Final Winter

‘Tuthill.’

‘Randy?’

‘Yes, who is it?’

‘It’s the General.’

Randy sat up in bed, as wide awake as if he had drunk a gallon of coffee. He had never heard such despair in the General’s voice before. Aircraft down, that was what it had to be, aircraft down and it was time to go rooting through maintenance records, to see if it had been one of his guys or girls who was responsible for sending a multimillion dollar piece of fine machinery and two human beings slamming into the ground…

‘Sir, what is it?’

The General said, ‘I need you at the Operations Center ASAP. I can’t say over the phone, but… the project you completed so successfully — it’s about to bite us in the ass, big time. Get over here. Now.’

‘You’ve got it, General,’ Randy replied. But by then he was speaking into a dead telephone.

~ * ~

In Washington State, Homeland Security Deputy Director Jason Janwick answered the phone in his conference room, with his people there. The advance word was that the guy on the other end of the line had information about the Russian and Arab who had slipped across the border last week.

His people looked at him with concern as he said, ‘Is this General Bocks, from AirBox?’

The strained voice on the other end said, ‘Yes, it is. Director Janwick?’

‘That’s right. What do you have for me?’

The caller said, ‘Vladimir Zhukov and the Arab boy that was with him. Imad. What can you tell me about them?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because the two of them were at my airfreight company a few days ago, that’s why.’

Shit, Janwick thought. ‘Hold on. I want my staff to hear this.’

He set the phone up to speakerphone, put the receiver down, and said, his voice louder, ‘Go ahead, General Bocks. Tell me again what you just said.’

The general said, ‘Those two men on your watch list. They were at my airfreight company less than four days ago.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Making a delivery. And it’s my time for answers. What can you tell me about those two?’

Janwick said, ‘The Arab kid is a truck driver, spent time in Canada, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. Has family contacts to groups associated with al-Qaeda. Zhukov… a tricky, slippery bastard. One of the brightest biowarfare scientists the Soviet Union ever produced. Disappeared and was thought to have gone rogue after the breakup of the USSR. Might have spent some time in Iraq, Iran, any place that didn’t like us and that would pay good money for his talents. And from what I’ve been told, his biggest talent is weaponized airborne anthrax.’

The only sound from the speakerphone was the hiss of static. Janwick looked at the attentive faces of his staff and said, ‘General, you said they made a delivery. We need to know. What kind of delivery? Packages? And if so, where did they go?’

Bocks sounded even more strained. ‘Canisters…they were delivering canisters that supposedly contained anthrax vaccine…but now…’

Murmurs from Janwick’s staff. ‘General, where are those canisters now? Are they being delivered? Or are they still at your facility?’

Bocks cleared his throat. ‘Director Janwick, those canisters are on nineteen of my aircraft. That’s where they are. And they’re set to disperse their contents if the planes descend below three thousand feet.’

Janwick had to sit down. Then he looked at the speakerphone in fury as a clicking sound indicated that the man on the other end had hung up. He was going to have one of his staffers get hold of Bocks, but thought better of it.

There were other things that had to be done.

‘Tess?’

‘Sir?’

‘Memphis. Whatever biowarfare resources we have near the airport, get them the hell over to AirBox.’

‘Yes, sir.’

~ * ~

Bocks watched his people at work in the Operations Center, knowing that they would do almost anything and everything he would ask of them. He wondered just how far they would go tonight, because…well, because they were going into uncharted territory. Terra very fucking incognita.

He looked at the telephone on the desk before him, flanked by framed pictures of some family. Three little girls and mom and dad. He wondered if it was mom or dad who worked for him, who sat at this desk, and whose lives he was quite sure he had put in jeopardy tonight.

The telephone. He was sure that Homeland Security guy was severely pissed at being hung up on, but time was slip-ping away. Other calls had to be made, he dreaded every single one of them, but there was no choice. He looked at the Blackberry and started dialing.

The phone rang once.

‘Night desk, FOIL,’ came the young man’s voice.

‘This is General Alexander Bocks, of AirBox. I need to speak to the Director, right away. Authorization is Bennington. I repeat, authorization is Bennington.’

‘Hold on.’

No clicks, no hum, no buzzes. Top-of-the-line comm gear.

The colonel came on the line. ‘General. What’s going on?’

Bocks squeezed the phone receiver quite hard. ‘I know this isn’t a secure line. But this is an emergency. I need information, and I need it fast.’

‘Go ahead.’