The Devil on Chardonnay (3 page)

“You’ve probably figured out that I’m here to offer you a job.  It’s a temporary duty assignment, actually, for 180 days.  Afterward, you’ll come back here and finish out your tour as we agreed.”

“I thought this secret, behind-closed-doors stuff was over,” Boyd said, sitting without being asked.

“The government is being run in accordance with the Constitution, if that’s what you’re asking about.  As far as this assignment is concerned, we need somebody who can think on his feet.  Someone who can take care of himself, keep quiet, and – ”

“ – who doesn’t have a family.”  Boyd finished the sentence, cutting off the general who seemed about to make a speech.  

“Yeah.  That’s part of it, too.  This is an uncertain world we live in.”

“I’ll take it.”  Boyd said, feeling alive at the prospect of action.

“I thought you would.  Your orders are already here.”

“What if I’d declined?”

Ferguson smiled knowingly and said, “Boyd, you’re a shooter, a born shooter.  You need to be out in front.  Out where the action starts.  We planners and schemers need guys like you when the balloon goes up.”

“Is the balloon going up?”

“No.  This is not a war.  This is something else.” 

Ferguson moved behind the vice commander’s desk and emptied the manila envelope, motioning for Boyd to follow and take the seat at the side.  “I’ve got a new job.  I’m the director of the Counter-Proliferation Task Force.  We deal with weapons of mass destruction.”

“Nukes?”

“Nukes, chemical, biological. Whenever one of the intelligence-gathering agencies comes across someone trying to buy, build or deploy such a weapon, they turn the case over to us.  We’ve got the experts, and we’re empowered to act, if necessary.”

“Act?”

“It’s a task force; elements of all the services, the complete range of capabilities, from intelligence-gathering to deployment to kinetic response.”

“And I’m in the kinetic-response end of it?” Boyd asked, knowing it would be something else. 

Ferguson chuckled.  “Well, you sure brought the kinetic response last time, and at a time and a place nobody could have foreseen it would be needed.  Like then, we don’t know what we’ve got here, so we’re going to put a shooter in charge from the get-go.”

“Prudent.”

“In January, the World Health Organization called us with the report of an outbreak of a rare disease that’s so dangerous our bio-warfare people don’t even like to talk about it,” Ferguson said as he dumped the contents of the manila envelope onto the desk.  He picked up several 8X10 glossy photographs.   “This guy, in the top picture there, died of it in less than three days.”

“Humph.  I don’t want to go there.”

“No.” Ferguson said, leaning over and pulling reading glasses out of his flight suit pocket. “Look at the next picture.”

“Same guy, from a different angle,” Boyd said, seeing a nude black man with blotches and spots all over him and blood dripping from his nose and mouth.  Then he added, “Still dead.”

“See that trickle of blood from his arm, the place where they take blood in a lab?  Then, see the footprint there?  Looks like a moon boot?  The WHO guys said someone in protective gear left 20 people dead in this village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after drawing a lot of blood.  See these other pictures?” 

Ferguson took the other photographs and spread them on the desk, pointing out more moon-boot prints and other bodies.

“So?”  “Boyd asked, stumped as to why they would want him for something like this.

“No one needs that virus for worthy purposes.  Having it is like having a dozen nuclear weapons.  Our bio people tell us there’s no way to even transport it safely, much less work with it in anything but the most sophisticated Level 4 containment lab.  Someone is playing with Pandora’s Box.”

“Tell me where they are, and I’ll drop a Mark 82 into their jock strap,” Boyd said, leaning back, no longer looking at the gruesome pictures.  He chuckled at the thought of a five hundred pound bomb in some guy’s jockstrap.

Ferguson didn’t laugh. 

“Day before yesterday, someone sent a distress signal from a previously uninhabited island in the Seychelles.  It said, ‘We are dying of a filovirus infection.  Quarantine this place.  We have made a terrible mistake.’  The Seychelles sent a patrol plane.  Both of the buildings on the island were in flames, there were no signs of life.”

Boyd looked darkly at Ferguson, beginning to see what his role might be.

“You’ll be completely protected in a biohazard suit,” the general said. “They say it’s cumbersome, but not really uncomfortable. The rest of the team, for now, is an Army pathologist, one of the world’s experts, but we don’t know what he might find, or find and not recognize.  We need somebody there who can, well, do something if it’s needed.”

“Why not send a Navy ship?”

“It’s the middle of the Indian Ocean, and the ships we have there are busy chasing pirates off Somalia.”

Boyd searched Ferguson’s face intently.  He was being strung along here.

Ferguson looked up and caught Boyd’s gaze.  “Uh, and they don’t want that on one of their ships.”

“Same with the Air Force I’ll bet.”

“Yes.”

“So, two expendables go to this place and look around.”

“Pretty much, yes.  Gather some samples.  Do autopsies if there are any bodies.”

“That would be the Army guy’s role.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

Ferguson paused, looked away, taking his time in answering.  “We want you to go to Diego Garcia for a few weeks, uh ...”

Long pause.

“It’s a … a kind of a hospital.”

“Quarantine?”

“Yes,” Ferguson said quickly, seemingly relieved not to have had to say that.

“If the Navy doesn’t want ‘that’ on one of their ships, and the Air Force doesn’t want ‘that’ on one of their planes, how do I get from the middle of the Indian Ocean to Diego Garcia?”

“We’re working on a contract flight.”

“Yes, we seem to contract out the real shit jobs.  Does the contractor know ‘that’ is going to be on his aircraft?”

“Ah, that would be your job, to explain all that, and to plan the mission.”

Boyd laughed, his head dropped back and he looked up at the ceiling, shoulders shaking.  He was oblivious to the stern look he was getting from Ferguson.  The laugh went on for three or four breaths before he stopped, still smiling, and looked again at Ferguson.

“I’ll bet I wasn’t the first guy to get a chance to go on this adventure.”

“It just came up yesterday.  You’re the first.”

“OK.  So, I go to the Seychelles, babysit an Army pathologist looking for bodies, pack 'em up in bags or something, then fly to Diego, hope I don’t get sick, and then what?”

“Take what you find and figure out who’s trying to do what.  You’ll be in charge of the team.  Contact me for whatever you need, but operate independently.”

“When do I leave?”

“Fourteen hundred.  I’ll fly you back to D.C. in my C-21.  We have you on a flight to Mombasa in the morning.”

“Oh, and what is this thing I’m looking for?”

“Ebola.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Packing up

Eight Ball emerged from beneath the porch as Boyd pulled up in a cloud of dust and jumped out of the truck.  The big black Lab’s tail hit the wooden steps solidly three times as he stood expectantly, waiting for Boyd to offer his hand. 

“Goin’ on a trip, big guy.  Clyde Carlisle is gonna drop by every couple days.  He may move in next week if he can dump his lease.  I told him about the covey we’ve been watching behind the bean field.”  Boyd talked as he would to a roommate.  He knelt, rubbed the big Lab’s ears.  He was sure Eight Ball understood.  Boyd climbed the steps and opened the rusted screen door, sorting the keys on his ring and finding the house key. 

“You’re gonna like Clyde,” Boyd said, Eight Ball following as he rushed into the bedroom and pulled out his desert camo travel bag.  “He’s the guy we went fishing with over on Lake Marion. You saw a duck and jumped out. Nearly swamped us.  Gonna have to learn not to do that, or we won’t get invited back.”  He packed quickly and light. 

The landlord had apologized for the bare wooden floor of the old house and had offered to put down some tile or carpet if Boyd would pay another 10 bucks a month in rent.  The gray, worn wood reminded Boyd of a little house from long ago, and he’d elected to buy some throw rugs. 

A car drove up in front.  Eight Ball ran to the door, tail wagging in anticipation of meeting yet another new friend.  Clyde Carlisle, dressed in a flight suit with bronze oak leaves on the epaulets, bounded up the steps. 

“Secret mission!  Damn, Boyd, you get all the luck,” Clyde said as Boyd opened the screen.  He knelt and rubbed the dog’s ears, then entered the house and began looking around.  “This’ll work great.  I think I can get moved in right away.”

“Let me show you where that covey is,” Boyd said, packed already and dropping his bag at the door.  He walked back into the kitchen and pointed out the window.  “They’re usually around that brush pile on the other side of those beans back there.  Eight Ball knows how to find 'em.  We’ve been keeping our distance. They’ve still got chicks now.”

“I’ll give 'em some space.”

“Food’s in there,” Boyd said, pointing to the dog food in the pantry.  They settled the rent and utilities in the time it took Boyd to walk through the front room and down the steps with his bag.  He paused at the truck to rub Eight Ball’s ears again, waved at Clyde and left. 

******

Boyd parked his truck in the lot across the street from the squadron building, lugged his bag through the double doors to the desk where the flights were posted and gave the keys to the airman behind the desk. 

“Major Carlisle will come by sometime this afternoon to pick up the truck.  My locker key is on there, too.  I’m leaving my helmet and G-suit.  Keep those dirtbags out of there,” he said with a nod toward his friends.  Several of the other pilots had gathered, knowing he was leaving and curious about where to.

“Can’t be much of a TDY if you won’t need your gear,” said the lieutenant, who’d now have to learn the pop maneuver from someone else.

“We’ll see,” Boyd said, shaking hands all around and heading out the doors in the back leading to the flight line.  He could see the general’s C-21 parked out among the F-16s.  He waved jauntily, entirely consistent with his mood as he carried his one bag out to the plane. 

The unknown was a challenge he was willing to take.  The last time he’d solved a mystery, it was out of honor to a fallen flier.  He’d been unwilling to drop the trail until he knew where it led.  Today, he was going to do it to feed something started then, something that was no longer satisfied with supersonic aircraft and practicing for war.  There must be others like him, needing to be out on the edge of their own strength, stamina and guile.  Most would draw their pay from terrorist, underworld or hostile government sources.  This thought gave him a pleasant anticipatory buzz.  When the ass kicking started, there’d be no reason to hold back. 

CHAPTER SIX

Mombasa, Kenya

“Shark!  Big one!  On the right side of the aircraft,” Rabon Clive said over the intercom, trying to inject some excitement into his voice.  There were always sharks circling along the outer reef of the Mombasa Marine Park, but today he had half a dozen actual customers paying to see them. 

Four middle-age German tourists and an old English couple rushed to the right side of the ancient Grumman Albatross.

“We’ll circle, get a better look.” He pulled the yoke back and the plane rose quickly, throwing his passengers back toward their seats.  They grabbed any available hand hold as the Albatross banked a full circle.  “Out the left this time.”  He swooped down along the waves, deliberately hitting a couple to send spray back along the side of the aircraft.

The hour tour up, Raybon pulled the Albatross’s nose up and lumbered south toward the harbor at Mombasa, Kenya.  “Mombasa Marine Tours” was painted in big red letters on the side of the old aircraft.  Several customers lined up at the lavatory door, airsick from circling over the shark.  Rabun took that as a sign they’d gotten their money’s worth.  He turned up Tudor Creek and flew by the center of Kenya’s seaport city to the marina beyond and landed on the bay, then moored the seaplane in the harbor and took a launch back to the yacht club dock.   He had a visitor.  A young man dressed in khakis was leaning against the locked door of his office above the yacht club.  He looked like CIA.

Raybon helped his co-pilot out of the launch and handed him his cane while watching the man in the door watch him.  He wanted nothing to do with the CIA.  He got angry, angrier than usual, walking up the dock.  

“The embassy said you were Air Force,” the man said with a big smile, still leaning against the locked door as Raybon climbed the steps to his office.   Several steps behind was his co-pilot, a black man laboriously climbing the steps by crouching on his left leg and swinging a rigid right hip to the next higher step then pushing himself upright with the cane.  

“Retired.”  Raybon said, not smiling.  He opened the door.

“Boyd Chailland, captain, U.S. Air Force.”  Boyd extended a hand and Raybon took it, searching Boyd’s face for signs he was being set up for something.

“Raybon Clive, captain, U.S. Air Force, retired,” he said, still standing at the door as his co-pilot caught up.  “Davann Goodman, staff sergeant, United States Marine Corps, retired, my co-pilot.”  They shook hands and Davann flopped down on an old leather couch by the window and made a call on his cell phone. 

“Interesting plane you’ve got there,” Boyd said, standing at the still open door and looking down into the bay below.  “Not many Albatrosses left in the world.”

“Just a few dozen,” Raybon said, closing the door behind Goodman.  “And with good reason. Burns gas like a bitch.”

“Well, I’d like to talk about some contract work,” Boyd said, turning into the room and looking about.

“It ain’t cheap,” Raybon said.  He’d dealt with the U.S. government before and didn’t like the experience.