The Minotaur (16 page)

Jake felt like a schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework. “But
how does the outgoing radar signal cancel the incoming one?”

Dodgers stepped over to a blackboard standing in the corner. He
looked around—“Where’s the rag?”—then used his shirt sleeve to
erase a spot “Harold, where’s that blasted chalk?”

“Here, Dad.” The young man picked up a piece from a nearby
bench.

Dr. Dodgers drew a sine wave on the board. “Do you know
anything about radiation?” he asked Jake gruffly.

Jake nodded hesitantly as he traced a sine wave in the air with
his finger. He knew from experience that claiming knowledge in
the presence of a physicist was not a good idea.

“It moves in waves,” Dodgers agreed dubiously. He drew an-
other sine wave over the first, yet the peaks of the second were
where the valleys of the first one wera, and vice versa. “The first
tine is the reflected signal. The second line is our outgoing signal.
They cancel each other.”

Jake turned to Fritsche with raised eyebrows. Fritsche nodded
affirmatively. “This principle has been known for a century. Dr.
Dodgers’ real contribution—breakthrough—has been in the area
of superconductivity at higher temperatures than anyone else has
been able to achieve. So he asked himself what computer applica-
tions were now possible that had been impossible before.”

“And came up with this one,” Jake muttered, for the first time
seeing the intelligence and determination in that face under the bill
of the cap.

“Let’s fire it up,” Dodgers suggested. “Helmut, if you will be
good enough to take Captain Grafton and Harold up to the out-
house, I’ll do the magic down here.”

As Harold drove the rental car along a dirt track through a field,
Jake asked, “How’s security out here?”

“Security?” the young man said, his puzzlement showing. “The
neighbors are all Presbyterians and Methodists and they think
Dad’s a harmless loony. Their kids get curious and come around
occasionally when they’re out of school or in the evenings, but we
don’t tell them anything and they wander off after a while. Just got
to keep them away when we’re radiating. Been having some trou-
bles with the power company from time to time. We sure pull a lot
of juice when we’re cooling down that hydrogen and they’ve
dropped the load hereabouts a time or two.”

“We had the head of the Federal Power Commission call the
president of Pacific Gas and Electric,” Fritsche told Jake.

“The district engineer still comes around occasionally, though,”
Harold continued. “I think he’s harmless. Dad’s been feeding him
a line about experimentation with electromagnetism, and he
bought it ’cause he’s local and knows Dad’s a dingbat” The
youngster goosed the accelerator to take them through a mudhole
in the road. “Nice car. I’d sure like to have a car, but Dad—with
the church and all . . .”

The radar was mounted in the old outhouse on the bench where
the seats once were. It radiated right through the open door. Har-
old Dodgers removed a padlock from a flap door at the back of the
structure to gain access to the control panel and scope. “This is an
Owl Screech radar,” Fritsche told Jake. “We borrowed it from the
EW range at Fallen.” The Electronic Wufare range at NAS Fal-
lon, Nevada, provided realistic training for fleet aircrews.

“Wonder where the U.S. Navy got this thing.” Owl Screech was
a Soviet-made gunfire-control radar.

“From the Israelis, I think. They had a few to spare after the
1973 war.”

The drone of a jet somewhere overhead caused Jake to scan the
blue sky. It was high, conning. An airliner or a bomber. A row of
trees higher on die hill waved their leaves to the gentle breeze. So
warm and pleasant here. Jake sat down in the grass while the
redheaded youngster worked at the control panel and Helmut
Fritsche observed.

“We’re not getting any power,” Harold announced. “Can I bor-
row the car and run back to the shop?”

“Sure. You have the keys.” Harold eased the car around and
went bumping down the dirt road. Fritsche joined Jake in the
grass.

Jake tossed a pebble at the outhouse. The stone made a satisfying
thunk. “What’s the plan to get this gizmo into production?”

“Normally we would do engineering drawings and blueprints
and take bids, but due to the time constraints and secrecy require-
ments, we’ll have to select a contractor on a cost-plus basis. The
government will retain title to the technology and we’ll pay Dodg-
ers royalties.”

“What contractor will get it?”

“One with the staff and manufacturing capacity to do it right
and do it quickly. Probably an existing radar manufacturer.”

‘”Cost-plus. Isn’t that beltway French for ‘can’t lose’? And the
contractor’s engineers will see all the technology and have a leg up
on bids for second- and third-generation gear.”

“Yep.”

“And if they can dream up ways to do it better, they can get
some patents of their own,” Jake tossed another pebble at the out-
house. “Gonna be a nice little plum for somebody.”

“Yep.”

“Good thing all the guys in our shop are honest.”

Fritsche sat silently, weighing that remark, Jake supposed. “I
guess our people are like everyone else,” Fritsche said at last, with-
out inflection. “People are pretty generally alike all over.”

“Why was Strong killed?”

“Don’t know.”

“Any ideas?”

“Some. But I keep them to myself. I try not to gossip. There are
laws against slander.”

Jake Grafton stood and brushed off the seat of his trousers. “A
river of money flowing along in front of a bunch of guys on middle-
class salaries, a bunch of guys all humping to keep their bills paid
until they get middle-class pensions and form letters of apprecia-
tion from the government. Everybody’s honest. Nobody’s tempted.
Makes me want to salute the fucking flag and hum a march.” He
looked down at Fritsche.

“I have no facts. Captain,” the scientist said. “None.”

Jake looked around, trying to think of something to say. He gave
up and strolled up the hill to the trees, where he relieved himself.
Somehow aboard ship things had been simpler, more clear. On his
way back to the wooden building he saw the car returning with
Harold at the wheel.

The redhead had the radar fired up in less than a minute. With
Fritsche and Jake looking over his shoulder, he flipped switches.
“This is its target-acquisition—its search—mode. And that blip
right there is the tabernacle.” He pointed. Jake stared at the return
a moment, then stepped a few paces to his right and looked around
the shed at the scene. The radar in the shed made a variety of
mechanical noises and he could hear the antenna banging back and
forth against its stops. Now he referred again to the radar scope,
which was American, not Soviet. Okay, there was the tabernacle,
the house beyond and to the right, the trees on the left …

“Now,” said the young Dodgers, “step over there again and
wave your arms at my dad. Then he’ll fire up the suppressor.” Jake
did as requested and returned to the scope. Even as he watched,
the blip that was the tabernacle faded from the screen, along with
the ground return in the area beyond. Where the blip had been was
merely a blank spot with no return at all.

“Try the frequency agility,” Fritsche suggested. Harold flipped
another switch and then turned a dial. The tabernacle became
faintly visible as a ghost image. “As he changes frequency on the
Owl Screech, the computer on the suppressor is trying to keep up,”
Fritsche explained to Jake, “so he sees this ghost image, which is
not enough to lock on to. And remember, this is an American
scope, more sensitive than Soviet scopes.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Go to a higher PRF and try to lock on the spot where we know
the tabernacle is,” Fritsche said to Harold. ‘Try the expanded dis-
play.”

Nothing. The radar failed to lock. The center of the presentation
was an empty black spot.

After a long silence, Fritsche spoke softly, almost as if he were
afraid of his own thoughts. “If we could implement this technique
at optical wavelengths you wouldn’t even be able to see that build-
ing down there with the naked eye.”

“You mean you could see right through it?”

“No, it would look like a black hole. Nothing would come back
from it. But no one is going to have that kind of technology until
well into the next century.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said a stunned Jake Grafton, “let’s just get
the bugs worked out of this and get it to sea. That’s more than
enough for you and me.”

The phone on Luis Camacho’s desk rang at noon on Tuesday as he
was eating a tuna salad sandwich. He had mayonnaise on his fin-
gers and managed to smear it on the telephone. “Camacho.”
“Luis, this is Bob Pickering. Could you take a few minutes now
and come down to my office? I have some folks here I would like
you to meet.”

Camacho wrapped the half sandwich that remained and stuck it
in his lower desk drawer, which he locked without thinking. Every
drawer and cabinet in his office was always locked unless he was
taking something out or putting something in. It was a habit.

Camacho knew Pickering, but not well. Pickering worked the
District of Columbia and routinely handled walk-ins. “Luis, this is
Mrs. Matilda Jackson and Mr. Ralph Barber. Luis Camacho.” As
they shook hands, Pickering added, “Mr. Barber’s an attorney
with Perguson and Waithe.” Ferguson and Waithe was one of the
District’s larger firms, almost two hundred lawyers, and special-
ized in federal regulatory matters.

Pickering summarized Mrs. Jackson’s adventures of the previous
Friday evening while Camacho glanced at the visitors. He con-
cluded, “Based on past experience, Mrs. Jackson felt that the Dis-
trict police may not be sympathetic to a complaint from her, so she
went to Mr. Barber, her former boss, yesterday, and he thought she
should come see us.”

Barber was in his fifties, still wearing his topcoat and white silk
scarf. Apparently he hoped this interview would be brief. Mrs.
Jackson still had her coat around her too, but its faded cloth con-
trasted sharply with the blue mohair that kept the spring winds
from the lawyer’s plump frame.

“The neighborhood used to be someplace a person could be
proud of,” Mrs. Jackson said slowly. “But those crack houses and
dealers on the comers . . . The police have got to do something!”

“We felt that the information and evidence Mrs. Jackson has
would probably receive a more dispassionate look from the FBI.”
The counselor gestured toward the edge of Pickering’s desk, upon
which lay a roll of film and a clear plastic Baggie containing a
crumpled cigarette pack.

“I thought you might want to send these to the lab,” Pickering
told Luis. “I’ll do the report and send you a copy. We’ll get back to
you in a few days, Mrs. Jackson. One of us will. Right now we
need to get a set of your fingerprints to compare with whatever is
on that cigarette pack. Just in case, you understand.”

Camacho jotted the report number on a piece of paper from
Pickering’s desk, then excused himself. Curious about the two
items he carried, he walked them straight to the lab and logged
them in. Tomorrow afternoon, he was told. After three-

The Consolidated Technologies prototype had a hangar all to itself
in Palmdale. As Jake stood and looked about the cavernous inte-
rior, he was surrounded by engineers and vice presidents, at least
twenty people all told. The vice presidents all wore business suits,
but the engineers seemed fond of short-sleeved white shirts with
dark ties. If that garb didn’t announce their profession, they all
sported nerd buckets—plastic shirt-pocket protectors full of pens
and pencils, from which dangled their building passes. Solar-pow-
ered calculators rested in belt holsters on engineers and vice presi-
dents alike.

The black airplane had a conventional dual nose wheel with the
nose tow bar that enabled it to be launched by catapult, but that
was about the only feature Jake found familiar. The rounded wings
were situated well back on the fuselage and a canard protruded
under each side of the canopy. Two vertical stabilizers canted in-
board rose from the rear of the fuselage. The engine air intakes
were on top of the plane, behind the cockpit, which seated two
crewmen in tandem.

The senior vice president, a tall woman in her late forties whom
Wilson had said rose from the accounting department to her pres-
ent position on sheer raw talent, led the group toward the machine
and explained major features to Jake. “The aircraft’s shape is opti-
mized to reduce the aircraft’s Radar Cross Section. We’ve used
radar-absorbent materials in all the leading and trailing edges—
laminated layers of glass fiber and plastic with carbon coat-
ing . . .”

“Uh-huh,” said Jake Grafton.

“For low frequencies that put the plane into the Rayleigh region,
we’ve tried to lower the overall electromagnetic susceptibility . . .
carbon-epoxy laminate for wing skin, coatings of multilayer ab-
sorbers—mainly Schiff base salts and honeycomb composites. The
goal was to reduce resonant microwave frequency scattering, mag-
netic waves and even surface waves before they escape from the
edges.”

“I see,” he lied. The canopy was open and the boarding ladder
down, so Jake climbed up and peered into the forward cockpit- The
control stick was a small vertical handle on the right side of the
cockpit. Two power levers were installed on the left console. The
forward panel contained two Multifunction Displays, MFDs, ar-
ranged on either side of the control panel for a Heads-Up Display,
a HUD, which sat on top of the forward panel so as he flew the
pilot could look straight ahead through the tilted glass. Under the
HUD control panel was another screen, similar to the MFDs, but
without the frame of buttons that circled the upper two. All of the
screens looked like eleven-inch color television screens with the
power off: they were larger than the five-inch displays to which
Jake was accustomed. But the weirdest thing—there were no en-
gine instruments. Oh, the panel had a conventional gear lever, a
standby gyro and even a G meter, but of engine instruments there
were none.

“Go ahead. Climb in and sit down,” the woman urged. Jake
glanced again at her name tag. Adele DeCrescentis.

“0kay.” As he arranged himself in the pilot’s seat, Ms.
DeCrescentis mounted the ladder. “Where’s the ashtray?” he
asked.

“Captain, I don’t think—“

“Sorry. Just kidding.” The look on her face implied that levity
was inappropriate. Here in the high-tech cathedral, Jake thought
Or the new-car showroom.

Down below, the entourage was making small talk among them-
selves and casting many glances at the cockpit and vice president
DeCrescentis, who probably didn’t look very vice presidential
perched on the boarding ladder. “What’s going to happen to en-
gine airflow in high-angle-of-attack maneuvers?”

“That was one of the trade-offs,” said DeCrescentis, shifting her
weight gingerly. Even the medium heels she was wearing must be
mighty uncomfortable on the rungs of that ladder. “Each intake
has a flap that is raised hydraulically to funnel more air into the
intake when the FCC—Flight Control Computer-—senses an in-
crease in G or angle of attack which correlates with a decrease in
compressor inlet pressure, but those flaps can only do so much.
The concept is angle-of-attack-limited, so it made sense to design
to a five-G limit. That enabled us to lighten the airframe and in-
crease the use of honeycomb composites, which made it even more
stealthy. And we achieved better fuel economy.”

“I bet spins will be exciting.”

“The engines will compressor-stall in an upright spin and have
to be shut down, but they can be restarted once a normal angle of
attack is achieved. Inverted spins shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Hmmm.” Jake moved the control handle experimentally. It
looked like the joystick for a computer game. “Fly by wire?”

“Of course.”

“Ms. DeCrescentis, I appreciate all you folks taking the time
this morning to show me this plane, but what say I sort of look it
over with my staff? They’ve been involved in this project for quite a
while and no doubt can answer any questions I know enough to
ask.”

“I suppose,” she said reluctantly, glancing again at the crowd
below. She maneuvered her way down the ladder and two men
below reached up to help her to the floor.

Fritsche scrambled up and seated himself on the cockpit coam-
ing. Commander Rob Knight, the project coordinator, came up
behind him and stood on the ladder. “What d’ya think?” Dr.
Fritsche asked.

“Pretty stealthy, I guess.”

“About the same RCS as a bird.”

“How big a bird?”

“You aren’t impressed, are you?”

Jake Grafton took his time answering. He examined the panels
on each side of the seat, then fingered the switches experimentally.
“You guys tell me if I’m wrong: what we have here is one of the air
force stealth-fighter prototypes, a version the blue-sky boys decided
not to buy. It’s subsonic, shoots only smart weapons, has limited
maneuverability and carries a nonstealthy belly tank for training
purposes that can’t be carried in combat. Combat radius un-
refueled is about six hundred nautical miles. Now, that is. To make
this plane carrier-suitable it needs a beefed-up structure, tail-hook
and folding wings, all of which will add at least a thousand pounds
of weight—probably fifteen hundred pounds—and cost us speed
and range- This killing machine will lighten Uncle Sugar’s wallet to
the tune of about sixty-two million bucks a pop. If, and only if, it
can be acquired on the most economic—the optimum—production
schedule. Is that right?”

“Well, the cost factors are a lot more complicated than you’ve
indicated, but your summary is fair.”

“Due to the likelihood that the five-G limit will be routinely
exceeded by fleet aircrews in training situations, the design needs
further modification to prevent compressor stalls. That involves
more structural strengthening, computer-operated secondary
intakes, loss of some stealthiness. That will cost an addi-
tional . . . ?”

“Five million a plane, assuming an optimum production sched-
ule. Ten million more per plane if we buy new engines.”

“Five million a plane,” Jake continued. “And if we don’t buy
that mod, we’ll have the compressor-stall problem that plagued the
F-14 the first ten years of its life, which will mean a higher attrition
rate than we would experience otherwise.” Attrition meant
crashes, planes lost in training accidents. “Yet to go the new-engine
route will take ten years because the engines don’t even exist; all we
have is an engineers’ proposal saying they could build them sooner
or later for about so many dollars apiece, subject to all the usual
caveats about buy rates, research, inflation, etc.”

“Hiram Duquesne likes this plane.”

“Ah yes. Senator Duquesne, Another great American.”

“We didn’t get the senior vice president this morning because
she likes your nose,” Knight shot back. “Consolidated has about
two hundred million dollars of their own funds tied up in this
prototype. They employ twenty thousand people. Consolidated is
big business. They’ve bet their company on getting a stealth con-
tract.”

“Yeah. Stock options and bonuses and company cars for the
executives, jobs for the little people, and votes for the big people in
Washington. I got the picture.”

“Don’t be so damned cynical,” Rob Knight said. “Listen, Jake,
it may well come down to buying this plane to replace the A-6 or
doing without. Ludlow and Royce Caplinger have to be goddamn
sure they have the votes in Congress before they go up to Capitol
Hill with their hats in their hands.”

“That’s their problem, not mine. I’m just a worn-out, washed-up
attack pilot. I didn’t understand two words that DeCrescentis
woman said.” He twiddled some knobs. “I didn’t ask for this job,”
he roared. “I’m not going to be responsible for whether twenty
thousand people keep their jobs! Don’t lay that crap on me!”

Knight retreated down the ladder. Fritsche followed, his face
averted. Jake sat alone in the cockpit. He tried to imagine how this
plane would feel to fly. With his right arm in the rest and his hand
on the stick and his left curved over the throttles, he thought about
how it would feel to look through the HUD at a Soviet ship. This
plane had to be able to take on Soviet ships in the Med and the
Indian Ocean and the Arctic in winter. But it also had to be able to
fight in brushfire wars in places like Lebanon and North Africa,
Afghanistan, Iran, Korea, Vietnam. Maybe China. Could it? With
million-dollar missiles and a five-G restriction?

When he had recovered his temper, he motioned to Knight and
Fritsche, who ascended the ladder again. “What would Sam Dodg-
ers’ gizmo do for this plane?”

“Lower the RCS from a bird to a June bug.” Fritsche frowned.
“It’s so stealthy now that making it more so wouldn’t be cost-
effective, at least not in the lifetime of this machine. That’s just my
opinion, of course.”

“On the other hand,” Knight said, “this plane wouldn’t be junk
if Dodgers’ suppressor can’t be made to work in a real airplane.
Dodgers knows the reflective characteristics of that tabernacle wall
precisely when viewed from the old outhouse by one radar. Pro-
tecting a shape as complex as an aircraft from numerous transmit-
ters and God knows how many receivers situated in ail three di-
mensions—that’s another thing altogether.”

“Tell me what all this stuff is,” Jake said. “This doesn’t look like
any cockpit I ever saw.”

“Both prototypes have exactly the same layout. This is all the
stuff that was going into the A-6G. What these television-screen
things are are Multifunction Displays. This lower middle one is a
map that moves as the plane moves. The plane always stays in the
center. This should do away with the necessity for the crew to
always carry awkward charts in the cockpit.

“Now these upper two MFDs present literally all the informa-
tion the pilot might wish to know, or the info can be presented on
the HUD. A touch of the button calls up engine information, an-
other button calls up the radar presentation from the rear cockpit,
still another the presentation from either one of the two IR sensors,
and so on. Then there’s a variety of tactical displays . . .” He
droned on.

Jake was astounded. This was several generations beyond the
A-6 cockpit. It was technically as far beyond an A-6 as an A-6 was
from a World War II B-17. “I had no idea,” he muttered, awed.

Knight showed him the rear cockpit. It was equally futuristic.
Instead of the HUD control panel, it possessed a third MFD, so
three of them were arranged in a row right across the panel. Under
the center one was the map display. “This moving map—didn’t
James Bond have one like this in one of the movies?”

“Yep. But this is better.”

“Mamma Mia!”

The BN in an A-6 had one cursor control stick. The BN in this
plane had two, one on each side panel, and instead of just a couple
of buttons sticking out, each stick was festooned with buttons, like
warts. “The idea is that the BN won’t have to reach for controls.
Everything he needs is on those control sticks.”

After Jake spent another half hour walking around the airplane
and looking at every inch, he asked each of the commanders what
they thought. One complained about range and payload, another
about the intake problems, a third about the difficulty of mainte-
nance. All were aghast at the cost. “But five years from now we’ll
all probably think sixty-two million dollars for a plane was a hell of
a buy,” Smoke Judy commented.

“You know,” Jake said later as he stood in the doorway with
Helmut Fritsche and looked back at the all-black airplane, “I had
an uncle who went to the car dealer one morning to buy a station
wagon for the family, and that evening he went home with a little
red convertible coupe.”

“High tech is sexy.”

Jake thought about it. “It’s so damn neat that you try to con-
vince yourself that you need it. All the bells and whistles and
doohickeys and thingamajigs. And the day you have to bet your
ass on these gadgets, they don’t work,”

“Shapes and absorbers work.”

“I suppose. But how is Sam Dodgers’ superconductive computer
with multiple CPUs going to work after five hundred catapult
shots and five hundred arrested landings when some kid racks the
plane through a six-G pull to evade an optically aimed missile?
How are all these MFDs and IR sensors and ring-laser gyros going
to hold up? Is this techno-junk gonna work then?”