working battle management, with two backups behind them. For this flight, which started out as a routine test mission, Taki had the station all to herself.
Seeing the two of them talking together, grins on their faces, gave Harry a pang of apprehension. Are they both in on it? Are they working together?
Then he heard Delany finishing one of his stories, “So the highway patrolman sees the guy’s too drunk to drive and he asks him, ‘Do you realize that your wife fell out of your car three blocks down the street?’ And the driver, he’s Irish, he says, ‘Thanks be to God! I thought I was goin’ deaf!’ ”
Monk hooted at his own joke and Taki laughed politely. Harry had heard the story before, and besides he was in no mood for laughter. But he got a sudden idea.
“Monk, I need to check out the ranging laser with you.”
Delany frowned up at him. “Again?”
“Again,” said Harry. “When that tanker gets here we’ve got to test the ranger on it.”
Pushing himself up from the bucket seat, Delany grumbled, “Your taking this
“Maybe,” Harry agreed. “But let’s make certain the laser’s ready to ping the tanker.”
Once they were in the beam control section, Harry plucked at Delany’s sleeve. “Monk, I’ve got an idea about how to find out who dismantled the lens assembly.”
Delany gave him a dubious look.
“If we can find the missing assembly, there’s probably fingerprints on it,” Harry said. “Once we get back to Elmendorf, we can get the Air Police to check ‘em out.”
Delany’s expression phased from dubious to thoughtful. “Cheez, Harry, my prints are all over that chunk of glass.”
Nodding, Harry said, “Yeah, sure. But if there’s somebody else’s prints on it, too, then that somebody must be the guy who took it!”
“Maybe,” Delany said slowly.
“Gotta be,” said Harry, convincing himself as he spoke.
Delany shook his head. “You’re turning into a friggin’ Sherlock Holmes, pal.”
Harry accepted it as a compliment, thinking, If Monk took the assembly he knows there’s nobody else’s prints on it. He’ll go back to where he stashed it and wipe it down, clean off any fingerprints on it.
But then he thought, Maybe he was smart enough to wipe it down before he stashed it in the lav. Maybe I’m not a Sherlock Holmes after all.
And he realized that Monk was only one possible culprit out of four. So what do I do now? He wondered.
“Message from the tanker!” O’Banion sang out.
“Pipe it to me,” said Karen Christopher.
“ABL-1, this is your friendly flying gas station. Sorry we’re late.”
“Better late than never,” Colonel Christopher said happily into her lip mike. “Where are you?”
“Three miles behind you and four thousand feet below. We’re coming up as fast as we can.”
Kaufman twisted around in his chair and did his best to look behind and below the plane.
“Very good,” said the colonel. “We’re glad to see you. We’re running on fumes, just about.”
“We’ll take care of that. You need anything else, Colonel? Windshield wiped? Oil change? Tires rotated?”
Karen laughed. “Just fill our tanks, thanks.” She turned to Kaufman. “Feel better, Obie?”
He gave her a halfhearted grin. “You should’ve been a test pilot: more guts than brains.”
Colonel Christopher nodded. More guts than you’ve got, butterball, she retorted silently. Then she puffed out a heartfelt sigh of relief.
“They’re definitely getting ready to launch,” said General Scheib, his eyes fixed on the wall screen that showed the latest satellite imagery from North Korea.
Zuri Coggins was speaking hurriedly, urgently, into the hair-thin headset she had attached to her minicomputer. Talking to the White House, Michael Jamil guessed. General Higgins was on his feet, his shirt rumpled, his face pasty.
Jamil wondered if the fatheaded general would send an alert to San Francisco now. The President arrives there and the North Koreans start their missile countdown. That can’t be a coincidence. It can’t be.
Then he asked himself, How did they know that the President landed? With all the commercial comm-sats out, there’s no worldwide news coverage. And we certainly aren’t sending data from our milsats to the DPRK.
They must have one or more satellites of their own watching San Francisco, Jamil concluded. Then he shook his head. The North Koreans didn’t have any satellites in space. The bomb they had launched was the first time they’ve gotten a bird into orbit successfully.
I need access, he realized. Seeing that the Coggins woman had taken off her headset and was watching the satellite imagery along with everybody else, he got out of his chair and went up the table to her.
“May I use your mini for a few minutes?” he asked.
Coggins cast a suspicious look at him, annoyed at being interrupted from her concentration on the wall screen’s imagery. The scene looked semi-weird, distorted. The surveillance satellite must be getting close to the local horizon, Jamil figured. It’ll be out of the area in a few minutes.
“My computer?” Coggins asked.
“Only for a few minutes. Please.”
She hesitated a heartbeat, then gestured to the mini. “Go ahead. It’s connected to the Defense Department’s information web.”
“Fine. Thanks.” Jamil slid into the chair next to Coggins and pulled the book-sized computer in front of him.
Coggins got up and stretched. Tense as a tightrope, she said to herself. Why not? You’ve got a lot to be tense about.
She walked over to the coffee cart. All three urns were empty again. We’re drinking too much of it anyway, she thought, even though she wished she had a cup to hold in her hands.
“Coffee’s gone again?”
Turning, she saw it was General Higgins glowering at the cart. He waved to his aide and pointed ostentatiously to the stainless steel urns. “I’ve got to tell him everything,” Higgins complained.
Coggins half-whispered, “Do you think they’re really targeting the President?”
The general shook his head stubbornly. “Scheib says those missiles don’t have the range or accuracy to hit San Francisco. He’s our local expert.”
“Then it’s Honolulu.”
“Or Fairbanks. Or Manila. Or Shanghai.” Higgins looked back at the screen, muttering, “Our next recon bird won’t be over the area for another ten minutes.”
She stepped across the room to where General Scheib stood staring at the wall screen while he gnawed his lip.
“How soon before they launch?” Coggins asked.
Scheib cocked his head to one side, thinking. Then he replied, “No more than an hour. Ninety minutes on the outside.”
“Can they hit San Francisco?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But if that’s their target, can your people stop them?”
General Scheib looked down at her. He still wore his tunic, ribbons displayed across his chest. Except for a shadow of beard, he looked almost as sharp as he had in the morning, when the group first convened. But he was gnawing his lip.
