by Jeff Rovin
“At once, Commander,” the ensign replied.
“Oh, Mike? I also suggest they keep aircraft off that route,” van Tonder added. “In case this hasn’t played out.”
Sisula acknowledged and van Tonder turned to the pilot.
“I still tickle but I don’t feel like coughing,” Mabuza said.
“Good man.” He looked at the illuminated digital instruments. “We’ve got—an hour of air there and if we just sit here and idle we’ve got that same hour before we have to go back. You okay with the heat on?”
The pilot nodded. “Feels good. But … no chills. Not flu-like.”
“You got that, Mike?”
“Yeah.”
Van Tonder gave the pilot another reassuring clap on the arm, then looked out at the dark ocean.
Even as a navy seaman, he had never had to face death. Not directly.
Not until now. It scared him to consider how close he and Mabuza had come to dying. Just a few yards in either direction, including up or down—
And they still had no idea what this affliction was just a few dozen yards distant. Not its shape or, if alive, its life span, how far it had already traveled and what vehicle—or city—it might strike next.
CHAPTER FOUR
Fort Belvoir North, Springfield, Virginia
November 11, 8:12 A.M.
After a long career in the military, Williams learned that when you were not in a position to give orders you had to be affable. Not that he was ever unfriendly. A high-ranking officer was supposed to be decisive and that did not always make him popular.
But there was a quick learning curve after Williams replaced the ailing Paul Hood as the director of Op-Center. The former banker and mayor of Los Angeles was such a skilled bureaucrat that he offended no one and rightly earned the nickname “Pope Paul.”
Williams had agreed to take the job and deal with highly sensitive matters, not knowing those matters would as often as not be age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and an aggressively suspicious human resources department.
He liked it better when subordinates in uniform were treated equally regardless of any consideration. He wondered, more than once, how HR would deal with an organization that had just one employee.
However, that on-the-job training had paid off this morning when he contacted his alma mater. Using what charm he could muster, he persuaded the alumni director at Tufts to hook him up with a professor he had found on the university Web site: the chair of the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Professor Jeanette Goodman, a sedimentologist. His self-respect took a broadside to effectively go begging, and so did his wallet in the form of extortion—an overdue donation to the school. But he got the professor’s private number. A direct question-and-answer would not only save hours of scouring government and public Web sites, collating information, it would prevent his leaving a digital footprint. In a building full of spies, one took reasonable precautions.
Williams vaguely introduced himself as a counterterrorism specialist with the government and said he was investigating the crash of the South African airliner.
“A horrible event but a turbulent, active environment unless you know it,” she said in a raspy voice that sounded like it had inhaled decades of rock dust.
“How so?” Williams asked.
“The upper-atmosphere crosscurrents,” Goodman replied. “The potential for a sudden deep freeze.”
“What about the geology of the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean?” Williams asked.
“Ah—I’ve been to the islands several times. What would you like to know?”
“To begin with, is the area geologically active?”
“Very much so,” she said. “Not in the way, say, Hawaii is strewn with volcanoes but closer to the Pacific Northwest or Alaska in terms of tremors.”
“We were wondering if there might be a connection between the missing airliner and satellite images showing what appears to be geologic activity in that region prior to the event.”
“What kind of activity?”
“We don’t know,” Williams said. “Light from fissures.”
“Not today, no,” she replied. “There have been no major eruptions there. That’s the first thing I do when I wake. I check the USGS update. If there were something major, then, as you probably know, all airlines would have been barred from the region immediately.”
“What about—I don’t know. A thermal vent? A geyser of some kind? The image I saw clearly indicates a glow, column-like, that wasn’t present in previous images.”
“Without seeing the image, I cannot say. In that region it would be a ‘white smoker,’” she said. “Very low temperature, remote from the heat source, generally sending up plumes laced with calcium, silicon, other local minerals. Nontoxic at those concentrations, I might add. But I assure you there is nothing of that kind able to reach more than, say, one thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet. And even that would be increasingly diluted by atmospheric currents.”
“I see,” Williams said. It sounded very much like a dead end. “Would it glow?”
“Dimly, perhaps. As I said, the heat source would not be near the surface. What about a meteor strike?” Goodman asked.
“I would think the odds are pretty slim, no?”
“Not really,” Goodman said. “That is a historically active area. The minerals and organic material date back three hundred million years, with a high percentage of it of extraterrestrial origin, including fragments from the moon and Mars.”
“You’re serious?” he said.
“Entirely.”
Williams was writing everything down on a yellow pad, making sure he highlighted key words. He did not know why he was bothering: Matt Berry would dismiss every word of this, and perhaps rightly so.
“Where are you located, Mr. Williams?”
“Washington, D.C.”
“There’s quite a collection of planetary specimens at the Smithsonian. An object of that kind, traveling at a high rate of speed, would not have to be larger than a walnut to cripple an aircraft.”
“Also, you said organic,” Williams said, looking at a word he had underlined. “Microbes?”
“Potentially. Many microbes are dormant in the cold, so something like that would definitely liven things up. Not my field, though there is a belief that microbes, in particular from Mars, may have come to Earth on rock blasted from the surface of the Red Planet. Some would have been hardy enough to survive the journey through the cold vacuum of space. We may be Martians, Mr. Williams.”
“I see.” Williams could not help but reflect, briefly, on just how much information he picked up in this job for which he had no further use. That idea was not something he was keen to share with Matt Berry. “What about the glow,” he said. “If not this ‘white smoke,’ what then?”
“Sunlight reflected on ice? Airborne chlorine?”
“The bleach ingredient? Isn’t that toxic?”
“Not in this state,” she said. “What you’re talking about is—the lye it’s combined with is caustic to the throat and skin, and chlorine creates a deadly gas when mixed with ammonia. Straight from the ground there’s no risk.”
“Why would it glow?” Williams said.
“Presume a rockslide or, more likely, melting ice,” Goodman said. “That might expose an ancient rock surface and millennia of deep, deep cracking. A natural gas pocket might be breached and release helium, which rises.”
“Helium,” Williams said. “The balloon gas.”
“Correct. There are also vapors that glow yellow in light but they would not be occurring naturally.”
“Such as?”
“Certain kinds of acids. I’m not a chemist—”
“No, of course. Battery acids or something purer?”
“Purer. Your average Subaru would not be responsible for that kind of luminescence.”
But a submarine might, Williams thought.
Goodman went on, expanding on every idea as if she we
re enthusiastically lecturing a freshman class.
“In that region,” she said, “the helium would likely pass through densely packed salt layers, eroded halite. If the event is close to the waterline, the exposed salt would quickly dissolve in seawater. The result—sodium chloride gas, or chlorine. Both gases rise, appearing yellow-green in sunlight or moonlight due to the chlorine. That could explain the glow. And there’s no limit to how high in the atmosphere the helium would push the chlorine.”
“How would that affect the jet?” Williams asked.
“I have no idea,” Goodman admitted. “You asked for a possible phenomenon to explain a glow.”
“I did,” Williams replied, his mouth twisting. You’ve got to love academics, he thought. The woman’s open delight was exceeded only by its failure to solve Williams’s problem.
He thanked the woman for her time and hung up. He looked at the scramble of words on his pad. The words “microbe” and “helium” had ended up one on top of the other. He laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll mention that to Matt.”
The phone pinged. It was Berry.
“We’ve got another one,” he said gravely and without preamble.
“A plane?”
“No, worse,” he replied. “Sea level. I’m patching you into the live DNI intercept.”
Berry hung up. The deputy chief of staff was not just in a hurry, he sounded uncommonly alarmed.
Williams put on his headset and, a moment later, he was listening to the feed from the Department of Naval Intelligence. The file on his computer was stamped “Open Distress Call via the USS Carl Vinson in the Indian Ocean.” The voices he heard were Afrikaner. The man who was speaking was soft-spoken, almost serene.
The man who came on after him was not.
* * *
Johan Krog was locked by deadbolt into the tiny radio room of the 230-foot Lürssen shipyard yacht. He was trembling from fear and from the cold. The heating system was failing and he was naked save for his thermal underwear. Every other item of clothing was presently in use. He had closed the door, hard, with his trousers between the side of the door and the frame. His undershirt was on the top, creating what he hoped was an airtight seal. He had shoved his white sweatshirt, hard, along the small space at the bottom of the door. He bolted the door shut. Then, using a pair of scissors, he had cut himself a small face mask from the sleeve.
Krog did not know what had caused everyone else in the sleek, modern vessel to cough up blood and drop to the floor, and he did not care to find out. He had been nodding at his post in the radio room when he heard the cries and moans, had woken and poked his head out to see what was amiss. When he found his friend and relief radioman Quentin Botha white-faced and throwing up gore in the corridor, a few steps from the radio room, he closed and jammed the door shut. He immediately contacted Claude Foster at his company office in East London, northeast of Johannesburg.
“Have you seen Katinka?” Foster asked after listening to the disjointed account. “She is not answering texts.”
“No,” Krog replied. “And, boss, don’t ask me to go and have a chat with her. She’s probably dead!”
“Then—just so I understand—let me review the timetable,” Foster said. “You arrived at the destination at 8:22 P.M. local time, two days ago, and an expedition team was dispatched, by raft.”
“Yes—Jesus, I’m gonna die here!”
“People die when they lose their wits,” Foster snapped. “You have to stay calm and we have to understand. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try. I’m scared!
“Quiet—”
“I liked our other trips better!”
“Be quiet and listen!” Foster yelled. “You did what you were supposed to do, yes?”
“We did. Over two days. That part—”
“Quiet! Just answer questions. You said the team worked for approximately ninety minutes each time. Three samples each site. This was done along the northern headland, as planned.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me again what happened after that. You weren’t making it clear.”
“I’m not clear because I’m bloody scared!” Krog shouted. “Okay, calm, calm,” he cautioned himself. “The team reported a faint glow coming from the final site. First they thought it was the sunset off the water. But then the sun set and it was still there.”
“A dull column of light,” Foster said.
“Yah.”
“They returned on the dinghy with the others, and the vessel departed. Six samples were opened yesterday after the boat was underway. There were three more left for today. Sometime thereafter—you don’t state exactly when, because you were at your post listening to naval traffic, you say—”
“It was after that plane crash I heard talked about. I wanted to find out more!”
“All right, after midnight a ‘strange affliction’ began striking crewmembers. Your relief man was pale and gasping and regurgitating blood—”
“He didn’t regurgitate,” Krog declared. “He was spewing out his guts is what it was, just a few feet away! I swear, I never seen a thing like it!”
“And then he was silent, everyone was silent, within minutes,” Foster said. “Crewmen who were still ambulatory retreated quickly to secure areas—”
“No, sir, judging from their shouts and footsteps they ran!”
“—and the ship is drifting.”
“Yassir,” Krog replied. “I’m assuming we haven’t got a pilot anymore. Or a captain.”
“Johan,” Foster said, “I want to be very sure of something. The, uh—the science crew did not perhaps find something that made it desirable to dispose of the other men aboard? Maybe three or four of you turned on the others?”
“A lie! And sir, I don’t want nothing except to live!”
“All right, then,” Foster said. “If something happened, and if we are to send a boat to assist you, we have to determine what it was. Which means you have to find out for us.”
“Sir, if I leave this room I will suffer what the others did,” Krog protested. “You’ve got to bring me a breathing mask, something to protect me. And gloves, in case they all touched something. I just don’t know what’s going on!”
There was muted conversation on Foster’s end—and coughing from the corridor of the yacht.
“Do you hear that?” Krog asked with alarm.
“What?”
Krog’s heart was beating fast. It drummed harder when he heard the heavy footsteps outside the door, which was to his left. That sound was followed by someone turning the knob.
“Who’s out there?” Krog yelled.
The answer was not a voice but a gurgling sound. It was followed by a thump. Then, as Krog watched wide-eyed, the white fabric of his sweater, under the door, began to turn a seeping, crawling expanse of red.
The radioman breathed heavily into his improvised mask. The rubber band he had used to hold it in place snapped. Gasping, the radio operator slapped a hand on the fabric to hold it in place.
“What is happening?” Foster asked.
“Crewmen are still dying!” he cried. “There is blood coming in under the door!”
“Johan, do not panic—stay exactly where you are.”
“So damn scared!” he said and moved the swivel chair up against the wall to his right. Suddenly, he coughed into the sleeve in front of his mouth.
“Aw Jesus, no…”
Krog froze, but only for a moment. He coughed again, then doubled over and threw up into the cloth.
“Sir … my stomach…!” he gasped. “It burns!”
The seaman threw away the sleeve, which was soaked with stomach acid and blood. He returned to the phone then hacked hard once again, falling over the shelf that held the radio console. Dark red blood spilled from the sides of his mouth with small flecks of internal tissue bulging from the pool.
A final cough filled his throat with a mass that burst from his mouth, onto his bare chest
, then cascaded down between his legs. A moment later, the radio operator slid from the slickened seat to the floor, where he suffocated.
“Johan?” a voice said over the radio. “Johan, are you there?”
Foster waited. Then he terminated the call.
* * *
Chase Williams sat for a long moment with the headset on, thick silence in his ears. He wondered who these men were.
They had to know they were on an open line but did not seem to care, Williams thought. They had only used first names. That would not tell an eavesdropper much. Most likely veterans at some illegal game—smugglers or pirates, perhaps.
Their identity was not Williams’s immediate concern. He was sure Department of Naval Intelligence would be on top of that. He was suddenly very fearful about the cause. The talk with Dr. Goodman no longer seemed so theoretical.
The jetliner had been in the sky. The boat had been at sea—35,000 feet below but in the same general geographical region. Whatever had happened killed easily, and quickly, in both places.
A core sample. He thought back to the conversation from the doomed vessel.
The spitballing conversation with Dr. Goodman suddenly took on significance. Something taken from that site had been brought to the ship and spread—by air. Something still at that site had at least the theoretical means to rise into the atmosphere and be drawn into a jet the only way possible—through engine intake. That air is shared with the ventilation system.
The phone beeped.
“Ever hear anything like that?” Berry asked.
“Actually, I have,” Williams told him. “In old films of decompression tests of high-altitude flight suits. But those were at sixty-five thousand feet coming on an hour. Submarine simulations at never-exceed depth might produce that kind of response.”
“Which leaves us with nothing.”
“Not entirely,” Williams said. “They were a seasoned team, whatever they were doing, with a hierarchy. You’re checking satellite photos for boats?”
