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  “So along the way, Kimball gets a file jacket full of letters of reprimand. Mild insubordination, ignoring the regulations, going around the chain of command. Bitching to some key congressional people, which is a real down-to-earth, glaring no-no. There’s enough in the file to be irritating to promotion boards, and he’s pretty sure he won’t make lieutenant colonel, much less brigadier. He’s young, and he’s still got a chance to mend his ways, but do you think he’d do that?”

  “Hell, no!” McEntire responded. “I can tell this guy’s a real loser.”

  “In his spare time, he’s been doodling little blueprints that don’t interest his bosses or anyone else who hangs around the Pentagon. So Kimball gets fed up with the whole thing, resigns his commission and starts an airplane design and fabrication outfit.”

  “Good for him!” Sam Eddy shouted.

  “I’ll admit, Kimball, when I was researching this, you surprised the hell out of me. You raised forty-five million dollars in financing just like that.” Wilcox snapped his fingers.

  Kimball didn’t say anything.

  “But I looked around some, and I saw that your old man was in the oil business at one time, and I’ll bet he had lots of friends with money just reeking of high-grade crude. I figure you took a few trips to Tulsa, Houston, and Denver, then stuffed your bank account. Good deal.”

  “My business is none of yours,” Kimball said, regretting his need to spout the obvious.

  “You did some other things. Fourteen highly trained and expensive pilots, not including Sam Eddy here, followed you out of the Air Force. You took along twenty-some damned good technical people, too. I’ll bet Air Force Personnel was pissed at you for a long time. I’ll also bet they didn’t see the other angle, like I did. It takes some leadership qualities to talk forty people into giving up an assured pension.”

  “You getting to the end of this, Wilcox?”

  “Easy up, Kim,” McEntire said. “As a vice president of the company, I want to listen to the pitch.”

  “I’m getting to the best part now,” Wilcox said. “You actually built eight airplanes …”

  “Seventeen.”

  “I’m only talking about the ones that you can actually get in the air,” Wilcox grinned. “Personally, though I’m just a layman, you understand, they look pretty good to me. They met the specifications right down the line, and there’s a very nice per-unit cost. Super-nice. But let’s talk about cost. All the high-tech materials were expensive as hell. Your legal expenses must have been a bitch, getting the licenses to buy classified electronics from the biggies in the defense industry, but they were happy to sell to you. They knew you were going under anyway.”

  “Now, goddamn it …”

  Wilcox held up a hand, palm out. “We’re getting there. Besides the production and design overhead, you’ve had a hell of a salary load for the past three years. In fact, I happen to know that you might as well close your bank accounts. Any cash you have, you could carry in your hip pocket.”

  Kimball didn’t think it was that bad. The cash flow would last for another few months.

  “That’s why you leased all of the aerobatic aircraft and put your pilots on the barnstorming trail. You’re hunting for cash any way you can.”

  “Maybe we just like to fly,” McEntire said, reaching for a fresh bottle of beer.

  “Yeah, sure,” Wilcox said, signalling for another bottle for himself.

  “You ready, Kim?” McEntire asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “In the last year, you’ve demonstrated your airplanes to the Air Force, Navy, and Marines,” Wilcox continued. “And nobody was interested.”

  “You know why?” Kimball asked.

  “Sure. First, the tactical organization is strange to them. Just because they’ve done it their way for so long, they think they like airplanes that can go independent. Second, they don’t like the idea of publicity that suggests their planning has been all wrong. Third, if the public found out that the Air Force could buy one of your Alpha Kats for half the cost …”

  “One-sixth,” Kimball corrected.

  “… of an F-15, John Q. Public would start climbing the Pentagon walls. The good old boys who’ve been leading the defense effort sure as hell don’t want anyone to think they’ve been leading it in the wrong direction.”

  “You’re aware of what the US and AF is now doing, I take it?” Kimball asked.

  “Sure. They’re reorganizing. Hanging onto all of their old assets, but managing it in a different way. Big damned deal.”

  “That’s what I thought,” McEntire said.

  “What’s this got to do with us?” Kimball asked, not really wanting to know. His curiosity level didn’t run as high as McEntire’s.

  “How would the Central Intelligence Agency like to buy some airplanes?” Sam Eddy asked. “We could work out a favorable discount, maybe. If there’s a real national security angle.”

  “I’ve got one more point to make, then I’ll buy the airplanes.”

  That made Kimball sit up. He finished his beer and slapped the bottle down on the table.

  “You’ve got more lines in your face than the last picture I saw of you, Kimball. High stress, you think?”

  The pilot’s squint lines at the corners of Kimball’s blue eyes had deepened in the past couple of years, and the flecks of gray in his umber hair were spreading fast. Back in the old Air Force days, he had been accustomed to smiling a lot, too, but the smiles were less frequent now. The go-to-hell attitude had evaporated.

  “That’s your point? Come on. Let’s get to it.”

  “Okay. Let’s see. You can’t sell your fighter aircraft and its required AWACS to the Pentagon, so naturally you take aim at some of the friendly third world and developing nation markets. And what happened there?”

  “You’ve done the research,” Kimball said.

  “State, Commerce, and Transportation all denied permission to either export the aircraft or to take them out of the country for demonstrations. Apparently, they don’t have as much faith in your little airplanes as you do.”

  “Bullshit,” Kimball said. “They were pressured by our competition.”

  “Aw, you don’t mean there’s a conspiracy to run you out of business?”

  “You’re damned right there is. Like you said, the military services don’t want to be proven wrong, and they’re in bed with the aerospace conglomerates who don’t want to lose their markets, even the downsized markets that are going to be left after the end of the Cold War. If Kimball Aero makes one good sale, we’ll undermine what Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas and everybody else has been doing. They’ll be forced to redesign and retool in order to compete. That’s damned expensive for outfits the size of Lockheed. Hell, they’re already trying to contract their size.”

  “I don’t think there’s a conspiracy,” Wilcox said, smiling a little smile.

  “And you’re the Deputy Director of Intelligence?” Sam Eddy asked. “That confirms an opinion I’ve always held about the Agency.”

  “I don’t think there’s a conspiracy that I want to try to prove. Or could prove. Try it that way.”

  “That’s the point?” McEntire asked. “Okay, good point. Now buy the airplanes.”

  “Actually, I don’t want to buy your planes. I want to lease them.”

  “For what?” Kimball asked.

  “For how much?” McEntire asked.

  “I like the way Vice President McEntire thinks,” Wilcox said, shifting his position on the edge of the bed. “He’s a bottom-line man.”

  “So am I. But my bottom line doesn’t necessarily revolve around dollars.”

  “I’m well aware that your principles are high, Kimball, and I don’t doubt your patriotism for one tiny minute. But what if it’s more than dollars?”

  “If it’s a covert operation, it’s probably not worth talking about,” Kimball said.

  “Let’s talk about what I’ll do for you. I’ll give you three mil
lion dollars. The three million buys you a few more months more of cash flow and it underwrites a foreign demonstration tour.”

  Sam Eddy stuffed potato chips into his mouth.

  “We can’t”

  “And additionally, I’ll arrange all of the permits you need to take the aircraft out of the country.”

  McEntire grinned. “That’s worth more than the three mil, Kim.”

  Kimball waited.

  Wilcox stood up and began to pace. He said, “Now let’s talk about what you’ll do for me.”

  Three

  Down in the wide corridor off the lobby of the Marriott, Benjamin Wilcox picked up a phone, dialed the number at Langley, then punched in his credit card number.

  Ted Simonson answered his own private line. Simonson was the Deputy Director of Operations, and Wilcox had known him for over twenty-five years, most of them as a friend as well as a colleague.

  “This is Ben.”

  “Where in the hell are you? You didn’t even tell your secretary you were leaving.”

  “It was a spur of the moment thing, Ted.” Wilcox turned and leaned against the wall. The guy in the black suit and blue tie was still sitting in the lobby. He was a patient type, probably suited to intelligence work.

  “You know that idea we were kicking around a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Which idea? You’ve got too many plots going, Ben.”

  “Well, I’m not going to mention it on the phone. I’ve got a friend sitting close by.”

  “Good friend?” Simonson asked.

  “No.”

  “What day did you mention this?”

  “It was a Thursday evening. We went to the Sans Souci. You had the lobster.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

  “I just talked to Kimball.”

  “No lie? And what did Kimball say?”

  “He hasn’t yet, but he’ll go for it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I looked deep into his background and his business, and he’s out of choices. The main thing I’m calling about, I want you to tag the dollars in your contingency fund. Don’t go spending them elsewhere.” Wilcox looked back toward the lobby at the man in the black suit, and the name finally came to him.

  “How many dollars?”

  “Three big ones.”

  “You’re going to have to come up with some of your own.”

  “Yeah, I can take part of it, I guess,” Wilcox agreed. “Even though it’s rightly in your directorate, rather than mine. For my contribution, I want to control it.”

  “Missing the good old days, are you, Ben?”

  “Not so you’d notice. I’ve just got a vested interest in this project. It’s also damned important.”

  “Have you forgotten, Ben, that we don’t have approval for this? Hell, I haven’t even mentioned it to the DCI.”

  “You told me you would.”

  “Yes, but it slipped my mind.”

  “The White House is fully aware of the problem,” Wilcox said. “We’ve been highlighting it in the intelligence estimates.”

  “I read them.”

  “We’re running out of time, Ted. It used to be months. Now it’s weeks.”

  “I’m well aware of it, Ben.”

  “So you don’t think it’s worth the gray matter I printed it on?”

  “No, that’s not it. I can buy it. My question: does Kimball buy it?”

  “He will because it’s got a national interest ring to it. The Secretary of Defense himself said that drug interdiction was a priority defense consideration,” Wilcox said. “Kimball doesn’t say it out loud, but he’s a patriot at heart.”

  “You didn’t tell him the whole story, then?”

  “If I told him the whole story, it wouldn’t sound so demanding of his patriotic fervor, would it?”

  “Are you going to? Tell him?”

  “Maybe. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

  “Well, hell, as long as he’s in, I don’t see how we can pass on this project.”

  “Damn right,” Wilcox said. “Where else are we going to find a private air force?”

  “Is it a capable air force?” Simonson asked.

  “I’ll be damned if I know about that, Ted. It looks good on paper, but I don’t know how it performs. We’re talking both hardware, which appears up to snuff, and people. My office is checking out his people, now. I tried to flatter him without being too obvious about it. Negative persuasion, you might call it.”

  “If the airplane doesn’t perform as promoted?”

  “I have a feeling the aircraft will be all right. But the pilots have been too long away from the discipline.”

  “So if they don’t fit together?”

  “Then we have us a sacrificial lamb, Ted. But we may still accomplish the goal. We do still have the same goal?” After a long pause, Simonson said, “Yeah, you’re right.” “Get hopping, then. We’re going to have to ram it through back channels and try to keep it out of the NSC. We can have an okay before anyone even thinks about the ramifications.”

  “And the Senate and House Oversight Committees? I can already count the votes.”

  “Use a Presidential Finding. Tell the committees after it’s all over,” Wilcox suggested.

  “The backlash on the Agency could be devastating.”

  “I don’t think so. I think we might pass some of our secret medals around.”

  “You’re getting awfully damned optimistic in your old age, Ben.”

  “Are we going to worry about the way the liberals vote, or are we going to take one little step for the country? For the world, for that matter.”

  “I’ll go up and see the Director.”

  “Hey, Ted, you want to call Melinda for me?” Melinda Mears was Wilcox’s secretary.

  “You’re saving on long-distance calls, right?”

  “Tell her I’ll be in Cheyenne, somewhere.”

  Wilcox hung up the phone and headed for the sunlit glass doors of the entrance. As he passed the man in the black suit, he stopped and bent over the back of the couch to tap him on the shoulder.

  “Enjoying your vacation, Major Nash?”

  *

  Kimball stood at the window, swirling the beer in the bottom of his bottle. There was a lake on the other side of Horsetooth Road, and he saw a small flight of Canadian geese approach from the south, passing over residential homes, to settle on its surface. A lone eagle presided over the lake, circling high to the east.

  He felt pretty much like the eagle. All alone, searching for a decision that wouldn’t endanger the geese in his pond.

  “There’s a risk factor,” he said.

  “Since the day you and I went down to Lackland and started playing airplane jocks, there’s always been a risk factor,” Sam Eddy said. “There’s always been high stakes, too, but never higher than they are now.”

  “We’d be committing a lot of good people we haven’t talked to, yet.”

  “Name me some names.”

  “What names?”

  “Of anyone who won’t go where you go.”

  Kimball couldn’t think of anyone. The trouble was that his life, or his outlook on it, had changed considerably in the last three years. In the Air Force, he had worried about his wingman, and to a slightly lesser extent, the men in his squadron. As President of Kimball Aero Tech, he worried about a great deal more. The people were the most important to him. He had enticed many of them away from the security of the service, and they depended upon him making the right decisions. Except for a few people they had hired locally to work in fabrication and assembly, they were almost family. A hell of a lot of brothers and sisters replacing his biological family.

  Then, beyond his company family were the investors who had trusted him. They deserved the best he had to give, and they didn’t deserve the condemnation that might come out of this soiree.

  As Wilcox had figured out, his father had provided him with the list of investment contacts to make. Even
today, he felt guilty about not calling or visiting his parents when he had had the chance.

  Wilcox had probably figured out some other things also. “The company people all have a stake, too,” McEntire reminded him. “Not only in their jobs, but in their investments of time, money, expertise, and trust.”

  All of the KAT employees were shareholders in the company to some degree. Kimball owned the biggest block (thirty percent) because the designs were his and had been fleshed out while he was still in the service. But he had passed out stock to those who had joined him.

  He turned around, went to the bed, and stretched out on it. “I don’t like government contracts.”

  “You mean, like the ones we’ve been trying to sell?”

  “No, damn it. Like working for Washington. Jesus Christ! The CIA! No one works for the CIA, Sam Eddy.”

  “Betcha we never see anything in writing,” McEntire said as he walked to the nightstand and picked up the phone. “Room Service? This is Mr. Kimball in 312. I could sure use a six-pack of Michelob and maybe some nachos. You have nachos? Great! Send up two orders.”

  “I don’t want anything,” Kimball said as Sam Eddy replaced the receiver.

  “I didn’t order you anything. Look, Kim, this is just what we need to get us out of this great big hole we dug for ourselves.”

  “It’s a big carrot, yes. Wilcox knew it would be.”

  “You bothered by the mission?”

  Kimball thought about the briefing Wilcox had given them. After listening to the man for awhile, it had not been as farfetched as it had sounded in the beginning. “No, no I’m not. The objective is all right. Hell, the objective is fine.”

  It was better than Sam Eddy would ever know.

  “All we have to do is blow this Wop Bop …”

  “Lon Pot.”

  “Lon Pot guy out of existence.”

  “And work for the CIA,” Kimball reminded him.

  “And take their bucks and licenses and visas and transport permits.”

  “And expect that Lon Pot won’t fight back? You heard what Wilcox said about the guy’s defensive posture. He won’t go easy.”

  “Fuck him. Can the Alpha Kat do it or not? What the hell do we think we’re selling?”

  “Throw me the damned phone.”