Top Gun (50 page)

“Yes, sir…”

“You gas her up, or whatever needs to be done. I’ll be around to collect her in ten minutes.”

The red Lamborghini two-seater sports coupe had a light-tan leather interior, a five-speed transmission, and enough dials,
gauges, rocker switches, and toggles to outfit a fighter-plane cockpit. Campbell had the garage attendant show him how to
work the important stuff, and then he got in the car and drove off amidst much gear-gnashing, leaving his estate and heading
toward the coast.

The Lamborghini’s shifter remained balky, and Campbell was a little rusty because he hadn’t driven a car in years, but there
wasn’t much traffic to contend with at this ungodly hour of the morning. Once Campbell reached the Pacific coast highway heading
south, he was able to put the Lamborghini in fifth gear and leave her there, averaging a hundred miles an hour.

It was fun driving through the night with the windows rolled down and the wind carrying the salty tang of the sea whipping
around inside the little hardtop’s cabin. The wind’s roar melded with the V-12’s steady tiger’s purr, filling Campbell’s ears,
lulling him, so that he was able to silence the turmoil in his mind as he concentrated on his high-speed driving.

About the time the sky had started to lighten, Campbell had slowed down, flipping on his high beams as he looked for the turnoff
he remembered that led to the breathtaking view of the ocean. A lifetime ago, a bank junior loan officer named Tim Campbell
and his new bride, an ex-waitress named Agatha, would often pile into their beat-up old Plymouth coupe to make this drive
and spend a lovely few hours staring out at the Pacific with their arms around one another, dreaming about the future.

Campbell spotted the little sign that read “Scenic Over-look,” and turned onto the steeply inclined road, dropping the Lamborghini
into low gear as the GT fishtailed on the loosely packed graveled surface. Campbell took it slow, not wanting to end up in
a ditch as he followed the twisting, climbing, two-lane road. An early-morning fog had set in, creating swirling wraiths around
the dark tree trunks that lined both sides of the high-banked trail.

Ghosts.
Campbell thought, smiling to himself, wondering if Aggie was out there tonight, or maybe Herman Gold’s ghost was flitting
among the trees, keeping a spirit’s pace with the red GT, laughing.

The road ended at a large, fan-shaped parking area with white wooden guardrails. It was still too dark to see the pounding
ocean, but Campbell remembered that hundreds of feet below those rails the thunderous sea was enternally breaking itself apart
against glistening rocks.

Campbell eased the Lamborghini into the parking area and stopped with the GT’s nose up against the rails. He took the car
out of gear but left the engine running: for one thing, he was afraid he might not be able to restart it if he shut it off;
for another, he enjoyed the powerful sound of its guttural warbling playing counterpoint to the cymbal crash of the sea.

As Campbell waited for the sun to rise above the cliffs behind him, he finally let himself think about his earlier confrontation
with Steve Gold. The kid had him by the balls, there was no doubt about it. Sure, Campbell could fight the SEC investigation
that Steve had hung over his head like the sword of Damocles. Hell, with the kind of legal clout he wielded, Campbell could
likely tie up any power on earth in years of costly litigation if he had a mind to, but what the fuck kind of golden years
was that for him to look forward to? There would be endless court appearances to endure, and hundreds of government accountants
infesting his offices like parasitic vermin. His business associates would treat him like a leper, and rightly so. Campbell
would be unable to wheel and deal with an SEC cloud hanging over him, and negotiating a deal was the only real pleasure left
in his life. Steve had been right: he would end up a pitiful old man.

The oddest thing about it all, however, was that Campbell was not all that pissed with Steve for what the kid had done to
him. No, in a funny way, Campbell was proud of Steve Gold.

“Herman,” Campbell told the tall, fog-shrouded figure he saw leaning against the guardrails. “Your kid did good. Your company
will prosper, and just like always, you’ve got your old partner Tim Campbell to thank for that. I taught your boy what you
never could: how to be ruthless. Steve was your son, but he’s my protégé.”

Below Campbell, the black sea applauded against the rocks. Above him in the leaden sky the first seabirds of the day were
laughing joyously in celebration of the coming dawn. The Lamborghini was trembling impatiently, like some great beast waiting
to be freed.

“Herman, the feud is over,” Campbell said. “It turned out we’ve been partners all this time despite our own worst intentions.
Together we made your boy. Together we’ve launched GAT toward its future.”

Campbell thought the figure glimmering in the fog raised a hand in salutation, but perhaps it was just a tendril of mist swirling
in the rising sea breeze.

Anyway, the fog was dissipating with the arrival of the new day. The blood-red sun was peeking above the high cliffs behind
Campbell, brightening the interior of the little red sports car. Campbell watched the sea come alive in luminous shades of
green and blue that stretched endlessly to a pink and orange horizon.

“Time to go,” Campbell said.

He struggled to put the Lamborghini into reverse, and then backed away from the guardrails about one hundred feet, until the
GT’s rear tires were on the roadway.

Time to go.

Campbell threw the Lamborghini into first gear and stomped the accelerator. The GT’s rear tires spun, then bit into the gravel,
and the powerful sports car rocketed forward, pressing Campbell back against his seat as it splintered the guardrails. Campbell
cried out as the car leapt into empty space, hanging in the sun for an instant before plunging toward the sea. His head slammed
the windshield and he blacked out.

Campbell’s last thoughts were that he’d lived to be older than Herman Gold.

Ha-ha.

And that he who dies with the most toys
wins.

(Five)

GAT

Burbank

29 June, 1978

It was around noon on Thursday. Steve Gold was in Don Harrison’s office, filling Don in on his meeting with Tim Campbell late
last night, when Don’s telephone rang

“Yes?” Don said, picking up the receiver. He listened a moment and then told Gold, “It’s Susan. I won’t be a minute. Yes,
honey. What’s up?”

Gold watched Don’s face turn white as Harrison listened to whatever it was that his wife had to tell him. “Yeah, thanks for
calling, honey. Yeah, your brother’s with me now. I’ll tell him. Bye.”

“What’s happened now?” Gold asked as Don hung up.

“Susan had been watching the midday television news. They announced that Tim Campbell’s dead. It seems his car went off a
cliff.”

Viking funeral,
Gold thought.
Good for you, Uncle Tim, you old bastard.
“I guess it won’t be necessary for you to make those calls. That investigation I threatened him with won’t have to proceed
after all.”

Don nodded. “That’s if I could have pulled the strings to get it going in the first place. That was quite a bluff you pulled.
I’m surprised you didn’t talk it over with me before you took it upon yourself to go see Campbell.”

“I wanted to spare you, partner,” Gold said lightly. “It wasn’t your fight. It’s
me
who Campbell’s stooge Turner Layten hates, and it was
my
father who Campbell thought had wronged him.”

“Excuse me,” Don said, sounding peeved. “But this was GAT’s fight, not your own.”

“I stand corrected,” Gold said dryly. “I promise that next time I get my hands bloody I’ll make sure you’re right there beside
me so you can get equally splattered. Satisfied?”

“Your hands
are
bloody, you know,” Don said softly. “I think we need to talk about this a little. Is that okay?”

Gold took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. We can talk about this a little bit.”

“You weren’t the least bit surprised to hear that Campbell had killed himself?” Don began.

“I knew that Campbell would never stand for the indignity of a government investigation.” Gold nodded. “I knew that just the
possibility of the SEC poking around in his doings would scare the shit out of him. I’m not saying that I knew for a fact
that Campbell would kill himself. He had other alternatives once he’d bought my bluff. He might have taken as much of his
dough as he could and gone to ground in some foreign country where U.S. law couldn’t touch him….” Gold trailed off. “But then,
keeping a low profile was never Tim Campbell’s style.”

“So you drove him to suicide.”

“I prefer to think of it as having protected GAT by removing the only enemy we had who could possibly have brought us down.”

Don hesitated. “Do you think your father would have approved your actions?”

Gold sighed. “Tim asked me the same thing last night when I managed to convince him that I’d set the SEC hounds on his heels.”
He shook his head. “No. Pop wouldn’t have approved of any of this. But Pop was a fighter pilot. He understood that war is
about survival. I think that he would have wanted GAT to survive, whatever the cost.” He smiled wryly. “And in a funny way,
I think
Tim
would have approved of my actions against him. He lived by the law of the jungle.”

“Last question,” Don said. “Does Linda know about any of this?”

“No,” Gold said quickly. “And I’d rather she never knew. I’m not proud of what I’ve done, you understand? I mean, I did it
for us. All of us. The family, but—”

Don cut him off, saying, “I know why you did it. It’s one of the reasons that I have come to love you like a brother.”

Gold smiled, pleased to see that Don’s mood had lightened. He would do his own mourning—for Tim Campbell, for himself—in private.
“A guy can always use a brother.”

(One)

Ryder AFB, Nevada

30 June, 1978

Lieutenant Andy Harrison had trouble sleeping the night before the last day of Red Sky. During the previous four days of the
war-game exercise, Andy had accumulated seven air-combat kills, making him a leading contender for winning the Warlord trophy.
Trouble was, there were a number of fighter jocks with comparable tallies, so the ultimate winner would be decided during
today’s ACM. Whoever was going to come away with the Warlord trophy was both figuratively and literally still up in the air.

At 0400 hours, Andy gave up on sleep. He rolled out of bed and quietly made his way to the trailer’s bathroom to get first
dibs on the shower. His unease about this last day of Red Sky activity was compounded by the fact that throughout the war
games he had yet to run into his half brother.

For the past four days Andy had been searching the sky with a mix of anticipation and dread for Robbie Greene’s flat-black
F-5E, but the lead Attacker simply had not appeared. As a matter of fact, Andy hadn’t seen Robbie since they’d had it out
behind the ice-cream parlor a couple of weeks ago.

At first Andy had found Robbie’s phantom-like disappearance during Red Sky to be both aggravating and unnerving. It was just
like his condescendingly superior older half brother to be still calling the shots and controlling the situation. What was
Robbie waiting for? Why couldn’t they get the fight on and get it over with?

It was Gail Saunders who’d straightened Andy out, telling him that he was nuts to be psyching himself out like this. Gail
had pointed out to Andy that the Ryder combat ranges covered a vast area, and that there was a lot going on simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the Attackers’ F-5Es had minimal fuel capacity, which meant they could hang out above the designated targets looking
for a fight for only about twenty minutes or so at a time before needing to return to base for refueling. (The Air Force’s
F-5E’s were not equipped for aerial fill-ups from the orbiting tankers.) Gail had gone on to make the point that if Andy took
all this into account, he would see that it was merely due to chance that he and Robbie had not run into each other.

Or maybe it’s been my good fortune,
Andy now mused as he stepped into the shower, letting the spray wash away the night’s cobwebs, if not the night’s lingering
fears. Andy couldn’t forget how slick Robbie had been during their first dogfight.
No way am I going to win the Warlord trophy today if I end up being shot down by Ryder’s resident gunslinger.

By 0600 hours, Andy’s roomies were up and the radio was on, the trailer rocking to Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones singing
“Under My Thumb.” Everyone was dressed in their flight suits and sipping coffee as they waited for the shuttle bus to come
around to haul them over to the mess. Once there, Andy forced himself to choke down some breakfast. It was going to be one
hell of a long Friday.

From the mess the hundreds of Red Sky participants walked over to the Tactical Air Combat Center for the mass briefing. By
0700 hours, the auditorium was filled and the mass briefing for today’s war scenario was set to begin.

The operations commander appeared on stage, and the big AV screen came down to show news footage documenting the ferment in
Nicaragua, where Somoza was trying to hang on against the Commie rebels. It was just a little background color to set the
tone for today’s fictional scenario meant to stimulate a possible situation at some hot spot somewhere on the globe.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” began the operations commander from behind his lectern. “The newly installed Marxist government
of the Central American nation of Palahorra has defied our Blue government’s warnings, allowing the Red Empire to supply it
with MiGs and Russian ground-attack helicopters. Clearly, Palahorra means to export its ideological revolution to its neighbors,
and just as clearly. Blue Land will not stand for that. The President has ordered a preemptive strike.”