Ben Bova - Able One

“As soon as the bellman brings our bags we’ll grab a quick bite someplace close by and then head out to the Cow Palace.”

“If we can get a cab,” Vickie said.

Denise went to the desk, where a few glossy magazines were arranged in a fan. “I’ll look up a good restaurant.”

Denise was always the practical one, Sylvia thought.

“Any word from the tanker?” Colonel Christopher asked.

“Not a peep,” O’Banion replied.

Christopher glanced at the fuel gauges, then over at Major Kaufman, sitting as grim as death in the right-hand seat.

“They’ll be here, Obie,” she said.

“If you say so, Colonel.”

She restrained an impulse to whistle at the hostility in Kaufman’s voice. Or maybe it’s fear, she thought. The major was staring straight ahead at the swirl of dirty gray clouds far below them. The tanker might be having trouble getting through that soup, she thought. Winds must be pretty strong down there. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her helmet partway off. The headache was getting worse. Stress, she knew. Try to relax. Chill out. At least we haven’t gotten word that the tanker’s not on its way to us.

“Take over, Obie,” she said, unstrapping her seat harness and getting up from the chair. “I’ll be back in five.”

Kaufman nodded and mumbled something about a potty break.

Damned creep, Christopher thought. She stepped through the hatch onto the flight deck, where Sharmon and O’Banion sat at their stations. They both looked pretty strained. So different, Christopher thought. Skinny black kid and chunky redheaded Irishman. But they’re both wearing Air Force blue and that’s what matters.

Placing a hand on each of their shoulders, Colonel Christopher said, just loud enough for them to hear her over the drone of the engines, “You heard the major and me hollering at each other.”

O’Banion shrugged and Sharmon nodded solemnly.

“That was a difference of opinion between the two of us. It’s all straightened out now. And forgotten. Understand?”

Sharmon blinked several times before saying, “Yes, ma’am. Forgotten.”

O’Banion broke into a lazy grin. “I gotcha, Colonel. No problemo.”

Christopher smiled down at the two of them. “Good. Now where the hell is that tanker?”

Harry saw that Monk was sitting beside Taki at the battle management station. There were four consoles lining one curving bulkhead of the compartment; in a real battle situation four Air Force blue-suiters would be working battle management, with two backups behind them. For this flight, which started out as a routine test mission, Taki had the station all to herself.

Seeing the two of them talking together, grins on their faces, gave Harry a pang of apprehension. Are they both in on it? Are they working together?

Then he heard Delany finishing one of his stories, “So the highway patrolman sees the guy’s too drunk to drive and he asks him, ‘Do you realize that your wife fell out of your car three blocks down the street?’ And the driver, he’s Irish, he says, ‘Thanks be to God! I thought I was goin’ deaf!’ ”

Monk hooted at his own joke and Taki laughed politely. Harry had heard the story before, and besides he was in no mood for laughter. But he got a sudden idea.

“Monk, I need to check out the ranging laser with you.”

Delany frowned up at him. “Again?”

“Again,” said Harry. “When that tanker gets here we’ve got to test the ranger on it.”

Pushing himself up from the bucket seat, Delany grumbled, “Your taking this el jefe crap too damned serious, Harry.”

“Maybe,” Harry agreed. “But let’s make certain the laser’s ready to ping the tanker.”

Once they were in the beam control section, Harry plucked at Delany’s sleeve. “Monk, I’ve got an idea about how to find out who dismantled the lens assembly.”

Delany gave him a dubious look.

“If we can find the missing assembly, there’s probably fingerprints on it,” Harry said. “Once we get back to Elmendorf, we can get the Air Police to check ‘em out.”

Delany’s expression phased from dubious to thoughtful. “Cheez, Harry, my prints are all over that chunk of glass.”

Nodding, Harry said, “Yeah, sure. But if there’s somebody else’s prints on it, too, then that somebody must be the guy who took it!”

“Maybe,” Delany said slowly.

“Gotta be,” said Harry, convincing himself as he spoke.

Delany shook his head. “You’re turning into a friggin’ Sherlock Holmes, pal.”

Harry accepted it as a compliment, thinking, If Monk took the assembly he knows there’s nobody else’s prints on it. He’ll go back to where he stashed it and wipe it down, clean off any fingerprints on it.

But then he thought, Maybe he was smart enough to wipe it down before he stashed it in the lav. Maybe I’m not a Sherlock Holmes after all.

And he realized that Monk was only one possible culprit out of four. So what do I do now? He wondered.

“Message from the tanker!” O’Banion sang out.

“Pipe it to me,” said Karen Christopher.

“ABL-1, this is your friendly flying gas station. Sorry we’re late.”

“Better late than never,” Colonel Christopher said happily into her lip mike. “Where are you?”

“Three miles behind you and four thousand feet below. We’re coming up as fast as we can.”

Kaufman twisted around in his chair and did his best to look behind and below the plane.

“Very good,” said the colonel. “We’re glad to see you. We’re running on fumes, just about.”

“We’ll take care of that. You need anything else, Colonel? Windshield wiped? Oil change? Tires rotated?”

Karen laughed. “Just fill our tanks, thanks.” She turned to Kaufman. “Feel better, Obie?”

He gave her a halfhearted grin. “You should’ve been a test pilot: more guts than brains.”

Colonel Christopher nodded. More guts than you’ve got, butterball, she retorted silently. Then she puffed out a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“They’re definitely getting ready to launch,” said General Scheib, his eyes fixed on the wall screen that showed the latest satellite imagery from North Korea.

Zuri Coggins was speaking hurriedly, urgently, into the hair-thin headset she had attached to her minicomputer. Talking to the White House, Michael Jamil guessed. General Higgins was on his feet, his shirt rumpled, his face pasty.

Jamil wondered if the fatheaded general would send an alert to San Francisco now. The President arrives there and the North Koreans start their missile countdown. That can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be.

Then he asked himself, How did they know that the President landed? With all the commercial comm-sats out, there’s no worldwide news coverage. And we certainly aren’t sending data from our milsats to the DPRK.

They must have one or more satellites of their own watching San Francisco, Jamil concluded. Then he shook his head. The North Koreans didn’t have any satellites in space. The bomb they had launched was the first time they’ve gotten a bird into orbit successfully.

I need access, he realized. Seeing that the Coggins woman had taken off her headset and was watching the satellite imagery along with everybody else, he got out of his chair and went up the table to her.

“May I use your mini for a few minutes?” he asked.

Coggins cast a suspicious look at him, annoyed at being interrupted from her concentration on the wall screen’s imagery. The scene looked semi-weird, distorted. The surveillance satellite must be getting close to the local horizon, Jamil figured. It’ll be out of the area in a few minutes.