Skyhook (9 page)

At last he ran out of words and plopped himself back in his suitably impressive desk chair with a look of defeat.

Almost.

“Lindsey, how can you sit there for … for five minutes—”

ttnn ť

Ten.

“Okay, ten minutes, then, and say absolutely nothing?”

“You were doing the talking.”

“Well, hell. I had to. Somebody has to talk or it’s not a conversation.”

She shook her head.

“There,” he said, coming forward in his chair and pointing at her with his index finger as he sighted along it with one eye.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“You know I hate long silences, so you stay quiet knowing I’ll keep talking until I talk myself into whatever you want.”

“Pretty efficient method, isn’t it? Especially when I’m right and you know it.”

Joe shook his head and looked out the windows bordering the south side of his office as he scratched absently at his stubbly chin.

He wasn’t a bad fellow, Lindsey thought, just scared of his own shadow. He’d been a very sharp electronics engineer for Uniwave, advancing project after project and promoted as a reward each time, until they’d elevated him to a job at least one level above his maximum capability. A small half-f jar of Maalox sat on his credenza, and what little hair he had left was rapidly going to gray. Joe, she knew, was now a full hostage of the high pay, benefits, and stock options of his position, and since the possibility of losing all that was his greatest terror, any suggestion from the corporate leaders in North Carolina attained Ten Commandment status in his mind. He had, Lindsey was fond of saying, achieved a status of profitable agony.

Joe sighed finally. It was a long and exhausted sound of capitulation, made worse by a very small whimper inserted at the far end of the coda.

“All right, Lindsey, I’ll make the call.”

“Good.”

“But you’d better stand outside and be ready to jump back when my severed head conies rolling out the door.”

“I’ll just put your hat on it and send it home to Betty in a box.

With a little formaldehyde and a big Mason jar, you’ll make a great conversation piece.”

“Very funny.”

“Hey! Your metaphor.”

“Cole really thinks another twenty-four hours will do it?” Joe asked, returning to Ben Cole’s conviction that failing to cancel the planned evening acceptance flight would be tantamount to murder/ suicide.

“He hopes so. But as I said—”

Joe waved her off. “Yeah, yeah. I know. No guarantees.”

“Joe, this is the small voice from Morton Thiokol in eighty-six, trying to tell the grand pooh-bahs of NASA not to launch the Challenger”

“Yeah, I get it, Lindsey.”

“I hope so, Chief. Because this is one of those O-ring alerts you ignore at everyone’s peril.”

Lindsey stood and left the office, pulling the door closed behind her, aware that Joe Davis had begun punching in the North Carolina headquarters number like a condemned man mounting the gallows.

wess than 150 feet away on the second story of the high security-project building, Dr. Ben Cole clapped a hand on the shoulder of one of his team and tried to smile.

“I want to keep everyone working until we lift off this evening.”

“So, you’re still going to fly tonight?” the man asked.

“No, he’s not,” Lindsey White’s voice replied from the hallway as she walked up, explaining Joe Davis’s agonized acceptance of the twenty-four-hour delay.

“Thank God,” the same team member said, noting the relief in Ben Cole’s eyes as he returned to the lab, leaving Ben and Lindsey in the hallway.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of the faded letter sweater she was wearing and cocked her head, looking into his tired eyes.

“You okay, Ben?”

He nodded with more energy than he had. “Now I am! The delay’s approved?”

“Yep.”

“You’re truly a woman of your word, Lindsey.”

She laughed. “Well, I couldn’t let you climb on that aircraft feeling doomed.”

“Did he put up much of a fight?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Not a subject for polite company.”

“Okay.”

“Now, the real question is, are you making any progress?”

Ben had been leaning against the door frame to the lab but he pulled his lank body back to a standing position and shrugged as he glanced at his watch. “I honestly don’t know, and I guess I’m still summoned to the meeting at six?”

She nodded. “Unavoidable, unless he cancels.”

“I think, with the extra time and that manual T-handle, I can guarantee we won’t get hurt physically, but I’m going to need every minute between now and tomorrow evening to make sure the system will pass the test.”

“But you can do it, you think? Realistically? Or … are you still guessing?”

Ben sighed. “Yeah, I’m still guessing. It’s in there somewhere, and now … I’ve got to think how to best use the extra time.”

9-ne floor away, Joe Davis replaced the telephone handset and wiped the perspiration from his brow. The chairman had been none too happy, but far less furious than Joe had expected, and the one day delay had been approved.

“Get it right the first time, Joe,” Will Martin had cautioned.

The phone rang again, this time with the chief test flight mechanic.

“Joe, we’ve got a big problem with that modification you wanted.”

Joe Davis sat back and began rubbing his eyes. “Yeah?”

“This is a civilian aircraft, and we can’t put a modification in like that—a physical modification—without bringing in our FAA liaison for approval.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” Joe asked. “The aircraft is on an experimental certificate. We can do anything we want.

We’re a secret black project, for God’s sake.”

“Joe, remember the exemption they gave us? It’s usually pro forma, but we have to have our FAA lady sign it off to be legal.

We can’t bypass the rules.”

“Well, then just yank our FAA chick in here and have her sign it off.”

“Hey, Joe, a little respect, okay? That chick’ is a very capable woman.”

“Yeah, a very capable female you’ve been trying to lay for six months now, right, Bill?” Joe Davis snapped, aware his sarcasm would hit home. Bill Waggoner was married, but clearly in lust with the female maintenance inspector.

Waggoner’s voice dropped to a frosty, cautious register. “I resent that accusation, Joe.”

“Well, sorry the truth hurts, old boy. What’s her name? Sandra?”

“Yes.”

“Just get Sandra in and get it approved.”

“I can’t do that. She’s in Oklahoma City for training for a week.”

“Then get a substitute.”

“Jeez, Joe, there are no substitutes with the required top secret clearances and need to know! You, of all people, should know that.”

Joe nodded to himself, doubly irritated at the rebuke. “Oh, yeah.

Look, if we could get Sandra to a scrambled, secure line out at Tinker Air Force Base down in Oklahoma City …”

“No, Joe. She’s a straight shooter. No way would she sign off on a physical modification without personally inspecting it.”

The explosion had been slow in coming, but it gathered now to a thunderclap riding the pressure and frustration of the last few hours.

“Goddammit, Waggoner! We pay you to come up with solutions. You want the plane to go down?”

“Of course not. What a stupid thing to ask.”

“Then install the friggin’ disconnect so we can keep them safe, and we’ll get it formally approved when Miss Sandra comes back.”

More silence.

“Bill?”

The sound of someone clearing his throat on the other end of the line was the only response at first.

“Bill, answer me, dammit!”

“This is for the record, Joe. Neither I, nor anyone working for me and under my control, is going to finish installation of that T-handle disconnect or any other physical modification without the appropriate FAA approval. That’s not negotiable. I have a fiduciary—”

“You’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, Waggoner!”

“No, Joe, I won’t. I’m a licensed mechanic with responsibilities that run beyond you and Uniwave. You want to fire me? Fine. But I’ve read my contract very carefully, and I know precisely who has the appropriate security clearances and who I can talk to to protest an illegal order, so don’t try threatening me.”

“You want to collapse this company? Is that what you’re up to?”

“You know better than that, Joe.”

“Godammit, Waggoner! I should fire your ass.”

“Go right ahead. I’ll be in General MacAdams’s face within the hour with a full explanation.”

More silence as the standoff intensified, broken finally by the capitulation Joe knew was inevitable.

“All right, leave it unfinished,” Joe said quietly, wondering how on earth to tell Lindsey White and Ben Cole without losing the final acceptance flight. Perhaps there was another way, he thought. The emergency disconnect was for the sole purpose of making Lindsey and Ben Cole feel better, but the extra twenty-four hours would give Cole time to solve his problems without needing the manual disconnect. Therefore, the backup disconnect was unnecessary. There was no need to discuss it—or highlight its absence.

The brief pang of moral conflict was no match for the engine of Joe Davis’s drive for economic and corporate survival. It was a small, manageable risk at best, and he could live with it.

Gracie O’Brien parked her silver 1982 Corvette in the marina parking lot and turned off the engine as she listened impatiently to the fellow law associate on the other end of her cell phone.

The call had lasted all the way from 4th and Broad in downtown Seattle to her parking place, and he was still droning on.

Twenty minutes ofjabbering for two minutes of content! Gracie grumbled.

She adjusted the headset connected to her cell phone. “Jeff? Hey, JEFFY? Yeah, sorry to yell. Look, I understand the problem. I’ll be in at six in the morning and we can hash it out then, if that’s okay with—”

The other lawyer began again, but she was ready for him.

“JEFF! FIRE! EARTHQUAKE! BAGELS!”

“Wha … what?”

“Just checking your hearing. Don’t you ever breathe between sentences? I couldn’t get an edge in wordwise.”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” he replied.

“Tomorrow, Jeff. Give it a rest for tonight.”

She waited for acknowledgment of the ungodly report time before ringing off and extricating herself from her gleaming sports car.

The Vette had been her first big indulgence after landing the job with Janssen and Pruzan. A $105,000 starting salary made it more than possible. She’d always wanted a Corvette. “Tom Cruise and me!” she’d told April countless times since the movie Top Gun had become her favorite rental.

“We both feel the need for speed.”

“Grade, he rode a motorcycle in Top Gun.”

“Doesn’t matter. It went fast, like a Vette.”

“Look, Corvettes are, what, fifty thousand?”

“New, yes. I’m talking a pre-loved Vette,” Gracie had explained, sounding hurt. “This baby’s six thousand, one owner, perfect silver paint … and all mine.”

“What do you mean, all mine’?” April had asked.

“I already wrote the check. I knew you’d approve.”

That was a year before, and her only regret in the intervening year was having too little free time to drive it—plus the two-hundred dollar speeding fine she’d earned by blowing past a Washington state trooper at somewhere over 110 miles per hour.

“He actually asked me for my pilot’s license,” Gracie had laughed when telling April the next day.

“Oh, no. You didn’t?”

“Of course I did! I pulled out my private pilot’s license and handed it to him. Your dad would have been proud.”

“I’m surprised you’re not calling from the county jail.”

“He actually started laughing.”

“But he still wrote the ticket.”

“Yeah, and I batted my eyes and thought sexy and everything, just like you taught me, Rosen. I keep telling you, it doesn’t work with me.”

“That’s because you keep talking. It wrecks the mood.”

Gracie chuckled at the memory as she pulled her briefcase from the front seat, closed the door, and paused to rub a smudge off the window before heading for the boat she called home.

The Corvette had elicited enough of a yelp from April, but Grade’s maverick decision to buy and live on an expensive yacht north of the downtown Seattle area had stunned her whole extended family.

“Is it safe to do that?” April had asked.

“It’s safe, and it’s calming, and I’ve got earnest money on a ten year-old fifty-eight-footer with a great master bedroom, salon, galley, and everything for about the price of your Vancouver condo.”

Gracie paused now at the entrance to her slip, admiring the lines of her ship, as she liked to call it. It was a fifty-eight-foot Carver, moored stern-in to the dock.

She closed the gate behind her and walked the twenty yards to her floating home, unlocked the door and tossed her briefcase onto a chair before putting her headset back in place to call April. She punched in April’s cell number, rolling over the details of their last conversation. That had been hours before, and while Arlie and Rachel were obviously doing fine physically, the news that NTSB and FAA representatives had shown up for an interview had worried her for the past two hours—and the silence from Anchorage wasn’t helping.

“Hello?”

“Where are you, Rosencrantz?” Gracie asked.

“Just leaving the hospital. I was going to call you, Gracie,”

April said. “I think we’ve got a problem.” Her voice was tense as she related the details of the contentious interview and the attack by the FAA inspector—as well as Arlie Rosen’s angry response.

“You’re kidding? Our captain came unglued?” Gracie asked m alarm.

“Completely. Name calling and all. If the FAA man wasn’t already intending to cause trouble—and he obviously was—he’ll be hell for leather to do so now. He came in with a chip on his shoulder.”

“Okay, I need to find an air-law specialist, and fast. Someone with experience defending pilots from the FAA.”

“Gracie, you think this is going to come back to bite Dad?”