Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Helen keyed the microphone switch, saying, breathing heavily, ‘This is AirBox 10...AirBox 10...we’re climbing...we’re climbing back to altitude ., .’

  There seemed to be relief in the F-15 pilot’s voice. ‘Roger, AirBox 10. Good job. We’ll get through this together. This is Sword One.’

  She looked over, at the slumped figure of Hank, at the blood on his shirt, blood on the panel, blood on the windscreen.

  ‘Sword One - to hell with you. I’ve just killed my pilot - and you’re going to land and be alive today...which is more than I can be sure of for myself.’

  Sword One didn’t answer.

  ~ * ~

  Monty looked at the flushed face of Victor, at the other faces of Brian and the General and Randy, the machinist. He said, ‘General, what will those pilots do when they get low on fuel?’

  Bocks said, ‘What do you think they’ll do? What any one of us would do in the same spot. They’re going to try to land. They’re going to try to dodge their fighter escorts, fruitless as that’ll be.’

  Land ... of course they’ll try to land, Monty thought. What else would they do?

  Land.

  At an airbase.

  Lots of airbases he’d been at over the years, busy ones like Offut and Eglin and Wright-Patterson. And, of course, lots of empty and quiet ones like—

  Shit.

  Empty ones.

  Lots of empty ones.

  ‘Doc!’

  ‘Yes, Monty?’

  ‘The anthrax - how long does it stay in the atmosphere?’

  ‘A few hours - maybe four or five.’

  ‘And where does it go after that?’

  Victor said, ‘Then it comes to rest on the ground.’

  ‘Still dangerous on the ground?’

  ‘Sure,’ the doctor said. ‘But in the air is where it’s most dangerous. When it’s on the ground you can protect yourself through normal decontamination efforts.’

  ‘How far can the anthrax spores travel when it’s airborne?’

  ‘All depends on the wind. Several miles...less, if there’s no breeze.’

  Monty felt a little flicker of excitement kindle inside him. Maybe. Just fucking maybe.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘We’re going for a quick walk.’

  He stood up and opened the conference-room door, stepped outside to the Operations Center. There was a low roar made up of phones ringing, people talking, keyboards being tapped, men and women, delivering and picking up messages as they moved back and forth. Monty gestured to the large display screen, depicting North America and parts of the Caribbean. Up on the screen, the triangular icons marking the orbiting AirBox flights were highlighted.

  ‘Look, I see at least two AirBox flights out in northern Texas. Am I right.’

  The General said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. So what?’

  ‘General, the so-what is where those two aircraft can go. They fly an hour west, they can hit a base I’ve trained at when I was detached to Air Force Special Ops. Tyler, used to be an Army Air Corps base back in the 1940s. Nothing there now except tumbleweed, coyotes, and a runway.’

  In the span of those few seconds, Victor’s color improved and it looked like he was standing taller.

  ‘Good Christ - they could land there, let the anthrax get released .. .’

  Monty slapped the sweating doctor on the back. ‘Sure as hell, and there’s nobody out there. Nobody.’

  Victor turned to him, eyes bright. ‘There must be other bases. Am I right?’

  ‘Shit yes, if there’s something this country is full of it’s military bases. Get me a phone and I’ll starting making calls to that Northern Command general. If we’re lucky, doc, we’ll start getting these aircraft on the ground, no fuss, no muss, and no civilian casualties.’

  Randy and Brian and the General looked like they were family members at an ER ward, suddenly being told that the body in the morgue wasn’t their dad but somebody else.

  Monty looked back up at the screen, looked at the icons, and then saw one little triangular light that was orbiting over a part of Georgia.

  His hands seemed frozen. In front of him a serious-looking young man was tapping at a terminal that had a miniature display of the wall screen. Monty bent down to him and said, ‘Son?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know where those jets are, the ones shown up on the screen?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The one in Georgia. Can you tell me - is it anywhere near a town called Miller’s Crossing?’ Where his aunt lived. Where Charlene and the two girls were staying.

  The guy worked the keyboard, shook his head. ‘Nope, it’s not near it.’

  ‘Oh.’ The relief going through him made Monty feel giddy.

  And the feeling lasted only a moment.

  The guy said, ‘The damn jet’s nearly orbiting on top of it.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  General McKenna of Northern Command hung up the phone and looked across to his adjutant, Colonel Madeline Anson. ‘We might have a solution.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Cross-check with the information we’re getting from Air Traffic Control and AirBox. Get the locations of those aircraft, their fuel states, and see what airbases we have within flight range of the aircraft. I want a listing of airbases in abandoned areas, old airstrips, anything and everything that can handle those aircraft types. Hell, even if it’s a stretch of highway in a remote part of Texas or Oklahoma or South Dakota . . .’

  Colonel Anson got up. ‘I see. If we can land those aircraft in unpopulated areas...’

  ‘Then we’re good to go. The anthrax gets sprayed out and nobody gets hurt.’

  ‘Some of these places, our personnel might have to get into MOP suits. And the decontamination process afterwards . . .’

  McKenna said, ‘A hell of a challenge, I know. But a better challenge than trying to explain to NBC or CBS or ABC how we came to shoot down civilian aircraft when we had a better option. Get to it, colonel.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ~ * ~

  Victor Palmer pulled General Bocks aside and said, ‘Your crews. To protect themselves, they need to wear their oxygen masks as they land.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Oh. One more thing. How good are your pilots?’

  ‘Most of them are ex-military. Lot of hours flying fighters or transport aircraft. Why?’

  ‘I’m not familiar with the language of the flying ... but it’s important that they land in a way that minimizes the release of the anthrax.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Victor said, ‘I’m not the flying expert, General. All I know is that if you can get them to land...well, in a way that they wouldn’t normally do. I mean, they usually land straight on, right? That means the anthrax is spread out in a wide stream. But if they can land...well, tight, like a corkscrew ... it means the footprint of the anthrax contamination will be that much smaller.’

  Bocks said, ‘It’s tough flying. Most of them haven’t maneuvered a jet like that in years. And never in a transport aircraft.’

  Victor said, ‘I know, General. But it could mean a better chance of reducing the area of contamination. Can it be done?’

  The General rubbed at his face, and Victor felt a sudden burst of sympathy for the poor man, whose aircraft and entire company had been hijacked by a cruel fate.

  ‘Yes, it can be done,’ he said.

  ~ * ~

  Aboard AirBox 101, which had been orbiting south of Imperial, Texas, Pete Renzi, a former Navy pilot, saw that his co-pilot, Jack Shaefer, already had his oxygen mask on. Pete said, ‘Ready to land?’

  Jack was sweating. ‘Shit, yes, let’s put this damn piece of metal on the ground.’

  Pete donned his own oxygen mask and glanced once more at the ACARS message that had come across a half-hour ago. Proceed along such and such a course, arrive near abandoned Army Air Corps base, and land this lumbering cargo jet like a stunt pilot flying an acrobatic m
achine. He hadn’t flown like that for more than ten years ... it was going to be a hell of a thing.

  ‘All right,’ Pete said. All right, we’re over the field. Let’s get ready to start this abortion.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Pete pulled the engine throttles to idle and rolled into a banking maneuver, letting the nose of the aircraft fall below the horizon in one smooth move. Breathing the cold and rubbery-tasting air, he saw the airspeed increase to 250 knots and he extended the plane’s speed brakes. The trick, he thought, was to keep the spiral tight but not to exceed the two-and-a-half-G limit for aircraft like theirs. Anything under two and a half times the force of gravity was fine...anything more than that, well, he thought, they’d see just how damn good the maintenance crews were in keeping routine repairs updated.

  But there were no G-meters in this aircraft; Pete would have to bring her in on experience and instinct alone, keeping the banking motion of the turn at a constant sixty-degree angle; anything too much higher than that and he and Jack and several tons of debris would be scattered over this desert floor...

  Pete watched the airspeed and attitude gyro indicator as he dove the aircraft to the left. The desert landscape below them appeared to tilt up as they moved in a corkscrew, descending to the ground. The G-forces pushed both of them back into their seats. Thank God it was just him and Jack on this baby. A passenger flight would have had the passengers gripping their armrests and screaming in terror. Jack kept up the chatter as Pete kept the downward spiral as tight as possible, Jack’s voice sounding muffled through the oxygen mask as he read out their altitude and rate of descent.

  ‘Ten thousand feet,’ Jack called out. ‘Six thousand feet per minute down.’

  The land continued to spin around. Pete forced himself to scan outside and then back inside to the instruments. Ignore everything else.

  At four thousand feet it was time...time to descend as rapidly as possible and, then pull out at the last minute to attempt a type of landing that was so crazy they didn’t even bother to train for it in the simulators.

  His co-pilot said, ‘Gear’s down, flaps thirty, landing checklist complete.’

  Pete said, ‘Let’s do it.’

  He pulled the throttles to idle, lowered the nose and extended the speed brakes. The aircraft, as one of his old instructors would have said, started to come down like a ton of shit.

  Jack called out, ‘Three thousand feet!’

  ‘Roger,’ Pete said, as he retracted the speed brakes and started the turn to the final approach.

  There you go, he thought. Below three thousand feet and somewhere in the belly of his aircraft - his responsibility! -anthrax was now spraying out. A few hours ago their original destination had been Los Angeles; he refused to think of how many would have ended up dead because of him if they hadn’t been stopped in time.

  The aircraft seemed to vibrate more as they quickly lost altitude. Ahead of them was the narrow runway, and at five hundred feet they were now on final approach. Pete lined up the aircraft with the fast-approaching runway and increased throttle speed, to reduce their descent speed.

  Jack was murmuring something, over and over, and Pete realized that the poor guy was praying .. .

  A hard shudder, a screech.

  Touchdown.

  Things moved very quickly then. As the spoilers were deployed, Pete engaged full reverse on the engines, and pushed his feet down on the brake pedals for maximum braking. These old military fields were so damn short.

  The plane vibrated some more as it started to roll to a halt. It was a bright, sunny day in the desert, and as they slowed and finally stopped Pete started breathing in the oxygen harder, thinking that he had never tasted anything so fine. The airstrip was deserted. Not even a single building. Well, so what? They were alive

  As the engines whined down there was a thud-roar and another thud-roar, and he looked up. Two F-15s were rolling up and out above them, after giving them a close flyby.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Victory roll,’ Pete said.

  ‘Victory? Victory for what?’

  Pete picked up a checklist, let it fall. For later.

  ‘Victory for not having to shoot us down,’ he said.

  ~ * ~

  As they descended into their approach, Karen Hollister of AirBox 88 said to her co-pilot Mark LaMontagne, ‘We get through this, want to go to unemployment together tomorrow?’

  His voice sounded odd through the oxygen mask: ‘What do you mean?’

  She couldn’t believe that she laughed, but what else was there to do? ‘You think AirBox is going to be in business this time next week?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Mark, old boy, a bunch of AirBox aircraft have been carrying anthrax for the past few hours. Do you think that’s a keen strategy for keeping our market share?’

  Mark coughed. ‘Shit. Hadn’t thought about that.’

  ‘Plenty of time to do that later. Let’s go.’

  And though this was going to be a landing for the record books and news magazines, it ended up being pretty routine. The touchdown was just a tad rough but when they were done, the plane at a halt, the landscape flat and pretty much abandoned, Karen sat back, breathing hard.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ she asked.

  Mark looked out the side windscreen. ‘Got to hand it to you, Karen. You put us down like you’ve done this before.’

  ‘Not hardly. Look. Company coming.’

  Flashing blue lights ahead of them. Getting closer. Vehicles, of course.

  In a couple of minutes, the lights were close enough to make them out.

  South Dakota Highway Patrol.

  Which made sense, for right now AirBox 88 was smack dab in the middle of a stretch of Interstate 90.

  ‘Hope you got your license with you,’ she said to her co-pilot as the state troopers came up to them. ‘Hate to be arrested for landing without a license.’

  Mark didn’t laugh - which made some sense, for the troopers below them looked odd.

  All of them were wearing gas masks.

  ~ * ~

  Air Force Major Terrence Walker was standing out on the flight line, moving clumsily in full MOP gear, gas mask and gas suit, as he and his small staff - all of them wearing the same gear - waited near a Humvee. There was one small building next to the long runway, with satellite dishes and radio antennas on its roof.

  Captain Cooper leaned toward him, his voice muffled through the gas mask. ‘Still can’t believe they’re ending up here,’

  ‘Good a place as any. Look. Here they come.’

  Walker looked up as the aircraft - AirBox 12 - started its descent, coming down like a goddamn brick. He hoped they could pull this off because there was nothing here to help them — this small base in Colorado tested weather-monitoring equipment for the Air Force, and didn’t even have a control tower or crash equipment - but it was going to have to work.

  Somebody said, ‘C’mon, hoss, ease her on down,’ and so they waited.

  ~ * ~

  Eugene Williams was the co-pilot of AirBox 12, and earlier he had said to his pilot, ‘Alex, I really think I should take her in. I’ve had the experience. You haven’t.’

  And AirBox 12’s pilot Alex Hinz had replied in his clipped, accented voice: ‘No more talk, please. Prepare for landing.’

  Stupid moron, Eugene thought, as he started reading out the altitude, rate of descent and airspeed of AirBox 12. He had flown F-16s before being RIFed out from the Air Force three years ago, and knew how to put an aircraft thought its paces. But Alex had flown some in the German Air Force and for Lufthansa, before ending up in the States and AirBox. He was a typical European pilot: follow all the rules and procedures, even if it meant killing you. Like the SwissAir flight that had gone down near Nova Scotia some years ago. Bastards had indication of fire somewhere in the plane, and they wasted time getting the passengers ready for landing, picking up meal trays, trying
to troubleshoot the problem, following everything nice and procedure-like instead of landing the damn thing, until they—

  ‘Alex, we’re at five hundred, sinking 1500 and 10 knots slow.’

  No reply. Just a grunt.