Pandemic Page 21

“That’s the Coronado,” Clarence said. “It’s new. It’s called a littoral combat s.h.i.+p.”

“So it literally does combat?”

“Not lit-ER-al, lit-OR-al,” he said. “It means close in to sh.o.r.e. That’s where SEAL Team Two is.”

Guided missile destroyers. Littoral combat s.h.i.+ps. SEALs. This was the equivalent of putting a floating flag in the middle of Lake Michigan and telling the rest of the world this is ours, and if you even look this way, you’re going to get a black eye.

How typical. Five years after what could have been the extinction of the human race, and her government chose to rattle its saber instead of working with other countries to share the biggest scientific discovery in history.

And yet as impressive as three of the four s.h.i.+ps looked, she realized that just a day ago there had been a total of seven: two more on the surface, one below. Somehow, the infection had taken them out.

I will beat you.

The helicopter suddenly plummeted, an elevator with the cable cut. Just as quickly the drop ended with a hard rattle that bounced her in her seat and jostled her loose helmet.

“Sorry about that,” said the pilot’s voice in her earphones. “The wind is pretty tricky. Turbulence is going to be rough as we come in to land. Hold tight.”

Something seemed to slap the helicopter’s left side. Margaret’s stomach let out a brief-but-intense prepuke warning. She started to look for something to throw up in, but Clarence was already offering her an open barf bag.

Margaret held it to her mouth as she discovered that she was not, after all, in charge of such things. She kept throwing up as the helicopter descended toward the Carl Brashear.

MUTUALLY a.s.sURED DESTRUCTION

Steve Stanton stood at the rail of the Mary Ellen Moffett, wondering if the phrase “freezing your nuts off” was less a figure of speech and more an accurate scientific possibility.

He stared out at an endless black surface, not that he could see all that far at 5:00 A.M. on a starless morning. November wind tore at his raincoat. Five-foot swells slapped against the hull, splas.h.i.+ng icy spray into his face. He’d been out on the lake dozens of times while testing the Platypus, but until this moment he had never, in his entire life, been in a place where he couldn’t see land. He felt like a s.h.i.+vering speck in the middle of nowhere, like a satellite surrounded by the expanse of s.p.a.ce.

Bo Pan stood next to him. The old man had already thrown up over the rail once. He looked like he might soon do so again.

It was hard to believe that just twelve hours earlier, Steve had been sunning himself in a lawn chair. As soon as the Mary Ellen Moffett left the dock, the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees. The growing wind dragged it down at least another fifteen. The Gore-Tex foul-weather gear he’d bought (with some of Bo Pan’s wad of cash, thank you very much) was rated for temperatures well below this, and yet still Steve felt wet and cold. When he got back, he’d write a stern letter of complaint to the manufacturer’s customer service department.

Steve found himself caught between excitement and fear. Despite years of preparation, it seemed impossible to believe that he was here — to possibly acquire a piece of something created by an extraterrestrial race.

“Bo Pan,” Steve said in a whisper that was lost on the wind. He leaned in closer and spoke louder. “Bo Pan, do you really think the location is accurate?”

Bo Pan shrugged. He looked miserable, but resigned to the misery, like a wet sheep patiently waiting out a hailstorm. Bo Pan hawked a loogie, spit it over the side. The man had cornered the market on phlegm.

“I do not know,” he said. “I was told to bring you here, and to launch your creation that way.” He pointed starboard, to the north.

Steve stared out. Maybe his destiny was out there, nine hundred feet below the surface. He could be the one to find it, to bring it back for the glory of China. If what lay on the bottom provided new technology, if it was or helped create a weapon, his country needed it. Hard times were coming to the world. America would not give up her place at the top without a fight. The People’s Party had spent decades preparing for that final s.h.i.+ft to ascendancy — it wouldn’t be fair if a chance find gave America some kind of accidental edge.

Steve knew his history: when America had an advantage, it used that advantage. The atom bomb against j.a.pan. Logistics and manufacturing against Germany. A superior air force against Iran, Libya and Bosnia. The shock and awe tactics against Iraq. When America fought with one hand tied behind its back, as it had in Vietnam and Korea, it lost. When it used everything it had, when it let the generals decide strategy, America always won.

China was gaining, gaining fast, but America still had the best tanks, the best planes, the best s.h.i.+ps. Chinese armed forces claimed technical superiority, but as an engineer Steve knew such claims were a steaming pile of bulls.h.i.+t. Even with the largest manufacturing base in the world and an entire government dedicated to developing a high-tech military, China was still a decade away from being able to fight on equal terms. If war came, America would use everything it had: including alien technology, maybe even that psycho disease President Gutierrez had talked about.

Sure, Gutierrez had warned everyone to be on the lookout for symptoms. Steve remembered the president’s endless “T.E.A.M.S.” public service commercials, the acronym that told the populace to watch for triangles, excessive anger and ma.s.sive swelling. People knew what to look for, yet the disease had never reappeared — at least as far as the public knew. Did America have it stored away somewhere, like the anthrax or smallpox it also wasn’t supposed to have?