Able One (28 page)

“Parkinson wouldn’t have the guts to order a counterstrike on North Korea.”

“I think you’re wrong, Lonnie.”

My name’s Lionel and she knows it, Defense growled inwardly. But he kept his pique off his face and asked innocently, “Wrong?”

“I think we can get Parkinson to give the attack order while he’s right there in the National Redoubt, snug and safe from attack. I think I could convince him.”

Defense shook his head. “So we clobber North Korea. And the Chinese clobber us.”

“No, Lonnie, you don’t understand,” State said. “We hit China right away with a preemptive strike. Cripple their missile forces so they can’t hurt us too much.
Then
we wipe out North Korea.”

Defense stared at her. She was still smiling, as if she were talking about rearranging the flowers on a banquet table.

“The fallout will drift over Japan,” he muttered.

The Secretary of State’s smile did not diminish by a single millimeter. “Regrettable,” she said. “But one of the ancillary benefits will be to remove both China
and
Japan as economic competitors.”

Defense realized what her smile reminded him of: a rattlesnake, poised to strike.

The Pentagon: Situation Room

“Have they launched?” General Scheib shouted as he burst into the situation room. General Higgins, sitting at the head of the table, his chair turned so he faced the wall screen, shook his head. “Not yet, Brad.” Gesturing to the image on the screen, he went on. “That’s the latest imagery. Looks like they’re in countdown mode.”

Scheib saw that the missiles were standing on their pads, slight wisps of steam issuing from the rime-coated section where the liquid oxygen tanks were.

Sliding into his own chair, he asked, “How old’s that picture?”

“Ten minutes,” Higgins replied. “We’ve got a low-altitude bird coming over their horizon in another three minutes. Should give us better resolution.”

Scheib tapped at his laptop’s keyboard. According to the tracking satellite in geosynchronous orbit, ABL-1 had just made a turn north to parallel the Korean coastline. He squinted at the radar imagery. A pair of tiny dots was also over the Sea of Japan, behind the 747, heading toward it.

Grabbing up the laptop’s headset, General Scheib said into its lip mike, “I need a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

A hesitation, then a woman’s voice in his earphone replied, “Sir, we need authorization from--”

Without waiting for her to finish, Scheib called down the table, “Possum, I need authorization for a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

Anger flashed in General Higgins’ face; he obviously did not like being called Possum.

Without waiting for Higgins to open his mouth, Zuri Coggins leaned over Scheib’s shoulder and said crisply, “Authorization code NAS one-one-three, alpha-alpha-omicron.”

Scheib heard in his earphone, “Checking . . . authorization verified. Establishing voice link.”

Coggins heard Scheib muttering, “Come on, come on.”

Still in his chair at the head of the table, General Higgins suddenly realized why Brad Scheib was in such a sweat to have a voice link with ABL-1. He leaned over toward his aide, sitting at his left, and whispered, “Who’s piloting that plane?”

“ABL-1, sir?”

With a disgusted look, General Higgins replied, “No, the
Spirit of St. Louis.”

Looking flustered, the aide tapped at his keyboard, then answered, “Lieutenant Colonel Karen Christopher, sir. I have her complete dossier--”

Higgins waved him to silence, thinking, Christopher. The one who clammed up at the Advocate General’s hearing. The one who was accused of sleeping with a married general.

One glance at the anxious, intense expression on Scheib’s handsome face and Higgins knew whom Christopher had shacked up with.

“Fighters coming up fast,” O’Banion reported, his voice a notch higher than usual.

Colonel Christopher had ordered her comm officer to activate ABL-1‘s search radar. No sense trying to stay quiet now, she reasoned. They know we’re here. Might as well get a good line on them.

“What’s the word from Andrews on the missiles?” she asked into her pin mike.

“Launch is imminent, as of . . . seven minutes ago.”

Kaufman muttered from his copilot’s seat, “Hope the bastards blow up on the pad.”

Christopher nodded. That would solve a lot of problems, she thought.

“Incoming message, Colonel, direct from the Pentagon.”

They got a direct satellite link working, Christopher said to herself. That’s good. They can hear us get shot down in real time.

“Put it through,” she commanded.

“Colonel Christopher, this is Major General Scheib.”

Brad! In the middle of all this he’s calling me!

“Christopher here,” she said, trying to hide the tremor she felt inside.

A heartbeat’s delay. Then Scheib’s voice said, “Two DPRK interceptors are vectoring toward you.”

“I know.”

It took half a second for her words to be relayed off the satellite and his response to get back to her.

“You have the option of turning away and exiting North Korean territorial waters.”

“We’re not over their territorial waters. We’re twenty miles off their coast.”

Again the delay, longer this time than normal. “I repeat, you have the option of turning around. You may abort your mission if you deem it necessary.”

She heard what he was saying. I love you, Karen. I don’t want you to be killed. I don’t care if it starts World War III--I want you safe.

But then she realized that instead of ordering her to turn tail and leave the mission unfulfilled, he had placed the choice in her hands. Come back to me, that’s what he was saying. But the responsibility is yours. The choice between nuclear war or not is yours. I love you, but I don’t have the guts to take the blame for what happens next.

ABL-1: Battle Management Compartment

Taki looks cool as a cucumber, Harry thought as he sat beside Nakamura and watched her run through the diagnostics on her console. If she’s the one who stole the optics assembly she sure doesn’t look nervous or scared about it. Harry felt relieved; he hadn’t wanted to believe it was Taki. Wally, yeah, maybe, he thought. That wiseass might be up to it. Probably not Angel; he’s too straight-arrow. Monk? Why would Monk try to screw up the mission? Why would any of them?

The answer came to him: for money. Whoever it was did it for money. When he thought this was just a test flight he tried to ruin it so that we’d look bad to the Air Force and DoD would cancel Anson’s contract and give it to one of our competitors.

Great deduction, Sherlock, Harry said to himself. So which one of them was it? Which one needs money so bad he’d sabotage a flight test? Wally gambles on the football pools. He makes no secret of that. Angel? I don’t see Angel getting himself into a hole that way. The kid’s worked too hard to get where he is to hand his money over to gamblers. Still, you never know.

Monk? Harry tried to remember if Monk ever took plunges with gamblers. Not that he could recall. Monk wasn’t the gambling type. Hell, even when they were all making bets on who would be named leader of the team, Monk threw in only a couple of bucks. Harry remembered Monk’s knowing grin when he put his money down on the pool.

“I’m the favorite,” he’d told Harry. “I can’t get decent odds.”

No, Monk’s too smart to get into debt with gamblers.

“Are you with me, Harry?”

It took an effort to snap his attention back to Taki, back to the mission and the reality of an impending nuclear war.

“I’m sorry,” he said, flustered. “I was thinking . ..”

Nakamura looked slightly disappointed. “I asked you if you’d double-check the board for me. Looks to me like everything’s ready to go, but it’d be better if you double-check.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Sorry.”

The gauges and screens on the consoles showed the status of every segment of the laser’s system. Harry ran his eyes across both the console he was sitting at and Taki’s, beside him. Everything looked okay. The COIL was pressurized and ready to fire. Ranging laser ready. Electrical power in the green. Computer humming.

“Looks okay to me, Taki,” he said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

She nodded. The only sign of apprehension on her face was the tightness of her lips. Without a word she unlatched the covers on the amber arming and red firing buttons.

“So who was Annie Oakley?” she asked.

“Where are those fighters?” Colonel Christopher asked into her pin mike.

O’Banion quickly answered, “Thirty miles behind us, seven o’clock. Closing fast.”

“Between us and the coast,” Major Kaufman said.

Christopher nodded. “I wonder what their orders are.”

“Shoot to kill.”

She almost laughed. “Maybe not. Maybe they just want to shoo us out of their territorial waters.”

“We’re not in their fucking territorial waters,” Kaufman grumbled.

She clicked the intercom and called, “Jon, exactly how far off the coast are we?”

“Twenty miles, Colonel, just like you ordered. Uh, actually it’s twenty-two, just at this point. We haven’t been closer than twenty, though, not once.”

“Do you have an accurate navigational fix on all that?”

“Yes, ma’am. I do.”

“Pipe it back to Washington. I want our people to know exactly where we are, that we’re not in North Korean territorial waters.”

“Yes’m,” Lieutenant Sharmon replied.

Kaufman gave her a sour look. “So they can drop a wreath in the water where we went down,” he muttered.

U.S. Route 12, Bitterroot Mountains, Idaho

Charley Ingersoll knew he couldn’t get lost, even in this damnable snowstorm. All he had to do was plow straight ahead down the road. The gas station was along the side of the road. His legs flared with pins and needles, his face felt numb, he’d never been so cold in all his life.

But he slogged forward. The snow was almost knee-deep now, and it took a real concentrated effort to pull his freezing feet out of the stuff and take another tottering step forward. He thought about praying, but then he realized that it was the Lord who had put him into this mess. Why? he asked heaven. Why me? No answer. So he staggered on.

Step by step, Charley said to himself. Closer and closer. Somewhere from the back of his mind came the faint memory of some comedy act where a guy says that. Something about Niagara Falls. Step by step. Closer and closer.

At least Martha and the kids are okay. Even if the van runs out of gas it’ll stay warm inside for a while. They’ll be all right. I’ll get to the gas station and they’ll come out in the tow truck they’ve got there and we’ll all be okay.

But you’ve got to get to the gas station first, said a voice in Charley’s head.

He blinked against the snowflakes whipping into his face. Can’t tell where the road is anymore. Everything’s covered with snow. White, white, white everywhere. Maybe this is what heaven’s like, he thought: everything is white. Or hell. There were parts of hell that were freezing, he remembered from his Sunday school days, all snow and ice. Then he realized that there were snowbanks on either side of the road, left by the plows that had scraped the highway earlier. Stay in between the snowbanks, Charley, he told himself. Stay in the middle.

He plodded ahead, his legs like a pair of rigid boards that shot pain up along his spine every time he tried to move them. Lord, help me, he pleaded. You put me into this, help me get out of it!

Something coming up the road!

Charley saw a shape up the road ahead, a dark bulk moving through the blinding white, slowly, patiently, soundlessly.

A car? No, too big, more like a truck. Awful slow, but it’s coming this way. No noise. Maybe I’ve gone deaf. Maybe my ears are frozen.

The shape slowly coalesced out of the wind-whipped snow. It’s a moose! Charley realized. Or is it an elk? Too big to be a deer. What’s a moose doing out here in the middle of the road?

The animal was walking calmly, with great dignity, up the road toward Charley. Strolling along as if this blizzard didn’t trouble it in the least.

It’s a sign, Charley thought. A sign from God. My deliverance is near.

For a wild instant Charley thought he might jump on the animal’s back and ride the rest of the way to the station. But as he staggered toward the beast it stopped in its tracks, snuffled once, then turned and bounded up the snowbank on the right shoulder of the highway and disappeared into the blinding whiteness of the storm.

Charley stood there dumbfounded. It just pranced up that snowbank like it was nothing, he thought.

This blizzard don’t bother it at all. And I’m alone again. Alone and cold and scared.

Why’d it run away? he asked himself. I wasn’t going to hurt it. What’s it doing out here, anyway? Then he realized the reason. Wolves. Where there’s moose or elk or whatever that beast was, there’s wolves. Charley strained to hear the howl of baying wolves. Nothing but the keening of the wind. They hunt in packs, he knew. They’ll come after me.

He sank to his knees. God help me! he screamed silently. God help me.

ABL-1: Cockpit

Major Obadiah Kaufman sat in the copilot’s seat looking out at the dark smudge on the horizon that was the coast of North Korea.

Colonel Christopher said, “Keep your eyes peeled for their launch, Obie.”

“Right,” he said, glancing sideways at her. Sixteen years in the Air Force, he thought, and I’m in the fucking right-hand seat while she gives me dumbass orders. Obie. Like she knows me well enough to call me Obie. How’d she like it if I called her Karen? Or Chrissie? The plane’s radar will pick up their fucking launch. She knows that. But she’s got to make sure I know she’s in charge and I’m just her goddamned stooge.

I graduated fourth in my class at the Academy. Where did she come in? Who the hell put her in here over me? It isn’t fair, it’s not fair. Hotshot B-2 jockey. She gets herself in hot water screwing some general and they bounce her out of the B-2s and break her down to this test program. This is a fucking demotion for her! But they push me into the right-hand seat so this slut of a colonel can take over my place. I worked hard to get to fly this bird! But they just push me aside and let her have it. The Air Force. Screw you every time.