The Minotaur

by Stephen Coonts

  The pounding ceased. The cockpit was very quiet.

  Toad remarked later that all he could hear as Rita worked to restart the engines “was God laughing.”

  This time as Rita approached touchdown, she flared the plane and pulled the throttles aft. Sure enough, the pounding of turbulent air in the intakes began just before the main wheels kissed the runway. She held the nose off and watched the EGT tapes twitch as the plane decelerated. When she was losing stabilator authority, she lowered the nose to the runway and smoothly applied the brakes.

  “Another day, another dollar,” Toad told her on the ICS.

  Removing the engines from the airplane, inspecting them, inspecting the intakes and reinstalling the engines took three days, mainly because Jake Grafton demanded that a factory rep look at the compressor and turbine blades with a borescope, which had to be flown in.

  Consolidated’s chief engineer was livid. He was so furious that he didn’t trust himself to speak, and turned away when anyone in uniform approached him. Adele DeCrescentis was equally outraged, but she hid it better. She listened to Rita and reviewed the telemetry and videotapes and grunted when Jake Grafton spoke to her.

  The navy personnel left the Consolidated employees to their misery.

  “We’re wasting our time flying that bird again,” Les Richards and George Wilson told Jake. “It’s unsat and there is no possible fix that would cure the problem. The whole design sucks.”

  “How do you know they can’t fix it?”

  “Well, look at it. At high angles of attack the intakes are blanked off by the cockpit and the shape of the fuselage, that aerodynamic shape. How could they fix it?”

  “Goddamn, I’m not an aeronautical engineer! How the hell would I know?”

  “Well, I am,” Wilson said, “and they can’t.”

  “Never say never. Regardless, we’re going to fly this bird five times. I don’t want anyone to say that we didn’t give Consolidated a fair chance.”

  “We’re wasting our time and the navy’s money.”

  “What’s a few million?” Jake asked rhetorically. The real objective was to get money for an acceptable airplane from Congress. So he was philosophical.

  Toad Tarkington slipped down the hall to his wife’s room when he thought everyone else was in bed. They had been running a low-profile romance since they arrived in Tonopah.

  “Tell me again,” Toad said, “just what that Consolidated test pilot said about stalls when you pumped him. What’s his name?”

  “Stu Vinich. He just said they had had some compressor-stall problems at high angles of attack.”

  “Nothing else? Nothing about how serious they were?”

  “He couldn’t, Toad. The company was downplaying the whole subject. People who talk out of school draw unemployment checks.”

  “We were damned lucky that thing didn’t spin. And we were lucky the engines relit.”

  “Luck is a part of the job,” Rita told him.

  “Yeah. If we had punched and our chutes hadn’t opened, Vinich would have just stood at our graves and shook his head.”

  “He said enough. I knew what to expect.”

  Toad turned out the light and snuggled down beside her.

  Jake Grafton was poking and prodding the plane, trying to stay out of the technicians’ way, when he noticed Adele DeCrescentis watching him. He walked over. “You know,” he said, “this thing reminds me of a twelve-ton Swiss watch.”

  “A quartz watch,” the vice president said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, I was wondering. Just how hard would it be for your folks to put a twenty-millimeter cannon on this plane?”

  “A gun?” She appeared dumbfounded, as if the idea had never occurred to her.

  “Uh-huh. A gun. A little Gatling, snuggled inside the fuselage with five hundred rounds or so. What do you think?”

  “When we were designing this plane, not a single, solitary air force officer ever even breathed the word ‘gun.’”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. But would it be feasible?”

  “With some fairly major design changes, which will cost a good deal of money, I suppose it might be. It would take a full-blown engineering study to determine that for sure. But why? A machine like this? You want it down in the weeds dueling with antiaircraft guns? Shooting at tanks?”

  “When tanks are the threat, Ms. DeCrescentis, we won’t be able to shoot million-dollar missiles at all of ’em. The Warsaw Pact has over fifty thousand tanks. A nice little twenty-millimeter with armor-piercing shells would be just the right prescription.”

  Senator Hiram Duquesne was not philosophical when he telephoned George Ludlow. “You keeping up on what’s going on out in Tonopah?” he thundered.

  “Well, I get reports from Vice Admiral Dunedin. Captain Grafton reports to him several times a day.”

  “I want to know why the officer in charge out there insisted on performing maneuvers that the manufacturer did not feel the plane was ready for, or safe to perform.”

  “He’s doing an op eval. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Oh does he? He’s got a twenty-five-year-old woman with no previous test experience flying that plane, a four-hundred-million-dollar prototype!”

  “She’s not twenty-five. She’s twenty-seven.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what the hell is going on over there, George? A lot of people have a lot riding on the outcome of this fly-off. And you got Bo Derek’s little sister out there flying the planes! Is she the best test pilot you people have? My God, we’ve been spending millions for that Test Pilot School in Pax River—is she the best you’ve got?”

  “If you have any information that implies she’s incompetent, I’d like to hear it.”

  “I hear she intentionally shut down both engines while she was up in the sky. Now Consolidated is spending a ton checking them for damage. I’ll bet Chuck Yeager never shut down both engines on a test flight at the same time!”

  “I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask the air force.”

  “Don’t get cute. I’m serious. Dead serious. Don’t let that hero fly-boy Grafton and his bimbo test pilot screw this up, George. I’m warning you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “By the way, the authorization for reactors for that new carrier you guys want to start? My committee voted this morning to delete it. Maybe next year, huh?”

  The senator hung up before Ludlow could respond.

  Jake Grafton changed Rita’s test profile for the last three flights. He had her avoid all high-angle-of-attack maneuvers, though he did let her ease toward the advertised five-G limit, where the airflow to the engines once again became turbulent and began to rumble.

  The three flights took another ten days. When they were finished the navy crowd spent three more days correlating their data and talking to Consolidated engineers, then packed up for the return to Washington. It would be three weeks before they came back to fly the TRX prototype.

  On their last night in Tonopah the navy contingent threw a party in the officers’ club for a very subdued group from Consolidated. Adele DeCrescentis didn’t attend, which was perhaps just as well. Along toward midnight, after Toad Tarkington had enjoyed the entire salubrious effect of alcohol and had begun the downhill slide, he spotted Stu Vinich in a corner putting the moves on some woman from Consolidated’s avionics division. He strolled over, tapped Vinich on the shoulder, and as the test pilot turned, flattened him with one roundhouse punch.

  21

  Jake Grafton was amazed when he saw Amy at the passenger terminal at Andrews Air Force Base. In the three weeks he had been gone the child had visibly grown. “Hi, Jake,” she warbled, and ran to throw her arms around him.

  “Miss me?” he asked.

  “Not as much as Callie did,” was the sophisticated reply.

  As he and Callie waited for the luggage to be off-loaded from the airplane, Callie visited with the other officers
who had ridden the DC-9 from Tonopah. Jake made a fuss over Amy and teased her a little, causing her cheeks to redden. But she stayed right there beside him, saying hello to everyone and smiling broadly when spoken to.

  “So how’d it go?” Callie asked him as they walked to the car.

  Jake shrugged. Everything was classified. “Okay, I guess. And you?”

  “I stopped going to Dr. Arnold. Last Friday was my last appointment.”

  Jake set his luggage on the pavement and gave her a tight squeeze as Amy skipped on ahead, her black hair bobbing with every bound. Callie looked happier than Jake had seen her in a long, long time.

  The next morning, a Tuesday, he spent closeted with Admiral Dunedin going over the test results. They watched videotapes and looked at numbers, and began writing down tentative conclusions.

  “So how did Moravia do?” the admiral asked at one point.

  “Fine. Good stick, keeps her wits about her, knows more aeronautical engineering than I even knew existed.”

  “So you want to keep her for the TRX bird?”

  “No reason not to.”

  The admiral told him about the conversation Senator Duquesne had had with George Ludlow. “The secretary didn’t tell me to fire her, or keep her, or anything else,” Dunedin concluded. “He just relayed the conversation.”

  “Let me see if I understand this, Admiral. Duquesne’s committee deleted the appropriation for reactors for the new carrier from this year’s budget. Is he implying that if we get another test pilot he’ll put it back in?”

  “No. I think the message is that unless the navy buys the Consolidated plane, he’s not going to be—he’ll be less enthusiastic about navy budget requests.”

  “Sir, I don’t think Consolidated’s plane can be modified enough to meet the mission requirements for a new attack plane. And you have to factor Athena into the equation. With Athena we won’t need to buy all that expensive stealth stuff on every airplane.”

  “Fly the TRX plane. Then we’ll see.”

  “Do you want me to get another test pilot?”

  “I just wanted you to understand what’s going on. The temperature is rising. Ludlow and all the politicos in SECDEF’s office are playing politics right along with everyone else in this town. The admirals and generals are parading over to the hill for hearings. It’s that merry time of year.”

  “I think we have to keep Moravia. After she’s flown both planes she can make point-by-point comparisons that can’t be questioned for extraneous reasons. Consolidated will beat us to death with Rita’s corpse if we use another test pilot to fly the TRX plane, and then recommend it instead of theirs. They’ll claim they got shafted by an incompetent, inexperienced pilot. You and I will look like blundering idiots, or worse.”

  “I agree,” the admiral said.

  Proposals from contractors were arriving based on the navy’s Request for Proposal (RFP) on the Athena project. The afternoon was devoted to examining these documents, which were as thick as metropolitan telephone directories. “How come these guys can’t just say what they want to say and leave it at that?”

  “Lawyers wrote these.”

  “I can’t make head or tail of some of this stuff. They’ve used every acronym in the book and made up a bunch more. These things look like dispatches from Babel.”

  One morning several days later Dreyfus stuck his head in Luis Camacho’s office door. “The Minotaur mailed the Russians another letter.”

  Dreyfus handed Camacho a copy and sank into a chair while his boss perused it. Addressed to the Soviet ambassador, the letter was a commentary on Gorbachev’s recent visit to Cuba. The last paragraph contained some advice on how the Soviets should handle Castro.

  “On generic copy paper, as usual. Just like all the others.”

  “Has the original been through the lab yet?”

  “Nope. I just took it down.”

  “Go get it. I want to see it.”

  “What for? That’s an accurate copy.”

  “Please. Now.”

  With a shake of his head, Dreyfus complied.

  Camacho opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves, which he worked onto his hands without the benefit of baby powder. Then he extracted a jar from the lower left drawer. He opened it and used a letter opener to smear a little of the blue jelly on his desk. Oops, too much. He used a piece of paper from a legal pad to blot the mess, then stared at the stain on the back of the paper. After firmly closing the jar, he stowed it back in his desk.

  When Dreyfus returned with the letter, Camacho was at the window idly watching the pedestrians on E Street. He gingerly opened the plastic bag and extracted the letter while Dreyfus watched openmouthed. He laid the fully opened letter on the desk and pressed. Then he turned it over and examined the blue smear on the back. Satisfactory. Not too much, yet enough for the lab to get a sample. He refolded the letter and replaced it in the see-through plastic bag.

  “Take it back to the lab.”

  “Did I see that?”

  “No. You are as ignorant as you look.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Indeed. And while you’re at it, see if this word is encoded in the text.” Camacho seized a piece of scratch paper and carefully printed a word. “Kilderkin.” He passed the paper to Dreyfus.

  “Anything else?” Dreyfus asked hopefully.

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I dunno. I’ve got the feeling that neat and wonderful wheels are turning like crazy, though I haven’t the foggiest idea why. Or where the wheels will take us.”

  “What do you want? A Tuesday-morning miracle?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a miracle. A tiny little sleight of hand would be welcome. Or a very brief explanation.”

  Camacho shot his cuffs. “See. Nothing up my sleeves. No hat, so no rabbit.”

  Dreyfus stood and ambled toward the door. “Kilderkin, huh? You know, I get the impression that—”

  “Never trust your impressions. Wait for evidence.”

  “So what do we do with the original letter when the lab’s through with it?” The agent fluttered the plastic bag gently.

  “The usual. Stick it back in its envelope and let the post office deliver it. I’m sure the ambassador will convey the writer’s advice to the members of the Politburo at his earliest opportunity. This may be the great watershed in U.S.-Soviet re—” He stopped because Dreyfus was already out the door and had closed it behind him.

  At ten o’clock Dreyfus was back. He waited patiently until Camacho was off the phone, then said, “Okay, how’d you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That that antique word from merry ol’ England would crack it?”

  “Kilderkin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson. A kilderkin is a barrel or cask. It contains something, as that letter did.”

  “Shit.”

  Camacho extended his hand. Dreyfus passed him a small piece of white paper containing the three words from the message and waited while he examined it The second word was “kilderkin.”

  “That’s all,” Camacho said, looking up as he folded the small page and stuck it into his shirt pocket.

  “Thanks.”

  “Always a pleasure, Holmes.”

  When he was again alone, Camacho dialed a telephone number from memory and identified himself to the woman who answered. In a moment the person he wanted was on the line and he said, “Let’s have lunch.”

  “Can’t today. Pretty busy.”

  “Appointments?”

  “Yep.”

  “Cancel them.”

  “Where and when?”

  “On the mall, in front of the Air and Space Museum. Twelve or so.”

  The line went dead in Camacho’s ear. He cradled the instrument. He leaned back in his chair and looked out his little window at the buildings on the other side of E Street. He pursed his lips and, breathing deeply in and out, gently massaged his head with one han
d.

  An hour later he was out on the sidewalk in his shirt sleeves, striding along. He had left his pistol locked in his desk drawer, his jacket and tie over the back of his chair. He was violating FBI policy but so be it. The summer heat was palpable, a living, breathing monster no doubt goaded by the sheer numbers of humans who were defying it this midday. Where did all these people come from? The streets were packed with cars, taxis, snorting buses and trucks, the sidewalks covered with swarming humanity.

  Overhead the summer haze made the sky appear a gauzy, indistinct white, but it failed to soften the sun’s fierce glare. Camacho’s shirt wilted swiftly and glued itself to the small of his back. He could feel the perspiration soaking into his socks. Little beads of sweat congealed around the hairs on the back of his hands, and he automatically wiped the palms on his trousers as he walked.

  Every shady circle under the mall trees was home to office workers and tourists who could no longer stay on their feet. Children sprawled and played on the hard-packed dirt. The grass that had grown under the trees so profusely this spring had succumbed weeks ago under the impact of infinite feet. An endless stream of joggers and serious runners pounded up and down the gravel paths of the mall, little dust spurts rising from the thud of each foot. The combined effect was a thin brown curtain of dust that rose into the air and tilted away toward the monolithic art museums that lined the northern side of the open expanse.

  The street in front of the Air and Space Museum was bumper to bumper with tour buses. As he came closer, Luis Camacho threaded his way through the hordes of teenagers and middle-aged pink people in shorts and cutesy T-shirts.

  The great American sightseeing excursion was in full swing. Herds of Japanese tourists clad in the requisite button-down short-sleeved shirts clustered near some of the buses and busily snapped their cameras at each other, the huge windowless museums to the north, the distant Washington Monument and the dome of the Capitol rising in the east like a corpulent moon. In spite of the oppressive heat, the mood was cheerful, gay.

  Camacho found a spot in the shade near a tree and sat down gratefully. Cigarette butts and candy-bar wrappers littered the ground. He didn’t care. To his left a souvenir stand was doing a land-office business in film, soft drinks and ice-cream bars. Squalling youngsters and frisky youths queued like soldiers in the sun as they waited for their turn to surrender their money to the happy merchant.