Good lawyer mat he was, Steve never missed an opportunity to eke precedent
“… tike to thank those of you who are visiting Australia or going on to connecting Sights for choosing our airiine. For diose continuing to London with us after the stop, please feel free to stretch your tegs and enjoy die airport’s restaurants, shops, and odrer amenities….”
BIO-STRIKE
Steve unfastened his seat belt, slid into the aisle, and took the flight attendant’s advice, stretching, massaging the small of his back with his knuckles. His achiness and complaints aside, he had to admit mat there were worse things in life than rubbing up against his neighbor in the window seat
He glanced over at her, an appealing blonde of about thirty in a sort of retro hippieish outfit consisting of a peasant blouse, hip-hugging bell-bottoms, and big, round red earrings like three-dimensional polka dots. At forty- four, Steve could recall an era when clothes of mat type hadn’t been so, well, form-fitted, as if they’d come straight out of a chic fashion designer’s showroom.
Not mat she didn’t look good in them. In fact, he’d been very aware of how good she looked the moment they boarded the jet in Hong Kong, and had tried striking up a conversation with her soon after takeoff. Just chitchat, really, while he’d checked her finger for a wedding band-a quick glance verified there wasn’t one- and tried to assess whether she might be inclined to pursue a more intimate dialogue at some later point in time. He’d told her his name, that he was an attorney who had been in Asia doing some patent and licensing work for a Massachusetts-based toy manufacturer, and that he was about to take a few days’ R and R in London before returning to the grind. She, in turn, introduced herself as Melina, no surname given and none asked, her English subtly laced with an accent he couldn’t associate with any particular nationality. It was kind of exotic, that name, especially hanging there exparte, so to speak. With a whimsy peculiar to the solo traveler, he had speculated that she might be an actress or pop star.
At any rate, she’d been reserved but pleasant, re
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
spending to his comments on the weather, their runway delays, and the lousy airline food, not revealing much about herself in the process. When he thought about it, she seemed almost secretive … although it was likely he was coming off too many days of legal gamesmanship to be a reasonable judge.
Steve got his travel bag out of the overhead stowage compartment, figuring he’d find a restaurant, eat a halfway decent meal, then maybe step some cologne on his face in the rest room to freshen up for the next long leg of the transcontinental haul. He’d batted around the idea of asking Melina to join him and was still undecided. Why. necessarily take her reticence as a snub? It was understandable that a woman flying alone would be cautious toward some strange guy talking her up. Besides, he couldn’t see anything inappropriate in a friendly invite.
He stood looking at her from the aisle. Still in her seat, she’d reached into her purse for a pen and a paper bag with the words Gift Shop printed on it in frilly silver lettering, then slipped some postcards out of the bag. It appeared she meant to stay put during the layover… unless he could persuade her to do otherwise.
He took a breath and leaned toward her. “Excuse me,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d like to join me for a cup of coffee, maybe grab a quick bite. My treat.”
Her smile was polite, nothing more, nothing less. “Thank you, but I really have to fill these out.” She placed the postcards on her tray table. ‘It’s the kind of thing that can sup right by.”
“Why not bring the cards along? A change of scene might inspire you to write better. Or faster, anyway.”
The cool, unchanging smile was a rebuff in itself,
BIO-STRIKE
making her clipped reply superfluous. “No, I think I’ll
stay right here.”
Steve decided to do some face saving. They would be
sitting together for another seven hours or so once the ‘plane got back in the air, and he didn’t want the situation I to get awkward.
He nodded toward the postcards in front of her. I “Guess you do have a fair-sized stack there.” l> “Yes.” She looked at him. “You know how it is with
obligations. They’re like little plagues on my mind.”
< Steve stood looking back at her. Sure, -whatever you say, he thought * He told her he'd see her later, turned back into the aisle, and filed toward the exit with the other debarking She waited, her eyes following him until he stepped off the plane. Then she rapidly got down to business. She removed the top of her pen and dropped it onto her tray beside the postcards. The ink cartridge was metal, with a small plastic cap above the refill opening. She twisted the cap to loosen the cartridge, slipped it out of the pen, and put the bottom half of the pen beside the other items on the tray. Little plagues, she thought. A choice of words the man who was bora her employer and her lover might have appreciated, though he surely would have disapproved of her speaking them aloud. Her thumb and forefinger tweezered around the cap, she separated it from the cylindrical cartridge with an easy pull. Careful that no one was watching, she held the cartridge away from herself, turned it upside down, and tapped it with her fingertip. A powdery white substance sprinkled out and immediately dispersed in the Tom Cfancy's Power Plays coin's cycling air. On newer commuter jets, maximum- efficiency filters might have trapped a significant amount of the contaminant, but she knew the aging fleet of Boeing 747s used ventilation systems that would suck it in and recireulate it with the plane's oxygen supply. Entering the respiratory tracts of the aircraft's crew and passengers, the microscopic capsules would release die dormant presences within diem. Transmitted from person to person, airport to airport, and city to city, spread across nations and continents by their hosts, these unsuspected invaders would aggressively do what they had been created to do. They would incubate. They would multiply. And they would smolder until fanned into inextinguishable wildfires, outbreaks that would burn scouring rings around the world. Nw the blonde woman checked her watch and de- t to move on. ' .'. from her rfctter j of powder table, she blew . They wisped away i of die cabin. Her business was concluded. jlxiek her tray table, she rose from her seat tad slid into the aisle. The plane was empty except for a handful of passengers and one male flight attendant near the exit, and she smiled at him as she left the plane. He smiled back, a touch admiringly. U BIO-STRIKE She passed through the jetway into the terminal and glanced up at the monitors listing arrivals and departures. Her next flight was slotted for departure in just over two hours. It would be the seventh and last, and she knew better than to believe the number was coincidence. No, it was without question a demonic fancy. A conceit of the fiend to whom she had given herself willingly, needfully, body and soul. Little plagues. Seven, and then some. She was tired, even exhausted, from crisscrossing die globe. But she had dispensed almost her entire supply of the agent and, after the jog into Frankfurt, would be through with the remainder. Meanwhile, she could find a place to relax for a while and possibly have something to eat. As long as she was careful to stay clear of her latest seatmate, why not? There was a comfortable margin of time left before she had to be at the boarding gate. Sight being its only faculty, the eye trusts what it sees. Striving always to keep us on a steady path, it will often slide past the out of place to turn toward the familiar. This makes it easily fooled. A business-suited investor in Manhattan's financial district. A crop duster winging over open farmland. An airline passenger filling out postcards to kill time during a layover. AU are sights that fit and belong. And all may be something other than they appear, camouflage to deceive the willing eye. In San Jose, California, a municipal street sweeper brought the aerosol payload through die target zone, dispensing it from an extra spray reservoir aboard its heavy steel frame. It whooshed along Rosita Avenue, amber 11 3;tt Tom Clancy's Power Plays cab lights strobing, circular gutter brooms whirling, wash-down nozzles deluging the pavement with water as the lab-cooked agent jetted from its second tank. An everyday part of the urban scene, the sweeper barely scratched the surface of people's awareness: It was a minor inconvenience, a momentary hiccup in their progress through the morning. Motorists shifted lanes to get out of Us way. Pedestrians backstepped onto the curb to avoid its rotating brooms, raised their conversational pitch a notch or two as it swished past, and otherwise ignored it.