A British aide who had been standing quietly behind and to the side of the British wing commander was now motioned over. The aide plopped a handheld radio in his hand, and without taking his eyes off the American general, the RAF commander brought the radio to his lips and keyed it.
“This is Crandall. Block it. Now!”
“What’s that all about?” the general asked, suspicious.
Wing Commander Crandall carefully handed the radio back to his aide before turning to the general and answering. “It’s about sovereignty, sir,” he said before turning on his heel. “Ours.”
As the general watched him go, the sergeant stepped forward with a red handset.
“Sir? It’s the command post at the Pentagon again. He needs to speak with you immediately.”
The spectacle of a huge airplane of some sort flying in a low formation with two smaller planes and passing over the normally tranquil nighttime countryside caused the few residents still out to look up as the aircraft passed over a village eight miles from the air base. Holland and Robb had already spotted the runway lights ahead and run the landing checklist when the lead F-15 pilot keyed the radio.
“Uh, Fox Three, or Sixty-six, I’m being instructed by my commander, sir, to tell you there’s a change in plans.”
Holland looked over at the F-15 pilot in disbelief as Dick Robb pressed the transmit button.
“Say again?”
“I’m now instructed to escort you out of British airspace. I’m to tell you that this word comes directly from Washington, and your company will follow up with a satellite call in a few minutes telling you exactly where they want you to go.”
“Jesus Christ, not again!” Robb exploded.
Holland looked ahead. They were less than fifteen hundred feet above the surface now, with the runway lights coming more clearly into view. Normally at night he would be able to see nothing of the runway surface, but now in the darkness there were extra lights and markings confusing the issue, and slowly they emerged as something else. Between the runway lights, stretching from the approach end to the departure end, was a solid line of red and white flashing lights, blue flashing lights, and what appeared to be … vehicles!
“Good Lord,” Holland said quietly, “they’ve completely blocked the runway.”
Robb had changed to Mildenhall tower frequency. An American voice came through immediately.
“Sixty-six, Mildenhall tower. Go around, sir! Go around! You are not cleared to land. The runway is blocked and closed. Men and equipment on all parts of the runway. Please acknowledge!”
Holland nodded. “Tell him we see it. We’re going missed approach.”
“I don’t believe this!” Robb muttered.
Holland shook his head as his hands eased the throttles forward.
“Max power. Flaps fifteen.”
The veins were showing in Robb’s neck as his voice reached a new frantic timbre. “Dammit, we can’t stay up here all day!”
The tower controller’s voice came back again. “Sixty-six, I say again, go around. Runway is blocked and closed!”
Holland looked at Robb. “Flaps fifteen, please.”
Dick Robb hesitated, his lips pressed tightly together, fighting himself to calm down. Mildenhall had been a solution. To have it snatched away left him stunned.
Holland reached around the throttle quadrant with his right hand and snapped the flap lever up to the fifteen-degree gate, then returned his hand to the throttles. Robb looked over, chagrined that he hadn’t responded.
“I’m sorry … flaps fifteen,” Robb apologized.
“Already got it. Positive rate, gear up,” Holland said. Robb reached for the gear handle and brought it up. The countryside began to drop away as Holland climbed after the lead F-15 and wondered in an almost detached fashion where and when the nightmare was going to end.
Logically, the fuel situation was not critical, he thought. They had enough for at least four more hours of flight and there were hundreds of runways within reach and plenty of options, and if everything else failed, he could always just pop up at some unsuspecting airport with a long enough runway and land. But the realization that they had become instant international pariahs unable to secure landing permission on anyone’s soil scared him profoundly. It was one thing to assume a bureaucratic overreaction, but the reality was that the world was increasingly scared of them.
What if, Holland thought, what if we all come down with something that can kill? How long will we have? How long will I have to get this ship safely parked before I’m too sick to fly?
Holland glanced over, making sure the gear was up and locked, and adjusted the throttles. Robb, he noticed, was still sitting in stunned silence.
He had to rely on other people’s decisions now, Holland reminded himself. The company, the State Department, the government, whoever. It wasn’t his airplane; he just had to keep it safe while they figured things out down below.
He remembered the early days when he’d just left the Air Force and been hired as a flight engineer. Airline captains were different then. They were expected to make their own decisions.
But those days were gone.
James Holland engaged the autothrottles and adjusted his climb rate slightly as he settled back in his seat, feeling all but helpless. The company would call on the satellite phone with instructions, he’d been told.
He glanced at the phone at the same moment it rang.
NINE
BONN—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22—9:30 P.M. (2030Z)
Horst Zeitner of the German Ministry of Health looked up from the corner of the conference room to see an aide motioning to him frantically. He quickly ended the phone call and crossed the room, too exhausted and numb to be irritated.
“What is it?”
“Sir, there is someone here I believe you need to talk to immediately.”
“Who? And why?”
The aide took his boss by the elbow and began guiding him out of the conference room to a high-ceilinged government hallway, but Zeitner pulled away in irritation. “Stop that! Answer my questions!”
The aide looked around nervously before half-whispering to Zeitner. “The chief officer of Hauptmann Pharmaceutical has just arrived. He flew here. He has information you need to hear immediately.”
Zeitner straightened up, with a dozen thoughts of caution zinging through his mind. Such a visit could not be routine. Something new was wrong. Zeitner motioned down the hall and the aide led the way.
Andrew Hauptmann was an impeccably groomed Berliner in a thousand-dollar suit who owned several companies and was worth several fortunes. In his seventies now, gaunt and frail, he had a reputation for arrogance, but he met Horst Zeitner with a mixture of concern and panic in his eyes.
“Where can we talk privately?” he asked. Zeitner was sure he heard a quiver in his voice, and it shocked him. He motioned Hauptmann to his office and closed the door behind them. Hauptmann took a chair across from the desk and shook his head.
“Herr Zeitner, my people in Bavaria have misled you. All that you’re doing here—the searching for people, the government’s refusal to let that airliner land—is based on incorrect statements.”
Zeitner sat back in his chair with his heart rate climbing, dreading whatever was coming. If this was a false alarm, his career was over.
“What … exactly do you mean, sir?”
“My people in Bavaria told you this was a virus … an influenza of some sort, is that correct?”
Zeitner nodded.
“My people were scared, Herr Zeitner, and they guessed. You see, this is most likely not an influenza at all.”
Zeitner’s heart stopped.
“What, then?” Zeitner asked.
Hauptmann riveted Zeitner with his small, intense eyes. Seconds elapsed before he answered—seconds that seemed like minutes.
“Permit me tell you what we do know … all that we know,” he said at last. “First, we have two men dead. A lab technician, thoroughly qu
alified, and a medical doctor, a researcher. Both were good men. The technician made a mistake five days ago. He was stacking a shipment of research samples we had obtained—potentially dangerous samples of various viral and bacteriological research, which we knew to treat with great care—when he fell, hitting his head and knocking himself out. In the process, one of the boxes dropped and cracked open. The biologically dangerous samples were in heavy, sealed glass vials, but several dislodged and broke. He was alone in the isolation chamber, and it was several hours, we think, before the other man—the doctor—walked in, also without protection, and found him. Fortunately, the chamber had an operating air lock and all the precautions for Level Three safeguards against airborne disease transmission, including negative air pressure. The doctor did all the right things: He sounded the alarm, cleaned up and sterilized the room, and then impounded both of them for observation.”
“Neither of them had protective suits?”
“No. Just white company coveralls. Two days later the technician became very ill. High fever, he told us, hot and cold flashes, skin malaise. The doctor fell ill within a few hours afterward, and tried to take care of the first man as he died. Without warning, the doctor suddenly became delirious and hysterical, as if claustrophobic. He broke the seal, operated the emergency door locks, and raced away.”
Andrew Hauptmann reached for a pitcher of water on the table and poured himself a glass. Zeitner watched his shaking hands negotiate the task, but he was too stunned to think about assisting. Hauptmann drank carefully and replaced the glass on the table, his eyes boring once again into Zeitner’s.
“My people took our helicopter and gave chase,” he went on, “but they didn’t locate him before he apparently had broken a window in the car of this American professor for whom you were searching. They spotted the car in the clearing about the time our doctor ran off into the forest. They didn’t see him double back to the clearing. When the doctor was spotted there a few minutes later, he was alone and the car was gone.”
Hauptmann sat back slightly and took a deep breath, followed by another. His face had reddened from the efforts of talking so rapidly, but then he leaned forward again and continued, his bony hands gesturing constantly.
“My facility director knew that whatever the doctor had caught from the spilled contents of that vial was very bad and very contagious, and when his team found bits of broken window glass on the ground, he tried to find whoever had been in that car. Our people searched the area and found this American’s luggage tag. They were very frightened because they believed he had been exposed and did not know it. That is when they called your office for help. I was out of the country at the time. I found out only around midday from my facility director in Bavaria that we were still reporting this to you as an influenza.”
“And … it’s not,” Zeitner said quietly.
Hauptmann shook his head. “No, it is not. It is far, far more serious, and frightening … and deadly.”
Zeitner had been leaning forward too. He straightened up now with a puzzled expression and raised the palms of his hands toward the ceiling. “What, exactly, was in that vial?”
Hauptmann looked at the floor, then back at Zeitner.
“We’re not certain,” he said.
“What? How could …”
Hauptmann nodded and sighed.
“In the former Soviet Union, as you know, there were numerous biological research centers operating. Last year we were quietly contacted by the managers of two such facilities. They were trying to raise hard cash in exchange for their many years of research. We agreed in secret to purchase much of it, hoping that somewhere in that body of work there would be marketable advances in drugs and vaccines. From the first, however, the deal presented substantial problems. Many research samples were properly documented and maintained, but too many shipments were in terrible disarray, with live virus cultures in tubes adjacent to bacilli cultures in mixed-up sequences, and some research vials were simply shipped unlabeled. We never knew what we were receiving from them until we unpacked it, and then, if it wasn’t properly documented, we had to destroy it. We’d been screening such samples in our Hamburg facility before shipment to our new facility in Bavaria. This collection, however, was misdirected. It was sent to Bavaria directly from Russia. My facility director thought it had been screened. It had not.”
“You mean you have no idea what the name, or the type …”
Hauptmann shook his head slowly. “None. What killed our two men could be viral, bacteriological, or even chemical, though we very much doubt that. It is most likely viral.”
“My God, that means we have no background data!” Zeitner said.
Hauptmann nodded and continued, his words coming more carefully and slowly.
“We contacted today one of the doctors who used to work in the Russian lab. We had never talked to him before. He was a chief research scientist in the facility involved and lives now in the Ukraine. Fortunately, he kept excellent lab journals from his years in that facility. He told us several important things we did not know. Perhaps Western intelligence services knew these things, or suspected, but we did not in the private sector.”
“I’m not understanding you,” Zeitner replied.
“Herr Zeitner, this facility was a Soviet military biological warfare research center. For decades they had been searching for efficient ways of killing human beings in great numbers by developing viral and bacteriological agents against which the Russian Army and the Russian people could be inoculated, but agents that would devastate any other human population. They made significant progress and pushed the frontier of that deadly science, but there was a certain rare class of pathogens discovered over the years that scared even the generals—ones that could spread through a primate population within days, killing with great certainty, and ones against which no vaccine seemed possible. The Soviet authorities were afraid of this class, because if such a virus were ever to be unleashed against a human enemy anywhere, it could just as easily double back and devastate the Russian population too. These are horrible human diseases—viruses mostly, including an early form of the filoviruses identified recently in Africa—all of them incurable and unstoppable. Some kill by destroying all the internal tissues of the body. Some by destroying specific organs. One, I am told, causes incredible temperatures, almost burning up the body from within, and still others cause circulatory collapse, beginning with the brain. To be in this rare class, the pathogen had to infect and kill within days, with no hope of an effective cure, and it had to be easily transferred by air and by touch. When such a pathogen was discovered to be in this class, all samples would be locked away in a special underground storage bunker beneath this facility. In Russian, it was called chortnee class, which, roughly translated, means the ‘omega stock.’”
Horst Zeitner had almost come out of his chair.
“My God, are you saying that the vials in Bavaria …”
Hauptmann nodded.
“That, Herr Zeitner, is exactly what I’m saying. What my researcher unpacked in Bavaria—and dropped—was from the omega stock.”
ABOARD FLIGHT 66
The banging on the cockpit door had become irritating, interrupting the detailed clearance being relayed by Shannon Control as Flight 66 climbed through thirty-three thousand feet on the way to thirty-five thousand.
Now, what? James Holland looked around in exasperation and pushed the electronic door release while Dick Robb read back the oceanic route. He expected to see one of the flight attendants. Instead, the doorway was filled with a vaguely familiar face whose owner stormed in and stood for a moment, his eyes evaluating the cockpit and which of the two men was in charge.
He settled on Holland.
“Captain? Reverend Garson Wilson.” A large, beefy hand was offered over the center console, and Holland shook it with his left hand without enthusiasm.
Wilson noted the lack of recognition.
“I’m Wilson, the evangelist,” he added.<
br />
Holland nodded. “Of course. Ah, Mr. Wilson, I’m afraid we’re in violation of FAA regulations for unlocking that door and letting you in. My mistake. I thought with all the knocking one of my crew had an emergency. I’m going to have to ask you to return to the cabin.”
Wilson rested his right hand on the top edge of the copilot’s seat, wiggling it slightly.
“Your name, Captain, is …” He turned a hand palm-up in search of a name.
“Holland, James Holland.”
“Good. Well, James, I don’t think the FAA will give you any guff for having ole Pastor Wilson with you for a few minutes. I’m a private pilot myself, and I’ve known the administrator since he was a pup.”
He moved back and closed the cockpit door before returning to the center jumpseat and continuing.
Holland turned to look at him. “Reverend, please! Honor my wishes here. I need you to return to the cabin.”
“In a minute, James. I needed to speak to you personally because we’re in a time crisis here. We need to be in New York in just a few more hours for a major, ah, appearance. I know you’ve got other problems to consider up here, but I’m not the one exposed to this virus you mentioned. I’ve gotta get off and get to New York as soon as possible—unless we’re headed there now. I figured you could arrange that for me. I’m sure whatever quarantine they’re planning will be a necessary inconvenience for the others, but I don’t have time for it.”
Holland swiveled around slightly to look the man in the eyes, remembering his face from countless paid television broadcasts and “Garson for God” rallies. He’d never been to one, never wanted to go to one. Religion was far too personal to him. Making a religious service into a circus was a curious Southern pastime he’d never had a desire to watch.
“Reverend Wilson,” the captain said, “I’m in no position to negotiate with you about any quarantine plans, and again, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Every word you say up here digs us all a bigger hole because it’s on the cockpit voice recorder.” He pointed to a small microphone in the ceiling.
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