Alpha Kat

by William H. Lovejoy

  Jimmy Gander, sitting on the floor against the far wall, next to Mel Vrdlicka, looked halfway sick.

  Kimball grinned at them. “I think that, within the next couple of months, each of your five thousand-share holdings are going to be worth at least fifty thousand dollars, maybe more than that.”

  Clothing rustled as they sat up. Backs straightened. Shoulders rose from slumps. Howard Cadwell stuck his two clenched fists in the air and shook them. Warren Mabry’s teeth splashed white against his ebony skin.

  McEntire said, “At least.”

  “We’re getting our clearances for a foreign demonstration tour.”

  “Hot damn! … ‘bout fuckin’ time … ah, mother … where to, boss?”

  “Tentatively, I’m scheduling demonstrations in Chad, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, and Thailand. Those will all have to be confirmed, and there may be a couple more.”

  The grins told him they were ready. They had been ready since the first Alpha Kat fighter rolled out of the hangar, eighteen months before.

  Kimball slipped the eight-by-twelve photograph from the file folder Wilcox had given him in Cheyenne. He held it up, the face toward them, and said, “There’s one little hitch.”

  “Who the hell’s that ugly son of a bitch?” Jay Halek demanded.

  The picture was fuzzy, blown up from a telephoto shot, but the man’s features were clear enough. He had thick black hair piled high on his head, heavy brows over narrowed dark eyes, a broad and squashed nose, and a grim gash for a mouth. The visible teeth were jagged. His skin was heavily pocked with smallpox scars.

  “This is the hitch. He’s one of Southeast Asia’s leading entrepreneurs and billionaires.”

  “You got to be kidding, Cheetah,” Vrdlicka said. “Cheetah” was Kimball’s old Air Force call sign.

  “I’m not. His name is Lon Pot, and he’s Cambodian, or Kampuchean as they call it now, though he lives in the Shan State of Burma.”

  “I call him ‘Pothead,’” McEntire said.

  “That’s the Golden Triangle,” Mabry said. “Heroin billionaire.”

  “You got it, Warren.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Gander said. “Where’s this going? What hitch?”

  “Let me tell you about Lon Pot and his farming venture first, Jimmy. This guy is a major export center for heroin. His collection teams roam the mountains and jungles of Burma, Cambodia, and northern Thailand where the local farmers grow a lot of pretty red and purple flowers. They don’t have to do much cultivation; the flowers grow wild, and they have seed pods full of alkaloid. The sides of the pods are full of thick, sappy, stuff that the farmers dig out. The alkaloid is raw morphine, and the sap is opium gum. Some Liu or Hsong tribe member will get himself a few hundred baht per kilo every April, that’s maybe eighty bucks, just enough to tide him over until the next harvest.

  “Lon Pot’s collectors haul packages of the gum to one of his five refining and distribution centers. After the gum is refined into heroin powder, a kilo can bring close to a thousand dollars. That’s a hell of a profit margin.”

  “Better than the aerospace industry at the moment,” McEntire said.

  “Thanks for the observation, Sam Eddy. Anyway, out there in the jungle, Pot doesn’t have a hell of a lot to spend his money on, so he buys himself an army. He’s got to have it, anyway, to maintain his power.”

  “How good an army?” Halek asked.

  “I don’t know, and it doesn’t affect us.”

  “What does affect us?” Gander asked.

  “His air force,” McEntire said.

  “Shit,” Gander said. “You getting to this little hitch, now?”

  “Yes. Sam Eddy and I struck a deal with … a government agency we’ll call Mr. Washington. In exchange for our clearances and some operating cash, we take out Lon Pot as a sideline to our demonstration tour.”

  “You might call it an operational demonstration,” Sam Eddy told them.

  There were a few moments of silence, though not really stunned silence, Kimball thought.

  Finally, Warren Mabry asked, “How big an air force?”

  “We’ll have better intelligence later, but right now it looks like he’s got a half-dozen MiGs, four HAL HF-24 Maruts which were built in India, several helicopters, and a bunch of elderly transport aircraft. Anything from DC-3s to C-130s. They’re based at three small and two large fields in northern Burma, Thailand, and Kampuchea. Pot thinks they’re pretty well-hidden, but we’re getting satellite photos of them.”

  “Piloted by?” Mabry probed.

  “My information is that he’s trying to build up a cadre of his own pilots, Kampuchean or Burmese probably, but that he still relies heavily on mercenaries.”

  “That could mean Americans,” Mabry said.

  “Yes. Or French, or Aussie, or Vietnamese, or Chinese. Who knows?”

  “And who gives a shit?” McEntire said. “Whoever is flying for Pothead, as far as I’m concerned, he’s peddling horse on 42nd Street in New York or Sunset in L.A. or Van Buren in Phoenix. If I down him, I’m not going to grieve. Hell, I’m not even going to think about it.”

  Not one of them had ever killed. They had been too young for Vietnam. Two of them had Persian Gulf experience before leaving the Air Force, but the sorties they had participated in had never run into hostile aircraft. Anything they ever shot down had been a remote-controlled target drone or computer-simulated in war games.

  “No one here has to go along,” Kimball said.

  “Oh, hell, boss,” Gander said. “I’m not worried about going along. I want a shot at these assholes. I want to show off our airplanes. It’s just going to take me a few minutes, or even a few hours, to absorb it.”

  Halek rotated his shoulders, stretching. “Kim, are we supposed to assume this will all be covert? I mean, we’re not going to go in blasting in broad daylight?”

  “It’s covert, Jay. We’ve got the planes for it.”

  “US and AF has the 117s,” Tom Keeper said. “They could make a stealth strike, too.”

  McEntire responded. “First, they don’t have any cover, any reason for being in the area, Jay. Second, the US hasn’t yet set a policy that allows the military to take direct action against drug targets.”

  “Not without the host country’s cooperation,” Kimball added, “and they’re not getting that in Burma. With the tour, we’ve got a reason to be in Burma, and in the next ten days, we’ll have to plan our tactics.”

  “What’s the fallout if it goes public?” Mabry asked.

  “It would be similar to Hiroshima, I expect. The liberals will blow up, and the conservatives will dig in for a long siege.”

  “Keep in mind that we could be the patsies in this whole thing,” McEntire said. “Kim and I don’t have an abiding faith in Mr. Washington. If we fuck it up, everybody we know, and don’t know, will disown us.”

  “That’s the risk,” Kimball said. “Beyond the chance to get shot down or have to eject over some Burmese jungle. We might save the company, or we could blow the whole thing. In addition to the people, we’re also risking most of the prototypes.”

  “I’m for saving the company,” McEntire said. “Just so you know my position.”

  “We’ve got enough cash to give everyone a combat bonus,” Kimball said. “It’s not much. Ten thousand for pilots, three thousand for ground crewmen.”

  “We rescue the company, that’s my bonus,” Mel Vrdlicka said. “I don’t mind being a capitalist.”

  “Sam Eddy and I will take a walk in the sun and give you guys a chance to talk it over,” Kimball offered.

  “To hell with that!” Gander said. “I’m voting.”

  He stuck his arm straight up and was immediately copied by fifteen more arms.

  “Damn, I love you guys,” Kimball told them. He didn’t often express an emotion, but when he did, he meant it. “Just don’t get too close to me,” Sam Eddy said.

  “Okay, let’s kick it off. First, no one mentions a word to anyon
e. Not wives, not kids, not girlfriends. We’re simply touring the airplanes. Questions on that?

  “Good. I’m going to have Soames set up a flying schedule. Everyone gets time in on the Alpha Kats and the Kappa Kats so we can back each other up. Everyone does time as an air controller. Later, I’ll make seat assignments, both for the demonstrations and the combat sorties.”

  “Don’t lock in the seats, Kim,” Halek said. “Let us rotate, will you? I want my shot.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Jay. We’ve got a hell of a lot to accomplish by the fifteenth. Mel, you and Jimmy are leaving by commercial air for Homestead first thing in the morning. Sam Eddy and Howard, you’re headed to South Carolina. We’ve leased ourselves two C-141 Starlifters to haul our act around.”

  “First class,” Gander said.

  “I’ve got a minor point,” Howard Cadwell said. “What about ordnance?”

  “We’ve got the dummy Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles we were going to use for demonstrations. We’ll practice with those until they’re gone. Sam Eddy will pick up more training missiles on his way back from Charleston. We can’t get Phoenix, but we’re supposed to have AIM-9 and the new AMRAAM. For air-to-ground, Mr. Washington’s trying to get us the Rockwell Hellfire.”

  “We’ll get to use the laser designators finally,” Conrad Billingsly said.

  “Let’s hope so, Connie. We also get some five-hundred pound iron bombs. That gives us a wide range of defensive and strike ordnance for the demonstrations. The arrangement is that we’ll get live missiles and ammo on the other side of the Atlantic.”

  The mood was definitely up-tempo when the group broke up, everyone headed back to their particular duties. Kimball Aero Tech’s pilots were not only pilots. Bryce Kimball had selected them for expertise in engineering, ordnance, electronics, controls, and the like. Everyone had a job within the company beyond flying aircraft. Different people were qualified in different types of aircraft, and all of them carried instructor’s ratings.

  Kimball had to repress a shudder when he realized he was not only risking his pilots, but also the core of the company’s engineering life.

  “Okay,” Susan McEntire said, entering the office, “my turn. Lay it out for me.”

  She would be eternally cute, Kimball thought, like Connie Stevens. Big, big green eyes in an open, clear face, and an uptilted nose. Lots of dark red hair framing her face. She was slim and pert and given to short white cotton skirts and blouses stamped with Southwestern prints. Better, she had a mind that could follow intricate engineering blueprints and a maze of financial transactions. She had only been there three weeks before he had named her the company’s comptroller.

  “Why’d you give up on Sam Eddy?” he asked.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Just because.”

  “Want to go to lunch?”

  “Nope. I’m not having anything to do with pilots in particular anymore. Just pilots in general.”

  “I’ll tell you how you can find three million dollars.”

  “Just a hamburger, then.”

  Taxi

  Five

  On Tuesday morning, A.J. Soames hit the ground running, feeling better about himself and the choices he had made than he had felt in some time. Kimball’s announcement on Monday had made the difference.

  Soames was one of two pilots at Kimball Aero Tech who had retired from the Air Force before following Bryce Kimball out to Phoenix. He was forty-five and something of a father or uncle figure to many of the younger men. His last assignment on active duty as a lieutenant colonel had been as a deputy wing commander in the Tactical Air Command, at Langley Air Force Base. In fact, Kimball and McEntire had flown for him.

  Soames’s love of flight had been tempered in his later years by enforced desk duty and slowed reflexes. He was not as idealistic as he had been in his earlier years, or as some of his younger colleagues still were. Experience had taught him many things, the chief one being that one doesn’t often or successfully buck the establishment.

  Kimball had spoken to him frequently about his disenchantments and frustrations with the Air Force’s traditions and expectations, and when Kimball actually carried through with his threat to resign, Soames had taken a close look at himself. His hair was already graying at the temples, his green eyes had taken on a washed-out appearance and weren’t nearly as sharp as they had once been, his face was fuller and more mature, and his body was following suit. Having been passed over once for promotion to full colonel, the odds in a downsizing organization were increasingly likely that he would be passed over again. He put in his papers, and he and Miriam left verdant Virginia for beige Arizona.

  Soames had less to worry about than most of KAT’s employees. He was drawing his military retirement check, and his only son had already completed college and entered the arcane world of computer systems analysis. Like others in the company, though, Soames wore several hats. He was a pilot, though he put in less air time than the others. Because of his background, Kimball had installed him as Vice President of Administration. In that position, he supervised all of KAT’s logistics — supplies and materiel flow, the physical plant, and personnel — and oversaw the front office, which included Andrea Deacon and Susan McEntire, who was the comptroller.

  Under his third hat, Soames had come to learn that he was a damned good airborne air controller. His reflexes didn’t matter, someone else was at the controls of the Kappa Kat. But in the backseat at his radar console, his mind could grasp the entire theater of combat, read the radar screen efficiently, and make the necessary snap decisions. It helped, too, that his experience and command presence brought instant trust and respect from the pilots who relied on his decisions. They had given him the code name “Papa,” somewhat different from the “Bronco Rider” he had carried in his Air Force fighter days.

  In the tactical simulations they had run hundreds of times, with one Kappa Kat controlling six Alpha Kats, Soames found he could steadily visualize the three-dimensional arena of combat, separate in his mind the dozens of radio calls coming in, and still create order out of chaos.

  It didn’t surprise him that Conrad Billingsly, also an older veteran and retiree, and a former Strategic Air Command B-52 pilot, had also gravitated toward the air controller position.

  All of the pilots did time in air control, but few had the discipline and calm which would be necessary in a time of moving, jumbled, erratic confusion.

  Soames was righteously, and quietly, proud of the fact that he had found a niche for himself outside of his academic and military training.

  He parked his Volvo in the lot outside the KAT hangar and unlocked the front door to let himself in. There were always early birds, and he heard their voices coming from the coffee room just behind the front office.

  He walked back to find Tex Brabham and Alex Hamilton, a pilot and air frame engineer, sitting in two of the four chairs at the single small table. The coffee pot gurgled in the corner, and one of the two had brought in a foot-high heap of breakfast rolls.

  Hamilton would be the guilty party. He was barely over thirty, but fighting an expanding waist. Bland-faced, with blond hair, he had a professorial appearance. With a mind as keen as he had, and with his penchant for getting along with people, he should probably have been teaching physics and stress engineering over at Arizona State in Tempe.

  “Mornin’, A.J.” Very few people knew the A.J. stood for Albert Johann, and Soames intended to keep it that way.

  “Hello, Alex. You made it back all right, Tex?”

  “Damned sight earlier than I planned on. Had me a nice thing going in Cheyenne.”

  Soames got himself a mug of coffee, and after delicate deliberation, picked up a chocolate donut. “Miriam will kill you for this, Alex.”

  “Only if she finds out,” Hamilton assured him.

  “Anybody going to tell me what’s going on?” Brabham asked. “Alex tells me his lips are locked.”

  “Sea
led, I said.”

  “What-the-hell-ever.”

  Soames was the personnel manager, and he knew that whatever else Kimball might have in mind about ground crew, Brabham would be his first choice. There was no sense in holding back with the old veteran, and after cautioning him about the confidentiality required, laid out the whole plan.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit, Tex. What do you think?”

  “I think me and my boys got a hell of a lot of prepping to do in the next ten days. My birds got neglected while we were traipsing all over hell, playing barnstormer.”

  “Keep in mind, Tex, that all of the Alphas have to be flying in the meantime, while we bring everyone up on their time.”

  Brabham got up and refilled his mug. “I’m going to go over time logs now, and set up a schedule.”

  He hadn’t reacted verbally, one way or the other, to the news, but the light in his eyes and the lively movement of his booted feet told the story.

  Soames watched him leave, sipped from his mug, and said, “It’s a changing world, isn’t it, Alex?”

  “Sure enough. I’m glad I got out when I did.”

  “Me, too. I talked to my old wing commander a few days ago. I don’t think he likes the new organization much.”

  “Where’s he at now?”

  “Still at Langley, which is headquarters for the new Air Combat Command,” Soames said.

  Langley previously headquartered the Tactical Air Command, while Offut AFB in Omaha headquartered the SAC. In the reorganization of the Air Force, much of it still under way, TAC evaporated, becoming part of the old Strategic Air Command under the new unified command. The new titles and acronyms replaced organizations that had been around for over forty years, and most of the good old boys didn’t like it.

  “I was at Scott in Illinois when I got out,” Hamilton said. “It’s now the base for the Air Mobility Command.”