Alpha Kat Read online

  Grinning, McEntire dialed the number, then handed the phone to Kimball.

  Susan McEntire answered promptly in Phoenix. She was Sam Eddy’s third ex-wife.

  “Hi, Susie.”

  “Kim? Anything wrong?”

  “Should there be?”

  “Is Sam Eddy all right?”

  “Everybody’s fine. Quit worrying. We’ve got some schedule changes to make.”

  He heard paper rustling. “Okay, tell me.”

  “Sam Eddy and I will make the show in Cheyenne tomorrow, but we’ll return to Phoenix just as soon as it’s over. I want you to call around and cancel the rest of our tour.”

  “What!”

  “And then start tracking everyone else down and call them back to Phoenix. I want pilots at nine o’clock in the morning, the day after tomorrow. We’ll need to call around and cancel their schedules, also.”

  “Damn it, Kim! You’re talking about cutting off a lot of income.”

  “We’re finalizing another contract.”

  “It better be out of this world.” Susan McEntire handled all of the accounting for Kimball Aero.

  “Three million.”

  “Hurry back,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door, and McEntire got up to open it and take the tray from the waiter. Kimball watched him sign the tab and figured he had added a big tip, then signed Kimball’s name.

  He sat up and said, “Let me have my nachos while they’re hot.”

  “You didn’t order any.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  They were accompanied with a dirty look from McEntire.

  *

  Jimmy Gander figured he was the first one back. He had only gone down to Tucson for a one-day show, and he landed his Beechcraft Staggerwing at Sky Harbor International Airport at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

  The big radial engine purred as he turned off the runway used by the noncommercial air traffic onto the taxiway leading to the general aviation section. Some of the Air National Guard guys were getting their flying hours in, he could tell, since there were gaps in the rows of parked ANG aircraft.

  “Beech one nine, you’re purtier than any seven-sixty-seven,” Phoenix Tower told him.

  The big passenger-cabined biplane was a full restoration, finished in yellow, with every detail crafted to match the original. Even the more modern Nav/Com radios were mounted in a temporary rack on the floor so they could be removed for air shows.

  Gander grabbed the mike resting in his lap. “Thank you, Phoenix, I feel purty. One nine out.”

  James Alan Gander was an Arizona boy, born and raised in Phoenix. He loved the hot, dry environment, and he even liked Barry Goldwater. KAT’s decision to locate in the capital city was one of the reasons he had given up his captaincy after seven years in the Air Force. He was twenty-nine years old and lanky: body, face, and limp brown hair. He had held at 166 pounds since his junior year of high school, when he was on the chubby side, but his height had climbed from five foot two inches to six foot two inches by the time he took his master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

  He rolled the Staggerwing off the taxiway toward the big hangar leased by KAT. It was painted cream, and “Kimball Aero Tech” was lettered in blue above the big doors. Because of the size of the lettering, there hadn’t been room for the “nology” part of the company name.

  Gander turned into the aisle behind the second row of aircraft in front of the hangar, then turned again to aim the nose toward the runway and park the Beech next to one of the three Kappa Kats. Only two of the Kappa Kats were operational; the third was just a shell without engines, instrumentation, or avionics. The eight Alpha Kats parked in the first row were also shells awaiting power and electronic components, but they were parked out in front for advertising reasons. The six operational Alphas were tied down in the third row.

  Those airplanes were the second, and higher, reason Gander had left the service. Gander thought that, like Ford had once claimed, Bryce Kimball had a better idea.

  They looked like a private air force parked there, identified only by the small “KAT” logo on the rudders, the FX-41 or CX-41 model number below the canopies, and the Federal Aviation Administration-assigned N-numbers on the fuselages. All of them were finished in a matte midnight blue which made them difficult to see at night or on clear days, but then, they weren’t designed to be seen.

  Gander shut down the Beechcraft, popped open the door, and got out with his flight bag. He dropped the bag on the tarmac and spent some time chocking the wheels and tying the airplane down. He liked the Staggerwing almost as well as he liked the Alpha Kat and wished that he, or the company, owned it, rather than leased it.

  Flying the Beech or the Alpha Kat was a pilot’s dream. He was totally in control of his aircraft. It was back to the basics, and there was nothing wrong with the basics. Gander had flown F-15 Eagles for the Air Force, which was kind of like supervising an automated roller coaster. There were lots of times, of course, when he had been allowed to do his own thing, but mostly the Eagle’s computers ran the show: do this, do that, turn here, lock on target, let go and let me fly it, you jerk.

  Looking between the wings of the Beechcraft at the row of Alpha Kats, Gander was very aware of sixty years of evolution. The Alpha Kat was small. At twenty-six feet, the wingspan was five feet less than an F-16 Falcon. It was a semi-delta wing, each wing deprived of being a full right-angled triangle by the forward sweep of the wing from the tail to the wingtip. The wings were thin and, from this distance, looked like razor blades. The four weapons pylons could handle a wide variety of missiles, and the tandem centerline hardpoints were designed to accept external fuel storage, electronics pods, ordnance, or a mix of the three.

  The fuel bladders were mounted inside the fuselage with the single Kimball/McEntire turbofan engine. The KM-121 developed 38,000 pounds of thrust, 14,000 pounds more than either of the engines in McDonnell Douglas’s F-15. The KM-121 had no afterburner to promote an infrared signature and high fuel consumption, though the lack did cut into its acceleration. The engine casing was primarily a ceramic casting to reduce the RCS (radar cross section). Even the turbine blades were manufactured from carbon-impregnated plastic for the same reason. Elongated and variable engine intakes were mounted to either side of the fuselage, slightly forward of the wing. Intake air was channeled internally in a slight inward curve toward the centerline-mounted engine. That prevented radar signals from “seeing” the spinning turbine blades through the intakes. To drastically reduce the infrared exhaust signature, the tail pipe was longer than normal.

  The wide, squat fuselage was mostly fuel storage, and the Alpha Kat had a ferry range, in a straight line, of 3,700 miles, one hundred more than an Eagle and nearly 1,400 more than a Falcon at the Alpha Kat’s economy cruise speed of Mach 1.2. It wasn’t as fast as the Eagle or Falcon, but Gander didn’t think the top end of Mach 1.9 was a crawl.

  The twin rudders, mounted close to the wide fuselage, were canted inward at the top, designed to also camouflage any heat from the engine that might create an infrared signature. The single small canopy, barely a bulge over the down-sloping nose, was tinted a dark bronze to eliminate sun glint and infrared return.

  Every leading or trailing edge had a slight curve to it, again to foil searching radars.

  It looked tiny, lean, mean, agile, and quite deadly. And it was.

  And parked beside him, the Alpha Kat’s bigger sister, the Kappa Kat command craft had a similar appearance. The wingspan was fifteen feet greater, and the fuselage was longer and wider in order to accommodate twin turbofan engines and four ejection seats. The Kappa Kat seated a pilot and a navigator/copilot side by side and two air controllers at matching consoles behind them.

  At Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” design center in Burbank, now phased out, such aircraft would have been cloaked in secrecy. At Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, Kim Kimball parked them
in the open for the world, and the competition to see. He wanted to advertise, and besides, the hangar would only accommodate two aircraft simultaneously because it was also crammed with alignment jigs, casting machines, calibration equipment, machine tools, and stored airframe and turbofan parts.

  Gander picked up his flight bag, with “Gandy Dancer” stenciled on the side of it, and started walking toward the hangar.

  An optimistic Kimball had taken lease options on the three hangars to the east for expansion.

  Jimmy Gander knew Kimball was less optimistic now. In fact, the main reason Gander had given up the security of the Air Force was Bryce Kimball, but he had changed dramatically in the last six or seven months.

  He dragged. There was less spring in his step. The smiles were forced. His normally spontaneous good humor had vanished. Kimball had never been married, and he carried something of a subdued reputation as a ladies’ man. Had carried. Gander didn’t think his boss had dated anyone in four months. Mollie Gander, his wife, had mentioned it, too.

  It was going bad.

  Gander figured tomorrow morning’s meeting had been scheduled to tell them that loans had been called, that Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness certificates had been withdrawn, that test flights were to be further curtailed to cut the fuel bills, that …

  … that something, anything, everything was wrong.

  He could feel it in his bones. The company was peering over the edge.

  The outlook for himself wasn’t great, either. The Air Force and the other services were cutting back, dumping pilots on the job market. And subsequently, the defense contractors were also reducing their payrolls.

  As a pilot and an electrical engineer, Gander might have to look for work in a restaurant.

  The security guard, who was stationed in a small corner office looking out on the tarmac and a few million dollars’ worth of aircraft, let him into the building. They exchanged pleasantries, and Gander went on down the hall toward the front door and the parking lot. The east side of the hangar had been subdivided into a hallway with small offices, restrooms, a dressing room, and a front office sectioned against the outer wall.

  A complete aerospace defense industry in sixty thousand square feet. It felt empty and forlorn.

  Sometimes, Jimmy Gander wished he was back in an Eagle, looking for something to shoot down.

  Four

  Kimball and McEntire had landed their Pitts Specials at Sky Harbor late on Sunday night. Judging by the wide variety of aircraft parked on the apron in front of the Kimball Aero hangar (Staggerwing, P-51 Mustang, P-38 Lightning, Stearmans), Kimball thought most of the pilots had already made it back. The ground crews who had accompanied them in vans, both owned and rented, would be dragging in throughout the night and Monday morning.

  Kimball drove his restored ‘68 Camaro convertible north on 32nd Street to his small condo off Camelback Road. He was almost eagerly prepared for deep sleep, but after he had showered, found himself wide awake. He pulled on a pair of faded jeans, opened a bottle of Dos Equis, and went out onto his balcony. The night was warm, but the stars were crisp, even with the glow of downtown Phoenix interfering with vision. The lamps along the sidewalk between the rows of condominiums spilled soft light on the yellowing grass and the gravelled sections containing several varieties of cacti. There were two mammoth saguaros, the familiar sentinel of Arizona. They were becoming an endangered species, with people sneaking out into the desert to steal them for home improvement projects.

  Kimball wasn’t sure how he felt. Much as he hated the CIA, and didn’t much care for Ben Wilcox, he was looking forward to the tour they were funding. Action of any kind was better than beating himself to death trying to reach Defense Department weapons procurement people or Transportation and State Department bureaucrats. He had been fighting that battle for over a year and had almost reached the last resort, which was going to court. Even then, the odds of forcing the government to pay attention to him were barely fifty-fifty. On top of which, he couldn’t afford the justice system, for both financial and publicity reasons. It wouldn’t help to publicize in the media the fact that the United States government didn’t think his airplanes should fly overseas.

  He decided he felt alive again.

  Or maybe just restless.

  After an hour of jumbled thoughts, Kimball finished his beer and went back inside. It was after midnight, but he toyed with the idea of calling Cathy before deciding to skip it. He had not talked to her in so long, she would probably hang up on him. And she had to go to work in the morning, anyway.

  He went to bed, woke at 4:30 A.M., and showered again, then shaved. He thought his eyes looked brighter, bluer, in the mirror. His face, with its flat planes and high cheekbones and deep tan, appeared healthier. The skeletal substructure was there for a purpose, rather than just to keep his skin from sinking farther. He needed to get a haircut.

  At five o’clock in the morning, he called Wilcox and found him already in his office.

  “Well?”

  “You on your office phone?” the DDI asked.

  “No, home.”

  “That should be all right for now. We’ll meet personally in the future. The Director and the National Security Advisor met with the man at Camp David yesterday afternoon. He signed off, and it’s a go.”

  Kimball breathed a sigh of relief or anxiety. He wasn’t certain which. “The money?”

  “The money will be transferred to your Phoenix account this afternoon. It will be followed in the overnight mail by a consultation contract for you to sign.”

  “I’m not signing shit,” Kimball said.

  “Hey, Kimball, this is cover. It just says that a Kimball Tech team will advise some company or another out of Atlanta, I think, on aviation matters. I don’t know what company they picked, but it isn’t the Agency. That clears you on your income. Be sure and set aside enough for your taxes.”

  “Are you my financial advisor now?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Did you find my aircraft for me?”

  “Yup. There are two C-141Bs currently on reserve status, and they will be leased to you for three months. One’s at Homestead Air Base in Florida, and the other is at Charleston Air Force Base. This is shaping up like a real travelling circus,” Wilcox told him.

  “What about the paperwork?”

  “First, I’m going to have to have you fill out all the applications.”

  “No damned way. The applications are already completed and sitting in offices all over your fair city. I’m not doing it again.”

  “That’s all right. That’s good, in fact. I’ll start making the rounds this morning.”

  “And you think you can swing it?” Kimball asked.

  Wilcox laughed. “If I can’t, I have this short letter signed by the big boss. What about on your end?”

  “I’ve already made contact with the appropriate defense ministers and officers in the countries we want. Hell, I did that over a year ago. There was a lot of interest at the time, and I suspect that I can revive it. But it’s still going to take about a week to put together.”

  “Timeline?”

  “We can be wheels-up in ten days. Make it July fifteenth.”

  “Good by me. I’ll have a package together for you before the twelfth. Let’s meet in Denver.”

  “You’re running this?” Kimball asked. Wilcox belonged to the Intelligence side of the CIA.

  “Well, it’d normally fall in the operations directorate, yeah, but I’m doing some temporary duty.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Kimball was leery of people operating out of their specialties. He wouldn’t put a transport pilot in an FB-111 fighter bomber.

  “I was in the field for seventeen years, Kimball.”

  “Just checking.”

  “You have a fax machine?” Wilcox asked.

  “In the office.”

  “All right. You’ll get a picture on it sometime this morning.”

  “Picture of
what?”

  “Picture of a who. Guy named Nash, a major. He’s an AFI snoop who was following me for awhile, but now he’s on your tail.”

  “What the hell? What’s going on?”

  “Hey, Kimball, you think there’s a conspiracy mounted against you? We’ve got our own going, too. It’s all part of the game, so don’t sweat it.”

  *

  The meeting started at nine o’clock.

  Kimball kicked everyone out of the front office except for the sixteen pilots and closed the doors. Susan McEntire put up a fuss about the exclusion of women, and he had to promise a briefing for her later.

  The room wasn’t really big enough for all of them. It was cramped already with Susie’s and the receptionist/secretary Andrea Deacon’s desks, two computer credenzas, an eight-foot couch, and several potted plants. Five oversized color prints of the Alpha Kat and the Kappa Kat in flight were mounted on the walnut-panelled walls.

  There were a few fights for possession of chairs. Most of the pilots leaned against the walls, and Sam Eddy McEntire sat in the middle of Andrea’s desk blotter, his legs crossed Indian-fashion.

  Kimball stood by the glass front door. “No problems with any of the air shows?”

  Sixteen negative responses.

  “Good.”

  McEntire grinned at him, but it was a sarcastic grin. Sam Eddy had never cared for Air Force briefings, and this was shaping up like one.

  “You guys each own five thousand shares of stock in the company,” Kimball said. That was about two percent each. McEntire owned twelve percent because of his rather dedicated and brilliant involvement with the engine designs. “It’s worth maybe a thousand dollars, if you could find anyone who wanted to buy it.”

  The morose faces told him they had been expecting something like this.

  “It’s not particularly undervalued because we’re showing about thirty-nine million dollars in assets and forty-five million in debt. If we could find someone willing to buy the assets.”

  By all that was true and fair, they should have been many more millions in debt. Nothing was cheap in this world, and a shoestring operation in aerospace technology just didn’t survive on less than a hundred million dollars. They had gotten this far only because everyone contributed heavily in expertise and reduced salaries.