CHAPTER 76
A Gulfstream over North Africa
“Well, how are we doing, Mr. Jones?”
William Parker felt as if he was awakening from a long night’s sleep. He tried to focus his eyes on the physician, in azure-blue hospital scrubs, sitting at his bedside.
“What the hell?”
“Thirsty?”
“Yes.” Parker tried to lean up in the bed. The sheets were clean and perfectly bleached white with just a small amount of starch. Somehow, for the first time in days, Parker felt clean, like the sheets. And hungry. He looked at his hands. The dirt of Pakistan remained embedded under his nails.
“Try some orange juice.”
“Dr. Paul Stewart.”
“Very good. It always helps a survivor of meningitis to remember my name.” The Buddy Holly clone from the CDC continued to check the pulse of his patient. “Of course, you survived NM-13. Amazing.”
“How about Yousef al-Qadi?”
“He did not make it. Intelligence reported that he made it back to his cave, cold and miserable.”
“Any others?”
“My guess would be one or two. If they had someone in their family tree that survived the black plague they had a chance.” Stewart had on reading glasses and was looking at the chart that had recorded Parker’s vital statistics.
“I remember your telling me about that. Any eastern Europeans with inherited super-immunity.”
“That’s it. Were there any Europeans there?” Stewart looked up over his glasses.
“I knew of only one.” Parker pulled the pillow up under his head. “But he should be dead. Any others?”
“It seems that the people stayed in their cave. We should not see any kind of major outbreak.”
“How about our team?”
“Well, you should not have been contagious after getting that first IV, so they should be uninfected. But we’re treating them aggressively as a precaution.”
Parker looked around the Gulfstream. He was apparently in a medical suite in the rear of the aircraft. The oval windows were all dark with closed shades.
“Do you want to get some more sleep?”
“How long have I been out?” Parker felt stiff, as if every muscle had been strained to its limit.
“You been down for about thirty-six hours.” Stewart looked at his watch. “I didn’t want to put you back up at altitude while your blood pressure was all over the place.”
“Thanks.” Parker didn’t know how close he had come to lights-out.
“Besides, frankly, I didn’t want you and your buddies back in the States until I knew we had this under control.” Stewart’s CDC side was taking over.
“You didn’t want to unleash NM-13?” Parker sat up on the side of the bed, got his bearings. As he sat there, he realized what Stewart was saying. If the disease wasn’t stopped for both him and his crew, they would have never left the country. “Okay.”
“Where’s Scott?”
Stewart shrugged. “A few are up front, but they’re all down for the count.”
Parker glanced forward and saw the several sofa-like chairs folded out flat with odd-shaped bundles under gray-and-blue blankets. Although daylight crept in through the window shades, the cabin looked like a dormitory after an all-nighter.
The orange juice had an odd taste, which was, for the first time in several days, sweet and rich. Parker tasted the pulp. Following the fever, his senses seemed to be returning to normal.
“Here, take these. I want you to stay on some extra antibiotics for a few days.” Stewart handed him what looked like large white horse tablets.
“Okay.” He swallowed the tablets with another gulp of the orange juice. “Thanks.”
“No. I think I need to thank you, Colonel.” Stewart’s voice was sober. “They told me enough that I understand the nuclear weapon was recovered because of you.”
“How about the one in Chicago?”
“They shut down half of Canada. All along the Lake Huron area. It’s all over CNN.” Stewart held Parker’s wrist as he spoke checking the pulse. “Some crazy young woman. You can see it up front.”
Parker smiled, looking through the doorway to the television screen in the front cabin. The graphics told everything.
Terrorist Cell Seized by FBI and Canadian Mounties with Seaplane Bomb.
No mention of the true nature of the bomb.
Six cell members killed in shoot-out. Pilot was Pakistani Woman.
What the news didn’t say—and what Parker would only learn later—was that the girl never made it to takeoff. The airplane was loaded and she had begun her taxi out into the lake for takeoff, but a bullet from the Canadian Mounty reaction team caught her in the chest. The airplane’s wing dipped, and it taxied across the water into the shoreline. The team found her dead, surrounded by maps and photographs of the South Haven Lighthouse. The cabin was full of blocks of explosives and, in the center, there was a small nuclear core.
Her dream remained a dream.
She had a look on her face, with her eyes fixed, open, big, brown, as if she had made the final turn to the target. Next to her, on her lap, was a small, odd round bundle of socks tied tightly together by loops of plastic bags. The Canadians were, at first, not sure of it, and carefully removed it wary of what it contained. Later, it was determined that the small round ball was harmless. It closely resembled the homemade “footballs” used by children in rock-and-dirt soccer pitches near the ghetto of Danish Abad.
They stopped it.
“What about Hernandez?”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Where are we going?”
“London.”