Pandora's Clock

by Nance, John J. ;

  Because someone of greater authority wants to talk to you privately, James. Someone wants to tell you something you don’t want to hear: that you’ve got virtually no control over this situation!

  Holland looked at Dick Robb, who was checking the fuel gauges and shaking his head.

  “They’re not fueling us yet,” Robb announced in a puzzled tone.

  Holland shook his head. “I didn’t see a single fuel truck, and I’m sure this isn’t a regular parking spot with a fuel outlet. We’re on a taxiway, as close to the downwind edge of the field as they could get us.”

  A chime sounded, confusing them for a moment, until Holland punched on the cabin interphone and recognized Barb Rollins’ voice instantly.

  “James?”

  “Go ahead, Barb.”

  “So what now? Should we keep everyone seated, or serve drinks, or what?”

  A new voice coursed through their headsets from outside.

  “Captain? Colonel Nasher.”

  Holland checked to make sure he still had the cabin interphone selected. “Barb, go ahead and run a drink service. I’ll call you back.”

  Then he punched on the ground interphone.

  “Yes, Colonel, we can hear you. Captain James Holland here. Are you ready to refuel us?”

  Holland could see the interphone cord snaking away in front of them to what looked like a heavy truck. Obviously the portable command post. He could almost make out the details of a face at the window. The face, he presumed, of the colonel who’d just called.

  There was a worrisome pause.

  “Uh, Captain, you understand I’m the base commander here, but I’m acting on orders from my leaders at the Pentagon, and they’re apparently coordinating with a lot of other U.S. government agencies.”

  Holland could hear voices in the background, along with the howl of the frigid wind sweeping down from the northeast.

  “I understand, Colonel. But we need fuel, and it wouldn’t hurt to check our engine oil levels as well.”

  “Okay,” Holland heard the man sigh, “okay, now please listen, Captain. My orders are to keep you in place here, make certain no one opens any hatch or door, make absolutely certain no one leaves the aircraft, and keep the situation completely static. We’ve closed the base entirely for the interim.”

  Holland cocked his head in puzzlement. “Well, that’s acceptable to us. We’ll keep the doors closed, and we weren’t planning on taxiing anywhere else other than to the end of the runway when we’re ready to go.”

  Another pause from outside.

  “Ah … I don’t think you’re understanding me, Captain Holland. I can’t allow you to depart from this airfield unless I get orders to that effect.”

  Holland moved back in the seat slightly, as if stung. He took a deep breath and turned to Robb. “Quick, call Dallas on the satellite phone. Fill them in. Find out what the hell’s going on.”

  He punched the transmit button again.

  “Colonel, the plan was to get refueled and then proceed on to Edwards Air Force Base, or possibly Holloman in New Mexico. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t particularly give a damn what your orders are. I’m not going to keep two hundred forty-four passengers sitting here two days before Christmas. Now, we need quite a bit of fuel.”

  The reply came swiftly.

  “Captain, I’m very sorry about this, I really am. But unless my orders change, we are not going to refuel you, and we will physically prevent you from leaving, if necessary. You have a major biological emergency on board, and your aircraft is now impounded under emergency military authority.”

  Holland was shaking his head in growing irritation. He jabbed the transmit button again. “I don’t believe this! Unless you’ve got a place to isolate over two hundred and fifty people, you’re telling us we have to live on this aircraft for the next however many days? Colonel, the toilets will be overflowing in six hours, and on that note, whether we leave or stay, can you at least refill our water, provide more food, and service the restrooms?”

  Again a pause. A long one. They haven’t thought this through, Holland decided. They’re making this up as they go along and leaving us completely out of it.

  The base commander’s voice came back all business, the solicitous tone of the first few exchanges now completely gone. “Okay, here’s the deal, Captain. The only thing I’m authorized to allow off your airplane is a body … the body of one of your passengers, who apparently died en route. When we get the word—and it could be twelve hours or more—we’ll have the airstairs brought up to one of the doors, and when our people are safely clear, we’ll let you push the body out on the airstairs. An autopsy is of great urgency, I’m told, to find out what this man died of, and a forensic team’s on the way up right now from stateside. As to servicing your toilets, we can’t allow any potentially contaminated matter off the airplane, so the answer is ‘Sorry but no.’ We’ve got your tail hanging over the seawall to keep the cabin air coming out of your outflow valve heading out to sea, I’ve got all my people wrapped up in these god-awful Rube Goldberg chemical suits, and my ass is on the line if one molecule of a virus gets off your airplane and infects anyone or anything! Now, you’ve got to explain all this to your passengers, and you also need to make sure they understand that absolutely no one else is allowed off for any reason.”

  “I’m not a jailer, Colonel. If someone jumps ship, I can’t control it.”

  “Captain, listen up. This is dead serious, man. I’ve got security police all around your aircraft, understand? My orders are to absolutely prevent—not try to prevent, but absolutely prevent—any human being from leaving your airplane. That’s a deadly force authorized order. Do I make myself crystal clear?”

  Holland sat back hard in the seat. “Jesus!” he said to no one in particular.

  The cabin call chime rang again, and Dick Robb answered on his headset, then unlocked the door. Holland was vaguely aware of Lee Lancaster and Rachael Sherwood’s entering and closing the door behind them.

  Holland punched the interphone button again. “Are you trying to tell me, Colonel, that if someone tries to leave this airplane, you’ll shoot them?”

  “Precisely. Man, woman, or child. I have no choice.”

  Robb turned to the ambassador with a wild look in his eye. “They’ve trapped us here! They suckered us in here and now they’re not going to let us leave!”

  Lancaster calmly motioned Rachael to the jump seat directly behind the captain’s seat, while he sat in the middle jump seat. Robb was holding the satellite phone to his ear and waiting for an answer from Dallas.

  Holland punched the transmit button again. “How about food, Colonel? Anyone thought about that?”

  “Yes, we have.” The voice was slightly less forceful. “I’m going to get creative with my orders. They didn’t say I couldn’t pass anything in to you. I’m going to have the airstairs stacked high with flight lunches when we retrieve the body. We have about three hundred. How much food do you have on board now?”

  Holland shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. We had a dinner service and breakfast service for this flight. I’m sure the breakfast service is still loaded and ready.”

  “Okay. We won’t let you starve, but you’d better ration the heads … the toilets. As for water, we can fill your tanks … we just can’t let you dump anything.”

  Holland could see Robb had connected with Dallas Operations. He had huddled over to fill them in on the situation. Suddenly he was staring at Holland with the color draining away from his face.

  “The Operations veep wants to talk to you. You’d better hear this from him.” Robb handed the phone over solemnly, and Holland brought the handset to his ear for a brief exchange that ended with the phone held loosely in his lap. Holland turned to the ambassador and swallowed hard.

  “What is it, James?” Lancaster asked.

  Holland took a long, ragged breath. “I don’t understand why, but a half hour before we landed, Dallas got a call from the W
hite House Situation Room people.”

  “And?” Lancaster prompted.

  Holland shook his head and swallowed hard. “Even our own country’s scared of us now.” He gestured to the windscreen, his mind obviously drifting away in search of options.

  “What are they telling you, James?” Lancaster asked, a bit more forcefully. Holland’s eyes returned to his. The captain was tired; the ambassador had noticed it before. But the depth of fatigue in those eyes was worrisome.

  “Dallas says,” Holland replied evenly, “the government’s convinced we’re carrying something far worse than a simple flu. They consider us a major threat to population centers.”

  “What does that mean?” Robb asked.

  “We’ve been refused reentry to the United States.”

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The President of the United States had made it a point since taking office to stay the hell away from the Situation Room in a crisis—unless absolutely necessary.

  “It starts a vicious feedback loop,” he’d explained to his exasperated National Security Advisor late one evening when it appeared Panama City was on the brink of civil war. “Nixon refused to use it, and Reagan felt the same way—perhaps for a different reason. They’d go to the Pentagon and hang around the War Room.”

  “It’s a lot more discreet to take the elevator two floors down, sir.”

  “Look, if I walk in down there, everyone thinks, Jeez, if the President’s here, it’s more serious than we thought! Pretty soon there’s so much tension in that room I can’t trust the advice to be cool-headed. I’ll stay in the Oval Office or in my damn bed, and they can use the phone or come up two floors and talk to me. Besides,” he added, “it’s too close to the Press Room, and Sam Donaldson never sleeps.”

  At 6:30 P.M. Eastern standard time on the evening of December 22, after an endless stream of phone calls from the Situation Room to the living quarters regarding Flight 66, the President junked the rule and took the elevator downstairs.

  A dozen men and women looked up in surprise as the President blew into the room looking weary and considerably older than his forty-nine years.

  “Okay, now what?” He stopped and leaned forward, supporting his weight with both hands on one of the communications consoles.

  The assistant to the National Security Advisor waved toward one of the display screens where a map of the North Atlantic now glowed with an orange circle around Keflavík.

  “The Icelandic ambassador is tearing up State’s phone lines to speak with you, sir. Someone was watching all this on television when they heard a seven-forty-seven had landed with Quantum’s logo on the tail. It’s a small community. That person picked up his phone and called the government, and now the Icelandic government is aware of our quarterback sneak and they’re madder than hell. They’ve even rousted the UN Secretary General out of bed. They want that airplane gone.”

  The President merely nodded.

  “The next move will be press conferences and treaty problems with our base there.”

  “Wonderful! It took nearly two hours on the phone to calm down the British PM after the Air Force tried that trick at Mildenhall. I should bust a three-star general back to lieutenant for that one!”

  “Sir, I … thought you authorized the Icelandic landing?”

  The President looked at the floor and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. Like an idiot. I really thought they could sneak him in there.”

  “And, sir, Jonathan Roth, CIA deputy director, is here, if you want a briefing.”

  The President spotted Roth in the doorway of the small, adjoining conference room. He stood up and waved Roth over.

  “Anything new, Jon?”

  Roth shook his head. “The Germans have a team of specialists at that Bavarian lab now to try to discover as quickly as possible the profile, or characteristics, of this bug we’re dealing with, but we won’t get results for several days at best.” Roth shifted around and dropped his voice slightly as the President sat sideways on the console and folded his arms.

  “Give me your best guess, Jon, based on what you know now. If they all come down with this stuff, how long does it take to recover, and what’s the mortality rate?”

  Jonathan Roth cleared his throat and looked away before fielding the question. He hadn’t realized the President didn’t know. It would make things more difficult, since the assistant to the National Security Advisor had been asked to pass that on—and hadn’t.

  “Mr. President, I apologize,” he began. “I thought you’d been informed.”

  The President looked at him quizzically.

  “Spit it out, Jon.”

  “Sir, the communicability rate is considered one hundred percent on that aircraft, and the mortality rate we had at first was above eighty-five percent, but just before I came over here, we talked with one of the Russian scientists again. He’s telling us we should expect a one hundred percent kill rate.”

  The President looked at Roth with an incredulous expression, his mouth half open in a contemplative habit familiar to American TV audiences.

  “You’re telling me that … everyone on board who comes down with this bug will die?”

  “Yes, sir. Most likely all.”

  “Oh my God in heaven! I … I was dealing with this as a containable panic. I figured we’d hold on to them for a few days and no one would get sick, and if they did, no big deal.”

  As the President looked at the wall and exhaled loudly, Roth shook his head sadly.

  “Mr. President, looking ahead beyond the two-day minimum incubation period, we have to prepare for two hundred fifty-six passengers and crew members dying on that aircraft. At least while they’re in Iceland we can get to them with some completely safe biochemical protection suits and send volunteers on board to help. I mean, we can’t euthanize anyone, but they could administer morphine, or whatever, to make the end a little easier. What we can’t do is take them off the airplane.”

  “What’re you saying, Jon? There’s a recommendation in there somewhere.”

  Roth took a deep breath, staring at the floor for a second as he bit his lower lip. His eyes returned suddenly to lock on the President’s.

  “I guess what I’m saying, Mr. President, is that we’ve got one horrible human tragedy about to occur which will go down in history as a dark chapter in human experience. What’s about to occur on that seven-forty-seven is going to wrench the hearts of even the most cynical. I … just wanted to make sure you know that, because however we handle this, it’ll be microanalyzed for decades.”

  “And you’re sure there’s no hope?” The President uncrossed his arms and slid off the console, standing with his hands on his hips. “Have we had any autopsy reports on the dead passenger? That professor?”

  The President paced slowly toward the corner of the room, one hand pulling at his chin.

  Jonathan Roth shook his head and followed, ticking off points on the fingers of his left hand.

  “The autopsy team’s on the way. But, Mr. President, the chain of exposure is already very clear. First, we know this biological agent is deadly beyond previous experience because it comes from a small stock of doomsday viruses discovered by the Soviets over the years—a stock that even they were afraid to exploit. We know it was shipped accidentally to that Bavarian lab. We know two researchers there were exposed, fell ill within two days, and died a demented death. We know that while fully in the throes of the disease, one of the researchers panicked and fled, and ended up in direct contact with Professor Helms. The Germans think blood was probably transferred between them in a struggle through a broken car window. And, sir, we know that Professor Helms, also two days later, suddenly fell ill and died aboard a seven-forty-seven full of people. The fact that he was ill with the disease means he was communicable, and the chances of exposure for everyone on board through the air-conditioning system, my experts tell me, is one hundred percent.”

  The President turned toward him, stand
ing inches away, his voice also subdued.

  “Wait a minute. You said it was a heart attack! That was in your initial briefing four hours ago, Jon.”

  “Yes, sir. But we’re told this could easily be another effect of the same virus. We don’t yet know how this virus kills. We simply know that it does. It could be a kinder, gentler set of symptoms than some …”

  Roth saw the President wince and scowl at him.

  “Sorry for the Bushism. What I’m saying is, whether it kills in a horrible way, or causes coronary or respiratory failure, the result is still the same. One hundred percent fatal.”

  “You said the Bavarian researcher died a demented death. Well, did this professor also go berserk like the scientist in Bavaria?”

  Roth shook his head again. “Not that I’m aware, but a psychoactive reaction isn’t necessarily required. Some may have it, some may not, and the reaction of the lab tech could have been panic or hysteria with regard to his illness.”

  The President was shaking his head vigorously. “Jon, this doesn’t sound like an airtight connection to me. There could still be hope. Maybe Helms wasn’t infected. Maybe we will have a few survivors. Maybe we’ll have a lot of survivors!”

  Roth waited a few seconds before answering. “And if so, maybe even the survivors will be permanently infectious and can’t ever come home. An infected person never gets rid of the HIV virus, for instance.”

  Once again the President turned and stared in stunned silence.

  Roth decided to continue.

  “Sir, I’m trying to hold on to some hope too, but all my instincts tell me it isn’t justified. And if my instincts are right, we need to prepare rapidly. Where do we want this to occur?”

  “You mean for public relations purposes?” the President almost sneered. He could see the searing investigative stories in his mind’s eye: President Schemes for Political Advantage While Hundreds Die in Agony.

  Roth’s hands were up instantly. “No, no, no! I mean in terms of further exposure of the population. The airplane will have to be burned, as will all the bodies. It may even be necessary to fly the airplane to a remote desert location and use a very small, low-yield nuclear warhead to make sure no biological component could survive. My God, Mr. President, if we mishandle this and it enters the general population, it could kill half the humans on Earth! I’m not kidding, sir. This is the biological equivalent of a thermonuclear war if we don’t contain it! There is no cure for it, and it kills within three days. The implications are staggering!”