“Maybe that’s why he was killed,” Tombstone said, suddenly both relieved and excited. “Maybe he figured out where the technology was going, and what for, so they murdered him.”
“That occurred to us,” his uncle said somberly. “We’re checking out the possibility.”
Tombstone suddenly sobered, too. “But… from what the DARPA kid told me, this bogey was years ahead of what we thought anyone else was capable of, never mind China. So even with the right parts, how could they…” He noticed that his uncle’s face looked grimmer than ever. “What?”
Tomboy spoke up. “Your bogey isn’t the only surprise the Chinese had for us. The aircraft that downed the Air Force jet was a completely unknown design, from all descriptions a flying wing with stealth characteristics. It’s got JCS worried.”
“A stealth plane?” Tombstone said numbly. “The Chinese have stealth, too?”
As he listened to Tomboy describe what little was currently known about the mystery bogey in Hong Kong, Tombstone felt himself tensing. Although stealth technology was largely an Air Force game, Tombstone had a good understanding of it. Most people, including some in the military and most in politics, had the right idea about stealth. To them, it seemed like a clever but otherwise innocuous idea, and prohibitively expensive. But that wasn’t the case at all. From a military standpoint, stealth was at once the most important and most extraordinarily successful technological development in decades.
The original goal of stealth was simple and realistic. It wasn’t to make an invisible airplane, or even one completely transparent to radar; no one expected that. The problem was that radar installations were relatively cheap to build, upgrade and maintain, while bombers were expensive to make, more expensive to improve upon, and most of all, expensive to lose. Imagine a bomber with the radar cross-section of a goose or an eagle. Imagine how deeply such an aircraft could infiltrate before AA noticed it.
This was the Pentagon’s dream when, in 1975, they funded Project Harvey — named after the invisible rabbit — to fund research into the problem. In the end, Northrop and Lockheed each presented DARPA with a wooden mock-up of its design, to be tested head-to-head at the Gray Butte radar cross-section test site. The Northrup model created quite a stir: To radar, it was no bigger than a pigeon, DARPA’s dreams exceeded. Then came the Lockheed entry, nicknamed “Hopeless Diamond,” which didn’t even look like it could fly. It was bathed in radar waves… and nothing happened. Nothing at all. In fact, according to legend, the model produced its first return only when a crow landed on it.
The battle for technological advantage in military applications is usually measured in tiny evolutionary steps. Relatively speaking, with the creation of what would become known as the F/A-117 Stealth Fighter, the United States had just stepped from the Stone Age directly into the Space Age. A stealth plane could fly over your headquarters and release a precision-guided bomb before you even knew you were in trouble. No other country was close to finding a way to combat this menace, far less produce a counter-menace of their own.
At least, that had been the belief. Until now.
Tombstone was so busy contemplating the ramifications of this information that he almost missed Tomboy’s next words: “That’s why I’m going to China. They want to see if I can get more information on this plane, maybe even get a glimpse of it. We’ve got to know more about it.”
Tombstone scowled. “This doesn’t make any sense. Okay, the Chinese could have stolen stealth technology; everybody knows it’s bound to leak out sooner or later. But UAVs? I got the impression from DARPA that the best the U.S. has come up with so far are nice little recon drones.”
His uncle was shaking his head. Tombstone had never seen the man look so grim. “That’s what I thought, too, until my briefing today. The truth is, the UAV program in this country has been struggling uphill for all the wrong reasons. It’s not because the technology’s really that hard to develop, especially if you’re satisfied with only partial stealth capability. The guidance system used to be tough, but hell, one of today’s ordinary laptop computers has more processing power than the computer that runs the guidance system of the entire space shuttle. The UAV program lags for one reason only: money.”
“Well, I understand new technology is expensive to develop, but — ”
“Virtually all of China’s GNP gets squeezed through a single pipeline,” his uncle went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “That’s the Communist way, of course. No matter where the money comes from or who generates it, it gets divvied up by the government, no arguments allowed.
“In the U.S., it’s obviously a different matter. Here, everybody argues. You’ve been in the Pentagon long enough to know what I mean about bickering. The Army fights for funding with the Navy, who fights with the Air Force. The technology guys fight with the grunts-in-the-mud types, and taxpayers fight with Washington over the whole thing. And underneath it all you’ve got politics. Remember what happened with Arsenal.”
Tombstone grimaced. “Don’t remind me.” Arsenal had been the Navy’s newest creation, essentially a floating weapons barge stuck inside a Navy hull and capable of doing battle almost entirely by remote control. When things flared up with Cuba, the president of the United States himself had tried to utilize the ship in just that way, with predictably disastrous results.
“The Arsenal mess wasn’t just about Washington micro-managing a battle,” his uncle said, as if reading his mind. Maybe he was reading his mind. After all, they were both Magruders. “Remember, a senator from the state where Arsenal was built played a big part in the whole fiasco.”
Tombstone nodded. “He figured his state would get rich building ships like Arsenal for the navy, if the prototype proved herself in battle.”
“Exactly.”
“But I don’t see how that applies here. You just said China doesn’t have the same financial entanglements.”
“Which is why they could be building UAVs,” his uncle said.
“Whoa. I hate to sound stupid, but — ”
“Look at it this way, sweetheart,” Tomboy said. “A brand-new Tomcat ain’t cheap and B-2s are over two billion each. A UAV? Maybe a quarter-mil; you get three for the price of a single Tomahawk. Sounds good, right? Nice and cost-effective. Now think about it from the perspective of a senator lobbying for defense contracting dollars for his state. You’ve got thousands of voters on welfare, on unemployment. Are you going to grab for the B-2 contract, or the UAVs?”
“Wait.” Tombstone held up a hand. “You mean to tell me we’d be developing and using more UAVs ourselves… except they don’t cost enough?”
His uncle gave him a grim smile. “And you always thought it was because you and your fellow aviators were irreplacable, didn’t you?”
Tombstone sat silently for a moment, trying to reconstruct his whole image of his life, and what it was all about. Finally he tightened his jaw. “Look, if you’re going to send Tomboy out there as an expert, you ought to send me, too. I’m the expert on Chinese UAVs.”
His uncle shook his head. “Sorry. We don’t need you on the carrier. We need you somewhere else. But this is a volunteer job, Matthew. Not up your normal alley at all.”
“Pardon?”
“Earlier, you mentioned that Phillip McIntyre’s death might have been related in some way to his business, and from there to the UAV. Since Phil’s not around to talk to, we need to ask someone else about that. Unfortunately his headquarters is in Hong Kong, so we have no authority to go in and simply start demanding information. But one of his top executives survived the Lady of Leisure massacre. He’s in Hong Kong right now, and evidently he’s frightened for his life, and a bit difficult to reach. We need someone he might trust to go speak with him. You’re the closest thing Phillip’s got to a son, so the employee should trust you. I wish I could go instead, but I can’t, not with the way things are over there right now. I’m needed in Washington.”