“Good to see you again, Captain.” The men had met on several occasions in the past, but Jake was unsure if Henry would remem- ber. After he pumped Jake’s hand the admiral motioned to a chair. “Please, be seated. Have any trouble getting here this morning?”
“I rode the Metro this morning, sir,” Jake said as the admiral seated himself behind his desk. It was dark wood, perhaps mahog- any. A matching table extended outward from the main desk, forming the leg of a T. It was at this table Jake sat.
“Good idea. Parking places are all for car pools and flag of- ficers.” He pushed the button on his intercom box. “Chief, did Commander Gadd sweep the office this morning?”
“Yessir,” was the tinny reply. »
“Are the window buzzers on?”
“Yessir.”
“Please close my door… Window buzzers are little security gizmos to vibrate the glass. Supposed to foil parabolic mikes, but who knows?” the admiral explained. “The damn things play wait- ing room music, and I can’t hear noises like that anymore.” Jake listened hard. He could just hear the beat and a trumpet.
The admiral leaned back comfortably in his chair as the door to the office closed behind Jake. “Soundproof,” he muttered, then smiled. “You look surprised.”
Jake smiled, his embarrassment showing. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to talk to the guy who’s going to be designing the new officer fitness report form.”
The admiral smiled broadly. “That job has been floating around with no takers. No, we have another project for you that is going to demand expertise of a different sort.”
The Minotaur
Jake was having trouble holding his eyebrows still. “I thought,” he said softly, “that I was a pariah around here.”
The smile disappeared from Admiral Henry’s face, “I’m not go- ing to bullshit you. Captain. Last fall when you disobeyed a direct order from a vice admiral, you may have torpedoed any chance you had of ever getting promoted again. Now with hindsight and all, most people can see you did the right thing. But the military won’t work if people go around telling flag officers to get fucked. For any reason, justified or not. And the congressmen and politicos from SECDEFs office who interfered with a navy investigation of that incident made you no friends.”
He raised his hand when Jake opened his mouth to speak. “I know, I know, you had nothing whatever to do with that and you couldn’t control the politicians even if you tried. No one can. They go any damn place they want with hobnail boots. Still, they raised hackles when they implied the navy couldn’t or wouldn’t be fair in its treatment of a naval officer.”
“I understand.”
The admiral nodded. “I suspect you do. Your record says you’re one of our best, which is why I asked for you. We need a shit-hot attack pilot with a ton of smarts and a gilt-edge reputation who can waltz a little project through the minefields. You’re him.”
Jake flexed his hands and rearranged his bottom in his chair. “I didn’t think my reputation was quite that shiny. And I’ve never had any Pentagon duty before.”
Henry pretended not to have heard. “Do you want to hear about the job?”
“I’m just a little surprised, sir. Shocked might be a better word. I’d thought…” He punched the air. “What’s the Job?”
“You’ll be working for Vice Admiral Roger Dunedin. He’s NAVAIR.” NAVAIR was Naval Air Systems Command, the pro- curement arm of naval aviation. “He needs a new program man- ager for the Advanced Tactical Aircraft, also known as the ATA. If and when we get it, it’ll be the A-12.”
Jake Grafton couldn’t suppress a grin.
The admiral laughed. “The fact we have this project is unclassi- fied. ATA, A-12, those are the only two things unclass in the whole program, and those two terms were just recently declassified. The project is black.” Jake had heard about “black” programs, so highly classified that even the existence of the program was some- times a secret.
The admiral rapped a knuckle on the desk. “So far, it appears to be one of our best-kept military secrets.” His voice fell to a mur- mur. “No way of being sure, of course.”
Henry fixed his eyes on Jake. “The A-12 is our follow-on air- plane for the A-6.” The A-6 Intruder was the aircraft carriers’ main offensive weapon, an all-weather medium attack plane.
“But I thought the A-6 was going to remain in the inventory into the next century. That was the justification for the A-6G proj- ect — new graphite-composite wings and updated avionics.”
“The A-6 had to have the new wings just to stay in the air, and the A-6G avionics are going into the A-12. We were trying the new gee-whiz gizmos out in the A-6G, until they canceled it.” The A-6G had died under the budget cutters’ knives. Henry smiled wickedly. “The A-12 will have something even better. Athena. Do you know Greek mythology?”
“A smattering. Wasn’t Athena the goddess of war, the protector of warriors?”
“Yep, and she had a quality that we are going to give to our new plane.” He paused and raised one finger aloft. When he grinned like that his eyebrows matched the curve of his Ups- “She could make herself invisible.”
Jake just stared.
“Stealth technology- The air force built a land-based fighter: that’s first-generation stealth technology. Then came new paint and radar-absorbent materials and the flying-wing shape — that’s second-generation.” His voice dropped conspiratorially. “We’re building an all-weather, go-anywhere anytime carrier-based attack plane that will equal or exceed the A-6 in range, speed and payload, and carry advanced sensors that will make the A-6 look blind as a cornfield scarecrow. These sensors — anyway, they’re a whole new generation beyond the A-6. And the A-12 will have third-generation stealth technology — Athena — which will make it truly invisible to radar. A stealth Super-Intruder, if you wid. That’s the A-12.” Henry’s eyebrows danced.
“And that, my friend, is the secret”
The admiral smacked his hand on the desk. The gold rings encir- cling his sleeve attracted Jake’s eye. ‘The Russians don’t know about it. Yet. If we can get this thing to sea before they steal the technology and figure out how to counter it, we’ve pretty well guaranteed that there won’t be a conventional war with the Soviets for at least the next ten years. Their ships would be defenseless against a stealth Intruder.”
Admiral Henry sighed. “We’re trying to build one of these things, anyway. You’re replacing Captain Harold Strong, who was killed in a car wreck a month ago. We had to wait to get you, but now, by God, your ass is ours.”
Jake Grafton sat stunned. “But how — all the weapons will have to be carried externally and they’ll reflect energy — how will you get around that?”
The corners of Henry’s lips turned up until his mouth formed a V and his eyebrows danced. “You’re going to enjoy this job. Cap- tain.”
“A real job,” Jake said, his relief obvious. “And I thought I was just going to be designing fitness report forms.”
“Oh,” Henry boomed. “If you want you can work on that in your spare time. Don’t know when you’d sleep, though-” He turned serious. “Things are really starting to move. We’ve got two prototypes about ready to fly — constructed by two different manu- facturers — and we must get them evaluated and award the produc- tion contract. We’ve got to quit noodling and get this show on the road. We need airplanes. That’s why you’re here.”
After a glance at his watch, Henry reached for his intercom. His hand hovered near it. “Start checking in,” he said hurriedly. “Go get your paperwork done. They’ve got some orders for you some- place; you’ll have to find them. Maybe at NAVAIR, which is over at Crystal City. Then you might go around the corner and intro- duce yourself to the project coordinator. Commander Rob Knight. He’s here today, I think. I’ll see you at nine tomorrow morning. And then I want to hear all about the attack on United States and how you started El Hakim on the road to Paradise.”
He keyed the intercom and started talking as he shooed Jake out with his left hand. Jake didn’t even get a chance to say thanks.
Crystal City, Jake was informed by Henry’s aide, was across the Pentagon’s south parking lot, on the other side of the highway, southeast of the Pentagon. NAVAIR was in buildings JP-1 and JP-2, in the northern portion of
