Ben Bova - Able One

“What’re you talking about?”

“The forward lens assembly is missing from the ranging laser, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Delany’s jaw dropped open. “Missing? Whaddaya mean it’s missing?”

“It’s not there, Monk. That’s why the console’s reading a malfunction.”

“It’s gotta be there.”

“It’s not. I just checked it out.”

“Everything was okay last night. I checked it all out.” Delany’s usual smile was gone now. He looked frightened.

“It’s not okay now.”

Monk looked up at Harry, his face full of consternation.

“We’ve got spares. I’ll get right on it.” He got up from his seat and before Harry could say anything squeezed through the hatch, heading aft.

Harry didn’t move. He stood there in the nose of the plane, feeling it rise and fall slowly, majestically, like the big cruise liner he’d been on as it ploughed relentlessly through the sea. But his mind was racing. There’s a saboteur among us, he thought. Somebody doesn’t want the COIL to work. Somebody on board the plane, somebody who doesn’t want to get himself killed. So he disables the ranging laser. Without data on the target’s range and position the COIL is useless.

Who did this? Harry asked himself. Can Monk fix it before we get near North Korea? And if he does, what will the saboteur try next?

The place was a madhouse. Sylvia had decided to avoid LAX and take a commuter jet to San Francisco, but the usually quiet airport in Santa Monica was teeming with angry, yelling, ticket-waving customers. One look at the electronic status board showed Sylvia that half the scheduled flights had been canceled. Most of the others were badly delayed.

Her daughters seemed unimpressed by the furor boiling all around them as Sylvia left them in front of the status board to fight her way to the ticket counter.

“Don’t move from this spot,” Sylvia commanded. Both girls nodded dutifully. “And watch my bag!”

“Sure.”

As their mother plunged into the crowd, Vickie said, “Must be a lot of people trying to get to San Francisco today.”

“Or someplace,” Denise agreed.

“The place looks like a zoo.”

“This is where they filmed Casablanca?” Denise asked her older sister.

The two girls were standing in the midst of the bellowing, surging crowd like a pair of slim palm trees in the middle of a tropical typhoon. Vickie nodded. “The airport scene in the beginning,” she said.

A harried-looking, red-faced man lugging a bulging briefcase rushed past the girls and tripped over Vickie’s roll-on suitcase. He went sprawling, his briefcase popped open, papers fluttering in all directions.

Vickie and Denise helped to scoop up the papers. The man stuffed them back in his briefcase, his face sweaty and angry, as he muttered something about being late for the last flight to Sacramento. He dashed off, clutching the briefcase under his arm like a football.

“He never said thank you,” Denise complained.

“A jerk,” said Vickie.

Sylvia came out of the crowd, reached for the handle of her roll-on, and said grimly to her daughters, “Follow me.”

They pushed through the fuming, bawling crowd and up a flight of stairs, their roll-ons bumping with each step.

Sylvia pushed through a door marked FLIGHT OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, the two girls at her heels.

It was mercifully quiet inside the office. No one was there except a rake-thin, harried-looking man sitting behind a desk with a phone at his ear and both eyes staring at his desktop computer screen. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were rolled up. His tie was pulled loose from his wrinkled, soggy collar.

“It’s a total mess!” he was saying into the phone, his voice high, agitated. “Computers are down, phone lines are jammed, navigation system is kaput—a real mess!”

Sylvia stood before his desk, her two daughters flanking her, and waited patiently until at last the man put the phone down and looked up at her.

Before he could speak a word, Sylvia said sweetly, “Congresswoman McClintock is waiting for us in San Francisco. If we don’t get there to be with the President this evening there’s going to be a lot of trouble.”

“Congresswoman McClintock?”

“We’re due to be with the President of the United States this evening at the Cow Palace,” Sylvia said in a tone that you could pour over pancakes.

“The President?”

“The President,” said Sylvia sweetly. “And Congresswoman McClintock. And the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. Among others.”

The man groaned, but then said, “Wait right here. I’ll see what can be done.”

Sylvia gestured for her daughters to take the two wooden chairs in front of the desk. She herself remained standing while the badly stressed director of flight operations picked up his telephone again.

“Kamchatka Peninsula coming up.” Colonel Christopher heard her navigator’s voice in her headphone. The kid sounded more sure of himself since they’d made the rendezvous with the first tanker.

“There it is,” Major Kaufman said, pointing to a smudge of gray clouds on the horizon, at about the two o’clock position.

Christopher said into her lip mike, “Jon, we need to stay well away from Russian airspace.”

“Workin’ on it,” the navigator replied. “I’ll have a course correction for you in two minutes, Colonel.”

“Colonel, we’re getting pinged by Kamchatka,” said the communications officer. O’Banion’s voice sounded worried. “Oh-oh. Message coming in.”

“Pipe it to me,” she commanded. A smooth baritone voice said in flawless midwestern American English, “Unidentified aircraft, you are approaching Russian airspace. Please identify yourself.”

Christopher thumbed the comm switch on her control yoke and said crisply, “This is U.S. Air Force ABL-1. We intend to remain over international waters.”

“We have no information on your flight plan,” said Kamchatka, without the slightest trace of anxiety.

The colonel bit her lips momentarily, then replied, “We are on our way to Japanese airspace. We will stay well away from your territory.”

Silence for several heartbeats. He’s waiting for his superiors to tell him what he should say, Christopher reasoned.

Finally, “U.S. ABL-1, our air defense command has sent a flight of interceptors to accompany you away from Russian airspace. They have no hostile intent.”

“Copy,” Christopher said curtly. “No hostile intent.” Then she clicked off the radio switch and grinned at her copilot. “Bet they’ve got plenty of cameras on board.”

“They’ll have air-to-air missiles, too, count on it,” Kaufman muttered.

“Of course.” She turned the situation over in her mind for a few moments, then said, “We better make a left turn, Obie.”

“I guess so.”

Lieutenant Sharmon gave them a new heading and the big 747 turned southward twelve degrees. Not enough, though.

“Hey!” Kaufman yipped. “We got company.”

Following his pointing finger with her eyes, Christopher saw a trio of swept-wing jet fighters boring in on them from above and ahead.

“Fulcrums,” Kaufman said. MiG-29s, the mainstay of the Russian fighter forces.

“No,” Christopher said, eyeing the sleek, silvery fighters. “They look too new. More like MiG-35s.”

“There’s another one,” Kaufman said, “comin’ up fast.”

“That’s not a MiG,” said Christopher.

“Looks a lot like one of our F-15s.”

She nodded, making her flight helmet wobble slightly on her head. “Sukhoi SU-27. Photo recon plane.”