Tiger's Claw: A Novel

more on his ratings and get him some more stick time.”

Patrick shook his head immediately. “I’m not going to tell you how to run your business or your training program, Tom,” he said. “Truth is, over the years I’ve probably—no, I have—been too easy with him with all the travel and assignments I’ve had, with Brad living with his aunts and grandmother after Wendy was killed, and maybe he hasn’t had to sacrifice as much as other kids. No, you keep on doing what you’re doing. Let’s see what he does. He said he has his single-engine commercial ticket already, and he’s working on his multiengine?”

“Like I said, he knows how to fly.”

“And we can keep this conversation between us.”

“Tell him if you want, sir,” Hoffman said. “Tell him I expect him to be positive, proactive, and engaged. I want him to start acting like he’s part of a team. Right now he thinks he’s just an errand boy. As long as he feels that way, he always will be. You can’t tell someone to be a team player or to be positive and proactive—they’ve got to want to be that themselves. I think, eventually, he will join the team—we’ll just see if he can gut it out long enough. But at least you should know that’s he’s a good pilot and a good worker. He’s just got to ditch the ’tude.”

“I hope he does, Tom. I hope he does.”

“Same here, sir.” They left the storeroom and headed toward the main hangar. “So, any word about your Excalibur proposal?”

“A few requests for additional information, background checks on some of the engineers, and that’s about it,” Patrick said. “You can probably expect a visit by the FBI or Department of Defense on your background and those of the instructors you propose to use, and maybe some more information on the training program.”

“Already have—I turned over five boxes of stuff to the Defense Investigation Agency. No problems that I’m aware of.”

“Good,” Patrick said. “But the silence is deafening—I haven’t heard no, but not a yes either. At least I haven’t heard volleys of laughter yet from the Pentagon.”

“It’s a good plan, sir,” Hoffman said. “But DoD is not accustomed to buying old equipment, even if the idea makes sense and is doable. But I’ll be ready to swing into action when you give the word. I’ve got a list of pilots ready to go through training, mostly ex-B-1 crewdogs but a few civilians. It’s a pretty geriatric bunch, but they’re all well qualified and eager as hell.”

They walked through the main hangar out onto the parking ramp. Bradley was just climbing down from a ladder after fueling the right wing and was carrying the Jet-A hose and the ladder to the other wing. “When you’re done, check the pressure on those tires—I see a little bulge,” Hoffman yelled out to Brad. “And don’t forget to wash the windows.”

“Yes, sir,” Brad responded . . . and then Patrick saw it, that little expression that silently said, “Anything else, master?” Hoffman looked at Patrick, who nodded—he had seen it too.

“The ’tude,” Hoffman said to Patrick in a soft voice. He shook his head, then smiled wryly and shook hands with Patrick. “I’ll see you later, sir,” he said in his usual booming voice. “Have a nice flight back.” And he left Patrick alone with Brad.

“What did Colonel Hoffman say?” Brad asked.

“Nothing,” Patrick replied. “We put your stuff on your bed.”

“Thank you,” Brad said stonily as he started up the ladder, fuel nozzle in hand. He laid a protective neoprene mat over the wing to guard against any damage to the deicing panels on the wing’s leading edge, then uncapped the fuel port and began feeding jet fuel into the wing fuel tank. “Are you heading home right away?”

“We have our Monday department head lunch meeting at eleven o’clock,” Patrick said. “Then it’s the meeting with the board of directors. Mondays are always pretty busy.”

“It’s pretty much the same around this place,” Brad said morosely. “The pilots fly in and they want it all done snap-snap, and Mr. Hoffman kisses their kneecaps and then barks at me. If he’s not giving me yet another menial job to do, I have to read another tech manual and do another test. It’s the same routine every day.”

Patrick could feel the anger rising in his chest, and he was about to do some barking of his own, but then his intraocular monitor flared to life. The late Dr. Jon Masters had replaced one of Patrick’s corneas with a tiny electronic device that acted like a large high-definition computer monitor, allowing Patrick to use a computer and access the Internet anywhere without any other hardware. Patrick scowled at the back of Brad’s head, then stepped away to answer the call. “Patrick here. What’s up, Kylie?”

“Just got an e-mail from the Pentagon,” his assistant, Kylie, said. “I forwarded it to you. The undersecretary of the Air Force for acquisitions wants to see you, Dr. Oglethorpe, and Colonel Hoffman immediately in the national security adviser’s office.” Dr. Linus Oglethorpe was Sky Masters’s new chief engineer, replacing the late Jon Masters, and the head of the Excalibur design project.

Patrick quickly read the e-mail, his excitement rising. “Get us airline tickets for this afternoon, Kylie. I’ll double-check with Colonel Hoffman to see if he’s free.”

“The Pentagon is sending a plane for you, Patrick,” Kylie said. “It’s already on the way. It’ll be here in a few hours. I’ve sent a text to Colonel Hoffman too—I assume he’ll be flying back with you in the Centurion.”

An even better sign, Patrick thought. “I’ll be back within the hour. Can you throw some clothes and travel stuff in a bag for me, and make sure my laptop has all our latest presentation materials and budget sheets? And check on Dr. Oglethorpe to make sure he’s ready to go—you know how he can be.”

“Will do, sir,” Kylie replied, and she hung up.

Patrick hurried back to Hoffman’s office, but his assistant, Rosetta, said he had already left for home to pack and said he looked very excited. Patrick stepped quickly back out to Brad and the Centurion. Brad was busy cleaning the windshield, and he had a portable compressed nitrogen bottle with him ready to help one of the licensed mechanics fill the tires if they needed it. “What’s going on, Dad?” he asked.

“We’re on our way to Washington to talk about the XB-1 project,” Patrick said. “Colonel Hoffman is coming with me. The Pentagon is sending a jet to pick us up in Battle Mountain.” Patrick called up a weight-and-balance and flight plan form on his intraocular computer system. “I’d better check the weight and balance with Colonel Hoffman—he’s a pretty big guy.”

“I think you’ll be okay,” Brad said. He finished checking the tires a few minutes later. “Just as I thought: the tires were fine,” he said.

“Brad, you seem to be doing an awful lot of complaining today, and when I spoke to you on the phone the other day,” Patrick said as he worked, accessing the programs using a virtual tactile keyboard on his intraocular display—it was always comical for Brad to watch his father poke and swipe at empty space and see his eyes dart back and forth as he worked. “You may think you’re getting a raw deal here, and I’ve given you your options. Just don’t make other people’s lives miserable.”

“I don’t complain to anyone.”

“See that you don’t,” Patrick said. “And it’s not just your words but your attitude that gets people down. You have to at least act like your work and your study mean something to you. If all folks around here see of you is this bummed-out moaning mumbling Eeyore, you bring everyone down, and that’s the impression of you that you’ll burn into everyone’s brain.”

“Is that what Colonel Hoffman said?”

“That’s what I’ve noticed around here myself in the short time I’ve been here, and I don’t like it,” Patrick said, “looking up” from his virtual computer to glance at his son. “You know what it’s like to be a team player, whether it’s Civil Air Patrol or football. You also know that the team needs the support of every member, even if you’re not doing exactly what you’d rather be doing. You didn’t grumble about being a ground team member in Civil Air Patrol, even if you’d rather be flying; you didn’t complain when you were benched or when you played special teams instead of first string.”

“But that was different—I knew what I was doing back then,” Brad said. “I was usually the leader or captain. Around here, I’m lower than whale poop on the bottom of the ocean.”

“You may not remember when you first joined Civil Air Patrol or were a junior varsity football player, but I do,” Patrick said. “You always sat in the back of the room, never wanted to get called on, had to be told how to do something a dozen times, and would panic when the others would turn and look at you or whisper about something stupid you said. It’s the same now. You’re the new guy, and you have to prove yourself all over again, just like you had to do working at Sky Masters.”

“Colonel Hoffman doesn’t like me,” Brad said. “He gives me stupid busywork stuff to do. He knows I’m here to