Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (27 page)

Tom turned to him, the relief obvious in his expression. “Man, you would think they had invented the airplane all over again. They are really bringing it into the inventory fast. They already have squadrons over in Vietnam, with more on the way. It’s amazing, given that they were refusing to even look at the airplane when it came out. Of course, McDonnell is a wonderful outfit, they have the best tech reps in the world, and they are over in Thailand and Vietnam, working to make these airplanes airworthy one hundred percent of the time.”

“What is its safety record? Seems like a lot of airplane for anybody to handle.”

Tom nodded his head slowly. This was a good opening. “I can give you the firsthand scoop on that. Harry, you remember that young cadet, Steve O’Malley, that we met at the Air Force Academy?”

“Yeah, your fan, he called himself. What about him?”

“He promised to stay in touch, and he has, with a vengeance, calls me every two weeks. He graduated from flying school last year, and went through the fighter training school at Nellis. They kept him as an instructor, which means he must have been a pretty good pilot. Anyway, he tells me that they are losing a few of them. The F-4 suffers from adverse yaw—in hard turns, you cannot roll it with ailerons; you have to center the stick and boot it around with the rudder. If you don’t watch your airspeed in a turn, the aircraft will depart, go into a wild stall, and maybe you’ll lose ten or fifteen thousand feet before you recover. And some of the guys have not recovered.”

Vance grunted, “Hell, all airplanes will do the old stall spin! They’ve been doing it since Orville and Wilbur.”

“Not like this, Dad. It’s not a simple stall; the damn thing goes wildly out of control, gyrating around the sky, even bangs you around the cockpit. And it is inhibiting in combat—if the battle slows down, the adverse yaw gets worse. It’s tough. But they have Jerry Gentry down at Edwards doing spin tests on the airplane, and he says you have to work it hard to get into a spin-stall situation. Gentry says that if you keep the airplane trimmed out and maintain your airspeed, it won’t happen. But too many young pilots let their airspeed go, the airplane departs, and they fight it all the way down trying to recover. Then they wind up too low to eject. It only takes a few seconds to get from stall to smash.”

There was a general silence and Tom surveyed the room. This was as good a time as any. “There are some other problems surfacing as well—the engines smoke, so the MiGs can see them miles away, and the climate is hell on the electronics, turns the damn potting to mush. But I’ll be in a better position to tell you all about this in a few months. I’m going to get a reserve assignment as an F-4 pilot, then apply to be brought to active duty. With any luck, I’ll probably be in Vietnam before Christmas.”

Tom’s combat record and his status as an ace gave him plenty of clout, and the Shannon name gave him access to the top four-stars. Few other people could have worked their reentry on to active duty as he had.

There was a dead silence before Vance asked, “And what does Nancy say about this?”

“She understands, Dad, and I hope you do, too.”

Vance was furious. “Dammit, Tom, you are leaving her and V.R. in the lurch, and us, too! Who the hell is going to take your place here? And what the hell are you going to do over there? You are forty-seven years old! You’ll be flying with kids half your age. When are you leaving?”

“You’ll find someone to take my place easily enough, Dad. This is something I have to do. Nancy understands, and I think you will, too, as soon as you think about it. You know me; you know how I feel about flying in combat. I won’t be leaving right away and I’ll have to go through a complete F-4C checkout. Maybe I won’t cut the mustard anymore.”

Despite his anger, Vance did understand, and so did Harry and Bob. They recognized the phenomenon, a compulsion for combat. There was something about air combat that insinuated itself into some people’s psyches and made them yearn for it as an addict yearned for a fix. There were other elements, of course—patriotism, the fear of getting older, and more. But the main thing was the need to be in combat, to put your life on the line against an enemy of unknown capability and prevail. Bob was a veteran combat pilot, too, he’d shot down twelve MiGs in Korea, and that was enough for him; he never wanted to go back to the Air Force or back in combat. But he understood Tom’s need.

Vance was relentless. “Tom, believe me, I understand only too well why you want to go. What I don’t understand is why you don’t have the brains and the discipline to control your desires. It is irresponsible. I wish you had talked to me about this.”

Tom stood up and put his arms around his father, kissed him on the forehead. “And if I had done that, you would have talked me out of going. You still run this family and this company with an iron hand, Dad, even though you keep it pretty well gloved. I didn’t tell you because I was determined to go—but knew you could talk me out of it.”

Vance shook his head and turned to Harry and Bob. “I guess you both knew about this, and just kept me in the dark.”

Tom broke in, “No, Dad, neither one knew, unless Nancy told them, and I’m sure she wouldn’t do that. I had to keep it quiet until I went through the physical and got all the paperwork cleared up. If things hadn’t worked out, I wouldn’t have said anything, wouldn’t have let you know that I’m still such a half-wit.”

“Well, Tom, you’ve done well in two other wars. You’ll do well in this one. Just don’t get the ace syndrome going. You don’t have to shoot down any more airplanes; you just have to bring yourself home.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

July 5, 1965

Palos Verdes, California

T
om’s bombshell had taken a lot out of Vance. Jill was happy when he decided to get up late and spend the morning at the umbrella-shaded table that had been a fixture on their rear porch for years. He had boxes of paperwork with him, a calculator, and he’d worked steadily all morning. Finally at eleven o’clock he had called to her, “I’m going in to have lunch with Lou Capestro. Come out here for a second, honey.”

When she sat down he pushed a sheet of paper to her. It showed that his interest in the Volkswagen dealership had grown to more than three-quarters of a million dollars.

“Volkswagen is doing just what Fritz Obermyer said it was going to do. It’s taking off. They sold more than three hundred thousand cars in the United States last year, and we sure sold our share.”

“Wow, I had no idea you had this kind of money!”

“It’s
our
money, Jill. And I’m thinking about selling out, and just using it for us to indulge ourselves, you know, do some first-class traveling.”

“Who are you trying to kid? The last thing in the world you want to do is travel. I’ve slipped a dozen brochures in your mail over the years, and the first thing you do is toss them in the garbage can. And I don’t want to go if you don’t want to go. What fun would that be?”

“Well, you be thinking of some way you want to spend the money, and I don’t mean just buying stuff for the kids. I want you to figure out how you want to spend it. That’s the only way I’ll get any fun out of it.”

She laughed again. “Let me tell you what you are really thinking about. You’re thinking about setting up a trust fund for V.R.”

He looked at her in disbelief.

“How the hell could you know that? I’ve never said a word about it.”

“We’ve been together a long time now. You don’t have to spell things out for me to know what’s going on in your mind. You were talking about him going to college the other day.”

She kissed Vance and said, “Let me put another thought there, something you would think about eventually.”

He waited, thinking how lucky he had been the third time around. Margaret, his first wife, had been a wonderful mother. Madeline, his lover, had seemed wonderful—until she left him holding the baggage of her espionage. But Jill was just a gem, able to do so many things, understanding him so well, handling the touchy situation with Tom and Bob. He was lucky to have her.

“Mae is pregnant. I think it would be a nice gesture to include her children in any trust arrangement. Lord knows there’s enough money to go around for a half-dozen kids.”

“She’s pregnant, eh? That rascal Bob, he’s a fast worker. How do you think that would go down with Tom?”

“Not too well, but what will we care? We’ll both be pushing up daisies before it comes into effect. We’ll just keep it quiet, between us, and they can sort it out in a fight at the funeral.”

“Let me think about it. I like the idea, but there are some ramifications. Harry doesn’t have any kids, and it sort of leaves him out.”

“Honey, the money from the dealership is only a part of your assets. You’ll have plenty for Harry and Tom, and they are well-fixed on their own, thanks to you.”

She walked with her arm around him down to the garage, where a cream-colored 1937 Cord Beverly was parked next to her Cadillac. Vance had acquired it in one of the rare moments when he decided he was going to work less. He’d gone through a long ritual of reading the automobile books, talking to traders, and finally located it in Illinois, stored not in the traditional barn, but on the third floor of an abandoned factory outside of Chicago. The cost of getting it out of the building and transported to Palos Verdes was almost as much as the price of the car. It was rolled off the truck, into Vance’s garage, and had sat there ever since. It was beat-up but somehow still beautiful, with its windshield cracked on the passenger side and one of the retractable headlights popped up in a perpetual leer.

“Are you ever going to get this thing fixed up?”

“First thing I’m going to do when I finally retire.”

“I’m not holding my breath.”

THE LUNCHEON WITH Lou Capestro was more than disappointing; it was frightening.

“I hate to tell you this, Vance, but I’m thinking about selling, too. I know you’ve been having trouble with your ticker, but I think my problem is even worse. It’s colon cancer. I’m lined up for an exploratory operation in two weeks. It doesn’t look good.”

“My God, Lou, I’m sorry to hear this. I know you’ll beat it, but I’m sorry you have to go through it.”

“Well it’s part of life. I haven’t told anyone except you, not even my wife. There will be time enough for them to know when I get ready to go to the hospital. No sense in worrying them any longer than I have to.”

They sat quietly together, two old friends who had been through the wars. Lou relentlessly played with the cutlery, drumming a knife against his glass so loudly that he was getting stares from a couple at the next table.

Lou finally spoke. “Why don’t we call Obermyer and see if he’ll buy us out? He’s doing very well in Los Angeles, and he’s always been fair to us.”

“Yes; I don’t want to go through the agony of selling it on the open market. If Fritz would take it over, I’d be willing to make some price concessions to him to do it.”

“Me, too. Somehow money just doesn’t seem too important nowadays.”

Alberto, their waiter for many years, brought them their usual coffee and the special grappa that he kept for old customers. Vance knew for sure that Lou was not well when he pushed both of them away, untasted.

CHAPTER FORTY

September 7, 1965

Moscow, USSR

A
ndrei Tupolev was seventy-seven and felt every one of his years. He stared with pride across the room at his son Alexei, now just forty years old and coming into his own despite the snide claims of nepotism made by jealous rivals. “Czarevitch,” indeed! Alexei had long since earned his position within the bureau by dint of hard work.

The two men had been at their desks since early morning, scarcely exchanging a word. Alexei was in the midst of a mammoth reprogramming effort, so deeply absorbed that he did not even look up when his father made one of his now too-frequent trips to the bathroom.

The elder Tupolev knew full well that his son did not have that rare spark of flaming genius that would lead him to a brilliant design, a spark that Andrei had possessed in such abundance for most of his life. But Alexei had something more important now, in this age when huge, sophisticated aircraft required teams of designers. He had the ability to integrate a mass of often-conflicting information and plan huge production efforts that involved the aerodynamicists, engine people, the materials group, everyone, in a sophisticated, closely scheduled program. This was a gift that few people possessed, chief among them Andrei himself.

In the eleven months since Khrushchev had been deposed, Tupolev had hoped that there would be some relaxation in the insane schedule that had been ordered for the SST—to fly in 1968 but, above all, to fly before any Western SST flew. Instead, the flighty Nikita had been superseded by a pure technocrat, Leonid Brezhnev, who made a quasireligion out of the Marxist-Leninist reverence for science and technology.

Brezhnev saw the SST as a personal fiefdom to gather prestige for the Soviet Union and for himself. Worse, he saw it as one of his own toys, no different from his growing fleet of exotic foreign automobiles. Far from relaxing the schedule, he let Tupolev know in no uncertain terms that the future of his bureau depended upon a successful flight in 1968.

Andrei Tupolev had still not recovered from the embarrassment at the Paris Air Show, which had gotten off to a bad start when an Italian Fiat G.91 fighter crashed into a crowded parking lot. One of the many models of the SST was flown in for exhibit, and its sleek shape both stunned and amused the foreign press, which immediately dubbed it the “Concordski” for its resemblance to the Anglo-French transport.

There was a good reason for the external similarity. Industrial espionage agents in France had given Andrei a three-year head start by stealing plans and data on the French research. He disliked the fact that the stolen design drove him to adopt the delta wing, something he had always avoided in the past.