Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (5 page)

Seeing Rodriquez’s stunned look, O’Malley went on. “They have given me the word, no stars for a wiseass like me. I might as well get out while I’m still young. I don’t want to be one of those gray-haired colonels still running the halls at the Pentagon after they’ve got their thirty in.”

Rodriquez was shocked. From his days as quarterback at Academy to shooting down MiGs in Vietnam, O’Malley had been a comer. Tom Shannon had predicted that he would be Chief of Staff someday.

“Jesus, Steve, after your career, how can they do this to you?”

“Easy, if they can do it to John Boyd, they can do it to me. I’m not political enough. I stepped on too many toes helping set up the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. Then working with the fighter mafia just about finished me off. All that, and then backing this beauty—” He gestured at the YF-16.

“Forty-second” Boyd had been one of the great fighter pilots in the Air Force, and a far-ranging thinker. He earned his nickname from his standing bet that he could beat any opponent in a simulated dogfight in less than forty seconds. Rumor was that he never lost his bet. But Boyd had an unfortunate personality, unlike O’Malley, who was a charmer. Rodriquez could see how Boyd might trip himself up, but never O’Malley, who now flashed his famous smile, saying, “Bob, you were an ace in Korea, flying F-86s against MiGs, and I tell you this airplane is going to be the weapon of the future, not because it’s inexpensive, but because it is good! It has all the relative quality of the F-86 and all the relative practicality of the MiG-15 wrapped up in a supermodern package. So far everybody’s been talking about this as a cheap supplement to the F-15; I tell you that it’s going to have capabilities beyond the F-15 and do it for half the price.”

O’Malley was talking Rodriquez’s language now—he had always maintained that the YF-16 was going to be more than just an air-to-air weapon, because he knew the electronics were coming that would turn it into a multi-mission aircraft. And that meant instead of building a few hundred YF-16s, General Dynamics would ultimately build thousands of them—all carrying the advanced pulse-doppler radar Rodriquez had developed at his firm.

The roar of the YF-16’s Pratt & Whitney’s F100 engine rose and Oestricher taxied out, flipping them a salute as he went by. It had been a stroke of genius on the part of the General Dynamics team to use the same basic engine that powered the McDonnell Douglas F-15, for it solved many development problems. It also made the Air Force happy because it simplified logistics and maintenance.

O’Malley stood watching as the heat from the F100 engine turned the tarmac behind the YF-16 into a shimmering mirage of lakes, then said to Rodriquez, “General Dynamics is going to make a fortune selling these to foreign air forces. There ought to be some way that we can build a company to cash in on the foreign sales.”

Rodriquez nodded. They were on the same wavelength. It wasn’t that he had gone as far as he could go with Aerospace Unlimited—the future was bright there for him. The problem instead was that he had taken Vance Shannon, Incorporated, as far as he could take it, given the management it had now with Nancy Shannon—Tom’s wife—running it. Nancy had grown tremendously as a businesswoman, but her ego had grown with it, and she was determined to steer the firm in new directions. To go farther, to get into the really futuristic side of aviation that he knew was coming, he needed to be completely on his own.

They watched Oestricher roll smoothly onto the runway.

O’Malley said, “Let’s hope this goes better than last January.”

Rodriquez winced at the memory. On a high-speed taxi test, the fly-by-wire system—
his
fly-by-wire system—had been calibrated incorrectly, making it too sensitive to control inputs from the pilot. Oestricher’s initial movements of the controls got out of hand, rocking the aircraft so violently that the tail plane was damaged. In an amazing demonstration of test-pilot savvy and courage, Oestricher elected to take off rather than to try to brake to a halt and perhaps roll the aircraft up into a ball. Aware of the problem, he handled the controls with the delicacy of a surgeon during his six-minute flight, making a normal landing. His quick analysis and skill had saved the airplane and the program.

“No repeats!”

Oestricher roared past on his takeoff roll, breaking ground exactly where O’Malley had computed, then took the YF-16 out of the pattern to fly to the restricted test area. The two friends returned to their
conversation on the prospects for a new business centered on servicing the foreign companies that would be lining up to purchase the production versions of the YF-16.

“Do you speak any foreign languages, Steve?”

“I can get by in French, and I know a little Russian, but that won’t be much help. How about you?”

“Spanish, naturally, and German. Between us we’ll cover most of the bases, although the people we want to talk to will almost all speak English.”

“Don’t forget Japan; we’ll have to find someone who can speak Japanese.”

“We’ll concentrate on NATO first. They are going to have to replace a whole lot of F-104s over the next ten years, and the F-16 will be the one they want. We just have to come up with the services that they need and General Dynamics won’t be in a position to supply.”

Steve shook his head happily.

“It sounds great, but we’ll be spread thin. We need to get a couple of young guys to come on board and do the grunt work. The way the aircraft industry is closing down, we ought to be able to hire a couple of test pilots.”

Rodriquez nodded in agreement.

“Let’s go slow, one at a time, and make sure they are compatible not just with you and me, but with each other. I know what it means to work in a company where someone doesn’t like you. It’s hell!”

O’Malley nodded. He knew exactly how tough the fights between Rodriquez and Tom Shannon had been over the years, no matter how Bob tried to avoid them.

They sensed activity on the field and saw that Oestricher had entered the landing pattern. Almost ninety minutes had gone by and they had not moved from their spot by the runway. Oestricher set the YF-16 down gently, and then taxied past them, oxygen mask off, a big grin on his face.

O’Malley said, “No troubles this time; I can tell by his expression.”

“Let’s go back to L.A. tonight; we can talk some more about our business then—and figure out how I’m going to break the news to Vance. I hate to do it, but it’s now or never.”

February 8, 1974
Palos Verdes, California.

T
HE LONG
M
EXICAN
tiled hallway of Vance Shannon’s house glistened from the drinks Jill spilled as she ran to the laughter roaring from the study. She sighed, planning to clean it up later and hoping no one slipped in the meantime.

“Look at him, there he is,” Rodriquez yelled, happier and more excited than anyone had seen him in months. He was pointing to Bill Pogue, the pilot on the Skylab 4, just pulled from the Pacific splashdown.

Vance’s faithful old DuMont television set had died at last and Rodriquez had replaced it with a huge color set that he had built himself, one component at a time, most of the work done late at night in lonely motel rooms on his endless road trips.

“Eighty-four days and one hour in orbit; can you believe that? That’s a new record. They must be weak as cats now that they’re back where there’s gravity. Look, there’s Pogue again, waving.”

Rodriquez had known Pogue in Korea and then again when he was flying with the Thunderbird aerobatic team. He respected him both as a pilot and a scientist. He went on: “People are so fickle! Skylab is amazing, an actual orbiting space station, with scientists in place for experiments, but it just isn’t getting the attention it should. I think beating the Russians to putting a man on the Moon has spoiled the American public.”

He glanced around the room. Once it had been a tightly knit family but now they sat divided, as if they were rival dodgeball teams. On the right-hand side, near the fireplace, were the “airplane guys.” Nancy sat with her arm around Tom. His twin brother Harry was next, with his wife, the always difficult Anna. Opposite them, ranged in a short semicircle of chairs, were the “electronic guys”—Rodriquez, with his estranged wife Mae and their son, Rod, and Steve O’Malley, a friend to both sides but Bob’s colleague and potential new partner.

Plopped right in the middle, accessible to both groups, was Vance Shannon, almost eighty now, but still far sharper than he had been a few years before when he’d suffered a stroke. A long convalescence and some unusual “occupational therapy” had rehabilitated him. The
therapy came in the form of telling his personal history to a writer. The process sharpened his memory and raised his energy levels, for the writer, Warren Bowers, knew so much about him that he could always supply a name or a date to spur Shannon’s memory. Warren was there as usual, fading into the background, his tape recorder going and pencil flying as he made notes on a yellow legal pad.

Shannon sat hand in hand with Jill, his second wife and third love. Jill tried to be neutral, she loved everybody in the room, but she concentrated on keeping Vance happy. The unrelenting tension between the two groups sapped his strength and hers. It was a relief to have the familial feeling momentarily restored by the miracle of the Skylab 4 flight.

Ironically, it was prosperity that divided them. Fifteen years before, they were a small, close-knit group, beset by the ordinary domestic problems found in every family. They worked together toward a single goal, furthering Vance Shannon’s personal creation, his consulting firm. Then called Aviation Consultants, it was a relatively small company, but much respected by aircraft manufacturers. Since then it had expanded into a huge entity with offices in every city where there was a major defense contractor. Much of the expansion had come from Bob Rodriquez’s relentless genius in exploiting the revolution in electronics. The rest had come from the compression of the aeronautics industry as it consolidated into fewer and fewer big firms. Each consolidation brought about layoffs that inevitably reduced expertise. This in turn forced the surviving companies to hire consulting firms, causing Vance’s well-respected company to prosper.

As happy as they were about the successful return of the Skylab crew, the series of four Skylab flights had deepened the family schism. Tom Shannon’s wife, Nancy, was now running the parent company, Vance Shannon, Incorporated, with an iron hand. Tom, still recovering from his long imprisonment in Hanoi, was proud of her even as he resented the fact that he wasn’t doing it. Worse, he felt that if he wasn’t running the company, then Harry should have been. Nancy was his wife, but she wasn’t born a Shannon, and it wasn’t right that she was in charge. One day, he hoped, their son V. R. would come in and take over. But that was a long way off—V. R. was almost finished with Air Force flight training and would probably make a career of it.

Despite Rodriquez’s constant urging, Nancy had elected to ignore
the Skylab program, insisting that it was too short term, and that she wanted the firm to diversify into other areas—particularly real estate.

This was heresy to Rodriquez, who had garnered a bonanza in contracts from the Skylab program for his division, Aerospace Unlimited. He felt that Nancy could easily have done the same if she had been more aggressive.

Vance Shannon reached over and tapped Rodriquez on the arm. “Bob, did your friend fly on all the Skylabs? How many were there?”

“There were four, Vance, one unmanned, and three manned. Each of the three manned flights had different crews. This time, my friend Pogue flew with Gerald Carr and Ed Gibson—both great guys.”

Vance nodded and turned back to the one drink that Jill would allow him. The simple truth was that the Skylab didn’t have wings, and that meant he was not really interested. What the hell were they doing, flying around and around, then splashing down in the ocean? It didn’t make any sense.

The television commentary went on for another few minutes, the usual shots of the welcome given to returning astronaut crews, and then broke for another commercial.

Nancy spoke up, almost for the first time that day. “Bob, do you think this would be a good time to tell the folks what we’ve been talking about?”

Rodriquez flushed. Damn the woman. This was the worst time to bring up the coming split, but there was no way to avoid it now. He wanted to break it to Vance first, but now it was out of the question. Struggling to be pleasant, he replied, “Sure, Nancy, if it is OK with you. You correct me if I get anything wrong.”

Everyone in the group looked anxious except Vance, who, as he did so often now, was gently dozing. Jill shook her head and, glancing around, took in the family dynamic. Tom looked angry and frustrated. He had always been unhappy with Rodriquez, and was more than happy to see him go. But it was becoming more and more difficult for him that his wife was now running the business that his family had created. It was not just male pride, having more to do with his general dissatisfaction with himself. His brother Harry simply looked appalled, knowing what the loss of Rodriquez’s genius would mean to the firm. Harry shared Tom’s resentment over Nancy’s running the firm. But he accepted it, because Nancy being the boss allowed him more
time to keep Anna on the straight and narrow. If he got too involved in the business, if he had to travel too much, she was apt to start drinking again. Anna was looking straight ahead, keeping her face a mask.

On the other side of the room, Mae Rodriquez was near tears. The Shannons had accepted her totally as a family member. Now the family was breaking up, just as her marriage had. Steve O’Malley looked embarrassed just to be there, sorry that he had even a tangential part in the breakup of the firm. Warren Bowers had discreetly turned off his tape recorder and put his pencil down, and was now staring intently at the huge aquarium that Jill had installed as a gift for Vance.

Nancy’s voice had a triumphant lilt. “Now is as good a time as any, Bob. I don’t want to let this wait until Monday. Let’s get everything on the table now.”