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  The Grueling Trials,

  The Glittering Triumphs of Gold

  THE HEIR

  His blood isn’t Gold. But he’s determined to leave his stamp on a proud dynasty.

  THE SON

  He puts the company on a bold new path in the hotly competitive airline business. But he can lose it all in a shocking tragedy that threatens a vital partnership.

  THE FIGHTER CHIEF

  She’s a sky warrior, and all woman. But she stands between two rival brothers already bitterly divided.

  THE ACE

  Whether landbound or airborne, he’s always pushing the edge, soaring in one last combat foray that will electrify the world.

  THE KID

  He’s a better pilot than his hero brother. Now the real dogfight’s about to start.

  ALSO BY T. E. CRUISE

  Wings of Gold: The Aces

  Wings of Gold II: The Flyboys

  Wings of Gold III: The Hot Pilots

  Published by

  POPULAR LIBRARY

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1990 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Popular Library® and the fanciful P design are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  Popular Library books are published by

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56709-1

  Contents

  The Grueling Trials, The Glittering Triumphs of Gold

  ALSO BY T. E. CRUISE

  Copyright

  BOOK I: 1973-1975

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  BOOK II:1975-1979

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  BOOK I:

  1973-1975

  CEASE-FIRE SIGNED

  U.S. Agrees to Stop Fighting in Vietnam

  Washington Star Reporter

  U.S. PUTS SKYLAB IN ORBIT

  First U.S. Space Station Begins Extended Mission

  Boston Times

  YOM KIPPUR ATTACK TAKES ISRAEL BY SURPRISE

  Arabs Initiate Oil Embargo Against “Israel’s Friends”

  Cold War Heats Up as President Nixon and Soviets Trade

  Charges of Interference in Mideast

  New York Gazette

  NIXON RESIGNS PRESIDENCY

  President Forced Out by Watergate Scandal Ford Takes Oath Of Office

  Baltimore Globe

  SAIGON SURRENDERS TO REDS

  Vietcong Flag Flies Over South Viet Capital

  San Francisco Post

  CAMBODIA FALLS TO COMMUNISTS

  Red Victory Ends Five-Year Civil War

  Detroit Bulletin-Journal

  AMERICAN SHIP SEIZED IN GULF OF SIAM

  MAYAGUEZ Fired Upon and Boarded by Cambodians

  Los Angeles Tribune

  CHAPTER 1

  (One)

  Gold Aviation and Transport

  Conference Center

  Burbank, California

  12 March, 1973

  The executives and guests gathered at the conference center grew quiet as Don Harrison, the chairman of the board and president of Gold Aviation and Transport, entered the plush screening room. As Harrison slipped into his gray suede armchair, he gave the signal for the film to roll. The recessed lighting dimmed, the speakers built into the theater walls coughed and crackled. The rough cut of the industrial film, commissioned for the upcoming stockholders’ meeting, began to roll.

  Harrison watched as the screen faded to black. On the sound track there came the shrill scream of a jet engine, segueing to a trumpets’ swell. The black screen was slashed with a diagonal beam of white light that dramatically lit the ghostly gray needle nose of a jet fighter within a darkened hangar.

  The film’s narrator, a famous actor who’d made his reputation doing biblical pictures, began his spiel:

  “Since 1927, when Herman Gold sold his first airplane design to the government from out of a Santa Monica waterfront loft, Gold Aviation and Transport has been on the cutting edge of aviation technology…”

  Spliced in was some splotched, amber-tinted footage of the single-engine, open-cockpit, G-1 Yellowjacket mail transport warming up on the tarmac. Waving to the camera were the ground crew in overalls, and a grinning pilot bundled up in sheepskin and a soft leather helmet. The pilot’s white silk scarf flapped in the wind as he climbed into the pilot’s seat, and then there was a shot of the stilt-winged, duralumin Yellowjacket taking off, soaring away into that long-ago sky.

  The film cut to black-and-white footage of an airport, circa the 1940s.

  “It was the GAT Monarch GC-2 and 3 series of commercial airliners that first brought safe, comfortable air travel to the public,” the narrator continued, while the screen showed footage of nattily dressed passengers enjoying themselves within a prop-driven GC-3’s pressurized cabin.

  “The GC series of piston-powered airliners has since evolved into the GC 900 series of jetliners that have become the industry’s standard for excellence—”

  In rapid succession, from top to bottom, the screen was filled with drawings and specs for the GC-909, GAT’s first jetliner; the smaller 909a, designed for short, domestic hops; and the stretched, intercontinental version, the 909i.

  “And here is GAT’s latest commercial transport, the incredible GC-999 jumbo jet liner, first flown in 1970. The GC-999 can seat 490 passengers and carry them over 7,000 miles at a cruising speed of 590 miles per hour. But GAT’s unbroken string in the commercial transport industry is only half the company’s success story—”

  The film cut back to the darkened hangar that began the promo, and several more narrow-focus overhead spotlights flared to life. Now, in addition to that mysterious jet fighter’s needle nose, the fighter’s teardrop canopy and vertical tail were illuminated. The tail was painted a ghostly gray except for two diagonal slashes of turquoise and scarlet: GAT’s signature colors.

  Harrison smiled as the screening room erupted in excited murmurings and applause. The idea had been his to reveal GAT’s newest experimental fighter, the GXF-66 Stiletto, in the manner of a stripper teasingly peeling off one article of clothing at a time. Marketing had become Harrison’s responsibility—or, more to the point, his burden—since his father-in-law, Herman Gold, had relinquished control of GAT to him, back in 1967.

  “GAT is much more than commercial avation,” The narrator was thundering. “For GAT has never flinched from going to war!—”

  Suddenly, Harrison and the rest of the audience were treated to a skillfully edited World War II gun-camera montage of American fighters shooting down German and Japanese airplanes, followed by an extended, color film sequence of a USAF GAT F-90 BroadSword jet fighter pursuing a fleeing, gunmetal-gray MiG wearing North Korean markings on its snout and tail.

  “In both theaters of the Second World War, the GAT BearClaw fighter and BuzzSaw attack bomber helped our flyboys take command of the skies, the voice-over continued. “While in Korea it was the GAT BroadSword that allowed our pilots to reign supreme over MiG Alley—”

  On the screen, the swept-wing F-90 began to pelt the MiG with 50MM slugs. The 50MM tracers looked like orange streaks of lightning as the MiG
vanished in a cloud of oily black smoke.

  “Due to the BroadSword’s fabulous success over Korea. hundreds were sold to our NATO allies. Today, BroadSwords have been supplanted by higher-performance aircraft in the service of most major powers, but BroadSword fighter squadrons still patrol the skies on behalf of smaller air forces, and it is the BroadSword that is still the backbone of America’s own Air Defense National Guard.”

  On-screen, the BroadSword pilot wearing his helmet with lowered visor and oxygen mask saluted from within his teardrop canopy before putting his warbird into a victory roll. As the BroadSword dropped away, the scene shifted to a contemporary, bird’s-eye view of the sprawling Gold Aviation and Transport office headquarters and factory complex, situated on hundreds of acres in Burbank.

  “It was here in California that the BroadSword was designed and built,” the narrator intoned. “Today. GAT is a vast manufacturing metropolis employing thousands of American workers who continue to turn out fighters, bombers and transport craft for the military and international commercial aviation markets.”

  The scene returned to that darkened hangar. The music built as the hangar was suddenly awash in light. The sleek GXF-66 Stiletto jet fighter—forty-seven feet long, with a thirty-one-foot wing span—stood revealed in her extraordinary grace. She looked like a monstrous predatory insect on her spindly tricycle landing gear, her bubble of a teardrop canopy rising up like a cyclopean compound eye. The fighter’s engine air inlet gaped beneath her needle nose like the yawning maw of a shark. She was painted entirely in a ghostly gray, devoid of bright color except for GAT’s trademark gaudy slashes on her tail.

  “Here to tell you about the Stiletto, the latest example of GAT fighter technology, is the company’s founder, Herman Gold.”

  Don Harrison Watched as up on the screen his seventy-seven-year-old father-in-law stepped out from around the tail end of the fighter into a pool of light. The sequence had been shot a little over a year ago, just after Herman had recovered to the best of his ability from his second heart attack. Unfortunately, Herman looked like a shell of his former self. His lined face was drawn, his bald scalp was mottled with liver spots, and the reddish-gray fringe of hair around his ears, and his closely trimmed beard, looked dry and listless. His shoulders were stooped and his charcoal, double-breasted suit looked too big on him, but Herman’s voice was clear and firm, and his pale blue eyes sparkled with youthful excitement as he spoke:

  “Two years ago, when we first conceptualized the Gold Experimental Fighter, or GXF-66, we intended a multirole, air-combat, lightweight craft. A plane that incorporated state-of-the-art fly-by-wire computer-augmented controls, but also harkened back to the BroadSword in its dynamic simplicity. I’m here to tell you, the stockholders—and the world—that we’ve achieved our goal.”

  The screen began to cut back and forth from Herman to animated visual aids as he spoke.

  “The GXF-66 is wrapped around a single Rogers and Simpson augmented turbofan engine rated at 23,000 pounds of thrust. The GXF-66 has a service ceiling of over 50,000 feet, a tactical radius of 340 miles, and a ferry range of 2500 miles. She utilizes the latest in Hotas, or ‘hands on throttle and stick,’ technology: the pilot, in the manner of a skilled typist or pianist, will be able to operate his combat avionics, fly the plane, and fire his weapons without having to look at what his hands are doing. The GXF-66’s armament includes a 20MMcannon, and she can accept all versions of the short-range Sidewinder and long-range Sparrow air-to-air missiles. In addition, the GXF-66 is designed to use the French Magic and Israeli Shafrir AAMs. The Stiletto can also be utilized in the short-range ground-attack mode, carrying beneath her wings up to 15,000 pounds of ordnance—”

  Herman paused. Don Harrison thought the old man’s smile was grand to see.

  “But the GXF-66 was BORN to dogfight,” Herman firmly declared. “She was born tu own the sky!”

  Don Harrison felt chills; at that moment, he could glimpse within that frail old man the World War I ace who’d downed twenty Allied airplanes while flying with Von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

  Herman continued: “When we designed the GXF-66, we intended that form should follow function.”

  Herman Gold then stepped aside, out of the light and into the darkness, so that only his voice could be heard as the music built and the camera moved to lovingly caress the jet fighter’s lithe form.

  “When we designed this fighter, we intended that she embody the timeless, elegant, lethal simplicity of her weapon namesake: ‘Stiletto’!”

  There came a cymbal crash like a peal of thunder, while thanks to the filmmaker’s magic the fighter seemed to whirl like some caged animal, so that her needle nose thrust out at the audience.

  The screen went white. There was more applause as the lights came up in the screening room. Don Harrison glanced across the aisle to where his brother-in-law, Herman’s son, Steve Gold, was sitting slumped in his chair.

  Steve was an Air Force colonel in his late forties, but he looked much younger. He was tall and lean, with thinning, light-blond hair worn moderately short, and squint lines etched vertically on either side of his nose and around his brown eyes, thanks to the long hours spent scanning the sky from various fighter cockpits during his thirty years in the Air Force. Steve was an ace several times over, a Medal of Honor winner with fourteen confirmed Japanese kills during World War II, and six MiGs accounted for during the Korean conflict. Steve had also flown combat missions in Vietnam. Harrison happened to know that his brother-in-law had “unofficially” bagged a MiG while flying incognito with the Israeli Air Force during the 1967 Six-Day War, but that episode was part of Steve’s adventures while serving as an Air Force/CIA liaison. Understandably, Steve didn’t talk about that part of his career too much. Currently, he was assigned to the Los Angeles Air Force Station at El Segundo, where he acted as a liaison between the military and the aerospace industry.

  “That’s all the film we have so far,” Harrison confided to Steve as the others began filing out of the screening room. “That GXF in the hangar was just a mock-up. Later on, we’ll put in shots of the prototype in flight, once we’ve finished building her, and we’ll be adding in sections on GAT Aerospace and our participation in the Skytrain European consortium.”

  “You don’t have much time before the stockholders’ meeting in June,” Steve pointed out. He took a scarlet package of Pall Malls from out of the pocket of his sky-blue Air Force uniform jacket and lit up a cigarette.

  “I know, but we’ll make it.” Harrison smiled. “One thing we’re used to around here is deadlines.”

  Steve nodded, looking pale as he exhaled cigarette smoke. “Damn, I wish that you’d warned me Pop was going to be in it.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should have.” Harrison nodded, thinking that he had all along intended for Steve to be shocked by the sight of his father up on the screen, hoping the experience would soften up Steve for the proposal Harrison intended to make. “Now that I think about it, I see that it was thoughtless of me to surprise you like that….”

  Steve seemed to wave the matter aside. “Pop looked terrible, didn’t he?”

  “I didn’t think so,” Harrison fibbed to comfort his brother-in-law. “Actually, I thought the camera captured something of Herman’s inner vitality.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Steve smiled fondly. “Nothing Pop liked to talk about better than fighter planes.”

  “Anyway, there was no choice in the matter,” Harrison continued. “Herman insisted upon being in the film.”

  Steve nodded. “Almost like Pop knew he was about to die.”

  (Two)

  GAT Executive Offices/Administration Complex

  Colonel Steve Gold murmured, “Every time I walk in here, I still expect to see him sitting behind this desk.”

  They’d left the conference center, traveling via electric golf cart along the half-mile of roadway beneath the California sun to the executive office complex, and were now entering Pop
’s huge office.

  No, strike that, Steve Gold thought. It was Don’s office now, as it had been unofficially since Pop had retired, and officially since Herman Gold had passed away in his sleep, succumbing to his third heart attack, a little over six months ago.

  “You know, I appreciate the way you’ve left things here just the way they were when the office belonged to Pop,” Steve Gold said, looking around at the wall-to-wall, moss-green carpeting, and the sofa and armchair groupings upholstered in supple burgundy leather. Custom-built display cases loaded with mementos highlighting Pop’s decades in the aviation business lined the oak-paneled walls beneath ornately framed oil-painting landscapes and commissioned oil portraits of successful GAT airplanes in flight. In one corner, a glass case held scale models of every airplane designed and built by Gold Aviation and Transport.

  “Hey, I kept things the way they were for myself.” Don smiled ruefully as he ushered Gold to an armchair and then took his place behind the big marble-topped desk. “Keeping it all like it always was comforts me. It makes me think that maybe Herman’s spirit is still around to help me guide the company.”

  The bank of telephone lights on Don’s desk was flashing like small-arms fire. Don pressed a button on his intercom, said, “Hold all calls,” and the lights quieted down.

  “The only change is that now you’re totally in charge,” Gold said.

  “Yep.” Don leaned back in his thronelike leather chair. “Is that a problem for you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Gold admitted, eyeing his brother-in-law. Don was fifty, tall and broad-shouldered, with baby-fine blond hair that he wore combed back from his high domed forehead, and wide-spaced hazel eyes that missed nothing from behind the lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles. In days past, Don had been an academic type who favored beards and baggy tweeds, but since taking over the company Don had cleaned up his act: his custom-tailored navy-blue double-breasted suit, pale-blue shirt, gold cuff links, and maroon silk tie radiated authority and power.