Able One (33 page)

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.”

ABL-1: Galley

“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?

Madelaine worked for Anson, Harry recalled, in the human resources department.

“What is it, Mr. Hartunian?” Colonel Christopher prodded.

He blinked at her. “It’s probably nothing.” He pushed himself up from the seat. “Let me talk to Monk.”

Christopher got to her feet beside him. “It’s him?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. Let me talk to him before we go jumping to conclusions.”

She studied his face for an intense moment, then nodded. “Okay. You do that. I’ve got a plane to fly.”

As she stepped back into the cockpit, Karen Christopher saw that Captain O’Banion’s shirt was dark with perspiration as he sat in the left-hand seat. Even though his hands were in his lap, they were balled tightly into fists. Kaufman was doing the flying, she saw, and the communications officer was clearly afraid to touch the controls.

O’Banion looked relieved as Colonel Christopher leaned between the two seats.

“How’s it going, Obie?” she asked pleasantly.

“She’s flying straight and level,” said the copilot, glancing up at her. “Buffeting a lot, but she’s holding together.”

“Good. Captain, you can go back to your comm station. Thanks for keeping the major company.”

O’Banion pushed himself out of the chair. “You’re entirely welcome, ma’am.”

“How’d you like sitting up here?” Christopher asked as she slipped by him and into the seat. It felt warm, hot almost.

“Makes me think of W. C. Fields,” O’Banion replied.

“The old comedian? How come?”

“He said he wanted on his tombstone, ‘All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.’ “

Christopher laughed. “You don’t want to be a pilot?”

“No, ma’am. You can keep the job. I’ll stick to communications.”

O’Banion ducked through the hatch.

As Colonel Christopher strapped in, she said to Kaufman, “No competition from him.”

Kaufman grunted. Christopher could see that he was reluctant to turn control of the plane back to her.

Looking through the windshield, the colonel saw that they were back over the gray swirling storm that they had passed on the way to the Korean coast.

“Hope we don’t have to put down in that mess,” she said lightly.

Kaufman gave her a sour look. “Misawa reports it’s starting to rain there. We’ll be landing in the storm, looks like.”

Christopher shrugged. “Not much we can do about that--unless you want to head back to Elmendorf.”

Kaufman said nothing, but the expression on his face could have curdled milk.

ABL-1: Beam Control Compartment

Monk Delany was asleep when Harry stepped through the hatch to the beam control compartment. He was sitting in front of his main console, head lolling on his shoulder as the plane bounced and staggered through the air. Up here in the 747’s nose, the constant rise and fall of the plane was more noticeable than farther aft. The noise of the engines wasn’t as bad, but the shaking and shuddering caused by the damaged wing seemed more intense up here.

“Monk,” he called. “Hey, Monk. Wake up.”

Delany stirred and grumbled to himself. His eyes fluttered, then opened fully.

“Harry,” he said blearily. “Musta dozed off.”

“Yeah.” Harry sat in the chair next to the big engineer. “Monk, when we get back to Elmendorf, the Air Force police are going to dust that optics assembly for fingerprints.”

Delany shrugged. “My prints’ll be all over it. Hell, you know that, Harry.”

“Yeah. Your prints and nobody else’s.”

“So whoever took it wore gloves.”

“They’ll search the plane. And each one of us. They won’t find any gloves.”

Delany’s face clouded over. “What’re you telling me, Harry?”

“You took the lens assembly out of the ranger, Monk. Last night. You wormed your big ape arm into the housing and popped it out, nice and neat. Just the way you popped the replacement set into it.”

Glaring at Harry, Delany looked as if he wanted to answer but thought better of it.

“It was you, Monk,” Harry said quietly. “I know it was you.”

The big man’s eyes narrowed. For an instant Harry thought Delany was going to get violent. But then he put on his lopsided smile and said, “What the hell, Harry?”

“You’re not denying it?”

“I didn’t do any damage. We shot down the gook missiles, didn’t we? We’re all heroes.”

“Yeah. All of us--except Pete Quintana.”

Delany look startled. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“How’d the grease get into the oxygen line, Monk?”

“Now wait a minute!”

“You put it there,” Harry insisted. “You knew what would happen when the line was pressurized. You killed Pete.”

“Dumb spic shouldn’t’ve been out there. He shoulda come into the control room with the rest of us.”

“You let him get killed.”

“I warned him!” Delany shouted. “I told the dumb sonofabitch to get inside! You heard me!”

“You didn’t tell him the COIL was going to explode. You didn’t tell me to stop the test.”

“Tell you fuck! Who the hell are you? Chief of the test team! Why you, big shit? It shoulda been me!”

Harry felt the fury radiating from the big man. “I know,” he said softly. “I told you so when Anson picked me.”

“Anson! Big fucking asshole! You know why he picked you? Because he can push you around. He calls the tune and you do the dance.”

“And Pete burns to death.”

Delany jumped up out of his seat, making Harry twitch with surprise and sudden fear. Monk’s a big guy, Harry thought, remembering the way the big guys at school had always run roughshod over him. He’d learned to talk his way out of most trouble, but there were always gorillas who took special pleasure in beating up smaller guys who got As in class.

“So Pete’s dead,” Delany roared. “Whattaya want me to do about it?
I
didn’t kill him! Damned brown-nosing spic had to show Levy and Scheib how good he was, how fucking
concerned
he was about getting every fucking detail just right! So he killed himself. I didn’t do it!”

Slowly, Harry rose to his feet. He barely reached to Monk’s nose.

“I know you didn’t intend to kill him,” Harry said, trying to placate Monk.

“Fucking right I didn’t!” Looming over Harry, Delany growled, “And you’re not going to say a word about this, buddy. Not to anybody. Understand?”

Before he could think of anything else to say, Harry heard himself reply, “Monk, I can’t keep this quiet. The colonel knows about the ranging laser.”

“So what? That’s all been fixed. No damage done.”

“We’ve got to know why you did it. Who paid you to do it.”

Delany slammed a big fist against the main console, making Harry flinch backward a step. “Dammit, Harry, you don’t hafta know anything! Not a damned thing! You got that?”

“Yes I do, Monk. But the Air Force will want to know. Mr. Anson will want to know. Pete’s widow, too.”

“Harry, I’m warning you! Drop it!”

“I wish I could, Monk.”

“But I can’t.”

Whirling, Harry saw Colonel Christopher standing in the compartment’s hatch. Monk stared at her, frozen, his mouth open, his hands balled into fists.

“From what Harry tells me, you’ll be charged with negligent homicide, I imagine,” the colonel said, her voice tight, her face hard and unforgiving.

“Now wait--” Harry began. He never got any further.

Delany gave out a strangled roar and grabbed Harry with one big hand, punched him squarely in the face with the other. Harry’s head snapped back. His nose spurted blood. He tried to push himself away, but Monk kept punching him.

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.

Georgetown, D.C.: The Scheib Residence

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.