Ben Bova - Able One

Sylvia was sitting in the right-hand seat, her daughters behind her. She couldn’t help looking out the windshield at the mountains down below, and the ocean. What if the engines stop? she wondered. We can’t land on a mountainside—or in the water. We’ll all die!

The pilot kept up a friendly chatter, but she had stopped listening to his words as she sat rigidly and felt every bump and shudder that the plane went through. There’s nothing between us and those mountains but empty air! Sylvia realized. She fought down an urge to vomit.

“Oh-oh,” said the pilot.

“What’s wrong?” Sylvia squeaked.

Tapping the bulbous earphone on the left side of his head, he said over the rumble of the plane’s twin jet engines, “Traffic control’s ordered us to orbit the field.”

“Orbit? In space?”

He laughed. “No, it just means they want us to ride around the airfield for a while.”

“How long?”

“Until Air Force One lands.”

From behind them, Denise said, “Air Force One? The President’s plane?”

“Yep,” said the pilot. Pointing past Sylvia’s nose, he said, “There she is, right there.”

Sylvia saw a huge four-engined plane painted sky blue and white. It looked terribly close, she thought.

“All traffic in and out of SFO is suspended until the President gets out of his plane,” the pilot said, as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.

Sylvia wondered how long they’d have to stay in the air, waiting. And if they had enough fuel.

“You’re probably wondering why I called you into this meeting,” said Harry. He knew it was weak to the point of inanity, but he couldn’t think of any better way to break the ice.

Wally Rosenberg snorted derisively. Taki Nakamura made a polite smile, obviously forced. Monk Delany looked disgusted and Angel Reyes looked worried.

Harry had brought them together in the battle management compartment. Usually manned by six people, it had more seats than any other section of the plane except for the cramped compartment where his team stayed during takeoffs and landings. Now they sat at the row of silent consoles, turned around to face Harry, who stood grimly before them.

“You all know that somebody pulled the optics assembly out of the ranging laser,” Harry said.

“It’s all fixed now,” said Delany. “No problem.”

“You replaced the assembly?”

“Yep. No sweat.”

Rosenberg asked, “How’d you get that fat ass of yours into that cramped little housing, Monk?”

“All I had to do was get one arm in. The assembly slides in and clicks in place nice and easy. It’s designed that way, Wally.”

Taki pointed out, “You’ll have to check the alignment when the tanker shows up.”

“No problem,” Delany repeated.

“That’s not the point,” said Harry. “The point is that one of us deliberately tried to screw up this mission. One of us” he emphasized, waving a finger at his four teammates.

“What do you want to do about it, Harry?” Reyes asked, his voice small, soft.

“I want the person who did it to stand up and admit it and swear that he won’t do anything else to mess us up.”

“He?” Delany asked, turning slightly to look at Nakamura.

“Whoever,” Harry said. “I figure that the guy did it before we were told we’re going against a real live missile. I don’t know why he did it and I don’t care. I just want to know that he—or she—won’t try anything more.”

Dead silence, except for the vibrating drone of the plane’s engines.

“No questions asked,” Harry promised. “Whatever happened, for whatever reason, it’ll be strictly among us. Nobody else has to know.”

“You told the pilot, didn’t you?” Rosenberg asked, almost accusingly.

Harry nodded. “I had to. But I can always tell her I made a mistake, that the optics assembly was taken out for inspection.”

“And that Air Force colonel’s gonna believe a cockamamie story like that?” Delany challenged.

“She’ll have to, if we all stick together on it.”

Silence again. Harry stared at the four of them, wishing he were a mind reader.

“At least tell me there won’t be any more of this crap,” Harry pleaded. “We’re going to a shooting war, for Chrissakes, we don’t need somebody trying to screw us up.”

They glanced back and forth at each other. Nobody said a word.

Then Rosenberg cleared his throat noisily and said, “Well, I’m not going to mess with anything, Harry.”

“Me neither,” said Reyes.

“I didn’t in the first place,” Taki Nakamura said, almost defiantly.

Delany broke into a lazy grin. “Hell, it’s dangerous enough up here without trying to louse up the works.”

Harry heaved an involuntary sigh. “Okay,” he said. “I have your word on it?” They all nodded.

“Good enough.” Harry realized that this was the most he was going to get from them. “But from now on nobody works alone. Understand that? I don’t want any one of you out of sight of one of the others.”

“Cheez, Harry, that ain’t gonna work,” Delany complained. “We’ve each got our own stations and—”

Harry cut him off. “Until we get into a real battle situation, you guys work in pairs. I’m not kidding. I want you to keep an eye on one another.”

Reyes nodded solemnly. “Okay, Harry. But who’s going to keep an eye on you?”

It took Harry a moment to realize that Reyes was smiling gently. Gruffly, Harry said, “Don’t worry about me.”

They broke up. Nakamura went with Delany forward to the optics station, Rosenberg and Reyes aft toward the COIL and its fuel tanks.

Harry stood alone in the empty battle management section, thinking that one of his four team members must have sabotaged the laser at the field test out in the Mohave and killed Pete Quintana in doing so.

Karen Christopher was stretched out on the bunk in the rear of the flight deck. Her eyes were closed, but she couldn’t sleep.

The tanker’s delayed. That one thought kept running through her mind. That and an image of the fuel gauges on ABL-1’s control panel. We’re over Japan now. We could break off this mission and put down at Misawa, nice and easy. Nobody gets hurt and nobody would blame me for aborting the mission.

And the North Koreans launch their missiles.

We could stop them! She knew that as certainly as she knew her heart was beating. If I can get this clunker of an airplane into the proper position we could shoot down those bastards before their rocket engines cut off.

But you need another long drink of fuel to get there, she said to herself. You need that tanker. And if you stooge around over the ocean long enough waiting for it, you could run out of fuel and go down into the ocean.

That’d be a great career move, she thought. Sink a billion-dollar airplane, the only one of its kind. Sink your career in the Air Force with it.

Christopher wondered how much of a career she had to look forward to. She remembered the board of inquiry, the cold, hard faces of the Advocate General’s panel of judges.

“You refuse a direct order to name the officer you’ve been sleeping with?” The crusty old brigadier was smirking at her, seeing dirty pictures in his mind.

“My activities while not on duty are not subject to Air Force jurisdiction, sir,” Karen had replied, knowing it was a pathetically weak defense.

“They are subject to United States Air Force jurisdiction when they reflect dishonorably on the service!” the judge had snapped at her.

Karen lapsed into silence. Her USAF-appointed lawyer, a light colonel like herself, had advised her that silence was her best defense.