Top Gun (42 page)

They’d reached the fountain. Without a word Gold flipped Linda into the eighteen-inch-deep water. She submerged and came up
sputtering, glaring at him, her drenched hair a tight helmet around her skull.

“Are you c-crazy?” she demanded, shivering, her skin constricted to goose bumps from the frigid water. “I’m f-freezing! W-why’d
you d-do that. The c-crash is over!”

“Like hell it is!” He fearfully glanced upward at the dark cloud of debris from the wrecked aircraft that would soon be falling
upon them.

Linda tried to say something more, but her words were lost in the fountain’s curtain of falling spray.

Then Gold heard the first earthshaking
crump!
as one of the jetliner’s fuel tanks caught, the blast billowing upward in an orange ball of flame and oily black smoke. There
was another fuel tank explosion. Then another. The rapid concussions rocked Gold. He threw himself into the frigid fountain
beneath the curtain of spray one step ahead of the heat blasts. The cold water shocked him; his balls constricted tight against
his groin.
Let’s hope it’s cold enough.

“Deep breath and hold it!” he ordered Linda, shoving her head down into the water and submerging himself at the same time.
He had his eyes open underwater, and saw the oil-and-fuel-soaked fragments of debris pelting the fountain’s surface like shrapnel,
hissing and trailing bubbles through the clear water. A couple of pieces of something or other stung his back through his
clothing, but thankfully the debris was small and had been sufficiently slowed and cooled by its trip through the air, through
the curtain of spray, and then the basin water to do too much damage. Gold put his arm around Linda, tucking her in beneath
him as best he could in the buoyant water to try and spare her being hit. Meanwhile, he prayed that no large pieces were at
the moment falling toward them.

Within seconds the rain of debris hitting the fountain slowed, then vanished. Gold warily lifted his head from the water.
The wailing of sirens instantly accosted him. There were a few isolated puddles of fire floating in the fountain, but otherwise
it was clear. He hauled Linda to the surface and heard her exhale noisily, gasping for air. They quickly climbed out of the
fountain, streaming water from their drenched clothing.

One of the paramedics now on the scene came over to ask if they were all right. Linda and Gold nodded, and the paramedic offered
the blanket from his stretcher. Gold wrapped the blanket around Linda, who was shivering. He then looked around.

The concrete ramp was littered with smallish, smoldering debris, some of it still sadly wearing a singed, blistered coat of
scarlet and turquoise paint. There had been some injuries to those who had been last into the walkways flanking the fountain,
but nobody looked seriously hurt. Gold turned toward the hospitality suite complex and saw that every window facing the airfield
had been cracked or broken by the shock waves or the debris generated by the fuel blasts.

Gold looked at the fountain. He had no doubt that it had saved himself and Linda from serious injury, maybe even saved their
lives. He hoped the architect who’d designed the fountain was a woman, because he fully intended to kiss that individual should
they ever meet up.

Out on the tarmac, the charred remains of the GC-600 sat enveloped in.wafting black smoke. The emergency fire vehicles had
soaked down the wreck with foam, extinguishing the fires.

Linda came over to Gold. Her hair was still soaked, and she was wrapped like an Indian in her blanket. Gold put his arm around
her, brushing her wet hair out of her eyes. “You look like a drowned rat,” he said tenderly.

“Oh, thank you.” She fingered his sodden jacket lapel. “And didn’t I tell you you couldn’t wash linen?”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find Don and Linda. They’ll be worried about us.”

(Three)

Duvalle Hotel

Paris

16 June, 1978

In Paris, Don Harrison always preferred to stay at the Duvalle. It was smaller and more personal than either the Ritz or the
Crillon, but every bit as luxurious.

Harrison always reserved the same suite. It had two bedrooms, one of which he used as an office, two baths, and an adjoining
parlor furnished with comfortable armchairs and sofas upholstered in striped satin. This hotel suite with its ornate mirrors,
Boilly portraits and luminous still lifes decorating its walls had always served as Harrison’s sanctuary from the rigors of
travel and conducting international business.

Until now,
Harrison thought, sighing. On this trip the lovely suite had become less a restful oasis and more a beleaguered bunker from
which GAT was conducting what amounted to a desperate defense to rescue its reputation and future.

Harrison was seated in the parlor, sipping cognac. His tie was loosened and his shoes were off. Surrounding his chair were
thick folders and scattered papers, the results so far of the preliminary investigation into the cause of the GC-600’s crash.
It was Friday night, a little before six, four days after the awful accident. Since the GC-600 had fallen out of the sky last
Monday, Harrison and Steve Gold had endured a gauntlet of official inquiries and news conferences during which they’d been
grilled by an increasingly hostile French press about what GAT might have done to prevent the crash.

From the start of this fiasco, Harrison had been pretty much out of his depth public relations-wise. It was one thing to appear
at a news conference in order to pat oneself on the back over some achievement and then pose for pictures. It was quite something
else to face a public inquisition—especially when the public was too ignorant to understand the answers to their shouted questions.
Harrison was first and foremost an engineer who was more comfortable talking the specific technical language of his profession.
At the press conferences and at the preliminary hearings called by the French authorities (who were more interested in grandstanding
than getting to the facts), Harrison had suffered a hard time keeping himself from lapsing into jargon concerning his confidence
in the overall design of the GC-600 and its fly-by-wire control technology, which it shared with the Stiletto fighter and
which allowed the jetliner to be safely piloted by just a two-man crew. Harrison’s long-winded technical explanations had
been miscomprehended by the French press as attempts at obfuscation. Meanwhile, the press kept hammering away, demanding to
know GAT’s position on the leaks now that they had been proved right?

Of course, the fact that the GC-600 had crashed didn’t necessarily mean that the jetliner’s design or technology was flawed.
Trouble was, the emotions of the moment were running hot. Harrison had concluded that some of the French overreaction toward
GAT concerning the crash was due to the residue of bad feeling in some of the French aviation industry over the fact that
Aérosens and Skytrain Industry had come out second best to GAT in that contretemps surrounding the Pont airliner back in 1974.

Harrison looked bleakly at Susan who was sitting on a sofa, pretending to be leafing through a magazine. His wife was wearing
a silk robe. She had on no makeup, and her silver-blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun. But there was no point in her
getting dolled up, Harrison thought. It was an ordeal to leave the hotel. As soon as they stepped out of the lobby, the reporters
were on them like a pack of beggars.

“You know,” Harrison told her softly. “If I haven’t said it before, I’m awfully sorry I’m dragging you through this.”

She looked up from her magazine to smile at him. “My mother went through much worse with my father. It comes with the territory.”

“I love you very much,” Harrison said.

Susan blushed. “Don’t look at me! I look awful.”

“You look beautiful.”

Susan said, “Keep talking like that and I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Harrison was contemplating asking her to follow him into the bedroom when the telephone rang. “Would you answer that?” he
pleaded. “I can’t bear to talk to any more reporters today.”

Susan reached for the telephone on the end table. She listened a moment and then hung up. “It was Steve. He and Linda are
coming down.”

Harrison nodded. Steve and Linda had a suite on another floor of the hotel.
Thank God for Steve,
Harrison thought. Steve had turned out to be as good at this public-relations damage-control stuff as Harrison was bad. For
one thing, the cameras seemed to like Steve. He came across well over the airwaves. And Steve had the knack of being able
to communicate with the reporters and officials on their own level, and through them, directly to the public. Harrison supposed
that Steve’s war-hero background helped somewhat in all that. And then, of course, there was the fact that Steve was not very
well formally educated and didn’t care a rat’s ass who knew it.

Right from the start of this mess, Steve had cleverly stressed his credibility as an experienced veteran in the cockpit in
order to claim that it had been pilot’s error that had caused the crash. That opinion had initially seemed to prevail among
the experts after they’d weighed the testimony of those who had witnessed the aircraft’s severe maneuvering just before the
crash. On Wednesday the French Minister of Transportation had issued a statement saying that while the investigation was still
only in its beginning stages, there was so far no evidence allowing the authorities to call into question the proper functioning
of the aircraft. Things had looked good, or at least as good as possible, but then yesterday the European Pilots Association
had issued a statement alleging that the accident had been caused by technical problems arising from the fact that the GC-600
was designed to be flown by only two crew members while most jetliners called for a three-man crew.

Harrison had been shocked by the blatantly obvious partisan nature of the pilots union claim and had fully expected it to
be ridiculed, but then, he always had overestimated the intelligence of the public. On Thursday a couple of newspapers had
trumpeted the allegation, and a few labor unions had put the bite on the French government, which caused the Transportation
Minister to back away from his statement, explaining that it was premature to absolve GAT. And so the witch-hunt would continue.

There was a knock on the door. Susan got up to let in Steve and Linda.

Linda was dressed in one of those slacks-and-sweater outfits she tended to favor. Steve was wearing chinos and a plaid sports
shirt:
comfortable clothes for a long night’s work planning our defensive strategy for tomorrow,
Harrison thought.

“Want a drink?” Harrison asked.

“Love one,” Steve said. He winked at his sister as he added to Harrison, “That’s okay, Don, don’t get up.”

Harrison laughed. “Thanks, because I happen to be too exhausted to get up.” He kicked the folders lying about his stockinged
feet, sending them skidding a short distance across the carpet. “I’ve got to reread all this crap before the hearing at the
Ministry tomorrow.”

“You lucky duck,” Steve muttered from the bar, where he was pouring himself a scotch on the rocks. “I’d rather talk aeronautics
with a bunch of eggheads any day than try and stop the hemorrhaging concerning the 600’s advance orders.”

“It’s going that badly, huh?” Susan asked. She glanced at Linda. “Want some white wine?”

“Love some.” Linda nodded gratefully.

“It’s chilling in the fridge behind the bar. I’ll get it,” Susan replied.

Steve was saying, “It looked as if I had not only been holding the line, but also regaining some lost ground with our customers,
especially after the Minister’s first announcement, and when I’d made it clear to our prospective buyers that we were willing
to share all the data results from our flight tests on the remaining two GC-600 protos.”

Harrison nodded. “But then came that damned pilots union assertion.”

“Right,” Steve said, taking his drink with him over to the couch, where he lit a cigarette. “The airlines were already a little
queasy about the idea of opening up negotiations with their pilots unions concerning reducing the cockpit crews by one man.
Now they’re scared that if they buy the 600, this crash will give the pilots the ammo they need to take their argument against
the plane to the public.”

“What a damned mess,” Harrison said mournfully.

“I suppose we’re going to have another room-service dinner,” Linda complained mildly. She and Susan were seated at the bar
with their glasses of wine.

“Do you really mind?” Harrison apologized. “Steve and I have got a lot of work to do for tomorrow, and frankly, I don’t think
I’m much in the mood to be gawked at in a restaurant.” He sighed. “Thank God it’s mostly property damage and questions about
the reliability of the airplane we have to contend with.”

“What you’re saying is, thank God no one was killed,” Steve added.

“Except the pilot and the copilot,” Linda said somewhat sharply, frowning at Steve.

Steve nodded. “Of course, except for them,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by leaving them out, honey.” He smiled sadly.
“I guess maybe because I was a pilot I said it the way I did. You see, I know personally that sometimes a pilot ends up like
a sea captain. Sometimes he—
we
—have got to go down with our ship.”

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry for snapping at you,” Linda insisted. “I guess I’m feeling just a little edgy being cooped
up here, feeling ostracized and in a state of siege.”

The telephone rang. Steve reached for the receiver. “Yes?” He listened a moment and then told Harrison, “It’s long distance.
The switchboard is putting it through now. Our corporate counsel in L.A.”

“Sam Wilcox?” Harrison frowned, glancing at his watch. “It’s early morning, West Coast time.”

“Yeah, Sam,” Gold was saying into the telephone. “I can hear you fine. What’s up? Huh? You’re shitting me!”

“What is it?” Harrison demanded. Steve put his hand up to silence him.