Pandora's Clock

by Nance, John J. ;

  James, we’re not in control of this. Our government is, and we’re told that the President of the United States is personally calling the shots. We’re still trying to break through the nonsense and get you clearance to fly back here, somewhere.

  “Our company is working hand in glove with the U.S. government to take care of us, folks, and break through the Public Health Service regulations we’d run afoul of if we flew directly to New York right now. Our best bet may be to stay right here.”

  He told them the refueling was being postponed until they had agreed on a new destination. And he told them that absolutely no one was allowed outside the aircraft, omitting the part about armed guards and intent to kill.

  “I’m going to make a critical PA,” he told them. “I’m going to tell them pretty much what I’ve told you, and I’m going to sound even more optimistic and upbeat and confident. Please smile and support me, and let me know if we have any bad reactions. I’ll come down myself in a bit.”

  Then he took questions, and sent those not quarantined back to their crew positions to watch the passengers closely.

  When most of the crew had left the upper deck, Holland turned to Dick Robb and gestured toward the stairway.

  “Dick, anything you can suggest, any observations, anything, for heaven’s sake jump in and tell me, okay? I’m … sorry I snapped at you back there in the London area. I do want your advice and counsel.”

  Robb flicked his right hand to the side to dismiss the incident and concentrated on his shoes.

  “It’s okay,” Robb said.

  “You okay with my briefing?”

  Robb turned and met his gaze. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “I mean, you are still in charge.”

  “You’re the acting captain.” The younger man looked up at Holland with a sudden movement of his head.

  “James, you ever been through anything like this before?”

  Holland shook his head no. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever been through anything exactly like this.”

  Robb sighed and looked away again, then back at his shoes. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. I’m kind of glad we’re staying here, y’know?” He looked up again. “At least this is an American base. Even if they won’t let us come home for Christmas, this is safe.”

  Silence filled the space between them for several lengthy seconds before Holland gestured to the cockpit. “I’d, ah, better make that PA.”

  Robb nodded without looking and turned away.

  In the rear of the coach cabin, Lisa Erickson listened with focused intensity to every word James Holland was speaking on the PA. Clutching a small airline pillow tightly to her chest, her eyes locked on the speaker above her head, she pursed her lips and waited for word that it was over and they would be home in a few hours.

  Her children were waiting.

  “We would love nothing better than to get all of us home for Christmas,” the captain was saying. She smiled a little at that and nodded silently. She would like nothing better as well. There could be nothing better. There would be nothing else. She had to get home!

  “… but I’m afraid, folks, that we’ve got to face a reality. It will be at least Christmas Eve by the time they release us from this miniature quarantine, so we probably won’t make it in time.”

  Keith Erickson thought at first a siren had gone off. The piercing, high-pitched scream was too sustained to come from a human being. But very quickly, as every head in coach turned in his direction, he realized the ungodly noise was coming from his wife.

  It was a monstrous wail of agony that knew no modulation or limits. It came from the depth of a tortured mind and continued for an eternity until the lungs propelling it demanded more air, and then it began anew as two alarmed flight attendants converged on the scene with their nerves frazzled and eardrums in shock.

  Keith grabbed Lisa and held her. He rocked her, talked to her, shook her, and finally got through. The pitch declined to a whimper, and then died out to nothing but a strange expression as she sat with her lips slack, looking at but not seeing the seat back in front of her. She pulled her knees up and encircled them with her arms, rocking back and forth slowly.

  “Are you okay? Honey, can you hear me?” Keith was saying in her ear, over and over again.

  At first there was no response. Then she turned toward her husband and smiled a vacant smile as she looked through him.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Keith,” she said with the deliberate meter of a Stepford wife. Her words came with excessive slowness, as if nothing had happened. “I am fine.”

  As Barb Rollins backed slowly away from the couple, Lisa resumed her rocking, her eyes returning to the seat back, the same strange expression on her face.

  After the crew briefing, Lee Lancaster had excused himself to return to the first class cabin below, leaving word with Rachael for the captain to call him up if there was anything more he could do. Rachael had remained behind in a front-row seat in the upper cabin within view of the cockpit. She saw Dick Robb stroll to the back, and watched through the open cockpit door as James Holland sat heavily on the center jump seat and organized what he was going to say to the passengers.

  When he had finished the PA, she was waiting at the cockpit door.

  Holland looked up and smiled, slightly startled.

  “Rachael. Come on in.”

  “Thanks. Should I close the door or anything?”

  James Holland looked beyond her to the door and then to the cabin. Dick Robb was nowhere in sight, and the passageway was deserted. But he nodded to her anyway, and she felt behind her for the doorknob, and quietly pulled the door closed.

  “This cockpit’s a little cramped, but not too bad,” he said by way of apology. He leaned over and motored the copilot’s seat back toward the right, motioning for her to sit sideways facing him. She slid in carefully around the center console before looking up and getting momentarily lost in his eyes again.

  Holland held her gaze for a few seconds and looked away, feeling suddenly embarrassed and not knowing why. The snowfall outside had increased in intensity, and though the winds had decreased, a gust gently rocked the aircraft as Holland’s eyes followed the runway lights to the east.

  “I, ah … appreciate you and the ambassador helping with all this,” he finally said.

  “Not a problem,” she replied, smiling. “I’m glad we were here.”

  He looked at her again with a puzzled expression, and she blushed.

  “Oh well, I mean, I’m not glad we’re in the middle of … of this situation, but …”

  “I understand.” He chuckled.

  “I mean … if someone had to be here, I guess I’m …”

  “Glad it’s you?”

  She laughed easily, he noticed. Her smile was captivating, and it felt good to be talking to her.

  “Stupid statement, right?” she said. “I’m just happy we could help, since we’re certainly in this together.”

  They fell silent for a few seconds, listening to the gusts of wind and to the hum of electronics coursing like a pulse through the cockpit.

  Holland gestured toward the floor, toward the first class cabin below.

  “I’ve got a question for you. Are you familiar with this fellow Wilson, Garson Wilson?”

  “God’s registered agent?” She laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been watching him. He wants off this airplane badly, and his poor little secretary is trying to shut him up half the time. It’s almost funny, but I’m more intrigued by some of the other passengers.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ve got the sweetest little couple down there. Honeymooners, in their eighties if they’re a day, wearing natty clothes and returning from three weeks around the Continent on their own. The Palmers. Betty and Bill. They’re taking all this in stride, and I really enjoyed talking with them. They’re so cute with each other. They’ve been holding hands since we took off.”

  She noticed his attention drifting and stopped talking. He was lookin
g at the door.

  He brought his eyes back to her and smiled. “I’m being selfish. I need to go down there and walk through and talk to everyone. They need to see and talk to the person behind the voice.”

  She cocked her head. “Selfish?”

  James Holland got to his feet and held out his hand to help her up. Rachael took it and let him gently pull her to her feet.

  “Yeah, selfish,” he said. “I’d much rather be up here with you than dealing with the realities of all this.”

  “Why, thank you, sir.” Rachael tried to keep an even smile on her face and hide the blush that had suddenly begun very deep inside and was working its way out, a tiny wave of delight that was at once inappropriate for where they were and yet in a strange way compensatory.

  Holland started to turn but she held on to his right hand, and he looked back at her.

  “James, you are telling me … I mean us … everything, aren’t you? You don’t really think we’re all going to get sick?”

  He looked away for a second and the gesture caused her stomach to tighten, but just as quickly his eyes returned to hers and he nodded.

  “I think we’re in more danger from panicked bureaucrats than from any virus, Rachael. No, I don’t think we’re going to get sick.”

  He let her hand go slowly—reluctantly, she thought—and turned to open the door. He paused then and turned back to her with the same hollow, haunted expression she had seen in Frankfurt.

  “I just hope they’re telling me everything.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22—9 P.M. (0200Z)

  Jonathan Roth shot from the front portico of the White House and climbed into his black Mercedes where he’d left it on the front drive. It was 9 P.M. and the streets of the capital were mostly deserted on what had become a cold, overcast night. He was a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue heading toward Georgetown before his thoughts returned to the Saharan airfield that would be the final resting place for Flight 66.

  What a tragedy, he thought. Two hundred forty-four men, women, and children, and twelve airline crew members, doomed to die what would probably be an agonizing death.

  It had taken the President only a few minutes to accept his recommendation of the Mauritanian site. It was the field closest to the Atlantic Ocean, and five hundred miles in all directions from the nearest outpost—which was why the Soviets had once invested money for a secret airfield there before the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

  The image of all those people getting sick one by one came swimming back, pulling at his emotions and surprising him. He thought he was case-hardened against such things. He’d seen more than a little death and carnage before, and had been responsible for the demise of several people during his years in Covert Ops. He’d also been the Company’s first man on the scene in Jonestown. The sight of those bloated bodies had been even more horrifying than the stench, which he could remember with nauseating clarity.

  His thoughts snapped back to the present.

  All those people, and a brand-new Boeing 747-400 to boot! What a waste!

  He thought about the airline’s Operations staff in Dallas. They had sounded so hopeful on the phone. The President had ordered him not to tell them the truth about the suspected nature of the virus, or the mortality rate. The political protests and personal pleas might cloud the cooler heads that were trying to do what had to be done. Quantum had no idea they were about to lose most, if not all, of their passengers and crew—as well as the airplane—in a historic tragedy.

  Too bad the airplane doesn’t just roll over and dive into the Atlantic. It’d be a coup de grâce. Over in a second. No pain, no suffering, and no spectacle of having to incinerate hundreds of contaminated bodies with the media trying to televise it live.

  Roth automatically maneuvered onto a deserted Conrail Road west of Georgetown, heading for the Chain Bridge—his course back to Langley little more than an automatic program in the back of his busy mind.

  The President was already distraught about the impending loss of Ambassador Lee Lancaster, and was fretting about when to call him and whether to tell him what the others certainly didn’t know: that everyone aboard would be dead within the next seventy-two hours.

  Roth sighed, and then snorted. What irony! He had met Ambassador Lancaster many times. Brilliant diplomat, but a pain in the butt to the intelligence community. Every time Lancaster traveled, the CIA had to work overtime to ferret out the latest terrorist plot to kill him. Roth had lost count of the number of airliners the ambassador had boarded that had been the unfulfilled targets of terrorist bombs.

  He shook his head.

  The one time in recent memory there’s no active plot against Lancaster is exactly when we need one!

  He thought of Al Aqbah, the newest, most lethal member of the Iranian-backed suicidal terrorist groups. Aqbah was doubly frightening because of a technical expertise never seen before in such circles. Roth remembered the American-trained Iranian pilot caught months before preparing to fly a MIG-29 fighter on a low-level suicide mission into Rome. His target had been the Vatican—and the Pope. No longer, it seemed, did terrorists need to hijack airliners and ships to reach out and touch their targets. They had fighters and missiles and probably more than a few nuclear warheads, most of them purchased from cash-hungry military units in the former Soviet Union. He knew only too well how easy it was to buy sophisticated military hardware from the former Eastern Bloc.

  Is there any possibility, however remote, that Aqbah could be involved with exposing those people to this virus? They’re ruthless enough.

  He had sworn to wipe out Aqbah just as he’d helped destroy Black September and cripple Fatah. His reputation as a spymaster rested on those “brilliant” achievements. The whole intelligence community considered him a genius at knowing what such groups were thinking even before they knew.

  But now they were waiting for Roth to move against Aqbah, and so far he’d been impotent where their operations were concerned. Electronic assets weren’t his strong suit. Human assets were. He could guess what Aqbah was up to sooner than he could prove it with satellites.

  The sight of a late-model Cadillac on the side of the road snagged his conscious attention. The hood was up and someone was shining a flashlight at the engine. Roth’s instincts from too many years in the field kicked in, and he realized he had automatically sized up the car and driver as potentially hostile and had formulated an escape plan.

  He chuckled and let his attention snap back to Aqbah as he passed the stranded car.

  According to the first intelligence reports from Beirut in 1994, Aqbah had formed in the wake of the Gulf War, using Saddam Hussein’s money to build a sophisticated arsenal, then double-crossing Hussein and defecting to Iran. With a string of bombings and assassinations to its “credit,” when Aqbah issued a threat, the world took notice. But much to the disgust of the CIA and others, there was a twisted sort of admiration growing in the intelligence community for Aqbah’s extremely sophisticated abilities. With an incredibly close-knit directorate, mindlessly fanatical Shiite Muslim operatives, and world-class experts in digital satellite technology and weaponry, Aqbah was building a superhuman reputation—at Roth’s and the rest of the free world’s expense.

  Roth shook his head and smiled. Only he knew his vaunted reputation was all chance and circumstance. He’d blundered into the correct solutions time after time, like a real-life Inspector Clouseau. His successes were largely a function of luck.

  He wondered if Aqbah’s leaders were even aware that Lee Lancaster was aboard Flight 66. It was a strange truth, he thought, that blowing Flight 66 out of the sky would be an act of charity, though the world would never see it that way.

  Aqbah wouldn’t waste their time, but if they tried, we’d have to stop them.

  Lancaster was a particularly important target for Aqbah. They had promised the Iranian clergy they would execute him for crimes against Islam—crimes so obscure he could ne
ver recall the details.

  The Chain Bridge loomed before him and he negotiated the ON ramp and crossed the Potomac into Arlington County as his mind worked the problem.

  Suddenly everything coalesced.

  Roth yanked the steering wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes, stopping the Mercedes on the shoulder of the Georgetown Pike with a nerve-shattering squeal of tires. He sat there a second, his mind racing, before reaching over the backseat and pulling out his briefcase.

  Roth laid the briefcase in the passenger seat and snapped it open. He pulled out his small notebook computer and toggled the slider switch, listening as the hard drive began spinning up on battery power. He waited impatiently for the shell menu, then selected a personnel database and called up a search menu. At last a blank line and blinking cursor dominated the screen, and he typed in a few key words and hit the ENTER button, pleased when the information appeared on the screen.

  He scanned the information carefully, then turned off the computer and closed the lid.

  Roth sat in deep thought behind the wheel of his idling car. He would have only a few hours to act to checkmate the enemy. If Aqbah was moving, he had to move faster, but he could do it using his personal network. Knowing the enemy’s next move conferred immense power, and there was no question what Aqbah would do if they had the information and the opportunity: bring down Flight 66 on their own.

  It was the opportunity he had been looking for since 1992!

  Roth put the Mercedes in gear and accelerated back onto the road toward Langley.

  ABOARD FLIGHT 66, KEFLAVÍK AIR FORCE BASE, ICELAND

  With Holland in the main cabin below, Dick Robb had returned to the cockpit and plugged in his headset when the sound of turbine engines rose to a substantial pitch on the left and an Air Force Lockheed C-141B transport flashed by as it landed on the western end of the runway adjacent to their position, its lights slicing in otherworldly fashion through the driving snow flurries.

  Robb keyed the interphone, wondering if the command truck was still manned.

  “Anyone out there?”

  The response was almost instantaneous. “Yes, sir.”