Able One

“Got it!” Monk said, grinning.

Leaning over his burly shoulder, Harry saw the return blip from the ranging laser on the readout screen of Delany’s console. Numbers rastered down the screen’s side. The laser was working fine and pinging the tanker plane with low-power invisible infrared pulses.

Harry grabbed the headset hooked to the console’s side and slapped it onto his head. Thumbing the intercom button on the console, he called, “Hartunian to the communications officer.”

“Comm here,” said O’Banion’s voice in the earphone.

“I’m piping our ranging laser’s data to you. Please confirm against your radar.”

“Will do, Mr. Hartunian.”

Monk looked up at Harry, his lopsided grin almost a smirk. “I told you I’d get it working. No sweat.”

Harry nodded absently. It was one thing to put the little laser together and make it work. It was another to make it work right. Using the tanker plane as a target was a good test, although the plane was practically in their laps and the real test would come when they had to get the range on a missile boosting from a hundred or more miles away. But if their laser results matched the plane’s regular radar—

“Mr. Hartunian,” said O’Banion.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sending our numbers down to you. They look good to me, sir.”

“Okay, okay.” Harry felt his hands trembling slightly as the radar numbers began to appear on Monk’s screen, alongside the numbers from their ranging laser.

“On the button!” Monk crowed. “Look at that!”

Harry saw that the numbers differed only on the fourth decimal place. Good enough, he thought. Good enough.

“You’re right, Monk,” he said, forcing a smile. “We’re in business.”

“Better tell that flygirl skipper, pal.”

“I will,” Harry said, straightening up. “After I check with Taki.”

Monk’s grin shrank as Harry left him and ducked through the hatch to the battle management station, where Nakamura sat peering intently at one of the four consoles.

Sliding into the chair beside her, Harry said, “Monk got the ranger working.”

“I can see that,” Taki said, tapping a lacquered fingernail against the console’s main screen.

“Is it good enough for you?” he asked.

Nakamura nodded, but Harry saw that her lips were pressed together tightly.

“Problem?”

She looked away from him for a moment, then turned back to the console and its array of screens. “Harry, I can’t do this. Not all by myself.”

“I know.”

As if she hadn’t heard him, she went on. “I mean, it’s one thing to run a test, just fire the COIL at a spot in the empty air. But now we’re going to try to hit real missiles? Come on, there’s supposed to be four people at these consoles. I’m only one person. I can’t do everything.”

“I’ll be beside you, Taki. I’ll be right here with you. We’ll do it together.”

Nakamura focused her dark eyes on Harry. He saw doubt in them. And he understood what was going on in her head. It all depends on her, Harry thought. Wally and Angel can fire the COIL. Monk can make the ranging laser work. But it’s Taki’s responsibility to run the sensors that acquire the infrared signature of the rocket exhaust plume, point the COIL at the target, and get off enough shots to take out the missile before its engines cut off and we lose the infrared signal from the plume.

“Taki,” he said softly, “what it takes four blue-suiters to do, the two of us can do.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. You’ll get an Annie Oakley medal for sharp-shooting.”

Her brows knit. “Annie Oakley? Who’s she?”

The tension broke and Harry laughed. “I’ll tell you all about her after this is over.”

As he got to his feet, Monk came through the hatch and passed through the compartment. “Kidney break,” Delany said.

The lens assembly! Harry thought. He’s going to wipe down the lens assembly! He watched Delany duck through the hatch, wondering what he should do.

“I’ve got to talk to the pilot,” he said to Nakamura, and followed Delany out of the compartment.

Instead of going upstairs to the flight deck, though, Harry watched Delany step into the lavatory, then he went into the galley, sat tensely at one of the bucket seats, and kept his eyes on the lav hatch.

Delany came out in less than a minute. He didn’t have time to do anything with the lens assembly, Harry thought. Hell, he didn’t even take the time to wash his hands!

But Harry entered the lavatory anyway, kneeled down, and opened the cabinet. The cartons of toilet paper were stacked just as he had left them. Taking the top few out, Harry saw the lens assembly still sitting behind them.

As he put the packages back Harry thought that so far he had proven nothing. As a detective he was a total flop.

ABL-1: Cockpit

“Message incoming from the Pentagon,” O’Banion reported. “I’m running it through decrypt now.”

“Let me see it as soon as decrypt’s finished,” Colonel Christopher said.

“Right.”

Lieutenant Sharmon’s softer voice sounded in her earphone. “We’re approaching North Korean territorial waters, Colonel.”

Karen Christopher frowned slightly. They had flown past the storm swirling across the Sea of Japan and were now over open water. Through the windscreen Christopher could see nothing but empty ocean, gray and rippled with waves. No sign of land.

“We’re twelve miles off the coast of Korea?”

“No, ma’am,” Sharmon replied. “The North Koreans claim territorial rights out to two hundred miles.”

“Two hundred? Is that legal?”

“I checked the regs, Colonel. Twelve miles is the international standard for territorial rights, but some countries claim exclusive economic rights out to two hundred. They don’t allow fishing boats or stuff like that.”

Colonel Christopher puzzled over that for a moment. “Better check with Washington and see what they recommend.”

“It’ll take awhile; communications are still all fuck… er, all snarled up.”

The colonel nodded to herself as she thought, We need to get this bird as close to the shoreline as possible. When those gooks pop their missiles we’ve got to be close enough to nail them right away. Close enough to take more than one pop at them if we have to.

O’Banion came back on the intercom. “Colonel, Mr. Hartunian’s asking to talk to you.” “Where is he?”

“Down in the battle management compartment.”

She turned to Kaufman. “Obie, take over. Stay on this heading until we’re twenty miles off the coast. Holler if I’m not back by then.”

Kaufman looked resentful, as usual. But he said, “Twenty miles. Right.”

Colonel Christopher nodded at her navigator and communications officer as she went through the flight deck and down the ladder to the tiny niche between the beam control and battle management compartments. Hartunian was standing behind the Asian-American girl, the expression on his face somewhere between grim and determined.

“Any problems, Mr. Hartunian?” the colonel asked, barely loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the plane’s engines.

Hartunian gestured toward the galley as he said, “I think we’re ready, Colonel.”