O’Malley gave his trademark booming laugh and said, “Put them down in the ‘future developments’ file, Dennis. It’ll be a little while before they shrink down that much, but you’re right, it’s coming.”
They climbed the long ramps up toward the fifth-floor E ring, where the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Bill Perry, was holding a highly classified briefing.
“Do you know why Perry called this meeting, Steve?”
“I hear it’s to level the playing field with the various contractors. He’s going to tell everybody as much as he can about stealth research, so that there will be more competition. Right now, Lockheed and Northrop are way ahead of everybody else, and DOD wants to be sure that others can get in, so prices will come down a bit.”
Smartly dressed Air Policemen were checking credentials at the door to the secure briefing room Perry had chosen. Jenkins nudged O’Malley.
“Look who’s ahead of us in line. Tom Shannon and V. R.”
O’Malley shook his head. “That’s easy to figure out. Tom is here as a contractor to be briefed, of course. And V. R. is doing test work at Edwards, probably getting in position to fly the prototype stealth aircraft. I sort of got him on the fast track for that. Glad to see he’s made captain.”
They were able to exchange greetings with their competitors as they filed in to their assigned seats, O’Malley giving the “let’s have a drink afterward” signal to Tom Shannon before they sat down.
Instead of the usual laundry lists of greetings and introductions, a door opened and Bill Perry walked in, moving directly to the podium, all business and intent on wasting no time.
Perry gave a brief history of the stealth program, pointing out its historical antecedents and the recent rise in research and development funding in the field. He pointed out that there was no single stealth technology, but that success lay in the proper synthesis of many technologies. Finally he admitted that there had been flight tests of some vehicles.
With that he folded his notes, said “Good day, gentlemen,” and strode from the room.
The crowd was still for a moment and then there was a sudden uproar.
Tom Shannon was especially furious. “What the hell was that about? We don’t know any more now than before we came in. This whole thing was a waste of time.”
He moved across the room to catch up with O’Malley and Jenkins.
“What do you think this was for, Steve? He had all of us come in, then tossed us a softball. I feel like submitting a voucher for time and travel expenses.”
O’Malley shook his head as he was shaking Tom’s hand.
“Tom, I don’t know. The only thing I can think is that he had to get on the record about there being flight tests. Otherwise there was no point in the meeting.”
Jenkins and V. R. were talking quietly.
“Tell me, V. R., do you know anything about the flight tests?”
“I’m like Sergeant Schultz, ‘I know nothing.’ ” But it was obvious from the expression on his face that he did.
Jenkins excused himself and grabbed O’Malley’s arm. He took him to the corner of the room and lowered his voice.
“There’s something wrong here. I suspect one of the contractors is way ahead with stealth—but the government’s afraid of giving it a monopoly. That tells me that the other contractor will win the next stealth contract—on the so-called Advanced Tactical Bomber.”
O’Malley pondered this for a bit.
“We’re pretty sure that Lockheed is ahead of us now on stealth; there’s no hard evidence, it’s just the way that the contracts are being handled. And Northrop’s not getting the results it wants. So I guess the bad news is that we won’t have much to do with the stealth fighter, and the good news is that we probably have a lock on the stealth bomber.”
“I hope you’re right, ’cause if you’re wrong, ActOn won’t have anything to act on in the stealth area at all.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE PASSING PARADE: Margaret Thatcher, Conservative, becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain; Jane M. Byrne is first woman mayor of Chicago; Congress bails out Chrysler Corporation; Soviet Union invades Afghanistan; Sally Field wins Best Actress Oscar; “black hole” discovered in middle of Milky Way; Pope John Paul II tours United States; Mother Teresa awarded Nobel Prize; Sweeney Todd on Broadway; Sony “Walkman” tape player becomes fad.
June 27, 1979
Over Lebanon
V. R. Shannon jabbed his gloved finger under his oxygen mask, letting sweat trickle out, and wondered what the hell he was doing in the infamous “Battle Triangle” of Lebanon, instead of flying over the quiet reaches of Area 51 in Nevada. There he had only to fly the quirky Have Blue; here he was a no-man in a no-man’s-land.
The sharp, quick communications from the Israeli Grumman E-2C Hawkeye reminded him: he was there to kill Syrian MiGs and bring back data to the USAF on the F-15’s performance in combat. No one, not even his darling Ginny, knew where he was—the mission was too secret. The United States could never acknowledge that it had an active duty Air Force pilot flying combat missions with the Israeli Air Force. He carried no identification material at all—no papers, no dog tag, nothing—and he had made a not-too-cheery commitment not to be taken alive if he was shot down.
Security was strict even for security-minded Israel. He had been introduced to his suspicious fellow pilots simply as Captain S. It was pointless, because he had been the instructor pilot for two of them when the Israeli Air Force got its first F-15s. Then he had become quite friendly with Dan Shapira and Beba Hurevitz; both gave him a wink and a nod at the introduction, but said no more. The other two pilots remained polite but wary of him until the first two indoctrination flights, when he demonstrated his proficiency and his gunnery prowess. They all spoke English on the ground, but in the air language remained the big barrier despite his two-week crash course at the language school in Monterrey. There they had concentrated on flying terminology, much of it derived from English practice.
Now he was number four in a flight of F-15s, Shapira in the lead, cruising at twenty thousand feet where there were no contrails to give them away. Israel was conducting raids on terrorist bases in the areas under Syrian control, and the intercepted radio communications showed that the Syrian Air Force was active. An Israeli Grumman Hawkeye command and control airplane—a sort of “mini-AWACS”—was watching the area, alert for any reaction from Syria.
As they turned over Sidon, the Hawkeye radar operator called: “Turn to 360 degrees; two formations of MiG-21s.”
Shannon knew that the MiGs were being sent to attack the Israeli F-4s striking PLO encampments. Strange war, with the F-4s being bombers and the F-15s their escort. He knew the Phantom pilots would prefer to handle the MiGs on their own, once they had dropped their ordnance. Minutes later V. R. picked up the two MiG formations on his own radar. On Shapira’s command, the F-15s lit their afterburners and dropped down on the still unsuspecting Syrians.
The late-model MiG-21s, suddenly aware of the F-15s’ presence, broke off their diving attack on the F-4s and turned to run. It was too late.
Heart pounding in his first combat, V. R. mumbled, “Dad, I hope I do as well as you did,” and saw three MiGs already spiraling down, trailing smoke. As his accelerating F-15 moved into firing range, he locked on his target, fired his Shafir missile, and watched with satisfaction as it flew right up the Syrian MiG’s tailpipe to explode. Seconds before there was a tiny camouflaged triangle of an airplane, flown by a living, breathing Syrian pilot; now there was just a big red ball surrounded by black smoke drifting above the barren landscape below.
As V. R. climbed back up to altitude, he was surprised to see his flight of F-15s form around him. The radio crackled and Shapira’s voice came on: “Congratulations on your kill, Captain! You lead us back to base.”
The flight back was less than thirty minutes. V. R. smiled all the way.
December 21, 1979
Edwards Air For
ce Base, California
HARRY SHANNON RECOGNIZED the slim, slightly stooped figure immediately. Once the maverick of swept-wing aviation, R. T. Jones was thin as ever, slightly stooped, and, Harry guessed, perhaps using a little Grecian Formula on his slicked-back hair.
“Dr. Jones, you won’t remember me . . .”
“Harry Shannon! Of course I remember you! How could I forget Vance Shannon’s son, after you flew me all over Europe?”
In the late spring of 1945, Harry had flown a C-47 carrying his father and the elite of American aeronautics deep into Europe to ferret out the secrets of the Luftwaffe. R. T. Jones, along with Theodore von Karman and others, had ruthlessly gone through the German engineering records, seeking whatever they could find that was in advance of American practice.
It had been a particularly satisfying trip for Jones, who had previously postulated that at very high speeds swept wings would have far less drag than straight wings, and been politely told by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics that he was dead wrong. Jones always felt that the NACA’s negative reaction was in part because he was a self-taught engineer and did not fit the academic mold. But the German data—and German airplanes like the Messerschmitt Me 262—proved that Jones was absolutely right, and he gained his deserved stature in the engineering community as swept wings became standard for jets.
Jones said, “It was a great time. But I don’t believe mankind has learned anything from the wars. Look what’s going on in the Middle East. Poor people oppressed on all sides, and their sorry governments using hatred against Israel and the United States to take their minds off their poverty. What do you think of this business in Iran?”
On November 4, Iranian students under orders from the new Iranian government seized the United States embassy in Tehran and were now holding sixty-six U.S. citizens hostage. Jones’s comment touched on a sensitive issue with Harry. Still outraged by the event, he forgot his usual policy of never talking politics, saying, “It doesn’t make any sense. They think we are weak, because President Carter has kept chopping down the size of the military. Canceling the B-1 was bad, but it was just a symptom. You lose all international respect if the world knows you are willing to disarm unilaterally.”
Jones nodded. “You’d have thought we’d have learned our lesson with Hitler. You’ve got to stop these rabble-rousers when they are still small, before they have too much influence.”
“It will be interesting to see what the Soviet Union will do. They love to see us sucked into small wars. And they have a huge interest in the area, they have for centuries.”
“We have to worry about Iraq, too. They are getting close to having a nuclear weapon, and if they have it, they’ll use it—maybe against Iran, but more probably against Israel.”
Both men shook their heads, silent now in their frustration, then Jones spoke, “I was sorry to learn of your father’s passing, Harry.”
“Yes, it was sad. But we are losing so many of the great ones now. Just in the last year or two, we’ve lost Willy Messerschmitt, Barnes Wallis, Bill Lear, Wernher von Braun—it is really sort of melancholy to be an engineer nowadays.”
“Well, you’re looking good, but you’re just a kid of fifty or so, aren’t you?”
“I wish—I’m sixty-one and cannot believe it. And you were born in 1910, I know, so you’re ahead of the curve. And still pitching swept wings!”
Jones laughed. “No, this time, it’s a swing wing. Look, here it comes now. Tom McMurtry is flying it—I hope all goes well.”
Harry was there to witness the flight of the Ames-Dryden AD-1 oblique wing aircraft in the hope it would have some application to problems he was working on in a “deep black” black stealth aircraft program. Their research showed that range was a problem with stealth aircraft, and Jones’s oblique wing innovation was a promising new approach.
They stood quietly as McMurtry taxied past, the two tiny jet engines putting out an ear-piercing whistle.
Harry noticed Jones shivering.
“It’s cold for Palmdale, Dr. Jones; can’t be much more than fifty degrees! Would you like my jacket? I’m feeling perfectly warm.”
Jones shook his head, laughing. “No, I’m delighted it’s cold. Those engines only put out about two hundred pounds of thrust each; the colder the temperature, the better they will perform. I wish it were freezing!”
Except for its size, the AD-1 was a perfectly ordinary-looking airplane. It had a slender clean fuselage, with a disproportionately large bubble canopy that seemed out of scale with the rest of the aircraft. The wings, designed to pivot at the center and lie almost parallel to the fuselage in flight, were narrow, very high aspect ratio, and from a quick glance had an unusual airfoil. Oddly enough, for a jet, it had a fixed tricycle landing gear.
Jones spoke up. “Look at that—thirty-two-foot wingspan, about fifteen hundred pounds gross weight—and McMurtry has flown everything from the 747 shuttle carrier aircraft to fighters. He must feel constricted in there.”
Shannon nodded and Jones went on. “I opposed this test at first. We’d already proved the theory in model form, but somebody up the line insisted on a manned vehicle.”
“Did you design it yourself?”
Jones shook his head. “No, the idea of an oblique wing, pivoting at the center, is mine, but Boeing came up with this configuration and it was built by the Ames Industrial Company up in Bohemia, New York. But I tell you, you can keep your eye out for a smart, up-and-coming company right here in California, run by a guy named Burt Rutan. Do you know him?”
Harry shook his head.
“Well, if you get nothing else out of this trip, go over to Mojave and tell him I sent you. I consider Burt to be the top aerodynamicist in the country now, and he combines it with a building savvy that is going to be impossible to beat. His outfit did all the detail design and load analysis on this plane.”
Jones took out a tiny pair of binoculars to watch McMurtry take off.
“He cannot fool around. That thing doesn’t carry much fuel.”
Shannon watched as the AD-1 sped down the runway, lifted off far later than he thought it would, and climbed up to about a thousand feet.
Jones smiled at him.
“They won’t do any dramatic testing today—McMurtry will just make sure it’s a good airplane first. And it’s not a good airplane, at least not when he gets around to swinging that wing fully back. It’s going to be tough to handle. To tell you the truth, Harry, the oblique wing won’t prove itself until you get to big airplanes, supersonic transports and”—he paused, smiled wickedly, and said—“stealth bombers.”
Harry’s mouth dropped just as a group of NASA engineers surrounded Jones and began congratulating him.
This was not good. Jones might just be guessing, but if he wasn’t, there was a leak in the program somewhere. And how the hell did he know, or even suspect, that Harry had a part in the stealth bomber? This was not good.
July 12, 1980
Long Beach, California
“WHAT ARE WE doing working on a Saturday?”
“Like we don’t work every Saturday and every Sunday, too, for that matter. Glad you could make it, Bob. We haven’t had a chance to talk face-to-face for weeks.”
They were sitting in Rodriquez’s rental Chevy outside the chain-wire fence at the airport, windows rolled up, radio playing, air conditioner on in the eighty-degree sunshine, waiting for one of Steve O’Malley’s longtime projects to take off. Steve had worked for years with the famous test pilot, Russ Schleeh, to sell the McDonnell Douglas KC-10 to the USAF as a tanker. After years of delay, the Air Force finally agreed to buy some.
O’Malley glanced cautiously around the interior of the Chevy; the backseat was filled with business magazines—Forbes, Fortune—and probably twenty different issues of The Wall Street Journal.
“What are you doing in this rental heap, Bob? And how come you let it get so dirty—it smells like you have a week of hamburger lunches back there.”
>
“I don’t own a car anymore. I’m in so many different cities during the course of the year, it’s easier and cheaper just to rent all the time. And that stuff”—he pointed to the newspapers and magazines—“is how I make my real money. You can make money easier on Wall Street than you can in aviation, that’s for sure.”
“How do you know what to buy? I’ve got a few mutual funds, but I’ve no idea what they are worth. All my money is in the company.”
“Big mistake, Steve. Playing the stock market is just a matter of watching the technology and picking the comers. It’s really no different than what we try to do with our company, pick a technology and try to sell it. Except if you are smart, you can make a hundred times more in the stock market because you have a whole lot of people working for you, not just yourself and a few people in the company. You just ride on their backs.”
“This is all new to me, Bob. When did you get interested in this stuff?”
“I’ve been doing it about ten years now. The divorce was a big setback, of course, I gave Mae half of everything. That’s why it made me so angry when she said she had to go to work.”
Rodriquez went silent, with the sullen look on his face that O’Malley had seen so often in the last year.
“Well, if you are beating the market, you’re doing better than most people. The Dow Jones has been virtually flat.”
“I don’t buy the Dow. That’s what the mutual funds do, mainly, and that’s why they don’t make any money. I buy shares in companies I think will do well. And, mostly they do. Anyway, I’ve got a lot more invested outside of our good old ActOn than I have in it, and I’m going to keep going in that direction. When I get enough, I’ll jump ship and disappear.”
O’Malley stared at him. It was an odd thing to say, totally untypical. And Rodriquez rarely joked. There was something behind this. He tried to change the subject.
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