“Okay, Dr. Martin,” he heard. “You win.”
He almost smiled. All those years, he had devoted himself to ferreting out disease, often risking himself, giving obscene energy, particularly for one fundamentally introverted. But, now, he realized with stunning clarity, he really had no investment anymore in people. He just wanted to be spit out from the belly of this sarcophagus. Maybe left to die, but, at least, left to himself.
Six
The soupy emotions left Lyle in an eyeblink, and there he stood again on the flight deck, tuned in to the voices.
“I’m prepared to allow you to go out there, Dr. Martin,” Eleanor said. “Dr. Martin!”
“Yes, yes.”
“We’re going to run out of heat. We need to know if we can go inside the terminal or inside the plane. I can’t make that call without knowing what’s out there. My personal preference is for me to go but Jerry makes a firm and fair case. So I want to ask you: Are you truly prepared to go out there and examine that man on the ground?”
“Yes.”
“You understand there could be a huge risk. We don’t know what’s out there.”
“Yes.”
“Jerry will go with you into the hold.”
“And cover you,” Jerry added, meaning: with the gun.
Now Lyle thought he understood Jerry’s motivations in allowing him to go outside. The first officer wanted to do something. He wanted to attack. This guy unnerved Lyle, and he’d already been in the hold, doing who knows what.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Lyle said. “Viruses or toxins don’t respond to gunplay.”
“So now this is a virus or toxin?” Eleanor said.
“I don’t see blood. No obvious violence.”
Eleanor handed him a yellow poncho, matching one that he noticed now that Jerry already was wearing.
“It’s not much,” she said.
“Good for visibility.”
“You read my mind. What else would be useful?”
“Not the slicker.”
“I thought you just—”
“Yes, it is good for visibility. You can see me better out there. But so could someone else, if someone is watching. Like I said, I personally doubt this is an armed attack though I’m not an expert on that front. Regardless, surely, you and Jerry talked about this and realized it is a potential suicide mission. That’s why I’ll be out there with the body and he’ll be below with his”—he looked for the word—“weapon. In case.”
She laughed bitterly. “This was your idea and don’t pretend it wasn’t.”
Lyle smiled but the meaning was unclear. Was he saying she read his manipulations correctly or that he accidentally made this bed himself?
“So what else do you need, Dr. Martin?”
Lyle looked out the window and made a show of thinking. Truth was, he wasn’t really consumed with the idea of figuring out what was going on. Most likely, these people were dead and he just wanted to get off the plane. He hadn’t particularly been approaching this as doctor, so much as escapee; not that he’d just start running. He was at least curious. If something killed these people, what was it? He’d like to feel for a pulse. He just wasn’t determined the way he once had been, not even close. He listed a few items: flashlight; face masks; rubber gloves from the medical kit; antiseptic wipes.
“Can we bring the defibrillator—below? Have it ready—in the hold.”
Eleanor shrugged. “It’s kept just beyond first class, in the overhead.”
“Well, let’s get to it,” Lyle said. “Down through there?” He looked below the observer’s seat.
Lyle nodded thoughtfully; made sense.
Lyle lifted the latch under the observer’s seat.
“Whoa, there, cowboy,” Eleanor said. “We have no plan.”
Lyle laid out how he saw it. He and Jerry would drop into the hold. They’d close the door behind them. Jerry would help lower Lyle to the ground and then wait while Lyle checked out the body of the guy in the jumpsuit. Lyle said he would use basic hand signals. Thumbs-up, thumbs-down.
“Thumbs-down means he’s dead?”
“Let’s not worry about him. Thumbs-up means I’m okay and forget about thumbs-down. I’ll either give a thumbs-up or ask you to join me. You can relay what I’m saying to them and we’ll go from there.”
Lyle didn’t wait for an answer. He started down to the hatch.
Eleanor grabbed his arm. She used just enough force to turn him around and let go. She locked on to his eyes. For the slightest moment, everything around them swept away and he felt her magnetism, connection’s seeds, and he blinked and looked down.
“You don’t have to do this, Dr. Martin.” Earnest.
He nodded.
“You need to stay low and be careful.”
Lyle looked down. He couldn’t handle this much sincerity, not now, and not for years. People who cared left him wondering whether or not to trust. The memories jagged in and out: Tanzania, Dean Jane Thomas, Melanie, all of it somehow leading here.
“Get a quick reading, make your best guess, and then get your ass back here,” she said. “I very much appreciate this.”
Lyle barely heard the last of this. He refused to let himself listen. He plopped down into the cold belly of the plane and wiped a tear from his cheek.
Cold seized him. The frigidity reminded him of when he used to walk into the refrigerated part of the lab. One time, early on in his relationship with Melanie, they stole into one of the Mortech units and tore off each other’s clothes and got after it. In walked a grad student who, in fierce backpedal, spilled incubating disease in test tubes that, thankfully, weren’t yet airborne. Truly, Melanie had joked, their first shared STD.
Lyle probed with his foot for a landing spot and caught the bottom rung of a rope ladder. He tested the footing, then allowed himself to rest on the rope ladder. He dipped his head into the plane’s belly. He let go of the last handle in the cockpit and, presto, dropped into a new world.
“Flashlight,” he yelled. He held his hand up again, waving blindly. A hand put the cylindrical light into his palm. He felt Eleanor give him a squeeze.
He heard Jerry say, “I should’ve gone first. This is the worst idea.”
“Get down there then. Lyle, wait at the bottom for Jerry.”
Lyle dropped to the floor of the hold and crouched. The light, already turned on by Eleanor, danced about, a wayward laser. Lyle steadied it dead ahead and found himself face-to-face with a crate. He listened to Jerry descend, holding a second dancing light. He dropped, scraping Lyle’s leg with a loafer. Lyle could see only the crate ahead and their breath.
“Okay?” asked a muffled voice from above.
“Okay.”
Jerry pointed the light to his left, revealing an opening between the crates. He walked that way and Lyle followed. He couldn’t tell if the first officer’s silence reflected his distaste for Lyle or a business-like approach. Seconds later, skirting crates, they arrived near the nose. Lyle flooded his light upward but felt Jerry push the tip of the light down.
“I got grounded once taking supplies into Baghdad. It was just before dawn and we had to sit for two fucking hours at the edge of this shithole village controlled by the other guys. We crouched the whole time. My point being that it’s good to keep visibility low.” Jerry focused his light on the floor. “Tricky latch. Can you hold the light?”
Lyle did as asked. Jerry tinkered and unlatched. Lyle noticed the frayed skin on the first officer’s cuticles. Could mean nothing? When it happened to Lyle, it meant he hadn’t been sleeping. A gasp of even colder air seeped out of the plane.