The Minotaur (7 page)

Jake spoke. “If the best the air force could get out of their stealth
attack plane was A-7 performance, is it a good idea for the navy to
spend billions on one? We can’t go buying airplanes to fight just
one war. and we need a sufficient quantity of planes to equip the
carriers. Five gee-whiz killing machines a year won’t do us any
good at all.”

The admiral stopped dead and scrutinized Jake. Slowly a grin
lifted the comers of his mouth. “I knew you were the right guy for
this job.”

He resumed walking, his step firmer, more confident. “The first
question is what kind of fights are we going to get into in the
future. And the answer, I suspect, is more of the same. I think the
likelihood of an all-out war with the Soviets in Western Europe is
pretty small—no way to prevent it from going nuclear and the
Russians don’t want that any more than we do. But we must pre-
pare to fight it, prepare to some degree, or we can’t deter it. I’d say
it’s a lot more likely we’ll end up with more limited wars, like
Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf or the Mid-
dle East or South Africa. So the capability to fight those wars is
critical. We need planes that can fly five hundred miles through a
high-density electronic environment, deliver a devastating conven-
tional punch, and return to the carrier to fly again, and again and
again. Without that capability our carrier battle groups are an ex-
pensive liability and not an asset. We need that plane by 1995, at
the latest.”

“You’re implying that our plane can’t rely on pinpoint missiles
for weapons.”

“Precisely. The air force has a lot of concrete to park their spe-
cialized planes on; carrier deck space is damn precious. We can’t
build planes that can only shoot missiles that cost a million bucks
each, then push them into the drink when we run out of missiles.
We have to be able to hit hard in any foreseeable conflict with
simple, cheap weapons, like laser-guided bombs.”

“So we can do something the air force couldn’t with the F-117?”

Henry threw his head back and grinned, obviously enjoying him-
self. “We aren’t going to trade away our plane’s performance or
mission capability.”

“But how—“

“Better design—we learned a lot from the F-117—plus Athena.
Active stealth technology.” His mood was gloomy again. “I think
the fucking Russians have gotten everything there was to get out of
the F-117 and B-2. Every single technical breakthrough, they’ve
stolen it. They don’t appear to be using that knowledge and they
may not ever be able to do so. This stuff involves manufacturing
capabilities they don’t have and costs they can’t afford to incur.
But what they can do is figure out defenses to a stealthed-up air-
plane, and you can bet your left nut they’re working their asses off
on that right this very minute.”

He looked carefully around. ‘There’s a Russian mole in the
Pentagon.” His voice was almost a whisper, although the nearest
pedestrian was a hundred yards away. “He gave them the stealth
secrets. The son of a bitch is buried in there someplace and he’s
ripping us off. He’s even been given a top secret code name—
Minotaur.” He scuffed his toe at a pebble on the sidewalk. “I’m not
supposed to know this. It goes without saying that if I’m not, you
sure as hell aren’t.”

“How’d—“

“Don’t ask. I don’t want you to know. But if I know the Mi-
notaur’s there, you can lay money he knows we know he’s there. So
the bastard is dug in with his defenses up. We may never get him.
Probably won’t.”

“How do we know he gave them stealth?”

“We know. Trust me. We know,”

“So we have a mole in the Kremlin.”

“I didn’t say that,” Henry said fiercely, “and you had damn well
better not. No shit, Grafton, don’t even whisper that to a living
fucking soul.”

They walked along in silence, each man occupied with his own
thoughts. Finally Jake said, “So how are we gonna do it?”

“Huh?”

“How are we going to build a stealth Intruder and keep the
technology in our pocket?”

“I haven’t figured that one out yet,” Henry said slowly. “You
see, everything the Russians have gotten so far is passive—tech-
niques to minimize the radar cross section and heat signature. To
build a mission-capable airplane like we want we’re going to have
to use active techniques. Project Athena. They haven’t stolen
Athena yet and we don’t want them to get it.”

“Active techniques?” Jake prompted, unable to contain his curi-
osity.

“Wre going to cancel the bad guys’ radar signal when it
reaches our plane. We’ll automatically generate a signal that nulli-
fies the echo, mutes it, cancels it out. The plane will then be truly
invisible to the enemy. They’ll never see it on their scope. They’ll
never receive the echo.” He thought about it “It’s the biggest
technological breakthrough since the Manhattan Project. Biggest
by a mile.”

“I’ve heard speculation about canceling radar signals for years.
The guys who were supposed to know all laughed. Can it be
done?”

“The party line is no. Impossible. But there’s a crazed genius
who wants to be filthy rich that has done it. That technology is the
living, beating heart of the ATA. Now all we have to do is get an
airplane built and keep them from stealing the secret.”

Jake whistled. “Can’t we put this on all our ships?”

“No doubt we will,” Henry said sourly, “and the Russians will
steal it before our first ship gets out of the harbor. For now let’s
just see if we can get it in one airplane without someone stealing it.
That’ll be plenty for you and Roger Dunedin to chew.”

“Existing aircraft? How about retrofitting them?”

“Right now, as the technology exists, the best approach is to
design the plane for it. The power output required to hide a
stealthy plane would be very small. The device would be easy
enough to put on a ship, when we get the bugs worked out. As
usual there are bugs. Expensive, though.”

Admiral Henry glanced at his watch. “Our work’s cut out for
us. The air force will want this technology when they get wind of
it, and right now everything they see winds up in the Kremlin. It’s
not their fault, of course, but that’s the way it is. The manufacturer
of our plane will see it and from there it may end up in the Mi-
notaur’s clutches. Ditto the ship drivers. And the politicians who
have been trick-fucked on the F-117 won’t sit still for more stealth
hocus-pocus; they’re gonna want justification for the four or five
billion dollars the ATA will require just to develop, and there it
goes again. So right now I’m sitting on a volcano that’s about to
erupt and my ass is getting damn warm. You see why I wanted you
on board.”

“Not really,” Jake said, wondering how far he should push this.
After all, who the hell was Jake Grafton? What could an over-the-
hill attack pilot in glasses with four stripes on his sleeve do for a
three-star admiral? Bomb the Pentagon? “So what’s your plan?
How are you going to do this?”

Henry was so nervous he couldn’t hold still. “I’m going to hold
the cards real close to my chest and catch peeking
over my shoulder. Or that’s what I’m going to try to do, anyway.”

“Admiral, with all respect, sir, what does CNO say about all
this?” CNO was the Chief of Naval Operations, the senior uni-
formed naval officer.

Henry squared off in front of Jake. “I’m not stupid enough to try
to run my own private navy, Captain. CNO knows exactly what
I’m doing. So does SECNAV and SECDEF. But you sure as hell
didn’t get it all in this little conversation.”

“Admiral, I’ll lay it on the line for you. I’m not going to do
anything illegal or tell even one solitary little lie. I’m not a very
good liar.”

Admiral Henry grinned. “You just haven’t had the experience it
takes. I’ve been single for ten years, so I’ve done a good bit of it.
Seriously, all I want you to do is play it straight. Do your job for
NAVAIR. Just keep it under your hat that we have an active sys-
tem we’re going to put into this bird. Roger will tell you the same.”

“How many people know about this active system?”

“Here in Washington? Eight now - The Secretary of the Navy,
CNO, SECDEF. NAVAIR, OP-50—which is Rear Admiral Cos-
tello—me, you and Helmut Fritsche. And let’s keep it that way for
a while.”

“Have you tested this system? Does it work?”

Henry made a face. “Fritsche’s seen it work on a test bench.
Your first job, after you look at the prototypes, is to put part of it
into an A-6 and test it on the ground and in flight.”

Jake eyed the older man. He had this sinking feeling in the pit of
his stomach. There was a hell of a lot he wasn’t being told. “So
how do you know Fritsche?”

“He was a professor at Caltech when I was there for a master’s.
We became good friends. He did some consulting work for the
inventor on some theoretical problems. He saw what the guy had
and came to help. That was three years ago. It was coincidence that
there was a deputy project manager job opening in the ATA’pro-
gram. I talked Fritsche into taking it. He wants to be a part of
Athena. The theoretical problems intrigue him.”

“You said you didn’t know all the players.”

Henry took this opportunity to look around again. “Yeah. I
don’t. Your predecessor, Harold Strong? Great guy, knew naval
aviation from catapult to tailhook, everything there is to know, but
he wasn’t a politician, not a diplomat. He was a blunt, brilliant,
take-no-prisoners kind of guy. Somebody killed him.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.” Henry described how he personally drove to
West Virginia on Saturday morning after the Friday-night automo-
bile accident. He summarized the conversation he had had with the
West Virginia state trooper who investigated the accident. The
trooper had served four years in the marine corps and by a stroke
of fortune Henry bad been in uniform. The trooper had been good;
he knew murder when he saw it. He had taken the admiral to see
the local prosecuting attorney, who had been splitting firewood in
his backyard when the two of them arrived in the police cruiser.
After two hours of talking. Henry induced the prosecutor and the
trooper to agree to a wording of the accident report that did not
mention homicide and yet would not preclude a homicide prosecu-
tion if the identity of the murderer could ever be established.

“My theory”—Henry shrugged—“I got no evidence, you under-
stand—my theory is Harold found out something, teamed some-
thing somebody didn’t want him to know—so he got rubbed out.”

The navy Ford pulled up to the curb, but Henry put a hand on
Jake’s arm. “This is big, Jake. Real big. You don’t understand how
big. The Russians will figure out we’re going to do something dif-
ferent and wonderful with the A-12 and they’ll pull out all the
stops to get Athena. And five billion dollars in development money
is on the line, plus twenty to thirty billion in production money—
that much shit will draw every blowfly and bloodsucker in the
country. A lot of these people would kill for this technology.”

“Maybe someone already has.”

“Just don’t trust anybody.”

“I’ve figured that out, sir. I think there’s a hell of a lot here you
haven’t told me. So I don’t trust you.”

Henry threw back his head and guffawed. “I knew you were the
right man for this job.” He became instantly serious. “I don’t give
a damn whether you trust me or not. Just do your job and keep
your mouth shut and we’ll get the navy a good airplane.”

“By the way, did Strong know about the active system?”

“Yes.”

The admiral’s driver dropped Jake at his office building. One of
the few benefits of working a black program was that he could
come to work in civilian clothes.

Vice Admiral Dunedin was finishing a conference, so Jake vis-
ited with Mrs. Forsythe. In fifteen minutes the door opened and
people streamed out, in a hurry.

“Good morning. Admiral,” Jake said.

“How’d your talk go with Admiral Henry?”

“Very well, sir.”

“Don’t lie to me. Captain. I’m your boss.”

“Yessir.” Jake found a seat and looked straight at the blue-eyed
Scotsman behind the desk. “He told me what he wanted me to
know and that was that”

“How long you been in the navy?”

Long enough to know how to take orders, Jake thought. “Yes-
sir.”

“Let’s talk about the A-12. It’s now your baby.”

An hour later the admiral rose from his chair. “Let’s go meet the
crew.”

Jake mentioned to the admiral that he had been looking at the
personnel folders. “Lieutenant Moravia. She’s got platinum cre-
dentials but no experience. How’d she get on the team?”

“Strong wanted her. He was down at Pax River when she went
through as a student. He said she’s one of a kind. Since he was a
test pilot himself, I figured he had the experience even if she didn’t,
so I said okay.”

“I’m not a test pilot,” Jake said.

“I know. These people work for you. If you want someone else,
just say so. That goes for any of them, except for Fritsche. If they
stay it’s because you think they can do the job and you trust
them.”

“I read you loud and clear, sir.”

“Anybody doesn’t pull his weight, or you get goosey about any
of them, I’ll have them sitting on the ice cap in the Antarctic so
quick they wont have time to pack their long johns,”

The office in Crystal City where the A-12 program team worked
was a square space with twenty metal desks jammed in. Five-
drawer filing cabinets with combination locks on the drawers had
been arranged to divide the room into work areas. The scarred tops
and askew drawers of the desks proclaimed them veterans of other
offices, other bureaucratic struggles now forgotten. Office equip-
ment was scattered all over the room: a dozen computer terminals,
four printers, a copy machine, a paper shredder, and a fax machine
linked to an encryption device. Jake’s office would be one of the
two small private offices. These two small offices each had an out-
side window and a blackboard, plus the usual filing cabinets with
combination locks on the drawers.

But the security—wow! There were two entry doors, each with
cipher locks, and a closed-circuit television that monitored the
dead space between the doors. An armed security team was on
duty inside twenty-four hours a day. Their business was to check
each person entering the space against a master list and log them in
and out. The windows had the music sound vibrators and could
not be opened. The shades were permanently closed. The fire extin-
guisher system in the ceiling had plastic cutouts installed in the
pipes so that they would not conduct sound.

“Every sheet of paper is numbered and accounted for,” the ad-
miral told Jake. “The phone numbers are unlisted and changed
monthly. I can never find my number sheet, so I end up walking
down here.”

After a quick tour, Jake stood in the middle of the room with the
admiral. “Where’d they get this carpet?”

“Stole it someplace. I never asked.”

“Sure would be nice to get a little bigger space. Thirty people?”

‘This is all the space I have to give you. It takes the signature of
an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to get space not assigned to
NAVAIR, I haven’t had time to kiss his ass. But if you can get his
scrawl, go for it”

“Nothing’s too good for the boys in navy blue,” Toad Tarking-
ton chirped cheerfully from his little desk against one wall, loud
enough to draw a frosty glance from the admiral.

“You’re Tarkington?” Dunedin said.

“Yessir.”

“I hear you suffer from a mouth problem from time to time- If
it’s incurable your naval career is about to hit the wall. You read
me?”

“Yessir.”

Dunedin raised his voice. “Okay, folks. Gather around. I want
you to meet Captain Jake Grafton, the new program manager.
He’s your new boss.” Dunedin launched into a traditional “wel-
come aboard” speech. When he was finished Jake told the attentive
faces how pleased he was to be there, then he and the admiral
shook hands. After a quick whispered word with Fritsche, Dun-
edin left the office.

Jake invited the commanders and civilian experts into his new
cubbyhole. It was a very tight fit. Folding chairs were packed in
and the place became stuffy in minutes. They filled him in on the
state of the project and their roles in it. Jake said nothing about his
visits with the admirals and gave no hint that he knew anything
about the project

He looked over Helmut Fritsche first, the radar expert from
Caltech. About fifty, he was heavyset, of medium height, and
sported a Hemingway beard which he liked to stroke when he
talked. He had alert, intelligent eyes that roamed constantly, even
when he was addressing someone. He spoke slowly, carefully,
choosing his words. He struck Jake as an intelligent, learned man
who had long ago resigned himself to spending most of his life in
the company of fools.

George Wilson was at least five years younger than Fritsche and
much leaner. He spoke slowly, in cadenced phrases, automatically
allowing his listeners to take notes if they wished. When he used
his third pun Jake finally noticed. Listening more carefully, he
picked up two double entendres and another pun. At first blush
Wilson seemed a man in love with the sound of his own voice, but
Jake decided that impression didn’t do justice to the fertile, active
mind of the professor of aeronautical engineering.

The A-6 bombardier, Commander Les Richards, looked as old
as Fritsche although he couldn’t have been a day over forty-two or
forty-three. Jake had met him years ago at NAS Oceana. They had
never been in the same squadron together but had a speaking ac-
quaintance. Richards’ tired face contained tired eyes. Jake remem-
bered that just a year or so ago Richards had commanded an A-6
squadron, so this assignment was his post-command tour. His eyes
told whoever looked that the navy was no longer an adventure, if
indeed it ever had been. The navy and perhaps life itself were
experiences to be endured on this long, joyless journey toward the
grave. If he caught any of Wilson’s wordplay his face gave no hint.
In spite of his demeanor, Jake knew, Richards had the reputation
of being an aggressive, competent manager, a man who got things
done.

Commander “Smoke” Judy was an F-14 pilot. Like all the com-
manders, he had had a squadron command tour. Smoke was short
and feisty. He looked like a man who would rather fight than eat
The joyous competitive spirit of the fighter pilot seemed incarnate
in him. A fire-eater—no doubt that was the origin of his nickname.
which had probably ceased to be a nickname long ago. Jake sus-
pected that his wife and even his mother now called him Smoke.

Dalton Harris was an extrovert, a man with a ready smile. He
grinned nervously at George Wilson’s humor and glanced at him
expectantly every time it seemed Wilson might become inspired.
He was a lithe, compact man, as full of nervous energy as Judy. An
alumnus of the EA-6B Prowler community, he was an expert in
electronic warfare- He even had a master’s in electrical engineering
from the Naval Postgraduate School.

The other two commanders, Aeronautical Engineering Duty Of-
ficers, were equally interesting. Technical competence was their
stock-in-trade.

An excellent group, Jake decided as the conversation wound
down, good shipmates. Harold Strong and Admiral Dunedin had
chosen well. He glanced at his watch with a start; they had been
talking about the A-12 for two hours. In parting he told them. “I
want a complete inventory of the accountable classified material
started tomorrow. Every document will be sighted by two officers
and they’ll both sign the list.”

“We did an inventory after Captain Strong died. Took two
weeks.”

“You’d better hope I don’t kick the bucket any time soon or
you’ll be doing it a couple more times.”

Jake spent five minutes with each of the other officers, saving
Moravia and Tarkington for last. He saw them together. After the
preliminaries he said, “Miss Moravia, I’m going to be blunt. You
don’t seem to have any test-flying experience other than Test Pilot
School.”

“That’s right, sir. But I can do the job. Try me and see.”

Moravia was of medium height, with- an excellent figure and a
face to match. Subtle makeup, every hair in place. Her gold naval
aviator wings gleamed above the left breast pocket of her blue
uniform. Try me and see—that fierce self-confidence separated
those who could from those who never would.

Tarkington seemed to treat her with deference and respect, Jake
noted wryly. “Ever flown an A-6?”

“About two hours or so at Pax River, sir.” Jake knew how that
worked. During the course of his training at Test Pilot School—
TPS—each student flew anywhere from twelve to seventeen differ-
ent kinds of aircraft. The final examination to qualify for gradua-
tion consisted of writing a complete flying qualities and perfor-
mance evaluation of an airplane the student had not flown before.
The student was handed a manual, and after studying it, was al-
lowed to fly the airplane for four flights or six hours’ flight time,
whichever came first. On the basis of this short exposure the stu-
dent then wrote the report. Rita Moravia was an honors graduate
of that program.

Try me and seel

“I want you and Tarkington to leave for Whidbey Island tomor-
row morning. The folks at VA-128 are expecting you.” VA-128 was
the replacement training squadron for A-6 Intruders on the West
Coast. “They’re going to give you a crash course on how to fly an
A-6. Report directly to the squadron skipper when you get there
tomorrow. Mrs. Forsythe in the admiral’s office is getting you or-
ders and plane tickets.” He looked again at his watch. “She should
have them for you now,”

“Aye aye, sir,” Moravia said and stood up. “Is there anything
else, sir?”

“Remember that nobody at Whidbey has a need to know any-
thing. You’ll be asked no questions by the senior people. The junior
ones will be curious, so just say the Pentagon sent you to fly. That’s
it. Learn everything you can about the plane and its mission. And
don’t crash one.”

Miss Moravia nodded and left, but Toad lingered.

“Uh, CAG,” Toad said, “I’m a fighter type and this attack, puke
stuff—“

“The admiral says that anyone I want to get rid of can winter
over in Antarctica. You want to go all the way south?”

“I’ll take Whidbey, sir.”

“I thought you would.” He picked up some paper on his desk
and looked at it, signaling the end of the interview. “Oh,” he
added, looking up again, “by the way, you stay the hell away from
Moravia. Absolutely no romance. Keep it strictly business. You’d
mope around here like a whipped puppy after she ditched you. I
haven’t got the stomach for another sorry spectacle like that.”

The office emptied at 5:30. Jake stayed, sorting through the paper
that had accumulated in Strong’s in basket. Most of it he threw in
the waste can under his desk. Memos and letters and position pa-
pers that looked important he saved for later scrutiny.