The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  No answer.

  “Captain Washington, as Chief Medical Officer, I order you to open this door now!”

  Still no answer.

  He tried the handle.

  Unlocked.

  He pushed.

  The door swung inward.

  A shaft of light from the corridor cut through the dark sitting room. His gaze swept a tan leather couch and matching easy chair squared on a navy blue carpet. The material was barely a cut above Astroturf, but nevertheless a luxury in a world with only cold metal underfoot. To the right loomed the shadowy shape of a modest, built-in bookshelf that had been especially constructed for the captain’s personal library, a collection that included first editions of Herman Melville and Edna St.Vincent Millay, treasures he never tired of showing off to his officers. On the left, another doorway led to his sleeping quarters. There the yellow glow of a small table lamp revealed a queen-size bed, its maroon covers turned down for the night, the underlying sheets looking taut enough to bounce a quarter off them. From where he stood, Paul could also see the entrance to Captain Washington’s bathroom, the only personal one on board. In all, a low-ceilinged, windowless version of any suite at a Day’s Inn motel, but on a crowded vessel like the USS Reagan, it was a palace of privacy.

  Paul took in these familiar surroundings over the space of drawing a breath and walked over to the bedroom. In a far corner the man himself sat behind a metal desk, his ebony face cast in the bluish glow of a computer screen. The thick features bulged in anger.

  “You actually sent this?” he said without looking up, his voice vibrating with low-pitched fury.

  “Captain, you know damn well Pearl had to know--”

  “You traitor! You fucking traitor!” He slowly got to his feet. “You told them everything without speaking to me.” A big man in any setting, the low ceiling made him appear all the more massive, as if he were expanding in size. “You fucked me--”

  “There’s no disgrace here, Captain. I put myself on report as well. Whatever’s going on, we’re casualties, same as if we took a bullet--”

  “It’s a mental thing, you idiot. You know damn well once it’s a mental thing, the causes don’t matter shit.” He started around the desk. “I’m fucked, because after a mental thing, nobody trusts you!”

  “Captain, I specifically said you were still capable of bringing the ship safely to port. That’s why I cc’d you with my e-mail. You never lost command--”

  “You fucked me, you back-stabbing Judas!” He kept coming.

  Paul backed toward the door.

  The captain lunged.

  Paul turned and tried to run, but felt his head snap back as one of those powerful arms coiled around his neck. Before he could yell for help, Captain Thomas Washington’s massive hand clamped down on the top of his head and wrenched it ninety degrees to the left as if unscrewing the top of a pickle jar.

  Commander Paul Wilson, MD, heard the crunch as his cervical vertebrae snapped apart, and stayed conscious long enough to see the darkness behind his eyes explode to white.

  Thursday, January 22, 2009, 1:05 A.M. IPT

  Pearl Harbor Tower, Oahu.

  Second Lieutenant “Brillo” Jefferson peered down at the fluorescent grid on his work consul. He ran a hand over the short bristles of his wiry black hair that had been the source of his nickname. “What the hell gives with the Reagan?”

  The man he was here to relieve, equal in rank but a decade his senior in jaded attitude, lounged in a chair with his back to the glowing bank of screens. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, munching on an egg-salad sandwich and not bothering to look up.

  Brillo frowned at the visual representation of all ship traffic in a two-hundred-mile range, his focus still on the Reagan. “But she keeps changing course. Now she’s two degrees off again”

  “I said, don’t worry. It’s been like that all night. They’ll correct back.”

  “It puts her full speed toward Waikiki.”

  “Like I said, they’ll swing back.”

  “Shouldn’t we hail her?”

  “I have. They say all’s well.”

  “Who’d you talk to?”

  “The master and commander himself, Captain Washington. He told me to relax, that they’re riding in on the storm, and he’ll resume his heading when it’s time.”

  “But this isn’t regular.”

  The older man stuffed the last of the sandwich into his mouth and licked a few remaining crumbs off his fingertips. “What’s the problem, Brillo? The chief pooh-bah himself said ‘all’s well.’”

  “The problem’s that he never wavers coming into Pearl, storm or no storm. The guy’s always no-nonsense.”

  “Well, tonight he sounded particularly relaxed. I swear he even spouted poetry, something strange about ‘Tall ships and a star to sail them by.’”

  “Poetry?”

  “Yeah, poetry, I swear.”

  Brillo studied the screen in silence for a few seconds, the dark ridges of his forehead thrown into stark relief by the green glow. “How far out were they when you called?”

  “About sixty miles.”

  “Maybe he’s turnin’ into the wind to fly off his planes?”

  “No one’s flying off squat. The pilots are all sick with something.”

  “Sick! With what?”

  “Dunno'. That’s all the word I got from the tower at Hickam. The flyboys are down with something. Every one of them.”

  “Now that is weird,” the younger man said, digesting the information,

  His senior shrugged. “Hey, shit happens.”

  “Yeah, but usually shipboard guys don’t get sick in big numbers, only land grunts, from the bugs and parasites they pick up. Is the rest of the crew okay? I got buddies on board.”

  The older man shrugged with palms upward, indicating he hadn’t a clue about that either.

  Brillo continued to study the radar. “You think we should call the bridge again?”

  “Why? There aren’t any other vessels in her way.”

  “No, but somebody on board better cut speed and make the turn, or they’ll all be having breakfast on Kapiolani.”

  “Yeah, right. Or maybe the guy’s just having some fun, you know, catching a wave on that ninety-ton surfboard of his. Or he figures the downtown area needs a new airport. Who gives a fuck. Hell, I hear all that by-the-book stuff is just show, and at heart he’s a real cowboy, a dude who actually shuts off the computers, takes the wheel, and steers by the stars to impress the cadets, especially females--”

  “Now that is bullshit,” Brillo responded with the indignation of a man who knew when a veteran was pulling his chain. “I told you, he’s no-nonsense.”

  “Oh, really? Did you ever see an admiral wannabe who didn’t secretly think they were judge, jury, and God combined once they’re on the open sea? It’s the ‘tall-ship’ days they all go on about. That being the case, what’s to stop the brother from struttin’ his stuff a bit?”

  “Waikiki.”

  Now the older man frowned. “You think there really could be a problem?” he asked, his tone all at once serious.

  “I don’t know.”

  Both men stared at the elongated dot representing the Reagan.

  “Captain Washington should know what he’s about, right?” Brillo said.

  “Right.”

  “And all the other times he’s been off two degrees, he made the correction, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So he’ll probably correct back again.”

  “Right.”

  They glared at the spot, bracketing it with their dark reflections on the glass, as if scowls could herd the white blip back on course.

  “I just don’t know,” Brillo repeated. “The dude’s coming awfully fast.”

  The other man contemplated this show of doubt, then gave a dismissive snort. “Well, I’m not gonna’ question the man’s competence, especially since I already warned him once. Besides, there’s what, another fifty
-five miles of water to slow down in and make the turn. My advice? Just wait a while. You’ll see. He’ll do things right the way he usually does, and bring her in on a dime. I mean, why rile him unnecessarily? He’s soon going to be bigger than God around here, once he makes admiral. Word’s out that he’s got a long memory.”

  1:30 A.M. IPT

  A trill from Terry Ryder’s cell phone pierced his sleep.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “I need you. We got a hot one, and it’s headed right into your front yard,” the familiar, gravelly voice informed him.

  His ER-honed reflex to pop fully awake kicked in. “Where?”

  “Are you in town, or in that eagle’s nest you call home?”

  “In town.”

  “Get to the helipad on top of Honolulu General. We’ll pick you up in five. I’ll explain the rest then.”

  The connection broke off with a click, and left Terry listening to a dial tone, surges of adrenalin already buzzing through his head. A summons from Robert Daikens, now a five-star general, had become rarer and rarer, but it always meant five-star trouble.

  “The hospital?” Carla asked, throaty with sleep, her voice still submerged in the lower registers that emerged when they made love.

  As chief advisor on Bioterror Preparedness for the Department of Homeland Security, Terry worked behind the scenes--not exactly undercover, but out of the spotlight--doctor by day, antiterrorist on demand, anonymity the key to any job that dug up secrets. He didn’t totally keep these clandestine activities from Carla, neither did he spell them out. “Yeah,” he lied, already dressing, figuring she’d sleep better not knowing that he’d been called to his other life. But the dread that always gripped him by the throat when the general beckoned sent his own voice a few notes higher. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

  “Don’t come back so silent and far away next time,” she’d once told him after he’d returned from a hot zone. “It scares me.”

  Sometimes it scared him.

  He leaned over to kiss her slightly parted lips. “Love you.”

  She drowsily puckered in response.

  Five minutes and fifteen seconds later the thudding stutter of Blackhawk rotorblades rent the nighttime quiet atop Honolulu General. Even in a city accustomed to coast guard, tourist, and traffic helicopters, nobody would sleep through the window-rattling racket of this baby, he thought, the powerful downdraft making him turn away and shield his eyes against flying dust as the craft hovered overhead.

  It settled astride the designated yellow markings, rocking gently on its runners. A tall figure in a bulky khaki outfit slid open the side door and beckoned him aboard. Ryder noted the military-issue biohazard suit, complete with boots and gloves, and then crouched low as he ran to the opening. Only the hood hanging loosely off the man’s shoulders remained to be zipped into place. They were heading to a hot zone, no doubt about it.

  He’d barely hefted himself inside before they lifted off, did a sickeningly tight turn toward the ocean, and accelerated out over open water.

  In the darkened interior, he made his way through at least a dozen other soldiers in similar outfits until he found a space big enough to squat in himself. Someone shoved a radio-equipped helmet at him and gestured he should put it on. Terry looked up to see the beefy face of Robert Daikens. Only his silver hair, though trimmed to a youthful, military bristle, dared reveal his age. The rest of him was bulky, but fit.

  He donned an identical piece of headgear. “We’re on our own frequency, so it’s okay to talk freely.” His voice transmitted with remarkable crispness above the noise of rotors. “We won’t know until we get there, but either the crew of the USS Reagan has been hit with a collective psychosis, or we’ve got sleepers on board who’ve turned it into a nuclear torpedo headed for the heart of Honolulu.”

  “What the--”

  “Just listen. We’ll be intercepting her in twenty minutes, and I need your best ideas about what we’re up against. As far as we know the captain’s locked himself in the bridge with some of his officers. The man insists he knows what he’s doing, but the ship’s heading suggests otherwise. And he’s refused direct orders from PACOM to shut down. They got word something was wrong half an hour ago, after a second lieutenant in the tower at Pearl didn’t like that the Reagan kept veering two degrees off course. Since then the captain’s gunned her to maximum speed--thirty-two knots. At that rate he’ll be aground in another hour and a half. The Admiral at Pearl has scrambled a team to seize the carrier and bring her to a stop. ” He gestured right and left with his thumbs.

  Terry glanced out the large, square, side windows. They were following an entire swarm of winking red and green lights. “Why are you here, General?” he asked, his old distrust of Robert Daikens never far from mind. The man had become pretty attached to Washington these last few years as his career wound down, matters of a personal legacy having become evermore his obsession. He hadn’t made the trip to Pearl in ages.

  “I was called out. Two weeks ago the ship’s surgeon reported some sort of outbreak on board.” As he spoke, his eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Crew members had gone nuts, exploding into psychotic rages and assaulting other seamen over the slightest thing. Eleven of these fights ended in murder. The killings were vicious, brutal, crazy acts, right off the charts, but in the aftermath, the killers were just as appalled and at a loss to explain what happened as the witnesses. The medical personnel wondered if some kind of substance was causing it all, a drug or a gas, either by accident or through deliberately introduced biological or chemical agents. That’s when I got brought in. Still, the ship’s doctor had run the appropriate tests, all negative, and according to the reports he forwarded to me, everything seemed enough under control to let the Reagan reach port. Tonight, this same son of a bitch sends me a doozy of a confidential e-mail stating that he’d relieved himself of duty, having been fighting his own problems all along--hallucinations and memory lapses--but only now considered them serious enough to doubt his own judgment. As a kicker, he adds that he might also have become just a bit paranoid, but with all the crazies on board, can’t be sure there isn’t really someone out to get his sorry ass. Can you believe it? The guy’s been going screwy for weeks, and he fooled everyone. Even after this looney-toon e-mailed me, the cocksucker turned around and told PACOM that, in his esteemed medical opinion, ‘it would still be perfectly safe to let them sail into Pearl since most other crewmembers have only minor, shakes, tremors, and numbness.’ That stupid dumb fuck! How the hell could this happen on a goddamn US carrier . . .”

  Because it was just two degrees, Terry thought as the general continued to rant. Apart from the killings, everyone just went a little off course. Either the deviations were caught and corrected, or the consequences weren’t immediate. And it was human nature to cover up mistakes. All this he understood in a flash. But that wasn’t what had most seized his attention. “Define ‘minor shakes, tremors, and numbness,’” Terry said, feeling as if the steelwork beneath them had dissolved, leaving him in free fall.

  Chapter 3

  The carrier first appeared as a constellation of pinpoint lights. Until then they’d flown in a void where Terry couldn’t tell sky from sea.

  “You’ll need these,” the general said, reaching into a wall-mounted cargo pouch made from netting. He handed him the folded components of a biohazard suit.

  Terry started to pull on the various pieces of the outfit, his mind racing on many levels. Part of him prayed that it might just be a chemical agent at work, devastating but noninfectious. At the same time he laid out the steps that would quarantine the entire island of Oahu, cutting it off from the world. And his most rational self insisted that the benign symptoms he’d been seeing in ER had no connection to whatever had invaded the Reagan. The ship had had no recent contact with Hawaii.

  His every intuition, however, that little realm of the brain where neurons bypassed logic and leapt straight to the truth, told him that this was the assault he�
��d been preparing for all his professional life. Because sometimes, even in matters of science, his mind would snap up esoteric bits of data and clues, then arrange them in the pattern that yielded the diagnosis without his ever being aware of the process. He called it his eureka circuit, after Archimedes’ famous bathtub moment. When it kicked in, he might not run naked through the streets, but he sure as hell paid attention. Tonight's little ditty had been particularly blunt. It’s an attack, stupid!

  Less helpful, his visual imagination kicked in. Though capable of providing useful insights when tackling a problem with cold clinical logic, in adrenalin-charged times of stress, it heightened whatever he saw, making everything appear a little too vivid. Sorting relevant details from distractions became key.

  As they drew closer, the vessel’s long black outline took form within the yellow haze of its halogen lamps, reminding him of bringing a microbe into focus under a microscope. The wake, like some phosphorescent tail snaking through ink, left a glowing trace of the skipper’s erratic course. Terry looked across to the other aircraft. They hung suspended above the ship, a mobile of seven dark dragonflies buffeted by the wind.

  One by one, each helicopter drifted in low to hover over an open patch of black tarmac. Boarding teams slid down ropes onto the deck with the speed of dropping spiders. Scurrying toward the towering superstructure that contained the bridge, they disappeared inside it as if attacking the nest of a hostile prey.

  “Are they nuts?” he muttered, the molten squeeze in the pit of his stomach rising to his chest.

  The general had been watching him. “What’s wrong?” His voice crackling through Terry’s headset, both men having kept the radio helmets on under their hoods. “You look scared shitless.”

  “What’s wrong is your storm troopers down there. If you don’t want to trigger more psychotic outbursts among the people on board, the worst possible strategy is a show of force to frighten them more than they already are. Heaven help us if any affected members of the crew have raided the armory--”