Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (36 page)

Jill said, “You do what your gut instinct tells you. That’s how Vance operated, and he did well. He always told me that you would be running the place.”

Harry turned and looked at her, flicking on the overhead light as he did so.

“Did he really say that? I’m amazed. Tom was always his favorite; I thought he would be the one to get the nod.”

Visibly angry, Jill said, “How can you say that? He loved you both just the same; you must know that.”

Harry shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. “No, that’s just the way it was, I didn’t mind, he never thought he was showing it, he always tried to be super-fair, but there it was. I think he saw a lot of Mom in Tom and that appealed to him. You don’t mind my saying that?”

Jill shook her head. “No, I’m not jealous of your mother. Who could be? She did a fine job. I’m jealous of Madeline, but that’s another story. But not your mother, never.”

Harry drove on. “If I’m clinically honest with myself, I have to say that I’m a better choice than Tom, because I get along with Bob.”

“Your dad saw that. That was part of his reasoning, but not all. He always considered you the best businessman in the family, himself included.”

Harry put his hand on hers, patted it, and said, “Well, now we’ll see. I just hope that poor Tom has survived. If he came back tomorrow, I’d be glad to give him pride of place; he deserves it.”

Jill said, “He’ll come back. I know it. I just hope it is not too miserable for him until he does.”

VANCE’S RECOVERY WAS progressing quite well until he had a sudden, totally unexpected bout with pneumonia. It was three weeks before he was allowed to return home to Jill’s loving care. To her surprise, he soon had a regular caller, Fritz Obermyer, who came down twice a week from Los Angeles to sit with Vance for precisely two hours. Vance had not yet regained his ability to speak, but he seemed to like Obermyer’s being there. It was an unlikely friendship, given their different backgrounds, but it was evident that Vance enjoyed the companionship and it was a welcome relief for Jill.

It was mid-February when Fritz left Vance’s bed and asked if he could talk to Jill. “That old car downstairs, the Cord. It is a favorite of Vance’s, right?”

Jill nodded.

“Let me take it. I will have my people restore it. They have connections with the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg club; they can get all the specifications. They will make it like new. Then we will surprise Vance; we’ll take him down and take him for a ride in his new Cord.”

Jill demurred at first, afraid that it might be done in a way Vance wouldn’t like. But Fritz persisted, and she finally agreed, hoping that it would tug Vance back closer to the real world and perhaps give him an incentive to recover. Something had to be done. It was so sad to see this imaginative, even artistic man bundled up within himself, unable to communicate beyond shaking his head and, when he was feeling really well, making a mark to signify “yes” or “no” on a legal pad with a large crayon that Jill placed in his hand.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

February 2, 1968

On the outskirts of Hanoi, North Vietnam

P
ain was the path between consciousness and oblivion. He would submerge into an unconscious state, deeper than death could be, only to be jolted back into a shocked awareness of pain so unbelievably intense that he would lapse back into unconsciousness again.

The North Vietnamese captors had not yet tortured Tom Shannon. He was already so broken that there was no way to inflict additional pain. They knew that he had to recover before they could retrieve useful intelligence from him. Only then he could be tortured profitably.

Shannon had survived so far only because of the almost superhuman ministrations of Michael Pavone, captured simultaneously with him. Both men had ejected successfully, but Shannon had landed in the middle of a North Vietnamese infantry unit. The troops had thrown down their rifles and rice bowls to leap on Shannon, beating him with a ferocious glee. Pavone had landed only a few miles away and was scarcely beaten at all before being taken into custody by an intelligence officer, Võ Trân Kiêt. When Kiêt finally reached Shannon, the pilot was unconscious, his face brutally kicked in, his right eye enucleated, with both arms and his left leg twisted grotesquely. He was scarcely breathing through a foam of blood. Kiêt immediately assigned Pavone to care for him, ordering their escort to allow Pavone to do what he had to do to keep Shannon alive.

Pavone used his and Shannon’s underwear to bind up the worst wounds and fashioned crude bamboo braces to immobilize his arms and legs as much as possible, given that he was being manhandled on trails until they reached a point where they were shoved into the back of a rough-riding truck. There was very little food, but Kiêt, conscious that Shannon was a colonel and therefore must know a great deal, passed Pavone sufficient rice to keep them both alive. Shannon could not chew, but Pavone chewed the rice for him, pressing it into his mouth and massaging his throat to induce him to swallow. All the while Pavone talked to him, sometimes as if he were a baby being induced to eat, sometimes screaming at him for not shooting down the fifth airplane for certain.

“I could be an ace and never know it.”

Curiously, Pavone didn’t blame Shannon for his bitter failure, for fixating on the target so long that he allowed them to be shot down. But Pavone was indignant that they might indeed have killed their fifth MiG and might never know for sure.

Pavone had no illusions. He knew that Kiêt’s bounty would end as soon as they reached some place where Shannon could be hospitalized. Then it would be Pavone’s turn to be beaten. He was not sure he could take it. It might be better to make a break for it, to be killed, rather than to endure the utter brutality that he had seen inflicted on the other prisoners who joined them on their long march.

On the second day on the trail, Shannon’s eyes fluttered and he stared up at Pavone, the glance questioning all that had happened. No one saw Shannon’s flicker of consciousness, and Pavone bent down and whispered in Shannon’s ear.

“Colonel, you’ve got to hear me. You’re hurt bad, but you’ll live if you get a chance to rest for a few more days. I’ve checked your arms and legs, and I don’t think they are broken. They want to question you, but as long as you are unconscious they’ll let you be. I think they know you were the man who tricked them and shot down the MiGs. Don’t ever let them see that you are coming around. I’ll take care of you, but you’ve got to pretend to be unconscious, no matter what they do.”

The North Vietnamese had moved them with a restless energy from one makeshift prison to the next. There was no pattern to the movements; sometimes as many as half a dozen people would be driven along, sometimes only Pavone and Shannon. It took all of Pavone’s declining strength to keep Shannon moving. The villages were indistinguishable, the people hostile, the prisons little more than bamboo pens or rooms in the back of some old French government outpost. During the day their legs were freed to allow them to walk, but their arms were tied, further upsetting their sense of balance and causing many additional wounds from branches that snapped back into them as they were hustled along the trails. At night they were trussed, arms and legs, so that they could not move, lying on their backs and soiling themselves.

Then they were back on the truck again, heading north, judging by the sun, when Pavone saw an arrow with the words “Hà Nôi” painted on it. A few moments later he was adjusting Shannon’s arm braces when he saw his good eye open and his lips moving.

Shannon gave a slight nod of his head and then lay there, thinking coherently for the first time since he had hit the ground, his parachute billowing around him. He had instinctively understood what Pavone meant about pretending to be unconscious. As long as Shannon could convince them that he was near death, he would probably not be tortured. Sooner or later they would find out, but if he could get a few days he would be stronger, more able to resist. Right now, torture would be easy for them; they would only have to twist one of his arms or kick him in the legs. But if he could get stronger, he could resist longer.

Wondering how Nancy and his dad had taken the news of his being shot down, he sank back into the black hole where pain could not come.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

March 28, 1968

Everett, Washington

T
he invitation to watch the first 747 wing assembly to be removed from its assembly jig came at a bad time for Harry, but he reshuffled his schedule to be there. Moving the twenty-eight-thousand-pound assembly would signal that the Boeing 747 was on time, on schedule, and on its way to rollout.

Harry wanted to check out the huge new factory that Boeing had carved out of seven hundred acres of Washington wilderness in less than a year. With forty-three acres under one roof, it was by far the biggest industrial building in the world. Boeing had had to build highways and railways so it could construct the $200 million plant. It started assembling 747s even before the enormous structure was roofed over.

As big as Boeing was, it still depended upon individuals to move projects like the plant and the 747 itself forward. Joe Sutter and his team had done a fantastic job in designing the big transport, which posed a lurking danger to the Boeing company. Any major problems in building or selling it and, most particularly, any crash for any reason would almost certainly destroy the company. Everything was riding on the 747, and everyone at Boeing from Bill Allen down knew it.

As a result, Sutter designed the aircraft with many redundant systems, making sure that any problems would be “fail-safe.” Harry Shannon had contributed in part to this, creating a new method of anticipating failures that he called fault-tree analysis. Charts recorded the safety relationship of every component to every other component in the airplane. If an element failed, its effect upon every other element could be spotted at once. With this in place, it was possible for the Boeing engineers to create solutions to problems before they occurred.

Sutter’s operational counterpart was Mal Stamper, the driving force behind creating the factory and getting the first prototype assembled. Stamper literally lived at the factory, returning home only for an occasional meal and to collapse in bed. The stories about him were legend, but the most characteristic occurred when an unbelievable—even for northwest Washington—sixty-seven consecutive days of rain caused massive mud slides. A hill was washed into the still-building factory area, and it took more than $5 million to clean it up. In the midst of the cleanup, Bill Allen found Mal Stamper down in a ditch, directing how a pump should be installed. In the great tradition of Boeing, Stamper didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

The huge assembly bay was almost filled with spectators, awaiting the removal of the wing assembly. It was not a lengthy process, but not a word was said until the huge assembly, the first really major portion of a 747 to be completed, was moved toward its next station. As it slid effortlessly along, the room burst into cheers.

Gordy Williams, a protégé of Wellwood Beall and fast becoming one of Boeing’s most successful salesmen, was standing next to Harry. When the cheers had died down, Williams said, “Got a second? I need to talk to you in my office.”

It was a long walk to Williams’s office, and Harry was puffing by the time he flopped into the leather chair facing his friend’s desk, realizing at the same time how out of shape he was.

Williams had his secretary bring them some coffee, and she said, “Did you hear the news? Yuri Gagarin was killed yesterday. Crashed on a training flight.”

The two men discussed the irony of a man surviving being shot into orbit only to die in an ordinary plane crash before Williams said, “Harry, this has to be on the q.t. We’re getting some unexpected resistance to the 747 in domestic sales. American and TWA keep telling us what they’ve been telling us all along—the 747 is too big, and what they really need are smaller, three-engine airliners like the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011.”

Harry nodded. The name “McDonnell Douglas” still sounded unfamiliar, but he knew that American Airlines had already ordered twenty-five DC-10s. Further, and he could not tell Williams this, he knew that Lockheed had secured orders for almost 150 of the L-1011s from Delta and some other airlines.

“I tell you frankly, Harry, we’re not so much worried about the DC-10. It depends too much on DC-8 technology. But the L-1011 scares us; it is a very modern airplane.”

Harry wanted to be noncommittal. “I see that they’ve gone with Rolls-Royce for the engines. It really surprised me.”

“Me, too, but it’s supposed to be one hell of an engine. Anyway, what I want you to do is do a study, sort of like the one your father did on the supersonic transport, and lay out the merits of the 747 versus the L-1011 and even the DC-10. Tailor it for domestic customers, using domestic routes. We don’t have any problems with foreign carriers ordering the 747, they’re lining up in droves, but we need to nail down more of the domestic market.”

The request both touched and bothered Harry. He was glad that Williams considered him in a league with the legendary Vance Shannon when it came to plans and forecasts, but he had some doubts about his ability to live up to the reputation. Vance had more experience, and he had an intuitive sense that Harry felt he lacked. Yet he knew that Boeing had many strong, experienced people who could do a study like this. Williams obviously wanted an unbiased, unvarnished look and felt that Harry could give it to him.

“I’ll be glad to do it. What’s your time line?”

“The usual, yesterday morning, but if you can give it to me in six weeks, I’ll have it before a tour I’m going to do of all the major U.S. airlines.”