The Fly Boys (40 page)

Gold felt sick to his stomach.

“Speechless, huh?” Campbell chuckled.

Gold savagely punched the intercom button.

“Yes, sir?” the secretary responded.

Gold put his hand over the telephone’s mouthpiece. “Get Mr. Quinn up here on the double,” he whispered into the intercom.

“The airlines made quite a strong case for us to get into the race,” Campbell was boasting. “They pointed out how it was unhealthy
for the industry for one company to have a monopoly on supplying jetliners. Competition in quality
and
price is what the American way is all about.”

“I hope you’ve got deep pockets,” Gold warned.

“Raising money has never been the problem for me that it’s been for you, Herm.”

Gold grimaced. Some thirty years ago Campbell had joined GAT to keep track of the company’s finances, back when the fledgling
company had been long on ideas but short on cash. Campbell, to his credit, had worked financial miracles for GAT, but Gold
wondered if the son of a bitch was ever going to let him forget it.

“Tim, I know that you can come up with the money,” Gold said. “But you’re going to need a viable jetliner design to spend
it on. You’ve got to admit that you’ve never in your life had a creative idea that didn’t involve a decimal point.”

“It so happens A-L already has its design,” Campbell replied. “Don’t forget I have Don Harrison working for me as my chief
engineer.”

“Oh, yeah, young Harrison,” Gold acknowledged. “I think I’ve met him a few times at industry conferences. Yeah, I do remember
him. He struck me as being very bright. I’m surprised you’re willing to let your ace in the hole get out and around.”

“Calling him ‘bright’ is like calling the ocean deep, Herman,” Campbell said. What other thirty-two-year-old guy is running
the R&D department of a major aviation concern?”

“He’s that good, huh?” Gold said as his secretary stuck her head into the office.

“Mr. Quinn’s door is still locked, and his sign is still up,” she whispered. “His secretary says he’s taken his telephone
off the hook.”

Gold nodded to dismiss the secretary. That business with the telephone off the hook was Teddy’s favorite trick when he was
brainstorming and wanted to be left alone.

“Harrison may be a wunderkind, all right,” Gold told Campbell, “but you’re still going to find it very expensive getting past
the trial and error phase to come up with something the airlines are going to like.”

“We already have, Herm,” Campbell said smugly. “We’ve previewed our proposal to the airlines, and they’ve endorsed it.”

“But,” Gold began, astonished, “how
could
you? You said you’ve only been at it for a few months.”

“Righto.”

“But it took us—” Gold paused as all the pieces in the puzzle finally fell into place. “You have our proposal, don’t you?”
he demanded softly. “That’s how you were able to streamline your preliminary design phase.
Answer me
, you fucking crook! You have our proposal.”

“Now, Herman,” Campbell patronized, “you
know
there’s no sense asking me such a dumb question. If I admitted that you were right you could cause A-L all kinds of legal
trouble.”

But that’s what happened, all right
, Gold thought. The airlines—at least one of them, at any rate—had leaked GAT’s proposal.

“Why did you call to tell me this?” Gold demanded harshly.

“Remember, Herman?” Campbell spat into the phone, his voice cutting. “I always said I’d get even. It looks like payback day
is at hand.”

Gold, cursing, slammed down the phone. Campbell’s laughter was still ringing in his ears as he rushed out of his office.

“I’ll be in the design department,” he told his secretaries as he passed them on his way to the elevators. “I’ll be in conference
with Mr. Quinn,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Hold all my calls. I don’t want to be disturbed.”’

The issue was not that A-L would try to copy the 909, Gold thought as he rang for the elevator. Campbell was not stupid; he
would know that a direct steal of even some minor detail of the 909 would give GAT all the opening it needed to nail A-L in
court.

Where the fuck is that elevator?
he fumed, and then gave up on it and headed for the stairs.

No, he didn’t need to lose any sleep over the likelihood of A-L building a duplicate of the GC-909. His fear was exactly the
opposite: that the A-L’s jetliner was going to be
different
.

Any complex design had drawbacks, and airplanes were no exception. A-L, by getting to examine the GC-909’s design, and also
hearing the airlines’ criticisms of the airplane, could design out all of those sticking points in their own jetliner while
it was still on the drawing board. Meanwhile, GAT was stuck with what it had: the production lines were already being tooled
to produce a full-scale prototype of the military AreoTanker version, and GAT was in too deep financially to try and counter
Amalgamated-Landis’s advantage by modifying its basic design.

Gold began hurrying down the stairs a little faster toward Teddy’s office. There had to be
something
he could do to counter Campbell, but what?

Panicking wasn’t going to help, that was for sure, even
if
he’d worked so hard to make the GC-909 happen. Even
if
the 909 was meant to be GAT’s replacement for its piston-engined Monarch series, its ticket into the future of commercial
aviation.

Even
if
the airlines played follow the leader and deserted the 909 for whatever Amalgamated-Landis came up with, and GAT was ruined.

“
Remember, Herman
?” Campbell had laughed. “
Payback day is at hand
.”

Back in ‘33 Campbell had waged a stock battle against Gold to seize control of Skyworld Airlines. Campbell had ultimately
ended up with Skyworld, but not before Gold had forced him to pay dearly for the privilege. Campbell had never talked much
about it, but Gold had always suspected that Tim was holding a grudge, and now his suspicions were confirmed.

Gold needed to talk with Teddy, to tell him what had happened. Screw Campbell’s boy genius of a chief engineer.
His
chief engineer had been with him from the beginning. Together, there was no problem that the two of them couldn’t solve.

The temporary replacement was not at her desk outside Teddy’s office as Gold barged into the design studio and hurried down
the center aisle to Teddy’s office. The door was still closed. That childishly scribbled “Do
Not
Disturb” sign was still taped to it.

Gold knocked on the door, but there was no answer. “Teddy! It’s me!” he called out, but he got no response at all, not even
the usual one, Teddy’s crotchety “
Go ‘way, Herman! I’m busy in here making you money!
”

Gold tried the doorknob. It was locked.

“He’s been in there all morning, Mr. Gold,” one of the engineers volunteered. “Haven’t seen him once today.”

Gold felt a chill travel down his spine.
Now don’t be stupid
, he lectured himself.
He’s all right in there. He’s just working, or better yet, sleeping
.

He went to the vacant desk. There was no intercom. Teddy refused to have one, calling it just one more distraction from his
work.

Gold dialed Teddy’s number on the telephone. He got the busy signal he’d expected due to Teddy’s having taken the telephone
off the hook.

Gold hung up the phone and stared at the door. At that silly sign. “Oh, Jesus Christ….” he murmured.

He abruptly raced toward the locked door and slammed his shoulder against it, but all he got was a tingling shoulder for his
effort.

He looked around at the engineers, who were staring at him, shocked.

“Break this door open!” he ordered. They kept staring. “Move!” he yelled.

Two of them did, slamming their shoulders against the door in unison. It still held.

Of course the door is holding
, Gold swore to himself. It was steel and fire-resistant, with a dead-bolt lock. Now that GAT had set up its Toy Shop project
and begun doing work for the CIA, Gold himself had specified that all the doors to offices where sensitive files were kept
be replaced with high-security units.

He glanced at Suzy’s desk. He had also issued a memo to his project managers and senior executives, forbidding them for security
reasons from giving office keys to their secretaries, but Teddy had never obeyed a rule in his life—

Please don’t let him have started now
, Gold thought as he pulled out the desk’s center drawer and dumped its contents on the carpet. The engineers were still throwing
themselves against the door, and Gold was on his hands and knees, rummaging through the spilled paper clips, pencils, and
memo pads for that fucking key when the temporary secretary finally appeared.

Gold looked up as she stood there, an appalled expression on her face.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you think you’re doing?”

It was so ludicrous that Gold burst out laughing. “I’m Herman Gold,” he managed finally. “Where’s the key to this office?”

“I don’t know,” the woman shrugged. “I’m only here for today.” Her eyes widened. “Say, if you were
really
Herman Gold you’d know that it’s against the rules to leave office keys lying around.” She hurried to the telephone. “I’m
calling security,” she said.

“Of course! A pass key!” Gold jumped to his feet and hurried to the desk, where he snatched the receiver from her hand.

“You’re in big trouble now,
whoever
you are,” the secretary squawked in outrage.

Gold dialed the number for security. It was busy.

He threw the phone down, looked around wildly, and then collared one of the engineers. “You get somebody from security with
a pass key to this office,” he ordered. “Tell them it’s an emergency.”

“Yes, sir!” The engineer went racing off.

“And somebody call the infirmary!” Gold shouted. “Tell them I think Mr. Quinn is sick, and that we’d better have a nurse—”

“Mr. Gold!” One of the other engineers was sitting on the carpet, grinning as he removed the key that had been cellophane-taped
to the underside of the desk’s center drawer.

Gold snatched the key and fumbled it into the lock. He twisted it, and the door swung open. He went into the office, while
several others stayed bunched up in the doorway.

Teddy in his white lab coat, his shoes off, and his glasses pushed up on his head, was perched on his stool, bent over his
drafting table with his head resting on his folded arms.

He’s just sleeping
, Gold thought. He went over to Teddy and gently prodded the man’s shoulder.

“Wake up,” he murmured. “Teddy, wake up!”

Teddy began to move. Gold could feel his tension draining. “You old bastard,” he laughed, turning away. “What a scare you
gave me—”

From the doorway the secretary shrilly screamed as Teddy’s head and shoulders slid off the drafting table and he began to
topple from his stool.

Gold spun around and lunged, just managing to catch Teddy. Together thay sank slowly to the carpet, where Gold sat cross-legged,
cradling him in his arms.

“Hell of a way to treat your best friend,” Gold murmured. He pressed his lips to Teddy’s forehead. His own tears felt shockingly
warm against Teddy’s flesh, which was cold and pale as marble. “After all we’ve been through, how can you leave me in a bind
like this? Tim Campbell just called me, you know. It looks like we’re up against it again, old friend. Like that time back
in ‘25, remember? When the government wanted to take our mail routes away?”

He held Teddy in his arms, talking to him while the nurse came and went, until the ambulance attendants appeared to gently
pry the body from his embrace and take it away.

Steve and his wingman Mike DeAngelo brought their Shooting Stars in low in a surprise attack upon the commie airfield. As
they crested the hills overlooking Kumch’ong, Steve was braced for automatic antiaircraft-weapons fire. He was surprised that
there seemed to be no ground defenses in place. There seemed to be nothing down there but construction equipment and supplies,
and the hundreds of laborers who were now scattering from the bomb-cratered strip littered with the charred remains of airplanes
and ground-support vehicles.

Last week Kumch’ong and the commie airfields like it in northwestern Korea had been savagely hit by B-29s. Today’s attack
was meant to stop the Reds from putting the facility back into operation, and to cost them their precious Soviet-built construction
equipment.

Close to the airstrip, near what was left of the burned-out compound, a large tent city had been erected to house the laborers.
The smoke from the myriad cookfires and charcoal braziers scattered amid the tenementlike cluster of canvas structures rose
to form a gray haze over the area.

“You take the tents, I’ve got the airstrip,” Steve told DeAngelo.

“Wilco.” DeAngelo’s silver and orange bird banked off toward its prey.

The laborers out in the open on the airstrip had dropped their picks and shovels and were scattering, but Steve did not bother
to strafe. He’d let the napalm canisters shackled beneath his wings do the dirty work. As he dived on the airstrip, he released
the canisters and then pulled up and away as the napalm hit the ground and detonated into a thunderous, rolling fog of crimson
fire and oily black smoke. The bulldozers, steamrollers, trucks, and other heavy equipment, the piles and barrels of construction
material all vanished beneath that high tide of flames.

As Steve came around, he saw DeAngelo drop his canisters on the tent city, obliterating it. The tents burned like paper. The
two fires spawned by the F-80s quickly united to turn Kumch’ong into hell on earth.

“Let’s go home,” Steve radioed as he gained altitude and banked his Shooting Star onto a southward course.