The Strain Read online

  Loyal investors were accustomed to Palmer’s perpetually gaunt appearance. It had essentially become his trademark, an ironic symbol of his monetary strength, that such a delicate, ashen-looking man should wield such power and influence in both international finance and politics. His legion of faithful investors numbered thirty thousand strong, a financially elite bloc of people: the buy-in was two million dollars, and many who had invested with Palmer for decades were worth mid-nine figures. The buying power of his Stoneheart Group gave him enormous economic leverage, which he put to effective and occasionally ruthless use.

  The west doors opened from the wide hallway, and Mr. Fitzwilliam, who doubled as the head of Palmer’s personal security detail, entered with a portable, secure telephone on a sterling-silver serving tray. Mr. Fitzwilliam was a former U.S. Marine with forty-two confirmed combat kills and a quick mind, whose postmilitary medical schooling Palmer had financed. “The undersecretary for Homeland Security, sir,” he said, with a plume of breath steaming in the cold room.

  Normally Palmer allowed no intrusions during his nightly replenishment, preferring instead to use the time contemplatively. But this was a call he had been expecting. He accepted the telephone from Mr. Fitzwilliam, and waited for him to dutifully withdraw.

  Palmer answered, and was informed about the dormant airplane. He learned that there was considerable uncertainty as to how to proceed by officials at JFK. The caller spoke anxiously, with self-conscious formality, like a proud child reporting a good deed. “This is a highly unusual event, and I thought you’d want to be apprised immediately, sir.”

  “Yes,” Palmer told the man. “I do appreciate such courtesy.”

  “Ha-have a good night, sir.”

  Palmer hung up and set the phone down in his small lap. A good night indeed. He felt a pang of anticipation. He had been expecting this. And now that the plane had landed, he knew it had begun—and in what spectacular fashion.

  Excitedly, he turned to the large-screen television on the side wall and used the remote control on the arm of his chair to activate the sound. Nothing about the airplane yet. But soon…

  He pressed the button on an intercom. Mr. Fitzwilliam’s voice said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Have them ready the helicopter, Mr. Fitzwilliam. I have some business to attend to in Manhattan.”

  Eldritch Palmer rang off, then looked through the wall of windows out over the great Chesapeake Bay, roiling and black, just south of where the steely Potomac emptied into her dark depths.

  Taxiway Foxtrot

  THE MAINTENANCE CREW wheeled oxygen tanks underneath the fuselage. Cutting in was an emergency procedure of last resort. All commercial aircraft were constructed with specified “chop-out” areas. The triple seven’s chop out was in the rear fuselage, beneath the tail, between the aft cargo doors on the right side. The LR in Boeing 777–200LR stood for long range, and as a C-market model with a top range exceeding 9,000 nautical miles (nearly 11,000 U.S.) and a fuel capacity of up to 200,000 liters (more than 50,000 gallons), the aircraft had, in addition to the traditional fuel tanks inside the wing bodies, three auxiliary tanks in the rear cargo hold—thus the need for a safe chop-out area.

  The maintenance crew was using an Arcair slice pack, an exothermic torch favored for disaster work not only because it was highly portable, but because it was also oxygen powered, using no hazardous secondary gases such as acetylene. The work of cutting through the thick fuselage shell would take about one hour.

  No one on the tarmac at this point was anticipating a happy outcome. There had been no 911 calls from passengers inside the aircraft. No light, noise, or signal of any kind emanating from inside Regis 753. The situation was mystifying.

  A Port Authority emergency services unit mobile-command vehicle was cleared through to the terminal apron, set up behind powerful construction lights trained on the jet. Their SWAT team was trained for evacuations, hostage rescue, and antiterrorism assaults on the bridges, tunnels, bus terminals, airports, PATH rail lines, and seaports of New York and New Jersey. Tactical officers were outfitted with light body armor and Heckler-Koch submachine guns. A pair of German shepherds were out sniffing around the main landing gear—two sets of six enormous tires—trotting around with their noses in the air as if they could smell the trouble here too.

  Captain Navarro wondered for a moment if anyone was actually still on board. Hadn’t there been a Twilight Zone where a plane landed empty?

  The maintenance crew sparked up the torches and was just starting in on the underside of the hull when one of the canines started howling. The dog was baying, actually, and spinning around and around on his leash in tight circles.

  Captain Navarro saw his ladder man, Benny Chufer, pointing up at the midsection of the aircraft. A thin, black shadow appeared before his eyes. A vertical slash of darkest black, disrupting the perfectly smooth breast of the fuselage.

  The exit door over the wing. The one Captain Navarro hadn’t been able to budge.

  It was open now.

  It made no sense to him, but Navarro kept quiet, struck dumb by the sight. Maybe a latch failure, a malfunction in the handle…maybe he had not tried hard enough…or maybe—just maybe—someone had finally opened the door.

  JFK International Control Tower

  THE PORT AUTHORITY had pulled Jimmy the Bishop’s audio. He was standing, as always, waiting to review it with the suits, when their phones started ringing like crazy.

  “It’s open,” one guy reported. “Somebody opened up 3L.”

  Everybody was standing now, trying to see. Jimmy the Bishop looked out from the tower cab at the lit-up plane. The door did not look open from up here.

  Calvin Buss said, “From the inside? Who’s coming out?”

  The guy shook his head, still on his phone. “No one. Not yet.”

  Jimmy the Bishop grabbed a small pair of birders off the ledge and checked out Regis 753 for himself.

  There it was. A sliver of black over the wing. A seam of shadow, like a tear in the hull of the aircraft.

  Jimmy’s mouth went dry at the sight. Those doors pull out slightly when first unlocked, then swivel back and fold against the interior wall. So, technically, all that had happened was that the airlock had been disengaged. The door wasn’t quite open yet.

  He set the field glasses back on the ledge and backed away. For some reason, his mind was telling him that this would be a good time to run.

  Taxiway Foxtrot

  THE GAS AND RADIATION SENSORS lifted to the door crack both read clear. An emergency service unit officer lying on the wing managed to pull out the door a few extra inches with a long, hooked pole, two other armed tactical officers covering him from the tarmac below. A parabolic microphone was inserted, returning all manner of chirps, beeps, and ring tones: the passengers’ mobile phones going unanswered. Eerie and plaintive sounding, like tiny little personal distress alarms.

  They then inserted a mirror attached at the end of a pole, a large-size version of the sort of dental instrument used to examine back teeth. All they could see were the two jump seats inside the between-classes area, both unoccupied.

  Bullhorn commands got them nowhere. No response from inside the aircraft: no lights, no movement, no nothing.

  Two ESU officers in light body armor stood back from the taxiway lights for a briefing. They viewed a cross-section schematic, showing passengers seated ten abreast inside the coach cabin they would be entering: three each on the row sides and four across the middle. Airplane interior was tight, and they traded their H-K submachine guns for more manageable Glock 17s, preparing for close combat.

  They strapped on radio-enabled gas masks fitted with flip-down night-vision specs, and snapped mace, zip cuffs, and extra magazine pouches to their belts. Q-tip–size cameras, also with passive infrared lenses, were mounted onto the tops of their ESU helmets.

  They went up the fire rescue ladder onto the wing, and advanced to the door. They pulled up flat against the fuselage on either s
ide of it, one man folding the door back against the interior wall with his boot, then curling inside, low and straight ahead to a near partition, staying down on his haunches. His partner followed him aboard.

  The bullhorn spoke for them:

  “Occupants of Regis 753. This is the New York–New Jersey Port Authority. We are entering the aircraft. For your own safety, please remain seated and lace your fingers on top of your heads.”

  The lead man waited with his back to the partition, listening. His mask dulled sound into a jarlike roar, but he could discern no movement inside. He flipped down his NVD and the interior of the plane went pea-soup green. He nodded to his partner, readied his Glock, and on a three count swept into the wide cabin.

  NOW BOARDING

  Worth Street, Chinatown

  E phraim Goodweather couldn’t tell if the siren he heard was blaring out in the street—which is to say, real—or part of the sound track of the video game he was playing with his son, Zack.

  “Why do you keep killing me?” asked Eph.

  The sandy-haired boy shrugged, as though offended by the question. “That’s the whole point, Dad.”

  The television stood next to the broad west-facing window, far and away the best feature of this tiny, second-story walk-up on the southern edge of Chinatown. The coffee table before them was cluttered with open cartons of Chinese food, a bag of comics from Forbidden Planet, Eph’s mobile phone, Zack’s mobile phone, and Zack’s smelly feet. The game system was new, another toy purchased with Zack in mind. Just as his grandmother used to juice the inside of an orange half, so did Eph try to squeeze every last bit of fun and goodness out of their limited time together. His only son was his life, was his air and water and food, and he had to load up on him when he could, because sometimes a week could pass with only a phone call or two, and it was like going a week without seeing the sun.

  “What the…” Eph thumbed his controller, this foreign-feeling wireless gadget in his hand, still hitting all the wrong buttons. His soldier was punching the ground. “At least let me get up.”

  “Too late. Dead again.”

  For a lot of other guys Eph knew, men in a situation similar to his own, their divorce seemed to have been as much from their children as from their wives. Sure, they would talk the talk, how they missed their kids, and how their ex-wives kept subverting their relationship, blah, blah, but the effort never really seemed to be there. A weekend with their kids became a weekend out of their new life of freedom. For Eph, these weekends with Zack were his life. Eph had never wanted the divorce. Still didn’t. He acknowledged that his married life with Kelly was over—she had made her position perfectly clear to him—but he refused to relinquish his claim on Zack. The boy’s custody was the only unresolved issue, the sole reason they still remained wed in the eyes of the state.

  This was the last of Eph’s trial weekends, as stipulated by their court-appointed family counselor. Zack would be interviewed sometime next week, and soon afterward a final determination would be made. Eph didn’t care that it was a long shot, his getting custody; this was the fight of his life. Do the right thing for Zack formed the crux of Kelly’s guilt trip, pushing Eph to settle for generous visitation rights. But the right thing for Eph was to hang on to Zack. Eph had twisted the arm of the U.S. government, his employer, in order to set up his team here in New York instead of Atlanta, where the CDC was located, just so that Zack’s life would not be disrupted any more than it had been already.

  He could have fought harder. Dirtier. As his lawyer had advised him to, many times. That man knew the tricks of the divorce trade. One reason Eph could not bring himself to do so was his lingering melancholy over the failure of the marriage. The other was that Eph had too much mercy in him—that what indeed made him a terrific doctor was the very same thing that made him a pitiful divorce-case client. He had conceded to Kelly almost every demand and financial claim her lawyer requested. All he wanted was time alone with his only son.

  Who right now was lobbing grenades at him.

  Eph said, “How can I shoot back when you’ve blown off my arms?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe try kicking?”

  “Now I know why your mother doesn’t let you own a game system.”

  “Because it makes me hyper and antisocial and…OH, FRAGGED YOU!”

  Eph’s life-capacity bar diminished to zero.

  That was when his mobile phone started vibrating, skittering up against the take-out cartons like a hungry silver beetle. Probably Kelly, reminding him to make sure Zack used his asthma inhaler. Or just checking up on him, making sure he hadn’t whisked Zack away to Morocco or something.

  Eph caught it, checked the screen. A 718 number, local. Caller ID read JFK QUARANTINE.

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintained a quarantine station inside the international terminal at JFK. Not a detainment or even a treatment facility, just a few small offices and an examining room: a way station, a firebreak to identify and perhaps stall an outbreak from threatening the general population of the United States. Most of their work involved isolating and evaluating passengers taken ill in flight, occasionally turning up a diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

  The office was closed evenings, and Eph was not to be on call tonight, or anywhere on the depth chart through Monday morning. He had cleared his work schedule weeks ago, in advance of his weekend with Zack.

  He clicked off the vibrate button and set the mobile back down next to the carton of scallion pancakes. Somebody else’s problem. “It’s the kid who sold me this thing,” he told Zack. “Calling to heckle me.”

  Zack was eating another steamed dumpling. “I cannot believe you got Yankees–Red Sox tickets for tomorrow.”

  “I know. Good seats too. Third-base side. Tapped into your college fund to get them, but hey, don’t worry—with your skills, you’ll go far on just a high school degree.”

  “Dad.”

  “Anyway, you know how it pains me to put even one green dollar in Steinbrenner’s pocket. This is essentially treason.”

  Zack said, “Boo, Red Sox. Go, Yanks.”

  “First you kill me, then you taunt me?”

  “I figured, as a Red Sox fan, you’d be used to it.”

  “That’s it—!” Eph wrapped up his son, working his hands in along his ticklish rib cage, the boy bucking as he convulsed with laughter. Zack was getting stronger, his squirming possessed of real force: this boy who he used to fly around the room on one shoulder. Zachary had his mother’s hair, both in its sandy color (her original color, the way it was when he first met her in college) and fine texture. And yet, to Eph’s amazement and joy, he recognized his own eleven-year-old hands dangling uncannily from the boy’s wrists. The very same broad-knuckled hands that used to want to do nothing more than rub up baseball cowhide, hands that hated piano lessons, that could not wait to get a grip on this world of adults. Uncanny, seeing those young hands again. It was true: our children do come to replace us. Zachary was like a perfect human package, his DNA written with everything Eph and Kelly once were to each other—their hopes, dreams, potential. This was probably why each of them worked so hard, in his and her own contradictory ways, to bring out his very best. So much so that the thought of Zack being brought up under the influence of Kelly’s live-in boyfriend, Matt—a “nice” guy, a “good” guy, but so middle of the road as to be practically invisible—kept Eph up at night. He wanted challenge for his son, he wanted inspiration, greatness! The battle for the custody of Zack’s person was settled, but not the battle for the custody of Zack’s spirit—for his very soul.

  Eph’s mobile started vibrating again, crabbing across the tabletop like the chattering gag teeth his uncles used to give him for Christmas. The awakened device interrupted their roughhousing, Eph releasing Zack, fighting the impulse to check the display. Something was happening. The calls wouldn’t have come through to him otherwise. An outbreak. An infected traveler.
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  Eph made himself not pick up the phone. Someone else had to handle it. This was his weekend with Zack. Who was looking at him now.

  “Don’t worry,” said Eph, putting the mobile back down on the table, the call going to his voice mail. “Everything’s taken care of. No work this weekend.”

  Zack nodded, perking up, finding his controller. “Want some more?”

  “I don’t know. When do we get to the part where the little Mario guy starts rolling barrels down at the monkey?”

  “Dad.”

  “I’m just more comfortable with little Italian stereotypes running around gobbling up mushrooms for points.”

  “Right. And how many miles of snow was it you had to trudge through to get to school each day?”

  “That’s it—!”

  Eph fell on him again, the boy ready for him this time, clamping his elbows tight, foiling his rib attack. So Eph changed strategy, going instead for the ultrasensitive Achilles tendon, wrestling with Zack’s heels while trying hard not to get kicked in the face. The boy was begging for mercy when Eph realized his mobile was vibrating yet again.

  Eph jumped up this time, angry, knowing now that his job, his vocation, was going to pull him away from his son tonight. He glanced at the caller ID, and this time the number bore an Atlanta prefix. Very bad news. Eph closed his eyes and pressed the humming phone to his forehead, clearing his mind. “Sorry, Z,” he told Zack. “Just let me see what’s up.”

  He took the phone into the adjoining kitchen, where he answered it.

  “Ephraim? It’s Everett Barnes.”

  Dr. Everett Barnes. The director of the CDC.