Larbi turned and looked back down the line and straight at Nick. He looked right through him. Nick was impressed. For a fish out of water, Larbi was coping admirably but then Nick remembered that Larbi would not have recognized him. Nick looked nothing like the man Larbi knew as Nick. Larbi was also doing something he had been told not to. Look around. His level of English, like many of the jihadists, was basic to nonexistent. However, all had been taught the very basics they needed for the trip. Most would have no ability to speak any more than, ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘good morning’. American Passport holders who didn’t speak the language posed the greatest risk. However, they had all been taught to answer ‘yes’ to packing their own bags and ‘no’ to any dangerous items. Other than that, all they really needed to know was their departure/boarding gate. All of which had been explained to them prior to their journeys.
Nick watched closely as Larbi, probably as bad an English speaker as 95 % of the jihadists who spoke no English, walked forward to the check-in desk. He handed over his passport and Nick could see him nodding his head to the first question and shaking to the second. The check-in agent then wrote something on Larbi’s boarding card and pointed, directing him to the security gates. Larbi smiled and without a look backwards proceeded to the security gates.
Nick was pleased. If Larbi could do it, all ten thousand could.
Nick felt a knot in his stomach as the check-in agent called him forward. The young man looked at him closer than Nick would have liked but made no sign, at least outwardly, that he had recognized Nick. Nick answered the normal security questions and was rewarded with his boarding pass with instructions to proceed directly to the gate that the agent had written clearly on the boarding pass.
Nick smiled at the young family checking in for the flight at the desk next to his and as instructed, proceeded to the gate. Security was quick and seemed uninterested in him. Again, Nick had no doubt that he was safe, thanks to the Munich bookings. He passed a group of excited passengers taking pictures of two US Airways planes. He looked at them and couldn’t see anything notably different. They certainly weren’t a new model, just a pretty standard looking Boeing 747 jumbo jet to him.
“What’s the excitement?” he asked one of the men, snapping shots like there was no tomorrow.
“It’s a US Airways Boeing 747,” the man said, as though that meant something to Nick.
“And?”
“They don’t exist!” he said, somewhat negating his previous statement.
Nick looked out of the window at the very large plane that they both could see very clearly.
“Well obviously it does,” he said.
“Obviously, yes,” said the man. “But nobody knew they had any until they arrived here this morning!”
“Okaaay,” said Nick, thoroughly underwhelmed. Plane, train and bird spotters were a special bunch of souls.
He walked through, checked his boarding pass, and proceeded to his gate. He noticed the board was showing a slightly different gate and made a detour towards the one displayed on the boards. Arriving at the gate, he noted the boarding had not started, something the desk agent told him had begun. A United Airlines staff member, one of the staff from the check-in desk, approached him and checked his boarding pass, then directed him to the gate on his pass.
“I apologize, sir. We’re having a nightmare this morning, gate numbers, flight numbers everything’s gone crazy,” explained the agent, directing another two men behind Nick to the same gate as Nick.
Nick arrived as one of the last to board.
“If you just take the stairs to the upper deck, sir, your seat’s on the left hand side.”
Nick followed the instructions and tiptoed through the cabin where it seemed everyone was keen to catch up on their sleep from the early morning start.
He sat down and looked out at the other aircraft which seemed far below, given his position on the upper deck of a Boeing 747. Another United Airlines jet sat alongside and Nick recognized the young girl sat in the window seat. She had been with the family checking in next to him. They had checked in at the desks for the UA988 flight to Dulles, the flight he was supposedly on.
A steward was stationed just two rows in front. Nick waved him over.
“What flight is that?”
The steward looked out the window. “Not sure, there are a few that leave around the same time as us.”
“This is the Dulles flight, right?”
“Yes, sir,” he said confidently, allowing Nick to settle back and relax.
Chapter 81
They had agreed to convene at Frankie’s house, being the nearest to the NCTC and providing more space than either Reid or Turner could offer. They owed it to the innocent lives at risk and to themselves to try whatever they could to stop the massacre. They had one major problem. Until the flights started falling out of the sky, they had nothing. All the evidence to back up their theories of the impending mass slaughter was back at NCTC, now under military control and lockdown.
They needed something. Unfortunately, the only thing they had would be after the first plane went down. The race would then be on to ensure that Carson was stopped before he massacred tens of thousands of innocents. They understood the reasoning. The Ebola virus had to be contained, but that didn’t mean they had to kill everyone. Not everyone would contract the virus on the flights. They all hit the computers. They needed the details and flight timings for every flight inbound to the US from overseas that day. Turner and Frankie took on that task and were stunned at just how many there were — hundreds. With each plane they found they couldn’t help but think it was another planeload of innocents flying to a certain death. It was madness; the hundreds of flights inbound to America now neared a thousand.
While they researched flights and details, Reid looked at potential solutions. Her job was to find remote facilities that could accept inbound flights and allow those who had not contracted the disease a fighting chance to survive while protecting the rest of the nation. With the rising number of flights that Frankie and Turner were logging, so too rose the number of potential locations required for the quarantine of passengers.
After three hours of research, the two lists were ready. They looked at them and realized that the scale of the task was monumental and not something that was going to be achieved in the space of a few hours.
“But were there only fifty vials of Ebola stolen?” asked Frankie, scanning down the vast numbers of flights.
“Yep,” said Turner.
“Minus the one he used,” Reid reminded them.
“So that means there are only forty-nine flights that are carrying the virus,” concluded Frankie.
“At most,” Turner remarked.
Reid sighed. “Unless they’ve infected each other before they left.”
“Not without infecting everyone they met prior to boarding, which would have infected most of Europe.”
“Does anyone really believe they can contain it in America anyway?” asked Frankie.
Both Reid and Turner nodded and Turner said, “We’ve seen the papers, it’s not easy but possible, as long as you know where and when the infection started. Obviously, we’ve done it in reverse, protecting us from a virus released in Europe or Asia, not protecting the rest of the world from a virus released here. But the principle would be the same.”
“Although it was North America, not just America,” added Reid.
“Yes, the Panama canal, the narrowest point would be closed and any attempt to cross met with deadly force. Likewise, all shipping and air transport would be sent back or face being shot down. Thereafter, the Navy Coastguard, Air Force and Army would simply shoot anyone who attempted to enter our waters or airspace.”