Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age

by Boyne, Walter J.

  That’s why they were here at the Metaloid Company. The unimaginably expensive concept depended upon the incredible Hycon camera, which in the D-21 in turn depended upon special fasteners manufactured by Metaloid. These were failing at an astounding rate, and there was no apparent reason for it. The Hycon cameras had a great track record, working like a charm on the U-2. It was the best highresolution high-altitude camera in the world, but the model designed for the D-21 was having one problem after another during testing, and all the problems could be traced back to Metaloid parts.

  Bob Rodriquez was lead on the project, but for the first time, he was not achieving what he set out to do. Vance didn’t know enough about camera engineering to second-guess him but wanted to meet the Metaloid project officers and get a reading on them and on their relationship with Bob.

  Ironically, the flight out had given him more insight into Bob than he had imagined, almost more than he could handle. Although he was young, bitter about the treatment he felt he had received from the Air Force, and socially totally unconventional, Rodriquez had an unusually mature view of Aviation Consultants, the business Vance founded so many years ago. Vance hated the term “visionary.” It implied a mystical quality, and he knew that really brilliant long-range engineering like that of Kelly Johnson consisted of the fabled 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

  Yet Rodriquez was visionary, laying out a path to the future for the company that was breathtaking, an expansion into technologies that were just beginning to be talked about in the journals. Bob spoke with passion about still having to do engineering with slide rules and calculators when there was a revolution in computers just around the corner. He was using words that he had to define more than once to Vance—like “hard drives,” “transistors,” “chips,” meaningless terms to a man brought up on “horsepower,” “wing area,” and “speed.”

  Bob was conversant with the terms, while Vance was barely aware of the companies creating them. He had heard of IBM, of course, and Texas Instruments, but Bob was referring to Digital Equipment, Fairchild Semiconductor, and others that were unknown to him.

  But there was another dimension to their conversation, unspoken but there nevertheless. Without saying a single word, Bob made it evident that this new era in the world of electronics was beyond the capacities of both Tom and Harry, so it raised immediately the question of succession.

  And succession was heavy on Vance’s mind since his episode at Groom Lake the previous April. By coincidence, his annual flight physical came in the following month, and old Dr. Parry damn near took him off flying status, saying that the EKG showed some sort of anomaly. It took all of Vance’s persuasive powers, and a promise to check back in for another physical in December, to keep from failing his flight physical.

  No one knew better than himself how foolish he was being. He didn’t need to fly anymore. He had more than twenty thousand hours’ flying time and could easily have given it up. But it was like sex; he was no longer as potent as he had once been, but he was damned if he was going to toss in the towel on that end anytime soon. Laughing to himself, he thought, Well, with flying, I can always have another pilot along. Can’t do that with sex.

  Vance’s distaste for the company resurfaced as they went through the process of signing in and getting identification badges for their day in the plant. On the West Coast, the reception desks always had beautiful young women handling functions like this. They were able to laugh or to flirt harmlessly, and they gave a decent start to a day sure to be dull. Here the signing in was handled by an officious middle-aged man, obviously overqualified for the job and resentful at having to perform it. He made the ID badges seem more like passports to prison than introductions to the plant.

  The sense of hostility was emphasized when a severely dressed young secretary pounded down the hallway, her low-heel shoes rattling the expressionist paintings on the walls. Expressionist paintings! By God, on the West Coast they’d have pictures of good-looking airplanes on the walls. Sorrowfully, Vance’s mind went back to the beautiful young women at Boeing, Lockheed, Convair, everywhere, who were as efficient as they were pretty. One was not necessarily the enemy of the other. Her voice was coolly antiseptic as she told them, “Follow me please. Dr. Peterson is waiting in the conference room.”

  Vance reacted badly again; the only people he liked to call “Doctor” were medical men like Doc Parry. In Vance’s world, engineering doctorates didn’t have the same cachet—you proved your engineering merit in your products, not on parchments hung on the wall.

  There were half a dozen scientists and engineers waiting for them in the conference room, and as they went through the introductions Vance noted a curious split in their attitudes. Four were genuinely friendly and obviously had a high regard for Bob. Two of these had even heard of Vance and talked about some of his exploits.

  Dr. Melville Peterson and his assistant, Dr. Arnold Koenig, were something else. They were cold to Bob, barely acknowledging him, and gave Vance a cold-fish handshake that clearly said, If you are with him, we are not with you.

  Vance could not fault the briefing, however. They were smart enough to recognize that he was new to the project, and they took it from ground zero, emphasizing the care with which they had modified the basic engineering of the Metaloid fasteners used in the U-2 to adapt to the D-21. They also clearly conveyed that they were not in the habit of being wrong and implied that the apparent failure must be in the Lockheed test procedures or test facilities. This trod directly on Vance’s area of expertise, and ego aside, he knew that the test procedures were valid.

  There was something else going on. An old veteran of corporate games, Shannon saw that Peterson and Koenig knew something that they were not revealing, and he sensed that it had to do with Bob. Peterson was tall and slim, with a Yankee horse face that belied his southern accent. Koenig was almost the opposite, short, soft, but with a similar accent. Peterson didn’t quite say “you-all” but came close enough.

  The meeting seemed to be ending inconclusively when Shannon stood up, saying, “I think this pretty well covers all we can do here. But I’d like to have a closed session with Dr. Peterson and Dr. Koenig, if I may.”

  Turning to Bob, Shannon said, “Wait for me at the reception desk.”

  Ordinarily Bob might have inquired, but he knew something was going on as well and nodded in acknowledgment.

  Peterson demurred saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Shannon, but we don’t have time for a meeting right now. Can we reschedule?”

  Shannon asked, “Will you have time for a meeting if I call Dr. Redgrave and ask him to join us?”

  Russ Redgrave was the founder of the firm; Vance knew him only slightly, but he knew men like Peterson or Koenig never wanted a scene with their boss that they were not prepared for. Nettled, Peterson sat down in his chair, saying, “Well, if you must, please get on with it.”

  Shannon did. “I clearly detect an animosity on your part for my colleague Mr. Rodriquez. Please don’t try to deny it; it is very evident. Is it because he does not have a doctorate?”

  Koenig spoke for the first time, his voice low and bitter. “That’s not it at all.”

  Peterson looked at him with fury as Shannon replied, “Well, what is it? I’m not going to let this lie; I will get Russ here and and I’ll have Kelly Johnson fly out if necessary. This program is too important to let personalities get in the way. And before we go any further, delays like this smack of sabotage, not of mere corporate squabbling. So let’s have it. Dr. Peterson, what is your beef with Bob Rodriquez?”

  Peterson stood up. “Are you aware, Mr. Shannon, that Mr. Rodriquez is engaged to a Negro woman? That is something I simply cannot tolerate, nor can my colleague Dr. Koenig. We find it repugnant to work with him and I think you would be well advised to remove him from the program.”

  Surprised, Shannon did not respond at once. Then he said, “I’m just amazed. Here in the liberal heartland there are two bigots like you running an
important program. Well, I’ll give you a forecast. Next week Bob Rodriquez will still be on this program, and you will not.”

  He turned on his heel, steaming through the door, a little warning sign from his heart tickling his chest, furious at Peterson and Koenig for their stupidity, even more angry with himself for responding to it.

  Shannon tossed his badge on the reception desk, grabbed Bob by the arm, and walked with him without speaking to a pay phone. Purely by chance, Kelly was available, took the story in, swore heartily, and promised to call Redgrave that very day.

  On the cab ride to the airport, Vance figured he had three problems to deal with on the ride back. The first was explaining all this to Bob without hurting his feelings and keeping him able to go back to Metaloid and work with the people who would be there after Peterson and Koenig were kicked off the project. The second was working out some rules for succession. He knew he could not put Bob in control of Aviation Consultants, not in place of his two sons. Maybe old Cliff Boyd was right; maybe they would have to go public and then split into two divisions, aircraft and electronics. Finally, he had to get back to see Doc Parry; there was definitely something going on with his heart.

  About an hour into the flight aboard the gorgeous American 707, they finished their first Jack Daniel’s and water, and Vance nudged Bob with his elbow. “Son, you know I think the world of you, and you know that I’m bowled away with your ideas about the future. But we’ve got to talk now about two problems, and in doing so I may hurt your feelings. I’m going to be direct because that’s the only way I know how to be, and I think it’s the best way, in the long run.”

  Rodriquez, who had shot down twelve MiGs and brawled with many more, was a strong man, but he flinched internally, thinking he knew what was coming. He rattled the ice cubes in his glass and said, “Go ahead. I may not agree, but you’re the boss.”

  “Right. That’s the first thing to remember and the last, too. But I’m talking to you as a friend now.”

  Shannon went on to explain Peterson’s and Koenig’s attitude and assured Rodriquez that Kelly would see that they were off the program. They had withheld some key information from Bob for personal reasons, and they would be lucky if Russ Redgrave did not prosecute them.

  “I knew it. They were always impossible to get along with.”

  Shannon nodded, impatient, and went on. “But Bob, you are going to have to look at yourself. This is a real world. I know you feel that there was some racism involved in your being brought back from Korea just when you thought you might be able to become the leading ace. Maybe there was. But I think you look for trouble now. I’m absolutely sure your feelings for Mae are genuine, and they should be; she is a wonderful girl. But when you cast down a gauntlet like this, an interracial love affair, probably a marriage, you are creating the possibility for trouble.”

  Rodriquez started to talk, but Shannon cut him off. “No, please be still and hear me out. You don’t have to give up Mae, or anything stupid like that. But you are going to have to expect criticism from bigoted people. The world is filled with them, and the business world has more than its share. You are just going to have to pull up your socks and work with them. You cannot make a battleground out of your career. If you want to fight the civil rights battle, go ahead, I’ll respect that, but you’ll have to do it as a full-time job, not as a part-time addition to being a brilliant engineer.”

  Rodriquez did not like what he was hearing but had too much respect and affection for Vance to argue. After a long silence he said, “OK. Vance, I get the message. Let me see if I can handle it.”

  “There’s no choice, Bob; you have to, working for me or working for anybody else. It’s a real world out there, filled with mean sons of bitches who will say or do anything. You have to rise above them. And here is message two.”

  He signaled to the beautiful young stewardess who was already on the way with a second round. They popped the caps on the little bottles, poured the whiskey in their glasses, and topped them off with water, using the little ceremony to prepare for the next message.

  “On the way out, you opened up some real horizons for me on what is coming down the road in computers and electronics. I wish we had had a chance to talk about it before, and I want to again; I know there is more. But in the process, I could see that when you look to the future, you don’t see yourself working for Tom or Harry as you do for me. I can understand that. But there’s no way I can put them aside for you.”

  Rodriquez hung his head, sorry that he had put Vance in this position, sorrier still that he had put himself there with him.

  “Bob, I think the best I can offer you is this. We can set up a subsidiary firm, to handle the electronics, with you running it. We can go public, and your share of the electronic firm will be a larger share than the Shannon’s. You’ll have less of the aviation side of the pie, to compensate. I cannot give you any figures; I just haven’t worked them out. But I can promise you that you’ll be able to call the shots, develop the products, and so on. But it will be just like any American corporation; you’ll be allowed to do that as long as you deliver for the stockholders.”

  Bob looked up at him. “That’s more than fair, Vance. Have you talked about this to your sons? I know my coming aboard wasn’t too popular in the first place.”

  Vance put his drink aside. He could only take about one a day now. “No, I think I’ve created enough trouble with you today; I’ll wait a few days before I stir up my own private hornet’s nest.”

  With that he put his head back and went to sleep. A good pilot can always sleep when someone else is flying the airplane.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  October 14, 1962

  Approaching Cuba

  Cratology got me here.”

  Major Richard S. Heyser, the top pilot of the 4080th Strategic Wing, said the phrase aloud, 72,000 feet above Earth, at the controls of a U-2F borrowed from the CIA. With its Pratt & Whitney YJ75-P-13 engine developing almost sixteen thousand pounds of thrust, it was far more powerful than the J57 engine-powered Air Force U-2s that he had been flying for almost seven years. The term “cratology” was coined at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) by its director, the fiery, inspiring, hard-driving Art Lundahl. It meant the scientific study of the almost infinite variety of crates, boxes, and shipping containers that the Soviet Union used to protect its equipment en route and on site.

  The knowledgeable, eagle-eyed photo interpreters at the NPIC—the use of “PIC” in the acronym was no accident—would study the remarkable photos brought back by the U-2s, the Martin RB-57s, the Boeing B-52s, even the weird aircraft like the C-97 used to carry a huge two-thousand-pound manually operated camera, and analyze the contents. The photos pertinent to Heyser’s mission had revealed sixty to seventy-foot-long crates, and the photo interpreters, looking at every detail—handholds, hooks, straps, bracing—determined that they almost certainly contained intermediate-range ballistic missiles. His job was to delete the word “almost” from their assessment.

  Heyser was as comfortable as anyone could be on such a long mission. He had breakfasted on the customary high-protein meal, taken the mandatory sleeping pill at eleven o’clock the previous morning, and slept deeply until eight that night. Thirty minutes after waking up, he was driven to the flight line for a brief, almost pro-forma pre-flight physical examination. The flight surgeons knew him well and would see any anomaly in his physical or mental condition immediately. There was none, so he could enjoy his favorite forty-cent breakfast—steak, eggs, toast, and coffee.

  Next he donned long underwear and his flight helmet to begin a two-hour period breathing pure oxygen, to remove nitrogen from his system and avoid the possibility of bends later if he depressurized suddenly. Feeling somewhat ridiculous as always, sitting in long johns and a helmet, he listened to a legion of briefers, all old friends, who told him what it would be like on Mission G-3101, code name Victor. They briefed on the weather (mostly good), how the
flight was laid out (long but straightforward, with minimum time over the target) and all the radio procedures (myriad) that such a secret mission had to follow.

  After one last trip to the bathroom, they fitted him into his skintight pressure suit. The suits had been improved over the years, but there was no way to make them comfortable. All of the connections—pressure, oxygen, radio—were carefully checked.

  He climbed into the cockpit at 11:00 P.M. Thirty minutes later he pushed the throttle forward and additional kick of the U-2F’s engine power exhilarated him as the aircraft leaped into the air. Night takeoffs were no problem for him, with several hundred hours of experience in the airplane. He jettisoned his tip gear—pogos, they called them—checked the aircraft thoroughly on the climb out, and, with everything working fine, pointed his nose toward Cuba, far to the east. As far as Heyser was concerned, the target might have been Podunk or Paris—it didn’t matter to a professional trained to do his job.

  Now, just over seven hours later, he saw the Isle of Pines to the north, on a course of 351 degrees.

  A quick—but not easy—glance around showed that he was not pulling any contrails. At 0731—one minute past the pre-flight time and not bad for an eight-hour flight—he put the B camera switch on. The time had been selected to take advantage of the twenty-degree angle of the sun. There followed the heart of the mission with the usual noises, a shrill call from the camera motor and the bump of the long lens barrel as it locked into each of the seven positions on its panoramic survey. Far below, out of sight to him but picked up perfectly by the camera, he hoped, were the places laid out on his chart—Davaniguas, Los Palacios, San Cristóbal, San Diego de los Baños, and Los Pozos. The towns meant nothing to him; he assumed there were Soviet technicians there, but there would be Cuban workmen, too, unpacking the crates that the “cratologists” had deciphered. In the villages there would be the families as there had been for centuries, indifferent to politics, worried about their daily work and food, and all unaware that they were being photographed, that they were the center point of a world crisis, that they might be standing on the very ground where World War III began.