22
THE GOVERNMENT GULFSTREAM JET DESCENDED out of a sapphire sky and touched down on the main runway of Coeur d’Alene Airport’s Pappy Boyington Field. A native son of the scenic Idaho town, Gregory “Pappy” Boyington had grown up to fly F4U Corsairs in the Pacific, winning the Medal of Honor while commanding the legendary Black Sheep Squadron. The airport that bore his name was now home to tame Piper Cubs and private jets of wealthy tourists. Pitt grabbed Ann’s crutches and helped her off the plane at the private jet terminal, where they negotiated the use of a rental car. Pitt took the wheel as they headed north on Route 95.
They were traveling up Idaho’s northern panhandle, a region of rich forested hills and pristine blue lakes, far from the potato fields in the state’s southern plains. Traffic was light, and Pitt nudged the rental car past the sixty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Twenty minutes later they reached the town of Athol, where Pitt turned onto a side road and drove east. A large sign welcomed them onto the grounds of Farragut State Park.
“An Idaho state park named after a Civil War admiral?” Pitt said.
“As a matter of fact, it is.” Ann scanned a travel brochure she picked up at the airport. “In the early days of World War Two, the Navy established an inland base here after it was feared the Japanese would bomb the West Coast. The Farragut Naval Training Station was indeed named for David Farragut, hero of the Battle of Mobile Bay and the first full admiral in the U.S. Navy. Nearly fifty thousand men were stationed here at one point. After the war, the base closed down, and the land was conveyed to Idaho, which turned it into a state park.”
“There’s some trivia to fling at your next Pentagon cocktail hour,” Pitt said.
The road exited the park and corkscrewed down a hill into Bayview. The hamlet was at the tip of a narrow inlet on the large glacial lake of Pend Oreille. Pitt had to squeeze past some road construction equipment before dropping down to the main waterfront drive. Several marinas filled with bass boats, day cruisers, and a large number of houseboats occupied the northern half of the bay. The Navy Acoustic Research Detachment controlled the southern shore.
“There’s the lab’s entrance,” Ann said, pointing to a gated entry.
Pitt pulled into the visitors’ lot and parked next to the guard station. After they signed in with the guard, a uniformed escort arrived and chauffeured them into the facility in a gray sedan. As they drove along the waterfront, Pitt noticed an oddly shaped submarine with the designation Sea Jet tied up at dock.
The driver stopped at a towering beige-and-teal metal building built over the water, then escorted Ann and Pitt to the door. An animated man with bright red hair and dancing blue eyes greeted them.
“Chuck Nichols, assistant lab director,” he said in a rapid-fire voice. “Please, follow me.”
He waved off the driver and led Ann and Pitt to a small office crowded with papers and technical journals. He cleared off a pair of chairs overflowing with binders so they could sit down.
“We were all pretty shocked to hear about Carl and Manny’s accident,” Nichols said. “Have you figured out what happened?”
“Not entirely,” Ann said, “but we don’t believe it was an accident. We have reason to believe they were killed during a failed attempt by a foreign party to obtain the model prototype they were testing.”
Nichols’s lips tightened. “Yeah, Slippery Mumm. He was pretty secret about that one. I can’t believe anybody would have known about it.”
“Slippery Mumm?”
“He always had a pet name for his models. He called his last hull model Pig Ghost. He gave us lots of grief over naming our test boat Sea Jet.”
“Any significance to the name?” Pitt asked.
“Sure, but probably only to Carl and Manny. He said the Mumm was from a champagne he liked. He talked a lot about speed and bubbles in attacking the supercavitation issue, so that must be the connection.”
“Tell us about your facility here,” Ann said.
“Heiland practically built the place. His family had a cabin here on Lake Pend Oreille, so he fell in love with the area.”
Pitt noticed he pronounced the lake’s name “Pond-o-ray.”
“When he headed up acoustics at the Naval Surface Warfare Center,” Nichols continued, “he convinced the brass in Washington to open an offshoot research lab here, using some remnants from the old Farragut naval base. He pretty much built it all from scratch. About ten or twelve years ago, he grew tired of the day-to-day management and decided to retire. That’s when he started his consulting business. Carl was always an engineer first.”
“You’re a long way from blue water,” Pitt said.
“Yes, but the lake is an ideal testing ground. It’s large, lightly populated, and features depths of over a thousand feet. Our work here focuses on research in advanced hull and propulsion designs—ones that allow for submarines to operate with a minimum acoustic signature. The lake is a nearly perfect controlled environment in which to test new designs and technologies.”
“The Sea Jet being a test platform?” Pitt asked.
“Exactly,” Nichols said. “It’s what we call an Advanced Electric Ship Demonstrator. Though it looks a bit like a submarine, it is actually a quarter-scale model of the new DD(X) class of destroyer. We’ve used it to experiment with some radical new hull designs and propulsion systems. It was originally built with waterjet propulsion, but we’ve migrated to some other technologies I probably shouldn’t talk about. We were scheduled to test Carl’s latest tinkering related to the Sea Arrow project, but we’re at somewhat of a loss there now.”
“The technology in the Slippery Mumm?” Ann asked.
“Yes. He was here testing it in the lake just a few weeks ago. I remember him telling the boys that he was really going to be scaring the fish with it. A couple of the fellows were out on the lake at the time and they claimed he was registering some crazy speeds.”
“Didn’t he work on it here at the facility?”