Ben Bova - Able One

Sitting beside her, Michael Jamil had an expression of impending doom on his thinly bearded face.

Trying to cheer him up, Coggins leaned toward him and said, “Relax, it’s all over.”

Jamil shook his head. “The missile threat is ended, but this isn’t over. Not yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s China’s next move?” Jamil asked urgently. “You mean North Korea’s next move,” said Coggins.

“China,” he insisted. “China’s behind this. The DPRK didn’t have the resources to do this on their own. Or the nerve. Maybe if Kim Jong Il was still alive—he was nutty enough to try a stunt like this. But not now. Pyongyang doesn’t have any motivation to start a nuclear war.”

“How can you be sure?” Coggins asked. “History takes weird turns, you know.”

Jamil shook his head. “There’s always a motive, no matter how weird it looks at the time. North Korea doesn’t have a motive for this confrontation. China does.”

Coggins saw the intensity, the absolute certainty, in his face. But she heard herself say, “The Secretary of State doesn’t agree with you.”

Jamil immediately snapped, “Then she’s a bigger horse’s ass than I thought she was.”

“Which one of your people tried to ruin this mission, Mr. Hartunian?” Harry saw that Colonel Christopher was dead earnest.

“I wish I knew,” he said.

“Not good enough. One of your nerds tried to screw up this flight. This is my airplane, Mr. Hartunian. I’m responsible for everything that happens in it. I want that guy’s head on a platter.”

Harry sank into one of the bucket seats on the bulkhead opposite the coffee urn. The plane was still shaking badly, but he’d almost become accustomed to it by now.

“You’re taking this kind of personally, aren’t you?” he asked the colonel.

“Damned right I am.”

He shook his head. “I’ve tried to figure it out. I know it had to be one of them, but I—”

“It could be you, couldn’t it?”

He felt the accusation like an ice pick jabbed into him. “Me?”

The colonel broke into a smile. “No, I don’t think it was you,” she said, more softly. “Not really.”

“It wasn’t me,” Harry said. Then he heard himself ask, “Could it have been one of your guys?”

Colonel Christopher’s smile dissolved. “From what you’ve told me, whoever it is would have to have some detailed knowledge of your system. My crew doesn’t. They’re flyboys, not techies.”

The intercom speaker in the compartment’s ceiling blared, “Colonel Christopher, General Scheib wants to speak with you, ma’am. Right away.”

Harry saw the expression on Christopher’s face harden. Looking up at the speaker, she said tightly, “All right, put him on the intercom.”

A burst of buzzing static, then, “Colonel Christopher? Karen?” The man’s voice sounded tight, insistent.

“This is Christopher,” the colonel said, her eyes on Harry.

A heartbeat’s delay while the signal was relayed to geosynchronous orbit and back. Then, “Are you okay?”

“So far, so good, General.”

Again the delay, longer this time. “There’s a flight of F-16s coming out to meet you.” Harry thought the general’s voice sounded lower, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“The DPRK air defense command says they’re sending more fighters to us. They want us to land in North Korea.”

“According to our tracking data you’ve left DPRK airspace.”

With a nod, she replied, “They claim out to two hundred miles, but my navigator says we’re past that.”

Silence, except for the hissing of static. At last the general’s voice resumed. “As far as we can see they haven’t put any more fighters into the air.”

“That’s good.”

“What’s your situation, Karen? Can you make it to Misawa?”

“We’re going to try.”

Harry counted his own pulse silently. Two beats, three.

Then the general asked, “What’s your condition?”

“One engine out. Wing damaged. Cabin pressurization holding. So far. Boeing makes tough airplanes, General. You know that.”

There was something going on, Harry realized. Something between the two of them that went beyond the words they were speaking. It was like a couple of people talking in code, almost. Harry could see the tension on Colonel Christopher’s face, in her strained posture, the way she was gripping her coffee mug in both hands, like it was a life preserver or something.

“Well... take care of yourself,” the general said. “We’re doing everything we can from this end.”

“Sure. I know.”

A long pause this time. Then, “I’ll set up a priority link with Misawa. Call me the minute you touch down.”

She closed her eyes as she replied, “If I can, General. I’ll call if I can.”

The audio link went dead. For a long moment Harry heard nothing but the rumble of ABL-1’s engines and the clatter of the plane’s buffeting. He realized he had become almost accustomed to the shuddering vibrations.

“You know him?” he asked Colonel Christopher.

She gave him a curious, half-sad smile. “I knew him.”

“Knew?”

“Too well,” she said. “Not well enough.”

Harry felt puzzled but decided the colonel’s personal life was not a place he should be poking into.

She sat wearily beside him. “Are you married, Mr. Hartunian?”

“I was. “We’re separated.”

“Going to get divorced?”

Suddenly miserable all over again, Harry waved both hands in the air. “I don’t know. My wife wants a divorce. But we’ve got two daughters. I don’t know what it’d do to them.”

“Do you still love her?”

Harry thought he should feel uncomfortable talking about his private life with a woman who was practically a stranger to him. Instead, he heard himself admit, “I thought I did at first. But I don’t know if we ever really loved each other. Not like in a romance story. We were just kids when we got married.”

“And now?”

He shrugged. “Now it’s all over, I guess. Has been for years, I was just too dumb to recognize it.”

Karen patted his knee. “Welcome to the club, mister. Welcome to the goddamned club.”

He saw that her eyes were sad. And really beautiful. Light gray, almost bluish.

Before he could say anything, though, Colonel Christopher straightened up in the seat and said, “Now, how do we go about finding out which one of your people tried to screw up this flight?”

“I had a speech prepared for you,” said the President into the microphones on the dais before him, “but events have moved so swiftly that I’m going to toss that speech away and speak to you from my heart.”

The spotlights were glaring brilliantly on the President. The crowd filling the auditorium was in darkness, but he could sense them out there in the shadows, feel their presence, hear their breathing like one gigantic, expectant animal.

“So tonight we’ll forget about the teleprompters and the speech my staff worked so hard to prepare. Tonight I want to tell you about an extraordinary series of events, and about the brave and gallant crew of Air Force and civilian personnel.”

He could feel them leaning forward, holding their breath, hanging on his words.

“You know the old joke: I have good news and bad news.”

A few laughs scattered through the darkness.

“I’ll give you the bad news first,” the President said, smiling broadly to reassure his audience. “As you know”—his smile dwindled—”just about all the civilian satellites in orbit were knocked out this morning. It’s been a tough day, without satellite phone links, without satellite relays for information systems and commercial television. Why, this speech right here and now isn’t being transmitted any farther than Sacramento… or so I’m told.”