about?”
“Will, you said—“
“I know what I told you! I’m asking if any of your superiors have even the slightest glimmer how valuable Athena is.”
“I don’t know.”
The admiral gestured hugely in exasperation. “Just what in the name of God is going on, Luis?”
They had reached the edge of the duck pond. Camacho stood with folded arms and gazed across the placid surface, past the statue of U.S. Grant on horseback, at the imposing edifice of the Capitol building. “I can only guess,” he said softly.
“But do they have any idea what Athena is — just what the hell they are giving away?”
“I don’t know what they know.”
“This isn’t fiber optics, or ring laser gyros, or any of that other magic shit they’ve been letting cart out of the vault Athena is the Hope Diamond, the mother lode, the most precious, priceless treasure in the vault. Do those stupid, ignorant incompe- tent half-wit political pimps have even the faintest glimmer what it is Just laid his filthy hands OB?
“I don’t know!”
“Athena will make radar obsolete. Inevitably it will become cheaper and well be able to miniaturize if get it so small and cheap we can use it to hide tanks and jeeps, not just ships and airplanes. We can hide satellites with it. In ten years or so we can probably hide submarines with it. Athena will revolutionize strat- egy, tactics, weaponry. And we’ve got it! The Russians don’ti Yetl If we can keep them from getting it for just a couple years — just a couple years — I tell you, Luis, Athena will give America such a huge technological edge that war will become a political and mili- tary impossibility. War will be impossible!”
“I believe you.”
“Then why? Tell me that! Why?”
Camacho shrugged.
“What could be so goddamn valuable that they would bet the ranch, the nation, the future of mankind?”
“I don’t know for sure, and I couldn’t tell you if I did.”
The admiral exploded. Thirty-some years in the navy had really taught him how to swear. Camacho didn’t think he had ever heard such a virtuoso performance,
Finally Henry stopped spluttering. Bitterness had replaced his exasperation. “I think there’s some treason going on over in your shop, Camacho. That’s all it could be.”
“Better go easy with that word.”
“Treason.” Henry spit it out “Don’t like it, huh? By God, if Congress gets hold of this, that may be the kindest word those slimy spook bastards ever hear. People will go to prison over this. You wait and see.”
Camacho lost his temper. “I showed you that piece of paper so you could take some reasonable steps to protect Athena, you swab- bie,” he snarled. “Like change the code or empty the file. Not so you could shoot your mouth off about things you know nothing about, things that will ruin you and me. Now I’ve heard all the crap from you that I’m gonna listen to. I’ve heard enough. One more crack out of line and I’ll come get you with a national secu- rity warrant and you can sit in a padded cell at St. Elizabeth’s until I think it’s safe to let you out. That may be when you’re a corpse. Is that what you want?”
“No,” said Tyler Henry contritely, aware that he had gone too far.
“Just one word. Admiral, just one little slip by you, and I’ll come after you with that goddamn warrant. You’d better believe I will. You and John Hinckley can spend your declining years together.”
Camacho wheeled and walked away, leaving Henry standing there staring at his retreating back.
22
Tyler Henry accompanied the ATA project crew when they returned to Tonopah in July. The admiral shook hands with the TRX engineers and spent three hours inspecting the plane, which occupied the hangar where the Consolidated bird had rested, and asking questions. At his request Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington remained beside him. Many of his questions were directed at Rita, but when he wanted to know something about the navigation/attack system, he asked Toad.
“Is that right, Franks?” the admiral growled at the TRX pro- gram manager after he had listened carefully to one of Toad’s answers.
Harry Prank nodded his assent. It looked to Jake as if Franks had lost ten pounds or so, but the cotton of his colorful sport shirt still seemed loaded near its tensile strength where it stretched over his middle. Franks rolled the stump of a dead cigar from one cor- ner of his mouth to the other and winked at Jake.
With his shoulders thrown back and his genial air of self-assur- ance and command. Franks reminded Jake of the salty chief petty officers he had grown to respect and admire when he was a junior officer. Franks certainly was no modern naval officer or chief in mufti, not with that gut. In today’s navy even the chief petty of- ficers were slimmed down or retired, victims of rigid weight stan- dards enforced with awesome zeal. The senior admirals liked to think of their service as a lean, mean fighting machine, which of course it was not. More accurately, the navy was a host of skinny technocrats. Not only were most sailors technicians, most of the officers spent the vast majority of their professional lives as admin- istrators, experts on instructions, notices, regulations, and budgets. The bureaucracy was mean but certainly not lean.
Confusing, Jake mused, glancing once again at Franks’s portico, very confusing.
Unlike the trendy and not so trendy humans who stood admir- ing it, TRX’s prototype was exquisite functionality. The mission was all-weather attack. The plane would be launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier, in any weather day or night, to pene- trate the enemy’s defenses, find and destroy the target without outside aid, and return to the tiny ship in the vast ocean from whence it came, there to be refueled and rearmed and launched again. Every form and feature had been carefully crafted for the rigid demands of this mission, and no other.
As he stood listening to the engineers describe their creation, Jake Grafton’s eye fell on Rita Moravia and Toad Taridngton, two intelligent young people in perfect health with good educations. They and others like them would have to use this machine as a weapon, when and if. The technocrats would build it and take it to sea. Yet the plane would never be anything but a cunning collec- tion of glue, diodes, and weird alloys. The attack must come from the hearts of those who rode it down the catapult into the sky.
The important things in war never change. As always, victory would go to those who prepared wisely, planned well, and drove home their thrusts with a grim, fierce determination.
When the F-14 chase plane was safely airborne, Rita Moravia smoothly advanced the throttles to the stops and let the two im- proved F404 engines wind up to full power as she checked the trim setting one more time. The cockpit noise level was higher than in the Consolidated plane, and no doubt the roar of the engines out- side was also louder. The exhausts had not been as deeply inset above the wing and cooled as extensively with bypass air from the compressors; consequently more of the engine’s rated power was available to propel the plane through the atmosphere. And the noise was not the only clue: she could feel slightly more vibration and a perceptibly greater dip of the nose as the thrust of the screaming engines compressed the nose-gear oleo. “Anytime you’re ready,” Toad announced.
After dictating all the engine data onto the audio recorder wired into the ICS, Rita released the brakes. The nose oleo rebounded and the plane rolled smartly, picking up speed.
The little thumps and bumps as the wheels crossed the expan- sion joints in the concrete runway came quicker and quicker. The needle on the airspeed indicator came off the peg. On the holo- graphic Heads-Up Display — the HUD — functioning in this proto- type, the symbology came alive. The sound of the engines dropped in volume and pitch as the machine accelerated.
Now the weight came off the nose wheel as the stabilator and living wing controls took effect and began to exert aerodynamic force on the nose, trying to lift it from the runway. Oh yes. With the joystick held ever so lightly in her fingers, she felt the nose wheel bobble, skip lightly, then rise from the concrete as the wings gripped the air.
The master warning light illuminated — bright yellow — and be- side the HUD the right engine fire warning
