Skyhook

EIGHT TUESDAY, DAY 2 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA

Lindsey White struggled to hide the fact that her stomach was churning and concentrated instead on the neatly arranged bric-a-brac adorning Joe Davis’s impeccable desk. She hated confrontations, and it had been difficult to maintain the facade of rock-solid conviction as he ranted, begged, bullied, and finally whined against the news that tonight’s acceptance test flight had to be canceled.

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—”

“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-full 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 comes 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.

Less 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.”

One 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.