Ben Bova - Able One

O’Banion’s voice replied, “Nothing since they reported the bird landed, Colonel.”

Kaufman grumbled, “Misawa can’t talk to us, so they send the word to Washington and Washington relays the poop to us. Helluva way to run a mission.”

“Communications are snarled up,” Christopher said. But inwardly she agreed with her copilot. Communications were vital and this Top Secret mission was at the end of a long and very shaky tether.

“Wind velocity’s picking up some,” Sharmon reported.

With a nod, Colonel Christopher realized that they were facing the navigator’s worst-case option. Fuel bingo in twenty-nine minutes, she calculated. Looking out at the swirl of gray clouds covering the ocean below, she thought, If we go down it’ll be into a nasty bit of weather. Ditching a plane this size into a cold ocean in the middle of a major storm. Not a good career move.

Harry was sitting by himself in the cramped little galley beneath the flight deck. There were no windows to see outside, but he sensed that the plane was turning, leaning slightly to the left side as it made a wide, cumbersome turn.

Are we turning back? he wondered. Maybe I should check with Colonel Christopher. If we’re going back, then I could make it known to whoever tried to screw up the mission that he can relax, the mission’s scrubbed.

As he grasped his lukewarm mug of coffee with both hands Harry asked himself for the thousandth time: Who is it? Which one of them tried to stop this mission? Who took that optics assembly?

He sat in one of the galley’s undersized bucket seats and tried to puzzle it all out. Beam control is Monk’s job. He knows the most about it; it’d be easiest for him to take out the lens assembly. But he couldn’t have gone up there once we took off—the flight crew would have seen him. Whoever it was must’ve removed the assembly before we took off. And he hid it somewhere on the plane, most likely. Where? Maybe if I can find the lens assembly it’ll tell me something about who took it.

But Harry shook his head. Maybe if I could dust it for fingerprints. Not even then, he realized. Monk, Taki, Wally, even Angel had enough time to sneak up to the flight deck last night while we were doing the preflight and take the assembly out of the ranging laser. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to lift the assembly out of its fitting. It’s designed to pop in or pop out, just like Monk said.

Why? Harry demanded silently. Why would any one of them want to scrub this mission? Is he a spy, for Chrissakes? With a disgusted shake of his head, Harry reasoned, No, that couldn’t be it. None of us knew we were flying into a shooting war when we took off. We all thought it was going to be just another milk run.

Not a spy, then. Not an enemy agent. No James Bond stuff. But then why the hell did he do it?

And did he cause the explosion out on the Mohave? Did he kill Pete?

Harry sat there mulling his thoughts over and over again. Slowly he began to think that he really didn’t want to know. One of my people is a saboteur, at least. Maybe a murderer. I don’t want to know who it is.

But he realized even so that he had to know. He had to find out. I can’t let him try again. He might kill us all, for god’s sake. Or her. Maybe it’s Taki. Is there something in her background that I don’t know about? Something that makes her willing to commit suicide to stop this mission? She’s third - or fourth - generation American, but is there some of the kamikaze spirit inside her?

He gulped at his tepid coffee, got to his feet, and went to the tiny stainless steel sink to rinse out the mug. You’re going nutso, he said to himself. Absolutely dingbat. Taki’s no Japanese spy, for Chrissake.

But somebody removed the lens assembly. One of my people. Somebody who figured that would be the simplest and least dangerous way to abort the mission. Knock out the ranging laser and we’re out of business.

Who? Who?

Harry leaned against the sink, his mind spinning. Then he stood up straight and went to the galley’s hatch. Instead of standing around asking yourself questions, he reasoned, go out and do something. Find the missing lens assembly. Maybe where the guy hid it will tell you who it was.

It wasn’t much, but it was all that Harry could think of doing.

Zuri Coggins looked up from her mini’s screen and announced, “The President’s landed at San Francisco International.”

Michael Jamil turned in his chair to face the wall screen that showed CNN, Fox News, and three other news channels. None of them was showing the President’s arrival in Air Force One. There must be a crowd at the airport to greet him, Jamil thought, his brows furrowing. That’s why he landed at the commercial airport instead of a military base. Why aren’t the news nets covering his arrival?

And then it hit him. The satellites are out. No instant news coverage from the West Coast. I’ll bet they don’t even have coaxial cables anymore to carry TV across the continent.

General Scheib was also bent over his laptop screen. “The tanker’s taken off from Misawa,” he said. “Should make rendezvous with ABL-1 in about one hour.”

General Higgins came down the table and bent over Scheib’s shoulder. “Will your plane have enough fuel to make the rendezvous?”

Without looking up at Higgins, Scheib muttered, “That’s a decision the pilot has to make.”

“The tanker’s on its way! Took off ten minutes ago!” O’Banion called so loudly that Karen Christopher could hear him through the open cockpit hatch even with her helmet on.

“ETA?” Christopher said into her lip mike.

It took several moments before O’Banion replied, more softly, “Sixty-eight minutes.”

Major Kaufman leaned toward Christopher. “That’s way past our bingo point.”

The colonel nodded slowly, her mind racing. “We have enough fuel to wait for the tanker. Once we make rendezvous we can refill our tanks.”

Kaufman’s face showed what he thought of that. “And what if the goddamned tanker breaks down again? What if it misses the rendezvous? There’s a big storm blowing down there. We can’t sit here and wait till our tanks run dry!”

“The tanker’s on its way,” Colonel Christopher said firmly.

“And we’re supposed to orbit around here and hope the damned tanker finds us?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s crazy!”

“The tanker will be here before we run dry, Obie. This is no time to panic.”

“So when is the time to panic? When we’re in the drink, in the middle of a goddamned typhoon?”

A fragment of memory flashed through Colonel Christopher’s mind, a legend she had heard while in the academy about a B-17 mission over Germany during World War II. With Nazi fighter planes swarming in on them, the copilot of the Flying Fortress screamed that they had to turn back, get away. The pilot unlimbered his service revolver and threatened to blow the copilot’s head off if he didn’t shut up and do his job. Karen regretted that she hadn’t packed her service pistol on this flight.

“I’ll tell you when it’s time to panic, Obie,” she said coolly. “Now keep your voice down, you’re frightening the kids.”

Kaufman stared at her, his baggy-eyed face a mixture of anger, fear, and disbelief.

“You’re gonna stooge around here until we run out of fuel?” he asked, his voice lower.

“Until the tanker shows up,” Christopher corrected. “And then we’re going to shoot down any goddamned missile those goddamned gooks launch.”

And there it was, tucked in behind the spare packs of toilet paper.