Able One (23 page)

Jamil agreed with a morose nod. But as he looked up at Coggins, he saw the wall screen behind her. “Look!” he said, pointing with a trembling hand.

“They’ve got a bunch of people working around the missiles.”

Every eye in the situation room turned to the satellite view of the North Korean site. The two missiles stood on their pads as before, but now teams of men in coveralls were clustered around the base of each missile.

“Final checkout,” said General Scheib. “They’re starting their countdown. They’re going to launch those birds.”

San Francisco: St. Francis Hotel

“Wow!” exclaimed Vickie as she turned completely around, taking in the suite’s sitting room with its beautiful draperies and handsome furniture. “Can we afford this?”

Sylvia laughed, delighted that at last
something
had impressed her sixteen-year-old. “It’s only for this one night. And besides, the party committee’s paying for it.”

Denise went to the bedroom door and peeked in. “Twin beds,” she noted. “Queens.”

Before her younger daughter could ask, Sylvia explained, “You two sleep in there. I’ll use the pull-out sofa.”

Vickie and Denise glanced at each other. Before they could say anything, their mother said, “I don’t want you two arguing over who sleeps where. You each get one of the beds, share and share alike.”

With a shrug, Denise changed the subject. “When do we eat?”

Their landing at the airport had been delayed because of the President’s arrival, and then it had been hell getting a taxi in the drizzling rain. The highway was clogged with slow-moving traffic and now it was dinnertime and their luggage hadn’t come up from the lobby yet.

“As soon as the bellman brings our bags we’ll grab a quick bite someplace close by and then head out to the Cow Palace.”

“If we can get a cab,” Vickie said.

Denise went to the desk, where a few glossy magazines were arranged in a fan. “I’ll look up a good restaurant.”

Denise was always the practical one, Sylvia thought.

ABL-1: Cockpit

“Any word from the tanker?” Colonel Christopher asked.

“Not a peep,” O’Banion replied.

Christopher glanced at the fuel gauges, then over at Major Kaufman, sitting as grim as death in the right-hand seat.

“They’ll be here, Obie,” she said.

“If you say so, Colonel.”

She restrained an impulse to whistle at the hostility in Kaufman’s voice. Or maybe it’s fear, she thought. The major was staring straight ahead at the swirl of dirty gray clouds far below them. The tanker might be having trouble getting through that soup, she thought. Winds must be pretty strong down there. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her helmet partway off. The headache was getting worse. Stress, she knew. Try to relax. Chill out. At least we haven’t gotten word that the tanker’s
not
on its way to us.

“Take over, Obie,” she said, unstrapping her seat harness and getting up from the chair. “I’ll be back in five.”

Kaufman nodded and mumbled something about a potty break.

Damned creep, Christopher thought. She stepped through the hatch onto the flight deck, where Sharmon and O’Banion sat at their stations. They both looked pretty strained. So different, Christopher thought. Skinny black kid and chunky redheaded Irishman. But they’re both wearing Air Force blue and that’s what matters.

Placing a hand on each of their shoulders, Colonel Christopher said, just loud enough for them to hear her over the drone of the engines, “You heard the major and me hollering at each other.”

O’Banion shrugged and Sharmon nodded solemnly.

“That was a difference of opinion between the two of us. It’s all straightened out now. And forgotten. Understand?”

Sharmon blinked several times before saying, “Yes, ma’am. Forgotten.”

O’Banion broke into a lazy grin. “I gotcha, Colonel. No problemo.”

Christopher smiled down at the two of them. “Good. Now where the hell is that tanker?”

Harry saw that Monk was sitting beside Taki at the battle management station. There were four consoles lining one curving bulkhead of the compartment; in a real battle situation four Air Force blue-suiters would be working battle management, with two backups behind them. For this flight, which started out as a routine test mission, Taki had the station all to herself.

Seeing the two of them talking together, grins on their faces, gave Harry a pang of apprehension. Are they both in on it? Are they working together?

Then he heard Delany finishing one of his stories, “So the highway patrolman sees the guy’s too drunk to drive and he asks him, ‘Do you realize that your wife fell out of your car three blocks down the street?’ And the driver, he’s Irish, he says, ‘Thanks be to God! I thought I was goin’ deaf!’“

Monk hooted at his own joke and Taki laughed politely. Harry had heard the story before, and besides he was in no mood for laughter. But he got a sudden idea.

“Monk, I need to check out the ranging laser with you.”

Delany frowned up at him. “Again?”

“Again,” said Harry. “When that tanker gets here we’ve got to test the ranger on it.”

Pushing himself up from the bucket seat, Delany grumbled, “Your taking this
el jefe
crap too damned serious, Harry.”

“Maybe,” Harry agreed. “But let’s make certain the laser’s ready to ping the tanker.”

Once they were in the beam control section, Harry plucked at Delany’s sleeve. “Monk, I’ve got an idea about how to find out who dismantled the lens assembly.”

Delany gave him a dubious look.

“If we can find the missing assembly, there’s probably fingerprints on it,” Harry said. “Once we get back to Elmendorf, we can get the Air Police to check ‘em out.”

Delany’s expression phased from dubious to thoughtful. “Cheez, Harry, my prints are all over that chunk of glass.”

Nodding, Harry said, “Yeah, sure. But if there’s somebody else’s prints on it, too, then that somebody must be the guy who took it!”

“Maybe,” Delany said slowly.

“Gotta be,” said Harry, convincing himself as he spoke.

Delany shook his head. “You’re turning into a friggin’ Sherlock Holmes, pal.”

Harry accepted it as a compliment, thinking, If Monk took the assembly he knows there’s nobody else’s prints on it. He’ll go back to where he stashed it and wipe it down, clean off any fingerprints on it.

But then he thought, Maybe he was smart enough to wipe it down before he stashed it in the lav. Maybe I’m not a Sherlock Holmes after all.

And he realized that Monk was only one possible culprit out of four. So what do I do now? He wondered.

“Message from the tanker!” O’Banion sang out.

“Pipe it to me,” said Karen Christopher.

“ABL-1, this is your friendly flying gas station. Sorry we’re late.”

“Better late than never,” Colonel Christopher said happily into her lip mike. “Where are you?”

“Three miles behind you and four thousand feet below. We’re coming up as fast as we can.”

Kaufman twisted around in his chair and did his best to look behind and below the plane.

“Very good,” said the colonel. “We’re glad to see you. We’re running on fumes, just about.”

“We’ll take care of that. You need anything else, Colonel? Windshield wiped? Oil change? Tires rotated?”

Karen laughed. “Just fill our tanks, thanks.” She turned to Kaufman. “Feel better, Obie?”

He gave her a halfhearted grin. “You should’ve been a test pilot: more guts than brains.”

Colonel Christopher nodded. More guts than you’ve got, butterball, she retorted silently. Then she puffed out a heartfelt sigh of relief.

The Pentagon: Situation Room

“They’re definitely getting ready to launch,” said General Scheib, his eyes fixed on the wall screen that showed the latest satellite imagery from North Korea.

Zuri Coggins was speaking hurriedly, urgently, into the hair-thin headset she had attached to her minicomputer. Talking to the White House, Michael Jamil guessed. General Higgins was on his feet, his shirt rumpled, his face pasty.

Jamil wondered if the fatheaded general would send an alert to San Francisco now. The President arrives there and the North Koreans start their missile countdown. That can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be.

Then he asked himself, How did they know that the President landed? With all the commercial comm-sats out, there’s no worldwide news coverage. And we certainly aren’t sending data from our milsats to the DPRK.

They must have one or more satellites of their own watching San Francisco, Jamil concluded. Then he shook his head. The North Koreans didn’t have any satellites in space. The bomb they had launched was the first time they’ve gotten a bird into orbit successfully.

I need access, he realized. Seeing that the Coggins woman had taken off her headset and was watching the satellite imagery along with everybody else, he got out of his chair and went up the table to her.

“May I use your mini for a few minutes?” he asked.

Coggins cast a suspicious look at him, annoyed at being interrupted from her concentration on the wall screen’s imagery. The scene looked semi-weird, distorted. The surveillance satellite must be getting close to the local horizon, Jamil figured. It’ll be out of the area in a few minutes.

“My computer?” Coggins asked.

“Only for a few minutes. Please.”

She hesitated a heartbeat, then gestured to the mini. “Go ahead. It’s connected to the Defense Department’s information web.”

“Fine. Thanks.” Jamil slid into the chair next to Coggins and pulled the book-sized computer in front of him.

Coggins got up and stretched. Tense as a tightrope, she said to herself. Why not? You’ve got a lot to be tense about.

She walked over to the coffee cart. All three urns were empty again. We’re drinking too much of it anyway, she thought, even though she wished she had a cup to hold in her hands.

“Coffee’s gone again?”

Turning, she saw it was General Higgins glowering at the cart. He waved to his aide and pointed ostentatiously to the stainless steel urns. “I’ve got to tell him everything,” Higgins complained.

Coggins half-whispered, “Do you think they’re really targeting the President?”

The general shook his head stubbornly. “Scheib says those missiles don’t have the range or accuracy to hit San Francisco. He’s our local expert.”

“Then it’s Honolulu.”

“Or Fairbanks. Or Manila. Or Shanghai.” Higgins looked back at the screen, muttering, “Our next recon bird won’t be over the area for another ten minutes.”

She stepped across the room to where General Scheib stood staring at the wall screen while he gnawed his lip.

“How soon before they launch?” Coggins asked.

Scheib cocked his head to one side, thinking. Then he replied, “No more than an hour. Ninety minutes on the outside.”

“Can they hit San Francisco?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But if that’s their target, can your people stop them?”

General Scheib looked down at her. He still wore his tunic, ribbons displayed across his chest. Except for a shadow of beard, he looked almost as sharp as he had in the morning, when the group first convened. But he was gnawing his lip.

“Wherever they’re aiming for, we’ve got four Aegis ships in the Pacific and our land-based antimissile batteries in Alaska and California.”

“Can they shoot the missiles down?”

He started to shake his head, caught himself. “You have to understand the problem. Once those ballistic missiles’ rocket engines burn out, they’re on a coasting trajectory to their target.”

“So you can track exactly where they’re heading,” Coggins said.

“Yeah, but they separate the warhead from the body of the missile, release decoys if they’re carrying any, even break up the missile’s tankage to make a cloud of images, confuse our radar. Our guys have to pick out the warhead from that cloud of crap.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’s not easy. The best way to discriminate the warhead is when the stuff reenters the atmosphere. Air drag slows down the decoys and fragments; they’re lighter than the warhead. Then we can pick out which incoming body is carrying the bomb.”

“When it’s diving onto the target? How much time do you have to decide which is which?”

Scheib made a sound that could have been a snort. “A minute, if we’re lucky.”

Coggins felt her eyes widen. “One minute or less? Can you hit the warhead in that time span?”

“We’ve done it in tests,” Scheib said. Then he added, “About half the time.”

“Saints and sinners!” Coggins exclaimed. “Half the time?”

“That’s why ABL-1’s so important,” said the general. “If we can hit the missiles with that laser while they’re still boosting, while their rockets are burning, before they deploy their warheads and decoys ...”

Coggins saw the uncertainty on his face. “Does the President know all this?”

“He’s been briefed. More than once. I made the presentation myself last year when they were considering the budget for MDA.”

He’s toast, Coggins thought. If those missiles reach San Francisco the President is toast. Along with half a million other people.

Back at the conference table, Michael Jamil had finally found the information he wanted. He had tried to check through official Defense Department files but found them too slow and cumbersome for his purposes. All DoD’s security regulations do is slow down access to the information you need, Jamil complained silently. So he’d turned to the Internet site of
Aviation Week
magazine. He’d heard guys at Langley call it
Aviation Leak
because it often published information that Washington would have preferred to keep away from the public.

And there it was, in last week’s issue. The People’s Republic of China had launched a quartet of scientific research satellites into polar orbits. Beijing announced that the satellites were part of China’s expanding space exploration program.

Space exploration my pimpled ass, Jamil snarled to himself. Those are surveillance satellites. Hardened birds, so they wouldn’t be knocked out by the nuke the North Koreans set off. They pass over California every half hour. They’re watching San Francisco and feeding the info to the North Koreans, telling them when to launch their missiles so they’ll catch the President.