Ben Bova - Able One

Colonel Christopher sprang at Delany, kicked him in the knee, and chopped at the side of his bull neck. Monk dropped Harry and turned on her, but she ducked under his wild swing and deftly rammed a fist into his chest. A smaller man would have gone down, but Delany just grunted and reached for her.

Through a world of pain Harry saw the colonel jabbing at Monk’s eyes. Staggering to his feet, he punched with all his might at Monk’s side. Kidney punch, strictly illegal in boxing but the best defense Harry knew when being beaten up by a bigger guy.

Monk yowled and twisted backward. Colonel Christopher chopped with the side of her hand at Delany’s throat and the big man went down, gasping and floundering on the deck of the narrow compartment.

As Harry sank to his knees he saw another Air Force officer stepping through the hatch, the redheaded captain. No need, he thought. No need for reinforcements. He saw Colonel Christopher standing over Monk’s prostrate body like an Amazon warrior, her eyes blazing, every line of her face and body daring Monk to try to get up again.

It was a three-story row house on O Street, narrow but deep. Like all the houses on that block it had a flight of concrete steps leading up to the front door, a basement garage, and a lushly flowering garden in back tended by a small army of brown-skinned immigrant workers. Its exterior differed from its neighbors only by the startling abstract mural that the lady of the house had lovingly painted—to the clucking disapproval of some of her neighbors.

Bradley Scheib’s den was on the top floor, insulated from the guest bedroom suite by soundproofed walls. General Scheib was sitting in his oversized recliner chair, a tumbler of single-malt scotch, neat, on the walnut table beside him, his private telephone held to his ear. The phone’s landline tapped directly into the Department of Defense’s shielded line that ran beneath the District of Columbia’s streets, connecting the White House and the Capitol building with the Pentagon, across the Potomac.

The only light in the room came from the computer screen on the desk, over in the corner. Brad Scheib sat in the shadows, bone-tired, emotionally spent, feeling ragged. He had torn off his uniform the moment he’d arrived home from the Pentagon and put on a comfortable old sweatshirt and baggy gym pants. He’d nodded hello to his wife and bounded up the stairs to his sanctum sanctorum.

“I gave you the priority code,” he growled into the phone. “What more authorization do you need?”

“Sorry, sir,” came the voice of the harried operator in the Pentagon. “Circuits have been overloaded all day.”

“I don’t care! Get me through to that plane! That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir. I’m trying, sir.”

The door swung open, spilling light from the hallway into the darkened room. Scheib’s wife stood framed in the doorway, wearing a floor-length flowered silk robe: lean, curvaceous, a tribute to relentless exercise and cosmetic surgery.

Angrily, he said, “Do I have to put a lock on my door? You know this is private territory. You can’t—”

“I’m not going to steal any military secrets from you, Brad,” answered Carlotta Harriman Scheib coolly. “I’m quite sure your call is personal. Isn’t it?”

Cupping one hand over the phone’s receiver, Scheib said, “Whatever it is, it’s none of your business.”

“Calling your little slut of a colonel?” Carla asked, smiling coldly. “Do you make her stand at attention for you? No, I imagine it’s you who stands at attention when you’re with her, isn’t it?”

“You’ve done enough damage to her career,” Scheib snapped, nearly snarling.

“So what? There are plenty of other women panting after you. I could set you up with a couple of the dewy-eyed twits you met at my birthday party. They’d love to flop into bed with you.”

“Carla, this is Air Force business.”

“Of course it is.”

“For god’s sake, we nearly went to war today!”

“So now you’re a hero.”

“No, but she is.”

Carlotta’s face contracted into a puzzled frown.

Suddenly understanding the reality of it, Scheib grinned maliciously as he told his wife, “That’s right, she’s a hero now. Thanks to you, she was in the right spot at the right time to shoot down a pair of ballistic missiles that were launched at us. What do you think of that?”

She started to reply, but hesitated, then snapped her mouth shut, spun around, and disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open. Scheib could hear the clop-clop of her high-heeled slippers going down the stairs.

He put the phone down next to his scotch and swiftly went to the door, closed it firmly, then returned to his recliner.

“Well?” he demanded.

“I’m still trying, sir.”

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Harry asked. His voice sounded funny to him because his nose was stuffed with cotton batting.

They were in the galley. Lieutenant Sharmon was leaning over Harry, dabbing a pad soaked in rubbing alcohol over the bloodstains on his face. The plane lurched and the first-aid kit sitting on the next seat slid to the deck with a clatter. Harry barely missed getting the pad shoved into his eye.

“Sorry,” the lieutenant said.

Colonel Christopher stood behind Sharmon, watching the first-aid work closely.

“Four older brothers,” she answered Harry’s question. “And self-defense classes at the Academy.”

“You’re a terror,” Harry said.

“That wasn’t a love tap you hit Delany with,” Christopher replied, grinning.

“Kidney punch. Learned that at good old Medford High.”

“Must’ve been a great school.”

Harry chuckled despite the pain from his nose. “We had a pretty good football team. But winning the game wasn’t as important as winning the fight after the game.”

Lieutenant Sharmon stooped to pick up the first-aid kit, “For what it’s worth,” he said, inspecting his handiwork, “I don’t think your nose is broken. You’re gonna have a pair of beautiful shiners, though.”

“Thanks.” Harry sighed.

Colonel Christopher shook her head slightly, then said, “I’d better get back to the cockpit. Weather’s getting thicker. Jon, you’ll have to get back, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the lieutenant, shutting the first-aid kit’s lid with a click.

Harry asked, “Where’d you put Monk?”

“Locked him in the forward lav,” said the colonel. “Your people helped drag him in there.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

She shrugged. “That’s up to the AG’s people, I suppose. And your own corporate execs. From what you said, he killed somebody?”

“That was an accident.” But Harry knew it was more than that. “I mean, he didn’t intend to kill Pete. He just—”

The plane lurched again, much worse. Sharmon staggered against the bulkhead, Colonel Christopher grabbed at him for support.

“I’d better get to the cockpit,” Christopher said. Silently she added, Before Obie wets himself.

O’Banion had both hands on the control yoke as he tried to help Major Kaufman keep ABL-1 flying steadily. Christopher could see the dark, swirling clouds of the storm below them, smothering the view from horizon to horizon.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said to O’Banion. As the captain got up gratefully and she slid into the pilot’s seat, Christopher said to Kaufman, “Sorry to be away so long, Obie. We had a bit of a ruckus downstairs.”

“Hasn’t been a tea party up here,” Kaufman muttered.

The plane was buffeting worse than ever as it plowed ahead on its three remaining engines. Colonel Christopher put on her heavy flight helmet and plugged in her communications line.