Ben Bova - Able One

“Opportunity?”

“The President has handled this crisis badly, going off to San Francisco to show what a macho strongman he is.”

Wondering where she was heading, Defense chose his words carefully. “If that kid is right and San Francisco is nuked…”

“Parkinson becomes President.”

Defense huffed. “He’s a horse’s ass.”

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“I had him bundled off to the National Redoubt this morning, when this missile business came up.”

“So he’s safe.”

Defense nodded and muttered, “Too bad.”

“Not at all,” State countered. “You wouldn’t want the Speaker of the House to be President, would you?”

“God, no!”

“Parkinson can be handled. He can be led.”

“By you?”

“By us,” State replied, her smile widening. “We can form a sort of committee.”

“A triumvirate. Like in ancient Rome, after Julius Caesar’s assassination.” And he remembered from history that the triumvirate quickly broke apart as Octavian bested the other two and made himself Rome’s first emperor, Augustus Caesar.

State nodded absently, her mind already obviously looking ahead. “If the President dies in a nuclear attack on San Francisco—”

“Parkinson wouldn’t have the guts to order a counterstrike on North Korea.”

“I think you’re wrong, Lonnie.”

My name’s Lionel and she knows it, Defense growled inwardly. But he kept his pique off his face and asked innocently, “Wrong?”

“I think we can get Parkinson to give the attack order while he’s right there in the National Redoubt, snug and safe from attack. I think I could convince him.”

Defense shook his head. “So we clobber North Korea. And the Chinese clobber us.”

“No, Lonnie, you don’t understand,” State said. “We hit China right away with a preemptive strike. Cripple their missile forces so they can’t hurt us too much. Then we wipe out North Korea.”

Defense stared at her. She was still smiling, as if she were talking about rearranging the flowers on a banquet table.

“The fallout will drift over Japan,” he muttered.

The Secretary of State’s smile did not diminish by a single millimeter. “Regrettable,” she said. “But one of the ancillary benefits will be to remove both China and Japan as economic competitors.”

Defense realized what her smile reminded him of: a rattlesnake, poised to strike.

“Have they launched?” General Scheib shouted as he burst into the situation room. General Higgins, sitting at the head of the table, his chair turned so he faced the wall screen, shook his head. “Not yet, Brad.” Gesturing to the image on the screen, he went on. “That’s the latest imagery. Looks like they’re in countdown mode.”

Scheib saw that the missiles were standing on their pads, slight wisps of steam issuing from the rime-coated section where the liquid oxygen tanks were.

Sliding into his own chair, he asked, “How old’s that picture?”

“Ten minutes,” Higgins replied. “We’ve got a low-altitude bird coming over their horizon in another three minutes. Should give us better resolution.”

Scheib tapped at his laptop’s keyboard. According to the tracking satellite in geosynchronous orbit, ABL-1 had just made a turn north to parallel the Korean coastline. He squinted at the radar imagery. A pair of tiny dots was also over the Sea of Japan, behind the 747, heading toward it.

Grabbing up the laptop’s headset, General Scheib said into its lip mike, “I need a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

A hesitation, then a woman’s voice in his earphone replied, “Sir, we need authorization from—”

Without waiting for her to finish, Scheib called down the table, “Possum, I need authorization for a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

Anger flashed in General Higgins’ face; he obviously did not like being called Possum.

Without waiting for Higgins to open his mouth, Zuri Coggins leaned over Scheib’s shoulder and said crisply, “Authorization code NAS one-one-three, alpha-alpha-omicron.”

Scheib heard in his earphone, “Checking . . . authorization verified. Establishing voice link.”

Coggins heard Scheib muttering, “Come on, come on.”

Still in his chair at the head of the table, General Higgins suddenly realized why Brad Scheib was in such a sweat to have a voice link with ABL-1. He leaned over toward his aide, sitting at his left, and whispered, “Who’s piloting that plane?”

“ABL-1, sir?”

With a disgusted look, General Higgins replied, “No, the Spirit of St. Louis.”

Looking flustered, the aide tapped at his keyboard, then answered, “Lieutenant Colonel Karen Christopher, sir. I have her complete dossier—”

Higgins waved him to silence, thinking, Christopher. The one who clammed up at the Advocate General’s hearing. The one who was accused of sleeping with a married general.

One glance at the anxious, intense expression on Scheib’s handsome face and Higgins knew whom Christopher had shacked up with.

“Fighters coming up fast,” O’Banion reported, his voice a notch higher than usual.

Colonel Christopher had ordered her comm officer to activate ABL-1‘s search radar. No sense trying to stay quiet now, she reasoned. They know we’re here. Might as well get a good line on them.

“What’s the word from Andrews on the missiles?” she asked into her pin mike.

“Launch is imminent, as of . . . seven minutes ago.”

Kaufman muttered from his copilot’s seat, “Hope the bastards blow up on the pad.”

Christopher nodded. That would solve a lot of problems, she thought.

“Incoming message, Colonel, direct from the Pentagon.”

They got a direct satellite link working, Christopher said to herself. That’s good. They can hear us get shot down in real time.

“Put it through,” she commanded.

“Colonel Christopher, this is Major General Scheib.”

Brad! In the middle of all this he’s calling me!

“Christopher here,” she said, trying to hide the tremor she felt inside.

A heartbeat’s delay. Then Scheib’s voice said, “Two DPRK interceptors are vectoring toward you.”

“I know.”

It took half a second for her words to be relayed off the satellite and his response to get back to her.

“You have the option of turning away and exiting North Korean territorial waters.”

“We’re not over their territorial waters. We’re twenty miles off their coast.”

Again the delay, longer this time than normal. “I repeat, you have the option of turning around. You may abort your mission if you deem it necessary.”

She heard what he was saying. I love you, Karen. I don’t want you to be killed. I don’t care if it starts World War III—I want you safe.

But then she realized that instead of ordering her to turn tail and leave the mission unfulfilled, he had placed the choice in her hands. Come back to me, that’s what he was saying. But the responsibility is yours. The choice between nuclear war or not is yours. I love you, but I don’t have the guts to take the blame for what happens next.

Taki looks cool as a cucumber, Harry thought as he sat beside Nakamura and watched her run through the diagnostics on her console. If she’s the one who stole the optics assembly she sure doesn’t look nervous or scared about it. Harry felt relieved; he hadn’t wanted to believe it was Taki. Wally, yeah, maybe, he thought. That wiseass might be up to it. Probably not Angel; he’s too straight-arrow. Monk? Why would Monk try to screw up the mission? Why would any of them?