National Security

by Marc Cameron

“Malaria’s not catchy,” Aunt Ellen said, settling back in with her knitting for a moment, and then suddenly leaned to look across Ian. “It’s not, is it, Theresa?”

  “Not unless we happen to share mosquitoes,” Theresa mumbled, engrossed again in her pulp romance. “But he’ll likely get sweat all over us.”

  Roughly three hours after Ian’s collision with the Algerian, Samantha and a flight attendant named Liz brought the beverage cart to a rattling stop beside row sixty-one.

  Samantha leaned across Aunt Ellen to give Ian a napkin. “Can I offer you a turkey sandwich and something to drink?” She put a wrist to his forehead. “Are you okay? You look feverish.”

  “Malaria.” Aunt Ellen looked up, a twist of sky-blue yarn wrapped around her boney index finger. “It’s not catchy.”

  “Just water,” Ian croaked, surprised at how raspy his voice had become.

  He sucked a piece of ice, hoping it would soothe his throat, but it only made the pain worse. He spit the cube back in his glass and sank against his seat, exhausted. His entire body was on fire.

  Aunt Ellen raised an eyebrow and clucked like a mother hen. “You poor thing.” She dabbed at Ian’s forehead with her napkin, between bites of her turkey sandwich.

  The boy in row sixty popped up and down like a redheaded Whac-A-Mole target, gawking at Ian and his two elderly seatmates. His name was Drew and he found it extremely entertaining to throw his pretzels one at a time, backward over the seat while his mother was in the restroom.

  Theresa scolded the boy, going so far as to smack him over the head with her paperback. Drew retaliated by tossing more pretzels, one of which landed in Ian’s water. Theresa fished it out with a wink and threw it back at the boy. The boy poked his freckled face above the headrest with the soggy pretzel between his teeth. He swallowed it with a devilish giggle just as his mother returned to her seat.

  Fifteen minutes later, Theresa and Drew began to cough.

  Two hours into the flight Ian awoke with his stomach on the verge of eruption. He had just enough time to grab an airsick bag from the seat pocket.

  Theresa rolled her eyes behind her book. Aunt Ellen rubbed her belly. “I’ve always been a sympathetic vomiter.” She dropped her knitting on the floor and waddled up the aisle toward the restrooms.

  Samantha Rogers heard the boy in 61E retch as if he was about to lose his entire stomach. Airline policy dictated she put on latex gloves immediately, but she usually just carried them until she checked out the situation. People upchucked all the time on these long flights, but they usually made it to the airsick bag or the restroom. She’d gotten a new manicure at the Hotel Meurice during her layover and wasn’t about to wreck her nails if she didn’t have to.

  The kid’s upper lip was beaded with perspiration. His T-shirt was soaked. Though slender, his belly was bloated as if ready to burst. A ring of what looked to be chocolate cookie crumbs encircled grimacing lips.

  No need for gloves here—just an overindulgent sweet tooth. Thankfully, he’d used the airsick bag. Samantha held out a plastic sack to take the smaller bag. She gave him an empty one in return.

  “Too many Oreos for you, mister,” she scolded, touching the corners of his mouth with a moist towel she kept in the pocket of her apron.

  “He hasn’t been eating cookies.” Theresa leaned across to scowl at the flight attendant.

  “Then what ... ?”

  Samantha’s face went pale as the boy’s eyes flicked open. Tears of blood trickled from a web of swollen vessels. A muffled croak escaped cracked lips. To her horror, she realized the flecks of what she’d thought were dried bits of cookie was dead flesh sloughed from the boy’s raw tongue.

  A moment later, Liz ran up the aisle. Her mousy brown hair had escaped its bun and hung beside a flushed cheek as if she’d just been in a scuffle.

  “She’s dead!” Liz gasped in Samantha’s ear. Her voice shook with abject terror. “I went in to check on her and she’s dead—”

  Samantha grabbed her by both arms. “Who?”

  “She was sitting right here.” Liz’s eyes were wild. Her voice quavered as she pointed to the empty seat beside Ian Grant. “I heard an awful groan in the bathroom, and when I checked on her ... she was slumped over the toilet.. . .” Liz dropped her voice to a grating whisper. “Sammie, she was bleeding out of her mouth... .”

  On the other side of Ian, Theresa stared mutely as a single drop of blood fell from her nose to land on the pages of her novel with a sickening plop.

  Samantha took a step toward the restroom, seized by a sudden wave of nausea. “Get it together,” she told herself through clenched teeth.

  From behind her, came the unmistakable sound of a child vomiting.

  “Drew!” The terror in a mother’s voice was unmistakable.

  Samantha swallowed, trying to regain some semblance of composure. Her throat was on fire.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Are you hearing this, Karen?” Northwest Captain Steve Holiday stared in dismay at his first officer as they listened to the flight attendants over the intercom. One passenger dead and four more were unconscious.

  “Food poisoning?” Karen Banning said as she unfastened her seat belt. If it had been a terrorist incident, both pilots would have barricaded themselves behind the armored door of the flight deck. In a medical scare, it went without saying that she would check things out.

  Captain Holiday reached behind his head and grabbed the oxygen mask. When alone at the controls, he was supposed to wear supplemental oxygen. His voice took on a detached, Darth Vader quality as he spoke through the mask.

  “Be careful out there. Scoot back here to let me in on what’s going on. Follow protocol.” If Steve Holiday believed in anything, it was protocol. It drove his wife crazy.

  The 747 was a spacious aircraft. It took the first officer three minutes to make her way through the upper-deck business class, negotiate the stairwell down to the main passenger compartment, size up the situation, and call back up to flight deck. To Holiday, each minute was an eternity.

  Normally almost giddy, Karen’s voice was deadly somber as it crackled across the intercom. “You’re not going to like this, Steve... .”

  Her vivid description of the pandemonium in the rear of the aircraft hit Holiday like a straight jab to the nose. He ordered her back to the cockpit, where hours of training and well-established emergency procedures kicked into gear.

  Holiday noted their position on the GPS—still five and a half hours from JFK—and called in a medical emergency via the satellite phone. He was told to stand by while a doctor was summoned.

  When the doctor came on the line ten minutes later, Karen described what she’d seen like a child recounting a nightmare—coughing, fever, vomiting, bleeding from the nose and eyes. She looked across at Holiday, slight shoulders trembling as she spoke.

  “It’s not isolated among a particular group of passengers ?” the doctor mused, almost to himself.

  “It is not,” Holiday snapped. He hated it when people talked to themselves when they should be talking to him. “This thing’s moving through my airplane like the plague. We haven’t been in the air four hours and already have five dead and ...” Karen mouthed a number that surprised even him. “... and at least forty-two showing advanced symptoms.”

  The doctor advised the pilots to use continued oxygen and have no more interaction with the passengers. With hardly a good-bye, he promised to make contact again in fifteen minutes and cut the connection.

  Holiday gave a tight grin to his copilot. Blond, pert and almost elfin in appearance, Karen had always reminded him of his daughter. The sight of her trembling beside him broke his heart. She had to know she could still depend on him. “Chin up, kiddo. They’re probably trying to figure out what leper colony to divert us to.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Thirty-four minutes after Captain Steve Holiday placed his initial call to FAA Flight Following, Dr. Megan Mahoney of the Centers for Disease Control found herself pulled
from the a plush corner booth at The Dining Room in Buckhead, on the outskirts of downtown Atlanta, and escorted to an armored limousine that smelled faintly of cigar smoke. She had been on her first date in months, with a cardiologist from Emory University Hospital. He was a handsome enough man, but loved to hear himself talk. Megan had to admit she wasn’t disappointed at the interruption.

  “I have to go,” she’d said as the two young, athletic-looking men wearing dark suits and dour expressions invited her to “please come along” with them. She’d shrugged and dropped her napkin on top of her lamb shank osso buco, which she was much sorrier to leave behind than the gabby cardiologist. “Duty calls.”

  “They send secret agents to fetch you from dinner?” Her date had smirked. “Who are you, Batgirl?”

  “Batgirl ...” Megan had nodded at that, thinking of the hundred of bats she’d dissected under lantern light in dank forests around the world. “I suppose I am... .”

  Mahoney was a compact woman, barely five-three, but when she wasn’t peering through a microscope at deadly pathogens, she was at the gym or in the pool. She demanded the two agents show her their credentials—though they both gave the impression she would get in the tinted limo one way or another.

  Inside, Megan found herself alone. A built-in webcam in a plasma screen on the teak table broadcast her image to representatives from Homeland Security, NORAD, and the White House. James Willis, the director of the CDC leaned across his deceptively uncluttered desk, making eye contact with her over the computer screen. He’d spent the last four days and nights working nonstop in Colorado. His face was drawn with fatigue and worry.

  Megan straightened her shoulder-length hair—her father called the color claybank—in an effort to look more professional and tried to settle into the overly soft leather seat.

  Each of the conference participants got their own portion of the split screen so all were visible to one another, even when they weren’t speaking. She recognized several of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level bureaucrats from too much time watching C-SPAN.

  “She’s four hours and twenty-one minutes off the Eastern seaboard at her present speed and course,” General Brian Randall, United States Air Force, advised the group, as if Northwest Flight 2 was an enemy missile. LEDs blinked and flashed on a wall map behind him in USNORTHCOM’s version of a Larry King backdrop.

  “Is that enough time to put a plan in order?” a frumpy woman from Homeland Security asked. “I’m not sure that’s enough time... .” She wrung her hands on the oak table in front of her, as if squeezing out a washcloth.

  “Depends on the plan,” said Army Lt. General Adam Norton. “French sources tell us their antiterror-ist units took down a lab a little over an hour ago near Roissy, an area adjacent to the Paris airport. They discovered the makings of what looks like an attempt at some kind of biological weapon.”

  In the back seat of the limousine, Dr. Mahoney ran a hand down the front of her black cocktail dress and took in the information. Of course the government had plans in place for the quarantine of incoming aircraft, but every incident was different and required a slightly different protocol. She’d scanned the contents of a powder-blue folder from the seat beside her. As she spoke, she leaned into the microphone beside the plasma screen.

  “Megan Mahoney with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” She possessed the well-coifed classiness of a CNN news anchor and, having grown up in Fulton County, the magnolia-soft drawl of a bona fide southern belle. “Forgive me, but I’m assuming you’ve put the DEOC on alert?” The CDC director’s Emergency Operations Center stood fully staffed and ready 24-7 to help support national health emergencies.

  “For the time being, you are the DEOC.” Willis shook his head. “The White House wants this close hold—the fewer people made aware of it, the better. With everyone spooled up over the Colorado bombings, nerves are on edge, as you can imagine. Something like this could shut down the country.”

  “Very well,” Mahoney sighed, knowing better than to argue with all the egos at the meeting. “The symptoms the pilot describes indicate a hemorrhagic virus—something like Marburg or Ebola—but we’ve never come across anything that acts this fast. Has anyone looked at the passenger manifest? This would make a lot more sense if a large group traveling together began to develop symptoms at the same—”

  General Randall held up a sheaf of computer paper. “We’ve been over the passenger list, Dr. Mahoney. No large groups. According to the pilot in command, it looks like an American kid named Ian Grant seated at the back of the airplane was the first to get sick. We’ve run this kid’s passport history. He was on a flight to Paris from the Ivory Coast day before yesterday.”

  Megan made some notes in a small notepad she carried with her everywhere. “And he isn’t traveling with anyone?”

  “No, ma’am.” Randall shook his head. “But he and the old ladies who were sitting next to him are dead.”

  “And farther forward?” Megan felt her chest go tight as she thought through the possible ramifications of a hemorrhagic virus trapped in the tight confines of a commercial airliner.

  General Norton leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “The pilot says there are five dead and over forty showing symptoms.”

  Megan nodded. It was exactly what she’d feared. “If an agent this fast is also airborne ... that entire airplane is doomed—”

  General Randall harrumphed, rolling his eyes. “Doomed is a strong word.”

  Megan Mahoney chewed softly on her bottom lip. She was all too used to dealing with know-it-all managers who, in truth, knew less than the guys who vacuumed their spacious offices. She leaned against the teak table, both hands clasped at her chest. A string of Mikimoto pearls was draped across her fingers.

  “You are right. We do have plans in place for this sort of thing, General. Northwest 2 should proceed to the quarantine isolation gate at JFK. If those passengers aren’t quarantined the moment they step off that airplane, this illness would almost certainly infect any unprotected people who get within breathing distance. I suppose I don’t have to point out that Marburg kills one in four of those it infects... .”

  “Maybe it’s not Marburg,” Randall said.

  “You’re right. It could be worse,” Mahoney said. “Ebola Zaire kills nine out of ten. Once those passengers get cell coverage they’ll be on the phone with their families. If they describe even the smallest fraction of what they’re going through, mass panic will ensue on the ...” Her voice trailed off as she scribbled some figures on a legal pad in front of her.

  “What?” Randall asked, appointing himself as CDC’s unofficial interrogator. “You’re the disease expert. What are you thinking?”

  “The air onboard a commercial jet is recirculated throughout the plane... .” Megan blew a strand of copper gold hair out of her face as she tapped her pencil on the pad. “A 747 carries roughly four hundred passengers. So far, they’ve eaten up fifty percent of their flight time and a little over ten percent of the passengers are infected. If this is anything like the hemorrhagic fevers we’ve seen, as soon as they show symptoms, each of those passengers will become a fountain of leaking virus and, from the look of things, be spewing it into the air with each breath.” She threw her pencil on the table. “I’m tellin’ y’all, Ebola does things to the human body you don’t want to see in the guy scrunched up next to you in coach.”

  Director Willis leaned forward. “Dr. Mahoney,” he said, giving her a knowing nod. “Why don’t you explain to the rest of the group what a hemorrhagic virus does?”

  “If it hasn’t happened already, very soon, the inside of that airplane will be awash in every bodily fluid imaginable. Connective tissue breaks down so skin looks like it’s falling off the bone. Cells rupture, men’s testicles swell, then die and turn black. Skin becomes hypersensitive to touch, making even the brush of clothing unbearable. There’ll be lots of bleeding—even from the pores—loss of bladder and bowel control ...”
>
  Mahoney saw all eyes on the plasma screen were focused heavily on her. “Look, I apologize for being so blunt, but it’s important y’all understand just how dangerous this is. Ebola ... digests you, for lack of a better description, from the inside out. By the time it’s finished, it’s replicated itself in exponential proportions. Each drop of blood in an infected body can contain over one hundred million viruses ... and every single one of those little guys wants to find a way out, because you’re dead, and he’s gonna need another host... .”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” A towering man in a crisp blue uniform and a full head of gray hair rubbed tired eyes. “Admiral Tobias Scott,” he said, though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs needed no introduction. “Whatever our decision, we owe it to Captain Holiday to get back to him quickly. He’s got be awfully lonely.”

  “I have two F-15s on alert at Lajes Field. With your permission—”

  “I appreciate that, General Randall, but our 747 is well beyond the Azores by now.” The admiral leaned sideways and spoke for a moment to an aide before turning back to the group. “Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as though the U.S. carrier Theodore Roosevelt is almost directly under Northwest 2’s present position. I’ll have her skipper send an F-18 Hornet up as an escort. He can jam the radio and satellite phone traffic so Captain Holiday or anyone else on board will be unable to get a signal out without coming through us. That should solve our mass-panic problem for the time being.” Scott looked directly into the camera. “Forrester?” he said, almost barking.

  Guy Forrester, a balding civil servant who’d risen inexplicably through the ranks of government to land high in the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, had jowls that were puffed and green, as though he might be sick. “Yes, Admiral Scott?”

  “Have someone pick up that FAA controller and the doctor who spoke to Captain Holiday. We’re going to have to bring them in to ... protective custody, shall we say.”