Able One

The Pentagon: Secretary of Defense’s Office

The Secretary of Defense smiled and rose to his feet as she came in, but stayed behind his broad, gleaming desk.

“Welcome to my humble abode, Madam Secretary,” he said, his deep voice grating like a rusty hinge.

“Cut the bullcrap, Lonnie,” said the Secretary of State. “We don’t have time for it.”

She walked across the spacious room and dropped with a sigh into one of the massive leather-upholstered armchairs in front of the desk. With a practiced eye she swept the office, taking in the heavy, dark furniture, the bookcases lined with leather-bound volumes that looked as if they’d never been opened, the wall of photographs of the man with his fellow great and powerful ones, the view from the top-floor windows of the city across the Potomac and the spire of the Washington Monument. It was still raining, but there was a hint of late afternoon sunshine breaking through the gray clouds.

“You came alone?” asked Lionel Bakersfield. “Without your usual entourage?” The Secretary of Defense swiveled his plush high-backed chair slightly to and fro. The Secretary of State thought it betrayed a nervousness in him. Bakersfield was wearing a gray three-piece suit that had been hand-tailored for him, although its jacket hung open and his vest was unbuttoned. Even his old-fashioned rep tie had wormed loose from his collar. Sloppy, thought the Secretary of State. The man’s always been a slob, and he’ll never be anything but a slob.

A dangerous slob, though. They had campaigned against each other through the primaries and both lost to the current President. Both of them had been senators before joining their onetime rival’s administration, and senators always thought of presidents as temporary. The President proposes; the Congress disposes: it was a motto that had warmed many a senator’s heart over many, many administrations.

State was still in the pearl gray pant suit and tailored white blouse she had worn earlier. She felt a little grubby, but there had been no time to change.

“Anyone see you coming here?” Defense asked.

She knew he meant news media people. “No. I came in a closed limo. There won’t be any headlines about State visiting the Pentagon, I assure you.”

Defense made a lopsided smile. “And, if I may ask, exactly why have you come from the comforts of Foggy Bottom to grace my office? To what do I owe this honor?”

God! thought State. The world’s coming to an end and he still can’t get out a single sentence without all his flourishes.

“I want to see a couple of the people on your situation team. That analyst from the NIC and General Scheib.”

Defense’s shaggy brows rose slightly. “I’ll get them up here right away.” He pressed a button on his desktop intercom and gave the order. Then, steepling his fingers as he looked back at State, he asked, “Why those two?”

State was surprised by the directness of his question. Then she thought, He’s trying to shock me into telling him the truth.

It was her turn to smile now. “I need to be brought up to the minute on this missile crisis.”

“Aha.”

“Phone links aren’t good enough. I need to see the players face-to-face.”

“I understand. They’ll be here directly.”

Five levels below the Secretary of Defense’s office, General Scheib frowned at the young tech sergeant who had handed him the message.

“The Secretary of Defense wants to see me in his office,” Scheib announced to the team. Pointing down the table to Jamil he added, “You too.”

Jamil looked shocked. “Me?”

General Higgins grunted. “It doesn’t pay to cross the Secretary of State, kid. She’s probably got the big brass upstairs boiling a pot of oil for you.”

“But we can’t go now!” Jamil said. “The North Koreans will be launching those missiles any minute!”

“Nothing you can do about that,” Higgins said. “You just follow orders, like the rest of us.”

Jamil got to his feet, looking uncertain, fearful. Zuri Coggins went to his side. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

Scheib snapped, “The call was for him and me. Nobody else.”

Eyes blazing, Coggins stood up to the general, even though she was barely the height of his chin. “I represent the National Security Advisor. If there’s going to be any boiling in oil, they’ll have to do it in front of me.”

Scheib actually took a step back from her. Then he shrugged and muttered, “Okay. You explain it to the Secretary, then.”

As the three of them followed the tech sergeant toward the door Higgins called after them, “We’ll try to keep the gooks from launching until after you get back.”

No one laughed. No one even smiled.

U.S. Route 12, Bitterroot Mountains, Idaho

Charley had never been so cold and miserable in his whole blessed life. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps through the wet, fluffy snow before his shoes were soaked and his feet started to hurt like fire. Doggedly he pushed on, heading back down the road toward the gas station he’d remembered seeing.

The wind was in his face and cutting right through his polyester shell jacket. It had a wool lining, but it felt like nothing more than tissue paper. Charley tugged on the zipper. It was already as high as it could go. He mashed his Seattle Seahawks cap as far down on his head as he could, but his ears were exposed and tingling. Turning, he could barely make out the lines of the van stuck on the roadside.

Come on, Charley, he urged himself. Get moving. The more you move, the warmer you’ll feel. Get that old heart pumping.

Jamming his bare hands into the jacket’s pockets he mushed on, squinting against the snowflakes rushing into his face.

It’s only a couple miles, he told himself. I got to get there before the van runs out of gas. Got to get there before Martha and the kids freeze.

They shouldn’t have blizzards like this in October, he raged to himself. Those science people claim we’re having global warming, for Lord’s sake. This don’t look like global warming to me!

ABL-1: Cockpit

“We’re going to have company!” Colonel Christopher heard the shrill alarm in Captain O’Banion’s voice.

“What is it?” she asked, keeping her voice flat, calm. “Flash from Andrews. Pyongyang just launched a pair of fighters, vectoring straight at us.”

“Fighters?”

“Must be, from their speed.”

Fighters, Christopher thought. From North Korea. Info relayed from Andrews.

“How long ago did they send out the warning?”

A pause. Then O’Banion replied, “Time hack says four minutes ago.”

At least they’ve got a direct link with us now, Christopher realized, finally. Now they can watch us get shot down in real time.

She asked O’Banion, “Estimated time to intercept?”

Again a pause. Then, “Ten… to twelve minutes.”

“Get Mr. Hartunian up here. On the double.”

Harry was sitting beside Taki, helping her check out all the electronic controls for the COIL.

It couldn’t have been Taki, he was telling himself. Unless she’s a damned good actress. But why would she do it? Why would she try to abort this flight? Why would any of them?

He asked himself again if one of the Air Force crew might have stolen the lens assembly. And again the answer came back negative. They don’t know enough about the system to cripple it like that. Besides, if one of them had started tinkering with the laser in its housing up there, the rest of them would have seen him.

Harry realized the gangly black lieutenant had ducked into the compartment, a puzzled frown on his face.

“You guys need to keep the intercom open,” he said without preamble. “Our comm man has been trying to get you on the squawk line for the past five minutes. The skipper wants to see you, Mr. Hartunian. And I mean now.”

Harry pushed himself to his feet as Taki snatched up the headphone from its hook on the console and clamped it over her spiky hair.

Colonel Christopher was standing in the rear of the flight deck, by the mussed-up pair of cots, as Harry clambered up the ladder. The redheaded captain was peering intently at his radar screen. As Lieutenant Sharmon went back to his console, Harry went aft toward the colonel. He realized that she was quite good-looking, even in blue Air Force fatigues. Slim figure, pretty oval face, dark hair cropped short. Sexy, almost. Except that she looked as bleak as death.

“Are you ready for action?” she asked, keeping her voice so low Harry barely heard her over the thrumming of the plane’s engines.

He nodded. “All systems are go.”

“We’re going to be shooting very soon. Within minutes.”

“We’re ready.”

She took a breath, then added, “And we’re going to be shot at, most likely.”

“What?”

“There’s a pair of North Korean interceptors heading toward us.”

Harry’s mind spun into overdrive. “Look, they won’t know if we fire the COIL or not. It’s an infrared beam. You can’t see it.”

Colonel Christopher’s brows knit slightly. “That’s something . . .” Then she asked, “Could we shoot down a plane?”

“If you can get the COIL’s beam on it for a couple of seconds. Heat up the aluminum skin to its ignition point and then the airflow starts the aluminum burning.”

“Is that real or some scientist’s theory?”

“We’ve done it on the test range, with fans blowing air across the target.”

“At what range?”

Harry had to think back. “Half a mile. But the COIL can hit a target much farther than that. A hundred miles, maybe more.”

“So we can defend ourselves, maybe.”

“Only if the bad guy’s dumb enough to fly in front of us. The output turret up in the nose can only swivel thirty degrees left or right.”

Christopher looked disappointed. “They’re not that dumb. They’ll come up behind us and pop an air-to-air missile at us.”

“Jeez.” Harry suddenly felt an overwhelming need to urinate.

“Our alternative is to turn around and head for Japan.”

“And let them fire their ballistic missiles?” She nodded grimly. “Nice choice, isn’t it?”

San Francisco: The Cow Palace

“Wow, it’s big!” said Denise as she, her sister, and her mother followed the crowd streaming from the BART station to the Cow Palace’s main entrance. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but still their hair was wet and plastered on their scalps by the time they got into the huge auditorium.

Once inside the vast, barnlike stadium, Sylvia told her daughters, “They’ve held national conventions in here, rodeos, basketball games, hockey games, even Roller Derbies.”

“Roller Derbies?” Vickie asked, curious despite her practiced teenaged boredom. “What’s that?”

Sylvia explained as they climbed the concrete stairs and found their seats. From this high up the platform on which the President would speak looked little bigger than a postage stamp.

“You said we were going to be in the front row,” Vickie accused.

“We’re not that far away,” said Sylvia as they sat down.

“They’ve set up big TV screens,” Denise said, pointing.

“We’ll be able to see the President’s face very clearly,” Sylvia said. “Just like we’re sitting next to him, almost.”

Vickie muttered, “Big deal.” Sylvia pretended not to hear her.

As the limousine pulled up at the Cow Palace, the President asked his chief of staff, “What’s happening in Korea?”

Norman Foster pulled the phone bud out of his ear. “Looks like they’re getting ready to launch those other two birds.”

“We can see them?”

“Satellite imagery. From the National Reconnaissance Office.”

The Secret Service agent pulled the door open on the President’s side of the limo. The motorcade had driven directly into the Cow Palace’s underground parking area, which had been cleared for security. No cheering crowds. No band playing “Hail to the Chief.” Just a shadowy concrete expanse, chilly, damp.

Before the President could get out of the limo the chief of his Secret Service detail, a tall, lanky man with a weatherbeaten face and a dour expression, ducked his head into the open door and said, “Mr. President, we’ve got to head back to the airport, sir.”

“No, we don’t,” the President said, smiling pleasantly at the agent’s grimly determined face.

“Sir, it’s my duty—”

“I make the decisions, Ron. I’m going ahead with my speech.”

The black-suited agent looked as if he wanted to argue the point, but he recognized the steel behind the President’s smile. “You’re the boss, sir.”

“That’s right, Ron,” said the President. As he got out of the limo he asked his chief of staff, “What about that laser plane?”

Sliding across the leather seat, Foster replied, “Approaching the North Korean coast. Should be in position to shoot at the missiles as soon as they’re launched.”

“If it can get close enough to them,” the President muttered.

“Yep,” said Foster. “There is that.”

The President nodded. Foster slid out of the limo and straightened up slowly. Arthritis, the President knew.

The chief of staff made a small, involuntary groan as he stood up. Then, “The Aegis ships are alerted and ready. So are the ABM bases in Alaska and Vandenberg.”

With another nod, the President muttered, “Now we’ll see if we’ve spent the taxpayers’ money wisely.”

“You bet your life,” said Foster, without a trace of a smile.

ABL-1: Beam Management Compartment

“They’re going to launch any minute,” Harry prodded.

Monk Delany shot a sour glance over his burly shoulder. “I’m ready. I’m ready. Let ‘em launch.”

Bending over the seated Delany, Harry saw that the ranging laser’s screen was clear. Nothing in view.

“Did I hear one of those blue-suiters say we’ve got fighters coming after us?” Delany had his headphone solidly clamped to one ear. Obviously he’d been tuned in to the intercom chatter.

“That’s what they said,” Harry replied tightly.

“Are we turnin’ back?”

“No.”

“But they could shoot us down!”

Harry said, “Or force us to land in North Korea.”

“Christ Almighty,” Delany muttered.

“You’re going to be a hero, Monk. We all are.”

“Dead or alive.”

Harry tapped Delany’s shoulder. “One way or another, Monk. One way or another.”

“They got parachutes on this bird?”

Harry forced a laugh. “I’ll go look,” he said. He left Delany fiddling with the ranging laser’s controls and ducked through to Taki’s battle management station.

She looked up at him. “We’re being chased by a couple of fighters?”

Harry nodded as he slid into the chair next to hers. “That’s the news from upstairs.”

“This is going to get bad, isn’t it?”

“Looks that way. But we don’t have any way out of it.”

“The pilot could turn us around and head back to Japan,” Taki said without taking her eyes off the screens of her console.

“She’s not going to do that. They’ll be launching those missiles any minute.”

“And after that they’ll shoot us down.”

“Taki, there’s nothing we can do about that. We’re in this to the brutal end.”

The look on her face was really inscrutable, Harry thought. What’s she thinking? She doesn’t look scared, or sore, or… anything.

As Harry slapped a headphone set over his baby-fine hair, Taki said, “You’re pretty cool, Harry. Pretty damned cool.”

“Me?” He felt totally surprised. “I’m scared halfway to death!”

“Halfway,” she said, with a slight curve of her lip. It might have been the beginning of a smile, Harry thought. Or a sneer of disdain.

With a shake of his head to clear his thoughts, Harry turned back to the console in front of him. “We’ve got business to do.”

“Right, chief.”

Harry puzzled over the intercom board for a moment, then pressed the key that he hoped connected to Rosenberg, back aft.

“Yo,” said Angel Reyes’s voice.

“Where’s Wally?”

“In the toilet. I think he’s throwin’ up.”

“Great.”

“Naw, I’m only kiddin’. He’s takin’ a leak.”

Harry realized that Angie and Wally hadn’t heard about the North Korean interceptors. Good. They’ve got enough to worry about just keeping their minds on business.

He asked into his lip mike, “You guys ready back there? Everything up and running?”

Reyes’ voice took on a more formal tone. “All systems are go, el jefe.”

“Any problems? Any anomalies?”

“Pressures in the green. Pumps functional. Feed lines purged and clean. We’re ready to rumble, boss.”

“Good,” said Harry. “Looks like the rumble’s about to start.”

The Pentagon: Secretary of Defense’s Office

“With all due respect, sir, I should be downstairs with the situation team,” General Scheib said. The Secretary of Defense nodded once. With a glance at the Secretary of State, sitting to one side of his wide, gleaming desk, he replied, “We need your honest assessment of the situation.”

“And yours,” State said, pointing a manicured finger at Michael Jamil, her face a mask of ice.

Scheib was on his feet in front of the desk, his uniform immaculate, his chiseled face clearly showing his displeasure. Jamil stood beside him, Zuri Coggins slightly behind the two men.

“Honest assessment?” the general echoed. “The Koreans are about to launch their two remaining missiles. Our antimissiles systems are on alert. The airborne laser plane is approaching the North Korean coast.”

“Are those missiles aimed at San Francisco?”

“No,” said Scheib.

“Yes,” said Jamil.

With an angry glance at Jamil, General Scheib insisted, “They don’t have the range or accuracy to reach San Francisco.”

“They do if they’ve been upgraded by the Chinese,” Jamil retorted.

“You’re not still accusing the Chinese of this?” the Secretary of State said.

“It’s the only scenario that makes sense,” Jamil explained. “The DPRK wouldn’t dare start this unless they knew the Chinese were backing them up.”

“But I’ve had assurances…” State’s voice dwindled away as she realized that she had nothing but the unsupported word of an informal back-channel contact.

Jamil took half a step toward her and said earnestly, “Madam Secretary, we know that the North Koreans launched the bomb that knocked out our satellites. That took more thrust and accuracy than their Taepodong-2 missile has. It had to be upgraded. And where’d they get a nuclear warhead? Their own nuclear program isn’t that advanced.”

Defense was frowning. State looked distracted, as if she was trying to absorb this information and match it with what she’d thought she’d known earlier.

Jamil went on, “Pyongyang wants—needs!— reunification with South Korea. China wants Taiwan. They both want us out of Asia.”

Defense put up a beefy hand. “Wait a minute. How does bombing San Francisco and killing the President get them any of those things?”

“Are we willing to have a nuclear war with China?” Jamil demanded. “Are we willing to see half our cities destroyed, maybe more? A hundred million casualties? Over Taiwan and the reunification of North and South Korea?”

“If they kill the President—”

“Even then, sir. The Chinese are betting that we’ll back down. And if we don’t, if we launch our missiles at China, they’re betting they can absorb our attack and come out the winner.”

The Secretary of State heard Quang’s warning in her mind, You must realize that there are factions within our council. We have our own hard-liners, you must understand.

“But we wouldn’t attack China,” State said, as if trying to convince herself. “We’d attack North Korea.”

“And China would retaliate. They’d have to. They couldn’t sit back while we destroyed an ally that’s right on their border.”

“Chongjin,” Defense murmured.

State turned toward him with a questioning look.

“The Korean War. China came in when our troops approached the Yalu River, the border between Korea and China.” Defense looked suddenly old and frightened, his liver-spotted face gray.

Coggins stepped up beside Jamil. “For what it’s worth, I think this scenario makes sense.”

“And the President’s been apprised of all this?” State asked.

Coggins replied, “I’ve spoken to my boss, the National Security Advisor, personally. He’s contacted the President’s chief of staff out in San Francisco.”

Impatiently, General Scheib said, “Whatever scenario you want to believe, we’ve got the airborne laser approaching the North Korean coast and the gooks about to launch their missiles. I ought to be down in the situation room.”

“Yes, you should,” Defense said. With a wave of one hand he commanded, “Get down to your post. I only hope to God Almighty your people can shoot those damned missiles out of the sky.”

The Pentagon: Elevator

Zuri Coggins realized that General Scheib was terribly tense. Despite the cool appearance he was trying to project, she could see that the general was boiling inside. As the elevator stopped at every floor and people got on and off, Scheib nervously jabbed repeatedly at the button for the basement level even before the elevator doors could close. “Come on, come on,” he kept muttering. Jamil, standing beside her in the back of the elevator cab, half-whispered, “Thanks for backing me up in there.”

He looked weary, spent, close to exhaustion.

“I think you’ve got it right,” she told the analyst, also speaking in a near whisper.

“I thought she called me up there to fry my butt,” Jamil confessed.

Coggins said, “Speak truth to power.”

“And get your head chopped off.”

She nearly laughed. “This isn’t Iran, Mr. Jamil. We don’t hack people’s heads off.”

His eyes narrowed. “You assume I’m a Muslim, don’t you?” Before she could answer, Jamil stated, “My family’s been Christian since the Middle Ages. That’s one of the reasons my father left Lebanon.”

“I see,” said Coggins. She debated telling him, then decided it would do no harm. “I am a Muslim, you know. My grandfather was a Baptist, but he converted to the Nation of Islam when a prizefighter named Cassius Clay converted and took the name Muhammad Ali.”

She thought that if the situation weren’t so desperately deadly the stunned look on Jamil’s face would have been hilarious.

The Secretary of Defense leaned back in his plush swivel chair and eyed the Secretary of State closely. She seemed lost in thought, sitting in the big leather armchair, her eyes turned toward the windows but obviously seeing something other than the view out there.

He lied to me, State was thinking. Quang told me China had no intention of attacking the United States, but if what this analyst says is true, then China’s actually behind the North Korean attack. Quang lied. After all these years, he lied to me. How long have the Chinese been preparing for this moment?

“Well?” Defense rumbled, tired of the silence. “What do you think you’ve accomplished?”

State stirred herself out of her private thoughts. She blinked once at the man behind the big ornate desk.

“Do you believe him?”

“Who? That kid?”

“He’s a first-rate analyst with the National Intelligence Council. I had my people check him out after we spoke together on the phone earlier today.”

“If he’s right, we’re in deep shit,” said Defense. “Whatever we do, we’re in for it.”

Strangely, State smiled. Defense had seen that smile before. It usually preceded a beheading.

“I read somewhere,” State said slowly, “that the Chinese symbol for crisis is a combination of two other symbols: one for danger, the other for opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

“The President has handled this crisis badly, going off to San Francisco to show what a macho strongman he is.”

Wondering where she was heading, Defense chose his words carefully. “If that kid is right and San Francisco is nuked…”

“Parkinson becomes President.”

Defense huffed. “He’s a horse’s ass.”

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“I had him bundled off to the National Redoubt this morning, when this missile business came up.”

“So he’s safe.”

Defense nodded and muttered, “Too bad.”

“Not at all,” State countered. “You wouldn’t want the Speaker of the House to be President, would you?”

“God, no!”

“Parkinson can be handled. He can be led.”

“By you?”

“By us,” State replied, her smile widening. “We can form a sort of committee.”

“A triumvirate. Like in ancient Rome, after Julius Caesar’s assassination.” And he remembered from history that the triumvirate quickly broke apart as Octavian bested the other two and made himself Rome’s first emperor, Augustus Caesar.

State nodded absently, her mind already obviously looking ahead. “If the President dies in a nuclear attack on San Francisco—”

“Parkinson wouldn’t have the guts to order a counterstrike on North Korea.”

“I think you’re wrong, Lonnie.”

My name’s Lionel and she knows it, Defense growled inwardly. But he kept his pique off his face and asked innocently, “Wrong?”

“I think we can get Parkinson to give the attack order while he’s right there in the National Redoubt, snug and safe from attack. I think I could convince him.”

Defense shook his head. “So we clobber North Korea. And the Chinese clobber us.”

“No, Lonnie, you don’t understand,” State said. “We hit China right away with a preemptive strike. Cripple their missile forces so they can’t hurt us too much. Then we wipe out North Korea.”

Defense stared at her. She was still smiling, as if she were talking about rearranging the flowers on a banquet table.

“The fallout will drift over Japan,” he muttered.

The Secretary of State’s smile did not diminish by a single millimeter. “Regrettable,” she said. “But one of the ancillary benefits will be to remove both China and Japan as economic competitors.”

Defense realized what her smile reminded him of: a rattlesnake, poised to strike.

The Pentagon: Situation Room

“Have they launched?” General Scheib shouted as he burst into the situation room. General Higgins, sitting at the head of the table, his chair turned so he faced the wall screen, shook his head. “Not yet, Brad.” Gesturing to the image on the screen, he went on. “That’s the latest imagery. Looks like they’re in countdown mode.”

Scheib saw that the missiles were standing on their pads, slight wisps of steam issuing from the rime-coated section where the liquid oxygen tanks were.

Sliding into his own chair, he asked, “How old’s that picture?”

“Ten minutes,” Higgins replied. “We’ve got a low-altitude bird coming over their horizon in another three minutes. Should give us better resolution.”

Scheib tapped at his laptop’s keyboard. According to the tracking satellite in geosynchronous orbit, ABL-1 had just made a turn north to parallel the Korean coastline. He squinted at the radar imagery. A pair of tiny dots was also over the Sea of Japan, behind the 747, heading toward it.

Grabbing up the laptop’s headset, General Scheib said into its lip mike, “I need a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

A hesitation, then a woman’s voice in his earphone replied, “Sir, we need authorization from—”

Without waiting for her to finish, Scheib called down the table, “Possum, I need authorization for a real-time voice link with ABL-1.”

Anger flashed in General Higgins’ face; he obviously did not like being called Possum.

Without waiting for Higgins to open his mouth, Zuri Coggins leaned over Scheib’s shoulder and said crisply, “Authorization code NAS one-one-three, alpha-alpha-omicron.”

Scheib heard in his earphone, “Checking . . . authorization verified. Establishing voice link.”

Coggins heard Scheib muttering, “Come on, come on.”

Still in his chair at the head of the table, General Higgins suddenly realized why Brad Scheib was in such a sweat to have a voice link with ABL-1. He leaned over toward his aide, sitting at his left, and whispered, “Who’s piloting that plane?”

“ABL-1, sir?”

With a disgusted look, General Higgins replied, “No, the Spirit of St. Louis.”

Looking flustered, the aide tapped at his keyboard, then answered, “Lieutenant Colonel Karen Christopher, sir. I have her complete dossier—”

Higgins waved him to silence, thinking, Christopher. The one who clammed up at the Advocate General’s hearing. The one who was accused of sleeping with a married general.

One glance at the anxious, intense expression on Scheib’s handsome face and Higgins knew whom Christopher had shacked up with.

“Fighters coming up fast,” O’Banion reported, his voice a notch higher than usual.

Colonel Christopher had ordered her comm officer to activate ABL-1‘s search radar. No sense trying to stay quiet now, she reasoned. They know we’re here. Might as well get a good line on them.

“What’s the word from Andrews on the missiles?” she asked into her pin mike.

“Launch is imminent, as of . . . seven minutes ago.”

Kaufman muttered from his copilot’s seat, “Hope the bastards blow up on the pad.”

Christopher nodded. That would solve a lot of problems, she thought.

“Incoming message, Colonel, direct from the Pentagon.”

They got a direct satellite link working, Christopher said to herself. That’s good. They can hear us get shot down in real time.

“Put it through,” she commanded.

“Colonel Christopher, this is Major General Scheib.”

Brad! In the middle of all this he’s calling me!

“Christopher here,” she said, trying to hide the tremor she felt inside.

A heartbeat’s delay. Then Scheib’s voice said, “Two DPRK interceptors are vectoring toward you.”

“I know.”

It took half a second for her words to be relayed off the satellite and his response to get back to her.

“You have the option of turning away and exiting North Korean territorial waters.”

“We’re not over their territorial waters. We’re twenty miles off their coast.”

Again the delay, longer this time than normal. “I repeat, you have the option of turning around. You may abort your mission if you deem it necessary.”

She heard what he was saying. I love you, Karen. I don’t want you to be killed. I don’t care if it starts World War III—I want you safe.

But then she realized that instead of ordering her to turn tail and leave the mission unfulfilled, he had placed the choice in her hands. Come back to me, that’s what he was saying. But the responsibility is yours. The choice between nuclear war or not is yours. I love you, but I don’t have the guts to take the blame for what happens next.

ABL-1: Battle Management Compartment

Taki looks cool as a cucumber, Harry thought as he sat beside Nakamura and watched her run through the diagnostics on her console. If she’s the one who stole the optics assembly she sure doesn’t look nervous or scared about it. Harry felt relieved; he hadn’t wanted to believe it was Taki. Wally, yeah, maybe, he thought. That wiseass might be up to it. Probably not Angel; he’s too straight-arrow. Monk? Why would Monk try to screw up the mission? Why would any of them?

The answer came to him: for money. Whoever it was did it for money. When he thought this was just a test flight he tried to ruin it so that we’d look bad to the Air Force and DoD would cancel Anson’s contract and give it to one of our competitors.

Great deduction, Sherlock, Harry said to himself. So which one of them was it? Which one needs money so bad he’d sabotage a flight test? Wally gambles on the football pools. He makes no secret of that. Angel? I don’t see Angel getting himself into a hole that way. The kid’s worked too hard to get where he is to hand his money over to gamblers. Still, you never know.

Monk? Harry tried to remember if Monk ever took plunges with gamblers. Not that he could recall. Monk wasn’t the gambling type. Hell, even when they were all making bets on who would be named leader of the team, Monk threw in only a couple of bucks. Harry remembered Monk’s knowing grin when he put his money down on the pool.

“I’m the favorite,” he’d told Harry. “I can’t get decent odds.”

No, Monk’s too smart to get into debt with gamblers.

“Are you with me, Harry?”

It took an effort to snap his attention back to Taki, back to the mission and the reality of an impending nuclear war.

“I’m sorry,” he said, flustered. “I was thinking . ..”

Nakamura looked slightly disappointed. “I asked you if you’d double-check the board for me. Looks to me like everything’s ready to go, but it’d be better if you double-check.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Sorry.”

The gauges and screens on the consoles showed the status of every segment of the laser’s system. Harry ran his eyes across both the console he was sitting at and Taki’s, beside him. Everything looked okay. The COIL was pressurized and ready to fire. Ranging laser ready. Electrical power in the green. Computer humming.

“Looks okay to me, Taki,” he said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

She nodded. The only sign of apprehension on her face was the tightness of her lips. Without a word she unlatched the covers on the amber arming and red firing buttons.

“So who was Annie Oakley?” she asked.

“Where are those fighters?” Colonel Christopher asked into her pin mike.

O’Banion quickly answered, “Thirty miles behind us, seven o’clock. Closing fast.”

“Between us and the coast,” Major Kaufman said.

Christopher nodded. “I wonder what their orders are.”

“Shoot to kill.”

She almost laughed. “Maybe not. Maybe they just want to shoo us out of their territorial waters.”

“We’re not in their fucking territorial waters,” Kaufman grumbled.

She clicked the intercom and called, “Jon, exactly how far off the coast are we?”

“Twenty miles, Colonel, just like you ordered. Uh, actually it’s twenty-two, just at this point. We haven’t been closer than twenty, though, not once.”

“Do you have an accurate navigational fix on all that?”

“Yes, ma’am. I do.”

“Pipe it back to Washington. I want our people to know exactly where we are, that we’re not in North Korean territorial waters.”

“Yes’m,” Lieutenant Sharmon replied.

Kaufman gave her a sour look. “So they can drop a wreath in the water where we went down,” he muttered.

U.S. Route 12, Bitterroot Mountains, Idaho

Charley Ingersoll knew he couldn’t get lost, even in this damnable snowstorm. All he had to do was plow straight ahead down the road. The gas station was along the side of the road. His legs flared with pins and needles, his face felt numb, he’d never been so cold in all his life.

But he slogged forward. The snow was almost knee-deep now, and it took a real concentrated effort to pull his freezing feet out of the stuff and take another tottering step forward. He thought about praying, but then he realized that it was the Lord who had put him into this mess. Why? he asked heaven. Why me? No answer. So he staggered on.

Step by step, Charley said to himself. Closer and closer. Somewhere from the back of his mind came the faint memory of some comedy act where a guy says that. Something about Niagara Falls. Step by step. Closer and closer.

At least Martha and the kids are okay. Even if the van runs out of gas it’ll stay warm inside for a while. They’ll be all right. I’ll get to the gas station and they’ll come out in the tow truck they’ve got there and we’ll all be okay.

But you’ve got to get to the gas station first, said a voice in Charley’s head.

He blinked against the snowflakes whipping into his face. Can’t tell where the road is anymore. Everything’s covered with snow. White, white, white everywhere. Maybe this is what heaven’s like, he thought: everything is white. Or hell. There were parts of hell that were freezing, he remembered from his Sunday school days, all snow and ice. Then he realized that there were snowbanks on either side of the road, left by the plows that had scraped the highway earlier. Stay in between the snowbanks, Charley, he told himself. Stay in the middle.

He plodded ahead, his legs like a pair of rigid boards that shot pain up along his spine every time he tried to move them. Lord, help me, he pleaded. You put me into this, help me get out of it!

Something coming up the road!

Charley saw a shape up the road ahead, a dark bulk moving through the blinding white, slowly, patiently, soundlessly.

A car? No, too big, more like a truck. Awful slow, but it’s coming this way. No noise. Maybe I’ve gone deaf. Maybe my ears are frozen.

The shape slowly coalesced out of the wind-whipped snow. It’s a moose! Charley realized. Or is it an elk? Too big to be a deer. What’s a moose doing out here in the middle of the road?

The animal was walking calmly, with great dignity, up the road toward Charley. Strolling along as if this blizzard didn’t trouble it in the least.

It’s a sign, Charley thought. A sign from God. My deliverance is near.

For a wild instant Charley thought he might jump on the animal’s back and ride the rest of the way to the station. But as he staggered toward the beast it stopped in its tracks, snuffled once, then turned and bounded up the snowbank on the right shoulder of the highway and disappeared into the blinding whiteness of the storm.

Charley stood there dumbfounded. It just pranced up that snowbank like it was nothing, he thought.

This blizzard don’t bother it at all. And I’m alone again. Alone and cold and scared.

Why’d it run away? he asked himself. I wasn’t going to hurt it. What’s it doing out here, anyway? Then he realized the reason. Wolves. Where there’s moose or elk or whatever that beast was, there’s wolves. Charley strained to hear the howl of baying wolves. Nothing but the keening of the wind. They hunt in packs, he knew. They’ll come after me.

He sank to his knees. God help me! he screamed silently. God help me.

ABL-1: Cockpit

Major Obadiah Kaufman sat in the copilot’s seat looking out at the dark smudge on the horizon that was the coast of North Korea.

Colonel Christopher said, “Keep your eyes peeled for their launch, Obie.”

“Right,” he said, glancing sideways at her. Sixteen years in the Air Force, he thought, and I’m in the fucking right-hand seat while she gives me dumbass orders. Obie. Like she knows me well enough to call me Obie. How’d she like it if I called her Karen? Or Chrissie? The plane’s radar will pick up their fucking launch. She knows that. But she’s got to make sure I know she’s in charge and I’m just her goddamned stooge.

I graduated fourth in my class at the Academy. Where did she come in? Who the hell put her in here over me? It isn’t fair, it’s not fair. Hotshot B-2 jockey. She gets herself in hot water screwing some general and they bounce her out of the B-2s and break her down to this test program. This is a fucking demotion for her! But they push me into the right-hand seat so this slut of a colonel can take over my place. I worked hard to get to fly this bird! But they just push me aside and let her have it. The Air Force. Screw you every time.

He heard Colonel Christopher call to O’Banion, “Where are those fighters, Brick?”

“Coming up fast, ma’am. They haven’t gone supersonic, but they’re pulling in closer.”

“Jon, keep us on a course that parallels the coast. I don’t want to get any closer.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Lieutenant Sharmon replied.

Christopher toggled the intercom and said, “Mr. Hartunian, you and your people better strap in. We’ll be in action any minute now.”

Hartunian’s voice answered, “Seat belts. Yeah.”

Kaufman spoke up. “You’ll have to swing around and point us at the coast when they launch.”

“I know, Obie. I just don’t want to give those fighters any excuse to open up on us until I have to.”

“But you have to be pointing at the missiles when they launch. Point the nose at them and—”

“And let the tech geek’s laser system acquire them. I know. I flew the simulator, Obie. I just don’t want those fighters to shoot us down before we nail the missiles.”

Kaufman stared at her. She looked like a little kid, sitting in the pilot’s chair with the safety harness over her shoulders and the big white flight helmet sitting on her head like some ostrich egg.

He knew he shouldn’t say it, but Kaufman didn’t care anymore. What the hell, he thought, we’re going to get our asses shot off anyway.

So he said, “Maybe I should take over now. I’ve had more experience handling this bird. I can—”

“No.”

“But you don’t—”

The look on Colonel Christopher’s face could have etched solid steel. “Obie, I’m the pilot here. That’s that. No further discussion.”

He wanted to spit. But instead he shrugged inside his safety harness and said nothing. The plane droned on for a few moments, then Christopher asked mildly, “You ever read Moby-Dick, Obie?”

Puzzled, he replied, “Saw the movie, I think.”

“You remember where Ahab tells his first mate, ‘There’s one God in heaven and one captain of the Pequod.’ ”

Kaufman felt his cheeks redden with anger.

“That’s the way it’s got to be, Obie. I didn’t ask for this job, but I’ve got it. Now let’s do what we’re here to do.”

O’Banion’s voice crackled in his earphone, “Message incoming from the gooks, Colonel.” “Let’s hear it.”

The same calm, reedy voice they had heard before said, “Unidentified aircraft, this is Air Defense Command of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You have invaded DPRK airspace. You will follow the two fighter planes we have dispatched and land at their base. If you fail to do so, they have orders to shoot you down. They are armed with air-to-air missiles. You will execute this order now.”

San Francisco: The Cow Palace

Vickie leaned her elbows on her knees and peered down at the platform where the President was supposed to speak.

“How long is it going to be?” she asked no one in particular. “These seats hurt my backside.”

Sylvia tried to smile at her elder daughter. “Just be patient. It’s not every day you get to see the President of the United States in person.”

“With ten zillion other people,” Vickie muttered.

“I think it’s cool,” said Denise, sitting on Sylvia’s other side. “Nobody else from my class is here, I bet.”

“So what?” said Vickie, with the airy disdain of the senior sibling. “He’s a drip, anyway.”

“He’s the President!” Sylvia snapped, shocked. “Show some respect.”

“He said he was going to do a lot for education,” Vickie retorted. “I haven’t seen any improvements. Have you, Dee?”

Denise thought a moment, then replied, “Well, we got more money for the school orchestra.”

“Big deal.”

“They were going to have to close it down altogether,” Denise pointed out.

“But it wasn’t federal money,” Vickie countered. “That extra money came from Sacramento.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

Sylvia swiveled her head right and left as the sisters argued back and forth, suppressing an urge to grab the two of them by the scruffs of their necks and rap their skulls together.

Norman Foster appraised his boss with an experienced eye. He’s winding himself up tighter, thought the President’s chief of staff. He gets high on moments like this. The crowd, the cameras, the band playing and people getting to their feet and cheering: hell, it gives me a thrill; it’s positively invigorating for him.

The President was pacing briskly up and down the little bare-walled room where they waited for the ceremonies to begin. Senator Youmans was beside him, scurrying breathlessly to keep up with his long-legged strides. She would introduce the President—after her own speech. The agenda gave her five minutes, but Foster knew she’d stretch that allotment.

His phone buzzed. Four Secret Service agents tensed for a moment, but Foster grinned at them as he pulled the iPhone from his jacket pocket, thankful that the military commsats were still working.

He squinted to read the text message on the tiny screen. “Urgent from Pentagon. Missile launched.”

That’s it, Foster thought. In half an hour we could all be dead.

ABL-1: Cockpit

“Look!” Kaufman pointed at the bright plume of rocket exhaust rising above the horizon. “That’s it!” Karen Christopher shouted.

“Turn into it!”

“Turning.”

She banked the big 747 to the left, swinging the plane so that its nose pointed toward the missile plume. Dumb jumbo jet turns like a freight train, Christopher said to herself, slow and ugly.

The colonel flicked a switch on her communications board. “Hartunian, they’ve launched.”

Down in the battle management compartment Harry heard the urgency in Colonel Christopher’s voice. “We’ve got them on the radar.”

His eyes scanned the console. Iodine and oxygen pressurized and ready to flow. All systems in the green.

“Taki?”

Sitting next to Harry, Nakamura’s lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “This is it,” she muttered as her hands played over her console’s keyboard.

“Ranging laser,” Harry said.

“Acquisition.”

On the screen that displayed the ranging laser’s data Harry saw a thin yellow line curving slightly toward the right.

“Locked on!” Nakamura called out.

“Distance?”

“One hundred fourteen miles.” Too far, Harry thought. The COIL’s range isn’t more than a hundred miles.

“Armed and ready,” Taki called. Harry yelled, “Fire!”

“Firing.”

From deep in the plane’s innards Harry heard the thundering roar of the laser, like a rocket bellowing: iodine and oxygen racing down the main channel, mixing, streaming through the laser cavity and surrendering more than a million watts of pure energy.

“We’re on it,” Nakamura said. “We’re hitting it.”

But is the COIL delivering energy to do the job? Harry wondered. At this range—

The yellow line on Harry’s screen abruptly cut off. He blinked at it.

“Did we get it?”

In the cockpit, Colonel Christopher gaped at the explosion. It was too far away to hear anything, but they could see that the missile’s white smoky exhaust plume ended in an orange-red blossom of fire. “We hit it!” she shouted.

“Sure as hell did!” Kaufman echoed, staring out at the dirty gray cloud expanding out by the horizon.

“Bull’s-eye!” Christopher pumped a fist in the air. Kaufman laughed hoarsely. “Scratch one missile!”

“Where’s the other—”

Out of the corner of her eye Christopher saw the flash of a missile’s smoky exhaust streak straight into the 747’s number two engine. It exploded inside the nacelle, blowing the engine to bits. The plane bucked and slewed so badly the control yoke jerked out of Christopher’s hands.

“Jesus Christ!” Kaufman bellowed.

“We’ve been hit!” Christopher grabbed at the controls, but the 747 was sliding into a shallow dive, bucking like a wild horse, its left inboard engine nacelle shredded and aflame.

“Fire extinguishers, Obie!”

Kaufman, staring goggle-eyed at the flames streaming from where the engine nacelle had been, shuddered for a heartbeat, then slammed the fire extinguisher system’s number two button almost hard enough to punch through the control panel.

“Pull her up!” he yelled as he reached for the control yoke in front of him.

“Trying . ..” Christopher panted, pulling with all her strength on the unyielding yoke. The big plane was shaking so hard her helmet was jiggling on her head, nearly slipping over her eyes.

In the battle management compartment Harry was almost slammed off his seat. The safety harness cut into his shoulders painfully.

“What the hell was that?” Nakamura yelped.

“We’re going down!” he realized.

Rosenberg’s voice screamed in his headphone, high-pitched, scared, “What the fuck’s happening up there?”

We’re dead, Harry replied silently. We’re all dead. The plane was jolting and rattling so hard Harry thought it would fall apart any second.

Then Taki pointed a shaking finger at the radar screen. “They’ve launched the other missile!”

Christopher’s mind went strangely calm. One engine out, losing altitude. Altimeter spinning down like it’s on steroids. Glancing out her left window she saw that the fire was out. At least there weren’t any flames streaming from beneath the wing. She saw ugly gashes in the wing’s surface where pieces of the exploded engine had ripped through. A long slick of fuel from a ruptured tank glistened across the shredded wing’s top. At least it wasn’t on fire.

“Close off that tank,” she said to Kaufman. “Shift to the tanks that haven’t been punctured.”

Automatically, she powered down a little, her right hand easing back slightly on the master throttle. Plane flies okay on three engines, she told herself.

We can fly fine on three. Then a sour voice in her head asked, So why’d they put the fourth engine on her?

Automatically, she swiftly scanned the control panel. Pressurization’s holding okay, she saw. No shrapnel’s penetrated the fuselage. Not the pressurized sections, anyway.

Level off, she told herself. Get her level. The plane was still shaking, rattling, but not as badly as before, responding to the controls now. She shot a quick look at Kaufman. He had both hands locked on his control yoke, knuckles white, face whiter. The 747 was leveling out, the altimeter still winding down, but slower now. Shit, Christopher said to herself, we’ve only lost a couple thousand feet of altitude.

“Leveling out,” Kaufman said, his voice shaky.

“Yeah.”

“Colonel, they’ve launched the other missile!” Hartunian called.

Christopher bit back the reply that leaped into her mind: Listen, buddy, we’ve got enough to do just staying in the air now. Never mind your goddamned missiles.

Instead, she looked out the windshield and saw the bright plume streaking upward from the distant horizon.

“Point us at it!” Hartunian urged.

“We’ve been hit,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.

As if he hadn’t heard her, Hartunian demanded, “Get the nose up and point her toward that plume. Now! We’ve got less than a minute!”

She looked at Kaufman. “Let’s do what the man says, Obie. Get the nose up.”

“If we can.”

Grimly, Christopher tugged on her control yoke. The lumbering 747 responded slowly, grudgingly. But her nose went up slightly.

“We’re bouncing in and out of acquisition,” Nakamura shouted.

Harry felt the plane shaking, shuddering, and wondered how long she would hold together. The screens on his consoles were jittering in front of his eyes.

“Get him, Taki,” he said, growling. “You’ve got thirty seconds, maybe less.”

“Acquiring,” Nakamura said, her voice edging higher. “If they could just hold the plane steady . . .”

Harry saw the yellow line of the missile’s trajectory rising toward the top of his screen. In another few seconds the bird would be so high they couldn’t get the COIL to point at it.

“Locked on!”

Fire the bastard, Harry urged silently. He heard the rumble from deep in the 747’s innards: the COIL was running.

“Missed!” Nakamura snapped. Before Harry could say anything she muttered, “Firing again. Multiple pulses.”

The line on Harry’s screen reached the top of the display, then winked out. “Did we get him?”

Nakamura shook her head. “I don’t know!”

In the cockpit, Kaufman yelled, “You’re going to stall out!”

Christopher didn’t reply. The tech guys needed the nose aimed at the missile and the missile was rising fast. She eased the lumbering 747’s nose up, up, hoping they had enough airspeed to avoid a stall. She’ll drop like the Rock of Gibraltar if she goes into a stall, Christopher thought. The plane was still vibrating, jouncing along on three engines and a shredded wing. Come on, baby, you can do it. Just hold it for a few seconds. A few seconds more… “Got it!” Kaufman yelped.

Another orange-red blossom of fire bloomed where the missile’s exhaust plume had been.

“We hit it!” Christopher agreed. She had a crazy impulse to lean over and plant a kiss on Kaufman’s round cheek. Instead she let the control yoke slide forward and the plane’s nose eased down.

“We did it,” Kaufman said, his voice hollow with wonder. “We shot both the bastards down.”

“We sure as hell did!”

Kaufman broke into a major-league grin.

“Let’s get this old bus back to Misawa,” said Christopher.

“If we can.”

Christopher started a right turn, away from the coast.

O’Banion called, “Oh-oh. Colonel, you better listen to this.”

“I repeat: American 747,” said a steely male voice in her headphone, “do not try to escape. You will follow us to DPRK air base and land there. Or we will shoot you down.”

The Pentagon: Situation Room

Brad Scheib pressed his hand against the earbud. Karen’s voice sounded strained, tense in the tiny speaker. He saw all the others in the room staring at him and knew he couldn’t say aloud what he wanted to tell her. I got you into this mess, Karen. I didn’t know you’d be flying the plane, I didn’t know you’d be on the hot seat. Don’t get yourself killed, honey. Come back to me. Come back.

“What’s happening?” General Higgins demanded, red-faced.

“They got the first missile,” Scheib said. Higgins broke into a happy grin. Zuri Coggins murmured, “Thank God.”

Then Scheib heard “Jesus Christ!”

“We’ve been hit!” Karen’s voice.

Scheib felt the blood draining from his face.

“What is it?” Coggins asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The interceptor hit them,” Scheib said.

“Where?”

“How bad?”

“Shut up!” Scheib snapped.

He heard Karen yell, “Fire extinguishers, Obie!”

“Pull her up!”

“Trying…”

Scheib listened, sweat beading his brow, as the others in the situation room clustered around him. Even the academic from NIC got up from his chair and slowly walked up the table toward him.

“Close off that tank,” Karen shouted. “Shift to the tanks that haven’t been punctured.”

Oh my God, Scheib thought. She’s going down. They’ve shot her down.

“Leveling out.” A man’s voice. Must be the copilot.

Somebody in the room shouted, “Look! They’ve launched the other missile!”

Scheib looked up at the wall screen. The last of the three missiles was rising up from its pad on a plume of flame.

He heard Karen say, “Let’s do what the man says, Obie. Get the nose up.”

“If we can.”

The satellite image of the North Korean missile launch was grainy, but everyone in the suddenly stuffy, hot situation room could see the missile climbing through a thin layer of cloud, its trajectory beginning to arc slightly, the bright trail of rocket exhaust curving as the missile rose.

“You’re going to stall out!” the copilot bawled.

Scheib’s guts clutched inside him. They’re all staring at me, as if I can make it all right, as if I can do something, say something…

Come on, he pleaded with Karen silently. Come on.

“Got it!”

“We hit it!” she said.

“We did it!” The copilot sounded halfway delirious with triumph.

“We sure as hell did!” Karen said, her voice trembling slightly.

The wall screen showed a blossom of orange flame. Everyone cheered. The missile’s exhaust track ended in an expanding cloud of dirty gray smoke.

“They did it!” General Higgins crowed. “They shot the bastard down. Both of ‘em!”

“Karen!” Scheib called into his lip mike. “Karen, are you okay?”

Colonel Christopher heard the tension, the urgency in Brad’s voice.

What do I tell him? she asked herself. How much can I say? He must have other people around him. I can’t... She found that she had to swallow twice before she could reply, her throat was so parched. Stick to business, she decided. Strictly business.

“We have one engine out and serious damage to the left wing,” she said, surprised at how shaky her voice sounded. “Plane’s buffeting badly. North Korean interceptors have ordered us to land at their base.”

No response. Silence. No, Christopher realized. She heard a buzz of voices. They’re talking. A lot of people. Somebody laughed! We’re flying on three engines and a shredded wing and they’re laughing back there in Washington!

O’Banion called, “Colonel, the gooks are telling us to follow them.”

“Let’s hear it,” she said.

“American 747,” said the same hard, cool man’s voice, “you will follow us to a DPRK air base and land there. You will be interned and treated well. If you do not follow this command we will be forced to shoot you down.”

Christopher thought it over for two seconds, then told O’Banion, “Plug me in to him, Captain.”

“You’re on,” O’Banion replied.

“This is ABL-1,” she said, working to keep her voice steady. “I read you.”

“Turn to a heading of three hundred ten degrees and follow me.”

“Turning to three-ten.” She eased the control yoke slightly leftward.

“What’re you doing?” Kaufman screeched.

“Keep your shorts on, Obie,” Colonel Christopher muttered. Silently she said to the North Korean interceptor pilot, Now pull up in front of me, wiseass. Get in front where I can fry you.

San Francisco: The Cow Palace

“Shot ‘em down!” Norman Foster exulted. The President whirled on his chief of staff. “Both of them?”

Foster pressed his cell phone to his ear, a wide grin spreading across his normally dour face. “Both of ‘em.” He held up two fingers.

Grinning back at him, the President said, “Now that’s something to tell the audience out there.”

Foster’s grin evaporated. “Wait a minute,” he said into the phone, “let me tell him.” Looking at the President, he said, “The North Koreans shot at our plane. Damaged it badly.”

“How bad?”

“It’s still flying, apparently. But the gooks want them to land in North Korea.”

“No!” the President snapped. “They can’t have that plane. And they’ll use the crew as hostages.”

“The alternative is they shoot the plane down and the crew dies.”

Biting his lip, the President paced the length of the bare-walled little room before replying, “Get Pyongyang on the horn. Tell them we hold them responsible.”

“And they’ll say we violated their airspace.”

“Call them anyway. We have to be on the correct side of this.”

“If you’d allowed a fighter escort—”

“We’d be in a shooting war by now!”

Foster shook his head. “What makes you think we’re not?”

In ABL-1‘s cockpit, both Colonel Christopher and Major Kaufman were hanging on to the control yokes with both hands. The plane was still vibrating badly and slowly losing altitude. The Sea of Japan looked a rippled gray sheet of steel. But Christopher’s attention was on the DPRK MiG-29 that had moved up in front of her, heading for the coast and a landing in North Korea.

“O’Banion, get Hartunian on the intercom for me.”

“Yes’m.”

“Hartunian here.”

“Do you have enough fuel left to shoot down a couple of fighter planes?”

She heard him gasp. Then, “Yeah, I think so, just about, if you can put us in a position to lay the beam on them.”

“I’ve got one of them sitting in front of us now, about eleven o’clock, level.”

“Give me a minute…”

The plane lurched again as Harry turned to Nakamura, sitting at the console beside him. His safety harness cut into his shoulders. I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow, Harry thought. If we’re still alive tomorrow.

“You ready to fire again?” he asked Nakamura.

His voice sounded unnaturally loud, urgent, in his own ears.

“Another missile?” Taki shouted back.

“Gook fighter plane.”

She blinked at Harry once, then said merely, “Let’s see if I can get acquisition; we’re bouncing around so much…” She began to peck at her keyboard.

As he watched her, Harry mumbled, “Sorry about the ‘gook,’ Taki. I wasn’t thinking.”

Without taking her eyes from her console’s screens, Nakamura said, deadpan, “That’s okay. I’m not offended. I’m a nip, not a gook.”

“Oh.”

“Get your terminology straight, round-eye.”

Harry almost started to chuckle.

“Acquisition!” Nakamura called out. “No! Jumped out. The plane’s shaking too much, Harry. I can’t get a lock on the target.”

“You’ve got to.”

“If they could hold us steady for half a minute…”

Harry toggled the intercom switch. “Colonel, we’ve got the fighter in our sights, but we’re bouncing around so much we can’t get a lock on it.”

Without an instant’s hesitation, Colonel Christopher’s voice replied, “Not much I can do about it, mister.”

Sitting tensely at the table in the situation room, General Scheib heard the intercom chatter from ABL-1. His laptop screen was blank, he was getting audio only, but it was enough to make him sweat with anxiety.

Standing in front of the wall screen image of the now-empty North Korean launch site, General Higgins said loudly, “Well, we showed the world that we can shoot down ballistic missiles. We’ve changed the global strategic picture.”

Zuri Coggins shook her head. “Not if they shoot down our plane, General. All we’ve shown is that we can trade a very expensive aircraft and crew for a couple of cheap missiles.”

Scheib glanced at the others, who had drifted toward the wall screen display and stood around General Higgins. Quietly he called up on his laptop screen the command organization of Misawa Air Base.

“He’s got to be there,” Scheib muttered to himself as he scrolled down the list of names.

And there he was: Mitchell Watson, executive officer of the Thirty-fifth Fighter Wing, headquartered at Misawa.

Japan: Misawa Air Base

“Brad, are you nuts?” Brigadier General Mitch Watson stared at the image of his old friend and Academy classmate on the screen of his telephone console.

“I’m deadly serious, Mitch,” said Brad Scheib. He certainly looked serious, Watson thought. Absolutely grim.

Watson leaned back in his desk chair. His eye caught the tennis trophy that he and Scheib had won back at the Academy. It was Watson’s year to hold the silver-plated cup.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, jabbing a lean finger at his old friend’s image. “You want me to scramble a flight of F-16s out to North by-damn Korea?”

Nodding tightly, Scheib answered, “There’s a 747 out there in trouble. Over the Sea of Japan, near the coast. Your Falcons could mean the difference between life and death for the crew.”

“I’m supposed to do this on your authorization.”

“I’ve got a priority code from the National Security Advisor’s office.”

Trying to read Scheib’s taut expression, Watson realized, There’s more to this than he’s telling me.

“Why in the ever-loving blue-eyed world should I do this? It’s crazy!”

“You don’t want to know, Mitch.”

Watson puffed out a breath. “That bad, huh?”

With another nod, Scheib said, “Just get some fighters out to that plane. Scare the bandits off.”

“And to hell with the chain of command, huh?”

“I gave you the priority code. It’s my responsibility, Mitch. You’re just following orders.”

“Yeah,” said Watson, wondering if he wasn’t flushing his career down the toilet. “Sure.”

ABL-1: Cockpit

The MiG-27 was painted a dull brownish gray , the same color as the hills up ahead, Colonel Christopher realized. Her 747 was still shaking badly, bouncing around as if it were caught inside a thunderhead.

“We’re gonna be crossing their coastline,” Major Kaufman said.

“Tell me about it, Obie.”

“You want to shoot that guy down?” Kaufman clearly didn’t like the idea.

“If we can, Obie. If we can.”

“And what does the other one do? He’s still on our tail, isn’t he?”

Christopher didn’t reply to him. Instead, she called down to Hartunian, “Can you lock on or not?”

“If you could keep the plane steadier we could,” came the engineer’s response.

“Maybe you ought to come up here and try flying this bird,” Christopher snapped.

“I wouldn’t be any—”

Suddenly the woman tech’s voice shrilled, “Lock! We’re locked on!”

“Zap the bastard!” Christopher snapped.

Nothing happened. The North Korean MiG flew several hundred yards in front of them just as before.

“What are you guys doing down there?” Christopher demanded.

“We hit him,” Hartunian said. “The instruments show we hit him.”

Christopher started to shake her head, but Kaufman took one hand off the control yoke and pointed a shaking finger at the MiG.

“Look!”

A thin trail of whitish smoke was streaming from a spot on the MiG’s fuselage halfway between the cockpit and the jet engine’s tailpipe.

“Is that all you can—”

Christopher clamped her mouth shut. The MiG’s fuselage was burning. A bright cherry-red circle of flame was growing, spreading. The plane’s aluminum skin was on fire.

“It’s burning!” Kaufman shouted.

“Took a few seconds to burn off the paint,” said Hartunian, almost apologetically.

Colonel Christopher watched as the burning circle spread across the MiG’s rear section. The plane yawed violently to the left and suddenly its clear plastic canopy popped off and the pilot ejected, his seat firing up and out while the MiG slid off on one wing and began to spiral toward the sea below. She leaned forward and craned her neck to watch the pilot separate from his seat. A heartbeat later his chute streamed out and billowed. She could see the man’s tiny figure hanging beneath the parachute’s canopy.

“We got him!” Kaufman exulted.

“Right turn, Obie,” Christopher commanded. “We’re heading for Misawa.”

The lumbering 747 turned slowly while the second MiG flew past them and began to circle the pilot descending into the water in his parachute.

“Let’s get our butts out of here,” Colonel Christopher said.

Kaufman muttered, “Before the whole gook air force comes after us.”

“Colonel, DPRK air command is calling again,” O’Banion reported.

Wishing she were flying a B-2 instead of this beat-up hulk of a transport plane, Christopher said, “Put him on.”

The man’s voice sounded more agitated. “American 747, one of our fighters has suffered a malfunction. Nevertheless you will continue to follow a heading of three hundred ten degrees. Another flight of our planes will escort you to a landing in the DPRK.”

Christopher thumbed her radio switch. “This is United States 747 ABL-1. We are leaving North Korean airspace and returning to Japan. Out.”

To O’Banion she said, “No more transmissions on their frequency, Captain. Let’s get away from here before they send out more fighters.”

Kaufman nodded. “Amen to that.”

U.S. Route 12, Bitterroot Mountains, Idaho

Charley Ingersoll’s hands were completely numb. He couldn’t feel anything with them. When he tried to wipe the snow off his face it was like a pair of wooden boards scraping against his frozen nose.

With some surprise, he realized that the pain was gone. Numb. Freezing. At least it don’t hurt anymore, he realized. God never gives you a trial that’s too much for you. He watches over you all the time.

He wondered if God was keeping the wolves away. They must be out there. Wolves. They hunt in packs. Prob’ly go after that moose ‘stead of me, he told himself. God won’t let me get eaten by wolves.

Without warning, Charley’s legs collapsed beneath him. He simply folded up and fell facedown into the snow. No pain. He felt like he was floating. Going to sleep. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was a tendril of fear, a vague memory of Martha and the kids.

God, don’t let them die! Charley begged silently. Take me if you gotta, but let Martha and the kids live.

He wanted to hear an answer, but only the biting, moaning wind came to his ears. And the distant baying of a wolf. Charley fought against falling asleep. You fall asleep and then you ireeze to death, he knew. But ultimately he had no more strength in him. He closed his eyes and drifted into the sweet oblivion of sleep.

But just before it all went dark, he thought he heard the snarl of a wolf. Several wolves. Very close to him. He knew he should be alarmed, but it was just too easy to go to sleep.

San Francisco: The Cow Palace

“So when’s he coming out?” Vickie asked, teen-aged impatience etched onto her face.

Sylvia frowned at her elder daughter. “He’s the President, Victoria. He has a lot of things to do. He’ll be out when—”

“Look!” Denise pointed. A portly woman was striding onto the stage. The audience began to applaud.

“That’s Senator Youmans,” Sylvia told her daughters, feeling relieved that something was happening at last. The chairs were totally uncomfortable.

Senator Youmans basked in the applause for a few moments, then waved both her chubby arms to still the audience.

“Good evening, and welcome to San Francisco, the City by the Bay. This is a momentous occasion for us all…”

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” Vickie moaned. “She’s going to give the same speech she gave at the big rally last week, back home.”

The President listened intently to his chief of staff’s cell phone. Foster had laid it on the table between them and clicked on its speaker function.

“Apparently they shot down one of the North Korean interceptors,” General Higgins was saying. In the phone’s minuscule display screen the general’s face looked red and bloated, clownish.

“Apparently?” the President snapped. “Did they or didn’t they?”

“The MiG caught fire and crashed into the sea, sir,” Higgins replied, his voice tinny and small. “Whether it was from ABL-1’s laser or just an engine malfunction remains unclear, Mr. President.”

The President glanced at Foster, who spread his hands, palms up. “Either way, we win,” Foster said.

“So where’s ABL-1 now?” the President demanded.

“Over the Sea of Japan, sir, heading for Misawa Air Base.”

“Can they send out a search-and-rescue team?”

“If the plane ditches—”

“Now! I want it sent out now. Whether the plane ditches or not.”

“Yessir. Of course. I’ll get the word to Misawa right away.”

“Good. Thank you, General Higgins.”

Foster clicked the cell phone closed.

The President stood in silence for a long moment, then said to his chief of staff, “We’ve done all we should do, Norm. Our skirts are clean.”

Foster ran a hand over his shaved head. “But if the North Koreans send out more fighters…” He let the thought dangle.

“If they shoot down our plane over international waters they’re clearly in the wrong. The important thing is that we’ve gotten rid of the missile threat. I don’t want a war breaking out now, there’s no need for it.”

Foster nodded. “Except for the crew of that 747.”

“That’s why I ordered the SAR unit, Norm. They’ll pick up the crew from the water.”

Unless the gooks shoot down the SAR plane, too, Foster thought. But he did not mention his fear aloud.

Out of the corner of her eye Senator Youmans saw the President standing in the wings, waiting to be introduced to the crowd. First I have to talk to them because he’s not ready to come out, she grumbled to herself, and now I’ve got to cut my speech short because he is ready. And antsy, from the looks of him.

She betrayed none of those thoughts on her face. With a dimpled smile, she said into the microphones before her, “So, without further ado, the President of the United States!”

The crowd roared to its feet. The band struck up “California, Here I Come,” and the President strode out onto the stage, grinning and waving both his arms.

ABL-1: Cockpit

“Colonel, we’ve cleared North Korean airspace.” Karen Christopher heard the obvious relief in Lieutenant Sharmon’s soft voice.

She spoke into her lip mike: “Brick, any more transmissions from their defense command?”

“Just repeating their order for us to head inland and wait for another fighter ‘escort,’ Colonel.”

“Screw that.”

Major Kaufman turned toward her and asked, “You think they’ll send another batch of fighters after us?”

“Probably.” Karen realized that she was tired, emotionally and physically drained. But the plane was flying better; they were barely above twenty thousand feet now, but the buffeting had eased a bit. Still, she wondered how long the bird would hold together.

“Obie, you think you can handle things by yourself for a few minutes?”

Kaufman nodded vigorously.

As she unstrapped her safety harness, Christopher said, “I’ll send O’Banion up here, in case you need another pair of hands to work the controls.”

The major nodded again, less enthusiastically.

Every muscle in her body seemed to be aching as Colonel Christopher pulled herself out of the seat and took off her heavy, cumbersome flight helmet. Nestling the helmet under one arm, she stepped to the hatch at the rear of the cockpit. Kaufman clutched his control yoke with both hands. The plane was still vibrating, rattling hard enough to make her grab for the rim of the hatch as she went through.

She stepped onto the flight deck and patted Lieutenant Sharmon’s shoulder. “How’re we doing, Jon?”

“On course for Misawa, Colonel. I’ve got their radio beam loud and clear.”

“Good.” Turning to O’Banion, she said, “Brick, go up and sit with Major Kaufman. Don’t touch anything unless he tells you to.”

O’Banion blinked uncertainly but murmured, “Yes, ma’am” and got up from his seat.

Karen dropped her helmet on one of the bunks, then climbed down the ladder and saw Hartunian and the Japanese-American woman sitting side by side in the battle management compartment.

“Good shooting,” she called to them through the open hatch.

Hartunian grinned at her. The woman asked, “What happened to the second fighter?”

“He stayed where his buddy went down. Standard operating procedure. Waiting for a SAR chopper to pick up the man in the water.”

Hartunian asked, “Are they sending out more fighters?”

“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?”

The Pentagon: Situation Room

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.”

ABL-1: Galley

“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?”

“We’re going to try.”

Harry counted his own pulse silently. Two beats, three.

Then the general asked, “What’s your condition?”

“One engine out. Wing damaged. Cabin pressurization holding. So far. Boeing makes tough airplanes, General. You know that.”

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.

Then he heard a soft beeping sound. Beep beep beep beep… Heaven don’t beep, Charley thought.

It all came back to him in a rush. The blizzard. Martha and the kids! The snow and the cold. And the wolves.

Charley blinked and it all came into focus. He was lying on his back. Hospital room. Off-white ceiling. Turning his head slightly he saw that the walls were a pastel green. The sound he heard was coming from a bank of medical monitors blinking and beeping at him. There were IV tubes in both his arms.

“We’re awake!”

The nurse’s boisterous voice made Charley jump.

“Had a good rest?” the nurse asked as she peered at the monitors. She was a chubby Hispanic woman with kinky dark hair.

“Whe… wha . ..” Harry couldn’t get his voice to work.

“Relax, Mr. Ingersoll. You’re still full of Demerol; relax and go back to sleep.”

What about Martha? Charley wanted to ask. My kids. But he found he couldn’t get the words out. Instead his eyes closed and he drifted back into blessed sleep.

When he woke again there was a blond young man in a white smock standing beside his bed. He had a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Must be a doctor, Charley thought.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Where am I?” Charley mumbled.

The doctor grinned at him. “I asked you first. But if you must know, you’re in Missoula Community Hospital.”

“Missoula? How’d I get to Missoula?”

“Snowplow found you, called the Highway Patrol. They took you here.”

“When? How long...?”

“Six hours ago,” said the doctor. His cheerful expression sobered. “I’m afraid we had to take four of your toes. You were pretty severely frostbitten. We saved your fingers, though.”

“My wife,” Charley said. “My kids.”

The doctor nodded and patted Charley’s covers. “We’ll talk about them later. Right now we’ve got to do some diagnostics on you. You were in pretty bad shape when they brought you in here.”

“But Martha. Charley Junior. Little Martha.”

“Later,” the doctor said. “Later.”

ABL-1: Galley

“Now, how do we go about finding which one of your people tried to screw up this flight?” Harry stared at Colonel Christopher. She was deadly serious.

“It had to be one of your people, Mr. Hartunian,” she insisted. “You know them a helluva lot better than I do.”

Think! Harry demanded silently of himself.

“Well?” Colonel Christopher prodded.

“Whoever it was,” Harry said slowly, thinking it out as he spoke, “did it while he thought we were on a routine test flight.”

“You already told me that.”

“Which means he did it for money. Not to stop us from shooting down the gook missiles. He didn’t know we were going against real missiles when he sabotaged the ranging laser. He’s not a spy; he’s not working for the North Koreans or some other nation.”

“He. Why not she?”

Harry shook his head. “I just can’t picture Taki doing it. Hell, she almost took my head off when I merely suggested the possibility.”

“Maybe she protests too much,” Christopher countered. “The best kind of defense is a good offense.”

Rubbing with finger and thumb at the ache growing between his eyes, Harry went back to his reasoning. “Whoever it was did it to give Anson Aerospace a black eye. Did it for one of Anson’s competitors. Did it for money.”

The colonel nodded encouragingly. “Okay. So which of your nerds has come into some extra money lately?”

Closing his eyes, Harry thought aloud, “Wally likes to bet on the football pools, but he’s just penny-ante. Small-time.”

“The Hispanic kid?” Christopher prompted.

“Angel? He’s strictly a straight arrow. Four kids, nice wife.”

“Mortgage? Debts? College tuitions? With four kids—”

Harry cut her off. “They’re all in elementary school, and Angel’s working on them to get baseball scholarships by the time they’re ready for college.”

“Still…”

“It’s not Angel.”

“That leaves the big guy.”

“Monk.”

“Has he come into some extra money recently?”

Harry leaned back tiredly in the bucket seat. The plane was still shuddering, but the shaking didn’t seem to be getting worse.

“Are we going to make it to Japan?” he asked.

Colonel Christopher smiled tightly. “If I have to get out and push.”

Harry smiled weakly.

“Now what about this Monk guy? Has he been flashing some extra money around lately? Bought a new house maybe?”

Shaking his head, Harry replied, “Hell, Monk’s been living in the same dinky bungalow since I’ve known him. Hasn’t bought a new car in years, drives a beat-up old Chrysler…”

His voice tailed off. Harry remembered that Monk’s wife had bought herself a Mustang convertible. Fire-engine red. Or had Monk bought it for her?

Madelaine worked for Anson, Harry recalled, in the human resources department.

“What is it, Mr. Hartunian?” Colonel Christopher prodded.

He blinked at her. “It’s probably nothing.” He pushed himself up from the seat. “Let me talk to Monk.”

Christopher got to her feet beside him. “It’s him?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. Let me talk to him before we go jumping to conclusions.”

She studied his face for an intense moment, then nodded. “Okay. You do that. I’ve got a plane to fly.”

As she stepped back into the cockpit, Karen Christopher saw that Captain O’Banion’s shirt was dark with perspiration as he sat in the left-hand seat. Even though his hands were in his lap, they were balled tightly into fists. Kaufman was doing the flying, she saw, and the communications officer was clearly afraid to touch the controls.

O’Banion looked relieved as Colonel Christopher leaned between the two seats.

“How’s it going, Obie?” she asked pleasantly.

“She’s flying straight and level,” said the copilot, glancing up at her. “Buffeting a lot, but she’s holding together.”

“Good. Captain, you can go back to your comm station. Thanks for keeping the major company.”

O’Banion pushed himself out of the chair. “You’re entirely welcome, ma’am.”

“How’d you like sitting up here?” Christopher asked as she slipped by him and into the seat. It felt warm, hot almost.

“Makes me think of W. C. Fields,” O’Banion replied.

“The old comedian? How come?”

“He said he wanted on his tombstone, ‘All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.’ ”

Christopher laughed. “You don’t want to be a pilot?”

“No, ma’am. You can keep the job. I’ll stick to communications.”

O’Banion ducked through the hatch.

As Colonel Christopher strapped in, she said to Kaufman, “No competition from him.”

Kaufman grunted. Christopher could see that he was reluctant to turn control of the plane back to her.

Looking through the windshield, the colonel saw that they were back over the gray swirling storm that they had passed on the way to the Korean coast.

“Hope we don’t have to put down in that mess,” she said lightly.

Kaufman gave her a sour look. “Misawa reports it’s starting to rain there. We’ll be landing in the storm, looks like.”

Christopher shrugged. “Not much we can do about that—unless you want to head back to Elmendorf.”

Kaufman said nothing, but the expression on his face could have curdled milk.

ABL-1: Beam Control Compartment

Monk Delany was asleep when Harry stepped through the hatch to the beam control compartment. He was sitting in front of his main console, head lolling on his shoulder as the plane bounced and staggered through the air. Up here in the 747’s nose, the constant rise and fall of the plane was more noticeable than farther aft. The noise of the engines wasn’t as bad, but the shaking and shuddering caused by the damaged wing seemed more intense up here.

“Monk,” he called. “Hey, Monk. Wake up.”

Delany stirred and grumbled to himself. His eyes fluttered, then opened fully.

“Harry,” he said blearily. “Musta dozed off.”

“Yeah.” Harry sat in the chair next to the big engineer. “Monk, when we get back to Elmendorf, the Air Force police are going to dust that optics assembly for fingerprints.”

Delany shrugged. “My prints’ll be all over it. Hell, you know that, Harry.”

“Yeah. Your prints and nobody else’s.”

“So whoever took it wore gloves.”

“They’ll search the plane. And each one of us. They won’t find any gloves.”

Delany’s face clouded over. “What’re you telling me, Harry?”

“You took the lens assembly out of the ranger, Monk. Last night. You wormed your big ape arm into the housing and popped it out, nice and neat. Just the way you popped the replacement set into it.”

Glaring at Harry, Delany looked as if he wanted to answer but thought better of it.

“It was you, Monk,” Harry said quietly. “I know it was you.”

The big man’s eyes narrowed. For an instant Harry thought Delany was going to get violent. But then he put on his lopsided smile and said, “What the hell, Harry?”

“You’re not denying it?”

“I didn’t do any damage. We shot down the gook missiles, didn’t we? We’re all heroes.”

“Yeah. All of us—except Pete Quintana.”

Delany look startled. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“How’d the grease get into the oxygen line, Monk?”

“Now wait a minute!”

“You put it there,” Harry insisted. “You knew what would happen when the line was pressurized. You killed Pete.”

“Dumb spic shouldn’t’ve been out there. He shoulda come into the control room with the rest of us.”

“You let him get killed.”

“I warned him!” Delany shouted. “I told the dumb sonofabitch to get inside! You heard me!”

“You didn’t tell him the COIL was going to explode. You didn’t tell me to stop the test.”

“Tell you fuck! Who the hell are you? Chief of the test team! Why you, big shit? It shoulda been me!”

Harry felt the fury radiating from the big man. “I know,” he said softly. “I told you so when Anson picked me.”

“Anson! Big fucking asshole! You know why he picked you? Because he can push you around. He calls the tune and you do the dance.”

“And Pete burns to death.”

Delany jumped up out of his seat, making Harry twitch with surprise and sudden fear. Monk’s a big guy, Harry thought, remembering the way the big guys at school had always run roughshod over him. He’d learned to talk his way out of most trouble, but there were always gorillas who took special pleasure in beating up smaller guys who got As in class.

“So Pete’s dead,” Delany roared. “Whattaya want me to do about it? I didn’t kill him! Damned brown-nosing spic had to show Levy and Scheib how good he was, how fucking concerned he was about getting every fucking detail just right! So he killed himself. I didn’t do it!”

Slowly, Harry rose to his feet. He barely reached to Monk’s nose.

“I know you didn’t intend to kill him,” Harry said, trying to placate Monk.

“Fucking right I didn’t!” Looming over Harry, Delany growled, “And you’re not going to say a word about this, buddy. Not to anybody. Understand?”

Before he could think of anything else to say, Harry heard himself reply, “Monk, I can’t keep this quiet. The colonel knows about the ranging laser.”

“So what? That’s all been fixed. No damage done.”

“We’ve got to know why you did it. Who paid you to do it.”

Delany slammed a big fist against the main console, making Harry flinch backward a step. “Dammit, Harry, you don’t hafta know anything! Not a damned thing! You got that?”

“Yes I do, Monk. But the Air Force will want to know. Mr. Anson will want to know. Pete’s widow, too.”

“Harry, I’m warning you! Drop it!”

“I wish I could, Monk.”

“But I can’t.”

Whirling, Harry saw Colonel Christopher standing in the compartment’s hatch. Monk stared at her, frozen, his mouth open, his hands balled into fists.

“From what Harry tells me, you’ll be charged with negligent homicide, I imagine,” the colonel said, her voice tight, her face hard and unforgiving.

“Now wait—” Harry began. He never got any further.

Delany gave out a strangled roar and grabbed Harry with one big hand, punched him squarely in the face with the other. Harry’s head snapped back. His nose spurted blood. He tried to push himself away, but Monk kept punching him.

Colonel Christopher sprang at Delany, kicked him in the knee, and chopped at the side of his bull neck. Monk dropped Harry and turned on her, but she ducked under his wild swing and deftly rammed a fist into his chest. A smaller man would have gone down, but Delany just grunted and reached for her.

Through a world of pain Harry saw the colonel jabbing at Monk’s eyes. Staggering to his feet, he punched with all his might at Monk’s side. Kidney punch, strictly illegal in boxing but the best defense Harry knew when being beaten up by a bigger guy.

Monk yowled and twisted backward. Colonel Christopher chopped with the side of her hand at Delany’s throat and the big man went down, gasping and floundering on the deck of the narrow compartment.

As Harry sank to his knees he saw another Air Force officer stepping through the hatch, the redheaded captain. No need, he thought. No need for reinforcements. He saw Colonel Christopher standing over Monk’s prostrate body like an Amazon warrior, her eyes blazing, every line of her face and body daring Monk to try to get up again.

Georgetown, D.C.: The Scheib Residence

It was a three-story row house on O Street, narrow but deep. Like all the houses on that block it had a flight of concrete steps leading up to the front door, a basement garage, and a lushly flowering garden in back tended by a small army of brown-skinned immigrant workers. Its exterior differed from its neighbors only by the startling abstract mural that the lady of the house had lovingly painted—to the clucking disapproval of some of her neighbors.

Bradley Scheib’s den was on the top floor, insulated from the guest bedroom suite by soundproofed walls. General Scheib was sitting in his oversized recliner chair, a tumbler of single-malt scotch, neat, on the walnut table beside him, his private telephone held to his ear. The phone’s landline tapped directly into the Department of Defense’s shielded line that ran beneath the District of Columbia’s streets, connecting the White House and the Capitol building with the Pentagon, across the Potomac.

The only light in the room came from the computer screen on the desk, over in the corner. Brad Scheib sat in the shadows, bone-tired, emotionally spent, feeling ragged. He had torn off his uniform the moment he’d arrived home from the Pentagon and put on a comfortable old sweatshirt and baggy gym pants. He’d nodded hello to his wife and bounded up the stairs to his sanctum sanctorum.

“I gave you the priority code,” he growled into the phone. “What more authorization do you need?”

“Sorry, sir,” came the voice of the harried operator in the Pentagon. “Circuits have been overloaded all day.”

“I don’t care! Get me through to that plane! That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir. I’m trying, sir.”

The door swung open, spilling light from the hallway into the darkened room. Scheib’s wife stood framed in the doorway, wearing a floor-length flowered silk robe: lean, curvaceous, a tribute to relentless exercise and cosmetic surgery.

Angrily, he said, “Do I have to put a lock on my door? You know this is private territory. You can’t—”

“I’m not going to steal any military secrets from you, Brad,” answered Carlotta Harriman Scheib coolly. “I’m quite sure your call is personal. Isn’t it?”

Cupping one hand over the phone’s receiver, Scheib said, “Whatever it is, it’s none of your business.”

“Calling your little slut of a colonel?” Carla asked, smiling coldly. “Do you make her stand at attention for you? No, I imagine it’s you who stands at attention when you’re with her, isn’t it?”

“You’ve done enough damage to her career,” Scheib snapped, nearly snarling.

“So what? There are plenty of other women panting after you. I could set you up with a couple of the dewy-eyed twits you met at my birthday party. They’d love to flop into bed with you.”

“Carla, this is Air Force business.”

“Of course it is.”

“For god’s sake, we nearly went to war today!”

“So now you’re a hero.”

“No, but she is.”

Carlotta’s face contracted into a puzzled frown.

Suddenly understanding the reality of it, Scheib grinned maliciously as he told his wife, “That’s right, she’s a hero now. Thanks to you, she was in the right spot at the right time to shoot down a pair of ballistic missiles that were launched at us. What do you think of that?”

She started to reply, but hesitated, then snapped her mouth shut, spun around, and disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open. Scheib could hear the clop-clop of her high-heeled slippers going down the stairs.

He put the phone down next to his scotch and swiftly went to the door, closed it firmly, then returned to his recliner.

“Well?” he demanded.

“I’m still trying, sir.”

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Harry asked. His voice sounded funny to him because his nose was stuffed with cotton batting.

They were in the galley. Lieutenant Sharmon was leaning over Harry, dabbing a pad soaked in rubbing alcohol over the bloodstains on his face. The plane lurched and the first-aid kit sitting on the next seat slid to the deck with a clatter. Harry barely missed getting the pad shoved into his eye.

“Sorry,” the lieutenant said.

Colonel Christopher stood behind Sharmon, watching the first-aid work closely.

“Four older brothers,” she answered Harry’s question. “And self-defense classes at the Academy.”

“You’re a terror,” Harry said.

“That wasn’t a love tap you hit Delany with,” Christopher replied, grinning.

“Kidney punch. Learned that at good old Medford High.”

“Must’ve been a great school.”

Harry chuckled despite the pain from his nose. “We had a pretty good football team. But winning the game wasn’t as important as winning the fight after the game.”

Lieutenant Sharmon stooped to pick up the first-aid kit, “For what it’s worth,” he said, inspecting his handiwork, “I don’t think your nose is broken. You’re gonna have a pair of beautiful shiners, though.”

“Thanks.” Harry sighed.

Colonel Christopher shook her head slightly, then said, “I’d better get back to the cockpit. Weather’s getting thicker. Jon, you’ll have to get back, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the lieutenant, shutting the first-aid kit’s lid with a click.

Harry asked, “Where’d you put Monk?”

“Locked him in the forward lav,” said the colonel. “Your people helped drag him in there.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

She shrugged. “That’s up to the AG’s people, I suppose. And your own corporate execs. From what you said, he killed somebody?”

“That was an accident.” But Harry knew it was more than that. “I mean, he didn’t intend to kill Pete. He just—”

The plane lurched again, much worse. Sharmon staggered against the bulkhead, Colonel Christopher grabbed at him for support.

“I’d better get to the cockpit,” Christopher said. Silently she added, Before Obie wets himself.

O’Banion had both hands on the control yoke as he tried to help Major Kaufman keep ABL-1 flying steadily. Christopher could see the dark, swirling clouds of the storm below them, smothering the view from horizon to horizon.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said to O’Banion. As the captain got up gratefully and she slid into the pilot’s seat, Christopher said to Kaufman, “Sorry to be away so long, Obie. We had a bit of a ruckus downstairs.”

“Hasn’t been a tea party up here,” Kaufman muttered.

The plane was buffeting worse than ever as it plowed ahead on its three remaining engines. Colonel Christopher put on her heavy flight helmet and plugged in her communications line.

“Jon, I need an ETA for Misawa,” she said into her lip mike.

“Lieutenant Sharmon’s still downstairs, ma’am,” O’Banion’s voice replied in her earphone.

“Get him up here,” she commanded.

“We got a shi… a big load of messages piled up, Colonel,” O’Banion said. “Including a top priority from Washington. General Scheib.”

“Give me that one first.”

Some stranger’s voice, a woman, asked, “Colonel Christopher?”

“Right.”

“General Scheib, I have Colonel Christopher for you.”

“Karen?” Brad’s voice. “General,” she replied.

In his darkened den, Brad Scheib heard the stiffness in Karen’s voice. She’s not alone, he understood. She’s in the cockpit of that plane with the rest of the goddamned crew tapped in.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“We’re approaching Misawa.” Karen’s voice sounded cool, totally under control. “One engine out, wing damaged, but we’re maintaining altitude and airspeed.”

“You’ll make it to Misawa? Met reports there’s a storm over the area.”

A hesitation. Then she answered, “We’ll make it, General.”

“Good.”

Silence, except for hissing static. What can I say? Scheib asked himself. What can I tell her with the rest of her crew listening in? Even if she tells them to stay off the line there’s no guarantee that they won’t eavesdrop. Hell, half the Pentagon could be listening to us. And it’ll all get recorded, too.

“I... I’m glad you’re okay.”

Again a long silence. She’s thinking of what she can say, what she should say, Scheib told himself. Helluva way for us to talk. For all I know this is the last time we’ll ever talk to each other. Helluva way for it all to end.

At last Karen’s voice said tightly, “I’m fine, General.”

“That’s good,” he said, feeling inane. Suddenly he couldn’t control himself any longer. He blurted, “Karen, I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

“I am too.”

“If things had been different. . .”

“Brad, it’s over and done with. You made that perfectly clear.”

Feeling utterly miserable, Scheib said, “I wish it could be different.”

“But it’s not, General. It couldn’t have ended any other way.”

He nodded in the darkness of his room. She’s right, he knew. It couldn’t have ended any other way.

In the cockpit of ABL-1, Karen Christopher heard the sorrow in Brad’s voice. And she realized that he felt sorry for himself. Not for her. Not for the mess she’d made of her career. For himself.

And she understood. He’ll never have the strength to leave his wife. His career is more important to him than I ever was. I made him happy for a while, but that’s all over now. It was doomed from the start.

“You still there?” He sounded like a lost little boy.

When she tried to nod, the damned helmet wobbled on her head. “I’ve got to sign off now, General. The weather’s closing in.”

Silence for several heartbeats. Then, “Good-bye, Karen.”

“Good-bye, General.”

And the connection went dead.

Karen looked over at Kaufman, who was studiously staring straight ahead. Looking out, she saw that the weather was indeed closing in.

“Colonel?” Sharmon’s voice.

“Go ahead, Jon.”

“ETA to Misawa, one hour seventeen minutes.” “Better get their weather report. Looks like we’ll be in for a shaggy ride.”

Washington, D.C.: New Jersey Avenue SE

The Bakersfield residence was not pretentious, except for the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the lot and the armored Humvee parked in the driveway, occupied by at least three heavily armed Secret Service guards at all times.

The Secretary of Defense was in bed, his fleshy face ashen, his corpulent body soaked with perspiration. His physician, a close friend since Lionel Bakersfield had first arrived in the capital as a newly elected senator, stood over him with a severe expression on his lean, nearly gaunt face.

“I could’ve been Vice President, you know,” said Bakersfield as he lay propped up on a mound of pillows in the king-sized bed. “One heartbeat away from the White House.”

The physician, rake-thin, white-haired, shook his head and replied, “Another day like this one and you’ll be one heartbeat away from your own funeral.”

The Secretary of Defense tried to chuckle at his old friend’s dismal attitude. “You’ve always been a sourpuss.”

“Lon, you can’t take so much stress,” the doctor warned. “I think you ought to retire.” Bakersfield snorted at the idea. “You’re killing yourself.”

“Bullshit! I’m just a little tired. It’s been a long day.”

“You can’t put in days like this without hurting yourself. That old ticker of yours is going to explode if you’re not more careful.”

“Another year,” said the Secretary of Defense.

“After next year’s elections. If the President gets reelected I can retire with dignity. If not, I’ll be asked to leave anyway.”

The doctor shook his head again, his face a bony mask of disapproval.

The phone on the bedside table buzzed.

As the Secretary of Defense reached for it, his doctor snapped, “No!”

Bakersfield hesitated, his fingers inches from the phone. “It’s probably important. Only a half dozen key people have access to this line.”

“No more stress!” the doctor insisted. “You’ve had enough for today.”

The Secretary of Defense made a weak grin. “Just one more. It could be important.”

He picked up the phone’s receiver while the doctor gave a disgusted sigh and started for the bedroom door.

The phone’s minuscule screen showed a prim-looking young woman. “Mr. Secretary,” she said, “I have the Secretary of State on the line for you.”

“Put her on,” said Bakersfield. With his free hand he waved good-bye to the doctor, who shook his head with frustration and left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang.

“Lonnie,” said the Secretary of State, smiling her news-conference smile. “Celebrating our victory?”

Defense realized that the phone’s miniature camera showed little more than his sweaty face.

“Should we celebrate?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” State replied. “We shot down the Korean missiles. They didn’t bomb San Francisco.”

“And the President looks like a brave young hero.”

State’s smile faltered a bit. “I suppose he does.”

“What do you hear from the DPRK government?” Defense asked.

A small crease furrowing her brow, State answered, “Pyongyang says its troops have taken the site where the missiles were launched. Most of the rebel officers have been killed—or committed suicide instead of allowing themselves to be captured.”

“So there’s nobody left to question.”

“Probably not.”

The meds his doctor had given him were beginning to take effect, Bakersfield realized. He felt relaxed, no pain. Almost giddy, in fact.

“So we won’t find out why they tried to attack us,” he said, feeling nearly relieved about it.

“Oh, I think we’ll find out, sooner or later, one way or the other,” said the Secretary of State.

Backdoor channels, Defense thought. She puts a lot of faith in her personal contacts in China, he knew.

To her blandly smiling face, he said, “It was good of you to call me and bring me up to date.”

If she caught the sarcasm in his tone she gave no visible inkling of it. “Actually, Lonnie, the reason I called is about how we should react to the President’s position. He’s bound to get a big bounce out of this in the polls.”

Bakersfield shook his head wearily. “That’s for you to worry about, my dear. I’m not interested in the White House anymore.”

“Not interested? How…?”

The Secretary of Defense enjoyed the play of emotions flickering across the Secretary of State’s face: surprise, satisfaction, anticipation—all replaced by a hard-eyed calculation.

“He’s going to be reelected and neither you nor I will oppose him,” he said.

“Yes, but four years after that...”

“I’ll be too old for it. It’s all yours, my dear.”

“I can count on your support, then?”

Bakersfield thought that in politics five years is an eternity. How can you commit yourself to anything so far in the unguessable future?

“Of course,” he said, knowing the obligation was unenforceable. “But don’t you have more immediate problems to worry about?”

She blinked at him, her thoughts obviously two election campaigns down the road.

“More immediate problems?”

“I don’t think the Chinese will be happy with our shoot-down of those missiles. Do you?”

“Self-defense,” the Secretary of State immediately replied. “We have a right to defend ourselves.”

Defense nodded, picturing the speech she would give at the United Nations. A good platform for her, he thought.

“I suppose you’re right,” he conceded.

“Of course I am.” She smiled as she said it, but it was clear that she meant it with all her heart.

Defense said, “Well, you have a lot of work ahead of you.”

“So do you,” State countered.

“Yes, I know. Get a good night’s sleep, my dear. Big day tomorrow.”

And he clicked off the phone connection, carefully replaced the receiver on the console, rolled over, and swiftly fell asleep.

Air Force One

The President was jubilant as he spoke to his wife.

”They loved it,” he said, a big boyish grin splashed across his face. “I told them we shot down those missiles and they loved it!”

The First Lady smiled back at her husband from the screen set into the bulkhead of the plane’s compartment. “Of course they loved it. You showed them that you’re strong, and at the same time you prevented a war from breaking out.”

The President sobered. “The threat isn’t over yet.”

“It’s not?”

Glancing at his chief of staff, sitting out of range of the First Lady’s vision, the President said, “We’re not entirely out of the woods yet. We’ve got to find out who was behind this attack, why they did it, and what they’re after.”

She bit her lip, as she always did when she was unsure of herself. “But you said they got the soldiers who launched the missiles.”

“Yes, but we’ve got to determine what was behind this business. They weren’t acting on their own, you can bet on that.”

“Oh.” Then she brightened. “But you proved to the whole world that we can shoot down any missiles that they fire at us. That’s important, isn’t it?

Norman Foster rolled his eyes to the heavens as the President replied, “We showed we can shoot down two missiles, honey. Russia’s got more than a thousand and China’s not far behind that.”

The First Lady said, “I thought the real problem was unstable countries like North Korea or Iran. And terrorists.”

“That’s the first problem, true enough. But there’s a lot more to worry about, as well.”

Still smiling, she said, “Well, you’ll handle it. You always do. I’m really proud of you, and I know everybody else in the country is, too.”

“Even the Republicans?”

Laughing, she replied, “Even the Republicans. Most of them, anyway.”

They chatted for a few moments more and the President insisted that the First Lady stay in the White House instead of driving out to Andrews Air Force Base to meet his plane when it landed.

“It’ll be nearly dawn when we touch down. You stay with the kids. I’ll sleep on the plane, don’t worry.”

“I miss you, baby,” she said.

“Me too. See you in a few hours, though.”

“Oh!” The First Lady’s eyes went wide with a new thought. “Listen. You ought to invite the crew of that plane to the White House.”

The President scratched at his chin. “Good idea. There’s civilians in the crew, you know. As well as Air Force people.”

“Even better. Congratulate them personally.”

“Right. Good image.” Smiling at his wife, the President said, “Smart idea, honey.”

She beamed back at him. “Good night, Mr. President. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Good night, Mrs. First Lady. I’ll be coming to you.”

Foster put his head down and stared at the deck.

Once the screen went blank, the President turned to his chief of staff. “Sorry if we embarrassed you, Norm.”

Looking up at his chief, Foster put on a smile. “Nothing to it, boss.”

The President started to get out of his seat, but Foster put out a restraining hand.

“It’s late,” the President said. “I need my beauty sleep. There’ll be plenty of news media at Andrews when we land.”

“I just want to ask you to think about where we go from here.”

“Where we go?”

Foster rubbed at his eyes for a moment, then said, “What you were talking about with your wife. We’ve got to find out who was behind this attack and what they’re after.”

Arching a brow at his chief of staff, the President countered, “I would think our first order of business is to get our satellites working again. If we can’t fix ‘em, we’ll have to replace them.”

“That goes without saying.”

“I just said it.”

Foster was obviously not in a joking mood. “Those gook soldiers didn’t pull this stunt for the hell of it. Somebody was behind them. Somebody big.”

“The government in Pyongyang? Are they that crazy?”

“The situation team came up with the possibility that China’s behind it all. That’s what this analyst from the NIC has put together as a scenario—”

“China?”

“The NSA representative on the team agrees with him.”

“China,” the President mused. “But why would they do it? Why would they risk a nuclear confrontation?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Foster said.

Suddenly breaking into a substantial yawn, the President said, “That’s what we’ve got the intelligence agencies for. And the State Department. Now, I’m sleepy. Let’s pack it in.”

But Foster pressed. “You want to hand this problem to the Secretary of State?”

“And the intel people.”

“It’ll put her smack in the middle of the spotlight, you know.”

At last the President understood his chief of staff’s reluctance. “So she gets the spotlight. Don’t sweat it, Norm. I’ve got the reelection sewed up after this. I’m the president who showed the world we can defend ourselves against missile attack! I’m the president who saved us from a nuclear war! The Republicans don’t have anybody who can come close to beating me.”

“But you’ll be giving her a big boost, you know.”

“What of it? She can’t challenge me next year. And four years after that she’s welcome to run for the top. That’s what she’s been after all along, right?”

“Right.”

“So let her have it. After I’ve finished my second term.” He yawned again. “Now I’m going to bed. G’night, Norm.”

The two men rose to their feet. “Good night, Mr. President,” said Norman Foster.

ABL-1: Crew Compartment

“Christ, I’m pissing blood!” Harry heard Monk’s frightened roar as he sat strapped tightly into his seat in the narrow compartment. Taki Nakamura, facing him, looked startled.

The plane was bouncing, jinking as they bit into the storm clouds. The thumping made Harry’s swollen nose hurt.

“We’ll have a doctor waiting for you when we land, Monk,” Harry shouted, feeling embarrassed, almost ashamed.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Wally Rosenberg asked.

“Kidney punch,” Harry mumbled.

“He break your nose?” Angel Reyes asked.

Harry started to shake his head but winced with pain. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Your eyes are swelling up,” Nakamura said, her face etched with concern.

“Yeah,” said Harry.

Rosenberg chuckled softly. “You’re gonna look great for the photographers, Harry. Two black eyes.” He laughed mockingly.

The plane lurched so badly all four of them clutched their seat arms.

I’ll look great for the photographers, Harry thought. If we land okay. If we don’t go into the drink and drown.

“Got Misawa’s beam,” O’Banion reported.

Colonel Christopher answered, “Great! Pipe it to me.”

She heard the thin, scratchy tone of the airfield’s radio location beam. We can ride in on it, Karen thought. Even if the weather’s zero-zero at the field, we can home in on the beam.

“Getting nasty,” Kaufman said, his voice high, nervous.

“Yeah.”

They were in the storm now, bouncing and lurching in the turbulence of the thick black clouds. Lightning flashed every few seconds. Hold together, baby, Karen crooned silently to the plane. Just a little bit longer. Hold together and we’ll get home. Just a little bit longer.

“What’s the ceiling at Misawa, Jon?” she asked into her lip mike.

“Checking,” Lieutenant Sharmon answered. Then, “Eight hundred and lowering. Raining hard.”

“Obie, get Misawa traffic control and tell them to clear a runway for us.”

“Already did that, Colonel.”

“Good.” We’ll make it, she told herself. But we’ve only got one shot at it. With the condition this bird is in, we won’t be able to go around and try a second approach if we goof the first one. I’ve got to make it on the first approach. Got to.

Missoula Community Hospital, Montana

Charley Ingersoll knew it was bad news when three doctors came into his room with a clerical-collared minister accompanying them. They all looked like they were going to a funeral.

“Martha?” Charley asked before any of them could open their mouths. “My kids?”

“They’re fine,” said the oldest of the doctors. “Really?”

“Really. They’re right here in this hospital, being treated for exposure. But they’ll be released later today and they’ll come to see you.”

Charley was sitting up in bed. One of the IV drips had been removed from his arm, but the other one was still connected. Charley had tried to figure out which of his toes they’d taken off, but he couldn’t tell by wiggling and the bedclothes covered both his bandaged feet.

Suddenly all the breath seemed to gush out of Charley, as if he’d been holding it in for a year. He felt light-headed, like he was drunk or high or something.

“You saved their lives, Mr. Ingersoll,” said one of younger doctors. He didn’t look happy about it, though.

“They’re okay,” Charley said, his voice shaking. “That’s the important thing.”

“The same snowplow that found you picked up your family a little farther up the road,” said the older doctor. “You were semidelirious, but you kept telling the driver that your family was stuck in a snowbank.”

“You saved them,” the other younger doctor said, almost in a whisper.

“Then everything’s okay,” Charley said, hoping it was true.

“Well,” said the older doctor, “almost everything is okay.”

“Whattaya mean?”

Looking very unhappy, the doctor explained, “We did some routine tests on the blood samples you gave us—”

“Gave you?” Charley snapped. “I didn’t give you no blood samples.”

“You were unconscious when you were brought in. We took blood samples as a matter of course. Strictly routine.”

“So?”

Glancing at his two younger colleagues, the doctor said, “The routine screening we did indicates that you have . . .uh, cancer.”

“Cancer?” Charley yelped. “Me?”

“Prostate cancer.”

Charley sat there gaping at them.

“It’s apparently in the early stage,” said one of the younger medics. “It’s definitely treatable.”

Charley had heard about prostate cancer. They cut it out of you and then you can’t control your bladder or even get an erection anymore.

The other younger doctor produced a thick sheaf of papers. “These are forms you’ll have to sign.”

“Sign?” Charley echoed.

“For the tests and therapy. Maybe surgery.” He put the wad of papers on the nightstand by Charley’s bed.

The older doctor put on a phony smile. “Well, in an hour or so your wife and children will visit you.”

Then he turned and headed for the door, trailed by the two younger docs.

Charley stared at the minister, who reminded him a little of the pictures he had seen of Jesus: a little bit of a beard, sad, sorrowful eyes. And he remembered when he’d been freezing out in the snow that he’d asked God to save Martha and the kids even if it meant taking him.

“Reverend,” Charley asked, feeling lost and bewildered, “why does God give with one hand and take away with the other?”

The minister shook his head. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Mr. Ingersoll. But it’s all for the best, believe me. Trust in the Lord.”

“Yeah,” Charley said. “Sure.”

Washington, D.C.: Jefferson Hotel

The penthouse suite was brightly lit, as if a gala party was to take place there, but the only two people in the spacious sitting room were the Secretary of State and Quang Chuli.

The Chinese businessman appeared to be perfectly at ease as he sat in the plushly upholstered armchair watching the Secretary of State at the bar, pouring herself a glass of wine. It was close to midnight, but he seemed as fresh as ever, wearing the same dark suit he always wore. Does he have a closet full of them? the Secretary of State wondered. It can’t be the same suit.

For her part, State had changed into comfortable peach-colored slacks and a white silk blouse that hung over her hips. She had a long-stemmed glass of California chardonnay in one hand. Quang had politely refused a drink.

“I thought we would toast to avoiding a war,” she said as she settled herself onto the little sofa that faced her visitor.

“I congratulate you,” said Quang equably. “You came through the crisis very well.”

“Have we? Do you mean that the crisis is over?” Quang dipped his chin slightly. “The hard-liners in Beijing are in disgrace. You have proven that you are capable of defending against missile attack.”

“Only two missiles,” said State. “We couldn’t stop a full-scale attack by the People’s Republic.”

“Not yet.”

State blinked at that, her mind rapidly deciding.

He thinks we’re going to increase our missile defenses! He thinks we’re going to build them up so we can stop a Chinese attack. Or a Russian one.

Carefully, she asked, “Do you mean that this was all a test? Nothing more than a test?”

Quang sighed. “Ah, if only the world were that simple, Madam Secretary. Unfortunately, it is not.”

State had no reply. She studied her visitor’s face, trying to fathom what was behind his bland smile, his enigmatic words. It was like trying to get hard data out of the Sphinx.

Sensing her uncertainty, Quang said, “As I have tried to explain to you in the past, the government in Beijing is not monolithic. Far from it. It is a coalition that includes moderates, hard-liners, and even a few farsighted statesmen.”

“Like your brother-in-law,” she murmured.

“The chairman is indeed a farsighted statesman. But he must balance the various forces and attitudes that are present in the Central Committee.”

Slowly, State said, “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

Leaning forward slightly, toward her, Quang said, “Today you demonstrated that missile defense is possible. Yes, it was only two missiles, but you proved that they could be stopped. Today could mark a turning point in the global strategic picture.”

The Secretary of State noticed the slight but definite emphasis Quang put on the word “could.”

Trying to hide her exasperation, she asked as sweetly as she was able, “Just what do you mean?”

“Let me be frank, then.”

“By all means. We’re alone here. There are no recording devices.” That was a lie, but an understandable one, she thought. No one would see the transcript of this conversation but herself and her closest aides.

Raising a stumpy index finger, Quang said, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a rogue nation, we both agree.”

State nodded.

“There are other such rogues in the world. Iran, for one.”

She nodded again.

“The world must be protected against such rogues.”

“And against terrorists,” State added.

“Agreed. Terrorists armed with long-range missiles could plunge the world into nuclear war.”

“Which neither of us wants.”

Now Quang nodded. Vigorously.

Reaching for her chardonnay, State asked, “So what do you propose?”

“The United States is in a position to… suggest, that is the proper word, I believe… suggest an international conference on the subject of missile defense.”

She felt her brows knitting.

Quang went on. “At such a conference the leading governments of the world could come to an agreement that any unauthorized rocket launch anywhere in the world will be shot down by missile defense forces.”

“Unauthorized rocket launch?” State asked. “What do you mean?”

“It is very simple, Madam Secretary. An international commission would be established to send inspectors to examine the payloads of all rocket launches.”

“Like the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

“Just so. But with this difference. Any rocket launch that has not been inspected and approved will be shot down.”

State leaned back against the pillows of the sofa. “But that would mean… we’d have to make our missile defenses available to this international commission.”

“Perhaps. At the very least you would have to pledge that you will act on the commission’s recommendations.”

She put her wineglass down on the coffee table between them before replying. “I don’t know if we could ever get that through Congress.”

“You must! Recognize that now, this very day, Beijing and Moscow and others are moving to create their own missile defense technology. The United States could lead the way by offering to share such technology—under international control.”

State shook her head. “Congress would never go for that.”

With a shrug, Quang said, “Then there will be a new arms race in missile defenses. Far better for the U.S.A. to take the lead on this issue, to show the world how to move away from the threat of missile attack.”

“That’s a very tall order, Mr. Quang.”

“It is the way to end the threat of rogue nations and terrorists using long-range missiles. It is the way to a new stability in the international political situation.”

“Beijing would agree to this?”

“I believe so. What is more important, my brother-in-law believes so.”

The Secretary of State picked up her wineglass again and twirled it in her fingers, her thoughts swirling with the wine. She remembered that the first Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty came directly out of the confrontation of the Cuban missile crisis. Maybe we can pull something good, something worthwhile, out of this.

To Quang she said, “I’ll talk to the President about this. I’ll suggest he call your chairman.”

“If you like, I could suggest to my brother-in-law that he call your President.”

“That would be very good. Very good indeed.” And she thought, If I can set up a global missile defense agreement I’d be a shoo-in for the nomination five years from now.

ABL-1: Cockpit

“Left main gear is no-go,” said Major Kaufman. Colonel Christopher saw the red light glaring on the control board. It wasn’t the only one, but it seemed bigger, hotter than all the others.

“Must’ve been shot up when that missile hit number two engine,” Kaufman added.

Christopher nodded, wondering what else was damaged by that missile hit. Deep inside the swirling storm, the plane was shaking badly, shuddering like a palsied old man.

“Jon,” she called into her mike, “how far from the field are we?”

“Eighty-two miles, Colonel.” “Brick, get me the tower.”

A moment’s silence, then, “Tower on freak four, ma’am.”

“Misawa tower here. Report your—”

“ABL-1,” she interrupted. “We’re on final. One engine out and left main gear won’t deploy.”

Karen could hear voices chattering in the background. She remembered the old story about a pilot telling the control tower that his engine was dead and his controls weren’t responding. “What should I do?” the panicked flier asked. And the control tower calmly responded, “Repeat after me: ‘The Lord is my shepherd…’ ”

At last, the voice from the control tower replied coolly, “Abort your final approach and orbit the field until you’ve burned off your fuel.”

“Can’t do it!” Christopher snapped. “We’re damaged. I don’t know how long this bird’ll hold together. I’m going to dump our fuel.”

“Negative. Environmental regulations forbid—”

“Screw the environmental regs! We’re shot up and bouncing around up here like a kid on a trampoline. I’m dumping our fuel and coming in!”

Colonel Christopher clicked off the connection with Misawa and turned to Kaufman. “Open ‘em up, Obie.”

With a grim smile, Kaufman reached for the fuel tank controls. “What about the stuff for the laser? They got anything left in their tanks?”

Harry had decided to let Monk out of the lavatory. The big engineer, his face somewhere between surly and sheepish, sat in the bucket seat next to Wally Rosenberg.

“Strap in good,” Harry said tightly. “It’s going to be a rough landing.”

“Like it ain’t rough already,” Delany muttered.

It was getting even rougher, Harry thought. It was difficult to click his safety harness shut, the plane was stuttering around so badly.

“Hartunian!” The overhead intercom speaker cracked like a rifle shot. “Blow out the fuel in your tanks. Pronto!” Colonel Christopher’s voice.

Harry stared at the speaker grill above him. Then he turned to Wally Rosenberg. “You heard the lady,” he said, unclicking his harness. “Let’s get it done.”

Rosenberg reluctantly got to his feet.

“I’ll go, jefe,” said Angel Reyes, fumbling with his harness.

“Stay here,” Harry said. “Wally and I can do it.”

The plane lurched so badly that Harry jolted into little Taki Nakamura’s lap. Rosenberg banged against the bulkhead.

“Oof!” said Takamura. “Watch it.”

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled. Getting to his feet, he grabbed for Rosenberg’s arm. “C’mon, Wally. Pronto, the lady said.”

Rubbing his shoulder, Rosenberg grumbled, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns—”

“Never mind the wisecracks,” Harry said. “Let’s get the job done.”

“Fuel’s all dumped, Colonel.” Hartunian’s voice sounded over the intercom.

“Get back in your seat and strap in tight,” said Colonel Christopher. “We’re going in. It’s going to be rough.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Karen Christopher was as scared as she’d ever been in her life, but once again she felt an icy calm engulfing her. It was as if she were somewhere else, somewhere in an ethereal world, watching this slim woman who looked just like her wrestling with the controls of the massive jumbo jet.

ABL-1 was shaking badly now. From somewhere in the plane’s innards something was banging, like a wild beast trying to get out of its cage. Hold together, baby, Karen cooed silently to the huge airplane. Just a few more minutes. I know you’re hurt, but just hang together for a little bit longer. Just a little bit—

As they broke through the bottom of the clouds she could see the runway lights strung out straight and beautiful like a guiding arrow leading her to safety, glistening wet with rain.

“The runway!” Kaufman shouted.

We’re on the nose, Karen saw. Got to thank Jon for getting us through the soup and lined up exactly right. Now comes the tough part, the real test. She remembered the old adage: Flying is the second most exciting thing a person can do. Landing is the first.

“Full flaps,” Kaufman said. “Speed on the button.”

Nothing in the fuel tanks but fumes, she knew. If we break up on the runway we won’t burst into flames. Not a big fire, anyway. Maybe some, but not so much we won’t be able to get out. We’ll be okay if I can get her on the ground without tearing her apart.

Gently, gently, Karen eased the big plane onto the runway, kissing the concrete with the right main gear so smoothly that for an instant she wasn’t certain the wheels had actually touched the ground. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a long line of fire trucks standing by along the edge of the runway. And two ambulances. They don’t expect to pull many of us out, she thought.

Bring the nose down, she told herself. Kaufman was babbling something, but she paid no attention to her copilot. The plane was rolling along the runway now on its nose and right main gear. Losing speed. No thrust reversing, Karen told herself. Not enough fuel left for that.

She pressed on the brakes and the plane slowed with a screeching, squalling shriek. And the battered left wing dipped toward the ground.

“Hang on!”

The wingtip caught the concrete and the outboard engine nacelle smashed into the ground in the next instant. Christopher felt herself lurch painfully against her harness straps, her head thrown forward and then snapped back against the seat back with a thump. The plane was grinding against the concrete, slewing to the left, tilted at a crazy angle. The cockpit was shaking, bouncing, slamming her sideways, back and forth with a roaring, tearing, groaning noise like a monster truck being smashed and squashed by car crushers.

And then it stopped. The cockpit filled with gritty, dusty fumes as Christopher sat there, totally wiped out, too weak to lift her arms.

But only for a moment. “Hartunian!” she yelled at the intercom microphone. “You okay?”

“No broken bones… I think.”

“You and your people go out the forward hatch with us.”

“Yes, ma’am!” came the heartfelt reply. Kaufman was already getting out of his chair. Karen heard the wail of sirens approaching.

Kaufman reached over and helped her to her feet. “Helluva landing, lady. Helluva landing.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling weak in her knees. “Now let’s get out of here before something blows up.”

Washington, D.C.: Hamburger Palace

“So you’ve never been married?” asked Zuri Coggins Sitting across the narrow table from her, Michael Jamil shook his head as he swallowed a mouthful of well-done hamburger, loaded with ketchup.

“No,” he said at last, reaching for a paper napkin from the dispenser at the end of the table, where it abutted the wall. “My parents picked out a wife for me when I was in undergrad school, but by the time I graduated she had gone off to school herself and she met a guy there and married him instead.”

Coggins watched him dab self-consciously at his lips. The diner was almost empty this late at night; only one other couple in the booths, and one policeman sitting at the counter, munching a doughnut.

“No serious relationships since then?” she probed.

He smiled self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t have a serious relationship then, Zuri. You didn’t go to bed with your fiancée. Not in my neighborhood. Wasn’t done.”

“But since…?”

He started to look uncomfortable. But he replied, “I’ve had a few girlfriends. Nothing serious.” He hesitated, then went on. “I haven’t met anybody I could get serious about.”

Zuri nodded understandingly. “Same here. Men seem to get scared of a woman who has an IQ higher than theirs.”

His smile came back. “So what’s your IQ?”

“One forty-two,” she answered immediately. “Yours?”

“Not that high.”

“How high?”

The smile widened. It was a good smile, she thought. Warm. Jamil said, “One thirty-eight.”

She leaned back on the thinly padded bench and said, “Well, that’s within the statistical margin of error. We’re practically on the same level.”

“Yeah.”

She felt herself smiling back at him. “Do I scare you?”

“You? No. Why should I be scared of you?”

“Because I’m as smart as you are.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Because I might be your boss.”

“Huh?”

Zuri hadn’t really thought about it until the words popped out of her mouth.

“How’d you like to work in the National Security Advisor’s office? With me?”

Jamil’s face clearly showed surprise. And a good deal of uncertainty.

She continued. “I mean, the Secretary of State is pissed with you. She’s got a mean hatchet, you know. You could use a new job.”

He said slowly, “But if there’s a change in the White House next November…”

“There won’t be. We’ll have five years together.”

“You mean it?” Jamil asked.

“I sure do.”

He nodded. “You’re certain? I mean, you’re not just doing this because . . .” His voice trailed off.

“I’m not doing it because I feel sorry for you, or because of anything except I think you’re damned smart and I need somebody in my office who’s as smart as I am.”

“Oh. I thought you were doing it because you like me.”

“That too,” she admitted.

Minutes later they left the diner. The streets were still wet from the earlier rain. Hardly any traffic. No taxicabs in sight.

“It’s after midnight,” Jamil muttered. “And my car’s over in Langley.”

Zuri Coggins slipped her arm in his. “That’s okay. My apartment’s within walking distance. You can stay the night at my place.”

He nodded thoughtfully, then disengaged his arm and moved around her to be on the curbside of the street. “A gentleman always walks on the curbside,” he said, quite seriously.

“Sure,” she retorted. “The muggers always hide in the doorways.”

They both laughed and started down the street into the new day.

Japan: Misawa Air Base

It was pouring rain as they jumped, one by one, down the inflated chute that extended from ABL-1’s forward hatch to the puddled concrete of the runway.

This isn’t going to be good for my back, Harry thought as he waited behind Monk Delany and the others of his team. Three of the Air Force crew had already slid down the chute; Wally Rosenberg was next.

“Off I go into the wild blue yonder,” Rosenberg wisecracked. He jumped from the lip of the hatch, hit the chute with his rump, and slid down into the waiting arms of a team of Air Force noncoms.

Harry saw a quartet of Air Police down there in white helmets and sidearms. Waiting for Monk, he figured.

“Will you be okay?”

It was Colonel Christopher, waiting last in line. “I can do it,” Harry said.

“I heard you had a bad back,” said the colonel. “Who told you that?”

In the shadows of the hatchway he could see a smile light her face. “I have my sources,” she said.

Taki Nakamura squealed as she jumped. Monk was next, big and lumbering. Now Harry stood at the lip of the hatch.

“Don’t make a big jump,” the colonel advised. “Make it easy on yourself.”

Unconsciously, Harry closed his eyes as he jumped. He felt his heels hit the inflated chute, then his rump. He expected a flare of pain but he felt only a tweak. He slid to the bottom on the rain-slicked chute and was grabbed by the Air Force noncoms, who helped him to his feet.

Squinting in the pelting rain, Harry saw that the Air Police were walking Monk off to a waiting Humvee. Turning, he watched Colonel Christopher slide down the chute. She got to her feet almost unaided.

“Nothing to it,” she said to Harry, grinning.

She’s really pretty, Harry thought. Kind of tiny, like a pixie. Really pretty.

The colonel turned to look back at the wreckage of ABL-1. Harry stepped up beside her, already soaked by the cold rain.

The plane was resting on its belly, slightly tilted. The left wing had ripped off and was resting several hundred yards down the runway, flames flickering from its root, where it had torn off from the fuselage. The pouring rain was pelting the fire, keeping it down as a dozen or so firefighters sprayed the whole wing with fire retardant.

ABL-1 ‘s fuselage looked to Harry like a stranded whale, resting on one side, its right wing angled defiantly against the thick gray clouds scudding above.

“We can salvage the COIL,” Harry said.

The colonel looked up at him. “They’ll build a new plane. More than one.”

“Damned right.”

“Your back okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

She gripped his arm lightly. “It’s been a helluva day. There’s an interrogation team waiting to debrief us.”

Harry thought about Monk and nodded.

One of the noncoms came up to them and pointed to an unmarked minivan standing a dozen yards away. Taki, Angel, and Wally Rosenberg were getting into it, together with the Air Force crew members. “Your transportation, ma’am,” she said to the colonel.

Karen Christopher tugged at Harry’s arm. “Come on, buddy, our chariot awaits.”

He let her guide him toward the minivan.

“After the debriefing’s finished,” said Karen Christopher, “I’m taking you to the officers’ club and buying you a drink, Harry.”

He felt pleased. Very pleased. And flattered that this good-looking and very competent woman liked him. I’ll have to go through with the divorce, he said to himself. I’ve got to get on with my life and let Sylvia get on with hers.

With a final glance over his shoulder at what was left of ABL-1, Harry ducked into the minivan, ready to face whatever was waiting for him in the future.

Pasadena, California: Anson Residence

In his penthouse aerie, Victor Anson stared at the blank screen of his telephone. They’re down, he repeated to himself. They made it to Japan and they’re all safe.

He nodded once and then commanded the phone’s voice-recognition system to call Gaetano Bartoni, in New York. It took some time to get a connection through; Anson got up from his desk and poured himself a glass of amontillado.

“Christ, Victor, it’s past midnight here!” Bartoni’s usually cultured tone was buried by burning indignation.

Sliding into his desk chair, Anson made a tight smile for the banker’s image on his phone screen. “Sorry, Guy, but this can’t wait.”

Bartoni had spent much of his adult life training himself to be polished and soft-spoken. His banking fortune may have started on street corners in Brooklyn, but for years now he had made his headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Cosmetic surgery had given him a reasonably straight nose and a smooth, tight face. His thick gray hair was always perfectly coiffed. But now, roused from his bed after midnight, his Brooklyn origins glared through his careful facade.

“All the friggin’ satellites are off the air, Wall Street’s in a panic, the President claims some gooks tried to nuke us, and you can’t wait until a decent hour to call me?”

“How are you fixed for investment capital?” Anson asked, knowing that it would cut through Bartoni’s ruffled emotions.

“Huh? Investment capital?”

“Our ABL-1 plane crash-landed in Japan less than an hour ago.” Before Bartoni could react, Anson went on. “After successfully shooting down a pair of North Korean missiles.”

Bartoni’s expression went from anger to surprise to curiosity. “So that’s what the President was talkin’ about in ‘Frisco?”

“It was indeed. Anson Aerospace’s Airborne Laser system defended this country against a nuclear missile attack.”

Bartoni muttered, “Jeez.”

Anson continued. “The government is going to want to replace the crashed plane. And build new ones.”

“And you need investment capital for that,” said Bartoni.

With a shake of his head, Anson corrected, “No, the Missile Defense Agency will give us a contract for that, no problem.”

“Then what...?”

“Satellites!” Anson chirped. “There’s going to be an immense demand to replace all the satellites that have been knocked out. Now’s the time to invest in building satellites—and rocket boosters to launch them.”

“That’s already a crowded market, isn’t it?”

“Not now, Guy. The market’s suddenly wide open. It’s going to be raining soup! Let’s start getting as many buckets for ourselves as we can!”