“Why is that, Bob?” the host asked. He’d come in from his home in New Jersey to the New York studio off Central Park West, just before the bridges and tunnels had been closed, and was sleeping in his office now. Understandably, he wasn’t very happy about it.
“Ebola is a nasty one. There’s no doubt of that,” said the network’s medical correspondent. He was a physician who didn’t practice, though he spoke the language quite well. He mainly presented medical news, in the morning concentrating on the benefits of jogging and good diet. “But it’s never been here, and the reason is that the virus can’t survive here. However these people contracted it– and for the moment I will leave speculation on that aside– it can’t spread very far. I’m afraid the President’s actions are precipitous.”
“And unconstitutional,” the legal correspondent added. “There’s no doubt of that. The President has panicked, and that’s not good for the country in medical or legal terms.”
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“Thanks a bunch, fellas,” Ryan said, muting the set.
“We have to work on this,” Arnie said.
“How?”
“You fight bad information with good information.”
“Super, Arnie, except that proving I did the right thing means people have to die.”
“We have a panic to prevent, Mr. President.”
So far that hadn’t happened, which was remarkable. Timing had helped. The news had mainly hit people in the evening. For the most part, they’d gone home, they had enough food in the pantry to see them through a few days, and the news had shocked enough that there had not been a nationwide raid on supermarkets. Those things would change today, however. In a few hours people would be protesting. The news media would cover that, and some sort of public opinion would form. Arnie was right. He had to do something about it. But what?
“How, Arnie?”
“Jack, I thought you’d never ask.”
THE NEXT STOP was the airport. There it was confirmed that, yes, a privately owned, Swiss-registered G-IV business jet had indeed lifted off with a flight plan taking it to Paris via Libya, for refueling. The chief controller had a Xerox copy of the airport records and the aircraft’s manifest ready for the visiting Americans. It was a remarkably comprehensive document, since it had to allow for customs control as well. Even the names for the flight crew were on it.
“Well?” Chavez asked.
Clark looked at the officials. “Thank you for your valuable assistance.” Then he and Ding headed for the car that would take them to their aircraft.
“Well?” Ding repeated.
“Cool it, partner.” The five-minute ride passed in silence. Clark looked out the window. Thunderheads were building. He hated flying in the things.
“No way. We wait a few minutes.” The backup pilot was a lieutenant colonel. “We have rules.”
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Clark tapped the eagles on his epaulets and leaned right into his face. “Me colonel. Me say go, air scout. Right the fuck now!”
“Look, Mr. Clark, I know who you are and–”
“Sir,” Chavez said, “I’m only an artificial major, but this mission’s more important than your rules. Steer around the worst parts, will ya? We have barf bags if we need ’em.” The pilot glared at them, but moved back into the front office. Chavez turned. “Temper, John.”
Clark handed over the paper. “Check the names for the flight crew. They ain’t Swiss, and the registration of the aircraft is.”
Chavez looked for that. HX-NJA was the registration code. And the names for the flight crew weren’t Germanic, Gallic, or Italian.
“Sergeant?” Clark called as the engines started up.
“Yes, sir!” The NCO had seen this man tear the driver a new asshole.
“Fax this to Langley, please. You have the right number to use. Quick as you can, ma’am,” he added, since she was a lady, and not just a sergeant. The NCO didn’t get it, but didn’t mind, either.
“Cinch those belts in tight,” the pilot called over the intercom as the VC-20B started to taxi.
IT TOOK THREE tries because of electrical interference from the storm, but the facsimile transmission went through the satellite, downlinked to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and reappeared in Mercury, the Agency’s communications nexus. The senior watch officer had his deputy run it to the seventh floor. By that time, Clark was on the phone to him.
“Getting some interference,” the watch officer said. Digital satellite radio and all, a thunderstorm was still a thunderstorm.
“It’s a little bumpy at the moment. Run the registration number and the names on that manifest. Everything you can get on them.”
“Say again.”
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Clark did. It got through this time.
“Will do. Somebody’s got a file on this. Anything else?”
“Back to you later. Out,” he heard.
“SO?” DING ASKED, reefing his belt in tighter as the G took a ten-foot drop.
“Those names are in Farsi, Ding–oh, shit.” Another major bump. He looked out the window. It was like a huge arena, a cylindrical formation of clouds with lightning all over the place. It wasn’t often he looked down at that. “The bastard’s doing this on purpose.”
But he wasn’t. The lieutenant colonel on the controls was scared. Air Force regulations not to mention common sense prohibited what he was doing. The weather radar in the nose showed red twenty degrees left and right of his projected course to Nairobi. Left looked better. He turned thirty degrees, banking the executive jet like a fighter, searching for a smooth spot as he continued the climb-out. What he found wasn’t smooth, but it was better. Ten minutes later the VC-20B broke into sunlight.
One of the spare pilots turned in her front row seat: “Satisfied, Colonel?” she asked.
Clark unbuckled his belt in defiance of the sign and went to the lavatory to splash water in his face. Then he knelt down on the floor next to her and showed her the paper that had just been transmitted. “Can you tell me anything about this?” She only needed one look.
“Oh, yeah,” the captain said. “We got a notice on that.”
“What?”
“This is essentially the same aircraft. When one breaks, the manufacturer tells everybody about it–I mean, we’d ask anyway, but it’s almost automatic. He came out of here, flew north to Libya, landed to refuel, right? Took off right away, practically–medical flight, I think, wasn’t it?”
“Correct. Go on.”
“He called emergency, said he lost power on one engine, then the other, and went in. Three radars tracked it. Libya, Malta, and a Navy ship, destroyer, I think.”
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“Anything funny about it, Captain?”
She shrugged. “This is a good airplane. I don’t think the military’s ever broke one. You just saw how good. A couple of those bumps were two and a half, maybe three gees, and the engines–Jerry, have we ever lost an engine in flight on a -20?”
“Twice, I think. First one there was a defect on the fuel pump–Rolls-Royce sent out a fix on all of those. The other one, it was in November, a few years back. They ate a goose.”
“That’ll do it every time,” she told Clark. “Goose weighs maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. We try to keep clear of them.”
“This guy lost both engines, though?”
“They haven’t figured out why yet. Maybe bad fuel. That happens, but the engines are isolated units, sir. Separate everything, pumps, electronics, you name it–”
“Except fuel,” Jerry said. “That all comes out of one truck.”
“What else? What happens when you lose an engine?”
“If you’re not careful you can lose control. You get a full shutdown, the aircraft yaws into the dead engine. That changes airflow over the control surfaces. We lost a Lear, a VC-21, that way once. If it catches you in a transition maneuver when it happens, well, then it can get a little bit exciting. But we train for that, and the flight crew on this one, that was in the report. They were both experienced drivers, and they go in the box–the training simulator– pretty regular. You have to, or they take your insurance away. Anyway, the radar didn’t show them maneuvering. So, no, that shouldn’t have done it to them. The best guess was bad fuel, but the Libyans said the fuel was okay.”
“Unless the crew just totally screwed up,” Jerry added. “But even that’s hard. I mean, they make these things so you really have to try to break ’em, y’know? I got two thousand hours.”
“Two and a half for me,” the captain said. “It’s safer ‘n driving a car in D.C., sir. We all love these things.”
Clark nodded and went forward.
“Enjoying the ride?” the pilot in command said over his
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shoulder. His voice wasn’t exactly friendly, and he didn’t exactly have to worry about insubordination. Not with an “officer” wearing his own ribbons.
“I don’t like leaning on people, Colonel. This is very important shit. That’s all I can say.”
“My wife’s a nurse in the base hospital.” He didn’t have to say more. He was worried about her.