that way, Wally.”
Taki pointed out, “You’ll have to check the alignment when the tanker shows up.”
“No problem,” Delany repeated.
“That’s not the point,” said Harry. “The point is that one of us deliberately tried to screw up this mission. One of
“What do you want to do about it, Harry?” Reyes asked, his voice small, soft.
“I want the person who did it to stand up and admit it and swear that he won’t do anything else to mess us up.”
“He?” Delany asked, turning slightly to look at Nakamura.
“Whoever,” Harry said. “I figure that the guy did it before we were told we’re going against a real live missile. I don’t know why he did it and I don’t care. I just want to know that he—or she—won’t try anything more.”
Dead silence, except for the vibrating drone of the plane’s engines.
“No questions asked,” Harry promised. “Whatever happened, for whatever reason, it’ll be strictly among us. Nobody else has to know.”
“You told the pilot, didn’t you?” Rosenberg asked, almost accusingly.
Harry nodded. “I had to. But I can always tell her I made a mistake, that the optics assembly was taken out for inspection.”
“And that Air Force colonel’s gonna believe a cockamamie story like that?” Delany challenged.
“She’ll have to, if we all stick together on it.”
Silence again. Harry stared at the four of them, wishing he were a mind reader.
“At least tell me there won’t be any more of this crap,” Harry pleaded. “We’re going to a shooting war, for Chrissakes, we don’t need somebody trying to screw us up.”
They glanced back and forth at each other. Nobody said a word.
Then Rosenberg cleared his throat noisily and said, “Well, I’m not going to mess with anything, Harry.”
“Me neither,” said Reyes.
“I didn’t in the first place,” Taki Nakamura said, almost defiantly.
Delany broke into a lazy grin. “Hell, it’s dangerous enough up here without trying to louse up the works.”
Harry heaved an involuntary sigh. “Okay,” he said. “I have your word on it?” They all nodded.
“Good enough.” Harry realized that this was the most he was going to get from them. “But from now on nobody works alone. Understand that? I don’t want any one of you out of sight of one of the others.”
“Cheez, Harry, that ain’t gonna work,” Delany complained. “We’ve each got our own stations and—”
Harry cut him off. “Until we get into a real battle situation, you guys work in pairs. I’m not kidding. I want you to keep an eye on one another.”
Reyes nodded solemnly. “Okay, Harry. But who’s going to keep an eye on you?”
It took Harry a moment to realize that Reyes was smiling gently. Gruffly, Harry said, “Don’t worry about me.”
They broke up. Nakamura went with Delany forward to the optics station, Rosenberg and Reyes aft toward the COIL and its fuel tanks.
Harry stood alone in the empty battle management section, thinking that one of his four team members must have sabotaged the laser at the field test out in the Mohave and killed Pete Quintana in doing so.
Karen Christopher was stretched out on the bunk in the rear of the flight deck. Her eyes were closed, but she couldn’t sleep.
The tanker’s delayed. That one thought kept running through her mind. That and an image of the fuel gauges on ABL-1’s control panel. We’re over Japan now. We could break off this mission and put down at Misawa, nice and easy. Nobody gets hurt and nobody would blame me for aborting the mission.
And the North Koreans launch their missiles.
We could stop them! She knew that as certainly as she knew her heart was beating. If I can get this clunker of an airplane into the proper position we could shoot down those bastards before their rocket engines cut off.
But you need another long drink of fuel to get there, she said to herself. You need that tanker. And if you stooge around over the ocean long enough waiting for it, you could run out of fuel and go down into the ocean.
That’d be a great career move, she thought. Sink a billion-dollar airplane, the only one of its kind. Sink your career in the Air Force with it.
Christopher wondered how much of a career she had to look forward to. She remembered the board of inquiry, the cold, hard faces of the Advocate General’s panel of judges.
“You refuse a direct order to name the officer you’ve been sleeping with?” The crusty old brigadier was smirking at her, seeing dirty pictures in his mind.
“My activities while not on duty are not subject to Air Force jurisdiction, sir,” Karen had replied, knowing it was a pathetically weak defense.
“They are subject to United States Air Force jurisdiction when they reflect dishonorably on the service!” the judge had snapped at her.
Karen lapsed into silence. Her USAF-appointed lawyer, a light colonel like herself, had advised her that silence was her best defense.
Not that it did her any good. They couldn’t get Brad’s name out of her, so they bounced her out of her job with the B-2 squadron and stuck her in a dumbbell assignment driving a cargo plane on milk runs.
But the cargo plane turned out to be ABL-1. Nobody expected the plane to do anything but fly racetrack courses over the open ocean and shoot its laser at simulated targets. Nobody expected the North Koreans to start World War III or ABL-1 to be sent on this mission to stop the war before it started. Nobody expected Lieutenant Colonel Karen Christopher to be placed at the pivotal point of world history.
“Uh, Colonel, ma’am?”
Karen snapped her eyes open. Lieutenant Sharmon was standing over her, looking a little embarrassed.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position. “What is it, Jon?”
“I’ve got the numbers on how long we can stooge around waiting for the tanker. They don’t look good.”
Out of the corner of his eye Charley Ingersoll noticed the gas gauge’s warning light flicker. The highway was blanketed with snow now; the clouds were low and dark. We ought to be outrunning this dratted storm, Charley fumed to himself, but instead it’s just getting worse. He wished he’d put in new wiper blades before starting on this stupid trip; the wipers were smearing his windshield so badly he could hardly see outside.
They’d stopped at two more gas stations, but both of them had no electricity, either, so they couldn’t pump gas. We’re not going to make it home unless we can fill the ever-loving tank, Charley knew.
The warning light glowed steadily now, a little yellow eye that told Charley he was in real trouble. What to do? What to do? Push on until we run out of gas or pull over and keep the car heated until a snowplow comes by?
Martha was still fiddling with the radio, trying to get a local station.
“Try the cell phone again,” Charley said. His wife shook her head. “It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it a dozen times and it doesn’t work.”
“Try it again, dammit!”
She looked shocked at his language, but picked the cell phone off the console between their seats and pecked at it.
“Nothing,” she said, almost as if she were happy about it.
At least the kids were quiet in the backseat. They’d peed and eaten a couple of granola bars. That ought to keep them satisfied for a while, Charley thought.
“Stay in the middle!” Martha yelped as Charley maneuvered the van around a curve. There was no guardrail and she was on the open side. The snow was so thick now that Charley couldn’t see how far a drop it was on her
