The Eskimo Invasion (37 page)

 

 

But the Major would not be another Burma or Pakistan. The Major's profile,
twelve inches from the Doctor's eyes, appeared massive and forbidding. His
teeth were grinding with tension. The Major would not negotiate with
fleas. Or Chinese --

 

 

The Major's thick forefinger poked the black box on the Doctor's lap.
"That's wired to the spray tank. Hey, this dial is at 98.6 degrees!
Is that Fahrenheit? That's the temperature of the human body.
What has the CIA got us carrying?"

 

 

Dr. West smiled wryly. He still couldn't remember. He wasn't sure.
He had known yesterday. He tried to think back into his scrambled-egg
brain. Narcohypnosis, those sons of bitches.

 

 

"How should I know," Dr. West's mouth answered as if it had been trained.
"I'm only a biotechnician who twists the dials and gets his ass shot off."
But he remembered he was a medical doctor! "I'm not even CIA." That was true.
Even his mouth wanted to disassociate him from the CIA. "I wasn't even at
the flight briefing. You were."

 

 

"All they showed us was a turning point at the end of our fuel range."
The Major opened his hand, then flattened it like a wing, and thrust!
"Target a couple of hundred miles inland on the deck -- minimum altitude.
The Chicoms are more apt to accidentally knock us down with a tree or
a hut roof or a radio tower than with AA missiles," the Major laughed,
his forehead beaded with sweat. "I need to know what's in the spray tank?"
He unzipped the front of his flying suit, revealing an Air Force blue
Lemay jacket.

 

 

Dr. West's throat clicked, not much of a laugh. Here he was with an
agricultural commune costume concealed under his flying suit, but the
Major was in Air Force blues. He hoped this was only an oversight,
a typical lack of coordination between Air Force and CIA as to escape
dress. Their costumes didn't match. Obviously one man could not eject
without the other. Aircraft this fast didn't carry parachutes --

 

 

"What's in the spray -- ?"

 

 

"If the plane is hit -- ?"

 

 

The two men spoke simultaneously, but the Major proved to be the more
courteous. He answered the Doctor's question.

 

 

"If we're hit, blooie!" The Major's teeth flashed white.

 

 

"I mean if we're only damaged."

 

 

"They'll never touch us. You're not sitting in one of your black-painted
CIA clunkers now. This is the real Air Force. The Chinks haven't upgraded
their AA missiles in thirty years."

 

 

Dr. West scratched his flea bites and supposed the Major probably was
accurate. For the last forty years, the Chinese had been concentrating
their lagging industrial capacity on gigantic million pound thrust
solid fuel ICBMs with big dirty hundred megaton warheads. Their patient
international strategy had been continuous political infiltration and
minimum warfare. Their opportunistic expansions into Burma and India
had been shielded from U.S. countermoves by the avowed Chinese policy
of massive nuclear retaliation.

 

 

The Chinese did not bother with modern antiaircraft or anti-ICBM systems.
In the UN General Assembly, the Chinese representative alternately stated
that no umbrella was needed for their two billion-plus population and that
all umbrellas are futile. When he was in a benevolent mood, the Chinese
representative would smile and state that huge countries like the United
States and China were equally vulnerable.

 

 

In the back of Dr. West's skull he realized, remembered, that this aircraft
was aimed much deeper than a few hundred miles into China. It would be
penetrating far beyond its fuel point of no return.

 

 

"Major, rephrasing my question, what happens to us if the plane has, say,
mechanical difficulties?"

 

 

"Doc, you don't sound very confident about the maintenance procedures
of your Air Force. Suppose we have a quadruple flameout right now over
the Pacific," the Major laughed. "Forward in the control module, lonely
old Colonel Meller pulls a lever. Blooie! His capsule ejects. Our sealed
capsule ejects straight up, and at the top of the arc we get all loose
and weightless like we're modern young guys in the Space Corps and not
obsolete old manned aircraft personnel. Our drogue chute opens, then
our big chute jerks open, and we come down to Earth. No sweat. We float
in a whole Pacific Ocean of sweat. What I need to know is what's in our
spray tank, Doc?"

 

 

Dr. West sat rigid. The Major twice had addressed him as "Doc."

 

 

"What dirty soup is in our spray tank, Doc," the Major's voice persisted.

 

 

Dr. West couldn't speak. He was afraid in a moment the Major would say,
cat to mouse: "Doc, is your last name West?"

 

 

"You feel OK?" The Major's voice asked.

 

 

Dr. West pointed at his mouth, made swallowing gestures, shook his head.
He couldn't speak, nauseated, his memory roaring at him:
Dr. West.
Dr. West. Murderer. Genocidal murderer.

 

 

The ramjet bomber howled and shuddered, and Dr. West realized it was
slanting down into the denser atmosphere. Already the bomber was more
than half way across the Pacific. The viewplate between his boots was
black as the night beneath, mirroring his eyes.

 

 

"What's in the spray tank, Doc?" The Major sounded personally concerned.
"You're too old to be a CIA biotechnician. I mean -- they're kids in their
twenties, just knob twisters. You're someone big. When those CIA spooks
shoved you into the aircraft, one of them slipped his tongue. I heard him
call you 'Doc.' So I figured you got a Ph.D. Maybe you're even a member of
the Harvard Circle in the CIA. You must know what we're flying into -- "

 

 

To Dr. West's relief the Major was proceeding along the wrong track.
He still had not recognized Dr. West.

 

 

"That spray tank was airlifted into Edwards Air Force Base in a big old
C-5," the Major persisted. "Word is the C-5 flew in from Arkansas. Pine
Bluff, Arkansas. An arsenal there. Even I know that's where they breed the
microbes. You're a top scientist or CIA or both." The Major slapped his
pistol holster. "You're not expendable like me. I mean -- this mission
must be crucial. Is this the beginning? The spray tank? Are we going to
kill millions of Chicoms?"

 

 

"No one will die."

 

 

"No one will die -- my ass!" the Major exploded. "We'll he crossing the
Chink coastline in a few minutes. In a few more minutes we'll reach our
turn around point. We can't go any farther, and by that time something
will happen, courtesy of you CIA spooks. I don't even think I want it to
happen! The President said we would never be first to use germ warfare!"

 

 

"What do you want?" The Doctor's fear and rage and frustration exploded
against the Major. "You're damned hysterical for an obsolete military mind
who has been eating out of the public trough for twenty years! What do you
want? A nice clean antiseptic hydrogen bomb?"

 

 

"Just tell me the mission, Doc." The Major's voice became surprisingly
patient. "Colonel Meller and I got a right to know what we're risking
our lives for. That spray tank may be warmed to 98.6 degrees but it's no
nutrient solution for babies. There's no three-eyed Chink dragon monster
swimming in that tank. I mean -- " the Major closed his eyes.

 

 

Evidently the Major was listening to the Colonel through the intercom.
He peered at Dr. West. "Instruments indicate we just crossed the Chinese
coastline north of Canton."

 

 

"Hey!" the Major exclaimed. "Less Than fifteen minutes and we got to
turn around. Doc, what are your orders? You better start spraying!"

 

 

Dr. West sat there. "When the red light comes on -- on this box, the sequence
will begin." He remembered that much.

 

 

The aircraft shuddered as it rammed through the thickening atmosphere.
A fiery glow engulfed the view plate beneath the Doctor's feet. We must
be down on the deck, the Doctor thought, imagining mountains and cliffs
and radio towers looming ahead.

 

 

The bomber was dependent upon the precise functioning of its terrain-
following radar.

 

 

"You'd better press that spray button! We're nearing our fuel point of no
return," the Major shouted louder than was necessary. An excited smile
began squirming across his face. "There's no time left. Do it. Give it
to him. We're as low as we can fly. Dust Mao III's armpits. God help
the Chinese and all of us!"

 

 

Dr. West glanced at the trembling face. The Major's reactions seemed to be
oscillating between excitement and revulsion.

 

 

"We're gonna give it to 'em! What are we giving the Chinks? Q-fever?"
the Major's voice raced on. "Pneumonic plague when you press that black
box on your lap? Mutated scrub typhus? Terrific? Terrible! I can see
the black box is set for fifteen minutes spray duration. God! That's a
long time. Fifteen minutes! Flying slowed down to 2000 miles per hour,
fifteen minutes makes a spray line 500 miles long!"

 

 

"I'm not stupid," the Major shouted. "There's ten hours of night over
South China. Ten hours before the sun dries out your aerosol microbes.
Ten hours of damp night while the sleeping Chinese breathe. For ten hours
the wind will blow. You CIA spooks always know which way the wind is blowing.
Even if it's blowing only ten miles per hour across our spray line,
that's a hundred miles the aerosol fog will sweep before the daylight
comes. The Chinks! God! What's the incubation period?"

 

 

Dr. West did not know what to answer.

 

 

"I'm not stupid," the Major laughed excitedly. "We even studied arithmetic
at the Air Academy. Five hundred miles of spray line multiplied by the wind
carrying the fog a hundred miles across the line, covers five thousand
square miles. No, that's fifty thousand square miles! How many sleeping
Chinks in our fifty thousand square miles?"

 

 

"Unfortunately, very few," Dr. West retorted, and immediately regretted it.

 

 

"Very few? Like we're not really flying over China?" the Major laughed,
and his face twisted in an agonized grin. "Wish the radar that's tracking
us was our own. -- I wish this was an exercise over the Pacific. I mean --
like when I was in the last FB-111Zs and I was so young I was unkillable.
-- Hey, Colonel," he laughed, pressing the throat button of his helmet mike.
"Colonel, tell me this mission is an exercise."

 

 

The Major stopped talking. Listening, he closed his eyes. He coughed.
The Major coughed uncontrollably.

 

 

The Major's huge face whirled. "You CIA bastard!" he yelled into Dr. West's
face. "The aircraft's captured by its own autopilot. Colonel says he's
smashed the cockpit portion of the autopilot and he still can't gain control.
Hidden somewhere on this aircraft is an operating autopilot you bastards have
wired in. His electric controls don't control anything anymore. For some
reason, you bastards want to make sure we can't come home."

 

 

Consciously, Dr. West had not known this. But he must have known this was
a one-way flight because his organism experienced neither violent surprise
nor additional fear.

 

 

With disappointment, Dr. West wondered: After all the political trouble
the Harvard Circle of the CIA had risked in stealing him from the
Canadian prison's Cold Room, after all the valuable time the Harvard
Circle had spent to rejuvenate him, to reeducate him and to carry out
parapsychological preparations, after he had begun to think he was
important again, they had decided he was no better than an expendable
technician. Wasted. Expendable.

 

 

On the black box on his lap, the red light flickered. Without thought,
his thumb pressed the button as if it had been trained.

 

 

"Drop the spray tank!" the Major was begging the Colonel through his
throat mike. "Save fuel. Save minutes. Listen, Colonel, we're not working
for the CIA -- "

 

 

Abruptly the Major closed his mouth as if the Colonel had said something
abrupt to him.

 

 

From his holster, the Major hauled out the heavy .45 automatic pistol.
At a range of six inches, its muzzle hole looked big enough to fall into.
But Dr. West's thumb remained on the button. He ignored the gun.

 

 

"I'm not going to blow your brains out," the Major gasped. "I wanted
to see what you'd do, you bastard. Colonel thinks it's possible the Air
Force brass agreed to let the CIA do this to us. If that's patriotism,
then I'm a motherless child."

 

 

The bomber howled and bucked through updrafts. Dr. West knew the aircraft
was laying a trail of aerosol fog across the formerly desolate mountains
of South Central China.

 

 

"They should have told us," the Major blurted. "I'm a professional.
I should have been given the chance to volunteer. The Colonel and me,
we're going to complete this spray run on the chance that the Air Force
did agree to -- sell us out. You CIA bastard, we've decided to complete
the spraying mission."

 

 

The Major waved the almost prehistoric .45 automatic ineffectually.
"Now do you feel better, or worse, you bastard?"

 

 

Dr. West surreptitiously had managed to raise his thumb from the button.
At first his thumb had not wanted to release the button, as if it had an
overtrained one-track mind of its own. The flickering red light stayed
on, and Dr. West knew the spraying was continuing anyway. Probably, if
he never had pressed the button, a backup mechanism would have initiated
the spraying. Probably he was not only expendable; he was superfluous.