Able One (32 page)

There was something going on, Harry realized. Something between the two of them that went beyond the words they were speaking. It was like a couple of people talking in code, almost. Harry could see the tension on Colonel Christopher’s face, in her strained posture, the way she was gripping her coffee mug in both hands, like it was a life preserver or something.

“Well... take care of yourself,” the general said. “We’re doing everything we can from this end.”

“Sure. I know.”

A long pause this time. Then, “I’ll set up a priority link with Misawa. Call me the minute you touch down.”

She closed her eyes as she replied, “If I can, General. I’ll call if I can.”

The audio link went dead. For a long moment Harry heard nothing but the rumble of ABL-1’s engines and the clatter of the plane’s buffeting. He realized he had become almost accustomed to the shuddering vibrations.

“You know him?” he asked Colonel Christopher.

She gave him a curious, half-sad smile. “I knew him.”

“Knew?”

“Too well,” she said. “Not well enough.”

Harry felt puzzled but decided the colonel’s personal life was not a place he should be poking into.

She sat wearily beside him. “Are you married, Mr. Hartunian?”

“I was. “We’re separated.”

“Going to get divorced?”

Suddenly miserable all over again, Harry waved both hands in the air. “I don’t know. My wife wants a divorce. But we’ve got two daughters. I don’t know what it’d do to them.”

“Do you still love her?”

Harry thought he should feel uncomfortable talking about his private life with a woman who was practically a stranger to him. Instead, he heard himself admit, “I thought I did at first. But I don’t know if we ever really loved each other. Not like in a romance story. We were just kids when we got married.”

“And now?”

He shrugged. “Now it’s all over, I guess. Has been for years, I was just too dumb to recognize it.”

Karen patted his knee. “Welcome to the club, mister. Welcome to the goddamned club.”

He saw that her eyes were sad. And really beautiful. Light gray, almost bluish.

Before he could say anything, though, Colonel Christopher straightened up in the seat and said, “Now, how do we go about finding out which one of your people tried to screw up this flight?”

San Francisco: The Cow Palace

“I had a speech prepared for you,” said the President into the microphones on the dais before him, “but events have moved so swiftly that I’m going to toss that speech away and speak to you from my heart.”

The spotlights were glaring brilliantly on the President. The crowd filling the auditorium was in darkness, but he could sense them out there in the shadows, feel their presence, hear their breathing like one gigantic, expectant animal.

“So tonight we’ll forget about the teleprompters and the speech my staff worked so hard to prepare. Tonight I want to tell you about an extraordinary series of events, and about the brave and gallant crew of Air Force and civilian personnel.”

He could feel them leaning forward, holding their breath, hanging on his words.

“You know the old joke: I have good news and bad news.”

A few laughs scattered through the darkness.

“I’ll give you the bad news first,” the President said, smiling broadly to reassure his audience. “As you know”--his smile dwindled--”just about all the civilian satellites in orbit were knocked out this morning. It’s been a tough day, without satellite phone links, without satellite relays for information systems and commercial television. Why, this speech right here and now isn’t being transmitted any farther than Sacramento ... or so I’m told.”

A few more nervous titters out there in the darkness. Good, thought the President.

“And things are going to be tough for a while. It will take weeks, maybe months or even a year or more, before we get full satellite services going again.

“What caused this enormous breakdown? A nuclear bomb exploded in orbit by a dissident element of the North Korean army.”

That got them! The audience gave a collective gasp. Rumbles and murmurs swept the shadowed rows of onlookers.

“I say again”--the President raised a slim finger-- “that the bomb was set off in orbit by a dissident group of the North Korean army. Not by the government in Pyongyang. The entire civilized world has been attacked by a fanatical group of ... well, they’re fanatics. What else can we call them?”

More grumbling and muttering from the audience. That giant beast out in the shadows was starting to growl.

The President held up both his hands, palms out,’ and the beast quieted. “The regular North Korean army is rounding up these dissidents. They’ll be captured and dealt with by North Korean justice. Which, I may tell you, is a lot tougher and swifter than our own.”

He hesitated a moment.

“But before these fanatics could be captured, they launched two more missiles. Toward America. We have every reason to believe those missiles were armed with nuclear warheads.”

Now they really stirred. But the President grinned and, raising his voice slightly, told them, “Now the good news. Both those missiles have been shot down. We’re not entirely sure where they were aimed at, because they were shot down within a minute or so of being launched. They might have been aimed right here, at San Francisco. They might have been intended to kill me. And you.

“But they were both shot down by an American plane flying over international waters off the coast of Korea. That plane was armed with a high-power laser that destroyed both those missiles within a minute or so after they were launched.

“So, the good news is that we have a missile defense system that works. The North Korean fanatics who launched those missiles are being rounded up and will be swiftly punished.”

They broke into applause. The audience rose to its feet like one single organism and cheered long and hard and loud. The President stood before them in the spotlights, smiling his boyish smile, thinking that the next thing he had to explain was that the North Koreans were in no way associated with Islamic terrorists. I don’t want this to spill over into a new war in the Middle East, he told himself. We’ve got to avoid that. By all means.

Washington, D.C.: Foggy Bottom

The rain had stopped. Cool moonlight beamed down out of a silver-clouded sky. The Secretary of State watched the clouds gliding across the moon as she listened to the President’s speech on the little plastic radio one of her aides had placed on her desk. His voice sounded scratchy, tinny, streaked with static. Cross-country television had been down since the commercial satellites were knocked out, but radio reception was still serviceable.

Sitting before her were General Higgins, freshly shaved and wearing a new, crisply creased uniform; Zuri Coggins, looking wilted in the same red jacket suit she’d been wearing all day; and that annoying Jamil fellow, with his sliver of a beard and his dark, probing eyes.

Farther back in the room sat a trio of her aides. The Secretary had forbidden them from making a transcript of this impromptu meeting, but she knew that her personal assistant had set up the digital recording system in her desk before she’d gone home for the night. No one else had access to it. I’ll be able to review what we say here but no one else will, she reassured herself. If necessary I can erase the record entirely.

The roar of the crowd sounded in the little radio like surf crashing on a rocky beach.

“They like what he has to say,” Zuri Coggins murmured to no one in particular.

The Secretary of State saw that although Coggins’ clothes might be wrinkled, the woman herself was still intense, still sharp, her eyes bright, her attention focused on the President’s words and the crowd’s reaction to them as she sat hunched slightly forward in the big leather chair.

“He hasn’t mentioned China,” muttered Michael Jamil.

The Secretary of State flared inwardly. There he goes with that China business again!

But she smiled cordially at Jamil and said mildly, “Let’s hear the rest of what he has to say before analyzing it.”

The President’s voice sounded strong, assured. “So I want the people of America--and our allies--to rest assured that we have a missile defense system that
works.
There will be no nuclear Pearl Harbors as long as we have fine, committed men and women in our military and civilian defense establishments.”

Thunderous applause. It died slowly.

The President resumed. “And I want the people of the world to know that we have entered a new era, an era where the most terrifying weapons of war are no longer supreme. An era where we can defend ourselves and our allies against surprise attack.

“And finally, I offer this pledge: The United States will work with any nation that is willing to work toward peace with the mutual understanding that we promise to use our missile defenses to shield them as well as ourselves. Against the threat of rogue states or terrorists, we must all stand together to build a world of peace and safety. That is our goal and we will not settle for anything less. Thank you and good night.”

The cheering erupted before the President finished his last line and went on and on until at last the Secretary of State reached out and snapped the radio’s off switch.

For several moments no one said a word. The cheering from San Francisco seemed to reverberate in the spacious office.

“Well,” the Secretary of State said at last. “Any comments?”

Zuri Coggins immediately replied. “He’s offering to turn this near disaster into an opportunity for better international cooperation.”

“Like Kennedy did after the Cuban missile crisis,” said Jamil. “It led straight to the Limited Test Ban Treaty.”

General Higgins shook his head. “What he’s really saying is that we can shoot down attacking missiles. That changes the whole strategic picture.”

“Yes, it does,” State said softly, “doesn’t it.”

She looked past the general to her aides, seated on the other side of the room. They glanced at one another, but none of them offered a word of advice or analysis.

Turning her cobra smile to Jamil, the Secretary of State asked, “Do you still believe that China was behind this?”

Without a heartbeat’s hesitation, Jamil replied, “Yes, ma’am, I do. But we’ll never know, will we? Those rebel North Korean army officers know they’re as good as dead. They won’t let themselves be taken alive.”

“You think not?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“So Pyongyang can tell us the DPRK government had nothing to do with this, and Beijing can sit there and say nothing.”

“The real test,” Jamil said, “will be how Beijing reacts to the President’s initiative.”

“Share our missile defense system with them?” State scoffed at the idea.

“Promise to build a system that can protect them against rogue nations or terrorists with missiles.”

Coggins shook her head. “The Chinese will want to build their own defenses.”

“Good!” Jamil snapped. “Fine. Defensive systems don’t threaten anybody.”

General Higgins made a sour face. “You don’t understand, young man. They’ll use their defense system to protect themselves, but they’ll still have all their
offensive
missiles. They can attack us and defend themselves against our counterstrike.”

“So can we,” Coggins said. Then she turned to Jamil. “Right?”

“Right.”

The Secretary of State pictured this same debate in the Senate. It’s going to come to the Senate, she realized. Sooner or later. The President proposes, but Congress disposes.

Jamil and Higgins were starting to raise their voices, so the Secretary of State said firmly, “We’ve all put in a long, hard day. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

She got to her feet. Everyone else rose and bade her good night. She watched them leave and, once her office was cleared of them all, she picked up her phone and tapped the speed-dial button for the Secretary of Defense. She knew that no matter where Lionel Bakersfield was, her phone system would track him down. Glancing at the digital clock on her desk, she figured that Lonnie was probably working on his third martini by now. Good, she thought. He’ll do less talking and more listening.

General Higgins rode the elevator to his waiting staff car in the basement parking garage of the State Department building without offering a ride to Coggins or Jamil. The two of them got off the elevator at the lobby level and then walked down the building’s front steps side by side.

Zuri Coggins looked up and down the rain-slicked street. Not much traffic. No taxicabs.

Jamil pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. “I hope they got the towers back online,” he said. “I left my car in Langley this morning.”

Coggins watched him as he pecked at the phone’s keypad. At last he gave up. “Guess not,” he said, more resigned than aggravated.

She gestured up the street and said, “Come on, let’s walk a bit. We’ll probably find a cab on the avenue.”

“And if we don’t?”

She chuckled at his oh so serious concern. “You like to look at all the aspects of a problem, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

Coggins tilted her head slightly and remembered from his dossier that Jamil was unmarried, just as she was. “Well, maybe as we walk along we’ll find a friendly bar. Or a restaurant.”

Jamil broke into a smile. “Come to think of it, I’m damned hungry.”

“Me too,” she said, as she started down the street alongside him.

Missoula Community Hospital, Montana

For a moment Charley thought he was in heaven. He seemed to be floating, as if resting on a blessed cloud. Not a care in the world. Nothing hurt, but he didn’t feel numb, not really, more like he was just-- floating.

He couldn’t see anything except an endless expanse of soft white. Not cottony clumps, like clouds: just flat, plain, eggshell white, kind of restful, really.

I must’ve died, he realized. There was no terror in the thought. In fact, he would have smiled if he could have. Died and now I’m in heaven. Or on my way, at least. Blissfully peaceful. Not a pain or a worry in the world.