He scratched at the glue caked on his fingertips. The stuff came off in flakes if you peeled it right. This plane—it was going to be a nice one. It was going to be good to fly it. When flying was all you knew and all you had been, you needed a plane around.
Oh, shit! As he looked at the pieces he felt like a fool. A fucking toy plane! He threw himself on the couch and lay there staring at the ceiling.
Toad Tarkington was silent as he drove from stoplight to stoplight on the main highway through Rehoboth Beach. The woman beside him finally asked, “So how is he?”
“He’s changed,” Toad said. “The official report said he was in a coma for two weeks. It was a week before that Greek fishing boat even made port. It’s a miracle he didn’t die on the boat. He said the fishermen expected him to and kept fishing.”
“I would have liked to meet him.”
“Well, I was going to mention you were in the car, but he was busy working on a model airplane and he was…Anyway, you can always meet him later.”
The woman reached for the knob to turn the stereo on, then thought better of it. “This new assignment—asking for it just because you like him…”
“It’s not that I like him,” Toad said. “I respect him. He’s…different. There aren’t many men like him left in this day and age. If Congress hadn’t jumped into that incident with both feet and voted him the Medal of Honor, he would probably have been forced to retire. Maybe even a court-martial.” Toad smacked the steering wheel with his hand. “He’s a national hero and he doesn’t give a damn. I’ve never met anyone like him before.” He thought about it. “Maybe there aren’t any more like him.”
The woman reached for the knob again and turned the stereo on. She had known Toad Tarkington for three weeks and she was still trying to figure him out. He was the first military man she had dated and he was modestly famous after the attack last fall on United States. Her friends thought it was so exciting. Still, he was a little weird. Oh well, he made a decent salary and bathed and shaved and looked marvelous at parties. And he was a fine lover. A girl could do a lot worse.
“Where do you want to eat tonight?” she asked.
It was dark and spattering rain when Jake heard Callie’s car pull in. He had completed assembly of the vertical and horizontal stabilizers, the rudder, and the wings, and had placed them on top of the bookcase and credenza to cure and was cleaning up the mess on the kitchen table. He raked the rest of it into the box the airplane had come in and slid the box up on top of the kitchen cabinets, then went outside to meet her. She was opening the trunk of her car.
“Hey, good-looking. Welcome home.” He pecked her cheek and lifted her overnight bag out of the trunk.
“Hello.” She followed him into the house, hugging herself against the evening chill. He closed the door behind her and climbed the stairs toward the bedrooms. “What’s this?” Callie called.
“I’m building an airplane,” he boomed as he dropped the bag on the bed. When he reached the foot of the stairs she was examining the wing structure without touching it. “It’s dry enough to pick up. How about coffee?”
“Sure.” Callie walked slowly around the living/dining area, her purse still over her shoulder, looking. She opened the door to the screened-in porch and was shivering in the wind, looking at the wicker furniture, when he handed her the coffee cup. “This stuff needs to be painted again.” She slid the door closed and leaned back against it as she sipped the hot liquid.
“What kind of week did you have?”
“So-so.” She was halfway through her first semester as a language instructor at Georgetown University. “They asked me to teach this summer.”
“What did you say?”
“That I’d think about it.” She had been planning on spending the summer here at the beach. Kicking her pumps off, she sat on the sofa with her legs under her. “It all depends.”
Jake poured himself coffee and sat down at the kitchen table where he could face her.
“I went to see Dr. Arnold this afternoon.”
“Uh-huh.” Jake had refused to go back to the psychologist.
“He says if you don’t get your act together I should leave you.”
“Just what does the soul slicer think my act is?”
“Oh, cut the crap, Jake.” She averted her face. She finished her coffee in silence, then rinsed the cup in the sink. Retrieving her shoes, she went upstairs.
The sound of water running in the shower was audible all over the downstairs. Jake spread the airplane diagram on the table and opened the instruction manual. Finally he threw the manual down in disgust.
He needed a drink. The doctors had told him not to, but fuck them. He rummaged under the sink and found that old bottle of bourbon with several inches of liquid remaining. He poured some in a glass and added ice.
The problem was that he didn’t want to do anything. He didn’t want to retire and sit here and vegetate or find a civilian job. He didn’t want to go to the Pentagon and immerse himself in the bureaucracy. The Pentagon job had been the only one offered him when he was finally ready to be discharged from Bethesda Naval Hospital. The politicians had made him a hero and checkmated the naval establishment, but the powers that be had still been smarting from the way the official investigation had been derailed. Luckily he had been damn near comatose in the hospital and everyone in uniform knew he had nothing to do with the political maneuvering. So he was still in the navy. But his shot at flag rank had vaporized like a drop of water on a hot stove. Not that he really ever hoped to make admiral or even cared.
He lay down on the couch and sipped at the drink. Maybe the whole problem was that he just didn’t care about any of it anymore. Let the other guys do the sweating. Let them dance on the tightrope. Let someone else pick up the bodies of those who fell. He put the glass on the floor and rolled over on his side. Maybe he was depressed—that soul doctor…Yes, depression, that was probably…
When he awoke it was two in the morning and the lights were off. Callie had covered him with a blanket. He went upstairs, undressed, and crawled into bed with her.
The wind whipped the occasional raindrops at a steep angle and drove the gray clouds at a furious pace as Jake and Callie strolled the beach. They were out for their usual morning walk, which they took rain or shine, fair weather or foul. Both wore shorts and were barefoot; they carried the flip-flops they had worn to traverse the crushed-seashell mix that covered the street in front of their house that led to the beach. Both were wearing old sweatshirts over sweaters. Callie’s hair whipped in the wind.
Jake critically examined the contours of sand around the piles that supported a huge house some ignorant optimist had constructed on the dune facing the beach. The first hurricane, Jake suspected, would have the owner tearing his hair. The sand looked firm now. Shades obscured all the windows. The house was empty. Only three or four other people were visible on the beach.
Birds scurried along the sand, racing after retreating waves and probing furiously for their breakfast. Gulls rode the air currents with their noses pointed out to sea. He watched the gulls and tried to decide if the Gentle Lady could soar with them. The moving air had to have some kind of an upward vector over the sand. Perhaps if he kept the plane above the dune. The dune was low, though. He would see.
Callie’s hand found his and he gave it a squeeze. He led her down into the surf, where the ice-cold water swirled about their feet. “Toad Tarkington said to say hi.”
“He called?”
“Stopped by yesterday afternoon. He’s going to the Pentagon too.”
“Oh.”
“If you teach summer school, we’ll see more of each other this summer,” he said. “We’ll be together every evening at the apartment in Washington as well as every weekend here.”
Her hand gripped his fiercely and she turned to face him.
He grinned. “Monday morning, off I go, wearing my uniform, vacation over—”
She hugged him and her lips made it
impossible to continue to speak. Her hair played across his cheeks as the ebbing surf tugged at the sand under him.
3
It was almost 9 A.M. when the subway train—the Metro—ground to a halt at the Pentagon station. Jake Grafton joined the civilian and military personnel exiting and followed the thin crowd along the platform. Rush hour for the 23,000 people who worked in this sprawling five-story building was long over. The little handful that Jake accompanied seemed to be made up of stragglers and visiting civilians.
Just ahead of Jake a man and a woman in casual clothes led two small children. When they came to the long escalator, the kids squealed joyfully and started to run up the moving stair. Each parent grabbed a small arm, then a hand.
The sloping staircase was poorly lighted. As he looked at the dim lights, Jake noticed the plaster on the ceiling was peeling away in spots.
At the head of the escalator two corridors led in, one from either side, and more people joined the procession, which trudged ever upward on a long, wide staircase toward the lights above.
At the head of the stair was a large hall, and the stream of people broke up, some heading for the main entrance, some moving cautiously toward the visitors’ tour area. The couple that Jake had followed led their progeny in that direction with an admonition to behave. Jake approached the two Department of Defense policemen scrutinizing passes at the security booth. “I have an appointment with Vice Admiral Henry.”
“Do you have a building pass, sir?”
“No.”
“Use those phones right over there”—he pointed at telephones by the tour windows—“and someone will come down to escort you.”
“Thanks.” Jake called and a yeoman answered. Five minutes, the yeoman said.
Jake stood and watched the people. Men and women wearing the uniforms of all four services came and went, most walking quickly, carrying briefcases, folders, gym bags and small brown paper bags that must have contained their lunches. People leaving the interior of the building walked by the security desk without a glance from the two armed DOD policemen.
“Captain Grafton?”
A small black woman in civilian clothes stood at his elbow. “Yes?” he said.
“I’m your escort.” She smiled and flashed her pass at the guards and motioned Jake toward the metal detector that stood to the left of the security booth. He walked through it, nothing beeped, and the woman led him through the open doors into another huge hallway, this one lined with shops. Directly across from the entrance was a large gedunk—a store selling snacks, magazines and other sundries.
“I was expecting a yeoman.”
“The phone started ringing and he sent me down.”
As she led him along the corridor, he asked, “How long did it take you to learn your way around in here?”
“Oh, I’m still learning. I’ve only been here five years. It’s confusing at times.”
They went up a long ramp that opened onto the A-Ring, the central corridor that overlooked the five-acre interior courtyard. As they proceeded around the ring, Jake glanced through the windows at the grass and huge trees and the snack bar in the center.
“Have you ever been here before?” she asked.
“Nope,” said Jake Grafton. “I’ve always managed to avoid it.”
After she had gone what seemed like a hundred yards or so, she turned right and ascended a staircase with a ninety-degree bend in it and at the top turned right. They were still on the A-Ring, but on the fourth level. After another fifty feet she veered left down a corridor, then right onto another corridor that zagged away at an angle. “Now we’re walking back toward the outside of the building,” she said. “There are five concentric rings in the Pentagon. The inner is the A-Ring, and next is B, and so forth, with the outer being E. They are connected by ten radial corridors like the spokes of a wagon wheel. It’s supposed to be efficient but it does confuse newcomers.” She grinned.
This corridor had little to commend it. It was lit by fluorescent lights, and over half the tubes were dark. The walls were bare. Not a picture or a poster. Dusty, tied-down furniture was stacked along one wall. It looked as if it had been there since the Eisenhower administration. Catching Jake’s glance, the guide said, “It’s been there for three months. Some of the offices got new furniture. This is the old stuff.” The piles were composed of sofas and chairs and scarred and battered gunmetal-gray desks. “These places on the ceiling where the plywood is?” Jake looked. “The plaster was falling off from water seepage from the roof and asbestos was being released.”
At the end of the corridor stood a magnificent large painting of Admiral Dewey’s flagship, Olympia, entering Manila Bay. Spots illuminated it. The guide turned right and Jake followed. The overhead blue mantel proclaimed: “Naval Aviation.” Here the hallway was well lit, painted a yellowish pastel and decorated with pictures of past and present naval and marine aircraft. This straight stretch was long, a third as long as the outside of the building. Almost at the end, his guide turned left into a large office. The sign over the door said: “Assistant, Chief of Naval Operations, Air Warfare.” Beside the door was a blue sign that read: “OP-05.” This was the office of the senior U.S. Naval Aviator, Mr. Naval Aviation.
The room was large and contained numerous windows facing south across the huge parking lot toward Arlington. Wooden desks, blue drapes, wainscoting on the walls.
A commander greeted Jake. “I’m a little early,” Jake said, glancing at his watch.
“I’ll see if the admiral’s free.” He was. Jake was escorted in through a swinging double saloon door.
Vice Admiral Tyler Henry rose from his chair and came around his desk wearing a warm smile to greet Jake.
“Good to see you again, Captain.” The men had met on several occasions in the past, but Jake was unsure if Henry would remember. After he pumped Jake’s hand the admiral motioned to a chair. “Please, be seated. Have any trouble getting here this morning?”
“I rode the Metro this morning, sir,” Jake said as the admiral seated himself behind his desk. It was dark wood, perhaps mahogany. A matching table extended outward from the main desk, forming the leg of a T. It was at this table Jake sat.
“Good idea. Parking places are all for car pools and flag officers.” He pushed the button on his intercom box. “Chief, did Commander Gadd sweep the office this morning?”
“Yessir,” was the tinny reply.
“Are the window buzzers on?”
“Yessir.”
“Please close my door.…Window buzzers are little security gizmos to vibrate the glass. Supposed to foil parabolic mikes, but who knows?” the admiral explained. “The damn things play waiting room music, and I can’t hear noises like that anymore.” Jake listened hard. He could just hear the beat and a trumpet.
The admiral leaned back comfortably in his chair as the door to the office closed behind Jake. “Soundproof,” he muttered, then smiled. “You look surprised.”
Jake smiled, his embarrassment showing. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to talk to the guy who’s going to be designing the new officer fitness report form.”
The admiral smiled broadly. “That job has been floating around with no takers. No, we have another project for you that is going to demand expertise of a different sort.”
Jake was having trouble holding his eyebrows still. “I thought,” he said softly, “that I was a pariah around here.”
The smile disappeared from Admiral Henry’s face. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Captain. Last fall when you disobeyed a direct order from a vice admiral, you may have torpedoed any chance you had of ever getting promoted again. Now with hindsight and all, most people can see you did the right thing. But the military won’t work if people go around telling flag officers to get fucked. For any reason, justified or not. And the congressmen and politicos from SECDEF’s office who interfered with a navy investigation of that incident made you no friends.”
He raised his hand when Ja
ke opened his mouth to speak. “I know, I know, you had nothing whatever to do with that and you couldn’t control the politicians even if you tried. No one can. They go any damn place they want with hobnail boots. Still, they raised hackles when they implied the navy couldn’t or wouldn’t be fair in its treatment of a naval officer.”
“I understand.”
The admiral nodded. “I suspect you do. Your record says you’re one of our best, which is why I asked for you. We need a shit-hot attack pilot with a ton of smarts and a gilt-edge reputation who can waltz a little project through the minefields. You’re him.”
Jake flexed his hands and rearranged his bottom in his chair. “I didn’t think my reputation was quite that shiny. And I’ve never had any Pentagon duty before.”
Henry pretended not to have heard. “Do you want to hear about the job?”
“I’m just a little surprised, sir. Shocked might be a better word. I’d thought…” He punched the air. “What’s the job?”
“You’ll be working for Vice Admiral Roger Dunedin. He’s NAVAIR.” NAVAIR was Naval Air Systems Command, the procurement arm of naval aviation. “He needs a new program manager for the Advanced Tactical Aircraft, also known as the ATA. If and when we get it, it’ll be the A-12.”
Jake Grafton couldn’t suppress a grin.
The admiral laughed. “The fact we have this project is unclassified. ATA, A-12, those are the only two things unclass in the whole program, and those two terms were just recently declassified. The project is black.” Jake had heard about “black” programs, so highly classified that even the existence of the program was sometimes a secret.
The admiral rapped a knuckle on the desk. “So far, it appears to be one of our best-kept military secrets.” His voice fell to a murmur. “No way of being sure, of course.”
The Minotaur Page 3