still dicking around with Need to Know crap. No, the Coggins woman said her office has set up direct links, Top Priority. If the White House can’t get a message through to Karen nobody can.
In the lavatory he went straight to the nearest sink and started washing his hands. When he realized what he was doing he laughed to himself sardonically. How biblical, he thought. Like you can get rid of your guilt with a little soap and water.
Karen’s piloting ABL-1, he said to himself. I’d like to get whatever genius assigned her to that job and stuff his balls up his nose. Like that’s going to help.
She’s out there over the North Pacific, heading toward Korea. Probably over Japan by now or close to it. The tanker’s going to be late, if those guys at Misawa get it off the ground at all. So Karen has the option of loitering around waiting for the tanker to refuel her or aborting the mission and landing at Misawa.
She’s tough, Scheib remembered. Tougher than I am. When the shit hit the fan and the board of inquiry called her in, she didn’t say a word about me. Wouldn’t tell them a thing. They thought that’d crack her, sticking her with a bus driver’s job on a stupid test program.
But now she’s in the middle of a real situation. Nuclear war, maybe. It all depends on what she does. What she can do. She won’t abort the mission. Not Karen. She’ll stooge around over the water until that tanker shows up or she runs so low on fuel she’ll have to glide back to Misawa.
Scheib almost laughed as he went from the sink to the urinal. The brass thought they were punishing her, but they’ve stuck her in the hottest spot any Air Force pilot could be in right now. As he unzipped his fly, the general thought, She could come out of this a hero. Or dead.
Looking down at his penis as he stood at the urinal, Scheib muttered, “See the trouble you’ve gotten me into?”
At Misawa Air Force Base, Major Hank Wilson glared red-faced and fire-eyed at one of his oldest friends, Major Joe Dugan. Like Wilson, Dugan was squat and burly, built like an old-fashioned fireplug.
“In one hour?” Dugan squawked. “Are you nuts, Hank?”
“In one hour,” Wilson said, his voice murderously low. “I want that frickin’ tanker out of here within sixty minutes after it lands.”
The two men had known each other since their Air Force Academy days. Now they were rushing— sprinting, almost—across the tarmac toward the base maintenance depot.
“Can’t be done, Hank,” said Dugan, puffing slightly from the unaccustomed exertion. “My guys’ll need —”
Wilson stopped suddenly and Dugan trotted several steps before stopping and turning around to face his old friend. The sky above the airfield was turning gray, but the only thundercloud Dugan could see was Wilson’s slab- jawed face.
Looking around to make certain that no one was within earshot, Wilson lowered his voice a notch and explained, “Joe, I got a message straight from the frickin’ White House. The National Security Advisor signed the order personally. Absolute top priority.”
“That don’t mean—”
“What it means is that we gotta get that tanker back in the air one hour after it lands. Or quicker. That’s what it means.”
“But we don’t even know what’s wrong with its engine!”
“Get another engine on the flight line. Swap it out.”
“That’s crazy! We can’t—”
“The hell you can’t. I want a crew ready to swap out the engine soon’s that tanker rolls up to the apron.”
Dugan looked as if he’d just swallowed a dose of rancid cod liver oil. He glanced up at the sky. “It’s gonna rain,” he grumbled.
“Clear out a hangar and roll the bird into it.”
“Hank, this is crazy and you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah. But get it done.”
Sylvia tried to keep her terror hidden from the girls. She had never flown in a plane this small. Commercial airliners were so big that she never felt afraid. It was like sitting in a bus, really, especially if she had an aisle seat and didn’t look out the windows.
But this flimsy little thing was barely big enough for herself and her daughters. And the pilot. He was a good-looking older man, his short-trimmed hair silvery gray. And he had a sporty little moustache the same attractive color.
Sylvia was sitting in the right-hand seat, her daughters behind her. She couldn’t help looking out the windshield at the mountains down below, and the ocean. What if the engines stop? she wondered. We can’t land on a mountainside—or in the water. We’ll all die!
The pilot kept up a friendly chatter, but she had stopped listening to his words as she sat rigidly and felt every bump and shudder that the plane went through. There’s nothing between us and those mountains but empty air! Sylvia realized. She fought down an urge to vomit.
“Oh-oh,” said the pilot.
“What’s wrong?” Sylvia squeaked.
Tapping the bulbous earphone on the left side of his head, he said over the rumble of the plane’s twin jet engines, “Traffic control’s ordered us to orbit the field.”
“Orbit? In space?”
He laughed. “No, it just means they want us to ride around the airfield for a while.”
“How long?”
“Until Air Force One lands.”
From behind them, Denise said, “Air Force One? The President’s plane?”
“Yep,” said the pilot. Pointing past Sylvia’s nose, he said, “There she is, right there.”
Sylvia saw a huge four-engined plane painted sky blue and white. It looked terribly close, she thought.
“All traffic in and out of SFO is suspended until the President gets out of his plane,” the pilot said, as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.
Sylvia wondered how long they’d have to stay in the air, waiting. And if they had enough fuel.
“You’re probably wondering why I called you into this meeting,” said Harry. He knew it was weak to the point of inanity, but he couldn’t think of any better way to break the ice.
Wally Rosenberg snorted derisively. Taki Nakamura made a polite smile, obviously forced. Monk Delany looked disgusted and Angel Reyes looked worried.
Harry had brought them together in the battle management compartment. Usually manned by six people, it had more seats than any other section of the plane except for the cramped compartment where his team stayed during takeoffs and landings. Now they sat at the row of silent consoles, turned around to face Harry, who stood grimly before them.
“You all know that somebody pulled the optics assembly out of the ranging laser,” Harry said.
“It’s all fixed now,” said Delany. “No problem.”
“You replaced the assembly?”
“Yep. No sweat.”
Rosenberg asked, “How’d you get that fat ass of yours into that cramped little housing, Monk?”
“All I had to do was get one arm in. The assembly slides in and clicks in place nice and easy. It’s designed
