Ben Bova - Able One

I’ve got to decide if we try to stop those damned missiles when they’re launched or put down safely in Japan.

Brad’s left it to me to decide. He’s dropped the hot potato in my damned lap.

Karl Dieter Olbricht hated trees. It had not always been so. As a youth, growing up on the windswept prairie of Nebraska, he had loved to climb the lone apple tree on the front lawn of his house. But once he started working for the local electric utility as a rugged, handsome blond lineman, he began to acquire a hatred for trees. Not all trees. Only those close enough to electrical power lines to bring the lines down if they were blown over in a storm.

If Olbricht could have his way, every tree within two miles on either side of a power line would be cut down, carted away, its roots dug up or dynamited.

He was standing with his back to the big electronic wall map at the regional headquarters, looking out the windows on the other side of the big command center. Snow was whipping past and the trees out on the parking lot were swaying as their branches loaded up with ice.

The wall map was blank, and had been since the satellites had gone dead. Olbricht had to rely on the already overloaded telephone lines to get some semblance of a picture about the situation over the three-state area. And phone lines were getting knocked out too. Cell phone service was spotty, at best.

The National Weather Service was next to useless, and without satellite data to work with, the regional power combine’s own weather forecasters were no better. In short, this storm was going to cause a mess, a frightful, dangerous, perhaps fatal mess.

The president of the regional combine burst into the command center, stamping snow off her boots. She was a large black woman who had yet to prove that she was more than affirmative action window dressing.

“What’s the story, Karl?” she called to him as she pulled off her long fur-trimmed coat and flung it on the nearest desk. “Where is everybody?”

Fewer than half the desks were occupied.

“My people are having a hard time getting through the snow,” he replied as she came up close enough for him to smell her heavy perfume.

“Tell me ‘bout it,” she said. “Highway’s blocked by a jackknifed semi. I had to detour all around hell and back. Damned near got stuck in a snowdrift coming into the parking lot.”

“It’s going to be bad,” Olbricht said gloomily.

“It’s already bad.”

He nodded. “We’re getting calls from here and there about outages. It’s spotty so far, but...”

“It’s going to cascade, isn’t it?”

“Damned right,” Olbricht muttered through gritted teeth. “We could see half a million families without power before this is through. More.”

The president looked around the half-empty command center, then back at Olbricht. “Okay. Tell me what needs doing. Give me a desk and put me to work.”

His respect for her bounded upward several notches. But he still hated trees.

Brad Scheib walked out of the situation room, past the two Air Police men lounging in the corridor who snapped to attention at the sight of a two-star general, and headed for the men’s room, two dozen paces down the hall.

He had written the order and sent it. Karen should have it in her hands by now, he thought, unless they’re still dicking around with Need to Know crap. No, the Coggins woman said her office has set up direct links, Top Priority. If the White House can’t get a message through to Karen nobody can.

In the lavatory he went straight to the nearest sink and started washing his hands. When he realized what he was doing he laughed to himself sardonically. How biblical, he thought. Like you can get rid of your guilt with a little soap and water.

Karen’s piloting ABL-1, he said to himself. I’d like to get whatever genius assigned her to that job and stuff his balls up his nose. Like that’s going to help.

She’s out there over the North Pacific, heading toward Korea. Probably over Japan by now or close to it. The tanker’s going to be late, if those guys at Misawa get it off the ground at all. So Karen has the option of loitering around waiting for the tanker to refuel her or aborting the mission and landing at Misawa.

She’s tough, Scheib remembered. Tougher than I am. When the shit hit the fan and the board of inquiry called her in, she didn’t say a word about me. Wouldn’t tell them a thing. They thought that’d crack her, sticking her with a bus driver’s job on a stupid test program.

But now she’s in the middle of a real situation. Nuclear war, maybe. It all depends on what she does. What she can do. She won’t abort the mission. Not Karen. She’ll stooge around over the water until that tanker shows up or she runs so low on fuel she’ll have to glide back to Misawa.

Scheib almost laughed as he went from the sink to the urinal. The brass thought they were punishing her, but they’ve stuck her in the hottest spot any Air Force pilot could be in right now. As he unzipped his fly, the general thought, She could come out of this a hero. Or dead.

Looking down at his penis as he stood at the urinal, Scheib muttered, “See the trouble you’ve gotten me into?”

At Misawa Air Force Base, Major Hank Wilson glared red-faced and fire-eyed at one of his oldest friends, Major Joe Dugan. Like Wilson, Dugan was squat and burly, built like an old-fashioned fireplug.

“In one hour?” Dugan squawked. “Are you nuts, Hank?”

“In one hour,” Wilson said, his voice murderously low. “I want that frickin’ tanker out of here within sixty minutes after it lands.”

The two men had known each other since their Air Force Academy days. Now they were rushing— sprinting, almost—across the tarmac toward the base maintenance depot.

“Can’t be done, Hank,” said Dugan, puffing slightly from the unaccustomed exertion. “My guys’ll need—”

Wilson stopped suddenly and Dugan trotted several steps before stopping and turning around to face his old friend. The sky above the airfield was turning gray, but the only thundercloud Dugan could see was Wilson’s slab-jawed face.

Looking around to make certain that no one was within earshot, Wilson lowered his voice a notch and explained, “Joe, I got a message straight from the frickin’ White House. The National Security Advisor signed the order personally. Absolute top priority.”

“That don’t mean—”

“What it means is that we gotta get that tanker back in the air one hour after it lands. Or quicker. That’s what it means.”

“But we don’t even know what’s wrong with its engine!”

“Get another engine on the flight line. Swap it out.”

“That’s crazy! We can’t—”

“The hell you can’t. I want a crew ready to swap out the engine soon’s that tanker rolls up to the apron.”

Dugan looked as if he’d just swallowed a dose of rancid cod liver oil. He glanced up at the sky. “It’s gonna rain,” he grumbled.

“Clear out a hangar and roll the bird into it.”

“Hank, this is crazy and you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah. But get it done.”

Sylvia tried to keep her terror hidden from the girls. She had never flown in a plane this small. Commercial airliners were so big that she never felt afraid. It was like sitting in a bus, really, especially if she had an aisle seat and didn’t look out the windows.

But this flimsy little thing was barely big enough for herself and her daughters. And the pilot. He was a good-looking older man, his short-trimmed hair silvery gray. And he had a sporty little moustache the same attractive color.