Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Monty looked at the faces of the other passengers, didn’t like at all what he was hearing. He unbuckled his seat belt and got up - always take an aisle seat, you don’t have to wait for some grandma or grandpa to let you go - and went to the overhead bin. He retrieved one of his black duffel bags - a bigger one was in the luggage hold, and he doubted he would see it before tonight was over - and he strolled up the aisleway. Some of the passengers started talking and pointing him out, and he ignored them.

  A flight attendant came toward him, saying, ‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to sit back down. We’re not allowed—’

  He showed her his identification, waited a moment, and said, ‘Ma’am, I’ve got to get off this aircraft. Now.’

  She looked at the identification, looked at him, and back to the identification. ‘We’ll go see the captain.’

  Monty followed her perky butt as they went forward, and a passenger in first class eyed him closely as he went by. The guy had close-cropped hair and had on a coat and tie, and Monty nailed him right away: sky marshal, just making sure things were copacetic.

  At the forward area, the attendant went into the open cockpit, where the captain and first officer were still in their seats. She passed over Monty’s identification, there was a quick confab, and the captain stood up and came to him as he stood by the closed cabin door.

  ‘Hell of an identification card you’re carrying there, Mister Zane,’ he said.

  ‘That it is.’

  ‘Says here...well, you could probably requisition me and this aircraft to fly you to Peking if you wanted to.’

  ‘Probably, but right now I just need to get off this aircraft.’

  The captain handed Monty back his ID. He said, ‘Nothing’s moving out there. I can open the cabin door but you’ll be on your own.’

  Monty shrugged. ‘I’ve been on my own in worse places.’

  The captain said, ‘I’m sure as shit you’re right.’ Then he said to the flight attendant, ‘Louise, go ahead. Pop her open.’

  Louise went to the red-colored door handle, swung it forward and there was a gentle whoosh as the door opened. The fresh air felt good. Monty went to the edge of the door, sat down, let his feet dangle over the side. He dropped the duffel bag to the runway below him, and then scooted out, grabbed onto the edge of the open door. He stretched out as far as he could, hanging there by his fingertips, and then he dropped. He let his body curl in a parachute fall, rolled onto his left side and shoulder, and then got up.

  A spotlight got him before he reached his duffel bag. He raised his hands.

  Two guys in black jumpsuits, body armor, helmets, and carrying automatic weapons with lit flashlight attachments under the stubby barrels approached at a fast trot. One guy shouted out, ‘You got someplace fucking important to go to, pal?’

  Monty said, ‘That I do.’

  ‘Unless you’re the fucking president of the United States, I don’t think you’re going anywhere but a lock-up.’

  Monty said, ‘All right if I slide my ID over?’

  The second guy said, ‘Sure. Make it snappy.’

  He dropped his identification wallet on the ground, gently tapped it with his foot so it slid over to the two guys. One of them picked it up and examined it with a small flashlight, while his partner kept his weapon trained on Monty. Good tradecraft.

  ‘Sorry, Henry,’ the guy examining the ID said.

  ‘Huh?’

  He tossed the ID back to Monty, who snatched it in midair. The guy said to his partner, ‘Guess we had a presidential election and missed it. Mister Zane, where do you need to go?’

  ‘AirBox,’ he said.

  ‘You got it.’

  ~ * ~

  A half-mile and thirty feet underground from his corner office, Alexander Bocks exited an elevator into his company’s Operations Center. Protected by steel-reinforced concrete and with its own independent power, water and air supply, the Operations Center kept track of every single AirBox aircraft in the air, from takeoff in Memphis to any of the scores of destinations in this part of the hemisphere.

  Bocks walked into the dimly lit room, lined with desks and monitors. On the far wall was a large plasma screen depicting the continental United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada and, in smaller subsets off to the left, Alaska and Hawaii. With a practiced eye, he looked up at the screen, saw the triangular icons marking those aircraft that were now airborne prior to the airport’s shutdown.

  The overnight manager - an ex-Air Force air traffic controller named Pam Kasnet - stood up from her desk, headset on, as he approached.

  ‘What do we have up?’

  ‘Nineteen aircraft, all on their paths, all on schedule.’

  ‘Any word on a reopening?’

  ‘None.’

  In the room there was the soft murmur of the operations staff who were keeping an eye on the aircraft and also keeping an eye on the package-sorting and distribution center. Smaller screens on some of the terminals displayed the interior of the buildings where packages and envelopes were continuously sorted, bagged and tagged. Bocks spared them a quick glance and went back to his overnight manager. What a fuck-up. Besides hammering his company’s schedule for the night, there was the more important Final Winter project, and he knew that very shortly he would need to let Adrianna Scott know what was going on.

  ‘The word I got is that there’s a threat against the airport, leading to the shutdown. You got anything more than that?’

  Kasnet went to her desk. ‘Got an info fax from Homeland Security about two minutes before you arrived, sir. Seems two men on the terrorist watch list crossed over into the United States through Washington State last week.’

  Bocks said, ‘Washington State? Hell of a thing to get us all spun up about.’

  She said, ‘True, sir, but the county sheriff’s department found the body of one of those terror suspects about ten miles from here last night. They had information that he and his partner might have been in the area of the airport.’

  ‘Let me see the fax.’

  Kasnet picked up a sheet of paper from her desk, passed it over.

  Bocks looked at the paper, and felt his left arm fly out to grab the back of a chair so that he could sit down without collapsing in front of his manager. He managed to get in the chair, managed to sit still, all the while staring at two faces, the faces of the two men who had been here just a few days ago.

  Mother of God and all the Saints preserve us, he thought. He had never passed out in his life, but he was sure that he was damn close to collapsing right now. Oh God, he thought, oh God.

  ‘Pam,’ he said, hating how hoarse his voice sounded.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get Homeland Security on the line. A Deputy Director Janwick, from their Northwest Regional Office, in Spokane. Now. And— Hold on, wait.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Stared at the paper, stared at the paper, all Bocks wanted to do was stare at the paper, and he felt things slipping away, felt it all slip away, and he forced himself to take a long, deep breath, put the paper down, and then look at his concerned manager.

  Took another deep breath.

  ‘All right. Before you contact Homeland Security, listen to what I’ve got to say, and then do it. No questions. Understood?’

  ‘Sir.’ Kasnet had a small notebook and pen in her strong hands.

  ‘Send this ACARS message to all airborne aircraft. “Positive threat to your aircraft. Threat altitude sensitive. Do not descend below three thousand MSL. Declare emergency with air traffic control. Hold present positions at maximum endurance. Contact dispatch upon receipt of message.” Got that? Under no circumstances are they to descend. Make sure all nineteen aircraft acknowledge, and I want their confirmations passed on to me. All right?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Good. Get going.’

  Kasnet went back to her desk, started raising her voice, and there was a quick huddle of her staff. Bocks let her be. She knew what she was doing. In a matt
er of seconds that message would be going out on ACARS - Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System - to those nineteen aircraft. He could count on her. She had a job to do and, right now, so did he.

  He found an empty desk, unlatched his Blackberry PDA from his belt, checked something, and then started dialing a cellphone number. It rang and rang and rang, but there was no answer.

  Adrianna Scott was gone.

  ~ * ~

  He knew it was odd, but Randy Tuthill had never been woken up by a telephone in his life. He was always half-awake, laying in bed or a bunk over the years, whenever a phone rang. He claimed to Marla that he was psychic, and she would say, ‘Psycho, maybe,’ and that was that. So when the phone rang at 2:40 a.m. this morning, he got it before the second ring.

  ‘Tuthill.’

  ‘Randy?’

  ‘Yes, who is it?’

  ‘It’s the General.’

  Randy sat up in bed, as wide awake as if he had drunk a gallon of coffee. He had never heard such despair in the General’s voice before. Aircraft down, that was what it had to be, aircraft down and it was time to go rooting through maintenance records, to see if it had been one of his guys or girls who was responsible for sending a multimillion dollar piece of fine machinery and two human beings slamming into the ground ...

  ‘Sir, what is it?’

  The General said, ‘I need you at the Operations Center ASAP. I can’t say over the phone, but...the project you completed so successfully - it’s about to bite us in the ass, big time. Get over here. Now.’

  ‘You’ve got it, General,’ Randy replied. But by then he was speaking into a dead telephone.

  ~ * ~

  In Washington State, Homeland Security Deputy Director Jason Janwick answered the phone in his conference room, with his people there. The advance word was that the guy on the other end of the line had information about the Russian and Arab who had slipped across the border last week.

  His people looked at him with concern as he said, ‘Is this General Bocks, from AirBox?’

  The strained voice on the other end said, ‘Yes, it is. Director Janwick?’

  ‘That’s right. What do you have for me?’

  The caller said, ‘Vladimir Zhukov and the Arab boy that was with him. Imad. What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because the two of them were at my airfreight company a few days ago, that’s why.’

  Shit, Janwick thought. ‘Hold on. I want my staff to hear this.’

  He set the phone up to speakerphone, put the receiver down, and said, his voice louder, ‘Go ahead, General Bocks. Tell me again what you just said.’

  The general said, ‘Those two men on your watch list. They were at my airfreight company less than four days ago.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Making a delivery. And it’s my time for answers. What can you tell me about those two?’

  Janwick said, ‘The Arab kid is a truck driver, spent time in Canada, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. Has family contacts to groups associated with al-Qaeda. Zhukov... a tricky, slippery bastard. One of the brightest biowarfare scientists the Soviet Union ever produced. Disappeared and was thought to have gone rogue after the breakup of the USSR. Might have spent some time in Iraq, Iran, any place that didn’t like us and that would pay good money for his talents. And from what I’ve been told, his biggest talent is weaponized airborne anthrax.’

  The only sound from the speakerphone was the hiss of static. Janwick looked at the attentive faces of his staff and said, ‘General, you said they made a delivery. We need to know. What kind of delivery? Packages? And if so, where did they go?’

  Bocks sounded even more strained. ‘Canisters...they were delivering canisters that supposedly contained anthrax vaccine...but now ...’

  Murmurs from Janwick’s staff. ‘General, where are those canisters now? Are they being delivered? Or are they still at your facility?’

  Bocks cleared his throat. ‘Director Janwick, those canisters are on nineteen of my aircraft. That’s where they are. And they’re set to disperse their contents if the planes descend below three thousand feet.’

  Janwick had to sit down. Then he looked at the speakerphone in fury as a clicking sound indicated that the man on the other end had hung up. He was going to have one of his staffers get hold of Bocks, but thought better of it.

  There were other things that had to be done.

  ‘Tess?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Memphis. Whatever biowarfare resources we have near the airport, get them the hell over to AirBox.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ~ * ~

  Bocks watched his people at work in the Operations Center, knowing that they would do almost anything and everything he would ask of them. He wondered just how far they would go tonight, because...well, because they were going into uncharted territory. Terra very fucking incognita.

  He looked at the telephone on the desk before him, flanked by framed pictures of some family. Three little girls and mom and dad. He wondered if it was mom or dad who worked for him, who sat at this desk, and whose lives he was quite sure he had put in jeopardy tonight.

  The telephone. He was sure that Homeland Security guy was severely pissed at being hung up on, but time was slip-ping away. Other calls had to be made, he dreaded every single one of them, but there was no choice. He looked at the Blackberry and started dialing.

  The phone rang once.

  ‘Night desk, FOIL,’ came the young man’s voice.

  ‘This is General Alexander Bocks, of AirBox. I need to speak to the Director, right away. Authorization is Bennington. I repeat, authorization is Bennington.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  No clicks, no hum, no buzzes. Top-of-the-line comm gear.

  The colonel came on the line. ‘General. What’s going on?’

  Bocks squeezed the phone receiver quite hard. ‘I know this isn’t a secure line. But this is an emergency. I need information, and I need it fast.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Adrianna Scott. The project I was performing for her. Does it. . . did it. .. did it involve a vaccination protocol at all?’

  He waited only seconds, he knew they were seconds, but God, in those seconds hope lived, it lived bravely and forthrightly, and at the end of those seconds hope died.

  ‘General... what the hell are you saying? There’s nothing involving vaccination connected with Final Winter. Nothing! Final Winter is supposed to be a test release of non-toxic bacteria, to measure wind patterns and dispersal records. Talk to me, General Bocks. Talk to me.’

  Bocks knew the Operations Center was kept climate-controlled, but his shirt was soaked. ‘Colonel... we’ve got a hell of a situation over here. We’ve got nineteen aircraft airborne, containing canisters that we believed to be an emergency airborne anthrax vaccine. These canisters were installed under the direction of your Adrianna Scott. In the past half-hour, I’ve been unable to contact Adrianna Scott. . And there’s one more thing...’

  ‘Go on.’

  Another deep breath. ‘Homeland Security has closed down Memphis Airport. They received information that two individuals on the terrorist watch list were in the area this past week. One was an Arab youth, with connections to a Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. The other was a virologist from the former Soviet Union. A Vladimir Zhukov. Colonel, four days ago these two individuals delivered the canisters that we believed contained an airborne anthrax vaccine. Adrianna Scott supervised the installation of those canisters aboard my aircraft. Whatever’s in them, I’m sure as hell convinced it’s not vaccine.’

  The colonel swore once, very loudly. ‘Are you sure they made the delivery?’

  ‘I’m positive. Colonel, I was there. I saw the bastards myself.’

  The colonel swore once more, and then hung up.

  Bocks followed suit and then picked up the phone and started dialing some more.

  ~ * ~

  Within ninety s
econds of the colonel hanging up on Bocks, a message was transmitted worldwide on a secure Department of Defense information network called DEFNET. The message said:

  FLASH PRIORITY ALPHA

  ALL STATIONS

  COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

  COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

  COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

  ALL STATIONS ACKNOWLEDGE

  Within sixty seconds of the Flash Priority message being sent across DEFNET, certain pre-planned events began to occur.