The reception area was more hectic than normal. Almost every seat was taken with a sick person or their companion. Standing at the main desk, a young pretty girl was crying her eyes out and pleading with the receptionist.
“Please, you’ve got to help me!” she said. “The other lady told me I could come back in a couple of days and check.”
The woman at the desk gave her a fatigued roll of her eyes. “I don’t know anything about that. And I can’t give you that kind of information if you’re not family,” she said. “I can’t even tell you if he’s here.”
“Please!” she said, the word elongated and turning into sobs. Other people in the waiting area began to turn away and mutter in embarrassment. Cote paused just a moment. The girl, in her desperation for help, sensed his gaze.
Her eyes dropped to the silver dolphins on his chest.
She ran to him and grabbed his arms. “Please, you’re a submariner! You’ve got to help me!”
“I’m not sure I can,” he said. “But I’ll try. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s my boyfriend… he told me he’d write me a letter before the boat pulled out… I never got anything! And now I know his boat is overdue… all the wives are talking about it. And I can’t get anyone to tell me shit because we’re not married yet!”
At the mention of “overdue” Cote perked up a little. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was a lot more unusual than it used to be during the height of the Cold War, when captains had to lead their boats into peril and improvise to get them home. He’d been on a Sturgeon class boat once in shallow water near the Kamchatka Peninsula when the Soviets somehow got a whiff of them. For two weeks, the Soviet High Command had a better idea of their location than Subpac, as they dodged sonobuoys and ice floes in the Sea of Okhotsk. Submarine schedules had become much more predictable since the demise of their old foe.
“You didn’t get a letter… so you think your boyfriend must be in the hospital?”
“Yes!” she said, almost shouting. “He loves me! I know it sounds stupid.” She ran her fingers through her hair and Cote saw that one of her fingernails was painted black.
He grabbed her hands and looked into her eyes. “What boat is your boyfriend on?” he asked, his voice lowered.
Her eyes widened, sensing correctly that Cote knew something terrible. “
It was midnight before they were all gathered together in a conference room: the admiral and his aide, Carr and King from NIS, and Connelly from the CDC. Master Chief Cote was there too, wondering if he might finally learn what the hell was going on. In the center of the table, in a sealed plastic bag, was a bottle of black nail polish.
“First things first,” said the admiral. “Where’s the girl? How is she?”
“She’s in isolation on the fifth floor, sir,” said Cote. “She appears to be thoroughly freaked out, but not sick at all.”
“Let’s make sure she’s treated well,” said the admiral. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I don’t want her to feel like she’s a prisoner here.”
King, the eager young NIS agent, spoke up. “We can keep her here as long as we want,” he said, pointing at Connelly. “We have the authority from the CDC.”
The admiral frowned and leaned over the table toward the young man. “I took an oath to be an officer
King withered in his seat.
The admiral turned to Connelly. “What do we know?”
“Looks like the pathogen was transmitted via the nail polish. Something cheap she bought at a flea market at Aloha Stadium. We confiscated a case of it from the vendor, he says he imported it directly from some relative at the factory in Thailand. We’ve got a team in Bangkok right now checking it out, they theorize they made a batch with contaminated river water. There are things in that river science doesn’t even have a name for. Somehow it got into his bloodstream when he painted his nail.”
“It was cracked,” said Cote. “His fingernail. I saw it.”
“Why did he paint his fingernail? Did she say?”
“They painted each others’ nails. Some kind of sign of devotion.”
The admiral sighed heavily at that.
Connelly continued. “So that’s why he was infected and she wasn’t, because it got into his bloodstream and mutated into some kind of infection. We think. Inside the boat, it went airborne somehow. Maybe it took hold in an air filter, or inside one of the scrubbers. We won’t know for sure until we get onboard.”
“You think everybody got it?”
Connelly shrugged. “We don’t know anything for sure, we’re still not even sure what we’re dealing with yet. Maybe something like the Hanta Virus. But based on the circumstances… I fear the worst.”
“So what do we do?” asked the admiral, more to himself than anyone in the room. “Sink it? An out of control nuclear submarine filled with a deadly disease?”
Carr responded. “Obviously this is way above my paygrade…”
“And mine,” said the Admiral. “But tell me what you think.”
“After 9-11, the planners agreed they would from now on shoot down airplanes that were non-responsive, heading toward populated areas.”
