Ben Bova - Able One

“So can we,” Coggins said. Then she turned to Jamil. “Right?”

“Right.”

The Secretary of State pictured this same debate in the Senate. It’s going to come to the Senate, she realized. Sooner or later. The President proposes, but Congress disposes.

Jamil and Higgins were starting to raise their voices, so the Secretary of State said firmly, “We’ve all put in a long, hard day. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

She got to her feet. Everyone else rose and bade her good night. She watched them leave and, once her office was cleared of them all, she picked up her phone and tapped the speed-dial button for the Secretary of Defense. She knew that no matter where Lionel Bakersfield was, her phone system would track him down. Glancing at the digital clock on her desk, she figured that Lonnie was probably working on his third martini by now. Good, she thought. He’ll do less talking and more listening.

General Higgins rode the elevator to his waiting staff car in the basement parking garage of the State Department building without offering a ride to Coggins or Jamil. The two of them got off the elevator at the lobby level and then walked down the building’s front steps side by side.

Zuri Coggins looked up and down the rain-slicked street. Not much traffic. No taxicabs.

Jamil pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. “I hope they got the towers back online,” he said. “I left my car in Langley this morning.”

Coggins watched him as he pecked at the phone’s keypad. At last he gave up. “Guess not,” he said, more resigned than aggravated.

She gestured up the street and said, “Come on, let’s walk a bit. We’ll probably find a cab on the avenue.”

“And if we don’t?”

She chuckled at his oh so serious concern. “You like to look at all the aspects of a problem, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

Coggins tilted her head slightly and remembered from his dossier that Jamil was unmarried, just as she was. “Well, maybe as we walk along we’ll find a friendly bar. Or a restaurant.”

Jamil broke into a smile. “Come to think of it, I’m damned hungry.”

“Me too,” she said, as she started down the street alongside him.

For a moment Charley thought he was in heaven. He seemed to be floating, as if resting on a blessed cloud. Not a care in the world. Nothing hurt, but he didn’t feel numb, not really, more like he was just— floating.

He couldn’t see anything except an endless expanse of soft white. Not cottony clumps, like clouds: just flat, plain, eggshell white, kind of restful, really.

I must’ve died, he realized. There was no terror in the thought. In fact, he would have smiled if he could have. Died and now I’m in heaven. Or on my way, at least. Blissfully peaceful. Not a pain or a worry in the world.

Then he heard a soft beeping sound. Beep beep beep beep… Heaven don’t beep, Charley thought.

It all came back to him in a rush. The blizzard. Martha and the kids! The snow and the cold. And the wolves.

Charley blinked and it all came into focus. He was lying on his back. Hospital room. Off-white ceiling. Turning his head slightly he saw that the walls were a pastel green. The sound he heard was coming from a bank of medical monitors blinking and beeping at him. There were IV tubes in both his arms.

“We’re awake!”

The nurse’s boisterous voice made Charley jump.

“Had a good rest?” the nurse asked as she peered at the monitors. She was a chubby Hispanic woman with kinky dark hair.

“Whe… wha . ..” Harry couldn’t get his voice to work.

“Relax, Mr. Ingersoll. You’re still full of Demerol; relax and go back to sleep.”

What about Martha? Charley wanted to ask. My kids. But he found he couldn’t get the words out. Instead his eyes closed and he drifted back into blessed sleep.

When he woke again there was a blond young man in a white smock standing beside his bed. He had a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Must be a doctor, Charley thought.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Where am I?” Charley mumbled.

The doctor grinned at him. “I asked you first. But if you must know, you’re in Missoula Community Hospital.”

“Missoula? How’d I get to Missoula?”

“Snowplow found you, called the Highway Patrol. They took you here.”

“When? How long...?”

“Six hours ago,” said the doctor. His cheerful expression sobered. “I’m afraid we had to take four of your toes. You were pretty severely frostbitten. We saved your fingers, though.”

“My wife,” Charley said. “My kids.”

The doctor nodded and patted Charley’s covers. “We’ll talk about them later. Right now we’ve got to do some diagnostics on you. You were in pretty bad shape when they brought you in here.”

“But Martha. Charley Junior. Little Martha.”

“Later,” the doctor said. “Later.”

“Now, how do we go about finding which one of your people tried to screw up this flight?” Harry stared at Colonel Christopher. She was deadly serious.

“It had to be one of your people, Mr. Hartunian,” she insisted. “You know them a helluva lot better than I do.”

Think! Harry demanded silently of himself.

“Well?” Colonel Christopher prodded.

“Whoever it was,” Harry said slowly, thinking it out as he spoke, “did it while he thought we were on a routine test flight.”

“You already told me that.”

“Which means he did it for money. Not to stop us from shooting down the gook missiles. He didn’t know we were going against real missiles when he sabotaged the ranging laser. He’s not a spy; he’s not working for the North Koreans or some other nation.”

“He. Why not she?”

Harry shook his head. “I just can’t picture Taki doing it. Hell, she almost took my head off when I merely suggested the possibility.”

“Maybe she protests too much,” Christopher countered. “The best kind of defense is a good offense.”

Rubbing with finger and thumb at the ache growing between his eyes, Harry went back to his reasoning. “Whoever it was did it to give Anson Aerospace a black eye. Did it for one of Anson’s competitors. Did it for money.”

The colonel nodded encouragingly. “Okay. So which of your nerds has come into some extra money lately?”

Closing his eyes, Harry thought aloud, “Wally likes to bet on the football pools, but he’s just penny-ante. Small-time.”

“The Hispanic kid?” Christopher prompted.

“Angel? He’s strictly a straight arrow. Four kids, nice wife.”

“Mortgage? Debts? College tuitions? With four kids—”

Harry cut her off. “They’re all in elementary school, and Angel’s working on them to get baseball scholarships by the time they’re ready for college.”

“Still…”

“It’s not Angel.”

“That leaves the big guy.”

“Monk.”

“Has he come into some extra money recently?”

Harry leaned back tiredly in the bucket seat. The plane was still shuddering, but the shaking didn’t seem to be getting worse.

“Are we going to make it to Japan?” he asked.

Colonel Christopher smiled tightly. “If I have to get out and push.”

Harry smiled weakly.

“Now what about this Monk guy? Has he been flashing some extra money around lately? Bought a new house maybe?”

Shaking his head, Harry replied, “Hell, Monk’s been living in the same dinky bungalow since I’ve known him. Hasn’t bought a new car in years, drives a beat-up old Chrysler…”

His voice tailed off. Harry remembered that Monk’s wife had bought herself a Mustang convertible. Fire-engine red. Or had Monk bought it for her?