Ben Bova - Able One

O’Banion came back on the intercom. “Colonel, Mr. Hartunian’s asking to talk to you.” “Where is he?”

“Down in the battle management compartment.”

She turned to Kaufman. “Obie, take over. Stay on this heading until we’re twenty miles off the coast. Holler if I’m not back by then.”

Kaufman looked resentful, as usual. But he said, “Twenty miles. Right.”

Colonel Christopher nodded at her navigator and communications officer as she went through the flight deck and down the ladder to the tiny niche between the beam control and battle management compartments. Hartunian was standing behind the Asian-American girl, the expression on his face somewhere between grim and determined.

“Any problems, Mr. Hartunian?” the colonel asked, barely loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the plane’s engines.

Hartunian gestured toward the galley as he said, “I think we’re ready, Colonel.”

“You think?” Christopher felt her brows knitting. She had wanted to make her tone light, not accusative. No sense making the nerd get sore at you, she told herself. But her words had come out as challenging, demanding.

Hartunian seemed not to notice as he stepped through the open hatchway and waited for her to enter the galley. Then he closed the hatch behind her, softly, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear it shut.

“Well?” Colonel Christopher said.

“The hardware’s in operating condition. We tested the ranging laser on the refueling plane and it’s working okay.”

“Good.”

With a shake of his head, Hartunian went on, “But I don’t know about the people. We’re just a skeleton crew. And one of us tried to sabotage the mission.”

“You still don’t know who.”

“No idea.”

Christopher thought it over for all of two seconds. Then she muttered, “Well, let’s hope it’s not some fanatic who’s willing to kill himself.” Then she added, “Or herself.”

Hartunian said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Whoever it was tried to screw up the mission in the least dangerous way possible. Knock out the ranging laser and we’d have to abort the test and turn back for home. But now that he knows this mission is for real...” His voice trailed off.

Christopher went to the coffee urn and poured herself a mug. “If you’re right, that means whoever it was sabotaged your laser when he—or she— thought this flight was only a routine test.”

“Right,” Hartunian agreed. “Which means that whoever it is wanted to give Anson Aerospace a black eye. He’s not an enemy agent, he’s just a damned industrial spy, working for one of Anson’s competitors.”

The colonel stared at Hartunian for a long, silent moment. Then, “You think so?”

The engineer smiled bitterly. “Either that or we’re all dead.”

As he spoke earnestly into the telephone, the President hardly glanced at the magnificent view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the penthouse suite’s windows. It was raining out there anyway, a steady, gray, cold-looking rain.

Norman Foster sat on the luxurious Louis XIV sofa and ran a hand over his bald pate as he watched his friend and boss chatting away on the phone, charming one moment, intimidating the next. Moscow, Tokyo, NATO headquarters in Belgium: he’d been trying to get world leaders lined up with him despite the maddening slowness of the battered global communications system.

At last the President put the phone down. Before he could get out of his chair, Foster said, “The Air Force wants to send some F-15s to escort ABL-1.”

“A fighter escort?” the President. “Why do they want a fighter escort?”

Foster knew that they’d have to change into fresh suits before heading out to the Cow Palace. He glanced at his wristwatch before replying, “The laser plane’s a big four-engine 747. If the North Koreans or the Chinese try to intercept it, she’ll be a sitting duck.”

“This request came from NSA?”

“From the special situation team. They sent it through the Air Force, who passed it up to the Secretary of Defense,” Foster said.

“From Lonnie Bakersfield?”

“None other.”

“This request came direct from Lonnie himself?” the President asked.

Spreading his hands in a gesture of uncertainty, the President’s chief of staff replied, “Nothing’s direct just now. Communications are in a mess. SecDef sent this request nearly an hour ago.”

“And you just got it?” the President snapped.

“It came to Air Force One and they transferred it to your security team’s briefcase.”

“God Almighty! How can we manage this crisis when we can’t even get telephone calls through?”

Trying to calm his boss, Foster said, “The communications system is working; it’s just slower than normal, that’s all.”

“That’s all? You said this request came from that situation team you put together, through the Air Force chain of command, up to the Secretary of Defense, and now to me.”

“That’s right.”

The President glared at his old friend. “Where’s that laser plane now?”

“According to the latest report, it’s over the Sea of Japan, heading for the coast of North Korea.”

“You think the North Koreans might try to shoot it down?”

“Or force it to land in North Korea. It’d make terrific propaganda for them. Not to mention the technology they’ll be able to get their hands on.”

“We’re staring nuclear war in the face and you think they’re aiming for propaganda?”

Foster made an exasperated grimace. “Yeah. What the hell do I know.”

Standing in the middle of the sumptuously furnished room, the President scratched at his long jaw once, then decided. “No fighter escort.”

Foster could feel his brows hike up.

Waving an extended forefinger like a schoolteacher trying to get a lesson across to a backward pupil, the President said, “You get our fighter jocks into the same airspace as their fighter jocks and you’re going to start a war.”

“But if they launch those missiles we’ll have a war anyway. A nuclear war.”

“The laser plane’s supposed to shoot the missiles down.”

“Suppose the North Koreans shoot down the plane instead?”

“Then they launch the missiles and we go to war. But I don’t want to have some fighter jock get us into a war if we can avoid it.”

Foster got slowly to his feet. “Mr. President, that just doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

“Maybe not to you, Norm. But that’s my decision. If there’s a way to avert this disaster I’m willing to take it. Now let me see if I can get the British Prime Minister on the phone before we have to head down to the Cow Palace.”

General Scheib looked up from his laptop. “No fighter escort,” he said, his face dark, grim. General Higgins stepped over to where Scheib was sitting and stared at the decoded message on Scheib’s screen, as if he couldn’t believe it unless he saw the words for himself.

“From POTUS,” he muttered. With a shake of his head he added, “Can’t go any higher in the chain of command than that.”

Scheib looked up into Higgins’ florid, big-nosed face. “ABL-1 will be a sitting duck if the North Koreans send out fighters.”

Zuri Coggins, standing by the newly replenished coffee cart, spoke up. “Maybe they won’t. If Pyongyang honestly wants to prevent the rebels from launching those missiles, they won’t interfere with our plane.”

“How do they know what our plane is?” Scheib snapped. “What if they think it’s a strategic bomber, the first part of our counterstrike against them?”