The Minotaur (24 page)

“How about in front of that plate?”

They discussed it. Yes.

“This jury rig is just for test purposes,” Fritsche told Jake. “An
operational Athena system for an aircraft will have to have con-
formal antennas, ’smart skin’ in the jargon of the trade. Literally,
the antennas will be part of the aircraft’s skin so they won’t con-
tribute to drag or ever be broken off.”

“How much is that going to cost?”

“Won’t be cheap. Conformal antennae are under development,
but they’ll be new technology and aren’t here yet.”

“Forget I asked.”

Jake wandered over to where Tarkington and Moravia stood
with Commander L. D. Bonnet, the commanding officer of the A-6
Weapons System Support Activity, which owned the airplane. AU
three saluted Jake as he approached and he returned the gesture
with a grin. “So, L.D., are you going to let these children fly your
plane?”

“Yes, sir. They appear sober and reasonably competent.”

“I appreciate your letting us borrow the plane and hangar for a
few days.”

“Admiral Dunedin’s very persuasive.”

Jake flashed a grin. L.D. must have hesitated a few seconds
before he agreed to the Old Man’s requests. “Here’s what I’d like
to do. Fritsche and Dodgers are going to take a day or two to
install some little antennas on the left side of the plane. They’ll use
glue and drill a few holes, then install a tiny fairing in front of each
antenna. They’re going to need the help of a couple of good, capa-
ble airframe technicians who can keep their mouths shut.”

Bonnet nodded.

“Then Rita and Toad will fly the plane up to the Electronic
Warfare range at Fallen since the EW range here at China Lake is
out of service this week. Fritsche and I will fly up there ahead of
them. Dodgers will stay here to work on the gear in the plane.
Rite, I want you to keep the plane under three hundred knots
indicated to minimize the airflow stress on these antennas. They’re
gang to be jury-rigged on there with a little bubble gum and
Elmer’s glue.”

“Aye aye, sir,” she said.

“L.D., I need you to loan me a couple of young officers with at
least ten pounds of tact each. They’ll alternate duty, so that one of
them will be with Dodgers day and night. They’re to escort him to
work, stay with him all day, escort him to the head, take him back
to the BOQ, eat with him, see that he talks to no one but them.
And I mean no one.”

After discussing the details. Commander Bonnet departed. Jake
Grafton explained to Rita and Toad exactly what he expected of
his flight crew. He finished with a caution. “This device, the proj-
ect name, everything, is classified to the hilt. Admiral Dunedin
tells me he has cells reserved at Leavenworth for anyone who vio-
lates the security regs. I don’t want you to even whisper about this
in your sleep.”

“I love secrets,” Toad said.

“I know. Just my luck, I get one of the world’s great secret
lovers. Keep it zipped. Toad.”

Jake went back to watch the installation process, so Toad and
Rita set out on foot for base ops to plan their nights to and from
Fallen, Nevada. As they walked along, Rita asked, “What was it
that Captain Grafton wanted you to keep zipped. Toad? Your
mouth or—“

“Never ask a question if you think you might not like the an-
swer. That’s Tarkington’s Golden Rule for survival in Uncle Sam’s
navy.”

They grinned at each other. Her hand slipped into his for a
fleeting squeeze. Instinctively they both knew to play it cool. No
hand-holding or huggy-squeezy or deep eye contact during duty
hours. No winks or sighs or casual touching. If Captain Grafton
saw any of that, the roof would fall in.

As Toad walked his shoulders were back and his head up. He
was acutely conscious of how good he felt, how pungently vigorous
and healthy. Takes a woman to do that for you, he told himself,
and began whistling a lively little tune that seemed appropriate.
Life is good.

Toad’s feeling of euphoric bonhomie lasted precisely one hour
and thirty-seven minutes, just the length of time it took to plan the
flights to and from the Electronic Warfare Range near Fallen, Ne-
vada, fill out the flight plans, visit casually with the weather briefer
about the long-range forecast for the next three or four days and
make a pit stop in the head. On the walk back to the hangar where
Grafton and the wizards labored, Rita was quieter, more subdued
than she had been the last few days.

“Do you like me?” she asked finally, wearing a gentle semi-
serious look that Toad Tarkington, man of the world, recognized
as trouble.

His jovial mood returned to earth with an unpleasant splat.
Commitment time! It’s their hormones, biology maybe, something
to do with genes, ‘Sure, You’re a very nice lady who’s fun to be
with.”

“Oh.”

“You know what I mean. You’re not one of those girls who write
poetry until two in the morning and read Albert Camus in the
cafeteria.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re”—and here Toad grinned broadly and arranged his fea-
tures in what he always thought was his most sincere, let’s-fuck-
tonight look—“you’re the kind of girl a guy likes to be around.”

“I understand,” Rita said, nodding. “You like girls who open
zippers with their teeth and wear crotchless panties.”

He didn’t like the way she said that, with lips parted but almost
immobile, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

“Rita, I try to avoid discussing serious relationships at midaf-
temoon in parking lots.”

“Maybe if I shave my pussy and put four or five earrings in my
leftear?’

Oh, so she wanted a little blood, huhl “Right ear. Left ear is for
lesbi—“

“You asshole!” She stalked away, her head down, braced against
the hurricane.

“Hey, Ginger , . .” Ginger was her nickname, what the other
aviators called her. She even had it on the name tag of her flight
suit

She spun around to face him, her hands clenched at her sides.
“Don’t you ever call me that, Tarkington. Not ever. Not you.”

“Hey—” he said, but he was talking to her back. He raised his
voice and shouted, “I’d like to get to know you. But I’m not get-
ting engaged in a parking lot, not even if you’re the Queen of
Sheba.”

When she was fifty feet away, she turned to face him. “I wasn’t
asking you to get engaged,” she shouted back.

“Oh yes you were! Crotchless panties, shaved pussies, what the
hell is wrong with you?”

She was walking away again. Toad turned back toward base ops.
Ten feet away a lieutenant commander stood looking at him, shak-
ing his head.

“You know, Lieutenant, when I discuss intimate apparel or per-
sonal hygiene with a lady friend, I usually try to find a slightly
more private place.”

Toad turned beet red. “Yessir,” he mumbled through clenched
teeth and stalked by with his head down.

Samuel Dodgers forked his food without wasting an erg of precious
energy. The utensil bit into the mashed potatoes and peas in one
swift, brutal motion, then soared aloft by the most direct route to
the waiting depository, where it was wiped clean in the blink of an
eye and dispatched down for another load. A man working this
hard should devote his attention to the job at hand, and Dodgers
wisely did so. If he heard the conversation around him, he gave no
sign.

Toad Tarkington gave Rita a hopeful wink when her eyes shifted
to him from Dodgers and his rapidly emptying plate. Her eyes
mapped down to her food. She pressed her lips firmly together and
inhaled deeply through her nose, which strained the cloth and
buttons on her khaki shirt. Toad sourly noted that the younger
Dodgers shared his interest in the physics of Rita’s bust expansion.
It wasn’t that she was extraordinarily endowed, but rather that she
was so perfectly proportioned. Her gorgeous breasts formed sym-
metrical mounds that seemed . . . just so exactly, perfectly right,
with the gentle swelling just visible in the deep V formed by the
neckline of her shirt. Toad gave those twin masterpieces yet an-
other glance as he sliced more meat from his pork chop and pon-
dered the vicissitudes of love.

“Well, Toad,” he heard Jake Grafton say, “are you satisfied with
this tour of duty?”

“Yessir. You bet.” The captain was looking at him with an
amused expression on his face. “Just challenging as hell, sir.”

This remark drew a grunt from the gourmet at the other end of
the table, who appeared to be finished anyway. Dodgers laid down
his fork and used his napkin on his mouth. As far as Toad could
see, he hadn’t missed with a single gram. “The road to hell may be
challenging, sir, but the road to heaven is more so.”

“Uh-huh,” Toad Tarkington said, and attacked the remnants of
his chop.

“The pathway of the righteous is narrow and difficult, and many
there are who find the way too treacherous, too steep, too rigor-
ous.” Dodgers was rolling, his phrases sonorous and heartfelt.
“The pathway of the righteous is strewn with the temptations of
the flesh, of the spirit and of the heart, all exits from the difficult,
righteous way, all exits to that short, smooth road that leads down
straight to hell.”

“A soul freeway for the pink Cadillac. Amen,” Toad muttered,
and didn’t even glance at Rita when she kicked him in the shin.

“The pathway of the wicked is that straight, steep ro—“

“I’m sure,” Jake Grafton interrupted firmly. Looking at Rita, he
asked, “Have you got the flight to Fallen planned?”

“Yes, sir.” She described the route, mentioning navigation aids,
time en route and her estimate of what her fuel state would be
when she arrived over the Electronic Warfare range. Jake asked
everyone present if they had been to NAS Fallen, and proceeded to
tell anecdotes of his many visits there throughout his career. Toad
Tarkington knew Grafton was going to monopolize the conversa-
tion through dessert just so he wouldn’t have to listen to Dodgers’
preaching. Apparently no one had ever told the physicist that three
things were never discussed at a wardroom table—women, politics
and religion.

Grafton was going easily from anecdote to anecdote when Rita
finished eating and excused herself. Toad lingered, engrossed in the
captain’s tales. The younger Dodgers ordered dessert and asked
several questions: even his old man seemed somewhat amused by
Grafton’s tales of ten-cent craps in Mom’s saloon and midnight
motorcycle rides through the desert by half-drunk fliers trying to
sober up so they could fly at 5 A.M.

Dr. Fritsche lit a cigar and sighed contentedly. He too seemed to
find Grafton’s tales of his younger days very pleasant this warm
evening in a navy wardroom a hundred miles from the sea.

Like Jake Grafton, I love this life, Toad found himself thinking.
As he listened he recalled his first two-week weapons deployment
with his squadron to Fallen, before his first cruise. It was in Fallen
that the ties to wives and girlfriends were temporarily broken and
the twenty-four-hour-a-day camaraderie began to weld friendships
among the junior officers that would last a lifetime. The challenge
was to fly the planes as weapons, two or three flights a day, and on
liberty to play as hard as they flew. As Jake Grafton described it
and Toad remembered it, it was a gay, carefree, exciting life, the
perfect existence for a youngster growing into manhood.

When Jake wound down, Toad smiled at everyone and excused
himself. Walking toward the BOQ he found himself whistling
again. I’m doing a lot of that lately, he thought, and laughed aloud.
He was spending his life wisely and well. He liked the thought so
much he roared heartily, and then chuckled contentedly at his own
foolishness, his animosity toward Rita this afternoon forgotten.

There was no answer when he tapped on Rita’s door. Perhaps
she was in the head or down in the laundry room. Oh well, he
would try to call her later.

When he opened the door to his room the lights were on and
Rita was sitting in the chair by the small desk. Her hair was down
over her shoulders and she was wearing only a teddy, a filmy little
thing that . . . Toad gawked.

“Well, close the door before everyone in the building stops by to
visit.”

“How’d you get in?” Toad asked, still staring.

“Just asked for a key at the desk.”

He got the door closed and latched and sat down on the end of
the bed, close to her. The furniture was early Conrad Hilton, and
there wasn’t much of it.

He cleared his throat as she stared straight into his eyes.

“I was writing a letter,” she said, her eyes never wavering from
his. “To you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can finish it later.”

“What’s it going to be about?”

“I’m sorry about the scene today in the parking lot. I just
wanted—oh, I—let’s forget it, shall we?”

“Sure,” he said. “It was only a little pothole on the hard, righ-
teous road.” His gaze was drifting lower and lower. “Not enough
to get us sidetracked onto that short, steep road that leads down
- . . down straight . . .” Her nipples were visible through the
lace of the teddy, ripe, red . . .

Rita stood in one smooth, fluid motion. “I want to make love to
you.” she murmured as she peeled off the teddy, “but I don’t want
to be too forward.”

He pursed his Ups and nodded. “Uh-huh.” He reached out and
she slid into his arms, her skin all silky and smooth.

“Should we turn off the lights?” she suggested as he caressed her
breasts with his lips. “‘

“You’re pretty enough for lights,” he said, and pulled her down
on the bed beside him.

“I don’t want you to get the idea that I just want you for sex,”
she said tentatively.

His mouth was fall of breast, so the best he could manage was a
reassuring noise.

“The sex is great, of course, but I want us to have something
else.” She ran her fingers through his hair, then smoothed the stray
locks. “You’re a pretty terrific guy, and it’s more than sex. That’s
what I was trying to get at this afternoon in the parking lot.”