Read Online Tomahawk by David Poyer - Free Book Online

already.I’m putting Litton on the guidance. And as of next week, I’m putting an RFP on the street for a second airframe production line.”
    â€œSir, the government paid for development of this missile. You have every right to buy it from whomever you want. But we designed it. We’ve fought through problem after problem. We have a proprietary interest—”
    â€œBullshit,” said Niles. “You nailed it the first time: I have every right, and I’ m going to exercise it. This is not Convair’s missile. It’s not the Navy’s missile. This is
my _
missile now. The minute I qualify a second source, you’re going to turn over every document, every piece of engineering software, and specs on every piece of tooling. If you hold out on me, I’ll cut you out of the list of competitors for every buy downstream till the end of next century.”
    The engineers and executives looked at the ceiling. Niles glared around once more, like Thor facing a circle of trolls, then slowly sat down, folding his beefy arms.

    Niles and Larramore disappeared after the opening meeting. The rest of the conferees broke into subgroups: missile, weapons control, launch systems. There was lots of sitting around while the engineers haggled over bit streams. Dan split his time between the launch systems group and the weapons control group. If he could get enough boxes built somehow, get them on the ship, and get the targeting and launch system debugged by next June, hell, he’d have to find someplace to sacrifice a calf.
    After a cafeteria lunch, they headed over to tour the production line. It was a quarter-mile walk in the brilliant California sunshine. A fresh wind smelled of the sea, and Dan yearned for it. The open sea, free of all politicking and moneymaking. What the hell was he doing ashore, anyway?
    Then he remembered. To decide what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
    The hangar doors yawned, and he joined a queue for hard hats with the Convair/General Dynamics emblem.
    Far above, girders webbed the underside of light-admitting panels. The distant rattle of air-driven toolsmerged with the whine of electric motors. He’d expected clamor, shouting, but the first thing he noticed was the quiet. He followed the group, then rejoined them as they spread themselves around something at the end of the line. He knew its dimensions by heart, yet somehow it was smaller than he’d expected.
    The first assembled Tomahawk he’d ever seen was as long as a full-sized car, yet no bigger around than a woman’s waist. As he trailed his fingertips over cool painted metal, over plastic inserts that faired rivets and accesses into air-cheating smoothness, a chill ran up his back.
    â€œBeautiful,” said the guidance engineer, running her hand across the outer edge of the wing, and Dan thought, It isn’t just a guy thing, then. This perception of beauty in an instrument of death. He’d felt it before, admiring the raked lines of a destroyer, the half-submerged deadliness of a submarine.
    For a moment, he looked back through an endless hall lined with armor and floored with bloody straw, where warriors caroused as the bard howled the paean to destruction. How many weapons—swords, spears, guns, knives, aircraft, bombs—Man had made, and all but worshiped before. Now it was missiles; and someday soon, it would be lasers, burning through the atmosphere like lightning drawn with a ruler. And his weapons had made him, refashioned him from a frightened plains ape to master of the planet.
    And here they stood, gathered around the newest idol to frighten the tribe in the next valley.
    The cart whirred and moved past them, and another cart and another missile took its place.

    He and Burdette drove Niles back to the airport after the meeting. The admiral didn’t say anything, just stared out the window. Dan contemplated wiry black hair salt-and-peppered with gray. What