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

by Walter J. Boyne

  Wachter started off by repeating Hawkins’s conversation almost verbatim. Harry was grateful for the esteem in which they held his father. They didn’t really know Tom, but they seemed totally sincere with their concern, for they knew it had affected Vance terribly.

  Wachter and Harry’s talk then turned to mutual friends, who was where, and, inevitably, the state of business, especially the purchase of Douglas by McDonnell earlier in the year.

  “‘McDonnell Douglas’—sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

  Harry nodded. “It’s the start of a trend. Stan Hooker warned my father about it years ago, when all the British companies were drying up. At least they kept both names—it would have been tough just to have it be ‘McDonnell.’”

  Wachter nodded his agreement. “Couldn’t do that—too much history tied up in the Douglas name. It would be like Chrysler dropping the Plymouth brand.”

  Harry filled Wachter in on all the details of the new Boeing 737, and Wachter gleefully recounted his Moscow-to-Tokyo trip in a new Tupolev Tu-114, a special flight laid on by Leonid Brezhnev for the foreign press and industry people.

  “It’s the damnedest thing you ever saw, Harry, four huge turboprops, swept wings, and it goes like a bat out of hell. The amazing thing was the service on board. They must have had a special crew of stewardesses, because you couldn’t turn around without them offering you a vodka and some caviar. And they were always hinting that if you wanted more of something else, they’d be willing. I don’t know if anybody took them up on the something else, but everybody took them up on the vodka and caviar.”

  Harry asked, “How was the noise level?” Turboprops were notorious for their noise and for their high frequencies, which often made ground crew men violently ill if they were not wearing adequate ear protection.

  “On the ground the noise was just impossible, deafening. I don’t think the FAA would ever approve it for domestic operations, just way too noisy. But inside, not bad at all. You’re conscious of it on takeoff, of course, but in level flight it’s quieter than a piston-engine transport, noisier than a jet.”

  They were silent for a while, companionably watching all the effort—cars driving up, people racing to the sideline for parts, panels on the aircraft being pulled, and an impatient group of executives glancing at their watches. It was all part of the preliminaries for a first flight.

  “I’ll tell you, Harry, if we don’t get a contract for this chopper, there is no justice! It is so advanced compared to anything else in the competition.”

  “A rigid rotor! That’s not just advanced; that’s futuristic. Can you make it work?”

  “Well, you see that itty-bitty fixed wing?”

  The Cheyenne had stub wings, about twenty-five feet in span, into which its wheels retracted.

  Harry nodded.

  “Well, they off-load the rotor during high-speed flight. It makes the fixed rotor practicable. And the pusher propeller makes it as controllable as an airplane.”

  “Any problems that you see?”

  “The wind tunnel and the slide rules tell us that it all works fine, but Willis is worried about stability at high speeds. You know it’s designed for about two hundred and fifty miles an hour—that is performance! Nothing like it in the competition.”

  Harry nodded. As important as the jet engine had been to conventional aircraft, it had proved to be a lifesaver for helicopters. All the previous piston-engine helicopters had been woefully underpowered, particularly at altitude. The jet changed all that, and the success that Bell had with its Model 47 seemed to change the helicopter world. Now it looked as if the Cheyenne was the next great advance.

  The Lockheed engineer went on, “This bird has everything! It carries a minigun in the nose turret, and can take six Hughes anti-tank missiles under the wing. They decked it out with night-vision equipment that you wouldn’t believe, and the helmet has a gun sight built in. It’s just phenomenal!”

  In time Wachter’s enthusiasm for the Cheyenne trailed off, and he began inquiring about the simulator business. Harry leveled with him. “Bob, let’s just get right down to what you want to know, and let me get back to you. If I try to wing it, I’ll be certain to foul you up.”

  Wachter pulled a folder out from the briefcase beside him and said, “I thought you’d never ask! Here’s about twenty key questions—any information you can give us I’d appreciate.”

  Harry glanced at the questions and shrugged his shoulders. The first question: “Is three-axis motion feasible for a helicopter simulator?” took him out of his depth.

  “Let me get this to Bob Rodriquez. He’s down at the Cape this week, but I’ll send it special delivery and he’ll get an answer back as soon as he can. He’s pretty busy there.”

  Wachter nodded. “I understand they are attributing the accident to the one-hundred-percent-oxygen environment?”

  “That’s what I hear, too, but not officially—just the usual rumors. Apparently a spark was all it took to turn the entire spacecraft into an inferno, and with the way the entrance hatch was designed, they had no way to get out. It means pretty much of a redesign of the entrance and the pressurization system.”

  There was a flurry of activity by the Cheyenne where Hawkins was tossing his notebook on the ground in disappointment. He recovered himself and walked to the microphone that had been used to brief the crowd earlier.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but we’ll have to postpone the first flight. There’s a small problem with the electrical system. First flight will be tomorrow, and I hope you all can return. We’ll shoot for a two o’clock takeoff.”

  Wachter smiled ruefully at Harry, saying, “That’s the breaks. How many times has this happened to you?”

  “More than I can count. It’s just part of the business. And I’ll be back to you on the simulator stuff ASAP.”

  Hawkins walked over and sat down besides them. “What’s the electrical problem, Willis?”

  “That’s just a cover. All of a sudden the Army project manager, Emil Kluever, decided he wanted to go along on the first flight! We don’t have a seat for him, so we have to rig one. I couldn’t tell that to the crowd. Kluever is a nice guy; I didn’t want to put him on the spot.”

  The next day, at two o’clock sharp, veteran test pilot Don Segner took off and put the Cheyenne through its paces for twenty-six minutes. Kluever perched on a makeshift seat in the front cockpit.

  Harry talked to Segner later. “She looked pretty good, Don; what do you think?”

  “I had some control problems, nothing I couldn’t handle, but I tell you this. The Cheyenne is too good.”

  “Too good? How’s that?”

  “As soon as the Air Force sees the Cheyenne’s performance, it’s going to start a rolls and missions war with the Army. They don’t want any two-hundred-and-fifty-mile-per-hour helicopters out there providing ground support. I got a bad feeling about this, Harry. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but the Cheyenne is just too hot to succeed. But don’t tell anybody I said this—that’s just between you and me.”

  Harry nodded—rolls and missions were the basis for apportioning the budget, and the services were intensely jealous about them. And as much as he hated to admit it, he knew that politics might prevent the Army from getting the best weapon it could.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  January 8, 1968

  Palos Verdes, California

  Clad only in his old terry cloth bathrobe, Vance Shannon was reaching for the refrigerator door when the stroke felled him. He stumbled straight ahead, gashing his scalp on the door handle, then crashing to the Mexican tile floor with a thump that brought Jill running from the next room.

  She knew what it was at a glance, checking his breathing, then calling an ambulance. Forty-five minutes later he was in the hospital undergoing treatment, Doc Parry at his side.

  Harry had rushed to the hospital and now he sat with his arm around Jill, comforting her. Jill had come late in life as a stepmother, but he loved her
dearly.

  “Anna will be here soon, and so will Nancy, as soon as she gets a babysitter.”

  Jill was a trooper, no tears, her emotions betrayed only by her death-white face and the constant squeezing of the handkerchiefs she held in each hand. She and Harry sat in the long green hallway, the walls throbbing with reflected fluorescent light, nurses and medics racing up and down, patients wheeled by, the curious combination smell of medicine, illness, and death, all with everyone looking anxious.

  “I thought something was coming, Harry. He ate scarcely anything last night, just went into the library, and sat there, worrying about Tom and the business. Every once in a while, he’d talk to himself, and I could see him being agitated. I went to try to comfort him a few times, but he did what he always did, smile, and say he was OK in a way that let me know he wanted to be alone.”

  An hour later Parry emerged, his hair tousled as usual but his manner unusually grave. Normally almost preternaturally cheerful, Parry sat down with them and said, “Vance is going to live, but I think he will be impaired. I hate to tell you this, and I hope I am wrong, but it’s apparent that this was a serious event, and we are going to have to watch him carefully for a few days. Then, when he comes home, he’ll need almost constant care for a while.”

  “Is he conscious now?”

  “No, he’s sleeping, and that’s the best thing for him at the moment. We’ll do our best for him. I know what his regular medications are, but has he been taking anything over-the-counter?”

  Jill thought for a moment and said, “Aspirin, he’s always been a hound for aspirin, but I noticed he was taking them two at a time, several times a day, recently, complaining about headaches.”

  “That’s a break—it may have saved him, that and your getting him to the hospital right away.”

  Harry and Jill went in to see Vance, frail and drawn, the usual array of drip bottles surrounding him.

  Harry made a wry joke. “Too bad Bob isn’t here to make sure the oxygen flow is right.”

  Jill whispered back, “Too bad Vance can’t hear you—he’d be the first to laugh.”

  After a sad, silent twenty minutes, they left to meet Anna and Nancy in the hallway. They arranged to meet back at the house.

  On the drive home, Jill cried quietly. She put her hand out on Harry’s arm. “You know what this means, Harry. Vance wanted you to take his work over completely, and now you’ll have to. I know you are too busy already; do you think you can handle it?”

  Harry pulled over to the side of the street, closed his eyes, and thought hard. “I’ll never be able to do what he did. He had an immense amount of knowledge and just incredible intuition. But I’ll try to cover as much as I can. I think the best thing to do will be to get together with Bob and see what he’s willing to take over. We can sort of divvy things up. And if it gets to be too much, we’ll hire people. There’s a recession going on in the industry now; lots of companies are squeezing their higher-salaried people out, the old story. We should be able to pick up some talent without much of a problem.”

  Jill said, “You do what your gut instinct tells you. That’s how Vance operated, and he did well. He always told me that you would be running the place.”

  Harry turned and looked at her, flicking on the overhead light as he did so.

  “Did he really say that? I’m amazed. Tom was always his favorite; I thought he would be the one to get the nod.”

  Visibly angry, Jill said, “How can you say that? He loved you both just the same; you must know that.”

  Harry shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. “No, that’s just the way it was, I didn’t mind, he never thought he was showing it, he always tried to be super-fair, but there it was. I think he saw a lot of Mom in Tom and that appealed to him. You don’t mind my saying that?”

  Jill shook her head. “No, I’m not jealous of your mother. Who could be? She did a fine job. I’m jealous of Madeline, but that’s another story. But not your mother, never.”

  Harry drove on. “If I’m clinically honest with myself, I have to say that I’m a better choice than Tom, because I get along with Bob.”

  “Your dad saw that. That was part of his reasoning, but not all. He always considered you the best businessman in the family, himself included.”

  Harry put his hand on hers, patted it, and said, “Well, now we’ll see. I just hope that poor Tom has survived. If he came back tomorrow, I’d be glad to give him pride of place; he deserves it.”

  Jill said, “He’ll come back. I know it. I just hope it is not too miserable for him until he does.”

  VANCE’S RECOVERY WAS progressing quite well until he had a sudden, totally unexpected bout with pneumonia. It was three weeks before he was allowed to return home to Jill’s loving care. To her surprise, he soon had a regular caller, Fritz Obermyer, who came down twice a week from Los Angeles to sit with Vance for precisely two hours. Vance had not yet regained his ability to speak, but he seemed to like Obermyer’s being there. It was an unlikely friendship, given their different backgrounds, but it was evident that Vance enjoyed the companionship and it was a welcome relief for Jill.

  It was mid-February when Fritz left Vance’s bed and asked if he could talk to Jill. “That old car downstairs, the Cord. It is a favorite of Vance’s, right?”

  Jill nodded.

  “Let me take it. I will have my people restore it. They have connections with the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg club; they can get all the specifications. They will make it like new. Then we will surprise Vance; we’ll take him down and take him for a ride in his new Cord.”

  Jill demurred at first, afraid that it might be done in a way Vance wouldn’t like. But Fritz persisted, and she finally agreed, hoping that it would tug Vance back closer to the real world and perhaps give him an incentive to recover. Something had to be done. It was so sad to see this imaginative, even artistic man bundled up within himself, unable to communicate beyond shaking his head and, when he was feeling really well, making a mark to signify “yes” or “no” on a legal pad with a large crayon that Jill placed in his hand.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  February 2, 1968

  On the outskirts of Hanoi, North Vietnam

  Pain was the path between consciousness and oblivion. He would submerge into an unconscious state, deeper than death could be, only to be jolted back into a shocked awareness of pain so unbelievably intense that he would lapse back into unconsciousness again.

  The North Vietnamese captors had not yet tortured Tom Shannon. He was already so broken that there was no way to inflict additional pain. They knew that he had to recover before they could retrieve useful intelligence from him. Only then he could be tortured profitably.

  Shannon had survived so far only because of the almost superhuman ministrations of Michael Pavone, captured simultaneously with him. Both men had ejected successfully, but Shannon had landed in the middle of a North Vietnamese infantry unit. The troops had thrown down their rifles and rice bowls to leap on Shannon, beating him with a ferocious glee. Pavone had landed only a few miles away and was scarcely beaten at all before being taken into custody by an intelligence officer, Võ Trân Kiêt. When Kiêt finally reached Shannon, the pilot was unconscious, his face brutally kicked in, his right eye enucleated, with both arms and his left leg twisted grotesquely. He was scarcely breathing through a foam of blood. Kiêt immediately assigned Pavone to care for him, ordering their escort to allow Pavone to do what he had to do to keep Shannon alive.

  Pavone used his and Shannon’s underwear to bind up the worst wounds and fashioned crude bamboo braces to immobilize his arms and legs as much as possible, given that he was being manhandled on trails until they reached a point where they were shoved into the back of a rough-riding truck. There was very little food, but Kiêt, conscious that Shannon was a colonel and therefore must know a great deal, passed Pavone sufficient rice to keep them both alive. Shannon could not chew, but Pavone chewed the rice for him, pressing it into his mouth and
massaging his throat to induce him to swallow. All the while Pavone talked to him, sometimes as if he were a baby being induced to eat, sometimes screaming at him for not shooting down the fifth airplane for certain.

  “I could be an ace and never know it.”

  Curiously, Pavone didn’t blame Shannon for his bitter failure, for fixating on the target so long that he allowed them to be shot down. But Pavone was indignant that they might indeed have killed their fifth MiG and might never know for sure.

  Pavone had no illusions. He knew that Kiêt’s bounty would end as soon as they reached some place where Shannon could be hospitalized. Then it would be Pavone’s turn to be beaten. He was not sure he could take it. It might be better to make a break for it, to be killed, rather than to endure the utter brutality that he had seen inflicted on the other prisoners who joined them on their long march.

  On the second day on the trail, Shannon’s eyes fluttered and he stared up at Pavone, the glance questioning all that had happened. No one saw Shannon’s flicker of consciousness, and Pavone bent down and whispered in Shannon’s ear.

  “Colonel, you’ve got to hear me. You’re hurt bad, but you’ll live if you get a chance to rest for a few more days. I’ve checked your arms and legs, and I don’t think they are broken. They want to question you, but as long as you are unconscious they’ll let you be. I think they know you were the man who tricked them and shot down the MiGs. Don’t ever let them see that you are coming around. I’ll take care of you, but you’ve got to pretend to be unconscious, no matter what they do.”

  The North Vietnamese had moved them with a restless energy from one makeshift prison to the next. There was no pattern to the movements; sometimes as many as half a dozen people would be driven along, sometimes only Pavone and Shannon. It took all of Pavone’s declining strength to keep Shannon moving. The villages were indistinguishable, the people hostile, the prisons little more than bamboo pens or rooms in the back of some old French government outpost. During the day their legs were freed to allow them to walk, but their arms were tied, further upsetting their sense of balance and causing many additional wounds from branches that snapped back into them as they were hustled along the trails. At night they were trussed, arms and legs, so that they could not move, lying on their backs and soiling themselves.