Able One

by Ben Bova

  ABL-1: Crew Compartment

  “We’re at cruising altitude.” Colonel Christopher’s voice came through the intercom speaker in the compartment’s overhead.

  Harry clicked his safety harness release and the straps slid into their receptacles on the back of his seat. To Rosenberg he said, “Check the tank pressures, Wally.”

  Rosenberg nodded sullenly and got to his feet. “Angel,” Harry said to Reyes, “I want you to purge the oxygen line.”

  Reyes gave him a questioning look. “Purge it?” Standing in the narrow aisle between the facing seats, Harry said, “There was a speck of grease in the oxy line when the rig blew up. I want to make sure the line’s absolutely clean.”

  “That was three years ago, Harry! We haven’t had any trouble since.”

  “Because we’ve been extra careful,” Harry said. “Purge the line, Angie.” With a slight grin, Reyes got out of his chair. The top of his head barely rose above Harry’s shoulder. “Okay, jefe. I’ll purge it.” Then he added. “Again.”

  Nakamura came to her feet, too, even shorter than Reyes. “I’ll check out the board.”

  She had the most critical job, Harry knew. The battle management system had to find the boosting missile and lock the laser onto it. He thought of little Taki as a sharpshooter. But her rifle weighed tons and took up most of the 747’s interior volume.

  This was supposed to be a test flight, Harry said to himself. We don’t have a full crew aboard and we’re supposed to shoot down a real missile. A real missile that’s carrying a real hydrogen bomb. He wondered if they could do it. Make it work, Anson had told him. But now it’s more than the company depending on us. This time it’s for real.

  As his teammates slowly started for the compartment’s hatch, Harry said, “Wait a minute. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  They looked at him questioningly.

  “The North Koreans set off a nuclear bomb in orbit this morning, and it looks like they’ve got more missiles ready to fire at us.”

  “Us?”

  “You mean America?”

  Delany growled, “Goddam gooks, we should’ve wiped them out long ago!”

  Nodding slowly, Harry said, “We’ve been ordered to fly to the Sea of Japan and shoot down any missiles the North Koreans launch.”

  “Shoot down real missiles?” Taki’s voice was breathless with surprise.

  “That’s right,” Harry said.

  “They can’t order us!” Delany snapped, nearly shouting. “We’re civilians, for chrissake! They can’t—”

  “The North Koreans have missiles with nuclear warheads. They’re getting set to fire them at American cities. We’ve got to stop them.”

  “Now?” Angel Reyes asked. “On this flight?”

  “Right.”

  “How many missiles?” asked Rosenberg.

  “Don’t know.”

  “How far do we have to go?”

  “As far as it takes,” said Harry. “So let’s make sure that everything—I mean everything—is in perfect condition. We’re heading into a real battle engagement.”

  Delany looked stunned. He sagged back down onto his seat. Rosenberg, for once, didn’t have a wisecrack to offer.

  “Let’s get to work,” Harry said.

  Taki started for the forward hatch; Monk Delany got to his feet and followed her. Harry and the two other men headed aft. The plane’s engines throbbed smoothly; Harry barely felt any vibration as the jumbo jet lumbered through the stratosphere.

  The laser bay was crammed with pipes and wiring. Harry insisted on keeping the area as neat as possible, but there were always loops of wire festooned from the overhead, spare parts tucked here and there along the narrow walkway. The clutter was inevitable: Harry remembered the old maxim that if a lab was spic-and-span, it meant no creative work was going on in it.

  Rosenberg and Reyes went about their tasks, barely saying a word. It’s hit them hard, Harry realized. One minute we’re on a routine test flight and the next we’re heading into a war. He wondered why he didn’t feel excited. Or scared. He felt numb instead. It’s too much, he thought. It’s just too fucking much.

  Slowly Harry walked the length of the laser bay, looking over every pipe, every wire, every weld on the tanks that held the volatile chemicals. Most of the laser itself was hidden behind all the plumbing; only its active lasing cavity was clearly visible and available for immediate adjustment or repair.

  He stared at the lasing cavity. Built of thick slabs of solid copper with water-cooling channels drilled through them, that chamber was where the chemical energy of the combined iodine and oxygen was converted into megawatts of infrared energy. Leading into it was another copper section, built like a miniature wind tunnel: that’s where the mixed chemicals roared through at supersonic speed, entered the laser cavity and gave up their stored energy, then flowed out to be vented outside the plane.

  Harry remembered the first time the Anson scientists had shown a blueprint of the COIL system to a group of visiting Air Force brass. One of the colonels stared at the wind tunnel section and shook his head.

  “That’s a lousy design for a rocket,” he said. “You’ll never get much thrust out of it.”

  The scientists laughed tolerantly and explained that the wind tunnel wasn’t designed for thrust. It was intended to feed the iodine and oxygen into the chamber where the lasing action took place.

  Now, flying toward the Sea of Japan at more than thirty thousand feet, heading into a possible war, Harry studied the laser assembly with the critical eye of a worried father. It’ll work, he told himself. We’ll make it work.

  But in his mind’s eye he saw the rig in the desert explode into white-hot flames, saw Quintana being roasted alive, felt the agony of his ribs cracking as he slammed against the back wall of the control room.

  It should’ve been me, not Pete. I should have been out there. I should have checked the oxy line myself, made sure it was clean.

  He shook his head to clear the nightmare vision. Well, Harry said to himself, if she blows today it won’t matter where I’m standing. We’ll all be dead.

  ABL-1: Flight Deck

  Lieutenant Sharmon unconsciously pressed one long finger against his headphone as the data for their first refueling rendezvous came through. The information was being fed into his navigation computer, but he listened to the beeps and boops of the electronics even while he watched the data rastering across the small screen of his nav console.

  They were over the Bering Sea now, just past the miserable rock of Attu, the last island in the Aleutian chain. Nothing but open water for the next zillion miles, Sharmon knew. With the surprising tailwind pushing them along, they’d reach the Japanese islands in five hours, he figured. But first he had to find the Air Force tanker that was heading for a rendezvous with them.

  Sharmon was plotting their course by dead reckoning, as well as homing in on the radio signals from as many Air Force bases as he could find with the plane’s radio equipment. The satellites were down, but he could triangulate their position from the radio fixes. Would that be good enough to find that one tanker plane in all the broad emptiness of the northern Pacific?

  If it’s not, we’re all dead.

  “Coffee?”

  Sharmon flinched at the sudden interruption in his increasingly morose thoughts. Captain O’Banion was standing over him with a steaming plastic mug in one hand.

  “It’s just coffee,” said the redheaded communications officer. “I wouldn’t poison you, man.”

  Sharmon tried to grin as he accepted the mug. “Thanks, Captain.”

  “Brick,” O’Banion said amiably, pointing to his rusty red hair as he sat himself at the comm console.

  “I’m Jon,” Sharmon replied. “Without an aitch.”

  O’Banion chuckled. “I haven’t used my real first name in so long I forget what it is.”

  He’s trying to make me relax, Sharmon figured, as he took a sip of the coffee. It was scalding hot. “Wow!
”

  “I made it extra strong,” said O’Banion. “We’re gonna need to stay bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  “Guess so. You hear anything more about. ..” Sharmon was going to say about the war, but he realized that there might not be a war going on. Not yet, leastways.

  “All the civilian satellites are off the air. Our mil-sats are workin’, but they’re swamped with traffic.”

  “You hear anything about North Korea?”

  O’Banion shook his head. “Not a peep. Except our orders.”

  Sharmon sipped again at the coffee. It was black and unsweetened. What the hell, he thought. Who needs cream and sugar when they’re going into a shooting war?

  “Where’s that tanker?” Colonel Christopher said into her pin mike.

  “Should be out there.” Lieutenant Sharmon’s voice sounded decidedly shaky in her headphone.

  The colonel clicked off the intercom connection. Should be, she echoed. But where the hell is it?

  She looked out through the windscreen. Nothing in sight but empty gray ocean. I could break radio silence and call them, Christopher thought, but I don’t want to look like some dumbass who can’t find her way to the toilet. Besides, it would tell Sharmon that I don’t have any confidence in him. Better to wait. Another few minutes, anyway. We ought to maintain silence as much as we can if we’re on a war footing. This might not be a war, not yet, but we’re sure ready to get into one.

  The flight helmet felt heavy on her head; her neck muscles were tensing up. She’d have a headache soon, she knew. As if I don’t have enough of a headache already, she thought, flying into a war with a planeload of nerds downstairs.

  Glancing at the fuel gauges on her control board, Christopher thought, If we don’t find that bird in another fifteen minutes, I’m going to have to call.

  She looked across at Kaufman in the right-hand seat. He caught her eye and ostentatiously tapped a stubby finger on the fuel gauge panel.

  “I know,” Christopher said. “I just hate to undermine the kid.”

  Kaufman huffed. “His job is to navigate properly, not get us drowned.”

  “It wouldn’t—” A glint of light sparkled against the endless gray of the ocean. “Hey, look!”

  And there it was. A big, fat, beautiful KC-45, chock-full of fuel for them.

  Colonel Christopher punched the intercom. “Lieutenant, you can stop sweating. We have the tanker in sight. Nice work.”

  She could hear Sharmon’s relieved sigh even through her headphone.

  The Pentagon: Situation Room

  “We’ve got to warn the President in the strongest terms that he should not land in San Francisco.”

  Zuri Coggins was surprised to hear herself speak those words, especially since her voice carried none of the doubt that she felt.

  General Higgins looked surprised, too. The situation room fell absolutely silent. Coggins could hear the soft murmur coming from the air-conditioning vents up in the ceiling.

  After several heartbeats, General Scheib said, “I disagree. Those missiles can’t reach San Francisco. They don’t have the range or the accuracy.”

  Coggins looked across the table at the general. “Are you willing to bet the President’s life on that?”

  “Yes,” Scheib snapped, without an instant’s hesitation.

  “I’m not,” said Coggins. Clasping her hands together on the tabletop, she tried to be more reasonable. “Look, General, the chances that they can hit San Francisco might be very small, but the consequences if they do will be extremely large. The prudent thing to do is to tell the President not to land there.”

  Scheib started to reply but held himself in check. Clearly he didn’t like what she was recommending.

  General Higgins said, “Ms. Coggins makes a good point.” Then he added, with a grin, “If nothing else, we’ll be covering our asses.”

  A few chuckles rose from around the table.

  “The President’s not going to like this,” Scheib said. “He’ll think we’re making him look like a coward.”

  “It’s his decision to make,” Higgins said firmly. “We can’t force the man to turn around.”

  “Turn tail, you mean,” Scheib muttered.

  Higgins shot him a disapproving look.

  “All right,” said Scheib. “If we’re going to advise the President to stay clear of San Francisco, we should also send a fighter escort to cover ABL-1 as it approaches Korean airspace.”

  “Fighter escort?” asked one of the civilians.

  “That 747 would be a sitting duck for enemy interceptors,” Scheib said. “We’ve got to protect it.”

  General Higgins nodded. “Send the recommendation to the Air Force chief of staff. With my approval.”

  “Yes, sir,” Scheib said, and he bent over his laptop.

  The National Security Advisor raised his hands prayerfully in front of his pursed lips as he stared at the smart screen on his office wall. Zuri Coggins looked so damned solemn, so convinced she was right.

  “And that’s the recommendation of the full emergency team?” he asked, his voice silky smooth. It was a tone that had terrified Navy officers for many years. Here in the White House, the civilians had been slow to understand its depths, but they figured it out—after a few bloody examples.

  “We didn’t take a vote,” said Coggins. “But General Higgins agrees with me.”

  “You’re not calling from your cell phone, are you?” the Security Advisor asked.

  “No, this is a secure videophone center in the Pentagon.”

  “Good.”

  “Will you make the recommendation to the President?” she asked.

  He hesitated. The President won’t like being told he should run away from San Francisco, he knew. Especially if it turns out that the city isn’t bombed. Maybe this is all some piece of North Korean gamesmanship to make the President look bad: he backs out of the San Francisco speech and the North Koreans don’t launch their missiles. Leaves egg on the President’s face.

  The Security Advisor sighed heavily. Damned tricky business here. Damned tricky. On the other hand, if it’s bombed with The Man in it, then Parkinson becomes President and who knows what that moron will do?

  “What does General Scheib have to say about this?”

  Coggins’ lips pressed into a thin, hard line. At last she answered, “He doesn’t believe the North Korean missiles can reach San Francisco. He thinks Honolulu is their likely target.”

  “I see,” said the Security Advisor.

  Urgently, Coggins pleaded, “We’ve only got a half hour or so before he’s scheduled to land. You’ve got to warn him.”

  The Security Advisor wasn’t accustomed to making snap decisions. All his life he’d waited until all the available information was in his hands before putting his reputation on the line.

  But he said, “I’ll put in another call to Air Force One. You know, he’s not going to like this.”

  “Better fled than dead,” Coggins said with a grim smile.

  When she came back into the situation room, the group had again broken into separate little knots of people, except for General Scheib, who sat at his place with a plug in one ear, tapping furiously at his laptop keyboard. And Jamil, who still sat alone at the end of the table. Maybe somebody put glue on his chair, Coggins thought.

  General Higgins called to her from the front of the stuffy room. “Well? What happened?”

  “He’s calling Air Force One and urging the President to turn back.”

  Higgins nodded. “Okay. That’s done. Now we sit and wait.”

  Slowly, everyone returned to their seats. Turning to General Scheib, Higgins asked, “Did you get the fighter cover you want?”

  His face like a thundercloud, Scheib said, “They’re bucking the request to SecDef.”

  “The Secretary of Defense?” Higgins frowned. “He’s a civilian.”

  Coggins didn’t know whether to laugh or growl.

  General Scheib said, “Nobody
wants to take the responsibility.”

  “Hell, I’ve already taken the responsibility,” said General Higgins. “Did you tell them I approved the request?”

  “I did. They’re bucking it up the chain of command.”

  “To a politician,” Higgins grumbled. “And he’ll just buck it up to the Commander in Chief.”

  Scheib looked disgusted. “They’d better make the decision pretty damned quick. If the North Koreans send interceptors after ABL-1, that’s plane’s dead meat.”

  “You’ve done as much as you can, Brad. Now it’s up to the politicians.” Higgins turned to the admiral sitting across from Coggins and asked, “Has Honolulu been alerted?”

  Nodding, the admiral replied, “Emergency teams are being notified. We’re telling them this is a surprise drill.”

  “You’re not letting them know that they may be attacked?” Coggins asked.

  “And start a panic?” the admiral snapped. “More people would be killed in the stampede to get out of the city than if the city really was nuked.”

  Coggins saw that Jamil slowly shook his head. He knows better, she thought. He knows that if they nuke Honolulu a couple of hundred thousand people will be killed instantly. At least.

  Higgins turned the discussion to emergency rescue tactics. Coggins opened her minicomputer and, looking toward Higgins all the time, reopened Jamil’s file.

  He’s a Christian, she saw with a quick flick of her eyes to the tiny screen. His whole family is Christian. That must be why they fled Lebanon and came here. And Higgins thinks he’s an Arab. She smiled to herself. She wondered what General Higgins would think if he knew that Zuri Coggins was a Black Muslim.

  Maryland Heights, Missouri: Provident Trust Bank

  Linda Suwazi saw her career going down in flames. The baby’s due in four months, she groaned inwardly, and this is gonna get me laid off, for sure.