The Minotaur (31 page)

“George Ludlow. Admiral Dunedin tells me there’s a problem.”

“Yessir. Caplinger and Duquesne arrived here a while ago with a
vice president of Consolidated Technologies tagging along. They
want her to see Athena. It’s classified special access, above top
secret, and she’s getting an unfair advantage over the other con-
tractors. I said no.”

“What did Caplinger say?”

“He wasn’t happy.”

“Do you understand that Hiram Duquesne is chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee? We have to have his support if
we’re going to get a replacement aircraft for the A-6. Without it
we’re pissing up a rope.”

“I understand that. And I understand that you chose me for this
job because I can wear a Medal of Honor on my shirt and because
I’m expendable. You’re going to have me make a recommendation
on which plane to buy based on a short operational evaluation fly-
off, and if you like it, I’ll have to go over to Congress and defend it.
You can disavow me anytime. I understand all of that. I took the
job anyway. Now I’m telling you, I can’t go over to the Hill and
make a recommendation if five or six senators and congressmen are
out to cut my balls off with a scalping knife because I let Consoli-
dated in on the ground floor in violation of the law and DOD
regulations. I won’t be able to hide behind Royce Caplinger over
there. That little shit is too goddamn small to hide behind.”

Ludlow chuckled, a dry sound that lasted three or four seconds.
“Go get Caplinger. I’ll talk to him.”

Jake left the phone lying on the desk and went downstairs to the
VIP lounge. “Mr. Secretary, you have a phone call upstairs.”

Duquesne’s face was still red and mottled. DeCrescentis looked
like she could chew up all of them and spit hamburger. The base
CO was nowhere in sight. He had probably attacked in another
direction, maybe toward the golf course.

Jake followed the Defense Secretary back up the stairs.

As soon as Caplinger recognized his son-in-law’s voice, he
shooed Jake from the office. Jake could hear his voice booming
through the door. It wasn’t just the Advanced Tactical Aircraft he
was concerned about—ft was the entire defense budget. As he
roared at Ludlow: “. . . you and I both know that Grafton will
probably recommend the TRX plane. With Athena, it’s the obvi-
ous choice. But that leaves Duquesne in political trouble at home
and we need his support. Jesus fucking Christ, George, you people
have an aircraft carrier up for funding, three Aegis cruisers, two
boomer boats, the air force wants more F-117s and some B-2s,”the
army wants more tanks. SDI is desperate for money. And Con-
gress is trying to cut the deficit! Don’t tell me to tell Duquesne to
fuck off!”

He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice
was low and Grafton couldn’t hear the words. He knew Ludlow
well enough to know how it was going, however. Let Grafton take
the heat, the Secretary of the Navy was probably saying. Make
Grafton the villain.

And that was how it went. When Caplinger came out of the
office he buttonholed Jake. “You’re going downstairs and explain
to the senator that you personally must put DeCrescentis back on
that plane. You will brief me and the senator this afternoon on
Athena and we’ll see it in operation tomorrow. But you are going
to insist that woman goes home now, and you are going to make
Duquesne like it. Got it?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The senator didn’t like it, of course, and DeCrescentis liked it
even less, but when Grafton made it clear that the law was going to
be obeyed regardless and he was the man insisting, both of them
gave ground with what grace they could muster. Duquesne had
more of it than the corporate vice president did, perhaps because
he knew that even Caesar had to retreat occasionally.

After an hour with Samuel Dodgers in the hangar, it appeared
Hiram Duquesne wished he had joined DeCrescentis on the plane.

Dodgers gave Athena no more than half his air and used the rest
to blast away at Congress, corporations and the communist-Jew-
nigger conspiracy. Finally Jake told him to shut up. It didn’t take.
Jake told him again in terms and tones that would have stopped a
rock band in full screech. Dodgers stormed off, leaving Caplinger
and Duquesne gaping foolishly at each other.

Jake Grafton took a deep breath, made his excuses to the two
politicians, and left them in the care of a stunned Helmut Fritsche.

In the parking lot, he caught up with Dodgers, trembling with
outrage. “You owe me an apology,” the scientist spluttered, hold-
ing himself rigid, his fists clenched.

“No, sir,” Grafton said in a normal voice. “You owe me one.
And you owe apologies to all three of those men in there.”

Dodgers was speechless.

“You have inflicted yourself on everyone within earshot since the
day I met you. Now there’s not going to be any more of that while
I’m around. Do you understand?”

“How dare you talk to me like this!” When Dodgers got it out, it
came out loud.

Jake lowered his voice still more. “I’m the officer responsible.
That’s it as far as you’re concerned. You do your work and keep
your personal opinions to yourself, and you and I will get along.”

The scientist spluttered. “I don’t want to get along with you,
you . . .” He couldn’t find the word.

“You’d better reconcile yourself to it if you want this project to
go anywhere.”

“. . . sinner. Agent of Satan.”

“You want money for your church, right? I’m the man.” With
that Jake turned his back on Samuel Dodgers.

The little neighborhood bar was fairly well lit and not very fancy,
with cheap furniture and oilcloth table covers. A television high in
one comer was tuned to a ball game, one of the NCAA tourna-
ment semifinals. Smoke Judy slid into an empty booth and ordered
a draft. The waitress flirted for a moment when she brought it,
then skipped away.

Smoke sipped his beer and watched the body posture of the men
leaning against the bar and sitting on the stools. Some were ab-
sorbed in the game, some were talking to a buddy. Most of them
were doing a little of both.

This was Smoke Judy’s favorite weekend beer spot, only a mile
from his place. He knew the bartender casually and they often
exchanged pleasantries on slow days. There were a lot worse ways
to make a living, Smoke decided, than running a neighborhood bar
where the guys could stop in after work or take a break from lawn
mowing and garage cleaning. The crowd was nice and the work
pleasant, although the money wouldn’t be great.

Maybe he would get a place like this when he retired next year.
He had dropped a hint to the bartender—who also owned the place
—a few weeks back, trying to find out if he had ever thought of
selling, but the man didn’t get his drift, or pretended he didn’t.

He was going to retire next year, with twenty-two years in. By
law, as a commander he could stay in the navy until be had com-
pleted twenty-six years of service, but he wasn’t going to endure
the hassle of staff job after staff job with no chance of promotion.

The end of the line had been a tour in command of a training
squadron in Texas. Four of those damn kids had crashed, three
fatally. Hard to believe. He had worked hard and flown hard and
done it by the book, and still those goddamned kids just kept
smashing themselves into the ground like suicidal rats. The acci-
dent investigators had never said or even implied he was at fault,
Yet every crash had felt like God whacking him on the head, com-
pressing another two vertebrae. He had gotten punchy toward the
end, a screamer in the cockpit, afraid to certify any student safe for
anything. He left that for the lieutenants.

The admiral had been sympathetic, of course, but he had no
choice. He said. He had to rate Judy the lowest of all his squadron
commanders. After all, four accidents? Nine million dollars’ worth
of airplanes and three lives? That had been God’s final whack.
Judy would never be promoted or given another command. All
that remained was a decision on when to retire.

He had seen it coming, like something from a Greek tragedy,
after that second kid augered in on a night instrument solo. A
fucking Canoe U. grad no less! Then the third one, that kid
punched out of a perfectly good airplane on a solo aero hop after
he flew into the only cloud for fifty miles in any direction for ten
whole seconds and got the plane into a high-speed spiral and pan-
icked. But he stood there in the CO’s office afterwards and said he
was sorry! The fourth one, that shithead—Judy had personally
given him a down once already—one clear, cloudless day that spas-
tic bastard failed to get the nose up to the horizon on a pullout
from a simulated strafing run and pancaked in, smearing himself
and his airplane across a half mile of cow pasture. The command-
ing officer is always responsible. And so it had been, like a judg-
ment from the Doomsday book.

Next year. With twenty-two in. That would give him 55 percent
of his base pay, and if one or two of these little deals he was
working with hungry contractors came through, he would do all
right. Not rich, but okay.

He paid for the beer and left two quarters for a tip. His car was
parked just fifty feet down the street, but as he walked toward it,
the car in front backed right into it!

“Awww . . .”

The driver got out and walked back to examine the damage.

“Awww, shit!” Smoke Judy exclaimed when he saw the broken
grille, the smashed headlight and the bowed-out fender. “Get your
goddamn driver’s license yesterday?”

“Jesus, mister, I am sorry! My foot just slipped off the brake.
Don’t know how it happened.”

“Awww, damn. The second time this year somebody has
smacked it when it was parked. Look at this fender, willya? Those
Japs must make these things out of recycled beer cans. Look how
this thing’s sprungi And this headlight socket!”

The other driver turned from examining his own bent fender and
smashed taillight and surveyed Judy’s damage. He was chunky,
fifty or so, flecks of gray in his hair. “Don’t worry. I got insurance.
They’ll fix it good as new. But honest, I am really sorry.”

“I suppose.” Smoke Judy shook his head.

“Maybe we’d better exchange information.”

“Yeah.” Judy unlocked his car and fished the registration and
insurance certificate from the glove box while the other driver
rooted in his.

“Maybe we should go inside and do this,” the chunky man sug-
gested. “Can I buy you a beer?”

“Why not.” Smoke turned and led the way back into the bar he
had just come out of. “My name’s Judy. Smoke Judy.”

“Sorry we had to meet like this. I’m Harlan Albright.”

Dodgers kept his opinions to himself at dinner Sunday evening,
partially because he was too busy with his food to waste effort on
small talk, and partially because he could not have gotten a word
in edgewise against Caplinger’s verbal flow. There were just the
four of them around a table in an empty dining room—empty
because the officers’ club was usually closed on Sunday evening
and Secretary Caplinger declined to go off-base to eat—Dodgers,
Caplinger, Senator Duquesne, and Jake Grafton. Caplinger dis-
cussed the budget deficit. Third World debt, global pollution, and
the illegal drug industry with a depth of knowledge and insight
that amazed Jake and even quieted the senator, who was the only
person at the table who tried to participate in the conversation. It
was obvious that Royce Caplinger not only had read widely but
had thought deeply about all these issues. Less obvious but equally
impressive was the way he wove the strands of these mega-issues
into one whole cloth.

After the steward placed a coffeepot in the center of the table
and departed, closing the door behind him, Caplinger eyed Jake
speculatively. “Well, Captain, it seems to me that now would be a
good time to sound you out.”

“I’m just an 0-6, Mr. Secretary. All I see are the elephant’s
feet”

Caplinger poured himself a cup of coffee and used a spoon to stir
in cream. He surveyed Samuel Dodgers as if seeing him this eve-
ning for the first time. “Good of you to share your Sabbath with
us, Doctor. We’re looking forward to seeing your handiwork to-
morrow.”

Dodgers wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin beside his plate.
“Tomorrow.” He nodded at everyone except Grafton and de-
parted.

When the door had firmly closed behind the inventor, Caplinger
remarked, “Senator, what will happen on the Hill if it becomes
common gossip that the father of Athena is a fascist churl?”

“You’ll be in trouble. That man couldn’t sell water in Death
Valley on the Fourth of July.”

“My thought exactly. We’ll have to make sure he stays out of
sight and sound. Little difficult to do in America, but not impossi-
ble.” He grinned. When he did his face twisted. It didn’t look like
he made the effort very often. “So how do the elephant’s feet look,
Captain?”

Jake Grafton reached for the coffeepot. “I confess, sir, that I’m
baffled. Seems to me that these new weapons systems under devel-
opment, with the sole exception of Athena, are going to be too
expensive for the nation ever to afford enough of them to do any
good.”

All traces of the smile disappeared from Caplinger’s face. “Go
on.”

“As the cost goes up, the quantity goes down- And every techni-
cal breakthrough seems to double or triple the cost. If anything,
Athena will be the exception that proves the rule. Athena should
be a fairly cheap system, all things considered, but it’ll be the only
one.”

“And . , -” prompted the Secretary of Defense.

“Well, if our goal is to maintain forces which deny the Soviets
any confidence in a favorable outcome in any probable nuclear war
scenario, we seem to have reached the treadmill. We can’t maintain
forces if we can’t afford them.”

“You made a rather large assumption.”

“So what is our goal?”

“The general public regards nuclear war as unwinnable. That’s
the universal popular wisdom, and like anything that almost every-
one believes, it’s wrong. The Soviets have invested heavily in hard-
ened bunkers for the top leadership. They’ve built underground
cities for the communist elite. Somebody over there thinks they can
win! Now their idea of victory and ours are two very different
things, but as long as they think they can win, the likelihood of a
nuclear war increases. Nuclear war becomes more likely to hap-
pen.”

Caplinger glanced at the senator, then turned his attention back
to Jake. He seemed to be weighing his words. “Our goal,” he fi-
nally said, “is to prevent nuclear war. To do that we must make
them think they can’t win.”

“So you are saying that any method of denying the Russians
confidence in a favorable outcome—however they define favorable
—is acceptable?”

Caplinger tugged at his lower lip. His eyes were unfocused. Jake
thought he seemed to be turning it qver in his mind yet again,
examining it for flaws, looking . . . Slowly the chin dipped, then
rose again. “We need . . .” His gaze rose to the ceiling and went
slowly around it. “We need … we need forces that can survive
the initial strike and respond in a flexible manner, forces that are
controllable, programmable, selective. It can’t be all or nothing,
Captain. It can’t be just one exchange of broadsides. If all we have
is that one broadside, we just lost.”

“Explain,” prompted Senator Duquesne-

“We’ll never shoot our broadside. That’s the dirty little secret
that they know and we know and we will never admit. No man
elected President of the United States in the nuclear age would
order every ICBM fired, every Trident missile launched, every nu-
clear weapon in our arsenal detonated on the Soviets. Not even if
the Soviets make a massive first strike at us. To massively retaliate
would mean the end of life on the planet Earth. No rational man
would do it.” Caplinger shrugged. “That’s the flaw in Mutual As-
sured Destruction. No sane man would ever push the button.”

Royce Caplinger sipped his coffee, now cold, and made a face.

“We must deny the communists the ability to ever come out of
those bunkers. We need the ability to hit pinpoint, mobile targets
on a selective, as-needed basis. That’s the mission of the F-117 and
the B-2. If we can achieve that, there will never be a first strike.
There will never be a nuclear war.”

Caplinger pushed his chair back away from the table. “Life will
continue on this planet until pollution ruins the atmosphere and
sewage makes the seas a barren, watery desert. Then life on this
fragile little pebble orbiting this modest star will come to the end
that the Creator must nave intended when he made man. Watching
our Japanese televisions, listening to our compact laser disks, wear-
ing our designer clothes, we’ll all starve.”

He rose abruptly and made for the door. Jake Grafton also got
to his feet. When the door closed behind Caplinger, Jake shook the
senator’s hand and wished him good night.

“He’s a great man,” the senator said, trying to read Jake’s
thoughts.

“Yes.”

“But he is not sanguine. The political give-and-take—it de-
presses him.”

“Yes,” Jake Grafton said, and nodded his farewell. Suddenly he
too needed to be alone.

On Monday morning Jake put Secretary Caplinger, Senator Du-
quesne, and their aides on a plane to Fallen with Helmut Fritsche
and Harold Dodgers. He had decided to stay at China Lake and
supervise the good doctor.

Sam Dodgers was in a foul mood, muttering darkly about money
and conspiracies. Jake managed to keep his mouth shut. When the
Athena device was ready and installed in the A-6, he helped strap
Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington into the cockpit. Toad was
whistling some tune Jake didn’t recognize.

“No birds today. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Toad was in high spirits. Higher than
usual. He must be screwing Moravia, Jake decided, trying to catch
some hint between them. The pilot was all business.

“Work the long distances today- Start at thirty miles and let
Fritsche call you closer when he has the info he wants. Just keep
the radar he’s using on your left side.”

“Sure, CAG. We understand.” He resumed his whistling as Jake
helped him latch his Koch fittings.

“You know who whistles in the navy. Toad?”

“No, sir,”

“Bosun’s mates and damn fools.”

Toad grinned. “I’m in that second category, sir. Enjoy your day
with Dr. Dodgers.”

Jake punched him on the shoulder and climbed down the board-
ing ladder.

As the Intruder taxied out, Jake climbed into the yellow ramp
truck that the base ops people had loaned him. He had no desire to
return to the hangar and watch Dodgers tinker with a computer.

He drove down a taxiway and parked near the duty runway. He
got out and sat on the hood. Already the morning was warm,
growing hotter by the minute as the sun climbed higher and higher
into the deep blue sky. Singing birds were audible here, away from
the hustle and bustle of the ramp. A large jackrabbit watched him
from the safety of a clump of brush.

He could hear the faint murmur of engines in the distance, and
assumed that was Rita and Toad. The minutes passed as he sat
there in the sun with the breeze in his hair. He had joined the navy
those many years ago to fly, and now he was reduced to sitting
beside a runway waiting for younger people to take off. Yet this
was the world he knew. The world Royce Caplinger had spoken of
last night—nuclear deterrence, global strategy—that was an alien
environment, as foreign to him as the concerns of headhunters in
the jungles of the Amazon.

He saw the tiny tail of the warplane moving above the swell in
the runway. It turned and became a knife edge. Still at least a mile
away, the visible tail came to a stop and remained motionless for
several minutes.

Caplinger’s pessimism troubled him. Sure, the world had its
problems, but every generation had faced problems: problems were
the stuff life was made of. A man as brilliant as Caplinger, he
shouldn’t be so … so bitter.

He heard the engines snarl, yet the tiny white speck of tail did
not move. No doubt Rita was standing on the brakes, letting the
engines wind up to full power and the temps stabilize before she let
it roll. Now . . . now the tail began to move, slowly at first, then
faster and faster.

The Intruder came over the swell in the runway accelerating
quickly. A river of hot, shimmering air poured down and away
behind the bird.

He pressed his fingers in his ears as the sound swelled in volume
and intensity. The nose wheel rose a foot or so above the concrete.
With a delicate wiggle the bird of prey lifted itself free of the earth
and continued toward him in a gentle climb as the wheels retracted
into the body of the beast. The howl of the engines grew until it
was intolerable.

Now the machine was passing just overhead, roaring a thunder-
ous song that enveloped him with an intensity beyond imagination.
He glimpsed the helmeted figure of Rita Moravia in the cockpit
with her left hand on the throttles, looking forward, toward the
open sky.

He buried his face in his shoulder as the plane swept past and
waves of hot jet exhaust and disturbed air cascaded over him.

When the gale subsided the noise was fading too, so he looked
again for the Intruder. It was climbing steeply into the blue ocean
above, its engine noise now a deep, resonant, subsiding roar.

He got down from the truck hood and seated himself behind the
wheel. The birds in the scrub were still singing and the jackrabbit
was still watching suspiciously.

Grinning to himself, Jake Grafton started the engine of the
pickup and drove away.

18

The day Terry Franklin died was
a beautiful day, “the finest day this year” according to a TV weath-
erman on one of Washington’s local breakfast shows. The sun crept
over the edge of the earth into a cloudless sky as a warm, gentle
zephyr from the west stirred the new foliage. The weather reader
promised a high temperature of seventy-four. Humidity was low.
This was the day everyone had dreamed of while they endured the
cold, humid winter and the wet, miserable spring. Now, at last, it
was here. And on this day sent from heaven Terry Franklin died.

He certainly didn’t expect to die today, of course, or any other
day in the foreseeable future. For him this was just another day to
be endured, another day to live through on his way to the life of
gleeful indolence he was earning with his treason.

He awoke when his alarm went off. If he beard the birds singing
outside his window he showed no sign. He used his electric razor
on his face and gave his teeth a very quick pass with the cordless
toothbrush he received for Christmas from his kids, whom he
hadn’t seen or heard from for three weeks and, truthfully, hoped
he wouldn’t hear from. If he heard from the kids he would also
hear from Lucy, and she would want money. He assumed that she
was back in California with her mother, the wicked witch of the
west. If so, Lucy didn’t need any money: her father the tooth
mechanic could pay the grocery bill and buy the kids new shoes.

He put on his uniform while the coffee brewed. The coffee he
drank black, just the way he had learned to like it on his first
cruise, which he had made to the Med aboard a guided-missile
frigate.

He paused automatically on the front stoop and looked around
for the morning newspaper, then remembered that there wouldn’t
be one and pulled the door closed and tried it to ensure it was
locked. He had canceled the paper a week after Lucy left. He never
read it and Lucy only scanned the front page and read the funnies.
She always wanted it for the crossword puzzle, which she worked
every morning while watching Oprah. Twenty-five cents a day for
a fucking crossword puzzle. He had relished that call to the circu-
lation office.

The Datsun started on the first crank. He backed out of the drive
and roiled down his window as he drove toward the stop sign at
the corner. He fastened his seat belt, punched up the Top 40 station
on the stereo and rolled. He only had three miles to go to the
Park’N'Ride, but still he enjoyed the private little world of his car.
These few minutes in the car, with the music he liked adjusted to
the volume he liked, he cherished as the best part of the day.