Free The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts Page B

“Let’s go meet the
crew.”
    Jake mentioned to the admiral that he had been looking at the
personnel folders. “Lieutenant Moravia. She’s got platinum cre-
dentials but no experience. How’d she get on the team?”
    “Strong wanted her. He was down at Pax River when she went
through as a student. He said she’s one of a kind. Since he was a
test pilot himself, I figured he had the experience even if she didn’t,
so I said okay.”
    “I’m not a test pilot,” Jake said.
    “I know. These people work for you. If you want someone else,
just say so. That goes for any of them, except for Fritsche. If they
stay it’s because you think they can do the job and you trust
them.”
    “I read you loud and clear, sir.”
    “Anybody doesn’t pull his weight, or you get goosey about any
of them, I’ll have them sitting on the ice cap in the Antarctic so
quick they wont have time to pack their long johns,”
    The office in Crystal City where the A-12 program team worked
was a square space with twenty metal desks jammed in. Five-
drawer filing cabinets with combination locks on the drawers had
been arranged to divide the room into work areas. The scarred tops
and askew drawers of the desks proclaimed them veterans of other
offices, other bureaucratic struggles now forgotten. Office equip-
ment was scattered all over the room: a dozen computer terminals,
four printers, a copy machine, a paper shredder, and a fax machine
linked to an encryption device. Jake’s office would be one of the
two small private offices. These two small offices each had an out-
side window and a blackboard, plus the usual filing cabinets with
combination locks on the drawers.
    But the security—wow! There were two entry doors, each with
cipher locks, and a closed-circuit television that monitored the
dead space between the doors. An armed security team was on
duty inside twenty-four hours a day. Their business was to check
each person entering the space against a master list and log them in
and out. The windows had the music sound vibrators and could
not be opened. The shades were permanently closed. The fire extin-
guisher system in the ceiling had plastic cutouts installed in the
pipes so that they would not conduct sound.
    “Every sheet of paper is numbered and accounted for,” the ad-
miral told Jake. “The phone numbers are unlisted and changed
monthly. I can never find my number sheet, so I end up walking
down here.”
    After a quick tour, Jake stood in the middle of the room with the
admiral. “Where’d they get this carpet?”
    “Stole it someplace. I never asked.”
    “Sure would be nice to get a little bigger space. Thirty people?”
    ‘This is all the space I have to give you. It takes the signature of
an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to get space not assigned to
NAVAIR, I haven’t had time to kiss his ass. But if you can get his
scrawl, go for it”
    “Nothing’s too good for the boys in navy blue,” Toad Tarking-
ton chirped cheerfully from his little desk against one wall, loud
enough to draw a frosty glance from the admiral.
    “You’re Tarkington?” Dunedin said.
    “Yessir.”
    “I hear you suffer from a mouth problem from time to time- If
it’s incurable your naval career is about to hit the wall. You read
me?”
    “Yessir.”
    Dunedin raised his voice. “Okay, folks. Gather around. I want
you to meet Captain Jake Grafton, the new program manager.
He’s your new boss.” Dunedin launched into a traditional “wel-
come aboard” speech. When he was finished Jake told the attentive
faces how pleased he was to be there, then he and the admiral
shook hands. After a quick whispered word with Fritsche, Dun-
edin left the office.
    Jake invited the commanders and civilian experts into his new
cubbyhole. It was a very tight fit. Folding chairs were packed in
and the place became stuffy in minutes. They filled him in on the
state of the project and their roles in it. Jake said nothing about his
visits with the admirals