Rosenberg, for once, had nothing to say.
Tapping a knuckle on the frosted side of the oxygen tank, Harry said softly, “It wouldn’t take much to blow this plane out of the sky. We’d all get killed nice and dead.”
“Jesus.” This time Reyes crossed himself.
“Watch everything,” Harry said. “And everybody.”
Reyes nodded. Rosenberg said, “And who’s going to watch you,
Karen Christopher heard O’Banion’s voice in her headphone, clipped and businesslike. “Message from Andrews coming through, ma’am.”
“Put it through,” she commanded.
“It’s printing out. No voice.”
Colonel Christopher glanced over at Kaufman in the right-hand seat. He’d just come back into the cockpit after flaking out on one of the bunks built into the rear of the flight deck. Still, he looked pouchy-eyed, weary.
“How do you feel, Obie?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” he said, clicking the safety harness over his shoulders.
Kaufman hesitated a heartbeat, then asked, “You know the routine for aiming at a missile?”
She nodded. “Point the nose at the rocket exhaust plume. Easy.”
He nodded back at her. “Yeah. Easy. In the simulator.”
Christopher heard the sarcasm in his tone. She thought about her copilot for a couple of moments, then decided to sweeten his life a little.
“Can you handle it by yourself for a few minutes?” she asked the major.
“Sure!”
Christopher smiled inwardly. That was every copilot’s answer whenever he was asked to take the controls. Sure! They want to fly, not watch the boss do the flying.
“Okay,” she said, unbuckling her safety harness. “It’s all yours.”
“Right,” said Kaufman.
The colonel slid out of her chair, took off the heavy flight helmet and left it on the seat, then stepped through the cockpit hatch. Lieutenant Sharmon was at his station, a stack of charts on his lap and still another map on his console’s main screen.
The lieutenant looked up at Christopher. “Rendezvous in fifty-three minutes,” he said.
“Fine,” said Christopher. She gave Sharmon a light pat on the shoulder and turned to O’Banion, who was pulling a freshly typed sheet from the printer built into his communications rack. She could see TOP SECRET emblazoned on it in bright red capital letters.
O’Banion passed it to her without reading it.
From Brad again, she saw. Major General B. B. Scheib, Deputy Commander MDA. Skipping past the formalities, she got down to the meat of the message.
Christopher made a swift mental calculation. We’ve crossed the date line; eleven hundred Zulu time is 9:00 a.m. here.
2.
She stared at the sheet of paper, noticing that it was shaking like a trembling aspen in her hand.
I’ve got to decide whether we hang out here over the ocean and wait for the tanker to find us or abort the whole mission and land at Misawa.
I’ve got to decide if we try to stop those damned missiles when they’re launched or put down safely in Japan.
Brad’s left it to me to decide. He’s dropped the hot potato in my damned lap.
Karl Dieter Olbricht hated trees. It had not always been so. As a youth, growing up on the windswept prairie of Nebraska, he had loved to climb the lone apple tree on the front lawn of his house. But once he started working for the local electric utility as a rugged, handsome blond lineman, he began to acquire a hatred for trees. Not all trees. Only those close enough to electrical power lines to bring the lines down if they were blown over in a storm.
If Olbricht could have his way, every tree within two miles on either side of a power line would be cut down, carted away, its roots dug up or dynamited.
He was standing with his back to the big electronic wall map at the regional headquarters, looking out the windows on the other side of the big command center. Snow was whipping past and the trees out on the parking lot were swaying as their branches loaded up with ice.
The wall map was blank, and had been since the satellites had gone dead. Olbricht had to rely on the already overloaded telephone lines to get some semblance of a picture about the situation over the three-state area. And phone lines were getting knocked out too. Cell phone service was spotty, at best.
The National Weather Service was next to useless, and without satellite data to work with, the regional power combine’s own weather forecasters were no better. In short, this storm was going to cause a mess, a frightful, dangerous, perhaps fatal mess.
The president of the regional combine burst into the command center, stamping snow off her boots. She was a large black woman who had yet to prove that she was more than affirmative action window dressing.
“What’s the story, Karl?” she called to him as she pulled off her long fur-trimmed coat and flung it on the nearest desk. “Where is everybody?”
Fewer than half the desks were occupied.
“My people are having a hard time getting through the snow,” he replied as she came up close enough for him to smell her heavy perfume.
“Tell me ‘bout it,” she said. “Highway’s blocked by a jackknifed semi. I had to detour all around hell and back. Damned near got stuck in a snowdrift coming into the parking lot.”
“It’s going to be bad,” Olbricht said gloomily.
“It’s already bad.”
He nodded. “We’re getting calls from here and there about outages. It’s spotty so far, but...”
“It’s going to cascade, isn’t it?”
“Damned right,” Olbricht muttered through gritted teeth. “We could see half a million families without power before this is through. More.”
The president looked around the half-empty command center, then back at Olbricht. “Okay. Tell me what needs doing. Give me a desk and put me to work.”
His respect for her bounded upward several notches. But he still hated trees.
Brad Scheib walked out of the situation room, past the two Air Police men lounging in the corridor who snapped to attention at the sight of a two-star general, and headed for the men’s room, two dozen paces down the hall.
He had written the order and sent it. Karen should have it in her hands by now, he thought, unless they’re
