“I’m glad to hear that.”
She could afford to be generous in victory. “Thanks for your help on these matters.” Megan turned, jubilant. Scotty Stang would finally get the help he needed. How would the Stangs receive the dictate? Jack worked with Sam. Would he try and take it out on Sam?
The first thing Holt did when he got into Ops was hunt down Jack Stang. He’d taken leave up until the first day of school in early January. Sam hadn’t forgotten what Stang had said and done to Megan at the Christmas party, and he was intent on pursuing the matter as soon as possible. He’d purposely arrived early in hopes that the captain would be there. Entering Design, he found Jack at his desk. The place was deserted. Good.
Sauntering over to his desk, Holt said, “We’ve got some serious matters to discuss, Jack. I’d have done it a lot earlier, but you’ve been out of town since Christmas.”
Lifting his head from his work, Stang reared back in his chair, a lazy smile on his mouth. “Palm Springs is a nice place to spend the holidays with my family, Holt.” Melody’s parents had a winter home at the posh resort. “Now, what’s on your mind?”
Placing his hands flat on Stang’s desk, Holt leaned forward, his voice low and menacing. “The Christmas party I couldn’t attend because I was TDY in Maryland at the time. You ever mention Megan Roberts’s father to her in that tone and fashion again, you’ll be answering to me, Stang. You copy that? And I didn’t like that fact your wife was hinting that Lauren and I were having an affair, either.”
Carelessly, Stang rocked back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “Is that what Megan told you?” He laughed. “That little lady’s stretching the truth—”
With a hiss, Holt’s hand snaked out. He gripped Stang by the collar of his light blue shirt, jerking him forward. Their faces were inches apart. “Don’t pull that shit on me, Stang. I know you too well.” His fingers tightened on the material, and Holt smiled lethally as Stang’s eyes went wide. Stang hadn’t expected him to get physical. “I believe Megan’s version of what went down. There were witnesses to that little tête-à-tête you had with her. Read me loud and clear on this, buddy—I’m on your six about this. I ever catch you talking about Megan in a derogatory way again, I’ll have your ass. Understand?”
Lips lifting away from his teeth, Jack gripped Holt’s wrist. “You son of a bitch, don’t you threaten me or my wife!”
Holt had the better leverage. With both hands, he hauled Stang forward, off balance. “Go ahead,” he breathed savagely, “take a swing, Stang….”
Stang hung across his desk, several items clattering to the floor. He was up for early major. He wasn’t going to lose it in a stupid brawl with Holt. And certainly not over Megan Roberts. “Let go,” he ordered harshly.
Holt shoved him backward, releasing his hold on Stang. The captain slammed back into his chair, nearly losing his balance. Straightening, Holt stood there, glaring down at him.
“You copy, Stang?”
“I copy,” he growled tensely.
Holt turned away and headed back to his desk, breathing unevenly. If anyone had caught them fighting, it would have been bad for their fitness reports, which were coming up soon. Sam didn’t care. Defending Megan was a hell of a lot more important than getting his damned major’s leaves early. He was going to protect her against people like Stang and his vicious wife.
For nearly an hour, they worked at their separate desks, the silence overwhelming. At eight o’clock, Stang’s phone rang.
“Design,” he snapped.
“Jack?”
“Melody, what’s wrong?” She was upset.
“I—I just got a call from Jamison. Jack, the school and union are demanding that Scotty be tested immediately for hyperactivity.”
“What?” He jerked a glance in Holt’s direction. The pilot glanced up, and then immediately went back to work. “What?” he whispered, keeping his voice low so Holt couldn’t hear the conversation. It didn’t matter, Holt got up and left Design, leaving him alone.
“Yes. Jamison said Megan Roberts went to General Dalton! Oh, God, Jack, she went to Dalton!”
“That bitch!” he cried hoarsely.
“We underestimated her, Jack. She’s Colonel Roberts’s daughter. She has clout here at Edwards, and she used it against us.”
His fingers tightened until the knuckles were white around the phone. “Christ, my major’s leaves! My early promotion! What’s this going to do to it?”
“There’s nothing we can do, Jack. Nothing! Dalton now knows about Scotty’s problems. The only thing we can do to salvage ourselves and your standing with him is to get Scotty tested. I’ve already called Dr. Alphonse Simmons in Los Angeles. He’s agreed to look at Scotty tomorrow morning.”
Furious over his blunder with Megan Roberts, Jack rubbed his brow. “Yeah…that’s fine. Take him down. Why don’t you leave now?”
“I’ve called my parents, and they’re expecting Scotty and me. Jack, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing we can do now. We’re outgunned. All we can do is implement damage control and hope like hell it hasn’t affected my status for early promotion.”
“It won’t,” Melody said. “I’m just sick about this, darling. Sick.”
No more than he was. Jack hung up a moment later. He sat at his desk, fuming. His day had gone from bad to worse. Did Holt know about Megan’s machinations with the general? The bastard probably did, wanting to be here when Melody got the word. Closing his fist, Stang ached to smash in Holt’s face. An entire day stretched ahead of him. In two weeks, Lauren was going to deliver her final decision on the brilliant test idea he’d come up with. If she approved the test results, he still stood in good with Design, and Dalton wouldn’t take his early promotion away from him because of Scotty’s behavior.
“I’m afraid,” Lauren Porter said with regret to the men surrounding the oval table, “that the engine redesign isn’t a complete success for short field landings.”
Stang, who had been leaning back in his leather chair, snapped upright, his jaw hanging. “What?”
Porter’s eyes narrowed. “I said, the engine redesign isn’t the total answer, Captain Stang.”
Holt moved uncomfortably in his chair. Weeks earlier Megan had filled him in on her fight to get Scotty Stang tested. The child was diagnosed as hyperactive and was now on drugs to calm him down. When she told him of General Dalton’s influence to bring the problem to a swift conclusion, he flinched inwardly, knowing that Stang would be a bear at work. Not only that, but Stang had also been barely able to conceal his hatred of him because he was going with Megan.
Holt sat down at one end of the table, a good view of Stang and Lauren, who were only two chairs apart. The mid-January sunlight filtered strongly through the blinds and lent a radiance to the Design meeting room that no one felt.
“But,” Jack sputtered indignantly, “I know it’ll work!” What was going down? Had Dalton’s opinion of him, based on his son’s need to be on drugs and well-publicized behavior at school, affected Lauren’s decision? Stang had no doubt that Megan Roberts’s interference was partially responsible for the flight engineer’s decision. Why else would she do it?
Fingers tightening around the pencil in her right hand, Lauren glared at Stang. “Captain, the flight engineers, both military and civilian,” she emphasized, “have given the Agile Eagle every possible chance to show it can land consistently at fifteen hundred feet. It doesn’t.”
Angrily, Stang stood up, shoving the chair away. “Well, I disagree.” He began to pace the length of the rectangular room that was littered with charts and blueprints.
Sam tensed, watching Lauren’s set features. No one was happy about the situation. Especially Lauren, because it was her project, and it was not just behind schedule, but nothing seemed to work consistently in slowing down the F-15 sufficiently for a short landing sequence.
“Look, Jack,” said Roy Holding, McDonnell’s civilian chief design engineer on the F-15, “we�
��ve tried everything. But when the winds are wrong, the bird can’t make the grade. Your idea was a good one, Jack, but it’s not the complete answer,” he stressed in a mild voice, trying to ease the building tension.
With a snort, Jack threw his hands on his hips and glared at all of them. His hatred soared as he fixed his gaze on Porter. She was the other reason why his idea hadn’t worked. Grinding his teeth, he snarled, “If certain flight engineers would ease up on the ratios, the Agile Eagle would have a ninety-five-percentile short landing record. And that’s good enough.”
Sam sucked in a breath, watching Lauren. He had to give the major credit: she wasn’t flying off the handle like Stang was. But then, Stang’s baby had just been shot down. He’d been relying on the engine design to guarantee his major’s promotion coming up shortly, and also to get the vaunted B-2 slot.
“Captain, sit down,” Lauren ordered in a tight voice.
Jack’s nostrils flared, his fingers digging into his hips. The urge to punch her in the face was very real. The snobby bitch! Everyone in Design was watching him. With a muttered curse he stalked back to his chair, jerked it out away from the table and sat down. Breathing hard, he leaned forward, nailing Porter.
“Major, I strongly disagree with the parameters you’ve set up for the tests with the new engine design. If you’d ease those restrictions, we’d get a ninety-five percent across the board.”
“Put it in writing, Captain,” she said in a steely tone, “and I’ll take it directly to General Dalton.”
Grabbing a pencil, Stang leaned back in his chair, and refused to say anything. That confirmed to him that Dalton was in on this. Seething with fury, Jack wanted to cry out in pure frustration.
Holt slowly released his breath. This confrontation between Stang and Port had been building for a long time. He applauded her control and good judgment. Stang wasn’t going to put anything down on a report. If he were wrong about her use of ratios, it could make him look foolish, or worse, possibly stupid. It wouldn’t look good on his fitness report, or help him get another choice slot as a test pilot. Lauren was a damn good flight engineer and knew her stuff. She’d tried every conceivable way to give the Agile Eagle a chance to land consistently at fifteen hundred feet. Under certain wind conditions, it wouldn’t. She refused to put her signature on the design change, approve it and tell General Dalton that they’d solved the problem when the tests weren’t proving it out.
Idly, he’d been drawing on a white pad of paper in front of him on the table. Unconsciously, he’d drawn the nose and canopy section of the F-15. Holt frowned and looked more closely at his doodles. A light flashed in his brain, and he grabbed the pad. His heart started a slow pound, excitement thrumming through him as he studied it.
“Port…” he called hesitantly.
“Yes?” Her voice was brittle.
Sam slid the pad down in her direction. “What if we put movable canards on the nose of the F-15? You know, we use them on the B-l bomber to slow it down enough to keep it out of a stall position for short takeoffs and landings.” He leaned forward, hands clasped on the table. “Hell, yes! Our whole problem has been trying not to stall the F-15 by raising its nose too high to create that condition. Those canards might prevent the normal stall angle in the bird. It might give us a few degrees upward, automatically slowing it down so we could consistently hit the mark.”
“You’re full of it,” Stang ranted, and stood up. “Holt, you’re really reaching! Most fighters don’t have canards. Just the bombers.”
“Sit down, Jack,” Lauren snapped. She looked at Holt’s drawing, and then glanced over at her civilian counterpart across the table. “Roy?”
The gray-haired engineer shrugged his rounded shoulders. “It’s provocative, Lauren.”
“Feasible?” she asked.
With a grimace, Roy rubbed his jaw, thinking. Design grew silent. The kind of silence that was fragile, at a breaking point.
Stang squirmed in his chair. He glowered at Holt in disbelief. “Canards! It won’t work,” he muttered defiantly. “You might get the F-15 on the mark, but what will it do to the fighter’s performance? Are you going to trade air combat superiority for a short landing? Holt, your idea isn’t going to make it.”
Sam let Stang’s acid comments slough off him. “You got any better ideas?”
“Dammit,” Jack growled, slamming his fist down on the table, getting everyone’s attention, “I know that bird can hit the mark at fifteen hundred feet right now! It’s winter, and the winds are choppy and multidirectional. We’ve been testing under difficult circumstances at best. All we need is more testing, more—”
“Captain, you’re way out of line,” Lauren growled. “The testing is finished on the redesigned engine. It was a good idea, but not a complete one. Now, I suggest you either join us in investigating the canard idea, or take a walk and cool down.”
Frustration exploded through Jack. He sat there, looking at everyone. Shoving the chair away, he snarled, “I’m going for a cup of coffee.”
Holt watched the test pilot stalk out of the room. The tension dissolved after he shut the door more loudly than necessary. With the promotion list due out sometime in the first week in February, Stang was increasingly jumpy. He wanted his major’s leaves so bad he could taste them. So did Sam, But would he, or any of them, get early promotion?
“Hey!” an airman called from the door of Design, “the promotion list was just posted out on the bulletin board down the hall.”
Holt froze at his desk. It was late Friday afternoon, and he was getting ready to pick Megan up after school. Stang reacted first, striding toward the door. Merrill slowly got up, as if not wanting to see the results. Hands growing damp, Sam forced himself to finish putting the reports he’d read over the weekend into his briefcase.
“Aren’t you going to look, Sam?” Lauren inquired from her desk.
He grinned carelessly. “Sooner or later.”
“My, what confidence,” she teased.
“No…not really. More like unadulterated fear I didn’t make it.”
Porter smiled. “You’re something else, Holt.”
Sam approached Curt. “Come on, we’ll go down together,” Sam told him with a smile.
Managing a pained grimace, Merrill picked up his bulging briefcase and put on his garrison cap. “Misery loves company. Yeah, I’m ready to call it a day.”
Holt walked out into the hall. There weren’t many captains going up for early promotion, so the list was going to be a short one. Up ahead, on the left, he saw six officers craning forward, looking around one another, to see if they’d made it. Sam had been too busy working with Lauren and the civilian design engineers on the canard idea to think about possible promotion.
Holt’s walk was slow because he dreaded looking at the list. Without a doubt, Stang had made it. He didn’t think Curt would. Himself? It was a real toss-up. The crash one month after arriving at Edwards probably signed his death warrant insofar as getting an early promotion. There were two cries of jubilation. Three more officers, turned away, sour looks on their faces.
Just as Sam approached, he saw Stang whirl toward them. His face was livid, eyes burning with anger.
“You’re the only one that made it of the three of us,” he rasped, and deliberately brushed Holt’s shoulder as he passed him.
Stunned, Holt jerked to a halt, assimilating Stang’s angry statement. Merrill moved around him and checked the list closely.
“Dammit,” Curt cursed, clenching his fist. “Dammit to hell.” And then, he caught himself, flushed and offered his hand to Holt. “Congratulations, Sam. You made it first time around.”
In shock, Holt gripped Merrill’s proffered hand. “Thanks…”
“Well, I’ve got to get home. See you Monday.”
Blinking, Sam nodded. “Yeah, Monday.” Had he really made early major? Everyone else had left, and he was alone in the hall to look at the paper. Only three names appeared. His was the last one. Shaki
ng his head, Sam stood there a good five minutes, hardly able to believe his good fortune. It meant a real shot at the B-2 project coming up.
“Congratulations, Sam.”
He glanced to his left. Lauren walked up, a set of huge, rolled-up blueprints under one arm and a huge briefcase in the other. She had her work cut out for her this weekend. “You knew?”
“For a long time. I wanted to tell you, but it wouldn’t have been fair to the others.”
Nodding, Sam understood. “I can’t believe it. At least, not yet.”
Laughing softly, Lauren murmured, “You will soon enough. All it really means is more responsibility heaped on your shoulders. A chance to screw up sooner, quicker and better than everyone else if something goes wrong. And your head’s the first on the chopping block sooner and on longer than anyone else’s, too. Some reward, huh?”
That was the reality of the situation. “I’ll take my chances with it,” Holt said, joining her laughter.
Looking significantly both ways, Lauren said in a low voice, “I wish I could have been out here when Stang found out he crashed and burned.”
“Jack wasn’t very happy.”
Lauren pursed her lips. “That’s the last time that bastard manipulates my people, and my project. He’s like a lethal, subtle poison infecting everyone. He and his wife. I can’t demote her, but I can sure as hell tie his hands and contain him. Maybe he’ll learn a lesson from this.”
Holt said nothing. He knew Lauren had a great deal to do with their fitness report ratings because she was their boss. “Maybe he’ll get the message and start squaring his act away.”
With a snort, Lauren moved past him. “Don’t count on it. I’m sure for the next month he’ll pout like a little boy who thinks he’s had his favorite toy taken away from him. See you on Monday.”
“Right.” Sam glanced at the paper one more time, as if to convince himself his promotion was real. Elation leaked through him, and then it became a flood of dizzying joy. He’d really made it! The door to his career as a test pilot had nowhere to go but up—unless he had a crash or some other major screwup.
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