Senator Worth reached out and tapped the screen. “There it is!”
“I’m afraid not, sir. That’s a United 767 in-bound for Salt Lake City, Senator,” the Marine major told him. “Oh.”
For a Marine, the major was fairly diplomatic, Brackman thought.
Brackman headed a strange organization. Though it was in the Air Force section of the Department of Defense’s chart, the Space Command was staffed by members of all the services. His priority had always been to obtain the best-qualified people, regardless of the service branch, and his headquarters corridors and offices were filled with inconsistent uniforms. A rear admiral headed his administrative section, and an Army colonel, who probably should have been making millions in the Silicon Valley, ran the tightest computer ship in the industry.
Through the porthole beside his seat, Brackman saw mountains, forests, a few wispy clouds, and a bright blue sky. He kept checking the direction of the sun.
Marian Anderson gave up on the radar and came back to take the seat across the aisle from him. She was twenty years his junior and thin enough to be emaciated. Her cheeks had a hollow quality to them, and Brackman sometimes thought that her eyes appeared just as hollow. She wore a dark gray skirted business suit and high heels.
“Your pilot has probably missed the rendezvous,” she said.
“Colonel McKenna doesn’t miss a rendezvous, Congresswoman”
“There’s always a first time”
“Oh, he’s out there, somewhere,” Brackman insisted.
He had grabbed McKenna out of the test program at Edwards almost six years before and put him in command of the 1st Aerospace Squadron, and he had yet to be disappointed by the decision. McKenna’s grasp on protocol and regulations was a little loose at times, but the results were more than satisfactory.
She waved her hand at the console. “I believe you when you say we aren’t going to see him on the radar.”
“Thank you. That’s why we’re giving this little demonstration during the day. So you’ll see the MakoShark with your eyes. I wouldn’t want you to think we’d try to fake it.”
“I think it’s pretty much a waste of time, General. The cost-benefit ratio of this program just doesn’t add up.”
“Today, maybe,” Brackman admitted. “But, Congress-woman, I’m trying to think twenty years down the road. For reasons of self-preservation, I wouldn’t admit this to Strategic Air Command or Tactical Air Command people, but can you imagine an Air Force composed primarily of, say, six MakoShark squadrons?”
She pursed her lips. “No SAC? No TAC?”
“As I say, I wouldn’t mention it out loud.”
“Six squadrons?”
“Fifty MakoSharks.”
“To do the job of the thousands of aircraft and pilots you now have?”
“The MakoShark has air superiority, air defense, and attack capability. We’re combining mission performance with this machine,” Brackman said. “I’m trying to be longsighted, but it requires a continuing program of build-up and replacement. I believe your cost-benefit analysis might change in light of that philosophy.”
“Do Mays and Cross know about this… philosophy?” General Harvey Mays was the Air Force chief of staff, and Admiral Hannibal Cross was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I have not discussed the concept with either of them. All I’m saying is that it’s something to think about.”
“You see Congress as being shortsighted, General?”
“I think Congress is sincere,” he sidestepped.
“There are hungry people out there. And people who need homes.”
“I know that, Miss Anderson.”
Senator Alvin Worth and David Thorpe came back and took seats. Worth was an unkempt, homey, oversized legislator, reminiscent of Everett Dirkson in some ways. His longish hair was gray and rumpled, and his eyes were blue and direct. He was a strong contrast to the natty and meticulous Thorpe whose appearance reflected his precise and analytical mind.
“We might as well head back to the Springs,” Worth said. “This demo has already proven what I thought it would.”
“I don’t think so, Senator,” Thorpe told him. “I’d keep an eye on the sun. That’s where it’ll come from.”
Brackman’s spine itched suddenly as the chilling thought passed through his mind that McKenna and Munoz could eliminate a hell of a lot of Congressional opposition to their primary love with one Wasp missile. That they might also lose their favorite flag officer and most endearing commander might not mean much.
He leaned against the fuselage side and peered through his window toward the descending sun.
The overhead speakers abruptly blared. “BANG! BANG! Splash one Citation.”
“What! Where…?” Worth exclaimed.
Brackman searched the skies.
No MakoShark.
He glanced down.
And there was Delta Blue, just below the Cessna’s wingtip.
Flying inverted.
An upside-down Tony Munoz waved at them.
McKenna rolled upright and took up a station a few feet off the wing so that the VIPs could look them over.
At 100 feet, the MakoShark was over twice the length of the Citation, and her 60-foot wingspan was 13 feet greater than the Cessna’s.
The MakoShark’s parents were SR-71 Blackbirds, but the Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Boeing, Hughes, and Rockwell design team had gone far beyond the 1964 design of the Blackbird.
The MakoShark was delta-winged like the SR-71, with an elongated fuselage that appeared flattened because of the chines along the side of the narrowing forward fuselage which finally blended in with the wings.
Unlike the Blackbird, she did not have rudders. The wingtips canted upward at seventy-degree angles, leaning outward, to serve as rudders. The engine and motor nacelles were elongated rectangles with rounded edges, rather than cylindrical, and the wing appeared to pass through them. At the bottom of the wing’s leading edge, the nacelle curved upward to its opening. Jutting out of the opening was the ramjet cone which was not actually a cone, as on the SR-71s, but a very wide and flexible triangular piece.
The trailing edge of the delta wing was curved, and contained the oversized flaps, elevators, ailerons, and trim tabs. Every surface was finished in the deep midnight blue paint that made the MakoShark disappear into the night a hundred yards from an observer. In appropriate locations near control surfaces were the tiny exhaust nozzles of the thruster system. The thrusters were utilized where the atmosphere was rarefied and the craft’s attitude unaffected by the movement of control surface. The surface finish was as smooth as silk. There were no exposed rivets; every joint was bonded.
There were also no insignia or aircraft numbers identifying the craft. Brackman supposed he would get a comment from Worth or Anderson about the clandestine appearance: Spy plane.
He glanced at the congressional representatives, but despite their earlier skepticism, they now seemed enraptured. Anderson had crossed the cabin to the seat behind Brackman’s and had her nose pressed against the porthole. Brackman was reminded of kids at Christmas outside the toy store.
Thorpe gave him a grin, and Brackman returned his attention to Delta Blue.
The cockpits were located just behind the needle nose, and the tandem canopies were flush with the lines of the fuselage. The technician-accessible compartment containing the bulk of the avionics and the computers was aft of the cockpits. Behind that compartment was the payload bay, then the primary JP7 fuel tanks for the jet engines in the remainder of the tapering fuselage.