Pandemic Page 61

Tim nodded.

“Yep, that does it,” he said. He reached out, wiped his hand right to left, clearing the video from his view.

“Yes indeedee dodee, that certainly f.u.c.king does it right f.u.c.king there. f.u.c.k you, Mister Triangle, f.u.c.k you right in your f.u.c.king face, f.u.c.k you very much.”

Tim returned to dividing up the yeast into four cultures of equal size. He knew what he had to do. If Margaret didn’t like it, well, then that was just tough s.h.i.t.

t.w.a.tTER

Twenty-five miles south of the task force, the Mary Ellen Moffett rocked gently from three-foot swells. Compared to most of the trip since leaving Benton Harbor, Steve Stanton considered it d.a.m.n near a dead flat calm.

He watched his laptops. Bo Pan was lying on the bed. Steve didn’t want to look at him. Maybe the old man had the gun pointed at Steve’s back; maybe it was better not to know for sure. Steve felt sick, twitchy — the stress was grinding him down.

If the Platypus didn’t make it back …

A laptop beeped.

“Contact,” Steve said.

Bo Pan scooted out of his bunk, stood at Steve’s right. Steve leaned a little to the left, an instinctive reaction that he checked before he fell off the edge of the chair.

The old man bent closer. “Did it get the container?”

Steve pointed to the screen.

@TheMadPlatypus: Bottle in hand at the microphone stand.

“It got it,” Steve said. “Holy s.h.i.t, it got the thing.”

Bo Pan thumped him in the back. “Genius! Steve, you are a genius!”

Steve laughed, the giddy feeling that rolled through him undeniable and unquenchable. For just a moment, he forgot about the old man with the gun, forgot about the danger of an alien disease. Had he really just beaten the entire U.S. Navy? Everything had gone according to plan. The Platypus had the small container holding the alien artifact and had left behind ten pounds of C-4 to blow the submarine’s nose to bits and cover its tracks.

Bo Pan thumped his back again. “This is very good. Are there movies? Can t.w.a.tter show us what the Platypus saw?”

For the first time, the old man had used the proper name for Steve’s creation.

“Yes, but we shouldn’t send the movies,” Steve said. “You told me the navy had stepped up activity, remember?”

Bo Pan nodded. He’d made several short, intense cell-phone calls about an angry uncle from Cleveland, which was his handler’s code name for navy ships.

“Then we should wait,” Steve said. “The Platypus will reach our boat in a few hours. The military has to be scanning for any kind of communication. If we broadcast anything before the Platypus gets here, there’s a chance the military will pick off that signal.”

And if they did, what then? Could they triangulate, find the Mary Ellen Moffett? Steve was an American citizen … the thought had never crossed his mind before, but would he be tried for treason?

The moment of elation pa.s.sed. He’d achieved his objective, but what now? Bo Pan was standing right next to him. Bo Pan, the man with the gun. And as for beating the world’s superpower? Maybe they’d trace this back to him anyway, somehow, no matter how good he’d made his encryption.

Steve wanted to go back to the family restaurant. He wanted to see his mother, listen to his father talk about how hard things had been when he was a kid. Steve wanted to roll forks and knives in napkins, snap the heads off a thousand green beans. He didn’t want to go anywhere near his creation ever again.

“Bo Pan, when you have the container … can I go home?”

The old man laughed. “Soon, my young hero. Go tell the owners of this boat that as soon as the Platypus returns, we are leaving.”

Steve looked up at the smiling old man.

“Leaving? For Benton Harbor?”

Bo Pan shook his head. “No. For Chicago.”

GAMBLING

Clarence stood in the airlock of the control room, fumbling with the biosafety suit’s awkward seals and latches. He just wanted to get the thing off and sit down for a few minutes.

He’d carried the canister of yeast out of the living quarters, gone up the long stairs to the upper deck, all the while wearing the suit. Yasaka had positioned armed guards around him, even established a kill zone — approach Clarence Otto, and you would be shot. He’d carried the yeast to the helipad, handed it directly to a similarly suited man in a waiting Seahawk helicopter. That man had given Clarence something in return: a small, gray, airtight case.

Only when the Seahawk lifted off had Clarence looked around and taken in the dozens of men and women — all exposed to the open air — staring at him like he was a visitor from another world. He was even wearing a s.p.a.ce suit, so to speak. They stared because they knew that he was safe, and they were not.

New case in hand, Clarence had headed back down. Decon through the living quarters airlock, keep the suit on while entering the lab area, decon again, climb to the control room airlock, decon a third time, and finally he was free.

He fell more than sat into the console’s comfortable chair. The gray case still had some bleach and disinfectant beaded up on it. Clarence brushed the wetness away, then opened it.

Inside, a bulky cell phone.

“Aw, Murray, you shouldn’t have.”

He’d seen this kind before. The bulkiness came from the encryption hardware loaded inside. The phone bypa.s.sed all ship communication, used the normal cell-phone signal available this far from sh.o.r.e. Sometimes spy hardware used secret satellites, gear that cost millions, and sometimes it just used what was available.