White Plague (15 page)

“Hey, I’m with you, man. I’m just saying.”

“Well, don’t just be saying. Figure out what made them sick. Be useful, for Christ’s sake. For all we know, the antibiotics will knock it, or weaken it. Two days from now they’ll all be better. Scare over. Welcome home, Marines.”

Eddie hesitated. “That movie, what year do you think it was made, Numero? It was old, the chief said. Nineteen sixty? Nineteen eighty?”

“We’ll never know.”

“Ah, maybe it was old porno. Maybe it was bullshit. Hey, remember those monkeys, One?”

“I never forget them.”

“I dream about them sometimes, and in the worst dreams the monkeys get human faces. People I love. Then ones I don’t know. One gets sick. Then another. Buses. Trains . . .”

We skied in silence for a while. There was some small comfort in mindlessness, but then I reminded myself that to do anything mindlessly out here could be fatal. Simple relaxation was not an option.

Eddie said in a low voice, “Thirteen forty-seven.”

“You’re filled with happy thoughts today,” I said.

I halted and our eyes met through the slits of our balaclavas. He’d finally mouthed the nightmare that loomed over this whole mission since I’d found out that the sickness had preceded the fire aboard the
Montana
, that—with the sailors coughing on the sleds—would have occurred to any doctor in our unit.

“Marseille,” I said, naming the French Mediterranean port that was famed for its role that year. “
Yersinia pestis
,”
I said, naming the infamous passenger that had come ashore there in 1347.

I knew that Eddie and I both were seeing the first map that we’d been shown when we’d joined the unit. It was a map of the past—the year that the black plague sailed out of Astrakhan, in central Russia, tacking its way south to Sarai, on the Sea of Azov, and then past the great Turkish port of Constantinople, until the tiny, cramped ship docked at Marseille.

“To burn through Europe,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Eddie miserably as we stood to the side and watched the progression of sleds pass, pulled by healthier Marines and Navy guys. Del Grazo helped. So did Sachs. Karen Vleska skied up front with Clinton.

The nightmare of nightmares had started
on a ship.
One ship that disgorged, along with coughing sailors, a few rats. Black ones, not the brown kind you see in the New York transit system.
Rattus rattus
. Rats that carried fleas. Fleas that carried bacteria. Bacteria that entered human bloodstreams when the fleas bit a dockside vendor or two, maybe a beggar with his hand out, maybe a fat, fur-clad merchant in his rich home overlooking the port.

Day one, a scattering of men and women, just a handful, scratching idly at their ankles and wrists, where fleas bite. Same day, a few locals grow feverish and have headaches. By day three, even for the strong people, here come the chills, first like a cold coming on, then chills become shakes and shakes become convulsions, and those little bite marks bloom into buboes, and soon after that,
other
family members who touched the sick, or breathed air they exhaled, maybe fed them a bit of soup, maybe told them a bedtime story, maybe changed a bandage,
they
began to get fevers, too.

“We may not know what our guys have,” I told Eddie, eyeing a moaning man being hauled past by a Marine. “But the good news is, it is definitely not the plague.”

“Ninety-five percent,” Eddie said.

Which was the percentage of people who contracted pneumonic plague who perished from it across Europe.
A kill rate of 95 percent.
Add in people who got just regular old plague, black plague, not the pneumonic kind, and you ended up with between thirty and seventy million dead. Clinically speaking, hiding horror with math, the way scientists prefer to do it, that was an overall 30 to 75 percent death rate, all starting with a couple of skinny, hungry
rattus rattuses
jumping off one ship in Marseille.

One ship.

And in
those
days far fewer people lived on Earth. And there were no airplanes, cars, and trains to spread things.

“I’m not letting some scare story keep our guys from getting all the care they need,” I said. “Whatever it is, it isn’t going to be another 1347.”

“Absolutely.” Eddie nodded.

But, I thought, we were heading for a ship
,
and that ship would hopefully take us back to Barrow, and Barrow had an airport, and cars, and trucks, and planes that took people—tourists, locals, scientists—all over the world so . . . well . . . you get the picture Eddie was painting.

Stop being paranoid.

I told Eddie wearily, “Take off the rose-colored glasses, Eddie. Stop being so positive about things.”

“Why didn’t the director tell us they knew about the sickness, One? Or the bodies they took aboard?”

“We’ll ask him when we can. Maybe he didn’t know.”

“You have some decisions to make before we reach the ship.”

I stopped and my voice hardened. “No I don’t. I made them.”

He leaned closer, but I didn’t give him the opportunity to say any more.

I snapped, “You want us to leave them on the ice? Walk away? Is that what you’re saying? How about us then? You and me? The Marines? Everyone here? We were all there. Because if it’s what you’re saying, have the guts to outright say it instead of making stupid jokes.”

He looked hurt. “That isn’t what I was saying.”

“No? Then you tell me, Doctor, what
were
you saying? Leave them on unstable ice near the ship? Throw them in the water? Inject them with too much morphine? Just what the fuck were you saying? Half these people won’t last till tomorrow, we do that.”

He lowered his eyes.

“Not a word about this,” I ordered. “We don’t even know what it is, and we’ll beat it. They didn’t have antibiotics in 1347, they didn’t have one percent of what we do—and their medical world was about as efficient as America’s health care plan. We’re going to save these people. That’s all I want to hear, so otherwise shut up.”

He said nothing, but I knew what he was thinking.

“Eddie, this has nothing to do with what happened in Afghanistan. I’m not making up for that now.”

“Sure, One. I know that.”

“I would do the same thing either way. In Afghanistan, we knew what we were dealing with. Here we don’t. That’s the difference.”

“I know. I do. Absolutely.”

“You’re not the one making the decisions.”

“And I’m glad of that.”

“Then make it easier instead of being an asshole.”

He dropped back. He skied alone. Later I saw him tending to the sick, and he did not flinch or pull back or spare them any attention. He was a good doctor. He knew he was in harm’s way. We didn’t speak for the next few hours. I felt bad that I’d snapped at him. He’d only been sharing things, not trying to make me change my mind. He had every right to be terrified. He had every right to share his thoughts with his best friend.

Thirteen forty-seven
, I thought, pushing forward and gliding, pushing and gliding, hearing the hacking men over the swoosh of runners on snow. The storm was lessening again, although by now, having been through several false endings, I fully expected the wind to rise up again at any moment.

Del Grazo knelt, back to wind, and picked up the radio locator signal from the
Wilmington
, and it turned out that we’d gone off point, but only by a few degrees. Clinton had been taking a generally accurate path.

“Two miles to go, Colonel. We’re just about there.”

I looked into his eyes. I saw black irises, cooperation, hope.

“Thanks, Del Grazo.”

“Hey, no problem, sir.”

A New York phrase, not Chinese. Well, I thought, if he’s a spy for China, he’s not going to run around saying things like,
As Confucius said and my spymaster stressed, he who learns but does not think is lost!

“Two-hour rest behind those ice ridges, out of the wind, then we push through the rest of the way!”

Del Grazo said, “I’ll try the sat phones again.”

“Knock, knock?”

Dr. Vleska’s head poked around the ice boulder that I leaned against, lee side of a pressure ridge, giving us cover from the wind. We’d broken out hot chocolate. It would be too involved to get the sick into tents, too laborious to unload and load them again, so we’d broken out the portable propane heaters and fired ’em up and circled sleds around them, or clustered in groups, like bums of the Arctic around trash can fires.

The privilege of command. I had my own private heater.

Her eyes looked big inside the slit of the black balaclava, ice blue and touched with white, a dime-sized patch of frostbite forming above the left brow.

“I have only three boxes of Girl Scout cookies left,” she said. “Well, that’s what I used to tell people at every house, when I was a kid, till all the boxes were sold. Effective sales technique. If I said one box, they just ordered one. But if I said three, they ordered them all. I tried four once, but that was too much. Interesting question. Why does three work and four fail? Harvard will jump at the cookie study, ten-million-dollar grant.”

“Got mint chocolate?”

She nodded approvingly. “Popular item, especially in the Arctic. It’s that cool sensation in your throat.”

“I’ll take three boxes.”

“Can I sit down?”

“You already have.”

“Who’s the spy?”

Once again, the on-again, off-again storm was lessening. The thermometer was up to a balmy four degrees. I’d taken my turn at hauling a sled and now felt sweat drying, bad idea in the Arctic. I sipped hot chocolate and stared at her, my question obvious.
How do you know?

“Give me a break,” she answered, sitting, baggy snow pants akimbo, like a girl attending a yoga class. Her back was straight. She probably did go to yoga. She said, “That Chinese captain knew you were a colonel. He knew how many Marines we had.
Who
told him, do you think?”

When I just smiled, she held out her wrists.

“Oh, it’s me? You going to handcuff me?”

Is she flirting? Or just probing?
When in doubt, always answer a question with a question. I said, “Who do
you
think it is?”

“You.”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. It was the relief that I needed. Just a great big circle, being out on the ice, I thought. Let’s just all kill each other. Let’s sit around like an old British drawing-room play and figure out who’s the one.

“Well,” she said, “no one checks on you, do they?
You
have the best access to communication.
You
get information first.
You
had that one-on-one talk with Captain whatever his name was.
You
magically stop the shooting. And,” she said, leaning close, “
you sank my sub
.”

“As in, the whole crazy thing was coordinated?”

“Plans
can
work once in a while.”

“How do you explain the bear showing up?”

“If you were a spy, you’d say that very thing!”

“What can I say? You nailed me.”

This time when we looked into each other’s eyes, I felt something different. We held the gaze for longer than politeness or accusation allowed. Whoever said,
Eyes are the windows of the soul
, didn’t know what he was talking about. Eyes are curtains to prevent you from seeing. They’re rabbits that climb out of a magician’s hat. Eyes are the last thing you see smiling before a bullet slams into your midsection. I’ll take pulse rate over eyes as clues any day of the week, and my rate was up.

She slid closer. There was a wet wool odor over the granular snow smell, and the oily propane, and the whiff of bad electronics. The hint of sweat-tinged perfume had to be the part manufactured in my head.

“I’m going to close my eyes a bit,” I said, meaning she should go away.

She rose and her sigh came out as a thin cloud that expanded and dissipated. Her breath, if solidified, would resemble an icicle pointed at my throat.

“Well, if you’re not the spy,” she said, “then what you did back there was pretty remarkable.”

I raised my brows.

“You didn’t fire the torpedo. You stopped the fight. You prevented a massacre. You put everything on the line.”

We watched each other.

“Surprised?” she said. “That I care more about the people than the submarine?”

“Your bosses hear that, they’ll dock your pay. Two billion. That’ll take a few years to work off,” I said.

The way her hands hung for a moment conveyed a vulnerable awkwardness. She said, “Sometimes I have trouble saying the nicer things. I’m better at the other.”

“My ex-wife was like that. Is it all women? Or just ones I know?”

“I don’t understand why the Marines call you Killer. It doesn’t seem right. It seems cruel. You’re not a killer, are you? You can do it, but you’d rather not. So what is that about? They seem to have the wrong idea about you.”

“Excellent interview technique,” I said. “You ever leave Electric Boat, I can find a good berth for you at the unit, as an interrogator.”

“Well, if you’re not the spy, I guess I can give you this,” she said, smiled, reached into her parka, and when I saw what she pulled out, the force of it pulled me to my feet. I could barely believe what I was seeing.