Able One

by Ben Bova

  “So the airborne laser—”

  “Will be our first line of defense. We’ve got to be able to stop their missiles as soon as they fire them at us. And they’ll be firing them at us, never doubt it.”

  Harry picked up his glass and took a gulp of soda. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

  “We do indeed, Harry,” Anson said, nodding grimly. “And I’ll be perfectly frank with you, son: the company’s entire future is riding on that laser. If it fails, if we can’t make it work and we lose the contract, Anson Aerospace could go bankrupt.”

  “The whole company?” Harry felt startled.

  “The whole company,” Anson confirmed. “I’ve staked just about everything on this one program.”

  “Wow.”

  Anson took a sip of amontillado, then asked, “Do you know why you weren’t laid off after the accident?”

  Harry’s guts clenched. One of the laser team’s technicians, Andy McMasters, had been fired. Harry had expected the ax to fall on his neck, but they had booted McMasters instead.

  Without waiting for Harry to reply, Anson went on. “Levy suggested we let you go, you know. He wanted to find a scapegoat to blame for the accident.”

  Harry nodded wordlessly.

  “But I knew that the rest of your team looked up to you, Harry. I knew the accident wasn’t your fault. I knew we needed you to get the COIL back on track.”

  “Me?”

  Anson nodded wisely. “You.”

  Dumbfounded, Harry mumbled, “Thank you, sir.”

  Anson reached out and grasped Harry by the shoulder. “You’re important to us, son. Important to me.”

  “But I’m just an engineer,” Harry protested, his back twinging. “Dr. Levy’s the one—”

  Waving an impatient hand, Anson said, “Levy’s a scientist. He’s fine in the lab, of course, but what I need now is a man who can make that contraption really work. I don’t need equations and theories, I need performance. I need you, Harry. You’re my program engineer.”

  Harry blinked at the man who owned the lab, owned the corporation, owned his future. “I’ll do my best, Mr. Anson.”

  Gripping Harry’s shoulder tightly enough to make Harry wince, Anson said earnestly, “I know you will, son. That’s why I want you running the test team every step of the way. When the COIL is integrated into that jumbo jet, I want you to run the flight test program. Wherever that plane goes, you go.”

  Harry felt his jaw drop open. “Me?”

  “Make it work, Harry,” said Anson. “I’m counting on you. We’re all counting on you. The company’s ass is on the line.”

  Santa Monica: Ocean View Motel

  “I’ve never lost my temper without regretting it, Harry told himself as he tossed his garment bag on the motel room’s sagging bed. He cursed himself for being an idiot. You pop off at the wrong time and make a mess of everything.

  He unzipped the bag and started pulling his rumpled shirts out of it. The room had a bureau and a wardrobe. One hand filled with the shirts, Harry yanked at the top bureau drawer. It stuck and the shirts spilled out of his hand onto the threadbare carpet.

  Harry fought down an urge to kick the shirts all across the room. Instead he sat on the bed and buried his face in his hands.

  You and your big mouth, he said to himself. You and your stupid temper. You hold it in and hold it in, and then when you let it go you ruin everything.

  When Anson announced that Harry was now head of the laser team, Harry had expected Monk to be disappointed, maybe even angry. Instead Delany looked almost relieved.

  “You deserve it, Harry,” he’d said. “Anson knows he can trust you.”

  Harry thought that what Monk was really saying was that Anson knew he could make Harry jump through hoops. So what? Harry said to himself. Angel Reyes started calling Harry el jefe; Angel even got his wife to sew the title on some of Harry’s T-shirts and coveralls.

  Sylvia took the news calmly enough, except to ask, “Does a raise go with it? You’re going to be putting even more hours into the job, aren’t you? You ought to get a raise.”

  Harry didn’t have the nerve to ask Anson, or even Jake Levy, if he should expect an increase in salary.

  For nearly three months after the accident Harry had been working at Anson’s test facility out in the Mohave, sweating away feverishly to rebuild the COIL. Victor Anson himself had come out to the desert twice to inspect his team’s progress and urge them to move faster.

  Harry stayed at the Desert Stars Motel more than he was home, and when he was home Sylvia complained about his being away. He found that he was happy to leave her in Pasadena and dreaded the long drive back home every weekend. His daughters had become strangers to him: teenagers, with lives of their own and friends and school and endless chatter on their cell phones.

  The day they fired up the COIL and burned a hole through the target sheet of aluminum half a mile away Harry could hear the relief and triumph in Mr. Anson’s voice over the telephone.

  “You did it, Harry! I knew I could count on you!”

  “We did it, Mr. Anson. The team. We did it together.”

  “You certainly did. Listen, Harry, give the team a party. Take them to the nearest bar and have a celebration. A blast. On me.”

  The bar at the Desert Stars Motel wasn’t much, but Harry and his team trooped in and took over the place. It was a wild night.

  And Harry found himself walking one of the young barmaids back to his room. She was really pretty, he thought, with a warm bright smile and he hadn’t had sex with Sylvia since the accident and he’d had more to drink than he should’ve and she seemed perfectly willing and Harry thought, What the hell, why not?

  He kept the story from Sylvia for more than a month afterward, tiptoeing around the house when he was home, feeling unable to look her in the eye, ashamed of himself yet happy that a good-looking young woman had willingly gone to bed with him. Harry stayed away from the motel’s bar; he didn’t want any entanglements. Monk kidded him about the night and told him the kid was asking about him. Red-faced, Harry went to his room and stayed there.

  It all came out during an argument with Sylvia, of course. He couldn’t even remember how the argument had started, but they were yelling at each other and he blurted out the news that other women found him attractive.

  Sylvia stared at him, white-faced with anger. She glanced past Harry toward their daughters’ rooms. Both doors were tightly closed. Vickie and Denise had heard plenty of screaming from their parents; they just shut it out of their presence.

  “Women find you attractive?” Sylvia asked, the beginnings of a smirk curling her lips. “You? Mr. Dull? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Yeah, me,” Harry snapped. “You’ve probably forgotten it, but I’m not so dull in bed.”

  She huffed. “There’s nothing to forget, Harry. You’re a dud and you always will be.”

  “Well, you’re the only one who thinks so!”

  “Are you saying you’ve gone to bed with other women?”

  “Damned right!”

  “That’s what you’ve been doing out at that motel? That’s why you stay out there more than you’re home?”

  “I’ve got more going for me out there than here,” Harry snapped.

  Sylvia glared at him for a long, long moment. Harry waited for her to burst into tears or start throwing things. Instead she almost smiled as she said, very calmly, “Then you’d better pack your things and get the hell out of here.”

  “I will,” Harry said.

  “Now. Tonight.”

  Harry nodded and walked wordlessly to the guest room, where he’d been sleeping since the accident. He pulled his garment bag out of the closet and began packing.

  Now, sitting on the bed in the seedy Ocean View Motel in Santa Monica, Harry saw that Sylvia had baited a trap and he’d walked right into it. His marriage was over. Sylvia’s known it for a long time, he realized. She’s always been smarter than me. It’s been over
for years, he said to himself. Over and done with.

  Still, he felt empty, alone. He had nothing left. No marriage, no daughters—they wouldn’t even speak to him on the phone. Nothing but work. The job.

  They’d start installing the COIL in the plane next week, Harry knew. The flight tests were scheduled to begin before the year’s out.

  He got up from the bed and began to pick up the shirts that had fallen to the floor. Make the COIL work. Go with the plane wherever it flies.

  It was something, at least. Harry had something. A reason to get up in the morning. A job that needed to be done.

  Approach

  ABL-1: Ranging Laser Housing

  Harry stared at the empty space where the ranging laser’s optical assembly should have been. He heard Victor Anson’s urgent demand. Make it work, Harry. I’m counting on you. We’re all counting on you. The company’s ass is on the line.

  He heard the lanky lieutenant’s voice. “You okay up there, Mr. Hartunian?”

  “I’m fine,” Harry said, adding silently, But we’re all in real trouble.

  With Lieutenant Sharmon helping him, Harry climbed down from the laser mount and closed its access panel. Then he headed for the beam control station downstairs, Monk Delany’s place. The ranging laser is Monk’s responsibility, Harry said to himself. And somebody’s sabotaged it.

  Harry clambered down the ladder, brushed past Taki Nakamura, and ducked through the hatch into the beam control compartment.

  Monk Delany looked up at him. “What’s the matter, Harry?” Delany had his usual half-quizzical smile on his stubbled face.

  “We’ve got a saboteur on board.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “The forward lens assembly is missing from the ranging laser, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Delany’s jaw dropped open. “Missing? Whaddaya mean it’s missing?”

  “It’s not there, Monk. That’s why the console’s reading a malfunction.”

  “It’s gotta be there.”

  “It’s not. I just checked it out.”

  “Everything was okay last night. I checked it all out.” Delany’s usual smile was gone now. He looked frightened.

  “It’s not okay now.”

  Monk looked up at Harry, his face full of consternation.

  “We’ve got spares. I’ll get right on it.” He got up from his seat and before Harry could say anything squeezed through the hatch, heading aft.

  Harry didn’t move. He stood there in the nose of the plane, feeling it rise and fall slowly, majestically, like the big cruise liner he’d been on as it ploughed relentlessly through the sea. But his mind was racing. There’s a saboteur among us, he thought. Somebody doesn’t want the COIL to work. Somebody on board the plane, somebody who doesn’t want to get himself killed. So he disables the ranging laser. Without data on the target’s range and position the COIL is useless.

  Who did this? Harry asked himself. Can Monk fix it before we get near North Korea? And if he does, what will the saboteur try next?

  Santa Monica Airport

  The place was a madhouse. Sylvia had decided to avoid LAX and take a commuter jet to San Francisco, but the usually quiet airport in Santa Monica was teeming with angry, yelling, ticket-waving customers. One look at the electronic status board showed Sylvia that half the scheduled flights had been canceled. Most of the others were badly delayed.

  Her daughters seemed unimpressed by the furor boiling all around them as Sylvia left them in front of the status board to fight her way to the ticket counter.

  “Don’t move from this spot,” Sylvia commanded. Both girls nodded dutifully. “And watch my bag!”

  “Sure.”

  As their mother plunged into the crowd, Vickie said, “Must be a lot of people trying to get to San Francisco today.”

  “Or someplace,” Denise agreed.

  “The place looks like a zoo.”

  “This is where they filmed Casablanca?” Denise asked her older sister.

  The two girls were standing in the midst of the bellowing, surging crowd like a pair of slim palm trees in the middle of a tropical typhoon. Vickie nodded. “The airport scene in the beginning,” she said.

  A harried-looking, red-faced man lugging a bulging briefcase rushed past the girls and tripped over Vickie’s roll-on suitcase. He went sprawling, his briefcase popped open, papers fluttering in all directions.

  Vickie and Denise helped to scoop up the papers. The man stuffed them back in his briefcase, his face sweaty and angry, as he muttered something about being late for the last flight to Sacramento. He dashed off, clutching the briefcase under his arm like a football.

  “He never said thank you,” Denise complained.

  “A jerk,” said Vickie.

  Sylvia came out of the crowd, reached for the handle of her roll-on, and said grimly to her daughters, “Follow me.”

  They pushed through the fuming, bawling crowd and up a flight of stairs, their roll-ons bumping with each step.

  Sylvia pushed through a door marked FLIGHT OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, the two girls at her heels.

  It was mercifully quiet inside the office. No one was there except a rake-thin, harried-looking man sitting behind a desk with a phone at his ear and both eyes staring at his desktop computer screen. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were rolled up. His tie was pulled loose from his wrinkled, soggy collar.

  “It’s a total mess!” he was saying into the phone, his voice high, agitated. “Computers are down, phone lines are jammed, navigation system is kaput—a real mess!”

  Sylvia stood before his desk, her two daughters flanking her, and waited patiently until at last the man put the phone down and looked up at her.

  Before he could speak a word, Sylvia said sweetly, “Congresswoman McClintock is waiting for us in San Francisco. If we don’t get there to be with the President this evening there’s going to be a lot of trouble.”

  “Congresswoman McClintock?”

  “We’re due to be with the President of the United States this evening at the Cow Palace,” Sylvia said in a tone that you could pour over pancakes.

  “The President?”

  “The President,” said Sylvia sweetly. “And Congresswoman McClintock. And the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. Among others.”

  The man groaned, but then said, “Wait right here. I’ll see what can be done.”

  Sylvia gestured for her daughters to take the two wooden chairs in front of the desk. She herself remained standing while the badly stressed director of flight operations picked up his telephone again.

  ABL-1: Cockpit

  “Kamchatka Peninsula coming up.” Colonel Christopher heard her navigator’s voice in her headphone. The kid sounded more sure of himself since they’d made the rendezvous with the first tanker.

  “There it is,” Major Kaufman said, pointing to a smudge of gray clouds on the horizon, at about the two o’clock position.

  Christopher said into her lip mike, “Jon, we need to stay well away from Russian airspace.”

  “Workin’ on it,” the navigator replied. “I’ll have a course correction for you in two minutes, Colonel.”

  “Colonel, we’re getting pinged by Kamchatka,” said the communications officer. O’Banion’s voice sounded worried. “Oh-oh. Message coming in.”

  “Pipe it to me,” she commanded. A smooth baritone voice said in flawless midwestern American English, “Unidentified aircraft, you are approaching Russian airspace. Please identify yourself.”

  Christopher thumbed the comm switch on her control yoke and said crisply, “This is U.S. Air Force ABL-1. We intend to remain over international waters.”

  “We have no information on your flight plan,” said Kamchatka, without the slightest trace of anxiety.

  The colonel bit her lips momentarily, then replied, “We are on our way to Japanese airspace. We will stay well away from your territory.”

  Silence for several heartbeats. He’s wai
ting for his superiors to tell him what he should say, Christopher reasoned.

  Finally, “U.S. ABL-1, our air defense command has sent a flight of interceptors to accompany you away from Russian airspace. They have no hostile intent.”

  “Copy,” Christopher said curtly. “No hostile intent.” Then she clicked off the radio switch and grinned at her copilot. “Bet they’ve got plenty of cameras on board.”

  “They’ll have air-to-air missiles, too, count on it,” Kaufman muttered.

  “Of course.” She turned the situation over in her mind for a few moments, then said, “We better make a left turn, Obie.”

  “I guess so.”

  Lieutenant Sharmon gave them a new heading and the big 747 turned southward twelve degrees. Not enough, though.

  “Hey!” Kaufman yipped. “We got company.”

  Following his pointing finger with her eyes, Christopher saw a trio of swept-wing jet fighters boring in on them from above and ahead.

  “Fulcrums,” Kaufman said. MiG-29s, the mainstay of the Russian fighter forces.

  “No,” Christopher said, eyeing the sleek, silvery fighters. “They look too new. More like MiG-35s.”

  “There’s another one,” Kaufman said, “comin’ up fast.”

  “That’s not a MiG,” said Christopher.

  “Looks a lot like one of our F-15s.”

  She nodded, making her flight helmet wobble slightly on her head. “Sukhoi SU-27. Photo recon plane.”

  Kaufman had an Air Force catalog displayed on the small screen to his right. “Flanker. Supersonic.”

  “She’s not carrying any missiles.”

  “The other three are.”