He shook Vance’s hand and left. Somewhat buoyed by the experience, Vance went in and told Jill about it.
“Vance, what were you thinking of? You shouldn’t have given him anything, not even if it’s not secret at all.”
“Why not? He could have gotten this from Popular Science.”
“Yes, he could. But he is not Madeline’s former lover and you are. You almost lost everything once, when she was stealing your secrets. You just concluded a deal worth almost a million dollars with him, and he waltzes out with your best thoughts on the supersonic transport. What do you think George Schairer would say about this?”
Vance slumped down in a chair.
“My God, what have I done? How could I have been so stupid? I must be senile!”
He looked up at her, whispering, “You better get me my heart medicine; I think there is something going on in my chest.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
January 29, 1966
Palos Verdes, California
Vance’s longtime friend and physician, Bill Parry, had rushed to his house two days earlier, examined Vance thoroughly on the spot, then had an ambulance take him to the hospital for further tests. Everything checked out, and now he was back in his robe and slippers, talking to Harry, Tom, and Bob.
“Doc Parry said it was not a heart attack at all, but something he called a panic attack. And I can tell you, I had just been so stupid that I was entitled to have one.”
He went on to tell them of his conversation with Fritz Obermyer.
“I cannot believe I did what I did. It took Jill two seconds to see how stupid I was. I’m just telling you now so that you won’t be surprised if something comes of this.”
Tom said, “It doesn’t seem to me that anything can come of it, Dad, if Obermyer keeps his mouth shut. Do you think he’ll blab?”
“I don’t think so, but then you never know. What about his contacts? I was up visiting Obermyer once in Los Angeles, in the early days of the dealership, and he insisted on taking me to a crummy German restaurant. I met some friend of his there, some palooka named Miller or Müller or something. He and Obermyer were friends all the way from World War I, and I could see they had some kind of deal going on.”
Harry looked agitated, and it worried Vance. “What’s the matter, Son?”
“I don’t like it, Dad. I think maybe you are a little vulnerable here. Do we have any hold on Obermyer?”
“No, he said he was through with this sort of thing. I’m hoping he meant it.”
“He probably meant it, but these guys play rough, and they might lean on him to get some more information.”
Harry weighed the possibilities. He had never told any of them of his activities with BAC, slipping the Russians the wrong information on tires for the SST. But this was close to the bone. Madeline could easily be involved in this; she had used Obermyer’s friend Müller as a contact. If things blew up, Vance would be terribly hurt if he suddenly found out that Harry had concealed his meetings with Madeline.
“Look, guys, I’ve got something to tell you. You’ve got to keep it absolutely secret. Dad, this may make you angry, but I don’t see how I can do anything else but level with you all now.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Harry? You didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Not this, but Boeing gave me permission to work with BAC. My job was to pass on some bogus information to the Russians on supersonic transport tires. We made up a fake compound—guaranteed to ruin any tires they made from it—and passed it off to them.”
Harry quickly filled them in on the details, telling them how the material had been deliberately compounded to appear genuine but to have inherent flaws that would foul up the manufacturing process. All three were laughing when Harry said, “Dad, you won’t think this is funny. My contact with French intelligence, believe it or not, was Madeline. She sent her best wishes to you, but because I couldn’t tell you anything about the project, I couldn’t tell you about her. And I didn’t want to; I didn’t want to open old wounds.”
There was a complete silence until Vance asked, “How was she? How did she look?”
“I think she was fine, Dad. She looked tired and overworked. She smoked continuously, as she always did, and I think that ages a woman. But she was very effective. I understand that she planted the information on the Russians and the East German in January, and then had one of the Russians and the East German arrested in February.”
“She was always very efficient. Do you have a contact for her? Somewhere that I could write her if I wanted to?”
“No, Dad, the whole thing was very sanitized. No one told anyone else their names, much less anything like an address. If I had not recognized her, no one would have ever known.” He waited for a moment and then said, “But I’m sure that if you wrote to her at Dassault, the letter would get to her. It might compromise her in some way, but you could …”
Vance shrugged. “No, I’d never write her. She was part of my life once, but she’s gone. I’m just glad to learn that she is well.”
He hesitated and said, “We’ll keep this to ourselves? Jill wouldn’t be too happy if she thought Madeline might materialize someday.”
Bob, as usual, was reticent. He always tried to avoid annoying Tom, whose threshold for irritation was getting lower and lower. It was going to be hard to avoid a fight someday, and given that Tom was almost a foot taller and forty pounds heavier, Bob didn’t like the possibility.
“Can I change the subject just a bit? Harry’s given me an idea, and I want you to think about it. You know that the Soviet Union is buying up our technology anywhere they can find it? They are buying machine tools, radios, television sets, anything that’s not on our restricted list. I’m not kidding you; they are buying IBM 360 computers through every blind they can think of. Believe it or not, they even have tried to buy a RadioShack retail outlet!”
Tom was irritated. His father was facing an emotional crisis, and Rodriquez was running off at the mouth, again. “Another time, Bob. I think we’ve had all we can take for a day.”
Vance was eager to prove he had absorbed the shock and said, “No, go on, Bob. What the hell do they do with the stuff?”
Rodriquez shifted away from Tom, then got caught up in his flow of ideas. “They reverse engineer it, just like they did the B-29, then cull everything they can out of it for military use. They are absolutely crazy about anything that has any kind of computer involved in it, no matter how simple.”
Harry was distressed by being forced to reveal having met Madeline but could not repress his amusement at Tom’s reaction to Rodriquez, thinking, He’s like a jealous lover. He’d like nothing better than to reach over and smack Bob on the head but knows he can’t—at least not in front of Dad.
“Here’s my idea. Why don’t we monitor what the Soviet Union is buying, and slip them a Trojan horse, just like Harry did with the tire compound? We could manufacture computers that would have defects in them that wouldn’t show up until they were given another application. For example, the Russians could be buying computers and using them for numerically controlled tools. We could have the computer we sell them programmed to begin making small errors after a certain period of time. The Russkies wouldn’t figure it out for a long time, because the errors wouldn’t show up until the equipment being manufactured wouldn’t work properly.”
Then, in a major mistake, Bob leaned forward with an exultant grin and asked, “Get it?”
Tom blew up, leaned forward, fist cocked, and Bob dove behind Vance. “Get it? Get it? You think we are morons? Of course we get it.” Then, embarrassed, he added, “What I don’t get is how you think you could ever get anyone to agree to the idea.”
Vance said, “Easy, Tom. It’s a hell of an idea, but Tom’s right, Bob; how could you ever persuade industry to do this?”
Bob emerged from behind Vance and said, “Let me work on this. I know a guy in Washington, Gus Weiss, and he can do damn near anythin
g. He’ll eat this up.”
Tom leaned forward and said, “Sorry, Bob; I lost my temper.”
He turned to his father, said, “Sorry, Dad; I made a jerk out of myself.”
Harry couldn’t resist. “Nothing new in that, Tom.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
February 14, 1966
San Diego, California
Mae had been in labor for sixteen hours when the nurse came out to see a desperately anxious Bob Rodriquez in the waiting room. Smiling, she said, “It is a beautiful little boy, Mr. Rodriquez, and the mother is doing fine. You can see her in a few minutes.”
The nurse gave him the vital statistics and Bob raced to the phone with the good news, getting through to Mae’s parents almost immediately but getting no answer at home. Then he called Jill. “Jill, it’s a boy, seven pounds, four ounces, and Mae is doing fine. He’s got all his fingers and toes, they tell me, and everything else looks fine. It was a tough labor, sixteen hours, but she’s fine. I’m going in to see her in a few minutes. I cannot believe how lucky we are to have a boy, first time out of the starter’s gate.”
“You’d be just as happy with a little girl and you know it.”
They talked a little more, and Bob hung up, knowing Jill was wrong. He had wanted a little boy, and that’s what Mae gave him. As he walked down the hallway to her room, he thought, I’d like to call him Vance, but that would be too much for Tom. Maybe I’ll call him Tom—no, that’s no good; if he ever has a nephew, then he’d be Uncle Tom. No good. Maybe Robert, a junior?
He raced to Mae’s side. She was wet with perspiration; her hair was in disarray. Normally always so perfectly made up, she looked utterly exhausted and never more beautiful. He kissed her, asking, “How do you feel?”
“Better than you look—you better go home and get some sleep.”
“Not until they bring Bob Junior in for me to see.”
“Bob Junior?” There was doubt in her voice.
They talked for a while holding hands. When they brought the baby in, Mae’s joy illuminated her face. She looked at him closely, caressed his cheek with her lips, turned, and said, “You’re absolutely right. This is Bob Junior.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
March 9, 1966
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
The red dawn spread across the desert as the Nellis flight line came alive with the sound of ground equipment carts being started, aircraft being towed into position, and the horn of the roach coach calling mechanics in for early coffee.
Tom stood savoring the gritty desert air, still laden with the dust from yesterday’s storm. He was immensely happy to be back in the saddle, marveling at how well things had worked out. Tom had been pushing his return to active service when a requirement came up for an experienced F-86 pilot to take part in a secret project at Nellis. A buddy of his at Air Force Personnel was swift enough to match Tom’s skills with the test requirements and cut orders for his return to duty.
He had prepared long and hard for it, dieting and exercising so that he was now down to the same 205 pounds he had weighed when playing football at Annapolis. His Air National Guard assignment had given him lots of leeway in flying, and he had spent a month at his old stomping grounds, Eglin Air Force Base, putting in a lot of time flying both the fighters and the simulators. When he was flying the fighters, he put himself through a rigorous process of building up his g-force tolerance, so much so that he was able to win most of the few pickup dogfights he was able to garner. The Air Force was changing, and the emphasis on safety restricted the aggressiveness of the pilots. Only the older troops and the very young ones seemed willing to mix it up; most of the troops, earnest young captains and majors, seemed more concerned about their careers than their egos as pilots. Tom wasn’t sure it was a net gain.
He had repeatedly distanced himself from Bob Rodriquez and his fascination with simulators, and the simulators at Eglin confirmed Tom’s opinion. They were almost negative training, for while they were useful for procedures, they lacked everything necessary to recreate the conditions of combat. Tom overcame his distaste for Bob and all his ideas by sending him a long memo, detailing what was really needed in simulators—a three-dimensional presentation of the combat arena, motion simulation, and, more than anything else, a total immersion into the flight. In the simulators they were using, it was impossible not to realize that it was all a game. The simulators Rodriquez should be creating should be so realistic that the pilots would forget they were on the ground but believe they were locked in mortal combat. Tom knew he didn’t know how to do it, but he had the feeling Bob would.
Despite Tom’s reservations, he spent every hour he could get in the F-4 simulator, learning all the emergency procedures and bringing his instrument flying up to snuff so that when he got into combat he’d not even have to think about routine things—he’d just be there to fight.
When he arrived at Nellis, it had taken him only a few hours to check out in the North American F-86H Sabre that was being used in Operation Feather Duster, an attempt by the USAF to devise new tactics to use against the small and nimble MiGs being encountered in increasing numbers in Vietnam. The idea was to fly the Sabre against a super-secret MiG-19 to find out what kind of maneuvers might work best against it. Then there was going to be a second series of tests, using the McDonnell F-4 against the much more modern MiG-21, to refine the tactics.
Much had already been learned about the Russian-built aircraft. The MiG-19 was very close to the North American F-100 in performance and was more maneuverable. The MiG-21 was reportedly a delight to fly but had very poor visibility. The pilot was so blind to the rear that a rearview mirror was an obvious quick fix. The windshield glass was so thick that the pilot could see only about three miles forward.
Tom would have to check out in the F-4, too, but that was part of his plan. He wasn’t sure he understood the rationale for using the Sabre. It seemed to him that the best way would have been to use the F-4 and forget about the F-86H, which was now in service in only a few National Guard and Reserve outfits. But he didn’t protest, since the project had landed him exactly where he wanted to be, preparing to return to combat.
Nor did he inquire as to the source of the MiGs. He presumed it was Israel, but they were in use in air forces all over the world, some of them satellites of the Soviet Union, some of them not. Scuttlebutt had it that these were from Syria, but it couldn’t have been too difficult to obtain examples from a number of countries.
The crew chief signaled Tom that the airplane was ready. He did a thorough walk-around—he always did, no matter who the crew chief was—and soon was strapping himself in, feeling like he was back in Korea, ready to go to MiG Alley.
Twenty minutes after takeoff, he entered the MiG’s operating area ninety miles north from Nellis. The MiGs were maintained at Tonopah, an isolated field, about thirty miles southeast of the town of Tonopah, Nevada. Unlike another super-secret facility, the Groom Lake facility in Area 51, the Tonopah air base was easily visible from public land and there was even a sign pointing to it on the highway. Nonetheless, the MiGs were kept under heavy security to keep their existence secret.
A glint of silver in the sun revealed the MiG-19, orbiting at the edge of the operating area. Tom pulled into formation, admiring the functional beauty of the aircraft. It was painted in U.S. colors, but there was no mistaking the MiG profile, with its portly fuselage, gaping engine intake, and huge slab-sided rudder. Its sharply swept-back wings attested to its supersonic speed capability.
The test was very tightly programmed to extract the maximum information from the limited airtime their fuel allowed. The two planes were to fly programmed paths, checking on acceleration, deceleration, turn radius, and climb speeds. When they completed the prescribed turns, they were free to engage in mock combat as long as their fuel state permitted.
Tom called, “Outlaw One, this is Sabre One.”
“My God, is that you, Tom? This is Owen Clark. What’s a nice guy lik
e you doing in an old airplane like that?”
Tom recognized Clark’s Texas accent as easily as Clark had recognized his voice. They had flown together in Korea, thirteen years before, and then again at an air show two years ago.
“Good to hear from you, Owen. Let’s get cracking on these profiles, and then I’ll wax your ass in a dogfight.”
The two planes moved in unison, the MiG-19 accelerating swiftly past the F-86, its afterburner kicking out a long plume of flame. When it came to turns, it was no contest—the MiG-19 had a much better turning radius. The same was true on the deceleration tests—the MiG would throw its big dive boards out, slowing down as if it had hit a wall, while the F-86 sailed past.
“Owen, I’m damn glad we were fighting MiG-15s in Korea and not this brute. How does it handle?”
“It’s about like an F-84F, if you’ve ever flown one. Not bad, just not like a Sabre. Let’s hassle; you must be getting down to fumes.”
As the pre-flight instructions had called for, the two planes circled and then made a head-on pass to start the engagement.
The two fighters turned, and Tom broke suddenly, intending to close behind the MiG into a firing position. Instead, the MiG, with its low wing loading, turned inside him, chewing up the distance, getting into a firing position.
“Can’t turn with this mother, so I better climb.”
Tom heaved back on the stick, converting airspeed to altitude. Feeling the g-forces, Tom looked up through the canopy to see the MiG-19 rolling out at the top of its climb and diving away. Tom pulled through the arc of his climb, rolled his wings level, and settled in on the tail of the MiG, which jinked right and left—but not soon enough to have avoided being shot down.
Clark came on over the radio.
“Good fight, Tom; you haven’t lost it. See you at the club tonight.”
Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age Page 23