by James Abel
Eddie asked me, “What?”
I called over to Janice, the vague suspicion coming as my heartbeat sped up, “Who got the medicines that we brought in? And who got the Chinese stuff?”
“But it’s the same!” she protested.
“Is it?”
I started down the row again. The first patient in line was Alice Richler, age nineteen, her chart read, a food service specialist on the Wilmington. Temperature at 103 two hours ago, at 101 now. Black curly hair tied back. She was breathing easier. The baby blue eyes showed a flicker of hope. She sensed, as the more alert patients did, that something good might be happening. She’d been at death’s door last time I’d checked.
On Alice’s crate lay a pair of pink plastic reading glasses, a ring of keys, a pen flashlight, a lucky bracelet with tiny charms, and a small white aerosol container.
Picking it up with my gloved hand, I read the label out loud. “Xapaxin.” And, “Manufactured in Shanghai.”
I reached across the aisle, to the adjacent night table, and picked up the aerosol container that sat there. It was shaped slightly differently, more bullet shaped, less bulgy at the center. I read the label.
“Xapaxin. Manufactured by Pacific-North Pharma.”
I moved on to the next pair of cots, and stopped. I read the next label on the right side. “Shanghai.” But the shape of the container told me that beforehand.
“And on the left side, Pacific-North Pharma.”
“But what . . .” said Cullen, and shut up.
Now we split up and the three of us went from cot to cot, reading labels.
Cullen moving down row two, saying, “China . . . China . . . China . . .”
Eddie in row one: “P-N Pharma . . . Pharma. But, One, I don’t get it. It’s manufactured in two places but it’s both xapaxin, the same stuff.”
And I said, holding two containers up, a bullet-shaped one from Pacific-North, a more rounded version from Zhou’s donated supply, “All we really know, Eddie, is that the labels say it’s the same.”
“It’s not the same,” I said thirty minutes later.
“Not even close,” breathed Eddie.
We were in the lab upstairs at the electron microscope again, comparing medicines, magnified 20,000 times on screens. Night and day. Yin and yang. Xapaxin, or at least the version manufactured in the United States, was an aquamarine crystalline bouquet, a shimmering jewel collection of bright surfaces, molecular clusters absorbing and sending forth the microscope’s internal bright probing light.
Xapaxin molecules, the sort that Zhou had donated, showed up as rust-colored clusters of grape-shaped ovals, thicker in the middle, small and bulging on top.
Eddie and I sat back. My pulse beat in my throat—strong and steady, a mix of hope, excitement, and bafflement.
“Is it possible?”
“Do you think?”
“But if it is an antidote,” I told Eddie, “how did they get it? How did they goddamn even have an antidote for the 1918 flu? You want to tell me that?”
“And also,” Eddie added, thinking out loud, “how did they know to bring it here? How did they know before we did, that we’re even dealing with the 1918 flu?”
“Unless they’re the ones using the bioweapon,” I said, “and this is it. They somehow introduced it into the sub.”
“Then why give us the antidote?”
“Maybe they made a mistake using it. Maybe whoever used it did so without orders. So now they need to stop it, but not admit they did it. It’s a screwup. They sent Zhou here to make the problem go away, before the truth got out,” Eddie suggested. “If the truth gets out that they attacked us, Christ, One, that’s an act of war.”
I recalled our first confrontation with Zhou, the way the Chinese officer had threatened to blow up the Montana, had sent soldiers to seize it. Was it possible that the whole episode—the attempt at seizure at first, the supplying of drugs when military action failed—had all been some kind of attempted cover-up, an effort to correct a terrible error made by someone on the Chinese side?
“No,” I decided. “That wouldn’t explain the disease breaking out because the Montana took hundred-year-old bodies aboard, and it sure wouldn’t explain the connection to an old silent movie.”
“Do you have a better explanation?” Eddie challenged.
“No.”
“How about a worse explanation?”
“No,” I said helplessly.
“Well, while we try to figure out any explanation,” Eddie said, “we better get word to the director that we might have an antidote. I mean, if people keep getting better on it then . . . My God! An actual antidote!”
“And I’m going to ask Zhou what the hell this is.”
I called ahead to the bridge to warn DeBlieu that I would be coming. It was the only way to try to use the long-range radio, that is, if it had been fixed. When I reached the bridge, the group of officers clustered at the control panel and chart table—a smaller group than usual, diminished by disease—moved back collectively, even though I was in my hazmat suit, with a surgical mask on instead of the faceplate, so I could talk.
The view through the windows stopped me dead. I’d not seen the sky for many hours, and it had changed. It seemed a schizophrenic rendering of two entirely different weather systems. To the northeast, a colossal northern light show—aurora borealis—turned the heavens astoundingly beautiful. The whole sky was luminous and deep cobalt, and against that background I saw enormous pulsating serpents in electric emerald, forming fantastic waxing and waning shapes—intertwined pythons, massive twirling ghost gyroscopes—while a solid arc of light stretched away, parallel to and fixed above the steep curvature of the earth.
But look left and I saw the ominous incoming mass of one more weather system, a thick solid gray. In minutes the cloud wall would slide between the lights and the ship, obscuring the glorious show, low and dark.
I turned to glance back. Behind the ship, a half mile away, was our follower, the sub, matching our speed.
DeBlieu’s crew stood ready with bottles of powerful disinfectant. They would pounce when I left and scrub anything I touched, anything nearby. The captain showed me how to operate the HF radio, and explained that the crew had been working in the radio room, and they were ready for a test.
“But even if we got the thing working, you might have trouble due to that light show overhead,” DeBlieu said.
When I switched it on, a gaggle of electronic scratches and screeches poured out. Nothing . . . nothing . . .
The whole thing went dead.
I could not call out.
I got on the handheld and called the submarine. While DeBlieu and the bridge crew listened, transfixed, I told the truth, that their medicines were working. I said that we knew now they’d sent aboard different stuff than ours. I told them that we’d compared medicines under the microscope, and the differences, chemically, were huge, no small modification. I thanked Zhou but also asked him, “Can you tell me what is in those containers? We’re going to need more. We need to know what it is.”
The static grew so bad that for an instant I thought that I’d lost him. The gray clouds were ominously closer in the sky now, racing toward us, closing the gap. The static climbed so high that I saw two of DeBlieu’s crew cover their ears with their hands.
But then the voice came through.
“Colonel, this is excellent news. I’ve been instructed to tell you that we are pleased that medicines made in China have been able to assist you in a time of need.”
He had not answered the question.
I asked, “But what is the medicine that you gave us?”
“I’ve been instructed to inform you that representatives from the People’s Republic would be pleased to work out a way, with your government, of supplying more help. These discussions will be held at high
levels so action can come fast!”
I felt as if he read from a script that had nothing to do with my questions. That he understood my questions perfectly and that no real answers would come. It was maddening. The man had studied English but just used it to talk in riddles. So I asked directly about Zhou’s change in behavior, the switch from aggressor to helper, as the static poured forth, and the British accent—if I didn’t know it came from a Chinese man, I would have envisioned someone in a bowler hat—came through again.
“I have been instructed, should you make this particular inquiry, to inform you that we work for a different superior now. The officer formerly in charge of our command is temporarily assigned to a different job.”
Above, I watched the dark clouds consume the light show. Soon half the sky was gray, then 30 percent, then 10. The electric green undulations vanished, as if they’d never been there at all.
I said, “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you? You’re not going to give me any answers at all.”
Nothing.
“Can you help us call Washington?” I asked, grasping at a new thought. “Patch me through?”
But they were gone. I cursed.
They were back.
“I’ve been instructed, Colonel,” the voice continued in that maddeningly formal tone, “to inform you that we now intend to break off contact, submerge, sir, and leave you with our good wishes before your warplane arrives.”
“Warplane?” A barb sliced into my belly. “What warplane?” I thought, Was that a warning? From Zhou?
“Colonel, considering the recent misunderstandings between our countries in the South China Sea, we do not wish our presence to be misconstrued as aggressive. We wish you continued success in thwarting the outbreak. I am instructed to say good-bye and wish you the best of luck, especially now that satellites cannot see what happens to you, with cloud cover so thick. We hope you suffer no accident.”
He clicked off. He did not answer when I attempted to reestablish contact. I went out on deck and saw, beyond the aft deck and copter landing square and winches at the rear of the ship, the submarine fall back, slide low, and then there was a phosphorescent frothing at the bow, from microorganisms. Zhou’s submarine began to disappear.
Captain DeBlieu—back on the bridge—had heard the whole conversation.
“What was that about a warplane?” he asked. “And an accident? And why the effing x do they know more than we do half the time? We need choppers, dropped supplies. A warplane? An accident?”
“How far are we from land, Captain?”
“Eighty miles, more or less. But I don’t get it. How come they haven’t sent us a copter by now?”
“Can I reach Barrow on the handheld?”
I tried. Of course no one answered. We needed a miracle. The goddamn radio had a range of a few miles.
DeBlieu said, not really believing it, “Maybe we’ll get lucky, patch up the radio room. Yeah, maybe.”
And I asked, “How fast can your Zodiacs go?”
“At top speed, twenty-six, twenty-eight knots.”
“So almost twice as fast as the ship. What kind of radio do they carry?”
“Standard line-of-sight transmission. You’ve got to see the place you’re trying to reach. On a good day, six miles.”
“I’d need to be near shore, then, to reach it.”
“If you even get there. There could be ice further south. It moves in packs. And you don’t know weather conditions. Things change fast. Look, Colonel, it’s an open boat, for work near the ship, but it’s not for distance, not up here. If you encounter a chop, or waves, you could flip in a second. And you’ll be in the dark. Hit ice at almost thirty miles an hour, and—”
“Lower a Zodiac, Captain. I need to get to Barrow.”
DeBlieu had turned white now, and not from disease, and he came close. He did not want the others nearby to hear.
“You’re saying that our own side is sending a plane to destroy us?”
“I’m saying give me a coxswain to drive the boat, the best person you have. I’m saying get someone on the radio, and stay on it, whether or not you think anyone can hear, and start screaming as loud as you can over the static: We may have an antidote. Keep sending, keep it up until you can’t scream anymore, keep it up while your guys try to fix the cables, in case you get a temporary connection, and then have someone else take over, scream it louder still.”
I started to leave, to get my gear, and turned back.
“Also,” I said, “I advise you to change direction now, head off toward the last place anyone would ever think that you’d go. Turn off every light! Now! Run dark. No radar. No sonar. Find that whiteout we passed and stay inside it. Give yourself every extra second. Maybe, with that electronic disturbance up there, it won’t be so easy to find you. Now, please, lower a Zodiac over the side!”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The coxswain was a master chief named John Kukulka. He was a big, strapping man from Ridgefield, Connecticut, built like a rugby player—ruddy face, fullback shoulders, curly hair and boyish cheeks, and a cheerful disposition as we sat in the Zodiac and were lowered down the starboard side of the Wilmington, to the Chukchi Sea.
“Ever go to Coney Island, Colonel?”
“Once, when I was a kid.”
“Like the rides?”
“Why?”
I saw his even teeth through the dark, white as snow. We wore crash helmets over our balaclavas. We wore thermal underwear and waterproof zip-up mustang suits against cold that would increase at almost thirty knots. Waterproof shells. Waterproof boots. The sky had clouded over. Aurora borealis was reduced to sporadic massive explosions inside the massed clouds. The ship was hidden from satellites. With Zhou gone, there would be no witnesses to whatever was planned to occur.
Now I was one of those Marines on the truck in Afghanistan, trying to reach the U.S. encampment, and whoever had ordered a warplane to hit us was also me, some officer onshore, in the continental United States.
“Coney Island,” John Kukulka said as I felt the buoyant Zodiac rock in the light swell, and as he button-started the motor. “At Coney Island, I liked the Cyclone roller coaster, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Python, now that was a good one.”
“And why are you telling me this, Kukulka?”
He grinned beneath his helmet. “Because here we go!”
The shock of the water on my face was immediate. The boat seemed to dig in and spurt forward and the bow lifted slightly but not enough so that John Kukulka—at the steering console toward the stern—could not see, with his night vision glasses, what was coming up ahead. The engine sounded monstrous. The ship fell back behind us, went from being a gigantic tanker shape, to a vague block of darkness with a few lights on, to those lights suddenly going off in the distance.
Something hard and angular flashed by at eye level on the port side.
“Ice bit,” shouted Kukulka. “Didn’t even know it was here.”
Now I knew why he’d asked about Coney Island. The little boat corkscrewed and leaped, turned sideways and righted itself. Frigid spray came from three directions. Our floodlight stabbed ahead, bouncing, yet somehow reflecting back into our faces. The sky seemed to press down and try to smother us. I thought, Warplane? What kind? A Hercules that could drop a fire bomb to float down by parachute? An Apache equipped with ship-killing missiles? A Navy jet launching harpoon missiles from twenty miles away, to guide them electronically into the ship?
Radar, I thought. Even with thick cloud cover, a warplane could light up that ship with radar.
“Hey, Kukulka!”
“What, sir?”
“You married?”
“To Lizzie.”
“Kids?”
“Ian. He’s eight.”
“Tell me about Ian.”
The jolly voice called back
, “He’s got a birthday coming up.”
“Get a present for him yet, Chief?”
“Yeah, Colonel,” shouted the big man, only the jaunty tone was gone now, and something harder and diligent was there. “I’m going to give him an intact family. I’m going to give him a mom who’s not a widow. And a dad who helps him blow out the candles on Lizzie’s banana cake. I’m going to get you where you need to be, so you can reach someone over our fucking radio, excuse the word, sir.”
At that moment, we hit something, wave, ice, log, who knows what, and we launched into the air again, corkscrewing and starting to flip. Kukulka slammed into the steering wheel, and bounced back. His hands flew off the wheel. His helmet hit the casing again. Blood blossomed from his right eye. I was no longer on the seat. I saw water below at a sixty-degree angle. Colonel Joseph Rush, no longer human, was flying. Colonel Joe Rush and coxswain John Kukulka, like Arctic birds, aloft, in the night.
In Barrow, the clouds blanketed the sky and the light show disappeared and the word finally came from Washington. The general stood up in the rescue squad office, at the airport, said good-bye to the two Eskimo boys. They’d been talking football, which had been pleasantly distracting. They were good kids, curious and smart, and joking with them had made the otherwise torturous wait go faster.
The general made his way downstairs, in his Arctic-issue shearling-lined hat and fleece pants. The F22 awaited him outside the hangar. The wind smelled wet. Inside the plane, huge kayak shapes, bombs, were finned and ready to be guided into the ship.
Their weight made takeoff longer than usual. Once in the air, he turned the Raptor to the north. He trimmed the wings. Dark sea raced by. He stayed below the clouds for better vision. He knew the last satellite coordinates for the Wilmington, but his radar seemed slightly off, possibly due to the light show high above in the ionosphere.
The Raptor had a top range of more than 1,800 miles and could reach air speeds of 1,500 mph, although today he was flying slower. The plane was capable, under combat conditions, of flying 500 miles, maneuvering, attacking an enemy, delivering payloads, and returning home. It was a miracle. He loved the Raptor. Today the route would be shorter, and finding the target should be simple with radar, despite the massive atmospheric disturbances wreaking havoc with satellites and sensors. Once he had visual confirmation of the target—as Washington wanted no mistakes, no bombing of some errant research or German tourist ship—he’d let loose with the 2,000-pound bombs.