But for right now, Stage Three would be put on the backburner.
“Gentlemen, this has been an informative discussion, and I thank you. It has helped a lot. What I am hearing just now is that we do not have any evidence or proof that the infection will spread from the pirates to anyone else. We think it will. We expect it will. But we simply do not yet know conclusively that it will. So, based upon that, I cannot yet recommend that we go to Stage Three. The nuclear incendiary devices will remain active, and ready for immediate deployment, upon my command, but for now we will continue to sit back and monitor the situation. We will meet again every six hours and re-evaluate this decision, based upon any new evidence. I have taken my own independent counsel on this issue, and before I give the order to incinerate everyone in the resort, I will need to be convinced that the plague is spreading to the residents and employees, and that the death rate is as high as you suggest it could be.”
“But this is madness, Mr President…I may be wrong, but if I am right, and one single person escapes the resort, then it could be too late.”
“Noted. But for now, we wait. Gentlemen, I will see you again in six hours time.”
In Puerto Rico, the Governor and the Superintendent breathed a sigh of relief.
In America, the President picked up the phone and called General Jerome Connor, “You have your stay of execution. For now. And if you are going to take one of the pirates, do it soon. But under one condition: you don’t bring him to the American mainland. You keep him in Puerto Rico. I don’t care where, so long as it’s secure, and there is no way in hell, he or the bacteria can escape. Do you understand me?”
The General said, "Yes." He understood.
Chapter 41
The Blue Emerald Bay Resort
Puerto Rico
Wednesday
6:00 p.m.
Captain McGregor sat beside the bed of Paddy O’Brian and watched as he took his last breath. He heard the death rattle come from his throat as the last air that Paddy would ever breath was exhaled, gently blowing away some of the froth and spittle that coated his lips.
Paddy was the third member of his crew to die in the past hour.
The Captain swore loudly, said a short prayer for Paddy, and then hung his head in his hands.
He was exhausted. He needed to go and lie down, somewhere far, far away, where the sea was cold, the sky was full of rain, and the grass was a bright, verdant green.
A picture of his farm in England popped into his mind. His wife was standing in the farmhouse door, waving at him as he set off for a day in the fields. She was young and beautiful. And alive.
But now she was dead. They were all dead. Everyone the Captain had ever cared for or loved had been dead for over three hundred years. The only family he had left were his crew, and now they were all dying too.
Soon there were be no one left.
He felt a hand upon his shoulder, and turned and looked up into the soft, blue eyes of Miss Sally. He saw the compassion and understanding in her eyes, and for a moment he did not feel so alone.
Lifting his hand, he laid it gently upon hers while it rested on his shoulders, feeling the warmth of her hand through the thin, green gloves that the doctors in the tents had given him to wear.
“I am sorry that you have lost another of your crew, Captain McGregor,” Sally said.
“I thank you for your condolences. And I fear that shortly you may have no need of using the title. I will soon be a Captain no longer. I may have a ship, still, but what is a Captain without a crew?”
“There is some good news,” Sally offered some hope. “The doctor has just told me that in the past three hours there have only been nine new admissions from your crew. The admission rate is falling. And now five of your men have started to respond to the new drugs they received yesterday. Not everyone will die. You will still have a crew, Captain McGregor.”
“But how many? Five? Ten? Eleven? Out of one hundred and twenty?”
“You look tired, Captain. How do you feel?”
“So far, I feel well. And you?”
“A little hot. But this is the Caribbean, after all.”
The Captain looked up and studied Sally’s face. Small beads of sweat were gathering on her forehead.
And then she coughed.
Captain McGregor stood up.
“Miss Sally, have you been administering the tablets to yourself that the doctor insists we take?”
“Yes, and you?”
“I have followed the instructions I was given like a good little boy, lest I be scolded by yourself for misbehaving!”
Sally laughed, and then coughed again.
“Miss Sally, please walk with me. I should like to find a quack to inspect you. I do not like the sound of that cough.”
At the end of the tent, they found two doctors standing over the bed of a patient and conversing animatedly. As they approached, the doctors turned towards them, and from within the white suit on the right came the voice of Mr Bones.
“Captain McGregor. It is I, Mr Bones! I have become a student again, learning the ways of the new world. And what wonders there are to be learned! I am amazed and humbled by the knowledge that has been gained in the past three hundred years!”
“I had wondered where you had hidden yourself, Mr Bones. But now I see that you are gainfully employed, I need wonder no longer.”
The Captain turned to the other person standing beside Mr Bones.
“Doctor, would you be so kind as to examine Miss Sally? I fear that she is…”
“I’m fine!” Sally insisted. “I’m just feeling a little hot.”
The doctor stepped forward, took Sally’s hand gently and guided her to an empty bunk a few feet away. As Mr Bones and the Captain stood watching, the doctor conducted his examination.
As the doctor finished - it could have been a man or a woman, they could not tell - he asked Sally to lie down on the bunk and rest. She complied, but as she lay back she turned her head and looked at the Captain.
There was fear in her eyes.
“The news is not good,” the Doctor said, speaking quietly to the Captain and Mr Bones. “She is beginning to show symptoms. She’s the second person in the past thirty minutes. Unfortunately, the infection has jumped from your crew to the residents and is now spreading amongst them.”
--------------------
James Silver lay on his bed in his chambers and coughed. He had been coughing all day.
There was a pain in the left side of his chest, and his head had begun to hurt: it felt like someone had taken a cutlass and tried to cleave his brain in half.
The pains had been getting worse throughout the afternoon, and three times he had stepped into the magic wall of water in the small room to wash away the sweat and cool down his hot skin.
At first he did not want to go back to the tents to seek the attention of a quack, because the still fresh memory of being sent away the day before, his tail between his legs, and the diagnosis of a ‘common cold’, had embarrassed Silver deeply.
Several hours later and things had changed. Silver wanted to go back to the green tents. And he wanted the pain to stop. Soon.
As he tried to stand, and he felt a wave of nausea roll over him, he realised that perhaps he had left it too late.
Sinking back on the wet bed, soaked through with his sweat, Silver reached out to the contraption sitting on the little table beside his head.
As he held it in his hand he tried to remember the instructions he had been given when he had been shown to his chambers for the first time.
The palace servant who had brought Silver here had called this contraption a ‘fone’. He had shown Silver that there were numbers on the bottom of it, which you could press so that they emitted small squeaking noises.
The servant had said that if Silver felt ill or needed help, he should press the number ‘1’ and then the number ‘0’ twice in quick succession. If he then held the contraption high against his head, Sil
ver would hear a squeaking sound, and then the voice of a man trapped inside the 'fone', who would help him.
Silver was scared of the magic contraption, but he was even more scared of dying alone in his room, ravaged by pain and thirst.
His hand shaking, and his vision beginning to blur, Silver pushed the numbers on the white box, heard the voice, and then cried for help.
General Jerome Connor sat in the co-pilot's seat of the Chinook CH-47 Military helicopter as it hovered above the Blue Emerald Bay Resort. Looking down, he could see the pirates' ship at anchor in the bay to his right, and the tennis courts and make-shift field hospital to the left.
It had been a long, long time since the General had taken the controls and flown a helicopter, but it was like riding a bike: you didn’t forget the basics. Nevertheless, he was happy to let the pilot land the helicopter, and put them down safely in the parking lot not far from the tennis courts.
Four men jumped out of the middle of the Chinook, and the General dropped down from his side door as the whirling blades above him came to rest.
What they were about to do had not been sanctioned by anyone apart from the President, who although he agreed to it, had not approved of it. He certainly would not have communicated with anyone else about the mission.
In effect, what they were about to do, was illegal. They were going to kidnap someone for scientific research.
It was wrong, against the law, the Geneva Convention – if it had applied to terrorists or pirates - and any other statute on human rights that a lawyer could imagine. Yet, it was not the first time they had done this, and no one had ever stopped them before.
Pushing the gurney that they brought with them from the helicopter and dressed in the same green biological protection suits as the other soldiers were wearing, the team marched quickly across to the tennis courts and into the nearest tent.
The tent was a hive of activity, and no one paid much attention to another group of doctors or soldiers pushing an empty gurney. If anything, the assumption would have been that they had just removed another dead body and taken it down to the beach for incineration.
Two of the men who had pushed the gurney into the tent immediately started moving from patient to patient, scanning the clipboard of patient notes that hung from the end of each bed. After a few minutes of searching they found the patient who had been admitted most recently. His name was James Silver, and according to the time noted on his board, he had only been admitted ten minutes previously. The notes confirmed that the symptoms he was presenting with were characteristic of pneumonic plague.
“This one will do,” General Connor said, pointing at the patient lying on the bed.
Immediately the men under his command drew the gurney up alongside his bed, hoisted Silver aboard, and swiftly disappeared out of the tent towards the waiting helicopter.
“Where are you taking me?” Silver demanded to know, struggling to sit up.
“Lie down. We are taking you to a different hospital for special treatment,” one of the men replied.
A steady hand on his shoulder pushed him back down onto the gurney, and the men hurried across the parking lot to the helicopter. The pilot had seen them coming and already the blades had begun to rotate. Fast and faster they turned and within seconds they were just a whirling blur, roaring louder than the devil in pain.
Silver’s eyes widened with fear, as he realised what was happening to him. Lifting his head up of the gurney once again, he saw the belly of the monster open, and felt rough hands hoist him upwards and off his moving bed and towards the monster's belly.
“They are feeding me to the monster!” he shouted aloud. “Help!”
As soon as he passed through the mouth of the monster, he felt a sharp prick in his neck, and a warm sensation move up towards his head.
A second later the world around him went black, and the monster swallowed him whole.
As the drug that had been injected into his veins circulated around his body, the Chinook lifted off the ground and flew swiftly away from the resort.
James Silver’s wish had come true.
He had escaped.
--------------------
Sally had been sleeping for an hour when she felt someone shaking her shoulders lightly.
“Sally, Sally, can you hear me? This is Joyce here…from Reception?”
Slowly the world around her began to come into some sort of focus and Sally recognised the forehead and eyes of one of the resort receptionists, staring down at her from within her protective biological suit.
“Joyce? What is it?” Sally asked, squinting. The lights seemed to be very bright.
Sally coughed.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Sally, I truly am, but the President of the United States has been calling you on the army phone that you left on the desk in your office. I heard that you had been admitted to the hospital, and the phone has been ringing several times, so I went in to see if I should answer it, and when I did….it turned out to be the President of the United States. He wants to speak to you! What shall I do? Shall I tell him you are too sick?”
“No!...Not yet. Please, bring the phone to me here…”
“I did…here it is…the President is still waiting for you on the line,” Joyce explained, pushing the large green phone towards her, but holding it with both hands so that Sally wouldn’t drop it.
Sally took the phone, thanked Joyce and ushered her away, coughed a few times, and then spoke into the phone.
“Mr President, this is Sally Davis, how may I help you?”
“Miss Sally Davis, Manager of the Blue Emerald Bay Resort?”
“Yes, that is I.”
“Good evening, Miss Davis. I am sorry to disturb you. I understand you are not feeling so well. How are you?”
“I could be better, Mr President,” Sally replied, feeling absolutely terrible. “I am sure you have by now been briefed on the situation here down at the resort?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“And you are also aware of the sickness?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Unfortunately it would seem as if that which we have feared has now transpired: the plague has jumped from the pirates to the residents and workers of the resort…” Sally coughed, “…and as you can hear, also to me. I too now have the pneumonic plague. As well as three other residents who have also been diagnosed with the same. The situation does not look good.”
Sally started to cough again, covering her mouth with a handkerchief, and noticing the first signs of blood in her sputum as she pulled the handkerchief away. A wave of fear washed over Sally as she saw it.
“Sally, may I call you that? I wish you well. My wife and I shall say a prayer for you this evening, along with all the other residents and employees. I have authorized the best medical help that mankind can provide, to help you all fight this and recover swiftly, and I am monitoring the situation in the resort with my advisers hourly.”
“Thank you, Mr President.” Another cough.
“Sally, I was also wanting to speak to you about something else. I don’t know if you are aware of it, or not, but my nephew…the son of my wife’s sister, is actually a guest of yours at the resort just now…”
Sally’s heart sank.
“…His name is Sandy Weiss. I was hoping that you could pass on a message to him, and let me know how he is?”
Sally coughed a few times. She tried to sit up in her bed, but suddenly felt too weak, and she fell backwards onto her pillow. Her pulse had quickened, and a wave of nausea swept over her.
She breathed deeply a few times, and tried to collect herself.
She was too tired and too sick to decide what the best story was to tell the President, so she found herself simply telling him the truth.
That Sandy was dead. That he had tried to escape from the resort with two other guests. That he had been shot dead by the army in the exclusion zone which no one was allowed to enter. And that his body, along with the oth
ers, had immediately been incinerated.
As she related the facts, the President was silent. When she was finished, there was a few moments of silence on the other end of the connection, before it was broken by the question: “When did this happen?”
“Earlier today. And everyone else in the resort has been informed of the incident. It is important that we must maintain order. Martial law is in force. Anyone leaving their rooms without permission is liable to be shot on sight.”
Another silence. Sally coughed again.
“Sally, thank you for the update. I appreciate it. I wish you well, Sally. And I would like to meet you personally here in the White House when all this is done. Please cling to that thought. As soon as you are fit…you shall be my guest. But until then...goodbye.”
The connection went dead.
Sally appreciated the carrot the President had just dangled in front of her. Survive, and be a guest of the White House! Unfortunately, they both knew that not all carrots are eaten. The finality with which the President had ended the conversation scared her. There was no, ‘Let’s speak later’, or ‘Take Care’, but simply ‘Goodbye.’
It was obvious the President did not think she would survive.
Sally smiled.
“What a bastard!” she thought to herself. “I will prove you wrong, Mr President! Even if it’s the last thing I do!”
--------------------
The President of the United States put the phone receiver down on its ornate onyx cradle. He stared at the old-fashioned telephone and swallowed hard. The phone had been a gift to his wife from her sister.
What was he going to tell her now?
That her son had tried to escape? That he was a coward? That he had been shot, and then burned? That the only thing left of her son Sandy Weiss, was a pile of ashes that was blowing away in the wind?
The President stood up, and walked to the window of his office, looking out across the lawn of the White House, and beyond to the city of Washington D.C.
A city full of people. Officially 632,000 of them.
TIME SHIP (Book Two) - A Time Travel Romantic Adventure Page 18
