“Maybe,” Christopher answered with a weary shrug. “Do you have enough fuel to shoot ‘em down?”
He shook his head. “Maybe one or two squirts, not much more. We used up a lot of fuel on that one fighter. Kept bouncing in and out of acquisition.”
Colonel Christopher looked at Hartunian, studied his face for the first time. Soft brown eyes, she noticed. He doesn’t look like a warrior. Not at all.
But she crooked a finger at him and said, “Come on to the galley with me, Mr. Hartunian.”
He looked surprised for a flash of a second, then unstrapped his harness and rose to his feet. The plane bucked slightly and he reached for the console to steady himself.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Colonel Christopher, with a thin smile.
“I guess not,” replied Hartunian shakily.
Once they entered the cramped little galley, Christopher went straight to the coffee urn. There was only half a mugful left, dregs. Still, it was better than nothing. She cradled the mug in both hands.
Turning back to Hartunian, she said, “Now, what about this saboteur?”
The engineer looked surprised. “What about him?”
“We’ve got to find out who he is and why he tried to scratch this mission, Mr. Hartunian.” “Harry.”
Christopher ignored his request for informality as she sipped at her coffee. It was bitter and only lukewarm. And full of grounds. The colonel repeated, “Which one of your people tried to ruin this mission, Mr. Hartunian?”
General Scheib scowled at the blank screen of his laptop. He was getting audio from ABL-1, but no imagery. And now the audio was giving him trouble.
“What do you mean, she’s not available?” he grumbled into his lip mike.
A moment’s hesitation while his demand was relayed through a military communications satellite orbiting some twenty-two thousand miles above the equator.
Then Captain O’Banion’s voice came through the plastic bud that Scheib had jammed in his left ear. “She’s not in the cockpit, sir. She’s taking a break.”
“Did you tell her who’s calling?”
“Yes, sir, I did, sir. She said she’ll call you back shortly, sir.” The young man’s voice sounded clearly troubled.
Scheib clenched his teeth together, then growled, “I want her on this frequency right away, mister. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir!”
From down at the far end of the table, Zuri Coggins watched the grim expression of Scheib’s face. More bad news? she wondered. But the general leaned back in his chair, wormed the bud out of his ear, and simply sat there glaring at his laptop’s blank screen.
General Higgins was at the coffee cart again. Cog-gins glanced at her wristwatch and realized with a shock of surprise that it was after 9:00 p.m. We’ve been in this room for nearly ten hours, she said to herself. The President’s due to start his speech in San Francisco right about now.
The speech had been scheduled for the evening news hour, so that the network and cable TV shows could carry it live. But with all the commercial commsats off the air there could be no coast-to-coast TV coverage. Even radio would be spotty. That nuclear blast in orbit had rattled long-range radio transmission, too. Something about high-energy electrons in the ionosphere.
Sitting beside her, Michael Jamil had an expression of impending doom on his thinly bearded face.
Trying to cheer him up, Coggins leaned toward him and said, “Relax, it’s all over.”
Jamil shook his head. “The missile threat is ended, but this isn’t over. Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s China’s next move?” Jamil asked urgently. “You mean North Korea’s next move,” said Coggins.
“China,” he insisted. “China’s behind this. The DPRK didn’t have the resources to do this on their own. Or the nerve. Maybe if Kim Jong Il was still alive—he was nutty enough to try a stunt like this. But not now. Pyongyang doesn’t have any motivation to start a nuclear war.”
“How can you be sure?” Coggins asked. “History takes weird turns, you know.”
Jamil shook his head. “There’s always a motive, no matter how weird it looks at the time. North Korea doesn’t have a motive for this confrontation. China does.”
Coggins saw the intensity, the absolute certainty, in his face. But she heard herself say, “The Secretary of State doesn’t agree with you.”
Jamil immediately snapped, “Then she’s a bigger horse’s ass than I thought she was.”
“Which one of your people tried to ruin this mission, Mr. Hartunian?” Harry saw that Colonel Christopher was dead earnest.
“I wish I knew,” he said.
“Not good enough. One of your nerds tried to screw up this flight. This is my airplane, Mr. Hartunian. I’m responsible for everything that happens in it. I want that guy’s head on a platter.”
Harry sank into one of the bucket seats on the bulkhead opposite the coffee urn. The plane was still shaking badly, but he’d almost become accustomed to it by now.
“You’re taking this kind of personally, aren’t you?” he asked the colonel.
“Damned right I am.”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried to figure it out. I know it had to be one of them, but I—”
“It could be you, couldn’t it?”
He felt the accusation like an ice pick jabbed into him. “Me?”
The colonel broke into a smile. “No, I don’t think it was you,” she said, more softly. “Not really.”
“It wasn’t me,” Harry said. Then he heard himself ask, “Could it have been one of your guys?”
Colonel Christopher’s smile dissolved. “From what you’ve told me, whoever it is would have to have some detailed knowledge of your system. My crew doesn’t. They’re flyboys, not techies.”
The intercom speaker in the compartment’s ceiling blared, “Colonel Christopher, General Scheib wants to speak with you, ma’am. Right away.”
Harry saw the expression on Christopher’s face harden. Looking up at the speaker, she said tightly, “All right, put him on the intercom.”
A burst of buzzing static, then, “Colonel Christopher? Karen?” The man’s voice sounded tight, insistent.
“This is Christopher,” the colonel said, her eyes on Harry.
A heartbeat’s delay while the signal was relayed to geosynchronous orbit and back. Then, “Are you okay?”
“So far, so good, General.”
Again the delay, longer this time. “There’s a flight of F-16s coming out to meet you.” Harry thought the general’s voice sounded lower, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear.
“The DPRK air defense command says they’re sending more fighters to us. They want us to land in North Korea.”
“According to our tracking data you’ve left DPRK airspace.”
With a nod, she replied, “They claim out to two hundred miles, but my navigator says we’re past that.”
Silence, except for the hissing of static. At last the general’s voice resumed. “As far as we can see they haven’t put any more fighters into the air.”
“That’s good.”
“What’s your situation, Karen? Can you make it to Misawa?”
