“And normal civilians can’t get their hands on the vaccine—even during peacetime,” Clyde had said. “But I know you and all your lab workers are immunized. So. How about it?”
Folkes had given him the first shot then and there and had been building up his resistance with twice-weekly injections ever since. Last week he had proclaimed Clyde Banks to be the most botulin-resistant human being on the face of the earth, unless the Iraqis were up to similar tricks.
The incredible noise of the engines and the wind and the creaking and sloshing jungle gym of fuel overwhelmed all other sounds. Clyde did not realize until almost too late that someone was approaching, picking his way between the fuel containers and the inside curve of the fuselage with a flashlight. The Iraqis had sent someone back to make sure they were dead.
Clyde had almost no time. He didn’t know how many of them were coming. And he was trapped in the tail of the aircraft. So he did the only thing he could think of. He rolled Fazoul’s body over on its side and pushed its arms and legs this way and that, so that the body no longer looked composed, and then flung himself facedown on a duffel bag next to the empty thermos and played dead. He had barely come to rest when the insides of his eyelids glowed red in the beam of the flashlight.
He could almost feel the light traveling up and down his body, like a groping hand looking for signs of life.
The ambient noise was his enemy now. He had not heard the man, or men, with the flashlight approach. He could not now hear whether he, or they, had departed. He counted to a thousand and then allowed one of his eyelids to come open just a crack. Dim light was scattering back into this space from some lamps hanging near the toxin tank, and by that light he could not see anyone. He opened his eyes all the way and tried to count to a thousand. But the cold was too much for him in his thin clothes, and he had to move. So he moved decisively, rolling to his feet as rapidly as his frozen joints and muscles would allow, and looking all around for anyone who might have been lurking. But there was no one there.
He turned once more and looked at Fazoul’s body. His friend’s death was just beginning to hit him. He tried not to think about it; it would just make him scared and despondent, which he could not afford right now.
He had no training for this, no real idea what to do. For some reason he remembered his survival training from Boy Scouts. When you realize you are lost in the wilderness, STOP: Sit, Think, Organize, Plan. So he sat down in a position where he could not see Fazoul and moved on to the Thinking. Clyde did a lot of thinking; he reckoned he could handle this part.
It was a terrible situation. But he shouldn’t get emotional about it. It had been a stupid and crazy chance to begin with, climbing on board this plane, and he had no right to expect better. It would be childish to whine about the way things had turned out. Ebenezer would be disgusted with him: You made your bed, you have to lie in it.
It was best to think of it like a cop, he finally decided. He was in a plane with a bunch of perpetrators. He just had to make the proper arrests and bring the situation in hand. They were a couple of thousand miles out of his jurisdiction at the moment, but these men had, after all, stolen a tractor from the Forks County Airport, and he felt a certain justification in playing the role of Long Arm of the Law.
He had faced much worse odds at the Barge On Inn, against men who were in some respects more formidable than these, and had prevailed just by the force of his uniform and badge.
Clyde Banks stood up and stretched, which felt good. He did some toe-touches and windmills, getting the blood flowing, the internal furnace fired up. Then he began to make his way forward between the tanks and the fuselage, following the gentle curve of the Antonov’s body.
The stack of fuel containers ended ten or fifteen yards aft of the bulkhead that walled off the insulated, heated passenger compartments in the nose. The toxin tank rested in the middle of this space, strapped and chained to floor rings. The stolen tractor was still hitched to it, pointed aft, its Iowa license plates now looking bizarrely out of place. As out of place as Clyde.