Cobra tsf-4

by David E. Meadows

  Then they would return to their religious purpose of destroying America.

  The French were already moving their ships into position off Algiers to replace the American Marines who were evacuating the city. Americans were funny people. You would think their naivete would have worn off by now, but they still believed everything you told them. He knew Algeria was lost. The Spanish had already restored the former government of Morocco to power, having found some obscure Moroccan cousin to the king to assume power. Tunisia he might be able to salvage.

  It would depend on what the British and Italians did. The French had agreed to him having Tunisia and them resuming their influence over Algeria without his interference. The French were to be feared more than the Americans. This telephone call had confirmed that. His French contact left an implied threat about Walid trying to double-cross them, but Walid, confident in his ability to manipulate the French as he had the Americans, grinned. He had resumed power, and Alqahiray had been deposed.

  Colonel Walid and Colonel Samir walked outside of the Navy Headquarters building and stood with Admiral Asif Abu Yimin.

  “Admiral, I congratulate you, sir, on a job well done.”

  The admiral nodded. “And I, you, sir.” He reached over to the tray on the small table on the veranda and poured himself another small glass of port. “Would the colonels enjoy a small drink in celebration?” Walid turned his nose up at the alcohol. “Not for me, Admiral. I just want to stand here and watch the smoke of Alqahiray’s last hurrah.” He looked at the two men as Colonel Samir took an offered glass from the admiral. “My fellow warriors, we have truly won. Nothing can stop us now. We have the future to build a true, independent Islamic nation dedicated to our people, our heritage, and our faith.”

  He lifted a glass of water from the tray and, as the cloud of anthrax spores settled over them, the three men toasted each other. The first breaths inhaled the spores as they looked out over the port city.

  Throughout Benghazi, the inhabitants breathed the anthrax spores along with their new leaders. Everywhere along the streets and sidewalks, the spores landed, only to be picked up by shoes, breathed by the rats and vermin living beneath the streets, and landing in and on the cars hurrying out of the city. The anthrax spores were on the move, heading out of Benghazi to other parts of Libya and the world, for the spores landed on merchant ships, which were loading and off-loading merchandise in the port. Within the next few days, widespread flulike symptoms would send many in Benghazi scurrying to the hospitals and clinics for medicine. Merchant vessels would exit the port for destinations ranging from Seville, Spain; to Japan; to Australia; and to the United States.

  The coughs would turn from dry to wet to bloody within thirty-six hours of the onset of the flulike symptoms. A week after Walid, Samir, and Abu Yimin drank their toast, 98 percent of Benghazi would be dead. Those living would be too weak to take care of themselves and there would be no one willing to enter the death city to help. But these three would be in no condition to know all of that.

  FOURTEEN

  These three weeks had been a whirlwind since the rescue of the hostages and the defeat of the North Koreans. So much had happened. Duncan touched the folded letter in his back pocket. The letter from his wife arrived ten days ago and went through the ultraviolet sanitation before being delivered to him. It was beginning to tear along the seams from being folded roughly and jammed into his back pocket. He refused to be separated from it for fear he’d lose it or some well-meaning mess specialist assigned to his stateroom would throw it away as trash. He had given the seven-page letter a lot of thought— nearly five full days — before arranging a ship-to-shore call to Reston, Virginia, where he had wakened her at two in the morning. He had been as nervous as a young boy waiting for the prom queen to answer his request for a date. They had talked for over an hour. He hoped he made the right decision in agreeing to try to patch things up. Marriages — especially military marriages — were never easy. They required a lot of work, and maybe he had been slack on his end, failing to recognize her goals, needs, and the hardship his career fostered on her. It would be an uphill battle to save their marriage, but she believed him leaving the Navy would remove a lot of the stress. A lot of harsh words and actions had burned a multitude of bridges between them since June, but he would try, and if they both really worked at it, then it might just survive what happened last week.

  He should call her with the news before some well-meaning friend would.

  Lord, protect me from the do-gooders in the world.

  Duncan pulled the saucer forward across the linen tablecloth, careful not to spill the coffee the mess specialist had just topped off. He folded the Stars and Stripes newspaper, laid it on the left side of his coffee, and from the right side lifted the International Herald Tribune.

  The papers were down loaded daily from the satellite and printed on newspaper print to give the semblance of newsstand quality. The only difference was that your fingers did not turn black from reading down loaded versions.

  This wardroom for flag officers was great for solitude and opportunity to arrange a person’s plans for the day. He was glad he had the use of it. He glanced at his watch — zero seven-thirty hours. This was his second day of taking advantage of this little-used wardroom. He reached up and stroked his collar devices, running his fingers beneath to make sure the small clips were holding the rank insignia securely. It had been over seven years since he had last bought new rank devices for his collar or hat. He just kept recycling the metal things as his uniforms wore out.

  Satisfied they weren’t going to fall off, he opened the second newspaper. The USS Hue City was stijl making headlines as she journeyed across the Atlantic enroute to Norfolk, Virginia. The USS Spruance accompanied the ship like a military escort alongside the coffin of a heroic war veteran. Sixteen sailors and officers had died on the Hue City from inhalation anthrax. Some, including Captain Horatio Jurgen Mcteak, were laid up for over a week before finally recovering sufficiently to leave their cabins. Starting the antibiotics when they did saved most of them. It would be up to CDC and Bethesda National Naval Medical Center to figure out why those sixteen died.

  Most, like Buc-Buc, suffered flulike symptoms that signaled inhalation anthrax. A few of the survivors even spewed blood from both ends. The one commonality between the inhalation anthrax survivors was that they had all had anthrax inoculations years ago. Those who had managed to keep their boosters up to date had been exposed, according to the blood test, but never came down with the deadly disease.

  The anthrax had run its course on the Hue City. Those recovering refused to be evacuated, opting to remain on board with their fellow shipmates.

  Only a sailor could understand the reason behind that choice.

  Duncan grinned at the memory of the photograph of Bucbuc holding the Army doctor by the rubber protective shirt and shoving him out of his stateroom when the doctor tried to have him forcibly evacuated.

  The Army chemical-biological warfare units flown out from Fort Bragg were still on board the cruiser with a smaller unit on the USS Spruance.

  Two days after the Hue City was exposed, the first sailor died. The medical team sent from USS John Stennis to assist during the epidemic suffered the same exposure. For five days, while the ship wallowed along, barely making way through the sea, these forty some odd officers and senior enlisted, who had been inoculated against anthrax and had also received their booster shots as required, had manned the Hue City.

  The Army team brought a computer chip called a Zebra chip, which they installed in the medical laboratory. Blood tests were analyzed using the chip, revealing immediately whether a subject had been exposed to anthrax. Throughout the United States Sixth Fleet, the chip was being installed hastily in every medical facility. Every crew member was being tested. A Navy message a few days ago notified the military forces deployed in South Korea to receive the same chip. Since the attack by Libya, America now worried that other rogue nations, such as N
orth Korea, might follow the senseless act with their own. He doubted North Korea would do such a thing. Once again, they were safely corralled back across the border. For how long, he had no idea.

  Duncan chuckled at the telephone interview with Master Chief Higgins of the Hue City. The newspapers loved him. They loved the senior chief, too, but the crusty master chief had a gift for saying the right things in the wrong way to shock the nation. Master Chief Higgins and Senior Chief Derby were heroes newspapers loved and the public admired.

  Together, the two men had fifty-eight years of combined Navy service.

  The two had taken charge of the bridge when the majority of the officers and chiefs lay helpless in their beds. The chief engineer, who was a thirty-year mustang, had had the anthrax vaccinations also.

  CHENG lived in the engine rooms during the same five days the two senior enlisted men manned the bridge. The master chief and senior chief took turns napping in the captain’s chair. They bounced between the helm, the navigation plotting table, and the bridge wings as they and several junior sailors steered the ship. CHENG gave most of the orders from belowdecks, but it was these two sailors, enlisted surface warfare specialists with their silver pins, who drove the ship.

  They only left the bridge to make head calls or dash to the mess decks to grab soup and sandwiches before dashing back up three decks to the bridge. Duncan knew the two were heroes. These two and the CHENG kept the USS Hue City moving until other members of the crew began to recover and help arrived. Duncan noticed a small tickler on the right side of the paper and quickly turned to page four. He laughed at an AP announcement that Playgirl intended to “profile the two lean, trim fighting machines who had saved the ghost ship USS Hue City. Playboy had obtained official photographs of the chief engineer from Navy Public Affairs, but had been curiously silent after receiving them.” Two Navy official photographs of the two men stared back from the borders of the article. That should make their wives happy, thought Duncan. He touched the letter in his back pocket.

  Reading on, the Herald Tribune quoted a chief of naval operations spokesman as saying forty-six crewmen had been unaffected by the anthrax. Duncan let a small grunt escape. No, that was inaccurate.

  Everyone on the ship had been affected some way or other by the anthrax.

  Those with the stronger immune system boosted by vaccinations over a decade old had just been affected less. Buc-Buc had the vaccination series, but it still took him nearly a week before he was well enough to make the twenty-foot trip from his at-sea cabin to the bridge.

  By the fourth day of the epidemic, when members of the medical team began to show signs of anthrax exposure, Admiral Devlin had made the grim decision to refuse additional personnel access to the plague ship.

  The Quebec flag in its grim solid yellow brightness fluttered from the signal bridge of the USS Hue City, warning everyone of the presence of a great plague.

  General Lewis knew exactly where to go for the experts to save the Hue City. It took one telephone call for Fort Bragg to launch two CBW teams. Within three days, Army CBW teams flew into Sigonella.

  Duncan had heard negative comments on the general’s leadership style, but this one episode convinced him the Army flag officer was a war fighting professional. He hoped he was right, because the general flew off the aircraft carrier yesterday, heading to new duties on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the new J3 on the joint staff.

  The CBW teams had done an outstanding job. Duncan had expected the teams to land on the aircraft carrier before flying to the two warships, but somewhere in the air between Sigonella and the John Stennis, the Army colonel in charge ordered the helicopters diverted in flight directly to the affected ships. General Lewis had been furious at first but had just as quickly realized the importance of time in combating the anthrax.

  There were the owllike noises of “Hooah” emanating from the three-star general’s lips that drew perplexed expressions from the Navy personnel standing near the Army Ranger.

  Thirty-six hours after the CBW teams landed on the Hue City and Spruance, the major portions of the ships were clean and pronounced sanitized. Spruance had been easy, but the Hue City was contaminated internally. The Army colonel had had the helicopter deck and stern deck cleaned first. From there, he established his command post within a known safe place for his men and women to take rest breaks out of their bulky, hot CBW uniforms. It was important in this hot climate and burning sun to watch for dehydration, and wearing those suits continuously could quickly cause his team to falter.

  Daily, each member of the Army team had blood samples taken and analyzed by the Zebra chip. The colonel was taking no chances.

  Reconstruction of the events concluded that when the saltwater wash down was stopped while Hue City fired Tomahawk missiles, it had allowed airborne anthrax spores to gain access to the interior of the ship. The Spruance avoided internal contamination. The Sixth Fleet meteorologist offered that the Hue City entered the anthrax area much like sailing into an invisible weather front. While it sailed through and fired its Tomahawks, anthrax rained on the ship. The USS Spruance, ten miles farther back and to the north of Hue City, fired first and had restarted its saltwater wash down before entering the biological front.

  The umbrella of saltwater spray kept the deadly spores away from the inside of the warship and washed most of them away from the outside. The USS Spruance, though quarantined like the Hue City, suffered no casualties or sickness, but that did little to alleviate the days of fear that swept the destroyer. Every little cold symptom produced an avalanche of fear.

  Duncan sipped his coffee. A mess specialist approached and laid a small china plate with a couple of small pastries on it.

  “Thanks,” Duncan said without looking up from the paper.

  A lot of the American intelligentsia were trying to whip up a groundswell of public opinion to keep the ships from returning immediately to the continental United States. “Oh, no, we support our military, we love our military, and we only want the best for these men and women in the service, but let’s wait a while to make sure they don’t bring anthrax into the United States.”

  The bioterrorist attacks of 2001 were still fresh in the minds of everyone who suffered through it. But the majority of Americans wanted their heroes back, and to hell with the small chance of anthrax being spread from the ship. They had fought this bioterrorist threat once, and they would fight it again if they had to.

  Europe was experiencing the same thing America did in 2001, with anthrax cases cropping up across the continent. Lab results had shown that the anthrax in those cases was undistinguishable from the anthrax found on Hue City and Spruance.

  He bent the paper in half and laid it on the table and read a column with excerpts from the major newspapers in America as he ate. The Virginia Pilot, the Washington Times, the Frederick News Post, the Newnan Times Herald, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Atlanta Journal had thrown their weight behind the two ships returning to the States. Most of the other major papers had, also. Others wanted the cruiser and aging destroyer quarantined for several months until all doubt of anthrax contamination was removed. And still others suggested taking the crew off and sinking the ships in the middle of the Atlantic.

  Scientists and medical specialists across the States, Europe, and within the military agreed there was no danger from the anthrax-infected ships.

  President Crawford in his weeldy radio address had advised the nation that he had personally decided the ships would return to Norfolk, Virginia.

  Flipping to the international section, Duncan saw where the Italians who fled Livorno were being allowed to return to their homes after the Italian government assured the city that the threat of anthrax in the harbor had been cleared. The merchant vessel, which had crashed into the pier upon arrival, was still quarantined with armed guards keeping the curious — few though they were — hundreds of yards from the ship. Along the coasts of the United States, several hundred merchant vessels floated
at anchor after being denied entry into American ports because they had sailed through the Mediterranean. Duncan supposed that one could argue against American paranoia, calling it an overreaction. But since the home-grown right-wing religious terrorist who had initiated the anthrax bioterrorist attack in 2001 had been caught, there had not been one incident of another biological attack in the States. And that was the way the government and the people wanted to keep it.

  The door opened to the flag wardroom, and Dick Holman entered. Duncan lifted his hand and waved. The oldies, but goodies radio station on the carrier played softly in the background; the Beatles were the feature of the day. Dick weaved his way past the other two tables to where Duncan sat.

  “Looks as if we have the entire mess to ourselves, Duncan. Mind if I join you?” “Not at all, Admiral,” Duncan said. “Those silver stars look impressive on those khakis.”

  Holman reached up and touched the devices. “Thanks. It will take some getting used to, you know. Six months ago, I was on my way out because of my weigh-in, and now I have a single star on each collar, and I’m leading the Stennis battle group as we prepare to reopen the Suez Canal.”

  “The other carriers should be here soon.”

  Holman nodded. “Should be arriving in the Mediterranean sometime tomorrow morning. At least, they won’t have to tow them through the Strait of Gibraltar like we did the Stennis.”

  Duncan motioned to the already moving mess specialist, who saw the new one-star admiral enter. Seconds later, another cup of coffee graced the table.

  “How is our new vice admiral taking the fact that Sixth Fleet will grow from the small naval presence it had in July to a three-carrier Marine Task Force powerhouse by tomorrow? Not to mention the Royal Navy Amphibious Task Force that is scheduled to arrive by the end of the week.”