Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman Page 8

  wasn't scheduled until day after tomorrow and the board was very picky about any exotic spending right now.

  Chet coughed, trying to clear a frog from his throat that just wouldn't go away. All the sitting in airports and airplanes had made his muscles ache—his neck, his back, his legs. He'd put down quite a few double Scotches during the layover in Denver—nothing else to do, for God's sake—and his head was throbbing on account of it. Well, maybe a hair of the dog—he flagged the tall black stewardess for a double Scotch and sipped away at it, staring out the window at the darkness.

  At least, he reflected, the meeting in Savannah was going to be worth every minute of the nasty trip. Ever since he'd first started with Sundown Explorations, ten years ago, he'd been waiting for a chance to really gig those Big Oil Bastards and now at last the time had come. Sundown had always been a little outfit. A very sharp outfit, what Chet liked to think of as Quality—but being small, they'd always had to pick up the crumbs after the Big Bastards had finished stuffing themselves. Take what the Big Boys couldn't be bothered with, lick their plates after them and pretend to like it. Well, no more—all that was going to change. Because by great good fortune and some clever detective work, Sundown now had the goods on the Big Bastards involved in that Upper Yukon Shelf ripoff, clear proof of the biggest exploration fraud that had ever been pulled in an industry where fraud was a way of life. A word from Sundown could blow the lid off the whole stinking mess and cost those Big Bastards multibillions in taxes, multibillions in penalties, multibillions in consumer reimbursements.

  Of course, Sundown had no intention of blowing the whistle on anybody. They had the goods locked away in seventeen different strongboxes. They also had that whole south Wyoming field locked up tight, proven solid-gold, to provide for cash flow and security. All they had to do was go to a meeting in Savannah and tell those Big Oil Bastards just how things were going to be cut up. Give them plenty of time to think it over— maybe forty-eight hours. All the time they'd need to figure out how badly they wanted to make Sundown rich.

  "You don't have to sell them anything, or ask for anything, or substantiate anything," Carey had told him at their hasty meeting in the VIP lounge at Sea-Tac airport a few hours before. "You're just the bright-eyed boy bringing them the information we promised; other than that, you don't know nothin'. Your company just wants to make sure they have this information before they make any important policy decisions on the Yukon Shelf, that's all. And if a single one of them looks crosseyed at you, you get up and walk out. If anybody says one word you don't like, you say 'Thank you, gentlemen,' and leave, right then—and you don't go back. We've got them by the balls this time, Chet. All you've got to do in Savannah is acquaint them with that fact. We'll do the twisting from this end."

  Chet coughed suddenly and explosively, choking on his drink and knocking it onto the floor. When the black stewardess stooped down to clean it up, he leaned very close, pretending to help, suddenly aware of her light fragrance. Might just make a play for this little honey, he thought, if I could get her to go on to Savannah with me. Talk about nice. And I haven 't been laid for a week. He coughed again. When she brought him a new drink he tried to engage her in a little light chitchat, but she didn't seem to rise to the fly. Oh, well, the hell with her. Plenty more where I'm going, and once the meeting's over, there '11 be plenty of time for fun and games. He thought of the condo at Hilton Head, the big pool and the golf course and the lush company suite on the twelfth floor, and that sweet little beauty he'd met in Savannah the last time he'd been there. Maybe he'd give her a jingle after the meeting and see if she had some spare time. They usually had some time for a weekend at that condo, with its high ocean view, and the best goddam food they'd ever eaten, and all the booze and snow they could ever hope for, and a little high-quality entertainment thrown in—he shifted in his seat in anticipation. Matter of fact, maybe he'd call that girl tonight, after he'd gotten a little sleep and before all the suckers started turning up for the meeting. They could just buzz off to the condo for dinner and a few hours to get reacquainted. He coughed again and pulled on his drink, beginning to feel downright feverish.

  In Atlanta, however, Chet's connecting Delta flight to Savannah turned out to be overbooked, and he was bumped onto a flight that left forty minutes later. By oddest coincidence, the tall black stewardess rode in the seat he'd had reserved as she deadheaded home to Savannah. Serve the fat bastard right to have to sit and wait a while, she thought bitterly. He was just one too many white men mentally undressing her in the past forty-eight hours. Let him sit and rub his crotch, she thought. And coughing right in her face, too. The girl shivered. You'd think even a slob like that would try to do something about his breath.

  In Savannah the black stewardess caught the limo to the DeSoto Hilton, then walked south along Bull Street in the hot morning sun, through the three graceful plazas to Forsyth Park. From there she angled west into the maze of scruffy tenements toward home—the sad, noisome, rat-infested home she'd been trying to escape for something like a million years, and had never quite made it.

  16

  The flashbulbs and photofloods hit Carlos full-face the minute he stepped off the plane at Stapleton International Airport in Denver— POW!—and he realized instantly that he should have been prepared for it, and like a damned naked baby, he wasn't. A microphone was shoved into his face, brandished by a wild-looking female. "Dr. Carlos Quintana, CDC?" Yes, yes. "Marge Callum, JTLM-TV News, Denver. Dr. Quintana, what can you tell us about the Black Plague epidemic that's hitting people, down in Rampart Valley?" Epidemic? My God, woman, what epidemic? There isn't any epidemic—"Well, there's plague been reported down there, hasn't there?" A few cases of plaguelike illness have turned up, yes. It hasn't been precisely identified—"But people have been dying from it, haven't they?" It's true a few victims have succumbed in an isolated area, but I assure you it's completely under control— "Well, if that isn't an epidemic, how would you define the word epidemic, Doctor?" I wouldn't, fight now, ma'am, I'm trying to get down there to get some information about it— "Aren't you the Black Plague expert at the CDC, Doctor?" ***sigh***I'm just a working epidemiologist, ma'am, nothing more, and I've got a job to do if you'll just please let me get past, here—"Well, Doctor, I'm sure you're very modest, but we have some viewers who would like to know the facts about what's going on with this disease." So would I, ma'am. That's why I'm here, to dig out some facts, but so far I haven't made it out of the airport—"Well, let me tell you right now, Doctor, our viewers are going to recognize a coverup when they see one. ..."

  Somewhere beyond all the lights and gabbling reporters he spotted Dr. Roger Salmon from the Fort Collins, Colorado, CDC unit, tall, white-haired, horn-rimmed glasses, moving toward him with a couple of burly airport guards on either side. Carlos grabbed Monique by the arm, ducked under the mikes and started plowing through the crowd toward Salmon as fast as his slight wiry frame could manage, sensing bitterly that he'd blown it with that reporter, but not knowing what else he could have done. Trouble was, he never could manage to hold on to his temper or watch his acid tongue; all he'd been taught about handling inquiries gently, instilling confidence, making positive and comforting statements that didn't sound evasive—all that always seemed to vanish every time he faced one of these hawks with a microphone trying to put words in his mouth. As he moved, with Monique in his wake, other microphones appeared, other bald, unanswerable questions came at him, but he just shook his head and plowed on. At last he reached Salmon, and the guards helped them break free of the pack.

  "Sorry that happened," Roger said. "They promised us they'd bring the plane in at an alternate gate and announce it just at the last minute, but then they already had a plane there, and we were screwed."

  "Never mind, just get us somewhere else." Carlos nodded gratefully to the airport guards. "Almost anyplace else will do."

  "Well . . ." Roger Salmon hesitated. "We've been changing our plans by the minute. There's nothin
g to do here in Denver, nor Rampart Valley either—I've got a dozen people working down there. We need to go to Canon City, south of Colorado Springs. We've really got trouble down there." The man looked very tired and very nervous. "If you aren't completely pooped out, I've got an army chopper waiting for us. We can leave right now."

  "You've got plague in this Canon City?" "Twenty new cases in the last twelve hours." Carlos pursed his lips. "Any rats?" he said. "Any fleas?" "I wouldn't know—but there's a guy down there who's been doing a lot of legwork for us—"

  "That would be our forester friend, I think," Carlos said. "The first one I want to talk to when we get there."

  17

  In Bozeman, Montana, Harry Slencik walked out on the porch of his little town house and looked at the elderly man sipping beer there. "Hey, Ben," he said, "did you see that six p.m. newscast last night on Channel 5?"

  Dr. Ben Chamberlain scratched his grizzled beard. "Don't watch TV much anymore, Harry. Same old crap, day after day. I just kinda eased out of it."

  "Well, they said there's some kind of Black Plague going on down in Colorado."

  "Oh, yeah?" Ben shrugged. "They always have a case or two every summer,"

  "But twenty-eight cases in a week? Amy says we ought to be payin' attention."

  The old doctor laughed. "Twenty-eight cases I don't believe, Harry. Far as I know, there haven't been twenty-eight plague cases in the West in a single year since the 1890s.'' The doctor took another sip of beer. " And as for Amy, you can tell her I said we've had plague up in those hills above Grizzly Creek since long before we ever built our cabins out there."

  "You're kiddin'!" Harry stared at him.

  "Not a bit," Ben said. "Plague doesn't hit people, primarily. Never has. It's a disease of rodents, and it's passed on from one to the next by the fleas that live on 'em. The fleas drink infected blood from the rodent, and when the rodent dies of the infection, the fleas go to another rodent, and vomit up some infected blood while they're biting the new rodent, and it gets infected. People only get it when too many rodents die and the fleas have to look for something else to bite. People will do in a pinch, but the fleas would rather have the rodents."

  "Bui we don't have any rats up in those hills near our cabins," Harry protested.

  "Not city rats, no. But we've got pack rats around all the time, trying to get into the cabins in winter. They're just native wood rats, is all they are. And then there's the squirrels, and chipmunks, and ground squirrels, maybe rabbits, marmots up in the higher country. There was a case down in New Mexico a few years ago when a couple of kids got fleabites from a dead coyote and came down with plague—I read about it in a journal."

  "Then why aren't people just dropping dead all over the place up there?"

  "Not that many people around, that's all. I mean, who's wandering around up there, ordinarily? Maybe a logger now and then, cruising timber. A few mushroom pickers in the spring, a few hunters in the fall, maybe a backpacker going through on one of the trails, a fisherman here and there. But it's big country. The odds of any one person actually contacting it are very small."

  "Then how did it get there?"

  "Just growed, I guess. Came in by boat from China around the turn of the century. Rats from the boats infected some wild rodents in the hills and it started spreading, very slowly. By now we've got low-grade sylvan plague, sort of endemic, in every state west of the Rockies and maybe even as far east as Kansas City or Nebraska. But we don't have to worry, Harry. It takes people to get the plague moving, even when it's around. In fact, if you want to get away from it, you just get away from people. And that was why we built those places up on Grizzly Creek in the first place, wasn't it? To get away from people?"

  "I suppose," Harry conceded. "But I tell you, Ben, if that Amy doesn't quit going into a panic every time she watches the news on TV, I'm going to have to belt her one ..."

  18

  It was almost 4:00 a.m.—7:00 Atlanta time—by the time Carlos and Monique were checked into the discreet separate rooms Roger Salmon had arranged for them in the new Holiday Inn just south of Colorado Springs. "That's an hour's drive from Canon City, but you'll need some rest before you go down there, and facilities are better here." On the way down Roger had briefed them on the status quo in Rampart Valley and the thoroughly disturbing developments in Canon City—new cases turning up all over down there, an infection that was moving too fast, far too fast, an atypical pattern even for something as volatile as plague. "The first cases down there obviously came from the camping party up in Washington," Roger told them, "but these last ones have got to be secondary cases. Denver is getting very nervous about a major panic down here, and the TV newscasters obviously smell a very juicy scare story. We've got to get a handle on this thing very soon or we're going to be in deep trouble. ..."

  Yes, but get a handle on what, exactly? Carlos wondered. He had hoped to get a few hours' sleep before Frank Barrington came pounding on his door—Roger had already contacted the man and set up an early morning meeting—but sleep proved elusive considering the sort of yawning chasm Carlos found himself staring into. Then, just as he was dozing off about 6:00 a.m. the phone jangled and he discovered that Denver was not the only place that was getting nervous. It was Ted Bettendorf on the phone from Atlanta, and his usually calm voice sounded just a little ragged. "Carlos, what in hell did you tell those TV people in Denver last night?"

  "Tell them? I told them nothing. Nada. Nichts. Garnish.''

  "Have you seen the morning ABC newscast? They quote you as saying we have a major epidemic in central Colorado, with uncounted people sick or dead, and we don't know whether we can control it or not—Jesus, Carlos, they just went on and on."

  "Holy Mother qf—" Carlos leaped out of bed. "They didn't actually show me saying any of those things, did they?"

  "No, you were just on the screen. This was all some woman's voice-over commentary."

  "Well, they just made it up, that's all. All I told them, on camera or off, was that there were a few sick people we were investigating, and that everything was under control. I followed the rule book on Contacts with the Press the best I could, but you know what those people do when they want a story—"

  "Look, I don't know what you told them," Bettendorf said, "and you probably don't either, but I know what /just got told. I just had the President on the line, the third day straight now, and he caught that morning newscast, and he was fit to be tied. Demanded to know what was going on out there that he didn't know about. He was very upset, babbling something about panic in the streets during his administration and people dinging the Governor of Colorado to declare the whole state a disaster area, and how all he needs right now is a nice big public-health mess that we can't control, right out in the middle of a major western state—well, you get the picture."

  "Okay," Carlos said, "the next newshawk that comes around I'll shoot on sight. Meanwhile, I need about six hours to find out what floats out here and what doesn't, and I'll be back to you."

  He hung up, got dressed and went down to the coffee shop for some breakfast. Monique was already there. "Couldn't sleep," she said. "They're ready for me up at Fort Collins anytime you say. I've already got them started setting up a Hot Lab so we can handle the samples they've been collecting. I get the shakes every time I think about what I may find."

  "Yeah, well, everybody else has got the shakes, too, right up to the President, but we've got some work to do before you take off. This Barrington guy will be here at seven, for openers."

  Frank met them in the lobby as he came in off the street, the little Chicano doctor and the tall willowy blonde. There were quick introductions, and then Carlos led them to a small conference room. Frank glanced at Monique, wondered fleetingly how any woman that beautiful could want to spend her time rooting around in a bacteriology lab. But once in the room he turned his attention to Carlos. "So you're the troubleshooter from CDC," he said. "I just hope to hell you're going to be able to stop this damned
thing."

  "Stop it?" Carlos made an elaborate gesture. "Of course I'm going to stop it. Why do you think I'm here?"

  "Whatever it was that hit Pam Tate may not be so easy to stop."

  "Pam Tate? Ah, yes." Carlos's face fell. "The unfortunate young woman. Your fiancee, I understand, and maybe a key to the puzzle." He looked up at Frank. "Look, my large friend, I was being facetious, and it was in bad taste. I apologize. No, I most certainly am not going to be able to stop this damned thing, not in any sense of wiping it out. Nobody yet has managed to wipe it out in four thousand years of recorded history, and I don't really think I'm going to be the lucky fellow. With a few good breaks and a lot of help from Monique and a lot of others I'm hoping at best to nail down this particular outbreak long enough to learn something about it and keep it from turning into a real mess. But I'm going to need those breaks, because something very strange is going on."

  "That's for certain," Frank said. "If it's really plague, it's been moving like lightning."

  "And you've been in Canon City?" Carlos said. "Tracing down contacts?"

  "And finding a lot of sick people," Frank said. "Here, I brought everything with me."

  He handed a large bundle of note sheets to Carlos. The little doctor sat down at the table and went through them carefully, page by page. Then he went through them again. "Remarkable," he murmured. "You just came down from Washington on your own and started in on this?"

  "I had to do something, and I knew that Pam had had contact with these people."

  "Remarkable," Carlos repeated. "You've done this kind of work before?"