World War III

Kennedy left his office and walked down the narrow corridor to the ops room. T/Sgt. Stedman had the graveyard shift this morning. That was fortunate and unfortunate, Kennedy thought. Stedman was very good, very reliable. But he ate that damned jelly and everything he touched got sticky.

“How’s it going, Stedman?” Kennedy moved to the coffee machine. He set his shaving kit down and drew a cup of coffee.

“Hey, Lieutenant.” Stedman turned, shrugged with a smile. “Usual. The satellite shows the front building over Chartosk. Otherwise, quiet.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes, sir. Please. Black.”

Kennedy drew another cup. He crossed to the console and set it beside the tech sergeant.

“Thank you, sir. You’re up early, Lieutenant.”

Kennedy nodded. “Couldn’t sleep.” He moved to the duty desk and glanced through the message log.

Through a partially open door he heard snoring and walked to it to peer inside.

“Wilkinson,” Stedman said. “Never knew a guy could make so much noise unconscious.”

“Everyone down?”

“Till six.”

“Who’s relief?”

“Myerson.”

Kennedy nodded again, satisfied. He went back to the coffee machine for more sugar then sat at the duty desk. A week-old copy of Newsweek was stuffed in the top drawer. President Thomas McKenna faced Senator Milton Weston on the cover. Lightning bolts separated the two old rivals. Politics. The presidential sweepstakes was starting. Again. The first primaries would begin in less than three months, Kennedy realized without enthusiasm. He turned to the sports news.

It began with a blinking light. Kennedy had read all that interested him in the news magazine and had turned to the featured interview in Playboy when he heard Stedman’s chair squeak suddenly. He looked up to see the alert light blinking on the long-range-tracking radar console.

“Lieutenant.” Stedman’s voice was calm but serious.

“What is it?”

“I have a blip. North quadrant, Tango-Charlie sector.” Kennedy got up from his place at the duty desk. He took his shaving kit and moved behind Stedman’s chair. “What’ve we got?” The tech sergeant adjusted the scope he was staring at. “I don’t know.”

“What range?”

“Ah, two hundred… no, one-seventy miles. At one thousand five. Speed…” He changed to another scope. “Two-seventy knots. It’s a bird, all right.” Stedman looked back at Kennedy. “Ahead of the front.

Do we have anything up?”

Kennedy shook his head. “No.”

Stedman was slightly shaken. He looked back at his screens. “Whoever it is, he’s on the deck.”

“How many?”

“Just one, Lieutenant. We’re getting tracks from just one plane.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.” Stedman nervously licked at a sticky finger and punched up a computer display that printed out a mapped grid of coordinates centered around a bright red blip. Beside the blip was a flashing message, UNIDENTIFIED TARGET, with alphanumeric data on speed, direction, altitude and course.

“It’s air-breathing, all right. It’s too slow and too low to be anything else.” Kennedy nodded. “You’re right.” He opened the shaving kit.

“I’d better notify Elmendorf,” Stedman said quickly. He wasn’t just serious or just excited anymore, Kennedy realized by the tone of his voice. He was frightened. “NORAD will have to be—”

“I don’t think so,” Kennedy replied calmly. He’d already screwed the silencer over the barrel of the automatic pistol as Stedman half-turned to face him.

“But, Lieu—”

The pistol barely moved in his hand as he pulled the trigger. Kennedy had never used a silencer before, and the only immediate evidence that the weapon had fired was the quiet phhumpt from its muzzle and the maroonish-black hole the slug made in T/Sgt. Willard J. Stedman’s forehead.

The NCO’s head was snapped backward by the impact and his body immediately lost all coordination, slipping out of the chair, knocking over a half-filled jar of peach preserves from the console and falling to the floor with a hard thud. Kennedy stood over him a few seconds, the weapon trained on the base of the skull, but there was no movement.

Lieutenant Kennedy then went into the sleeping quarters and, standing over each of the occupied cots in turn, fired once into his sleeping victims. When he returned to the ops room, the snoring had ceased.

* * *

The blip on the screen was still blinking as he dragged Stedman’s body a few feet away from the console and sat in the controller’s chair. He stared at the screen as he made his call to Elmendorf.

“Hello, six-eight, what’s up?” said a slightly bored voice on the line.

Kennedy checked his watch. It was exactly 0500 hours.

“Lieutenant Kennedy. We’ve got a bad generator here, throwing voltage fits. It’s screwing up our high-band reception.”

“So?”

“I’m requesting permission to shut down for a few minutes. We can fix it, but nobody wants to get near the damn thing while it’s fritzing like this.”

“Terrific.”

Kennedy took a long breath. “Okay?”

“Wait a minute.” There was a muffled conversation at the other end, then: “Kennedy, this is Colonel Clark. What’s the matter up there?”