Chapter 04

Riding in the buses back to the airport, I asked Mike, “Do you think we went a little over the top with things?”

“Other than whether they’re going to run the whole tape or not, not really. The ladies were all elegant and well spoken and did a great job of explaining your unconventional marriage. I thought it was funny when Sayel cut the golf ball in half in your hand when they weren’t expecting it, and it made for some really great television when you did the same while Johnny and Ed were both holding one out.”

“I thought they were both going to pee themselves, but that’s something they’ll remember for a long time. I bet it helped make up for how scared they were with getting the donation to the John W Carson Foundation.”

“Definitely. All in all, I think it was good television. But what the hell do I know? That’s Marcia’s gig.” He looked out the window. “I’m going to be busy these next few days. Can you at least try to stay out of trouble?”

“Of course, I can try...”

We made it back home just in time to actually watch the show that night with the kids. I was pleased that the phone didn’t ring at all that night, allowing us to rest and get some extra snuggle time in, once the kids went to bed.

It did ring the next morning, but it was simply security letting me know that NASA Ames would like me to come by as soon as I could.

I found out why when we got there.

“Thank you for coming in, Cal, Dora,” Virginia Valenzuela said. “We recovered the pieces that were ejected by the shuttle from the desert. It’s funny how orbital mechanics works, things sort of land where you expect them to land. We had two spotter aircraft up to make sure, but everything was expected to land within a five minute period and did.”

“Very good,” I replied. “How’d we do?”

“Here’s the video from one of the spotter planes. You can see the fireball in the atmosphere from the first one. It appeared to burn up at about fifteen miles up. Second one burned up at ten miles. Then, here are the craters in the desert floor from the other four, each a little more than a couple of miles apart. That was good aiming on your part, so I’m guessing this wasn’t your first time planning a reentry.”

“Definitely not, no. It looks like the craters are all about two meters in diameter in the video.”

“A little less, for each of them.” She snorted. “The ground team was so damned excited that they actually had something to measure, they forgot they were in the desert. They got stuck in the sand. Anyway, here they are.” She led us over to a table that had a sheet draped over it.

“From left to right, we have two coats, aluminum and steel, and four coats, aluminum and steel.” She pulled the sheet off. I picked up the aluminum with two coats, while Dora picked up the steel. There were burn marks on the edges of both, with slight deformation of the panels. I switched with Dora.

“Well, it’s better than nothing. I think the atmospheric buffeting must’ve been more than enough with the internally raised temperature to cause this deformation,” I said.

Dora agreed. “Yes, you can see how the drag caused tumbling here, so this one was actually going through the air almost like a pinwheel. See how the machined edges are rounded?”

We put them back, then picked up the other pieces, that had four coats on them. “I wasn’t expecting that. Look, here on this piece. You can see where the protective coating actually acted almost like an ablative, especially here on the edges,” I pointed.

“Yes, but it never ... here, put it under the microscope,” Dora said. “See, it didn’t actually burn through any of the layers.”

I pitched my voice low, so only she could hear. “Thanks, I was just using my vision.”

“De nada, mi amor.”

“What do you think, Virginia?” I asked.

“I think ... we’re still going to use tiles, and this needs more experiments. However, we’ve already sent some of your assistants to Florida and they’re working on putting the first coat onto Challenger. This is going to make one hell of a difference from a safety perspective. We’ve already started stripping the tiles from the other three shuttles. The Soviets have decided to simply keep the Buran in a hanger at Baikonur and strip the tiles from her, so they can put Heat-X on the craft itself under the tiles before they actually launch her. Their whole boost system is designed to be reusable, and someone got the fear of God put into them, so we’re going to see how difficult it would be for us to use their Energia. While we’re both doing that, the ESA is working with both of us on optimizing their launch facility in French Guiana, since that’s actually the best place to launch supplies for our new joint space station.”

“That seems like a nice thing, cooperating instead of competing,” I said.

“Everyone here watched the news from Geneva. We were all warned barely half an hour beforehand last night to stay up and watch Johnny Carson. We all know you, know your ladies,” she said, giving a nod to Dora. “I ... haven’t talked with the rest of the staff here about this, but ... I called Kansas earlier this week. I talked to Esmeralda, I talked to Sophia, and I spoke to some more of the family. You are the Guardian. Neither Finley nor Justin know what that really means. I will help guide them to make the right decisions, the ones that you decide for all of us here. Not just at NASA, but for all of Earth.”

Since we’d gotten out of the house so early, I drove us from the lab past the commissary to the Space Bar and Grill for a sandwich. While we were there, Chuck got a call on his radio, asking where we were. He told dispatch; Mary and Dave came in about fifteen minutes later.

“We’re glad you’re handy, Cal. Things are running a little ahead of schedule,” Mary said.

“Okay, well, I suppose that’s good. Whatever it is.” That got a laugh.

“Come on, let’s go,” Mary grinned.

I drove, following Dave’s Suburban onto Macon Road and around the end of the runways. We went up past the California Air National Guard headquarters, to the far eastern side of the airfield. He turned down a road that headed towards Hangars Two and Three, so I followed him. Both hangar’s doors were open, with a couple of our helicopters sitting outside.

“About time you bothered to show up for something,” I heard as soon as I shut the car off.

“Oh, lord, what kind of mechanical mayhem have you gotten into this time, Wally?”

“Don’t look at me, this is all your doing. It’s not bad enough that I’ve got a full time aircraft repair and maintenance facility set up in Oklahoma, but now I’ve got to do the same thing here!”

I looked into the shadows inside. “Do I even want to know how many C-130s we have?”

“Enough that I’m seriously wondering if the US has any left in inventory. We’ve got four KC-130s now, with one still set up as a tanker only, to refuel some of your other helicopters if need be. The Saudi C-130H is being overhauled now, we have four more C-130H models, and two AC-130 Spectres. Why exactly we have two fully armed gunships I don’t know, but I’m sure you have your reasons, just like we now have six Cobras and four Apaches. Fully armed up, by the way. Those are all stationed here as well. I’m supposed to get three KC-135s and a KC-10 from Tinker to be stationed at Vance for your use, too.” He spat on the ground. “But that’s not why we’re here today, is it?”

“Actually, I have no idea why I’m here, other than Mary tracked me down.”

He glanced down at his watch. “Then I suppose you ought to follow me over here.” With that, he strolled to the west side of Hangar Two. “They’re further away than they look, but that’s the nice part of having the runways end right at the Bay.”

There were two sets of bright landing lights coming in from the northwest. “Are those our new planes?”

“Yep.” He spit again, and I realized he had chewing tobacco in his mouth. “I don’t know if you can tell, but they’re set up for each runway, with two miles of separation between them. If they were coming in on the same runway, they’d have to be six miles apart.”

I stood next to him, just watching as first one, then a second, Boeing 747 came in for a landing. I saw as their noses came up that they both had the Salthawk painted on the underside of the belly and wings, with a very light blue background. When they landed and rolled by, the line of light blue coming up the side stopped, with a line of Cardinal red going halfway up the doors and windows, with a white line above that. The top was also a light blue like the underside. The rudders were painted with a giant globe. I noticed they were different, with one centered on the Atlantic Ocean while the other plane’s rudder painting was centered on the Pacific. Bright yellow lettering read ‘SALTHAWK’ on either side of the fuselage of both aircraft.

“You do get some pretty aircraft, boss.”

“Thanks. I’m confused about something.”

“What else is new?”

“I do have that reputation with everyone, don’t I? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t these both 747-200B models?”

“No, you’re right. Technically, they’re 747-200B SUD models, meaning stretched upper deck. Externally, you can’t tell the difference between these and the new 747-300, since they both can use the same engines. Internally, the 200 still has the spiral staircase, while the 300 now has a regular staircase. Either way, we have twenty-three more feet on the top deck. Performance is nearly identical. From my maintenance perspective, no big deal. From your perspective as the owner, these were less expensive.”

The ground crews brought both planes over to spots in front of Hangar Two.

“Let me guess. Someone decided that this would be the perfect hangar for our airplanes.”

Mary had joined us, watching the ladder truck pull up.

“You don’t have a problem with this, do you, Cal?” I could hear concern in her voice.

“Not really. I knew Salthawk One was going to be too small. While we were leasing the 747 from Boeing, I could at least pretend that we weren’t getting too big. This ... this is a slap of cold reality.”

I recognized our pilots getting off the planes, as well as SJ and Ramona coming down from the one on the right. I felt a presence behind me, and turned to see that most of my women had joined me.

“Margie, I think he may have an invoice or two for you,” I joked.

“Nope. We already paid both of these off, so we own them, free and clear. The only thing we have to pay for is maintenance supplies and wear items, like tires. Of course, changing a set of tires on one of these things is about thirty thousand dollars, and engines are almost a million bucks apiece, so all things are relative.”

Everyone started climbing the stairs, so they could go tour the airplanes. I saw Cassandra walking around the front tires and went over to her. “Feeling like a bus driver now?”

“No. Not really. Just ... realizing something. Mary and I, we’ve been together for more than a dozen years now. I know we took you by surprise when we modeled for Sports Illustrated, but we’ve both stayed in shape. Somehow or other, even with there first being four of us, then six, and now more than fifty pilots working for you, Mary and I have pretty much ended up becoming your personal pilots. It’s not a bad thing, we’ve had to add a few flight engineers to the staff because until they go glass cockpit, you can’t fly one of these with just two people.” She paused, looking out over the bay.

I quietly asked, “Cass, what’s really bothering you?”

“I like this, you know. The flying you all over the world, being a part of history as your pilot. Literally watching you make history. Thing is ... I told Marcia something when we were flying your family to Disney that the more I’m around your family, the more it’s eating me up inside.”

“You’re saying that wrong, Cass.”

“What?” She threw me a sharp look.

“It’s not ‘your’ family, it’s ‘our’ family. You, Mary, Greg, Nate, Wally, Joel ... you don’t just work for me, you’re part of my family. I’m known for being dense about a lot of things, but I would have hoped you’d know that by now.”

“Sort of. That’s what makes this tough. Mary and I both have talked, and we want something, we’d like to have something, but we’re not sure how to go about it.”

“Do you want me to see what I can do? You know that Cally and Cristian were created in labs, so do you want me to do that for you?”

“No, we don’t. Thank you, but ... we’d both like to have your baby, but...”

“Without me being involved, as it were, since neither of you is bi-sexual. That’s not exactly something I can just give you an immediate answer to right now. However, she can,” I said, as Beth had joined us.

“With the clarification that you and your wife will remain and be considered part of our family, we agree. We’ll figure something out, so you two can figure out if you want to be knocked up at the same time, or sequentially, or whatever. As much as I don’t want to go there, we’ll have to get lawyers involved, simply to deal with paternity issues in advance. But that’s something relatively simple, Cassandra. You and Mary are a lucky couple.”

“Thank you, Beth. I ... I appreciate that.” She let out a big sigh. “That’s ... well, that’s one hell of a load off my mind. We’ve both been around you all enough that, if there were the slightest bit of actual attraction, we’d just ask for things normally.”

“Hey, I said we’d work things out. Now, how about you show your boss his and your new toys?” Beth suggested.

Giving a little cough, Cassandra said, “Right. Okay, we’ll start here on the outside. As you’re an engineering student, you’ll appreciate the performance difference. The engines on the leased 747 are Pratt Whitney JT79D-7AHs, which have max thrust of just over forty-six thousand pound feet. They are also six years old. These are brand new Rolls Royce RB211-524D engines, capable of nearly fifty-three thousand pound feet of thrust, with better fuel economy. We do have military grade flare and chaff launchers installed on both planes here in the back, to assist in the event of heat-seeking missiles and to help with breaking radar lock. Obviously, with these being our planes, we wanted our traditional logo on the bottom. This plane has the Atlantic Ocean as the center on the rudder, the other has the Pacific Ocean. If you’ll follow me up the stairs...” I did so.

“The Atlantic is your personal flagship. From the port entrance forward is your personal suite. What that means is we’ve got a bed in there big enough for six to eight, plus a shower for four, and toilets for two. Between this entrance and the forward wing entrance is your wardrobe area, an office, and twelve seats configured in a lounge type arrangement. Let’s go up the stairs here. From the upper doors forward is crew area. We have four seats that recline into beds on this side, two fold-out beds on that side, storage for our personal items, and then a large bathroom and a small shower. Shut this door and we’re in our own area. That leaves us room for a couch wide enough for eight on this side, seating for four with a game table in between and then four additional seats on that side. There is a lavatory here, and a galley for crew meals and snacks behind the stairs.

“Coming back downstairs, here’s where things really make a difference. Salthawk One has a total length of one hundred feet, and cabin width of eleven and a half feet. These planes are two hundred thirty-one feet long, with cabin width of effectively twenty feet. So, in this section, we have a full galley on the starboard side, capable of actually making fresh meals, with seating for sixteen here on the port. I know you’ve traveled commercial, so you know what first class seats are. These are slightly larger, and definitely more comfortable. There are also four oversized lavatories here, to help with changing babies.

“This next section has seating for twelve on the port and starboard sides, and the middle section has walls to be a nursery, complete with cribs and remote monitoring. This is also the survival section for your family. It’s reinforced, has its own air supply, and in the event of plane loss at altitude, also is equipped to be jettisoned, with parachutes for the entire section. Here in the rear section, we have additional seating for twenty-four more people plus two couches. In the very rear we have four lavatories, and two very small showers. We also have access in both front and rear to the lower deck and cargo decks, if need be. You remember how we had to fight to get your motorcycles under Salthawk One?”

“Yeah, that was a tight fit.”

“Front and rear cargo doors are one oh four by sixty-six. We could put all of your Porsche 911s in the basement and not even know it. I’d prefer not to, but what this basically means is we have an aircraft designed to carry a hundred fifty thousand pounds of cargo ... people ... sixty-four hundred miles. That means unless something strange is going on, we’re going to be at least fifty tons light every liftoff, probably more. That’s figuring five hundred pounds for each passenger and their luggage. Probably a little less than that, because I know your security team, and we’ll probably carry a couple of jeeps in the cargo bay with machine gun mounts on them, because they’re paranoid.”

“Well, I do pay them to be like that, after all.”

“True. Okay, let’s go check out Pacific.” We walked back out and crossed over to the other 747. “Okay, forward cabin bed still sleeps six to eight, the rest of your area is the same, stretched upper deck is the same. Midsection is designed to seat forty, next section is the same, and rear section is designed to seat sixty. Both planes have the same lavatories for the middle class and steerage passengers. Biggest difference is the galley on Pacific is just regular airplane food. No cooking fresh meals. She’s designed to carry fifty more people than Atlantic.”

I frowned. “So, why the difference? I mean, I know it had to cost probably another twenty million per aircraft for the upgrades, but why not make them both the same?”

“That’s on us,” Chuck had been casually following me around. “Atlantic is for going to friendly places. Staying here in the US, going to England, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, or China, for example. Pacific is for going to places we’re not quite as sure about what your reception is going to be, which means the back sixty seats are for troops.”

I plopped down in one of the seats. “Huh, even these are pretty nice. You’re annoying, Chuck, especially when you’re right. I’m surprised you haven’t put in a bid for one that can be a regular troop hauler.”

“We did. It’s going to cost another forty million for that one. It’s a regular 747-200M, without the stretched upper deck, that we’re buying from Lufthansa. It’ll carry two hundred troops and twenty-five tons of gear on the main deck. We’re working on a hoist system with counterweights, so we can offload our jeeps without being dependent upon ground support. That’s one we hope we don’t ever have to use, because if she’s in use, we’re probably going to have gunships providing covering fire, too.”

“Wally said something about getting some KC-135 tankers, that’d get the Spectres the fuel they need to get ... wherever, wouldn’t it?”

Cassandra looked over at me and snorted. “This is almost funny. I served sixteen years in the Air Force, and now that I’m out, I’m potentially closer to combat operations than I ever was while in uniform.”

“Oh, you’re in uniform, Cass. It’s the CEDEM one, whatever it turns out to look like. Remember, you’re the one that used our call sign taking off from Geneva. I’m the one that’s third in line for the Federation leadership, not my wives. They’re fourth.”

“Shit, I didn’t know that.” She glanced over at Beth, who was leaning against one of the seats with a huge grin on her face. “How the hell do you keep up, or put up, with him?”

“It’s interesting, I’ll tell you that. Come on, I’m sure Wally wants to get these birds into Hangar Two, so he can go over them with a fine toothed comb and make sure the Boeing engineers did everything right,” Beth said.

We went back down, where Wally had a tug waiting to pull each plane in. Ramona and SJ joined us in going back to our house, where most of the girls talked to Ramona about their upcoming marriage. Margie, SJ, and I went off to one of the other rooms to discuss additional business.

“Should I be worried that you’ve actually got a briefcase?” I asked SJ.

“It wouldn’t do to simply carry this sort of stuff in a school backpack. It projects the wrong image, after all,” he said with a grin. He opened the briefcase and pulled out a folded up map. It took up nearly our entire coffee table when he stretched it out.

SJ showed he’d been paying attention in school with a plan for the next year, the next three years, and the next five years for the Salthawk Private Transportation Company. He’d added in regular commuter flights for many of our planes, as well as regular air freight. We wouldn’t be trying to compete with the main carriers, we’d be primarily handling our own items, which meant we didn’t have to pay anyone else, simply deal with billing internally.

Something I wasn’t expecting to see was other modes of transportation on the three and five year plans.

“SJ, this looks like you’ve got our own trucking distribution centers on the three year plan, and you’ve got four shipping terminals on the five year plan. I thought we weren’t going to be competing with the big carriers?”

“We’re not. They’re going to handle general freight for the rest of the nation, and our own trucks and ships will handle our freight. We’ll still use the regular rail networks for getting finished products from the factories to our own distribution centers. This is for Siemens, Ice-X, and Heat-X, plus shipping Cisco and Microsoft hardware as well. Allen was telling me the engineers had to do some final reworking on our production model of the big turbines, but it’s all figured out.”

I frowned. “Did I screw something up?”

“No, it’s our infrastructure. There’s an old joke that our railroad track width is based upon something the Romans did, so it’s the width of two horses’ asses. It’s not really true, it’s more that form follows function. The big turbines are ten feet tall and twenty feet wide. They had to figure out how to stand them on their side for shipping via rail, because freight cars have a maximum extreme width of ten feet, six inches, and twenty feet, two inches for maximum extreme height. So there’s a few things that have to be installed on the final job site. We’ll use specialized freight cars to get the ones that are being shipped overseas to Houston, San Diego, or Tacoma. We’ll also use specialized tractor-trailer combinations for road transport. The weight isn’t the big thing. Once we move them via road, we’ll have to be transporting them in their installation position, so the final highway load will be about eighteen feet wide.”

Margie grimaced. “That’s a lot of special permits and extra cost.”

“On a per unit basis, not that much,” SJ said. “You may not remember, but you bought a couple of sections of land closer to Wichita and Kansas City.”

“I remember that was something to look at, before things got too crazy,” I said.

Margie smiled. “We did. We own land in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Well, our energy group does, anyway. That way they get to make the blades and the towers for the wind turbines that they’re going to end up buying to produce the energy for their customers.”

“Okay. I haven’t gotten into monopoly law yet, but if we’re not breaking too many rules and laws, then let’s keep things rolling.”

Margie smiled at me. “You have learned, haven’t you? Good. SJ, just for the overview, would you explain why the cargo ships?”

“Sure. The turbines are too big to fit into anything vaguely resembling a shipping container, so we have our own cargo ships that can carry – and have cranes and such for offloading at places that don’t have them – wind turbines, towers, blades, and your nuclear reactors. The cargo ships can also carry the tractor-trailer combinations that will be needed to actually haul everything, and can even carry the cement and a front-end loader to dig the pit for the tower installation.”

“What about cranes to put the towers and turbines up?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re not going to need those. Keep in mind this stuff is all in the two to three years out range. We’re going to have support ships helping with that. The Soviet Union is giving us – meaning they don’t want to pay for their maintenance and crews – five ships, and also selling us twenty Mi-26 heavy lift choppers. It’ll take us a year to get the ships refitted for our use, anyway, and then we’ll be good to go.”

“That sounds like those are ships that can handle helicopters. What are they?”

He pulled out a list. “Let’s see here. Moskva and Leningrad are the two smaller ships, and Kiev, Minsk, and Novorossiysk are the bigger ones. The two smaller ones are helicopter carriers, and can carry two Mi-26s, since those are actually longer than Salthawk One. The three bigger are aircraft cruisers, so they’ll be able to handle additional choppers, even if they can’t get the Mi-26s below decks.”

I sarcastically asked, “What are they going to do, give us some of the Yak-38 VTOL fighters, too?”

“About sixty or seventy of those.” SJ shrugged. “They figure they’re not going to need them, so they’re selling or giving us all this hardware at pennies on the dollar.” He looked around for a second, to see who was listening.

“We’re alone, SJ. Ramona is four buildings away, getting fashion tips from Diana,” Margie said.

“Okay. Mike Douglas has been talking with me. Even if we end up scrapping stuff later, we’re going to take anything and everything that any country in the world wants to give or sell to us, as long as it’s reasonable. So long as it is not demilitarized, we don’t care. We’re going to hire a lot of military veterans from our country, and if some of the Soviet and Chinese troops want to stay and work for us, that’s fine, too. If we’re going to be a private military company, then we’re going to be the biggest and baddest PMC on the planet. The Soviets are probably going to dump all of the armor they shipped to South America on us, so that’s going to be about a thousand T-72s and a couple hundred T-80s. India is going to give Punjab about that same number of tanks, too. We’re having to pay attention, because Siemens has already worked out where to build a wind turbine factory there, and we want to make sure we have it protected.”

“What’s that old television show I’ve watched with you all? The Twilight Zone, right? Why do I feel like I’m actually in one of those episodes now?”

“Shit, Cal, you’re not the only one. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up one of these mornings and instead of Ramona snuggling with me, I’ll be in the hospital in Ramstein, and all of this will have just been a dream. It seems like I’m making multi-million dollar decisions every other day, while I’m still studying business at HCC. I have two offices, one at the airport and one in the office trailer, my fiancée works with me, and I have three other people that are all at least ten years older than I am that report to me on what they supervise. We’re sending two flights daily to Seattle for Microsoft, one to here for Cisco, we’ve added an airline cargo hub, eight different passenger flights on three different airlines, plus the charter flights to New York, Germany, Japan, China, Australia, the Soviet Union, and Saudi Arabia. I’m having the time of my life, because this shit is fun! I’m just sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop is all.”

Margie said in a gravelly voice, “And so, with that, your journey to the dark side is complete!” Then she made an evil laugh.

“Corrupted him you have. Your new padawan he is,” I said in a Yoda voice.

“My what?”

“Apprentice. It was in the novelization of the movie, and I read it in the library.”

“I like that. I shall follow your ways, Darth Margie.” All three of us laughed at that, then SJ gathered his things up so we could join everyone else for dinner.

Later on, when we were all resting in bed after some gentle loving, Margie asked, “Cal, what the hell are we doing?”

“I thought I was spooning up behind the woman that’s going to give birth to our son in about two months, while laying in bed with all of your sister-wives.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Oh, I know what you meant. I was just thinking that laying here, my arm under your head, our skin pressed against each other, while my other arm is laying on your belly and feeling our son stretch around inside you, isn’t normally the place we’d have this conversation.”

“Me, either.”

“Then don’t,” Beth spoke up. “Margie, we’re all having more and more things coming our way. Leave them at the bedroom door. This is our space, for loving our man, for loving each other.”