Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  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.”

&nbs
p; 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.

  O’Malley finally broke the silence.

  “I agree with you, Bob, but there’s another development just over the horizon. Nobody’s figured it out yet, but it has to be faced. And that is hypersonic flight. We’ve got the Concorde going, and lots of fighters are supersonic, but the next step has to be not just going three times the speed of sound, like the SR-71, but getting up there in six or eight times the speed of sound.”

  There was silence again and Mae finally said, “Steve, you never say anything unless you are pretty well convinced of it. You’ve got some insight, from something, probably a classified project that we don’t have. But just hearing you say it makes me believe it.”

  Harry said, “That’s enough for tonight! We’ve gone from a World War I toast to hypersonic flight. Now let’s just see if we can make it all the way to the buffet table, where I’ll at least know what I’m doing for once.”

  October 18, 1984

  Edwards Air Force Base, California

  MAJOR GENERAL STEVE O’MALLEY and Dennis Jenkins walked slowly out of the debriefing room, shaking their heads. It had been one hell of a debriefing. The prototype North American B-1B had landed at 2:38 P.M. after a three-hour and twenty-minute flight from the plant in Palmdale.

  “Steve, this was pretty damn good for a first flight on an airplane as complex as the B-1B. There were only a couple of delays before takeoff, the flight systems worked fine, and so did most of the avionics.”

  Jenkins’s morose expression did not change. “That’s easy for you to say; you’re not responsible for the radar—and it didn’t work at all.”

  Both men wandered out toward the flight line where mechanics were still swarming around the huge bomber. Unlike the ill-fated B-1As, which had been painted white, the number one B-1B, serial number 82-0001, was painted in two shades of gray and a dusky dark green, giving its long nose and swept wings an even more sinister look.

  Jenkins sighed. “Christ, this has been a long time in coming. I don’t think any bomber anywhere has had the development time or the mission changes this one has.”

  It was true. The program had started in 1961, when the Air Force was looking for a replacement for the B-52, then already 19 years old. It continued on for the next sixteen years under a variety of names and stupid-sounding acronyms—subsonic low altitude bomber (SLAB), extended long range strike aircraft (ERSA), low altitude manned penetrator (LAMP), and finally advanced manned precision strike system (AMPSS).

  The Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, had tried to kill it many times, once by demanding that the Air Force stretch the General Dynamics F-111 into a bomber, the FB-111. In April 1969, the aircraft finally received a decent designation, the B-1A, and a contract was let for North American Rockwell to build 244 of them. Four B-1As were built, the first one flying in December 1974. After three years of testing, President Jimmy Carter, in the midst of a frenzy of unilateral disarmament, canceled the program, saying that with the new air-launched cruise missile, it wasn’t needed. This was an outright lie; the ALCM, as it was called, was early in its development and was no substitute for a bomber that could penetrate enemy defenses.

  Jenkins went on. “You were right about Ronald Reagan. When he ordered the B-1B into production, he saved the Air Force. This airplane has tremendous potential, and the B-52 design is thirty years old now.”

  Both men knew that the B-1B was not as ambitious an airplane as its predecessor, the B-1A. It was not as fast, but it had far better stealth qualities.

  O’Malley said, “Dennis, the nature of war is changing. The one hundred B-1Bs we’re going to buy will saturate the defenses of the Soviet Union better than the B-52s can do. But it’s more important that it’s adaptable. We’ll be able to use the latest in GPS navigation, and meld that into our precision guided bombs.”

  “I agree. But what do you mean when you say the nature of war is changing? The Soviet Union is still our main enemy; we still have to claw through their radar, their SAMs, their fighters.”

  “Yeah, but the Soviet Union is on its last legs. I just hope it doesn’t go out with a suicidal launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. They’ve been stuck in Afghanistan since 1979. They are setting the Muslim world on fire. Look at all the incidents around the world, the hijackings, the killings, the explosions. And look how we are reacting to them. The Iranians made fools out of us by capturing our embassy in Tehran. And now last year, in Beirut, they bomb our embassy in April, and blow up the Marine barracks in October. What do we do? We protest and we walk. They killed almost 400 people and we flee the scene of the crime.”

  “What the hell can we do; it’s just a bunch of fanatics, not the whole Muslim world. You can’t declare war on the fanatics and kill people wholesale.”

  “The hell you can’t. Germany was run by a bunch of fanatics, the Nazis. And Japan was run by a bunch of fanatic militarists who ordered Pearl Harbor bombed and then declared war on us. And we sure bombed the hell out of their people. We had to—they were passive about the fanatics, and the fanatics were trying to kill us. It’s the same thing here.”

  Jenkins shook his head and stayed silent. O’Malley was a brilliant guy, but this seemed to be off base.

  “I know it sounds nuts, Dennis, but I’m running the trend lines out ten, maybe twenty years, and it looks to me like we’re going to be fighting entirely different kinds of wars. We’ll be looking to kill individuals, or maybe small groups, not armies. No army blew up the barracks in Beirut, just a bunch of terrorists. No army is going to blow up the New York subway system, or set off a little nuke in D.C.—it’
ll be a small gang of terrorists.”

  It was hot on the tarmac at Edwards, and they stood sweating in the shade of the swept wing of the number one B-1B. They were alone—all the mechanics and technicians had gone in for supper.

  “Steve, you don’t talk like this as a rule. This is the first time you’ve ever mentioned anything like this to me.”

  “Or to anyone else. I’m just getting used to the idea.”

  “Well, be that as it may, something caused it. And I’ve got a damned good idea it was something you found out about Bob Rodriquez. You probably cannot tell me what it is, but there’s something going on here that is totally strange.”

  “You’re right, as usual, Dennis, and not only am I going to tell you, I have to tell you. Something fatal could happen to Bob, and we’ll never know about it, and nobody would ever reveal anything. Something could happen to me, for that matter, and I want somebody able to tell the family what he’s doing when the time comes. You can’t tell them now, it’s too secret; talk about deep black, this is deepest indigo, you can’t get any more classified than this. And I’d be court-martialed if anyone knew I told you about it. But I’m going to because I know you’ll keep it to yourself. If something happens to me, later on, you’ll be able to pass the word on to Mae and Rod, and to the Shannons.”

  O’Malley stood up and walked around the airplane, scanning the tops of the wings on the off chance that there might be someone he hadn’t seen still there. He came back and said, “OK. Here it is. Bob Rodriquez had been running drugs, working for the FBI. His looks and his Spanish language talent made him a natural. Apparently he was so fed up with the Shannons and Mae and the business that he volunteered for undercover work, just to get away from it all.”

  “I figured it had to be something like that. Bob was a patriot.”

  “That he was and is. Then something bigger came up. They needed someone who could infiltrate some of the terrorist networks they were uncovering. They faked the accident in the Bahamas where he was supposed to be killed, and put him into an intensive course in Arabic language and culture. His size and his coloring made him a natural. Bob wasn’t really a linguist, but apparently he did well in school, and now he’s working inside some terrorist organization. I don’t know where, and I don’t want to. I just hope he can survive, and somehow get back to a normal life back here.”