Final Winter

‘But they wouldn’t have to land, would they? Shit, Monty, all they’d have to do is fly in circles over a patch of water, let the anthrax spray out, and then head to land when the canisters were empty. Right?’

Monty stared at Brian for what seemed like a long time. Then he yelled out, ‘Doc Palmer! Get your ass over here! Now!’

~ * ~

Carrie Floyd looked at the ground below her, several thousand feet and a lifetime away. Pennsylvania. Definitely not Boston and definitely not home. She raised her head, saw the patient escorts out there, the proud F-16s that were ready to blow her and Sean out of the sky.

She said, ‘Find anything out?’

Sean said, ‘Dispatch is quiet. I’ve been trying to pick up some of the local radio stations. Getting a CNN feed every now and then.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Well, we and the eighteen others are the lead story. Funny about that. Foreign airspace’s been closed to all American flights. Stock market will be closed today, people are bailing out of cities, it’s being called the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11.’

‘Should have kept my mouth shut.’

Sean said, ‘Well, there is a bit of good news. Some of the AirBox flights, the ones headed to Seattle or LA or Salt Lake City, they’ve been able to divert them to empty airstrips out in the desert. Landing with no problem.’

‘Lucky bastards.’

‘You got that,’ he said.

Carrie tilted the aircraft, just a bit. Farmland and towns and highways, as far as the eye could see. ‘Not much desert down there. Or emptiness.’

‘Alaska,’ Sean said.

‘What?’

Sean said, lips tight. ‘Lots of empty places in Alaska. Lots.’

She reached over, grabbed a hand, squeezed. ‘Let’s say we quit this gig later today and go to Alaska tomorrow. The three of us. You and me and Susan.’

Sean just nodded. Carrie thought she saw that his eyes were filling up. She released his hand and went back to the day’s flying, boring holes in the sky, waiting for instructions, waiting for rescue, waiting for those F-16s to drop back and do their jobs.

~ * ~

Victor Palmer listened to Monty and said, ‘Yes… I think it’d work.’

‘How much time before the canisters empty out?’

‘Twenty minutes, to be on the safe side. But you need to make sure that stretch of ocean is empty. Ah, the Coast Guard or Navy will have to be contacted. Get shipping out of the area.’

Monty went back to the desk he had taken over, picked up some handwritten notes. ‘Tight. Christ, it’ll be tight.’

Victor said, ‘Do it. Just do it.’

Monty started making a call. ‘It’ll be done.’

~ * ~

At Northern Command, Lt General McKenna was on the phone with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He said, ‘Sir, we’re making progress. We’ve got just over half the planes on the ground. And I’ve been advised that the Tiger Team is working on a way to handle the other aircraft by vectoring them out to the ocean. Apparently the anthrax will be dumped over the water. Hell of a better place than down-town DC or Philadelphia.’

The Chairman said, ‘All right, Mike. I’ve got a briefing with the Man in five minutes. I’ll tell him about the progress…but Mike, those aircraft have got to be out of the air within two hours. Or you’ll be taking them out for us before those pilots try to land them someplace populated. Understood?’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

~ * ~

Aboard AirBox 10, Helen Torrinson flew south, lowering the aircraft towards the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Off to starboard she could make out oil-drilling rigs, but she didn’t care about them, not at all. She had gotten the instructions from ACARS and from Houston Air Traffic Control on where to go and how to do it, and she knew that back there were two F-15s, making sure that she went where she was told.

Part of her — a part no doubt corrupted by her captain — thought that this was probably all just a ruse. The DoD probably wanted her and the other AirBox planes to head out over the ocean so they could be shot down without any problems, without any witnesses.

Beside her, the body of Hammerin’ Hank lay still, slumped back in his shoulder straps. She was grateful that at least his bloodied head was turned to the left so she didn’t have to look at his face.

Helen checked the altimeter. She was dropping below one thousand, was now at nine hundred, and when she got to five hundred feet, she leveled off the aircraft. Twenty minutes. She was to fly for twenty minutes.

Which was what she did. She checked the time, watched as each minute slipped by, wondering if this was going to be the minute when an air-to-air missile ripped through her aircraft’s engines.

But the minutes still slipped away, and when the twenty-minute mark had been reached her earphones crackled with a message.

‘AirBox Ten, this is Houston Center. You’re cleared directly to Hutchinson Field, Louisiana. Initial heading zero-one-zero, climb to one-five thousand.’