Ben Bova - Able One

He heard Colonel Christopher call to O’Banion, “Where are those fighters, Brick?”

“Coming up fast, ma’am. They haven’t gone supersonic, but they’re pulling in closer.”

“Jon, keep us on a course that parallels the coast. I don’t want to get any closer.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Lieutenant Sharmon replied.

Christopher toggled the intercom and said, “Mr. Hartunian, you and your people better strap in. We’ll be in action any minute now.”

Hartunian’s voice answered, “Seat belts. Yeah.”

Kaufman spoke up. “You’ll have to swing around and point us at the coast when they launch.”

“I know, Obie. I just don’t want to give those fighters any excuse to open up on us until I have to.”

“But you have to be pointing at the missiles when they launch. Point the nose at them and—”

“And let the tech geek’s laser system acquire them. I know. I flew the simulator, Obie. I just don’t want those fighters to shoot us down before we nail the missiles.”

Kaufman stared at her. She looked like a little kid, sitting in the pilot’s chair with the safety harness over her shoulders and the big white flight helmet sitting on her head like some ostrich egg.

He knew he shouldn’t say it, but Kaufman didn’t care anymore. What the hell, he thought, we’re going to get our asses shot off anyway.

So he said, “Maybe I should take over now. I’ve had more experience handling this bird. I can—”

“No.”

“But you don’t—”

The look on Colonel Christopher’s face could have etched solid steel. “Obie, I’m the pilot here. That’s that. No further discussion.”

He wanted to spit. But instead he shrugged inside his safety harness and said nothing. The plane droned on for a few moments, then Christopher asked mildly, “You ever read Moby-Dick, Obie?”

Puzzled, he replied, “Saw the movie, I think.”

“You remember where Ahab tells his first mate, ‘There’s one God in heaven and one captain of the Pequod.’ ”

Kaufman felt his cheeks redden with anger.

“That’s the way it’s got to be, Obie. I didn’t ask for this job, but I’ve got it. Now let’s do what we’re here to do.”

O’Banion’s voice crackled in his earphone, “Message incoming from the gooks, Colonel.” “Let’s hear it.”

The same calm, reedy voice they had heard before said, “Unidentified aircraft, this is Air Defense Command of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You have invaded DPRK airspace. You will follow the two fighter planes we have dispatched and land at their base. If you fail to do so, they have orders to shoot you down. They are armed with air-to-air missiles. You will execute this order now.”

Vickie leaned her elbows on her knees and peered down at the platform where the President was supposed to speak.

“How long is it going to be?” she asked no one in particular. “These seats hurt my backside.”

Sylvia tried to smile at her elder daughter. “Just be patient. It’s not every day you get to see the President of the United States in person.”

“With ten zillion other people,” Vickie muttered.

“I think it’s cool,” said Denise, sitting on Sylvia’s other side. “Nobody else from my class is here, I bet.”

“So what?” said Vickie, with the airy disdain of the senior sibling. “He’s a drip, anyway.”

“He’s the President!” Sylvia snapped, shocked. “Show some respect.”

“He said he was going to do a lot for education,” Vickie retorted. “I haven’t seen any improvements. Have you, Dee?”

Denise thought a moment, then replied, “Well, we got more money for the school orchestra.”

“Big deal.”

“They were going to have to close it down altogether,” Denise pointed out.

“But it wasn’t federal money,” Vickie countered. “That extra money came from Sacramento.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

Sylvia swiveled her head right and left as the sisters argued back and forth, suppressing an urge to grab the two of them by the scruffs of their necks and rap their skulls together.

Norman Foster appraised his boss with an experienced eye. He’s winding himself up tighter, thought the President’s chief of staff. He gets high on moments like this. The crowd, the cameras, the band playing and people getting to their feet and cheering: hell, it gives me a thrill; it’s positively invigorating for him.

The President was pacing briskly up and down the little bare-walled room where they waited for the ceremonies to begin. Senator Youmans was beside him, scurrying breathlessly to keep up with his long-legged strides. She would introduce the President—after her own speech. The agenda gave her five minutes, but Foster knew she’d stretch that allotment.

His phone buzzed. Four Secret Service agents tensed for a moment, but Foster grinned at them as he pulled the iPhone from his jacket pocket, thankful that the military commsats were still working.

He squinted to read the text message on the tiny screen. “Urgent from Pentagon. Missile launched.”

That’s it, Foster thought. In half an hour we could all be dead.

“Look!” Kaufman pointed at the bright plume of rocket exhaust rising above the horizon. “That’s it!” Karen Christopher shouted.

“Turn into it!”

“Turning.”

She banked the big 747 to the left, swinging the plane so that its nose pointed toward the missile plume. Dumb jumbo jet turns like a freight train, Christopher said to herself, slow and ugly.

The colonel flicked a switch on her communications board. “Hartunian, they’ve launched.”

Down in the battle management compartment Harry heard the urgency in Colonel Christopher’s voice. “We’ve got them on the radar.”

His eyes scanned the console. Iodine and oxygen pressurized and ready to flow. All systems in the green.

“Taki?”

Sitting next to Harry, Nakamura’s lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “This is it,” she muttered as her hands played over her console’s keyboard.

“Ranging laser,” Harry said.

“Acquisition.”

On the screen that displayed the ranging laser’s data Harry saw a thin yellow line curving slightly toward the right.

“Locked on!” Nakamura called out.

“Distance?”

“One hundred fourteen miles.” Too far, Harry thought. The COIL’s range isn’t more than a hundred miles.

“Armed and ready,” Taki called. Harry yelled, “Fire!”

“Firing.”

From deep in the plane’s innards Harry heard the thundering roar of the laser, like a rocket bellowing: iodine and oxygen racing down the main channel, mixing, streaming through the laser cavity and surrendering more than a million watts of pure energy.

“We’re on it,” Nakamura said. “We’re hitting it.”

But is the COIL delivering energy to do the job? Harry wondered. At this range—

The yellow line on Harry’s screen abruptly cut off. He blinked at it.

“Did we get it?”

In the cockpit, Colonel Christopher gaped at the explosion. It was too far away to hear anything, but they could see that the missile’s white smoky exhaust plume ended in an orange-red blossom of fire. “We hit it!” she shouted.

“Sure as hell did!” Kaufman echoed, staring out at the dirty gray cloud expanding out by the horizon.

“Bull’s-eye!” Christopher pumped a fist in the air. Kaufman laughed hoarsely. “Scratch one missile!”

“Where’s the other—”

Out of the corner of her eye Christopher saw the flash of a missile’s smoky exhaust streak straight into the 747’s number two engine. It exploded inside the nacelle, blowing the engine to bits. The plane bucked and slewed so badly the control yoke jerked out of Christopher’s hands.