The Hot Pilots (42 page)

“I
told
you when you insisted on coming that I’d be here a long time!” Gold snapped.

He saw the boy flinch, and immediately regretted his gruffness. “I’m sorry, Andy. I’m not mad at you,” he softly reassured.
“I’m mad at myself, I guess …”

“How come?” Andy asked.

“We’re having some problems with the Super-Broad-Sword,” Gold muttered. “That’s our latest military airplane?”

Andy nodded. “It’s broken?”

Gold smiled thinly. “You could say that …”

“When my stuff gets broken you fix it,” Andy said. “You gonna fix your plane?”

“I’m going to try.” Gold forced patience into his voice. “But I need you to be quiet, okay…?”

The more Gold thought about the trouble the full-production Super-BroadSword had been causing for the last several months,
the more he could feel his gut clenching. Just about everything that
could
go wrong with the damned airplane—from its aerodynamic drag to its engines—
had
gone wrong. It was becoming impossible for his design and production departments to stay on top of the mess. Just last week
a new batch of complaints had flooded in concerning a potentially life-threatening in-flight malfunction of the variable-sweep
swing wing. Gold couldn’t account for the gremlins. He’d had Don Harrison and his best people heading up the design process.
The components had all been checked and double-checked. The parts had all been perfect. Hell, they
still
were, and yet when those parts were assembled into a Super-BroadSword they just didn’t seem to want to hang together…

“Grandpa, I’m bored—” Andy was complaining. He’d tossed aside his comic book, and was restlessly swinging his heels against
the sofa.

“I wish there was something around here for you to do,” Gold murmured. His elegant office with its oil paintings, dark wainscoting,
and leather furniture was not exactly set up to be a playroom …

His eyes fell on the newly installed glass display case in the office’s far corner. The case was filled with scale models
of all the airplanes that GAT had designed and manufactured in its forty-two-year history. The models had resided in Teddy
Quinn’s office back when Teddy was chief engineer. When Don Harrison had stepped into the job he’d moved the model case onto
the main floor of the engineering department. Gold, feeling sentimental, had recently had the case moved up here.

“I’ve got an idea.” Gold pointed toward the model case. “Would you like to play with the airplanes?”

“Sure!” Andy hopped off the sofa. “Can I?”

“You bet,” Gold replied, standing up and walking to the case. He slid open the glass doors and stepped aside, grinning as
he watched his grandson carefully lift from its stand the twelve-inch-long, cast metal replica of a prop-driven, open-cockpit
G-1 Dragonfly.

“That was the first airplane we ever built,” Gold said as the boy held the silvery model up to the light. “We called it the
Dragonfly. We sold a bunch of them to the Post Office, and to private freight transport companies. For a while it was used
all over the country to deliver the mail.”

“It must have been fun to fly one of these, huh, Grandpa?”

Gold nodded.
More fun to fly them, and more fun to build them in those days
, he sadly added to himself. He would have liked to play with the models along with his grandson, reminiscing about old, and
better times.
You’ve got work to do
, he reminded himself. He trudged back to his desk, intent on dealing with today’s problems instead of losing himself in yesterday’s
fond memories.

He spent another quarter hour staring at the goddamned columns of numbers, then tossed aside his pencil and shut off the adding
machine. He couldn’t concentrate, and it wasn’t just because Andy was sitting on the carpet by the display case, making airplane
noises as he played with the models.

Gold leaned back in his chair. He was feeling exhausted. This Super-BroadSword fiasco was keeping him up nights with worry.
He was also feeling a bit sorry for himself—

Despite all the problems, things could have been smoothed out if old Howie Simon was still in charge of procurement
, Gold brooded.

He’d shared twenty years of aviation history with Howie. The two men had understood each other. Howie would have known without
question that Gold would work day and night to set things right …

But Howie was gone, put out to pasture in Texas. The general had been replaced by a team of snot-nosed young officers who
didn’t have the aviation savvy in their entire bodies that Howie had possessed in his little finger. And the way those young
bastards had talked down to Gold! Just thinking about it was enough to set his pulse pounding all over again …

Yeah, he could have worked things out with Howie. The problems could have been rectified without tarnishing the reputation
of the Super-BroadSword and the reputation of his company. But the new people in charge of Air Force procurement hadn’t been
interested in the way things had always been done—

On Gold’s desk was the telegram notifying him that the Air Force had temporarily suspended acceptance of Super-BroadSword
deliveries pending an evaluation of the design changes, and a reassessment of the unit costs.

The trade publications would soon get wind of it—if they hadn’t already, Gold thought sourly. He supposed that once the headlines
broke, the politicians in Washington would want to stick their noses into it, as well. He also knew that once the Air Force
had pinned the lemon label on the airplane, it wouldn’t matter how hard GAT worked to rectify the problems. The company could
still kiss good-bye its future foreign orders …

God, it was all so needless!
The Super-BroadSword was a good airplane. Frustrated, he balled his hands into fists.
It was all so aggravating!

Calm down
, he told himself. It wasn’t like the Super-BroadSword was the only thing he had to worry about. Dealing with the Europeans
concerning the Skytrain Industrie jetliner consortium of which GAT was a part was always an exhausting burden. And then there
was the ever-sharpening competition from Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas in the domestic jetliner market. Sure, Don Harrison
was eager to take some of the burden off Gold’s shoulders, and the other executives in the company did their jobs, but Gold
had always had trouble delegating responsibility. He was the top man after all … The buck stopped at
his
desk, goddammit. Nobody else’s;
his
—

And it all used to be fun
, Gold thought,
but not anymore
. Pondering it, Gold realized that it hadn’t been fun for a long time. It seemed that increasingly his pleasures were diminishing,
while the unpleasant aspects of life continued to increase—

For instance he couldn’t fly anymore. When he’d turned sixty-nine last month his wife, his daughter, and his son-in-law had
all ganged up on him. They’d sat him down and explained the facts of life: that the various medications Gold was taking for
this or that damned ailment had made flying simply too risky.

It had hurt like hell to listen to that. It had hurt even more to realize that what they were saying was true.
Dammit!
He’d been flying since he was eighteen years old. He was a combat
ace
before he was twenty…

With flying denied to him, Gold had concentrated on his religious studies for relaxation. At home he had dozens of books on
Judaism, and he’d really enjoyed his Hebrew language lessons. It was too bad that he’d had to cut them out when this Super-BroadSword
mess developed. There simply wasn’t enough time to do everything—

“Grandpa?”

“Yes, Andy…” he sighed.

“Would you play with me?” Andy was still sitting on the carpet by the display case. He’d removed most of the airplane models
from their stands and had them scattered on the level green runway that was the carpet.

“Play?” Gold muttered. “I don’t know … Play
what?
”

“We could play … Dogfight!” Andy held up one of the airplane models he’d removed from the case. “You could pick one and I
could pick one and we could have a dogfight—”

“I’ve got so much work to do here …” But Gold trailed off, thinking,
Screw the work
.

He got up from his desk and walked over to the case. “Dogfight, huh? I ought to remember how to play that …” He winced from
the jolt he felt in the small of his back as he laboriously lowered his girth to the carpet.

“Grandpa, what plane did you fly in the war?”

“I flew a lot of different planes, but my favorite was the Fokker triplane.”

“Is that like a Mess-o-shit?”

Gold burst out laughing. “No, the Messerschmitt was in the Second World War. I fought in the First World War…” He gently brushed
Andy’s unruly blond hair out of the boy’s brown eyes. “I think that was a little before your time, right?”

Andy nodded solemnly. “How many planes did you shoot down?”

“Twenty.” Gold smiled. The boy asked him that at least once a week.

“Wow,” Andy gravely replied, as he always did.

“Okay,” Gold said, looking at the models spread out on the carpet. “Pick the plane you want to use for our dogfight.”

“Which one is the one you flew in the war?”

“What? The Fokker? It’s not here …”

“How come?”

“Because I flew it in the war, but I didn’t design and build it.”

“So what?”

“Sew buttons,” Gold said. “Now pick.”

“Okay. I’ll take this one.”

“You’re going to dogfight with
that?
”

“Sure, why not?” Andy demanded. “It’s big, right?”

Andy had chosen the twin-engine, prop-driven, BuzzSaw Combat Support attack bomber. The CS-1 had been a successful design
that GAT had put into production back in ‘39.

Gold pointed at the newest addition to the model collection. “You sure you don’t want Super-BroadSword?”

“I’m sure,” Andy said.

“You and the Air Force,” Gold mumbled. “Okay, then! For our dogfight I’m choosing this one!” He picked up the GC-909I intercontinental
jetliner.

“But it doesn’t have any guns,” Andy pointed out.

“Yes, it does. This one has hidden guns,” Gold said seriously.

“Hidden where?”

“In the wings,” Gold said. “Fifty of them. Fifty fifty-caliber machine guns. Twenty-five to a wing—” He hauled himself up.
“So you’d better watch out, mister, because here I come!”

“Uh-uh!” Andy laughed, springing to his feet and making
varoom-varoom
noises as he began running around the office.

“Bogie at five o’clock high!” Gold yelled, feeling silly, and enjoying it. He held the model jetliner out in front of him,
keeping its nose pointed at Andy as he ran after his grandson.

“Bang-bang-bang-bang!” Andy chanted, aiming his model at Gold as the boy swung around a pair of armchairs, almost knocking
a lamp off an end table in the process. Gold, grinning, faked one way, and then quickly tried to catch his grandson by coming
around the other side of the chairs.

“Don’t let me get on your tail, mister!” he gasped, laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath.

“Bang-bang-bang!” Andy yelled nonstop, running toward the desk with his bomber pointed over his shoulder back toward Gold.

“Here comes an Immelman turn!” Gold yelled, maneuvering the jetliner in the air as he chased Andy around his desk.

The boy stopped to thrust his airplane out like a pistol across the desk. “Bang-bang-bang! Take that, you mess-oh-shit!”

Gold, laughing so hard he thought he was going to bust, lunged across the desk, scattering papers as he tried to grab hold
of Andy. The boy, giggling, lightly twisted away, dashing to the far side of the room. Gold straightened up and came lumbering
after him, the sweat running down his heaving flanks beneath his flapping shirttails. “I’m gonna get you now, mister!” he
roared. “Here comes fifty machine guns—”

The chest pain hit him so abruptly that he was still laughing even as the sledgehammer blow brought him short.
What is it?
He stood stock-still, afraid to move; afraid even to breathe—

The pain eased.
It’s nothing. A cramp. It’ll go away
—

The pain hit again and he doubled over. The jetliner slipped out of his grasp and crashed to the carpet, snapping off a wing.
This is not happening
, he thought as the pain wrapped its fingers into a fist around his chest and
squeeeeezzed
—

“Grandpa?” Andy was calling, sounding very far away.

The pain struck a third time. It began as an implosion in Gold’s chest and then radiated through him. He was staggering blindly
toward the nearest chair when the pain brought him to his knees.

“Grandpa?”

As Gold knelt in supplication to the pain he could dimly see Andy standing quietly beside the display case. The boy’s face
was pale. His eyes were the size of saucers.

Call someone
— Gold waited, staring at the boy, who was still just standing there.
Didn’t say it
, Gold realized. He was still on his knees. His arms were laced around himself to try and contain the pain.
Got to try to talk
—

“Andy—” he managed to whisper. “Dial 654 …” He toppled over, his face pressed against the carpet. Moaning, he rolled onto
his back.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” Andy was standing over him and crying.

“Andy, phone on the desk.” His grandson’s hot tears were splashing Gold’s face. “Dial 654—”

The boy disappeared from his line of sight. Gold stared up at a spiraling white circle in a growing field of purple. The pain
was grinding its heels into him as he heard squealing casters—
Andy, shoving the desk chair out of the way
—and then his grandson fumbling with the telephone.

“
654
—” Gold wheezed, closing his eyes. He was drifting now, floating on his back on a warm sea. Now and again the dark waves would
wash over him … then … slowly … recede …

“
Security
—”

Andy must not have been holding the telephone up against his ear because Gold clearly heard the male voice on the other end
of the line repeat, “This is Security. Is there anyone there?”