Ben Bova - Able One

“My computer?” Coggins asked.

“Only for a few minutes. Please.”

She hesitated a heartbeat, then gestured to the mini. “Go ahead. It’s connected to the Defense Department’s information web.”

“Fine. Thanks.” Jamil slid into the chair next to Coggins and pulled the book-sized computer in front of him.

Coggins got up and stretched. Tense as a tightrope, she said to herself. Why not? You’ve got a lot to be tense about.

She walked over to the coffee cart. All three urns were empty again. We’re drinking too much of it anyway, she thought, even though she wished she had a cup to hold in her hands.

“Coffee’s gone again?”

Turning, she saw it was General Higgins glowering at the cart. He waved to his aide and pointed ostentatiously to the stainless steel urns. “I’ve got to tell him everything,” Higgins complained.

Coggins half-whispered, “Do you think they’re really targeting the President?”

The general shook his head stubbornly. “Scheib says those missiles don’t have the range or accuracy to hit San Francisco. He’s our local expert.”

“Then it’s Honolulu.”

“Or Fairbanks. Or Manila. Or Shanghai.” Higgins looked back at the screen, muttering, “Our next recon bird won’t be over the area for another ten minutes.”

She stepped across the room to where General Scheib stood staring at the wall screen while he gnawed his lip.

“How soon before they launch?” Coggins asked.

Scheib cocked his head to one side, thinking. Then he replied, “No more than an hour. Ninety minutes on the outside.”

“Can they hit San Francisco?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But if that’s their target, can your people stop them?”

General Scheib looked down at her. He still wore his tunic, ribbons displayed across his chest. Except for a shadow of beard, he looked almost as sharp as he had in the morning, when the group first convened. But he was gnawing his lip.

“Wherever they’re aiming for, we’ve got four Aegis ships in the Pacific and our land-based antimissile batteries in Alaska and California.”

“Can they shoot the missiles down?”

He started to shake his head, caught himself. “You have to understand the problem. Once those ballistic missiles’ rocket engines burn out, they’re on a coasting trajectory to their target.”

“So you can track exactly where they’re heading,” Coggins said.

“Yeah, but they separate the warhead from the body of the missile, release decoys if they’re carrying any, even break up the missile’s tankage to make a cloud of images, confuse our radar. Our guys have to pick out the warhead from that cloud of crap.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’s not easy. The best way to discriminate the warhead is when the stuff reenters the atmosphere. Air drag slows down the decoys and fragments; they’re lighter than the warhead. Then we can pick out which incoming body is carrying the bomb.”

“When it’s diving onto the target? How much time do you have to decide which is which?”

Scheib made a sound that could have been a snort. “A minute, if we’re lucky.”

Coggins felt her eyes widen. “One minute or less? Can you hit the warhead in that time span?”

“We’ve done it in tests,” Scheib said. Then he added, “About half the time.”

“Saints and sinners!” Coggins exclaimed. “Half the time?”

“That’s why ABL-1’s so important,” said the general. “If we can hit the missiles with that laser while they’re still boosting, while their rockets are burning, before they deploy their warheads and decoys…”

Coggins saw the uncertainty on his face. “Does the President know all this?”

“He’s been briefed. More than once. I made the presentation myself last year when they were considering the budget for MDA.”

He’s toast, Coggins thought. If those missiles reach San Francisco the President is toast. Along with half a million other people.

Back at the conference table, Michael Jamil had finally found the information he wanted. He had tried to check through official Defense Department files but found them too slow and cumbersome for his purposes. All DoD’s security regulations do is slow down access to the information you need, Jamil complained silently. So he’d turned to the Internet site of Aviation Week magazine. He’d heard guys at Langley call it Aviation Leak because it often published information that Washington would have preferred to keep away from the public.

And there it was, in last week’s issue. The People’s Republic of China had launched a quartet of scientific research satellites into polar orbits. Beijing announced that the satellites were part of China’s expanding space exploration program.

Space exploration my pimpled ass, Jamil snarled to himself. Those are surveillance satellites. Hardened birds, so they wouldn’t be knocked out by the nuke the North Koreans set off. They pass over California every half hour. They’re watching San Francisco and feeding the info to the North Koreans, telling them when to launch their missiles so they’ll catch the President.

Jamil pushed his chair away from the table and looked for Zuri Coggins in the group clustered before the wall screens.

The Chinese are behind this! He was certain. The North Koreans are fronting for Beijing. We’re heading smack into a nuclear war.

Charley Ingersoll had to make a decision. The van was stuck in the god-dratted snowbank on the shoulder of the road. The more he tried to pull out of the snow, the deeper his tires spun into the ruts they were making.

Martha was ashen-faced, barely keeping herself from sobbing. The kids seemed okay, but they were strangely quiet. Scared, Charley thought.

I’m scared too, he realized. Stuck here in the middle of infernal nowhere with the snow coming down harder than ever and the van running out of gas. Stupid phone doesn’t work and there hasn’t been a snowplow through here for God knows how long. Lord have mercy! We could freeze to death! He tried the radio. Nothing but hillbilly music or blaring rock that made him feel as if his eardrums were about to explode. No news. No weather reports.

“It’s ten minutes to two, Charley,” his wife said, her voice small, frightened. “They’ll have news and weather on the hour.”

Like that’s going to do us any good, Charley thought. But he didn’t say anything out loud. He sat and waited. The van was eerily silent. Only the soft purr of the engine and the moaning wind outside. The snow was coming down heavier than ever.

How long will the gas last? Charley asked himself. Once it runs out and the heater goes, we could all freeze to death.

“Can’t we go out and make a snowman?” Little Martha asked again.

“No!” Martha snapped. “Stay in here, where it’s warm.”

For how long? Charley wondered.

“Your headlines on the hour,” a man’s deep voice intoned over a blare of trumpets. “Surprise blizzard blankets the region with snow! Widespread electric outages reported! Network and cable television still out of service!” He sounded positively happy about it all. “And now the details.”

Charley listened in growing impatience as the voice told how television service had been out all day except for local stations. Come on with the weather, Charley prompted silently. Come on!

“A surprise autumn storm has struck the region with more than a foot of snow, and still more on the way.” The guy sounded overjoyed about it, Charley thought. “Snowplow crews have been struggling to keep the interstates open, but secondary roads have been officially closed to all but emergency traffic . . .”