Able One (18 page)

What if she gets killed on this mission? he asked himself. That would solve a lot of problems.

And he hated himself for even thinking of it.

ABL-1: Beam Management Compartment

Monk came back through the hatch with both his hands full of black cases that held spare optics components.

"Relax, Harry," he said. "I can get it put together again in an hour, maybe less."

"You can work up there?" Harry asked. "It’s a tight space; I barely got into it."

Delany grinned at him. "I know the layout inside out, Harry. All I gotta do is get my arm into the housing."

"You sure of that?"

"If I need to I can get Taki to help me. She’s small enough to get in there with no trouble."

Harry nodded but heard himself say, "And how do we test it?"

Monk stared at him.

"You put a new lens assembly in, but how do we know it’s aligned right? How do we know it’s working the way it should?"

"Jeez, Harry, I’m doin’ the best I frickin’ can."

"Yeah, I know. But it might not be good enough."

Monk put the boxes gently down on the workbench that ran along one side of the compartment. Turning back to Harry, he asked, "So what do you want to do?"

I want to go home and have a beer and watch the sun go down over the ocean, Harry thought.

"Harry?"

"Get to work," he said. "I’ve got to talk this over with the pilot. She’s in command of this plane."

"If we can’t be sure the ranger is okay, we’ll hafta turn back, I guess," Monk said softly, almost as if talking to himself.

"We’re not turning back," Harry said. "Not unless the woman in charge says so."

"She doesn’t know shit about this technology."

"She’s in charge. It’s her decision, not mine."

Monk looked as if he wanted to argue, but he merely shook his head dumbly.

"You need help with this?" Harry asked him.

"Naw. Another pair of hands would just get in the way."

"Okay," Harry said. "I’m going up to talk it over with the skipper."

Harry ducked out of the optics compartment.

Taki was at her battle management console, looking bored. But one glance at Harry’s face made her get to her feet.

"What’s wrong?" she asked.

"Plenty," said Harry. On an impulse, he said, "Look in on Monk, give him a hand if he needs it. He’s got to replace the ranger’s optics assembly."

"Replace?" She looked startled. "Why? What’s wrong with the--"

"It’s missing."

"Missing? How can it be missing?"

Harry thought she looked genuinely surprised, genuinely alarmed. "That’s what I’d like to know. You go in and offer Monk your help. Don’t leave him alone in there."

Taki’s face, normally impassive, was wide-eyed with consternation.

Harry left her and started up the ladder to the flight deck, thinking, If Monk sabotaged the ranger, he probably won’t try anything else with Taki watching him. Unless she’s in on it, part of the plot. Hell, they could all be in on it. Maybe I’m the only one who isn’t.

The two blue-suiters were at their consoles, the lanky black lieutenant and the redheaded captain at the communications console. It seemed quiet up on the flight deck, the big jet engines muted to a distant background drone, the plane’s throbbing vibrations barely noticeable.

The redhead gave him a quizzical glance as Harry clambered up from the ladder.

"I’ve got to talk with the skipper," Harry said.

Without a word to him, the comm officer tapped a key on his console and spoke into his pin mike. Then he looked up at Harry.

"Colonel Christopher will be right with you," he said.

She came out of the cockpit, stretching her slim body as she stepped through the open hatch. Harry thought that sitting for hours on end at the plane’s controls must be hell on your body. His back twinged in sympathy for her.

Christopher looked up at him and smiled tiredly. "I was just thinking about taking a little nap." She made it sound like an apology.

Glancing at the two officers at their consoles, Harry said, "Can we go down to the galley?"

The colonel nodded. "A little coffee might do me good."

She gestured him to the ladder, then followed him down. They went past the empty battle management station; Taki was still in the forward section with Monk, Harry saw. The two of them were bent over the workbench, putting together the spare lenses of the optics assembly.

Once in the cramped little galley, Christopher went straight to the coffee urn and poured herself a cup.

"Almost empty," she murmured. "I’ll have to get Sharmon to make a fresh batch."

Unable to contain himself any longer, Harry blurted, "Somebody sabotaged the ranging laser."

"What?" Christopher’s dark eyes flashed.

"My people are fixing it, but somebody took out the optics from the ranging laser. Deliberately."

She sagged back against the curving bulkhead, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her.

"We’ll get it fixed," Harry said.

"It couldn’t have been any of my guys," said the colonel. "None of them would know how."

Harry agreed with a nod. "It’s one of my people. But I don’t know who."

"You’re sure ...?"

"It was deliberate. The lenses were in place when we did our inspection last night. When I checked ten minutes ago they were gone."

"Shit on a shingle," Christopher muttered.

"Somebody in my team doesn’t want this mission to go ahead," Harry said.

"You can fix it? We can go on?"

"Yes, I’m pretty sure."

"Pretty sure?"

"I’m not worried about fixing the lens assembly," Harry said. "What worries me is what the guy’s going to try next."

"He could blow this plane out of the sky!"

Strangely, Harry felt calm, unafraid. "I don’t think so. Whoever did it picked the least damaging way to shut us down. Without the ranging laser the big COIL is useless. And the saboteur is aboard this plane, riding with us. He doesn’t want to kill himself, whoever he is."

"You keep saying ‘he.’ You have a woman on your crew. She’s Chinese or something, isn’t she?"

"Taki Nakamura," Harry replied. "Born in Phoenix, Arizona. Her family’s been in the States since the 1920s. She’s as American as you or me."

Christopher digested that information in silence. Then, "You’re going to have to keep your eyes wide open, mister."

"I know. But we have another problem."

"Another?"

"We can fix the ranging laser. But we won’t know if it’s calibrated properly unless we can try it out on a real target."

"Explain."

"It’s a low-power laser. We use it like radar, to get a pinpoint fix on the target’s distance and velocity. We need a live target to test it on."

Colonel Christopher almost smiled. "That’s easy. We’re due for another refueling rendezvous in"-- she glanced at her wristwatch--"another seventy-three minutes. You can ping the tanker."

"Yeah," Harry said. "That’ll work."

"You’ll have the laser working by then?"

"We will," Harry said, adding silently, Or I’ll jump overboard.

Japan: Misawa Air Force Base

“But you’re supposed to be the intelligence officer!"

"That doesn’t mean they tell me diddly-squat. Sir."

Major Hank Wilson held a flimsy sheet of a decoded message from Andrews Air Force Base, back in the States, in one big, hairy fist. He glared down at Captain William Koenig, long, lanky, and as lean as a beanpole. Koenig glared right back at his commanding officer.

Brandishing the flimsy, Major Wilson grumbled, "That tanker’s due in fifteen minutes and we don’t know why it’s here."

"It’s out of Chongju, I know that much."

"But why’s it landing here? Where’s it heading? We don’t have anything up there that needs an air-to-air refueling."

"Washington moveth in mysterious ways," Keonig murmured.

College boy, Wilson thought. Give ‘era a degree and they think they know everything. But when you need information from them they can’t produce anything but crap.

Seeing the anger growing on his superior’s face, Koenig said, "We know the tanker’s out of Chongju. We know it’s on special orders from Andrews, relayed out of the Pentagon."

"We knew that two hours ago," Wilson growled.

"Everything’s slowed to a crawl," the captain said. "Our commsats are overloaded with traffic. Messages are coming through late."

"But the message from that mother-loving tanker came through loud and clear, didn’t it?"

"Yessir. It came directly from the tanker itself, not relayed by a satellite."

"So they have engine trouble."

Koenig nodded. "It’s an old bird, a KC-135. Been in service for thirty-some years. I looked up the tail number."

"So it needs to land here and get its engine fixed."

"Or replaced."

"So it’s going to be late for its rendezvous with whatever it’s supposed to be refueling."

Koening spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Nothing we can do about that."

"But there’s a plane out there someplace expecting to rendezvous with that mother-humping tanker and the fucker isn’t going to be there!"

"That’s the way it looks. Sir."

"We have to tell that plane that its rendezvous is going to be late."

"Yes, sir, we certainly do."

"But we don’t know what plane we’re talking about! We don’t know where the bastard is! How can we communicate with it when we don’t know anything about it?"

"I’ve sent an urgent message back to Andrews, sir. It’s in their lap."

Major Wilson’s heavy-jowled face looked like a thundercloud. "By the time Washington gets your message and acts on it, that mystery bird could be in the drink."

Captain Koenig said nothing.

"So why don’t you find out what plane we’re talking about and where the fuck it is?"

"I’ve queried Andrews, sir. No response, so far."

Wilson restrained himself from jumping over the desk and throttling the captain. It’s not his fault, he told himself. Think of your blood pressure. Remember you’ve got a physical coming up Monday morning. It’s not his fault.

But he growled, "You’re supposed to be the intelligence officer."

The Pentagon: Situation Room

General Scheib’s minicomputer chimed with the ding-dong melody of Big Ben. It sounded like a Munchkin version of the London clock’s sonorous tones.

Scheib hurried from the newly refilled coffee cart to his chair at the conference table. One of his aides from his office in the Pentagon was on the notebook’s miniature screen, a frown of concern etching lines between his brows.

"What’s up, Lieutenant?" Scheib asked, his own face tightening worriedly.

"Can we go to scramble, sir?" Scheib nodded. "Do it."

The computer screen broke into a hash of colored streaks until Scheib tapped the password code on his keyboard.

The lieutenant’s worried face took form again. "Message incoming from Misawa, sir. Marked urgent."

Misawa Air Force Base, Scheib knew. In northern Japan.

"Let’s see it."

The lean, angular face of a captain replaced Scheib’s aide. The man looked more puzzled than concerned.

"We have a KC-135 asking for landing clearance here. They say they’re on a refueling mission but have developed engine trouble. Somebody needs to tell the plane they’re supposed to be refueling that the rendezvous is going to be late, but we have no information on what plane that might be or where it is."

Scheib sank back in his chair. The timeline hack on the bottom of the screen showed that the message had been sent nearly two hours earlier.

He closed his eyes and suppressed the urge to rip out his aide’s intestines. Two hours to replay an urgent message to me! Scheib raged inwardly. Then he remembered that the commercial commsats were out and the military satellites were overloaded with traffic. The ABL-1 mission was classified Top Secret, Need to Know. Neither the tanker crew nor the base at Misawa knew what the hell was going on.

He sensed someone standing behind his chair. Turning slightly, he saw that it was Zuri Coggins.

"Is that going to ruin the mission?" she asked.

"Could be," said Scheib. "What can I do to help?"

"Get me real-time comm links with that tanker, with the base commander at Misawa, and with ABL-1. We’re tripping over ourselves with the damned security regs."

She nodded. "I’ll call my office."

General Higgins came up, looking bleary-eyed and tired of the situation.

"There goes your laser, Brad," said Higgins. "Looks like we’ll have to depend on the Aegis ships and the missile batteries in Alaska."

"I’m not giving up on ABL-1, sir," Scheib said tightly.

Down at the end of the table Michael Jamil watched the tense little minidrama going on around General Scheib.

Let them play their games, Jamil said to himself. What’s important is to find out who’s behind this crisis. Why have they knocked out the satellites? What do they want?

Again and again Jamil had played out every possible scenario he could think of in his mind. He didn’t need computers; he knew the players and their tactics. But none of this made sense. Why knock out the satellites? Why keep those two additional missiles on their pads when they know that regular troops are rushing from Pyongyang to their launching site? It’s been more than ten hours since they set off the bomb in orbit; why are they waiting to launch those other two missiles?

Every scenario he ran through his mind ended in the same way: they’re going to try to kill the President. They’re going to hit San Francisco with half a megaton of hydrogen bombs, but they have to wait until the President’s there. There can’t be any other explanation for what they’re doing. Knock out the satellites to slow our communications links to a crawl, then wait for the President to show up in San Francisco and blow the city off the map. Maybe the explosions will be enough to trigger an earthquake into the bargain.

Jamil looked up at the two generals and the others clustered around Scheib’s chair. They look grim, he realized. Something must have gone wrong.

The woman from the National Security office looked up and met his gaze. She detached herself from the crowd around Scheib and walked down the length of the table toward him.