Ducking under the spinning rotor blades, Fremont ran up and banged on the helicopter window with the heel of his fist. Nora hurriedly unbuckled her harness and opened the door.
“We need to make a short stop before heading inside,” he shouted above the engine whine.
Grabbing her pack, Nora jumped to the ground and, following Fremont’s hunched over lead, dashed out from under the rotating blades.
“What’s all the smoke?” she asked once they were clear.
“Innovac’s incoming transport tried to make a run for it ― crashed inside the hangar. It’s a real mess. Serious injuries ― some of them ours. Jet fuel all over the place and still burning.”
Gunning its engines, the Comanche lifted skyward behind them. Fremont continued walking, Nora trailing him by half a step.
“Our mobile command center,” he said after they had gone a short distance, indicating a hulking camouflage-painted helicopter parked just outside the shadow of the fully-opened hangar door. “A specially modified Huey Stallion on loan from the Navy. Totally tricked-out for bio-hazmat duty.” Opening the door, he helped Nora climb aboard.
Without introductions, just smiling nods to and from the half-dozen uniformed occupants seated at plasma-screen workstations inside the electronics-stuffed belly, Fremont headed for the rear of the craft. Along the full width of the aft bulkhead, dozens of snow white EDS suits hung in narrow bays.
“Just a precaution,” Fremont said, noticing the alarm in Nora’s eyes. “Until we’re sure it’s completely safe. There was a helluva lot of gunfire inside. We’ve sealed everything at the hangar’s inner wall and swept the interior for anomalies. So far, nothing. But we decided to play it safe until you had a look-see.”
Lifting one of the slick polymer suits from its compartment, he put one foot inside, then the other. “Take any one you want. They’re all identically ‘Oh-My-God!’ super-sized.”
Nora removed the nearest suit from the wall and began pulling it on as Fremont continued. “The production rooms were completely untouched, but a few of the labs and especially the route to the main control center were pretty heavily damaged.”
“Have you quarantined everyone who was inside without protective gear?”
“Including the eleven bodies. All told that’s nearly fifty people ― ours and theirs. Plus the five surviving burn victims and the additional two bodies from the crash. We isolated them separately.”
“Including all the men from Bremer’s assault squads. Lyköan too?”
“Yep.”
“And Pandavas?” she asked, pulling the visored hood over her head, adjusting the regulator on the bio-particulate air filter canister.
“Disappeared. We rounded up everyone we found ― from the Cairncrest labs too. He wasn’t among them ― and so far nobody’s talking.”
“How about the others: Narayan or Whitehall? Julie Prentice?”
“Nada. Seemed to be only caretaker crews at both locations. The production labs weren’t even running. Pandavas may have known we were coming. Whatever. He apparently had enough time to get away with his whole entourage ― and at least some of the viral agent.”
Passing under the door’s great hydraulic-lift cylinders, they entered the hangar. Staying close to the wall in the smoke-filled hollow, Fremont explained, “There’s an old military adage that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. That sure was true here.”
“I see what you mean,” Nora replied, surveying the heap of twisted, still-smoldering wreckage as they circled around it.
“We treated everything as soon as we arrived ― once Bremer’s boys had secured the joint. Allcide fog and foam inside and out – every surface within fifty yards of the entrance.”
“Start everybody ― anyone who was inside the hangar before the area was treated ― TID: 75mg rimantadine hydrochloride and 100mg natrolamivir phosphate. Immediately, you understand?” She was speaking with somber authority now, unwilling to carry even one more Jack Cummings on her conscience if it could possibly be avoided.
“Are you guys getting this in there?” Fremont shouted above the din of firefighters battling the central blaze, holding two gloved fingers to his hood-covered ear.
“It’s only a prophylaxis ― you know ― until we can confirm there’s been no exposure. But humor me, okay. It’ll make me feel better.”
“Fine by me. This way,” Fremont said, motioning towards a guarded oval-shaped door, one of a number that stood along the hangar’s back wall. “We’ve set up an airlock de-con chamber for passage in and out. Before we head for the command center, though, I want you to speak with someone.”
“Who?” Nora asked.
“Derrick Taylor. The sergeant who was with your friend Lyköan when they first entered the labs. I want you to hear it from him ― just the way I got it.”
“And—?” Nora wondered.
“Just let him tell you his story.”
* * *
“I see him flying through the air,” Taylor exclaimed excitedly, reliving the events, “thrown back by the blast. Crashes real hard into the wall. He wasn’t five feet from the grenade when it went off. Thought he was dead for sure. Next thing I know ― poof! ― he’s gone. Like he disappeared. And there’s a helluva hubbub down the hall – screaming and gunfire ― and this god-awful screeching ― like metal grinding or something. Finally there’s this big crash. Then silence for awhile, followed by muffled gunfire farther off in the distance. Damned fine point work, but I have no idea how he pulled it off.”
“That’s it?” Nora asked.
“All I can tell you, ma’am. I was a little disoriented when that grenade went off ― but inside the doorway where I was holed-up, most of the blast blew by me down the hall. Anyway, once things settled down we followed the trail to the control room. It was hard to miss. Blasted doors and eight bodies along the way ― Lyköan’s weapon signature all over the place ― multiple rounds in the first two bodies, but the rest ― I dunno ― blunt force trauma maybe ― but no blood, not a single hole in any of ’em.
“When we reached the control room we found four armed guards piled together right outside the locked door. Lyköan was already inside. Those guys were the lucky ones, they were still breathing. We interrogated them when they came around, but they weren’t much help, didn’t even seem to remember what they’d had for breakfast. We didn’t dwell on it at the time ― still had the rest of the place to secure. ”
“Thanks, sergeant.” Fremont said. “I wanted Doctor Carmichael to hear it straight from you. We’re headed for the control room now to speak with Lyköan. I also wanted to personally thank you and the rest of the men for the fine job you turned in.”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” Taylor responded. “But that was the mission, you know? Anyway, once Lyköan secured the control room and could direct us to specific targets, running down the remaining resistance was nothing. But I’ll tell the men ― what you said.” With a snappy about-face he headed back to his brothers in arms, nonchalantly smoking and joking now that the death and confusion had passed.
Nora followed Fremont out of the quarantine room, taking a return route to the control center not very dissimilar from the exit she and Egan had traced during their escape: walls, floors and ceilings blood-stained and pockmarked, metal doors torn from their hinges, shattered glass, and odd depressions in the walls at irregular intervals. Fremont was silent, but none of it was lost on Nora.
“Those outfits you’re wearing ― very encouraging.” Lyköan chuckled, greeting them with a lilt and level smile when they entered the control room a few minutes later. “You guys worried about the virus? Don’t be. I’m pretty sure nothing escaped.”
“That’s what Felix thinks too, E,” Nora said, relieved to hear his familiar, easygoing banter again. Inside the bulky EDS suit and under the watchful eye of Fremont, embracing him was out of the question, but she couldn’t keep from walking over to where he was sitting in the glow of a bank of wide-angle screens a
nd placing a gloved hand on his shoulder. He winced.
“Uh, okay, I got winged right at the beginning of the melee. Zigged when I should have zagged. But it’s only a scratch ― really.”
“Before you shifted into overdrive, you mean,” Fremont corrected. “What exactly happened back there, Lyköan? No one who witnessed it has any idea.”
“Ever hear of the Hermetic Transformation, Felix?”
“No.”
“Look it up sometime. It’ll give you something to chew on.”
“That’s no explanation ― it’s more like a homework assignment.”
“Sorry. It’s all you’re going to get.”
Immediately changing the subject, he went on, “Besides, there's other business needs attention. While I been stuck in here I took a look through what was left of the Node’s chrono files. Looks like those pallets back in the hangar were the last of it. The Shiva Node was built for one fast run up and they finished quick ― days ago. Even without that last load, Pandavas can still boogie. What is H9N2 anyway, beautiful? This is the second time it’s come up.”
“Another avian-borne influenza, why?”
“That’s what’s in the canisters. As long as they haven’t been damaged we’re uncontaminated. Trust me, the inside of the Node’s clean.”
“You may be right, Lyköan, but we have to confirm that,” Fremont said, almost apologetically. “We’ve already promised His Majesty.”
“It’s his country I guess. Oh, I also ran across some other tantalizing tidbits. RPT1 to SIR2 gene stimulation. Ever hear of it? Age extension or something. Whatever the process, it seems to exponentially prolong cellular life ― all part of Innovac’s telomerase coding and nano-scripting work. These tiny devices his scientists had created that reworked the human genome at the molecular level. ‘Perfecting the organism’s genetic potential’ they called it. Apparently these things are virtually eternal, self-propagating and ― under certain conditions ― transmissible,” he emphasized the last word, lifting an eyebrow. “Really mind-blowing stuff. Way over my head, of course ― but thought you might find it interesting, Doctor.”
Nora understood immediately.
“Anyway, I’ve learned everything I’m going to here. It’s left me a good half step behind Pandavas, but, hey, that’s ten steps ahead of you, right Felix?” He couldn’t help himself, the Tanner was gloating again, for the moment the paramount aspect of his personality.
“Think so, Lyköan?” Fremont returned. “Well then, you must also know that Pandavas was at the Stockholm strategy session yesterday.”
“While Narayan was presenting in Ho Chi Minh City,” Lyköan smiled back, flashing a mouthful of astonishingly beautiful teeth, gleaming almost iridescently under the fluorescent lights. “Same presentation in fact. Every detail. Including viral exposure of the audience.”
“We notified the local authorities,” Fremont parried. “Successfully quarantined the Stockholm session. We did run into a little trouble with the Vietnamese. Took some time, but we eventually convinced them.”
“But,” Lyköan added, “not before our boys had left the conferences ― current whereabouts unknown. Just our luck, huh Felix? Nothing left but a few distracting wisps of smoke.”
Lyköan had grown tired of sparring with Fremont, their repartee exposing only the dark underbelly of an unpalatable truth.
“Anyway, once you’re satisfied there’s been no contamination here,” he said tiredly, “We’ll need to head back to Bangkok ― hopefully with State’s blessing and full diplomatic credentials. You can swing that, right?
“In the meantime, maybe you can call ahead and have somebody find out what’s been going on recently at Primrose.”
* * *
Lyköan shifted stiffly in the soft leather seat. After twenty hours, including an in-flight refueling over Diego Garcia, the C-37A was now eating air over the eastern edge of the Andaman Sea. The cabin was empty except for Fremont, Nora and himself.
Like Classic Greek tragedy, events were playing out to formula. Hubris or presumptive pride had lead to ate, an arrogant act offensive to the gods, which in turn was now sure to blossom into nemesis: retributive justice, ruin, infamy and death. Nemesis, that deified opponent, could not be avoided, beaten or overcome once hubris had arisen in the human heart. The trick right now was determining who possessed the greater hubris, Pandavas or himself. He hoped it would prove to be Dr. Pandavas. That seemed about right. Perhaps. But hadn’t there been plenty of presumptive pride in his own actions lately?
Might he also have done something to deserve it, perhaps something he was entirely unaware of doing? Hadn’t Oedipus, the classic example, asked the same question? Did he ever get a satisfactory answer? No, he only learned the nature of his unintended sin after the fact, when it was far too late. Sometimes committing a sin wasn’t even necessary, the gods one day simply found some previously innocuous mortal act offensive. Wasn’t that how genuine tragedy operated? In the end, Lyköan wondered, were all fates sealed, before the sin unknowable, and most unfortunately, after their commission, always unavoidable?
Take the illogic of Bremer allowing him to accompany the first wave assault on the Node. All he had done was ask. Obvious hubris. But why had Bremer agreed so quickly? The same for Fremont immediately acquiescing to his request for diplomatic credentials and a first-class government-paid ticket back to Thailand. What could explain any of it?
Nora was in the rattling seat next to him, her eyes closed, head thrown back, but he was pretty sure she was awake. The twin engines were humming monotonously in the background. They would be landing shortly. Across the narrow gulf of the fuselage, Fremont stared ahead blankly, a rainbow-hued cloud of sparkling fractals billowing out of his nostrils and dissipating with each repeating breath. They had talked themselves silent hours ago. Lyköan caught himself imagining Fremont wishing he were capable of reading minds, his two companions’ in particular.
Nothing much here, Felix. A little hubris. A little Greek tragedy. He smiled darkly and returned to the most troubling detail of his spectral foray to the Node days before, something that had failed to register at the time. During the conference room visit, Pandavas had referred to the meeting taking place in the afternoon. What afternoon could he have meant? The ‘yesterday’ referred at that meeting? The previous afternoon, when Nora had been caught on camera changing trains in Crewe? Impossible. No next afternoon existed between that yesterday and the following morning when he had witnessed the reference. There was only the afternoon that had not yet arrived. So what had he witnessed? A vision of the future? Of a possible future? One of Pandavas’s illustrious uchronia? He had relied upon the information and it had proven accurate. But how?
The plane banked. “Looks like we’re coming into Krung Thep,” he whispered into Nora’s ear with a nod towards the window. “Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.” His breath, though warm, made Nora shiver.
Spread out like a blanket below lay the lights of sprawling Bangkok ― the vastly overgrown village of wild olives ― an ocean of illumination painting the serpentine Mae Nam Chao Phraya in long, gaudy strands of electric incandescence, reflecting every garish color the human eye was capable of discerning as it flowed slowly south onto the distant Bight of Bangkok darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Coming Clean
Truth is a mobile army of shifting metaphors
Ludwig Büchner : Kraft und Stoff
Armed military patrols had been a common sight along Suvarnahbumi’s main concourse for as long as Lyköan had lived in Bangkok. During innumerable visits to the airport over the years, the faces of those automatic weapon-toting soldiers had generally been friendly. Not any longer.
A young, attractive American embassy attaché was waiting for them at the diplomatic gate. Lyköan had almost grown accustomed to the disturbing visualizations, in this case taking the form of the young woman’s brave, but nervous smile, radiating broadly from the corners of her mouth with a brilliant au
rora of incandescence, accompanied by iridescent sea-green eyes burning even more fiercely than the forced smile ― twin pools of fathomless aqua ― a bizarre head-enveloping mask into which he felt himself being swept. Smiling self-consciously, he looked away.
“Hope you’ve already confirmed your plans,” she announced pleasantly, introducing herself as she presented each of them in turn with freshly-issued passports. “The whole country’s gone into emergency lockdown. If you’ve got any official business ― anything not directly related to the influenza threat ― it’s not going to be met with much official response – at least not until this thing blows over.”
Digitized photos, thumbprints and retinal scans were hurriedly downloaded onto passport-embedded biometric microchips in the private U.S. annex, accruing to each newly minted civil servant the full panoply of diplomatic honor and privilege. With a flash of diplomatic credentials, they passed through customs without inspection and were on their way.
Ambassador Lyköan, Egan thought, grinning at the irony. Wonder if it comes with full immunity.
“I’m going to have our bags delivered directly to the embassy,” Fremont said, moving them through the gate turnstile. “We can pick them up later. And head out to the WHO labs immediately.”
“The embassy limousine is parked right outside airport security,” the attaché offered. Lyköan had already forgotten her name. Embarrassing. The tiny gate annex felt inexplicably oppressive, its silence deafening. “Anywhere you need to go,” she continued, “anything at all, it’s at your disposal. You’ve received full clearance from State, so anything you need...”
“I was hoping to swing by my place first ― check on a few things,” Lyköan said, his voice echoing hollowly as they entered the nearly empty international concourse. All he wanted, right now, was to put some distance between himself and Fremont, take Nora and follow their own noses. “It’s been weeks and I haven’t had a minute to myself.” Didn’t Felix have clues of his own to follow?
The SONG of SHIVA Page 38