Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

Dugard scowled at Beck disapprovingly, but Nacht sat back with a deep sigh and crossed his legs, toying with a plastic glass that still had a half-inch of vodka in it: “No war, Assistant Secretary Beck, is ‘little.’” The Magyar’s tone was severe. “But ask among the Third Worlders and those of us from satellite nations and you will find no sympathy for either your country or the Soviet Union. Ask Iraq, and you will see that they wish to use this opportunity to sterilize every mullah in Iran with their own ‘small’ nuclear capability. Ask Poland, and you will see that they know the price of freedom is always high. A reign of terror has aptly ended by terror. You will soon find out that none of us who are in a position to be on this tour are overly anxious to help either the US or the USSR to regain their former glory. Too long the superpowers have held the rest of us in thrall. Surely you realize, Mister Beck, that it is a different world now, and a freer one.”

Beck couldn’t think of a thing to say that wasn’t diplomatically inappropriate, so he just finished his coffee and hoped that Dugard would pick up the ball. If aid from the nations these men represented was not forthcoming—and if Nacht had his way, it would not be—not only the States and the USSR, but the entire world was in more trouble than it knew. Beck had expected some hesitancy, but not the elevation of generations of resentment into policy. It was madness, and he could do no more than mark Nacht as an enemy, one to watch, and smile patiently. Such was the nature of “frank and constructive” diplomatic dialogue: you let them insult you and you learned something.

Dugard was picking up on the Iraq–Iran angle, placing it in the context of a larger Middle East imbroglio that oil-consuming nations worldwide could ill afford, when Beck looked up and saw Slick, his hand on Chris Patrick’s shoulder, surreptitiously trying to catch Beck’s eye.

When Beck acknowledged him, Slick’s gaze flicked to Nacht and he made a quick thumbs-down that the Saudi whom Chris was mesmerizing did not see: Nacht had just been targeted, and Beck didn’t make a counter-motion which would have voided Slick’s suggestion: unless Nacht’s viewpoint changed drastically, he’d be better off dead than being allowed to spread his poison among the entire group.

“Excuse me,” Beck said, coffee finished, and headed forward; “duty calls,” stopping only long enough to ask Morse—who’d been segregated from the other passengers by being given orders to play sick and stay in one of the two bunks—if he needed anything.

Morse’s face, when the geneticist rolled over in response to Beck’s question, was swollen and streaked with tears: “Nothing you can provide, evidently, Mister Beck,” he said, and turned away again.

Since that was in general true, and Morse’s remorse was due as much to having indirectly caused the truck-bombing of the consulate as to the treatment Ashmead’s team was giving a “proven security risk,” Beck didn’t try to comfort Morse: now, after the fact, Morse had too many doubts about the side effects of the serum they’d all taken to earn him any sympathy. Ashmead had told Morse that if any of them died of these side effects, Morse would be next. Beck had been there, and hadn’t argued: if this whole operation were a wild goose chase, he’d probably draw straws with the others for the privilege of blowing Morse away.

In the midst of so much death, in past, present, and future tenses, Beck was beginning to understand the team’s operational fondness for dispensing it: chemically, one was forced to last resorts; emotionally, one became incapable of compassion; mercy was a rich man’s game, and these days they were all paupers of the soul.

The galley and expanded “lounge” were in the plane’s aft section, directly under the tail-mounted roto-dome; forward of the dome, the P-3B was still all business, and off limits to her passengers. Racks of electronics alternated with CRT terminals and scopes in narrow niches where chairs were bolted to sliding tracks.

Beck sat down at his traffic controller’s station and switched a toggle that took the system off automatic “scan and inform,” then put on a one-ear headset and spoke into his throat-pad mike: “Rafic, I’m back. Couldn’t take much more of that.”

He heard the static/clip of voice-actuation in his right ear, then Ashmead said: “Learn anything, cowboy?”

“That Nacht’s a risk to the project. Slick’s—”

Slick’s voice cut in: “—got it well in hand. Either of you two geniuses see that blip at two-ten o’clock on the horizon screen?”

Beck twisted in his seat and saw that Slick had followed him forward and was sitting at his radar station ten feet away, hunched over his control panel, his handsome head awash in red and green indicator spill. Beyond Beck’s view was the flight deck, where Thoreau and Ashmead were cloistered behind closed doors.

“Yeah,” Thoreau said, “now that you mention it, I can pull it in on my heads-up, but it’s not exactly heading straight for us.”

The P-3B had a “heads-up” display that allowed the pilot to superimpose on his windshield any of the electronics displays aft or, as a fighter pilot might want to do, the instrumentation in front of him. Unfortunately, none of that included active defenses: the P-3B had no missiles, cannon, or any other offensive weapons.

“Just for grins,” Thoreau continued with his accustomed insouciance, “I’m going to piggyback the 727 and make us both disappear—or try real hard, anyway.”

The P-3B had sufficient radar jamming and counter-jamming to make it invisible in all spectrums, including heat, to any but the most sophisticated aircraft, but whether that protection could be extended to cover the 727 was questionable: Thoreau would have to interpose his aircraft between the 727 and the approaching unidentified aircraft in such a way that the P-3B’s electronics masked not only its own radar-available signatures, but those of the differently shaped 727 also.

“Take notes, Beck,” Slick cracked, “we’re making aviation history and we need an unbiased observer.”

Again, Slick’s inference was that Beck wasn’t part of the team.

Again, Beck let it pass: he was too busy trying to plot the vector of the approaching aircraft precisely enough to help Thoreau—who was now on a secure channel to the 727, telling it exactly what he wanted it to do—block the unidentified aircraft’s view of the 727.

“This bogey of yours could be just another scheduled or nonscheduled flight, Slick,” Beck said with neutral precision: “Everybody’s having a rough time without radar handovers from ground controllers.” The vector on which the other aircraft was approaching was not one that was commonly used for commercial traffic; no international airports had been able to rejoin the grid of international control radars which had once handled transoceanic traffic: the various militaries had preempted all available replacement electronics in a futile attempt to make up for lost satellites.

“Yeah,” Slick gave back, “and your mother might have known your father.” Then: “Here’s the rest of their team—a trawler coming up over the horizon, three o’clock.”

Beck had been adopted by an American couple in the Foreign Service, just one of countless war babies from Eastern Europe. He was about to let Slick know that, as far as Beck was concerned, Ashmead’s deputy had just stepped over the line, when Ashmead cut in smoothly: “Come on, kids, this is no time for a family squabble. If I make this right, we’re about to be in a heap o’ trouble—that bogey’s way too fast for a commercial anything and the trawler’s there to pick up the pieces—the serum, if they’re lucky—and pick off the survivors. Listen up, all stations: we’ll hold this evasive course—” he gave new headings “—for five minutes. Over and out, El Al 10.” When the 727 was offline, Ashmead continued: “If after that time the bogey’s still closing, we’re going to veer off and get our tails out of here, maximum speed, maximum countermeasures.’’