheel down. It was over in a few minutes.

Jenkins spoke up, almost for the first time that day.

“That’s it? We’ve been flying drones since Kettering’s Bug in World War I! Reginald Denny made them for target practice, and we used Ryan Firebees in combat. What makes this special, Steve? And how could it possibly be connected to space?”

“Dennis, this is the future, pure and simple, for little firms who want to stay in the business. The Air Force is going to stop putting pilots in harm’s way and getting their ass shot off, like Tom Shannon did more than once. This one is going to be called the Predator—I’ve got dibs on naming it—and it is the start of a revolution. And it is related to space because it can be controlled via a satellite relay.”

Harry could not conceal his incredulity. O’Malley was usually right, but this seemed to stretch the point.

“Who was that guy in the Army uniform?”

O’Malley came as close as he ever did to blushing.

“I hate to say it, but this started out as an Army program. They don’t know it yet, but I’m going to steal it right out from under them. This project should belong to the Air Force!”

Shaking his head, Harry went on. “You are going to steal this airplane to fight with MiGs?”

“Not with this, no, that’s what the F-15s do now and the F-22s will do later. But when we’ve established air superiority, we’ll fly these unmanned aerial vehicles—UAV is the preferred acronym right now—over enemy territory, day and night, and we’ll pick off anything that moves. Just let a camel driver try to move across from one oasis to another and we’ll nail him cold. But later, ten years from now, twenty
maybe, we’ll be ready to start building real combat vehicles that will take on the MiGs and whatever else they throw at us.”