by Jack Mars
He laughed and banked right. He knew this town like he knew his own face. He flew straight over the houses and buildings, moving north into the heart of the city. He put Meeting Street to his right and King Street to his left. Both streets were lousy with hotels and restaurants and rich tourists. Both streets were crowded, way more crowded than the Battery walk.
He hit the sprayers again. The mists went out two hundred feet on either side of him, enough to cover both streets. Look at all the people! Hundreds of them. Swarms of pests. He opened those foggers up and let it rip, block after block, a thousand feet before he closed it up again. Beautiful.
A little bit of the fog blew back into the cockpit with him, but he didn’t care. He knew it would happen. It always did. He breathed it deeply. He wanted it inside him. This was his final statement. The act itself was his manifesto.
No one ran. No one did anything. They just stood there. A few pointed at the sky, at James Walter Shouberty and his chariot of fire. He checked his product level. Low. Enough for one more drop, a small one.
Better make it good. He banked right at Market Street and flew toward the Charleston City Market. It was crowded. He could see the crowds from here. The summer evenings brought out the maggots just like rotting summer garbage did. He opened the sprayers and dumped the last of his load on the Market and all the nice rich people buying sandwiches and overpriced pizza, and trinkets for the folks back home.
A moment later, the chopper was over the Cooper River. James banked right and headed down to the mouth of the harbor again. In front of him was nothing but wide ocean, dark green and stretching to the horizon.
He glanced at his fuel gauge. He had about forty minutes of flying time left. He hadn’t really given much thought to what would happen… afterwards. He figured he would probably just set the bird down somewhere and eat his own gun.
On a whim, he headed straight toward open ocean instead. There was something romantic about it.
“Bury me at sea, darling,” he croaked to no one. “Bury me at sea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
5:35 p.m.
Joint Interagency Task Force South, Naval Air Station Key West
Luke sat on the phone, listening to elevator Muzak and trying not to feel sorry for himself. Piano notes tinkled in his ear, playing a watered-down version of some song that had been popular twenty years before. This was the hold music at Susan Hopkins’s New White House?
A few moments before, Ed Newsam had stormed out of the room on his crutches. Ed was upset the kid had died. Ed was quiet for several minutes, and then he exploded, shouting at Luke.
“You design a mission, you got to do it up, man. You don’t send us in on some half-assed mission. We gonna do a raid? We go in guns blazing.”
“I didn’t send you on a mission, Ed. I was there with you. Remember?”
Ed shook his head. “It was half-assed, man. Don’t pretend it wasn’t. We got kids with no experience. We got some Saudi Arabian on a boat we know nothing about. We got five minutes or less to get him out. Is he gonna run? Of course he’s gonna run. So we got some dumb ass boy killed, and we didn’t even get the target. And you had him, and what did you do? Shot him in the hand.”
“What was I supposed to do, Ed? Have a gunfight with half the Cuban navy and air force? That would have gotten us all killed.”
“Shoot him in the head, Luke. That’s what you do. You shoot him in the head. But you… now you got him laughing at us.”
That’s when Ed walked out.
Luke felt bad about the argument. He understood what Ed was going through. He was feeling it himself. Charlie Something had died, and it turned out for nothing. Was it a half-assed mission? He didn’t want to think that way. But maybe it was.
On the phone, one saccharine-sweet song ended, and another began. He glanced at his watch. They had kept him waiting until after the attack was scheduled to happen. That little fact told him all he needed to know.
He paced the room in the makeshift command center. It was a small room down the hall from the Dutch Air Force command offices, which operated a small subgroup out of here in concert with the Americans, and patrolled the Caribbean basin all the way down to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. Trudy and Swann were at a table, monitoring computer data for any evidence of an unfolding attack.
The Muzak stopped abruptly. Susan Hopkins’s voice came out of Luke’s handset. “Luke, I don’t have a lot of time to talk. You’ve put me in an awkward position. You’re probably the best agent we have, but there’s no way we can use you for anything now.”
“Can we please put me aside for the time being?” Luke said. “If there’s been an attack, we need to respond to it. If there hasn’t been an attack, we can still stop it.”
Monk came on the line. “Stone, do you know that successive administrations have spent the past ten years repairing our diplomatic relationship with Cuba? In one afternoon, you’ve set that relationship back to the depths of the Cold War.”
“Okay, Richard,” Luke said. “You seem to have an ax to grind.”
“I don’t have an ax to grind, Stone. Your behavior is out of control. You accused the director of the Galveston National Laboratory of having an affair with the terrorist who stole the Ebola virus.”
Luke rubbed his eyes. “He admitted that he did it.”
“Well, he’s denying it now. He says you extracted a false confession from him under duress.”
Luke shook his head. “If that’s what he thinks, then he’s never experienced duress. All I did was ask him some questions. I can deliver a lot more duress than that.”
“We know that much,” Richard said. “Like shooting a hole through the hand of a member of the Saudi royal family. Don’t even get me started on that. Our entire embassy staff is being ejected from Saudi Arabia as we speak. You’ve set that relationship back to a place it’s never been before. What you’ve done there, we have nothing to compare it to. But now that we’ve studied your personnel record, we see that you have a long history of exactly this type of thing. Violent incidents. Allegations of torture. Overstepped authority. By the way, did someone tell you it was okay to invade Cuba? Or did you just think it up on your own, and decide to do it?”
“Is Susan still on this call?” Luke said.
Her voice came back on. “Yes,” was all she said.
“Susan, Omar knew about the attack. He knew the vial had been stolen. He was probably the one who paid for the theft to happen. We need to have the Cuban government hand him over to us.”
“That won’t be possible,” Monk said.
“It has to be possible. He’s the only link we have.”
“The Cuban medics treated his hand, and then he boarded a private jet that was already waiting for him at the Jose Marti airport in Havana.”
“Where did he go?”
“He didn’t file his flight plan with us,” Monk said. “But we assume he was headed home to Saudi Arabia. You’re very lucky you’re not headed there yourself.”
“Are you Susan?” Luke said. He had just about had it with this guy. “You don’t sound like Susan. I called to talk to Susan.”
“Luke,” Susan said, “I’m not sure we have anything to talk about right now.”
“Susan…”
Monk didn’t back down. “Face it, Stone. You’re excommunicated. What other choice do we have? Effective as of the moment you breached Cuban airspace, you’re stripped of command of the Special Response Team. The SRT itself, in its entirety, is suspended until we have time to decide what to do with it. You can borrow the Secret Service plane to get home. I suggest you do that immediately.”
The line went dead. It took a moment to sink in with Luke what had just happened. He had spent most of his career outside the normal boundaries. Don Morris had brought him on in the early days of the SRT, precisely because Luke didn’t paint inside the lines.
In ten years, Luke had been in administrative trouble more times than he cared to count. He had been suspended
, he had been arrested, he had been threatened with contempt of court. He had also been beaten, he had been shot, and he had been stabbed. He had survived car crashes and helicopter crashes and countless explosions.
Now, Richard Monk had just hung up on him.
Luke stared at the phone, wondering if he should try to dial in again. He called over to the other side of the office.
“Swann, did we get any satellite imagery of where Omar went?”
Swann shrugged. “Yeah. It looked like his yacht’s own small chopper took him to the big airport in Havana. Then three Lear jets went out of there in rapid succession, moving fast. One went east and headed across the Atlantic Ocean. We can assume it was headed to Europe or the Middle East. Another went south. It’s headed toward South America, my guess being Venezuela. We have no extradition treaty with them. The third one went west and landed at a private airfield in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. A line of SUVs went out of there a few minutes later and split up. I lost them in the city traffic. Omar’s a tricky bastard, I’ll give him that.”
Luke thought about it. Omar was dirty, that much was clear. Now he was trying to run and hide. That meant the attack was real, and it was coming.
“There are two planes still in the air,” Swann said. “You want me to pull some strings, see if we can interdict?”
“No. He’s a high-profile guy. A billionaire Saudi royal can’t exactly hide forever. The guy’s got a carbon footprint the size of Ohio. We’ll find him again. We should save whatever strings we have left for when we absolutely need them.”
For a long moment, Luke wondered if that was the right move. He could no longer be sure what the right moves were. If letting him go was the right move, then why had Luke wanted to so badly to capture him earlier in the day? Because it seemed easy? Because he had been overconfident? Because he had been desperate? If he was desperate then, what was he now?
The answer came to him, and he didn’t like it. He had been desperate earlier. Now he was just resigned. If the attack was going to happen, at this point chasing down Omar wasn’t going to stop it.
Suddenly, Trudy stood up from her chair. The chair fell over backwards, crashing to the floor. The sound echoed in the mostly empty room.
“Oh my God,” she said. She turned to look at Luke.
Luke stared at her. “What is it?”
Her mouth hung open for a long moment.
“The attack is underway.”
“Show me,” he said.
He stood and went to her computer. It showed a live TV newscast out of Charleston, South Carolina. A pretty blond-haired news reporter stood on a crowded street, in front of a line of beautifully restored Victorian-era buildings. People milled around behind her, some looking uncertain, some laughing and clowning around.
“Mitch, I’m on Meeting Street in the heart of Museum Mile, near the Charleston City Market. People down here are in shock. Just moments ago, a helicopter from Charleston County Mosquito Control veered over this neighborhood and sprayed what appears to be a very large amount of pesticide on hundreds of people dining in outdoor restaurants, people leaving work, tourists, and others just out enjoying the mild spring weather. Charleston County officials we contacted seem baffled, saying there is no policy of aerial mosquito spraying in the city center. They are looking into who the pilot involved is, and what substance he might have been spraying. I’m standing with City Councilor Abe Thornton, who was strolling with his wife when the spraying happened.”
The camera panned back to include a tall, older black man, with glasses and graying hair. He wore a bright green Polo shirt, and was much taller than the news reporter. She held her microphone up to him. Despite the circumstances, neither of them could repress a slight smile.
“Councilor Thornton? What are your thoughts?”
The man shook his head. “Cindy, it’s shockingly irresponsible. This is the type of thing I’ve been talking about for years. The city is the economic engine of this entire region, it’s the arts capital, and it’s a national historic treasure. Meanwhile, we’re roped to a county that is unaccountable, is run by people who don’t live in the city, and who seem hell-bent on doing whatever they want. Today’s incident is an extreme example, but don’t think for a minute this is an isolated incident.”
“Did you and your wife breathe in any of the spray?”
He nodded. “Oh, we got a lungful, all right. And we’re not happy about it.”
“Are you worried about potential toxicity?”
Councilor Thornton raised a hand as if to say STOP. “I think it’s too early to go there, Cindy. Let’s stay calm for the moment. We don’t know what the pilot was spraying. We don’t know what the health implications are. My hope is that a healthy person could ingest some amount of this material without long-term consequences. Personally, I feel fine. I’m concerned about citizens who may have asthma, or emphysema, or some other lung impairment, but as I said, we don’t know anything yet. My staff are in contact with the county, and we’re going to get to the bottom of this as soon as we can.”
There were a few more seconds of banter between the reporter and the politician, but Trudy had already turned the sound down.
“They don’t know what just hit them,” she said.
“Hey, look at this,” Swann said. He pulled up another screen. “This was posted to a social media stream three minutes ago.”
The three of them watched the screen. It was narrow cell phone footage of a small helicopter flying low over some buildings. The footage zoomed in, became unstable, lost the chopper for a second, then panned sideways and found it again. Background chatter came through the phone’s speaker.
“Jesus, he’s too low.”
“Who is this idiot?”
“Hey! What the…”
Suddenly purple and brown fog burst from thin, antenna-like sprayers on both sides of the chopper. It wasn’t a small burst. The chopper laid it down heavy and long. The person holding the phone followed the chopper as it passed, fog pouring out the entire time. The background chatter went on, voices shaking, almost frantic.
“Oh my God, it’s coming down!”
“Should we get inside?”
“Inside where?”
“It’s wet, it feels like rain.”
“Okay, okay, it’s just a mist. Relax.”
“Honey, hold your breath.”
“Disgusting!”
The video ended. The screen showed a static image of a helicopter with a triangular arrow in the middle indicating PLAY. Luke, Trudy, and Swann stood around the small bank of computers.
Luke’s mind revved up, started cranking along, and then took off like a missile. He was in a bad position. It had been a horrible day, and his credibility was shot. His command post was gone, and his entire team was suspended. Would anyone listen to him now? He had no idea. But he had to try. The faster the response, the more people could be saved.
“Swann, pull me up an aerial map of the Charleston peninsula. I need to see main arteries and possible choke points. I need hospitals, especially with helipads. We need to close all the marinas and marine terminals, and blockade them with Navy and Coast Guard if need be. This is it, the time to pull strings. Pull every string you have at FBI, NSA, CIA, Centers for Disease Control, Naval intelligence, anywhere and everywhere. We want real-time satellite data, and we want all video surveillance in the city coordinated and fed to our command.”
“Where is our command?” Swann said.
Luke shrugged. “Here. Naval Air Station Key West, right? They’ve got to have a real command center here somewhere. Tell them we need it, we work for the Office of the President. Except for a skeleton crew to keep their normal operations intact, we need all of their intelligence, data, and logistics personnel. Anyone asks questions, refer them to me.”
Luke paused, his mind racing ahead of his ability to speak. He took a deep breath. He gave himself five seconds to settle down, then he started on Swann again.
“Alert the control to
wer at Charleston airport. Tell them to put more people on—we’re going to have military flights coming in and out every thirty seconds. We need to close the city, so we need portable roadblocks moving into place now. Whatever the local cops have will do for the time being. No one gets out, and controlled entries only. Tell the CDC we need to drop about a thousand medical personnel in there in the next few hours, all of them trained in infectious blood-borne and airborne diseases, and we need them protected from attack by panicked people and from the virus itself. Find out what nearby military units were in West Africa during the Ebola crisis there, and pull them in. We’ve got to get people in place fast. And, not for nothing, it has to happen in something like an orderly fashion.”
Swann stared at him, eyes wide.
“Do it, man! We’re already out of time.”
Swann raised his hands. “Okay, Luke.”
Swann slid into a chair at a laptop, started pulling up data, and picked up his telephone. Within a few seconds, he was already talking to someone.
Luke turned to Trudy.
“Trudy, get me back in touch with the President. We need the governor of South Carolina to declare a state of emergency right now, and we need National Guard mobilized in both South Carolina and Georgia. If he won’t do it, Susan has to do it. There are a lot of military assets based in Charleston. She has to close the city, and the resources to do it are right there. We need every artery out shut down, including walkways and nature paths. When the roads close, people are going to try to get out by sea. We need boats covering the harbor and the rivers—use the Coast Guard first, they’ll have cutters standing by and they’ll get there fastest. No one gets off that peninsula. Also, you have to keep Ebola victims hydrated, right? So bring in about a hundred thousand gallons of water. That’s for starters. More if you can get your hands on it. Also food. We’re going to put an army on the ground, and we have to feed them.”
Trudy didn’t move. She seemed stricken.
“Who’s going to listen to us, Luke?”
“What?”
“We don’t have a mandate from anyone. We don’t even have jobs. Who’s going to listen to us?”
