The only drawback to summer in Aspen was the lack of snow bunnies.
McKenna and Munoz had checked into separate rooms at the Aspen Inn at seven in the morning. McKenna slept until noon, and Munoz slept until three.
Then they idled around the swimming pool, absorbing the sun’s rays, watching the vacationing teachers, and drinking Bloody Marys. After two drinks, they switched to Bloody Marys that contained only the stalks of celery. In younger days, that weren’t too far behind him, McKenna had never counted his glasses or cans. Now, with unpredictable flying schedules, and especially with the MakoShark, he had fallen into a habit of moderation.
When they went out on the town like this, Maj. Tony Munoz stuck close to Col. Kevin McKenna because he didn’t have the same will power over Bloody Marys, Margaritas, and Johnny Walker.
Munoz was sitting in a canvas-webbed chair at a right angle to McKenna. The Arizonian was a tawny brown, with hard-ridged muscles lining his arms, legs, chest, and stomach. He had dark brown hair that matched his eyes and a smooth, almost round face that suggested that he did not have a care in the world. He didn’t.
The two of them had met when Capt. Anthony Munoz had been assigned for a year as a weapons system trainee in McKenna’s squadron. McKenna was a major then and had taken the WSO into the backseat of his F-4D. By the end of the year, the two of them took second place in their class in the Red Flag combat exercises out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. With a little finagling, they managed to get Munoz’s temporary duty converted to a permanent assignment.
“It is dark. You realize that, jefe?”
The sun had indeed dropped beyond the western peaks, leaving a nice blush of orange and red on the horizon, and the quick cooling of the mountains was raising goosebumps on McKenna’s chest. A few yellow lamps were lit around the pool, and the surface of the pool itself was lit from below with a soft, bluish tint that wavered from the action of a couple becoming amorous.
McKenna had become so accustomed to rapid changes in temperature that he hadn’t paid attention to the night falling. He only watched for the important things, like unaccompanied vacationing female teachers and secretaries harboring some thought of adventure.
Usually, he was able to attract one or two. At thirty-eight, he was in excellent shape, the stomach flat and hard, the 175 pounds just right for his six-foot frame and heavy bones, the black hair full, a trifle long, and slightly unkempt. His eyes were listed as green on his driver’s license, but actually slipped over into a light shade of gray. His eyes were extremely sharp, not missing much, especially hostile aircraft in otherwise empty-appearing skies. It was one of the reasons he had picked up the nickname, “Snake Eyes.” Another reason was his willingness to take a gamble, now and then. McKenna was an Air Force Academy engineering graduate who had planned on becoming a general. One star, at least. That ambition had eroded slightly after he learned to fly and found out that he was pretty good at it. Not many generals were allowed to fly as much as they would have liked. McKenna had had one tour with the Thunderbirds demonstration team, had flown as a test pilot out of Edwards Air Force Base, and had served as an instructor/liaison pilot in F-15 Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons for the Saudi and Israeli air forces, in addition to standard assignments with USAF wings. A lot of it was boring, and a lot of it was exciting. It got more exciting on the morning, five years before, when Gen. Marvin Brackman called him at the Bachelor Officer Quarters at Edwards.
“McKenna, a couple people I know said you could fly anything with wings.”
“Even if it’s only got half a wing left, General.”
“Would you rather make full colonel or fly?”
“I’ll fly,” McKenna had said.
“Maybe you’ll do both. By the time you get down to the flight line, I’ll have an F-15 cleared for you. I want you at Peterson by ten o’clock.”
It had been a short interview, and McKenna had not returned to Edwards.
“Hey, Kev. I mention it was gettin’ dark?”
“Yeah, Tony. You did.”
“We gonna sit here all goddamned night, lookin’ for what ain’t gonna appear?”
“I saw a couple possibles,” McKenna said.
“So did I. Holdin’ hands with friendly types.”
“Reluctantly, I’ll say today was a bust.”
“Me, I saw one of those, too. Coveted by her husband.”
“That leaves dinner, I suppose.”
“I’ve been known to eat,” Munoz said.
“Almost anything,” McKenna agreed.
They went up to their rooms to change into sport shirts and jeans, and then met in the lobby. Paring down the list of restaurants by flipping quarters, they ended up with a yuppie place called the Eager Angus, and took a cab out to it. The place was hanging ferns and brass and used brick and cozy nooks, but they got a window booth with a view of Buttermilk Mountain — when it could be seen — and someone had said the prime rib was “really, really” prime.
It was. An inch thick, and juicily rare, and covering an oversized platter. The baked potato melted when McKenna looked at it.
Munoz dribbled black pepper over everything — beef, salad, and potato.
“You think that’s good for you?”
“Hey, amigo. It’s the only damned thing the surgeon general hasn’t banned.”
Halfway through the meal, two young ladies were escorted to a table across the room, on the other side of an unlit, round fireplace full of orange trees.
“Oh shit, oh dear,” Munoz said. “I’m in love.”
McKenna turned to look. “With the blonde or the brunette?”
“Doesn’t matter. You get your quarter out, we flip.”
“Don’t gulp your food, Tony.”
Just before McKenna was ready to call his dinner complete, a waiter showed up at his elbow.
He looked up.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Colonel McKenna?”
“If I said no?”
“I’ll tell the caller to try somewhere else.”
“Ah, hell. I’d better not.”
McKenna got up and followed the waiter into the foyer and picked up the phone.
“McKenna.”
“Damn you, McKenna. I’ve been calling all over Aspen. I’ve made nineteen calls. You’re always, always supposed to leave word.”
“I’m having dinner. It’s very good.”
“We have to take off in an hour.”
“Not good,” he told her. “We’re just about to meet two lovely young ladies. Or perhaps you’d like to join us, Amy? Could be fun.”
“We’re leaving in an hour,” she insisted.
“No hurry. I figure about three A.M.”
“We have an assignment”
“Oh. Well, that’s different.”
The MakoShark was absolutely the most beautiful thing Maj. Wilbur Conover had ever seen. Its heritage was SR-71 Blackbird, but the air force’s design team — from Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Boeing, Hughes, and Rockwell — had gone far beyond a design that was twenty-years’ advanced for 1964, when the Blackbird first flew.
Like the Blackbird, the MakoShark was delta-winged, with a long, long fuselage, and flattened. Chines along the side of the narrowing forward fuselage gave it a visual pancake appearance.
The resemblance stopped there. She did not have rudders. Rather, the wing tips canted upward at seventy-degree angles, leaning outward, to serve as rudders. She did not have the cylindrical nacelles protecting her propulsion systems. The housings were elongated rectangles with rounded edges, and the wing appeared to pass through them. Forward, at the bottom of the wing, 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 now blocking the entire mouth of the nacelle. The turbofan engines were not in alignment with the intake, but raised above it, sucking their air supply from an upward-curving tunnel. The reason for that configuration was that spinning turbine blades were excellent radar reflectors. With the blades not directly behind the intake, the possibility for radar contact was reduced.