“You didn’t get a letter… so you think your boyfriend must be in the hospital?”
“Yes!” she said, almost shouting. “He loves me! I know it sounds stupid.” She ran her fingers through her hair and Cote saw that one of her fingernails was painted black.
He grabbed her hands and looked into her eyes. “What boat is your boyfriend on?” he asked, his voice lowered.
Her eyes widened, sensing correctly that Cote knew something terrible. “Boise.”
It was midnight before they were all gathered together in a conference room: the admiral and his aide, Carr and King from NIS, and Connelly from the CDC. Master Chief Cote was there too, wondering if he might finally learn what the hell was going on. In the center of the table, in a sealed plastic bag, was a bottle of black nail polish.
“First things first,” said the admiral. “Where’s the girl? How is she?”
“She’s in isolation on the fifth floor, sir,” said Cote. “She appears to be thoroughly freaked out, but not sick at all.”
“Let’s make sure she’s treated well,” said the admiral. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I don’t want her to feel like she’s a prisoner here.”
King, the eager young NIS agent, spoke up. “We can keep her here as long as we want,” he said, pointing at Connelly. “We have the authority from the CDC.”
The admiral frowned and leaned over the table toward the young man. “I took an oath to be an officer and a gentleman, if that’s alright with you.”
King withered in his seat.
The admiral turned to Connelly. “What do we know?”
“Looks like the pathogen was transmitted via the nail polish. Something cheap she bought at a flea market at Aloha Stadium. We confiscated a case of it from the vendor, he says he imported it directly from some relative at the factory in Thailand. We’ve got a team in Bangkok right now checking it out, they theorize they made a batch with contaminated river water. There are things in that river science doesn’t even have a name for. Somehow it got into his bloodstream when he painted his nail.”
“It was cracked,” said Cote. “His fingernail. I saw it.”
“Why did he paint his fingernail? Did she say?”
“They painted each others’ nails. Some kind of sign of devotion.”
The admiral sighed heavily at that.
Connelly continued. “So that’s why he was infected and she wasn’t, because it got into his bloodstream and mutated into some kind of infection. We think. Inside the boat, it went airborne somehow. Maybe it took hold in an air filter, or inside one of the scrubbers. We won’t know for sure until we get onboard.”
“You think everybody got it?”
Connelly shrugged. “We don’t know anything for sure, we’re still not even sure what we’re dealing with yet. Maybe something like the Hanta Virus. But based on the circumstances… I fear the worst.”
“So what do we do?” asked the admiral, more to himself than anyone in the room. “Sink it? An out of control nuclear submarine filled with a deadly disease?”
Carr responded. “Obviously this is way above my paygrade…”
“And mine,” said the Admiral. “But tell me what you think.”
“After 9-11, the planners agreed they would from now on shoot down airplanes that were non-responsive, heading toward populated areas.”
“How do they define non-responsive? What if the pilots are just busy? Or distracted?”
“Or asleep? All those things are possible, and, in fact, have happened. More often than you would think. Most recently just two weeks ago, when a Northwest Airlines 737 overflew the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles, and was nonresponsive for about an hour.”
“What happened?”
“The pilot finally answered the call. Said he and his copilot were distracted and lost ‘situational awareness’ as they were arguing about some company policy.”
“And they were really ready to shoot her down?”
Carr slid a file folder over the table toward the admiral. “Two F-16s from the Minnesota Air National Guard were on the runway, ready to intercept. The protocols call for a series of escalating actions, starting with a fly by, waving wings, even dropping flares. We modeled our special procedure on this, with the shooting water slugs and the underwater telephone. The idea is to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that the plane can’t or won’t respond.”
“And then they shoot her down.”
“If they have to. We’re not going to let big jets fly into buildings anymore.”
“And a nuclear submarine can do a lot more damage than an airplane,” said the admiral. “A lot more. But we don’t even know if everybody is dead onboard Boise. Not yet.”
“If there’s anyone onboard, they’ll answer the call from Louisville,” said Carr. “The special procedure will leave no doubt.”
“But the Louisville has to find her first,” said the admiral. “No matter what, they have to find her.”
USS Louisville
Danny woke up early the next day and grabbed a granola bar in the wardroom. The delicious smell of bacon was wafting from the galley, but he fought the temptation. Angi managed to stay in great shape and he didn’t want to come back from sea with a belly, an occupational hazard on submarines, which had the best food in the navy. He crunched on the bar as he walked the short distance to control. It tasted like honey mixed with sawdust.
Lieutenant Bannick was the OOD, and he looked disappointed to see Jabo on the steps. Bannick was on his last deployment, his resignation letter already turned in and his separation orders in hand. Rumor had it that he had a job offer from Kraft Foods, near his hometown in Naperville, Illinois. Certainly he was growing his hair out in preparation for civilian life. Jabo had no problem with that; he had himself written his resignation letter once, and had had every intention of getting out. He had no problem with people leaving the service after fulfilling their obligation. But he did have a problem with people who phoned it in, no matter how short they were. Perhaps because of his last patrol on Alabama, Jabo knew better than most how much a submarine depended on the dedication of every man.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” said Jabo.
“I was hoping you were my relief,” said Bannick. “I’ve got to piss like a race horse.”
“I’d take the watch if I could.”
“Yeah what the fuck is up with that?” Bannick responded with a chuckle. “You’re qualified to chart our course, but the XO won’t let you take the watch?”
Jabo saw a few enlisted heads turn at that in control, and he chose not to respond. Everyone on the boat had a god-given right to bitch, he knew, including officers. But an officer like Bannick, even one nearing the end of his time in uniform, shouldn’t be airing his doubts about the command where the crew could hear him. For that same reason, Jabo would talk to him about it later: in private. He continued over to the chart.
They were getting close to the area that he’d boxed in with a red pencil line — his best estimate of where the Boise might be. It excited him. Another twelve hours and he would request the captain station the tracking party, and be ready to man battle stations. He carefully checked, and re-checked their position. Then he pulled out a binder of the latest NTMs, or Notice to Mariners, to verify that the chart was completely up to date. Bannick had wandered over to look.
“Nothing out here, right? Nothing but deep water?”
“Supposed to be,” said Jabo. “But sometimes these sea mounts can sneak up on you. And trust me, you don’t want to hit one at this speed.”