He couldn’t go on. Randy reached over, grabbed his shoulder. ‘General, please.’
The General shook off Randy’s hand. ‘And now I’m about to kill millions of my countrymen…’
There was motion at the other end of the room. It looked like the doctor was now back on his feet. Randy again squeezed the shoulder of the man who’d been his superior officer for all these years.
‘Don’t give up now, General. Don’t give up now.’
The General nodded briskly. ‘I’ll do my best. You can count on that.’
‘Of course.’
At the Peterson Air Force Base Lt General McKenna was on a conference call with his boss of bosses, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Chairman’s boss, a former governor who was now orbiting a patch of Albertan prairie land, hundreds of miles away.
‘McKenna,’ the Chairman said. ‘Are your flights in place?’
‘Affirmative,’ he said.
‘All right. What then?’
‘Awaiting developments, sir, from AirBox and the Tiger Team that’s running the show.’
The Chairman said, ‘Are you comfortable with what they’re doing?’
A hell of a question. McKenna glanced out his office window to the terminals and display screens that were designed to protect this nation and its borders, from the time of the Soviet empire to now, when the threat had been changed to hijacked aircraft being flown into office and government buildings. Now? Nineteen aircraft, airborne biological bombs, and so far, the only defense he and his staff could devise was to blow them out of the sky.
‘No, sir,’ he said finally. ‘No, I’m not. But I’m afraid I don’t have any better ideas.’
The Chairman grunted. ‘Yeah. Who does? All right. We’re trying to work the problem on our end as well. But remember one thing. Those aircraft are not going to fly low enough to release their payloads. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
‘Very good.’ Then, the Chairman’s voice changed, and he was talking to the other man on the line. ‘Sir? Any questions for General McKenna?’
‘No, not right now,’ the third voice said. ‘Appreciate all you’re doing. Both of you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the Chairman said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ General McKenna said, though he couldn’t imagine that he would be in this job at the same time tomorrow.
When news was released about the supposed hijacked aircraft in the United States that were carrying anthrax, Mexico, quickly followed by Canada, closed its airspace to United States-flagged aircraft. Japan followed, then the Caribbean nations, France, and lastly, reluctantly, Great Britain.
Victor was helped to his seat. He rubbed his hands together and then rubbed at his face. He was tired and he felt humiliated by what he had done, and he despised the look of pity from the other men in the conference room.
‘I’ll be fine. Honest. Jesus.’
Again, the face, staring at him, waiting for information, waiting for a miracle. It brought back bad memories of his residency, working in the ER during the night shifts, looking at the same expressions from moms who wanted to know if their young boys were going to live, even with the tops of their heads blown off by nine-millimeter bullets. He said, ‘Nineteen aircraft. Where are they?’
The General said, ‘Orbiting at various locations in the southeast, over areas with the least amount of population.’
‘How long can they stay up there?’
‘Another three, four hours. Tops,’ the General said.
Victor said, ‘Can’t they get refueled up there? The Air Force or something?’
Monty shook his head. ‘No. Civilian aircraft. They don’t have aerial-refueling capability.’
Three or four hours…Christ on a crutch…
‘And what happens at the end of the three or four hours?’
Bocks said, ‘They start to descend. And before they get to three thousand feet… the Air Force will shoot them down. They can’t be allowed to let those canisters release the anthrax.’
‘No,’ Victor said.
‘No, what?’ Bocks said.
‘The aircraft. They can’t be shot down.’
The machinist guy, Tuthill, said, ‘Well, yeah, we don’t want them to be shot down. I mean, they’re our guys and—’
Victor said, ‘Excuse me, am I speaking in fucking Latin or something?’
Tuthill’s face reddened. Everyone else kept their stare on him. Monty said, ‘I’m afraid we don’t understand, Victor. Tell us what you mean.’
‘The aircraft. They can’t be shot down.’
‘Tell us more,’ Monty said.
Victor couldn’t believe that they didn’t realize what was going on. He said, ‘Monty. You’re our military whiz, Right?’
Monty said calmly, ‘Yes, I’m the military rep for this Tiger Team. Go ahead.’
‘When the jet tries to shoot down a cargo aircraft like this, how does it happen? Do they have laser beams? Anti-matter disintegrators? When they shoot it down, does everything turn to dust?’
‘No,’ Monty said. ‘You know that.’
‘Maybe I do, but I think you’ve all forgotten. Tell me how the aircraft would be shot down.’
Monty said, ‘There are F-15 Eagles or F-16 Falcons up there, with air-to-air missiles. Probably AIM-9 Sidewinders. If they get the order, they drop back, fire one, maybe two missiles. Heat-seekers. Go right into the engines, explode… aircraft spirals down, breaks up.’
Victor slapped the table for emphasis. ‘Exactly! You damn fools, don’t you see what this means? The fuselage remains intact. It spirals in. Even if the fuselage does start to break up, the canister is in there, self-contained, with its own radio-altimeter-triggered switch, and as it’s spiraling into the ground, sure as shit, gentlemen, that anthrax will be released, no matter how many missiles get fired at those aircraft.’
AirBox personnel might wear the same uniforms and have the same pension plan, and most had the same military background. But in the air that early morning were thirty-eight scared and angry men and women whose company loyalty was under a severe strain.
Among them was Helen Torrinson, the co-pilot aboard AirBox 10, which was currently orbiting a patch of Mississippi sky about twenty thousand feet above Biloxi. With her, in the captain’s seat, was Hank Harmon, also known as ‘Hammerin’ Hank’, not only for his checkered flying past with the Marines but also because of his habit of heading straight to one of Memphis’s nightspots whenever he got back from a flight. Helen — who had flown CM 30 transport aircraft in the Air Force Reserve — knew that in most other carrier companies Hank might have been grounded months ago for his drinking.
But AirBox, as the advertisements liked to point out, wasn’t like any other carrier.
And ever since that ACARS message had come through, Hank had remained pretty quiet for Hank, though Helen had noticed that his face had been turning grayer, with trick-les of perspiration dripping down his cheeks and neck. Her own attempts at conversation had been met with an occasional ‘yeah’ or a grunt as they continued to fly on autopilot.
But it had been the arrival of the F-15s — calling themselves Sword One and Sword Two — that finally triggered something.
Hank had whipped his head back and forth, leaning forward in his seat to get a better view of the escorting fighter jets, and he had started murmuring something, about plots, about death, and Helen had sat there, almost frozen with indecision.