The whirlwind of Tomlinson’s campaign rushed on: speeches, interviews, another debate—this time with Sebastian and Tomlinson alone on the stage, facing each other.
Sebastian kept hammering on the federal loan guarantee question. “It’s a giveaway, nothing less,” he insisted. “A welfare giveaway for billionaires. It means that you, the taxpayer, will be held responsible for the billions of dollars that this pie-in-the-sky space program is going to cost.”
Tomlinson countered, “The loan guarantee program will allow our new efforts in space to be financed by private investors, not by your tax dollars. It’s an idea that’s worked before, and it can and will work again.”
Sebastian took the New York primary. And Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Tomlinson won Delaware and Rhode Island.
O’Donnell sneered, “With those two and a couple of bucks you just might be able to buy a coffee at Starbucks.”
But a week later Tomlinson scored a solid victory in Indiana, and the following week took both Nebraska and Oregon.
At campaign headquarters, Pat Lovett stared thoughtfully at the big wall screen showing the various states in red and blue.
Shaking his head, the campaign manager muttered, “It’s not following the usual pattern. Frank’s winning in the Midwest and far west. He’s getting the farmers and the high-tech geeks.”
Standing beside him, Jake suggested, “Maybe it’s a new coalition forming. Like FDR, when he put together the Old South and the northern big city machines.”
Lovett stared at Jake. “You’ve been reading political history.”
“A little,” Jake admitted.
Quite seriously, Lovett said, “If you’ve got time for that, we haven’t been working you hard enough.”
And he walked away, leaving Jake standing there in front of the map, feeling somewhere between dumbfounded and annoyed.
* * *
June began with a heat wave in Washington, daily high temperatures inching up into the low nineties, humidity high enough to curl women’s hair and take the crease out of men’s trousers. The California primary was less than a week away. And two days before that, Nick Piazza was scheduled to launch another Astra Super at Spaceport America, in the White Sands desert of New Mexico.
Jake felt torn between his desire to see the launch and his superstitious fear that if he was there, in person, he’d witness another disaster.
Nick Piazza had no such worries. “I’ll send a plane to pick you up in Washington, fly you out there, and get you back home before the California primary.”
On the wall screen of Jake’s office, Piazza looked relaxed, totally at ease, as if this next launch was guaranteed to succeed. Jake felt decidedly otherwise.
“Your new launch crew is ready to go?” he asked.
“Ready, willing, and eager,” Piazza replied, almost jovially. “They’re gung ho.”
Feeling reluctant, Jake heard himself say, “Okay, I’ll fly out the day before the launch and return right after it.”
“You won’t stay for the after-launch party?” Piazza asked.
Shaking his head, Jake said, “Don’t have the time to spare, Nick.”
Grinning broadly, Piazza said, “Work is the curse of the drinking man, Jake.”
Jake smiled back weakly at him. Just get the damned rocket off the ground successfully, he pleaded silently. The partying doesn’t mean a damned thing. Getting the bird into orbit is what’s important.
* * *
Tami insisted on going, too.
“One way or another, this is going to be a huge story,” she said. Then imitating a previous presidential contender, she stressed, “Huuuge.”
Jake laughed and cleared it with Piazza.
Senator Tomlinson was campaigning in California, drawing big crowds in the high-tech Silicon Valley area and the Southern California aerospace industry region. But the turnout for him in Los Angeles itself was disappointingly small; Lovett’s people had to work hard to make the crowd look big enough for the TV news cameras.
The afternoon of their flight to New Mexico, Jake and Tami rode in one of Senator Tomlinson’s limousines to Reagan National Airport. It was early afternoon, and traffic through Washington’s sweltering streets wasn’t as bad as it would become in a couple of hours.
“We’ll be there in good time,” Jake muttered as he sat beside Tami in the air-conditioned limo.
“And we gain two hours from the time difference,” she added.
Jake nodded. “Nick Piazza told me a while ago that he likes to spend New Year’s Eve in New Mexico. He said he can watch the ball go down in Times Square and it’s only ten o’clock in Albuquerque.”
“You mean he goes to sleep then?” Tami asked. “That’s sacrilegious!”
“That’s Nick,” Jake said, with a chuckle.
* * *
When they got out of the limousine, at the hangar where Piazza’s sleek, swept-wing Cessna Citation was waiting, Jake was surprised to see Billy Trueblood standing by the twin-jet plane.
As they shook hands, the Native American grinned happily and told Jake, “Nick needed somebody to sit in as copilot on this flight.”
Surprised, Jake asked, “You’re qualified for a Citation?”
“Got my license and nearly fifty hours in the air.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Trueblood’s grin faded. “There’s a lot of things about me that you don’t know.”
Jake and Tami followed Trueblood up the aluminum ladder and into the plane’s posh interior.
“Take any seat you like,” Billy said. “It’s all yours, this flight.” And he headed up into the cockpit, closing the windowless door behind him.
Jake and Tami sat side by side in a pair of the commodious swiveling chairs that lined the passenger compartment. The plane’s aisle separated their seats, but they were close enough to reach out and hold hands.
A tractor towed them out of the hangar and the twin-jet engines spooled up. Jake felt the plane tremble like a retriever dog catching the scent of a bird, heard the muted roar of the engines. Then they taxied out to the end of the runway, raced forward until the runway markers were a blur, and lifted up into the sky.
Trueblood’s voice came through the cabin speakers, sounding calm, professional. “We’ll be flying at forty-eight thousand feet, well above the weather. Average speed will be five hundred miles per hour. Next stop, Spaceport America.”
Jake unconsciously frowned.
“Something wrong?” Tami asked. The plane’s acoustical insulation was so good that she could speak in a normal conversational tone.
“We’re supposed to be going to Albuquerque,” Jake said. “We’re staying at the DoubleTree overnight.”
Tami shrugged. “I suppose that’s what Billy meant.”
“I guess,” Jake said, uncertainly.
They climbed through a layer of clouds, bouncing slightly in the mild turbulence, then smoothed out into a clear blue sky. Beneath them a sea of clouds undulated gracefully, above them was nothing but sunshine.
“If you go high enough,” Jake said, smiling, “you can find the sunshine.”
“Philosophy? From you?” Tami teased.
“I’m a man of hidden talents,” Jake replied.
Jake had just cranked his seat back for a nap when his cell phone started playing Sousa. Fumbling it out of his pocket, Jake saw that the caller was Nick Piazza.
“Hello, Nick,” he said to the image on the little screen. “We’re on our way—”
“Is Billy with you?” Piazza asked urgently.
“Yeah, he’s copiloting the plane.”
“No, he’s not. He’s flying it by himself and he doesn’t know how to land it.”