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.
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.
Sitting in front of Linda’s desk, Mrs. Markley radiated cold fury. “You are the branch manager, aren’t you? Why can’t you get the machines fixed?”
Mrs. Markley was the seventh customer to barge into her office in the past half hour, complaining that the ATMs were down. Linda had tried to phone the local service company, but she’d gotten nothing but a busy signal. In desperation she had called corporate headquarters in Houston. No use. The line was so jammed with other calls that all she got was an automated message advising her to call again later.
“I want access to my money!” Mrs. Markley was hissing. “It’s bad enough that your machines aren’t working, but your tellers
“Our computers are down,” Linda tried to explain. “It’s only temporary, I’m sure. If you could come back later…”
Mrs. Markley rose grandly to her feet, practically twitching with rage. She reminded Linda of a beady-eyed rat.
“If you can’t run your bank properly you should be replaced!” Mrs. Markley snapped. Then she swept out of Linda’s office.
Linda sank back in her swivel chair and fought down the urge to burst into tears.
“You scared, boss?”
Startled, Harry half-turned and saw Delany’s big, bearlike form lumbering up the narrow walkway toward him. Harry had slowly worked his way past the lasing cavity and mixing chamber, heading tailward along the tanks that held the liquid oxygen and iodine toward the cramped little monitoring station where Wally Rosenberg sat, checking pressures and tankage levels.
“What are you doing back here?” Harry demanded. Monk’s station was up in the nose, at the beam control compartment.
“The optics are all okay,” said Delany. “I was just wondering how you guys’re feeling. You nervous about this?”
