The Viral Epiphany

by Richard McSheehy

  “I don’t think so, sir, but would you mind telling me why you are questioning the choice of targets there?” General Baker looked up at the countdown clock and shook his head in exasperation.

  “Certainly. I have spoken with an Irish research scientist. He has created a vaccine for the disease. In fact he has given us a small supply. He also said that Ireland is disease free! We need to quickly re-verify our information General.”

  “Yes, sir. Hold on a minute, please, sir.” General Baker picked up the P.A. microphone and paged Franklin James Singleton III to come to the Omega control room immediately. A minute later, red-faced and out of breath, Franklin pushed the control room door open and hurriedly waddled over to General Baker’s desk. He sat down across from the General and began wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his left hand. He was holding a half-eaten almond croissant in his right hand.

  “Franklin,” General Baker said, looking slightly disgusted, “I need an answer, and I need it fast!”

  “Yes, sir!” Franklin said, very surprised. He had never heard the General talk to him like this before.

  “What data set did you use to determine that cities in Ireland should be targets in Clean Sweep? Hurry up. The President needs to know!”

  “Data set? What do you mean?” Franklin replied as he looked wildly around the room for the President. “We used the population data that was published by the Irish government. Why?”

  “No, no, no. I mean what disease data did you use?”

  “Disease data?” Franklin asked, looking perplexed. “Why do you think we used disease data? I don’t have any disease data. The computer just uses model projections. We do that for all the cities. Why?”

  “You mean you don’t know if there are actually any cases of the disease in Ireland?” General Baker had never bothered to learn the details of how the targeting program actually worked, but he had always assumed that it relied on actual disease statistics.

  “No, sir, of course not. I’m sure you must recall that the Clean Sweep targeting program was written with the assumption that there was a worldwide outbreak of a really bad disease. Right? So, given that there is a worldwide outbreak then it’s just a matter of eliminating cities of certain size in order to control the spread of the disease. We don’t need actual disease data,” he said and sat back with a self-assured smile.

  “You don’t need disease data?” the General said, completely dumbfounded.

  Franklin smiled proudly, shook his head ‘no’, and took a bite of his croissant.

  General Baker sat and stared at him for a second. “OK, Franklin. You just sit tight here and listen in case I need you. I’m going to put this on speakerphone now, but you just keep quiet unless I tell you to speak. Got it?”

  “Yeah, John,” Franklin said nodding amiably, “Sure.”

  General Baker then took a deep breath before he spoke again to the President. “Sir, I’m afraid we don’t have any disease data for Ireland.”

  “What?” the President said, looking over at Grace, “you targeted Ireland with no data?” A slight trace of hope appeared on Grace’s face.

  “It’s a long story, sir. But that’s it in a nutshell.” General Baker wondered for a split second how he might have to explain this later on.

  “General,” the President said with a tone of urgency now in his voice, “this researcher in Ireland, his name is Doctor Dan Quinn, told us he has a vaccine that works!”

  “Daniel Quinn?” the General asked, unable to hide the surprise in his voice. “Is he in Cork City?”

  President Cranston hesitated for a second before replying, “Why yes, he is. How did you know?”

  “Sir, we have a black team looking for him right now. He knows too much about things he shouldn’t.”

  “What??” the President shouted, “Are you out of your minds over there? Call that team off right now! This guy has a vaccine, General!”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. I’ll take care of it. Right away, sir.”

  “General,” President Cranston said, calming down slightly, “they have millions of doses already made in Ireland. And…he said that our CDC is currently manufacturing millions of doses too! Did you know that?”

  General Baker looked up for a moment, trying to remember if he had heard anything about the CDC making a vaccine. “No, sir. I hadn’t heard that. Sir, I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t see how that’s relevant at this time. I mean we’re past T minus thirty now and what difference does it make if anybody has a vaccine now? There’s no time left to give millions or billions of people shots. It’s too late.”

  “Well, maybe not for Ireland. Doctor Quinn said they are already making inhalers and they will be distributing them to everyone in about a week. I don’t think we shouldn’t be targeting them!”

  “Yes, sir. Maybe you’re right about that. But, sir, how are they distributing the vaccine? It can take months to give everyone an injection. Oh, did you say it was inhaled?”

  “Yes, the vaccine is inhaled, General. They are mass-producing inhalers that they are distributing to the people!” President Cranston suddenly had an idea. “General, wait a minute. Maybe we could do that too! Maybe our industry could do the same as theirs! We have so much more manufacturing capability than they do. Maybe there’s still time!”

  “Sir,” General Baker said with as much patience as he could manage, “I don’t want to contradict you sir, but the population of Ireland is only about four million people. The U.S. has about three hundred million people and the world population is over six billion! I’m afraid that wouldn’t work. You can’t just hand out hundreds of millions or billions of inhalers to everyone on the planet now. There’s just not enough time. The computer projections show that. Hell, I have the expert right here beside me.” Franklin looked over at him and frowned slightly. He had been listening intently to the new course the conversation had taken and he didn’t want to be put into a position where he might be blamed for any miscalculations.

  General Baker then looked up at the control room countdown clock for a moment. “Sir, I don’t want to rush you, but I have to get going, we’ll be coming up to T minus fifteen minutes pretty soon.”

  “I see,” President Cranston said with the disappointment clearly in his voice, “We’re going to take Ireland off of our target list, General, but I only wish we could do something more. What, with all the vaccine that’s being made, I just wish we could find a way to use it.”

  “Sir,” General Baker said, trying to console him, “if you had something that could do aerial spraying of the vaccine, sort of like the Nightshade bomber, you might be able to do it, but we’ve only got one of those. I don’t know how else you could do it.”

  “Yes! That’s it!” President Cranston said, “Why can’t we use the Nightshade? It’ll be able to cover a lot of ground quickly, won’t it?”

  General Baker raised his eyebrows and shook his head. The President had never shown much grasp of what it takes to really get things done and as a result he had a history of always promising far more than he could deliver. “It’s only one plane, sir, you would need thousands and we just don’t have them. It’s sort of funny, though – now that you mention it. We do have enough bladders – I purchased a few thousand of them a while back when we had some extra funding and couldn’t spend it any other way. If we only had the planes we could probably do what you’re saying. But we don’t!”

  “Of course you do!” said a loud voice behind him. General Baker turned around and saw Franklin beaming at him. “Sure you have planes, John. You could put those rubber bladders into all of the commercial airplanes and military airplanes in the country. Just take out the seats! You hook the bladders up to the exhaust air vents in the tail – all the planes have them – and then you just spray the vaccine over the cities!” Franklin smiled broadly at General Baker and popped the last bite of the croissant into his mouth.

  General Baker stared at Franklin, his mouth half open in wonder. He’s right! he thou
ght. We probably could do that!

  “Sir,” General Baker said to the President as his voice rose in excitement, “I think we might have an idea here. I think we can use our chemical bladders and the country’s commercial and military fleets of large aircraft to spray all the major cities in the world. If there really is enough vaccine, sir…well…I think we can do this!”

  President Cranston smiled over at Grace and then said, “Well then, General lets do it! Cancel Clean Sweep immediately!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And General, listen,” President Cranston said lowering his voice and talking very slowly, “This means that we have some serious damage control to do now. We need to keep this whole Clean Sweep thing a very, very deep secret. The American people, hell, the world population, can never know that we actually put Clean Sweep into operation. Right? Do you understand me, General? This is very, very important!”

  “Yes, sir. Understood. We’ll take care of it.”

  “You do that, General. And General, call the dogs off Doctor Quinn. Right?”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir!”

  T minus ten minutes

  President Cranston had left the stateroom, with Grace holding his hand, and he was standing beside Captain Andrews in the control room of the Seawolf when the urgent message came in.

  “Captain! We’ve just received a FLASH message from Omega Headquarters! The communications officer took the message from the Seawolf’s printer and handed it to Captain Andrews.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  TOP SECRET TOP SECRET TOP SECRET

  MESSAGE PRIORITY: FLASH

  URGENT MESSAGE TO CMDR SSN SEAWOLF:

  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP IS CANCELLED

  ABORT ABORT ABORT

  OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP IS CANCELLED

  NOTICE: THIS INSTANCE OF OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP WAS AN UNANNOUNCED, AS REALISTIC AS POSSIBLE, READINESS DRILL. ALL UNITS WILL RECEIVE PERFORMANCE SCORES IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

  ALL UNITS ARE TO RETURN TO BASE AND STAND DOWN IMMEDIATELY.

  ALL LAUNCHES ARE TO BE ABORTED IMMEDIATELY.

  REPEAT: ABORT ABORT ABORT

  SECURITY NOTICE: FOR ALL INVOLVED PERSONNEL

  ALL DETAILS OF THIS OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP READINESS DRILL ARE NOW CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET. NO PERSON MAY DISCUSS OR DIVULGE ANY DETAILS OF THIS OPERATION TO ANY UNCLEARED PERSON – EVER.

  PENALTY FOR ANY PERSON IN VIOLATION OF THIS ORDER IS SEVERE.

  ALL PERSONNEL TAKE NOTICE.

  GENERAL JOHN BAKER, OMEGA HQ SENDS

  ABORT ABORT ABORT

  OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP IS CANCELLED

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  “Attention all personnel,” Captain Andrews said into the P.A. microphone, “Operation Clean Sweep is cancelled. This was only a drill. We have been ordered to stand down and return to base. However, before we head back to Bremerton we have a couple of passengers who want to get dropped off closer to home!”

  Captain Andrews switched off the microphone and turned to Charlie Murray. “Charlie, you think you could find us a course back to New London?”

  Charlie smiled back at the Captain, “You bet I can, skipper. You bet I can.”

  Thirty-Nine

  A cold white sun rose silently into the pale blue sky above New York City while the east wind from the ocean, frigid and piercing, huffed along the desolate avenues and around the empty street corners. Traces of new fallen snow lay on the sidewalks while clouds of ghostly white steam hissed and rose into the air from steel manhole covers. It had been two weeks since Operation Clean Sweep had been cancelled. SSN Seawolf had followed the course set by Charlie Murray and had arrived at the port of New London, Connecticut a week ago, and President Cranston and Grace had returned to a nearly empty White House, abandoned by all except a handful of dedicated guards and two servants.

  Now, at one minute before seven a.m., in the nearly deserted streets of New York, sirens began wailing in the streets as police cars and fire trucks drove up and down the avenues, along the streets, and even into the back alleys of the Village.

  “Attention, attention. This is the New York City Police,” one of the policemen said over his car loudspeaker, “Everyone, everyone, listen! Come out to the streets now for your Asian Fever vaccinations. Everyone come out to the streets immediately!” The police cars and fire trucks crisscrossed the city broadcasting the word to the occupants of every building they passed. Similar announcements were being made simultaneously on radio and television. Slowly and cautiously, people began emerging from the apartment buildings and skyscrapers, restaurants, and homeless shelters. Somehow, people had survived, far more than the analysts at Omega had expected, and now they came out by the thousands as the news spread.

  A minute later, at exactly seven a.m., the first command was issued from the control tower at New York’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport. “Continental One Heavy, cleared for takeoff on runway four left. Continental Thirty-Five Heavy, cleared for takeoff on runway four right.”

  “Continental One Heavy rolling,” came the almost instant reply as the captain released the brakes and the huge Boeing 777 began accelerating down the runway.

  “Continental Thirty-Five Heavy is rolling,” crackled over the radio as soon as the first pilot had finished his callout. The Boeing 767-300 began its takeoff roll at the same time as the Boeing 777 aircraft, and the two aircraft sped down their parallel runways, rotated, and took to the air at almost the same instant.

  “Just like the old days in Viper squadron 21, Dave,” the second pilot radioed to the first.

  “Sure is, Ted. Hopefully you’ll be able to hold formation a little better now though,” he replied as the two huge aircraft began turning to the south to a heading that would take them out over the Atlantic Ocean.

  Before the two planes had even cleared the runways two more aircraft, a Continental 767 and an American Airlines 777 had pulled into position on the same runways, four left and four right, and their crews listened to air traffic control while they awaited their takeoff clearances.

  First they heard, “Jet Blue Twenty Seven cleared for takeoff on runway thirteen left; US Airways Five Five cleared for takeoff on runway thirteen right.” Seconds later they heard their callouts, “Continental Three cleared for takeoff on runway four left; American One One, cleared for takeoff on runway four right.” All four aircraft began their takeoff rolls simultaneously and before any of them had even left the ground four more aircraft had taken their places at the end of the runways and had started their takeoff rolls.

  At nearby LaGuardia Airport and Newark airport long lines of aircraft were taxing to the runways and taking off to join up in the skies over the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, C-5 and C-17 cargo planes were already airborne and heading out to the Atlantic Ocean to line up in their formations. They were soon to be joined by C-141 and C-130 aircraft from nearby Air National Guard units.

  While the planes took off in pairs every thirty seconds from airports across the east coast, the streets of New York were becoming filled with people waiting expectantly for the vaccine distribution to begin. The late November sun gave only slight warmth to the waiting crowd, and most of the people were beginning to feel the chill of the wind. Many more were beginning to doubt that anyone would be handing out vaccines anytime soon.

  “Dad, how much longer do we have to wait here?” Andy Cappelli asked as he looked up at his father. “ My hands are getting cold.” Andy was seven years old and although he should have started the second grade by now the large number of Asian Fever cases had led to the complete cancellation of all school classes.

  “I don’t know,” his father, John Capelli, said. “The announcement just said to come out to the streets for vaccinations and so I guess we just have to wait. It’s really important, Andy.
Try to rub your hands together for a while. OK?”

  “OK, Dad,” Andy said as he began clapping his gloved hands together. His mother had died of Asian Fever a week ago, and now he had only his father.

  John Capelli looked at the enormous crowds that were now filling the sidewalks and streets. “I have no idea how anyone could drive down these streets though,” he said quietly. He looked over towards the Ladder 21 fire truck that was parked at the corner. Maybe they can tell me how long it will be, he thought. As he turned back to take Andy’s hand, Andy tugged at his coat.

  “Dad, look!” he said and pointed straight down Fourth Avenue towards the southern horizon. Far off in the distant sky - it seemed as if he were looking down the length of a concrete canyon - John Capelli could see what appeared to be hundreds of small dots in the sky that were slowly moving towards them. They looked as if there were arranging themselves into groups as they moved, V-shaped groups.

  “Attention Alpha Two Wing, Attention Alpha Two Wing,” Captain Dave McKenzie, the pilot of Continental Flight 001, said, “This is Alpha Two wing leader. On my mark we will turn to heading Three Two Zero and descend to one thousand feet. Maintain formation and safe separation at all times! When we reach the city I will give a command to begin release of the vaccine. Be sure to fly directly over the avenues at a very low altitude at the slowest safe speed - the lower and slower, the better. But make sure you maintain a safe altitude and airspeed at all times. Each aircraft will pick its own avenue. Following the vaccine dispersal we will continue to the end of Manhattan Island, then we’ll reform for our next sortie to, uh, Newark, as previously briefed. Any questions?” He waited for several seconds but no one responded. “OK, everybody – just like the old days, right? Here we go! … Come to heading Three Two Zero on my mark… Three,… two,… one,… Mark!”

  “Dad!” Andy shouted, “Look at that! See the big V? It looks like big white birds! Maybe they’re swans, Dad! They fly in V formations like that, we learned that last year in school. Look, they’re all turning this way towards us! Oh, and look! There’s another V over there,” he said pointing to the northeast, “but that one’s not white, it’s gray. I bet that one’s geese, Dad. I wonder where they’re going?”