“But why does he want me specifically?” Sophie asked.
“As I said before, it’s above our security clearance. We have to get you there, whatever it takes.”
She did not like the way he had said, whatever it takes.
The driver sneered. “It’s the goddamned rag-heads you mark my words, it’s a chemical attack. A cowardly act of terrorism. Like 9/11, but even more sneaky. A typical camel-jockey trick.” He glanced at Sophie, taking in her dusky, latin looks. “…oh, sorry, doctor, no offence.”
“What do you mean?” she inquired sharply.
“I wasn’t thinking,” he apologized, circling his face and pointing at her.
“You think I’m Middle Eastern?”
“Your skin color, y’know?”
Skin color again? The soldier had seen her sallow skin coloring and thought her the enemy. She felt her temperature rising along with her temper. “This disease does not discriminate over skin color. Or cast or creed for that matter. It will kill without mercy, the rich, poor, black or white, it does not care, and it will mow down everything in its path. And for your information I’m Latin-American.”
The driver sneered under his breath. “American, yeah, sure, right.”
The Sergeant leaned forward; “I apologize for my colleague’s offensive remarks. He’s claustrophobic. The helmet’s giving him the heebie-jeebies. Making him irrational and speaking without thinking.”
The jeep lurched across the lanes as the driver sneezed three times rapidly in succession. The driver fought for control of the vehicle as he fishtailed down the interstate. Sophie held on tight as the driver swerved onto the shoulder spewing up gravel, he managed to straighten the jeep, when he sneezed violently and once again lost control. He yanked the steering wheel one way, over corrected, and then yanked it the other. Finally, he braked and squealed to a halt. He convulsed once more and sneezed painfully.
“Goddamn it! Aw, Christ. Look at the inside of my helmet; it’s covered in snot.”
Sophie turned to see the plastic visor splattered with thousands upon thousands of droplets of the deadly bacteria as the soldier had sneezed without the ability to cover his nose.
She froze in alarm when the driver started to remove his helmet. “Whatever you do, do not remove that helmet,” she said firmly.
The sergeant whacked him on the back of his helmet, “Leave your helmet on, soldier. That’s an order, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Sergeant.” He put the jeep in gear and continued forward. He maneuvered his head to see through the mucus on the inside of his helmet. “This is so gross,” he moaned as the fluid ran down the inside of the visor obscuring his vision.
The jeep picked up speed and hurtled along the I-95 at a fair clip; the sergeant leaned forward again and spoke quietly to Sophie. “We were told sneezing is one of the first signs of the … you know,” he paused trying to think how to word his next question. “I don’t suppose that his sneezing could be connected to the—” he could not finish the sentence as the driver turned and glared at him.
“No,” Sophie replied and smiled at the driver reassuringly. “As long as he has kept his helmet on.”
The driver's face dropped and his eyes swiveled from side to side. He acted in an agitated manner, which the Sergeant noticed. “You have kept your helmet on, solider?”
“Yes, sergeant. Well, except from when we took a leak at the rest stop. I quickly phoned my honey, but it was no more than a minute tops, sergeant. I had to take the helmet off to hear her.”
He clouted him on top of the head. “You idiot.”
14:00 PM
Sheila Stone, the chief flight attendant dabbed her bloody nose with tissue paper, she felt nauseous and had to hold on to the seats while she made her way to business section. In all her years of flying, she had seen nothing like this, she and her staff were totally unprepared. She knew that flying for a living had its fair share of dangers. She had trained against high-jacking or kidnapping, and even hand-to-hand combat, in the event of an attack by passengers. But in the small hours of the night she’d wonder about air-crashes, she’d be a liar if she didn’t dwell on the prospect once in a while, as each air mile she flew brought her statistically closer, however miniscule the chance, to the possibility of dying in a crash.
She’d had narrow escapes, she’d been in an airplane that had been struck by lightning. It had lost power and had to glide to the nearest landing strip, and made the unlikely safe landing only because of the pure skill of the pilot. Another time she’d experienced wind shear, a phenomena still not fully explained by science, but once experienced never forgotten, a situation where the airplane dropped out of the sky like a stone. Her drinks cart had stuck to the ceiling as they plummeted downwards at speed, along with the passenger’s cups and glasses, and then, when the pilot had controlled the situation, what goes up must come down, and the passengers had been covered with the contents of their drinks and she was struck a glancing blow by the falling drinks cart.
Her nightmares were becoming more frequent and always featured crashes, she would wake in the night in a cold sweat with the sheets clinging to her. She blamed her lack of faith in the inexperienced pilots, who seemed to be getting younger and younger, each year, as the airlines lowered their standards on each new batch of recently qualified pilots. No doubt to get cheaper, and often foreign pilots. Stop kidding yourself Sheila she scolded, it’s YOU getting older, but it did seem like the pilots were considerably younger.
When she had first started the captains’, co-pilots’, and flight engineers, they even had flight engineers navigating back then, had been rock-solid older men, with years of US air-force experience behind them. They were reliable and self-assured, they commanded respect and she knew she was in safe hands. Now with the competition in the industry and the ever changing bottom line, the companies had to chase the all-elusive dollar that much harder, which equated to a slip in standards — and in safety, if she was honest with herself. She saw the standards cut everywhere she looked, in the quality of the material in her uniform, through to the quality of the food they served, even now offering a no-food option, who’d have thought that would ever happen. She knew that the airline bought the cheapest replacement parts and the check-up intervals were less frequent and not as stringent. However, she never thought they’d scrimp on the quality of the pilots, although she’d been told time and time again that anyone could fly a plane these days, that computers guided the craft, that they could ‘fly by wire’, even land themselves. She was all for progress, but when it came to flying, or more precisely landing, she still preferred a pilot with years of experience under his or her, and there were some hers’, belt, rather than these two snot-nosed kids piloting today. One of them she’d heard, had his rich daddy to fund his training at pilot-school as he’d failed to make the grade, and did not have the inclination to join the air force and train in the usual fashion. That’s just great, she thought, when she saw the flight crew early that morning boarding the aircraft, just what I need, a high school dropout sat in the left hand seat.
Still, she reflected, none of that mattered now, it looked as if her days were numbered anyway and in a manner she could never of imagined in her wildest dreams. She dabbed her bloody nose on a napkin and approached Luke and the Asian man. “Gentlemen, would you mind following me?”
Luke followed apprehensively up the spiral staircase, through the first class lounge to the flight deck. She opened the door to the cockpit. He entered with trepidation and sure enough, both pilots were dead.