met them. “We have an EA-6B Prowler waiting for you,” he said. The lieutenant colonel’s aide carried a couple of bags Nova assumed must belong to Joe.
The blonde deposited Nova’s two bags at Nova’s feet. She gave Joe a parting smile and strode off, back straight, hips in a swagger. Nova felt a flash of admiration for the confidence in her stride.
Looking at Joe’s gear and the large duffel bag and aluminum camera case at her feet, the lieutenant colonel added, “I don’t think the Prowler will handle that much.”
“Sure it will,” Joe countered.
“I’ll leave the clothes if I have to,” Nova said. “I won’t leave the camera equipment.”
“While we take a quick anticipatory trip to the head,” Joe said to their contact, “you check with the pilot and find a way to bring all her gear.”
“Yes, sir,” came the man’s crisp answer. “You’ll find the heads one deck down that ladder,” he gestured with his thumb, “and to your right.”
Joe took Nova’s arm. Her body remembered at once the feel of his hand on her arm—firm, warm and a bit possessive. And she didn’t mind any of that. Not at all.
He steered her toward the ladder. “Here’s the deal,” he said. At last she was going to get a better feel for what was afoot. “We need to be in Rome as soon as possible. We’re going to be picked up by SISMI, the Italian version of the Company.”
“SISMI. Right. Servizio per le Informazioni e la Securezza Militaire. And Rome. I haven’t been to Rome for about eight years.”
“It will be easier for them to pick us up from Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport than from the American military base, so we’re going to make the last leg of the trip on Alitalia, out of Atlanta. And we have to be there by 17:30 this afternoon, Atlanta time, to make the connection. It’s sure a better deal for us. We’ll be a lot more comfortable in Alitalia’s business class than on a military transport.”
“If I’m not mistaken, my niece, Maggie, is in Italy right now. Or should be soon. You remember I told you my sister Star has three kids. Maggie, the girl, is their ten-year-old.”
They reached the lower deck and turned right. She spotted the sign for the women’s head.
She met him back on deck where he was waiting with the lieutenant colonel. In short order, she slipped into flight gear and a helmet; as she climbed into the Prowler, she felt her pulse picking up. Joe had been a naval aviator before an accident had ruined his vision and he’d traded flying for spying. This would all be old hat for him, but she’d never flown in a jet with this much power before.
The takeoff from the carrier’s deck was a thrill ride times a thousand, the jet’s thrust slamming her hard into the seat. “That was way too quick. I want to do it again,” she said into the intercom.
“You’d have made a great pilot,” Joe’s voice came back.
“Glad you enjoyed it, Ms. Blair,” she heard from the pilot. “Always my pleasure to give a hot woman a thrill.”
Yes, she thought with a grin. Flyboys do love their thrills—of all kinds.
The flight to Pensacola left her too much time to wonder about what job could be so complicated as to require uncommon linguistic skills.
Time to think, also, of how much she did not want to deal anymore with the brutality and destruction some people seemed compelled to commit. She was quite certain why they’d sent Joe to rope her in. They knew she would trust him. And she did. If Joe believed it was important for her to do this, then they figured she’d go along.
At the Pensacola air station, she and Joe ran to a waiting private executive jet, were whisked inside and were quickly once again airborne. Free of the uncomfortable flight suit, she stretched her legs and arms and sighed. Except for the pilot and a copilot, they were alone at last, Joe sitting facing her in one of the comfortable leather seats. “So what can you tell me?”
Joe removed one shoe and then the other. “It’s bad, Nova. Potentially a disaster.”
He started massaging the ball of one foot. With a grin, he said, “Sorry, but the sneakers are new. My feet ache like hell.”
She pinched her nose in fake revulsion. “As I recall, you’re the guy with a great perfume connoisseur’s nose. How can you think of subjecting me to male foot smell?”
“Gonna pass out?”
She let go of her nose. “No. I’ll just cut down on breathing. So, what kind of disaster?”
He talked with his eyes closed. “On the plane coming down here, after I got the call instructing me to fetch you, I received some further information. Not much, but here’s what I know.” He opened his eyes, propped one leg across his knee. “SISMI has obtained reliable information that someone in the Amalfi area has their hands on the formula for a new strain of the Ebola virus.”
Icy fingers brushed a chill across her throat.
“It’s a modified form of something called the Reston strain, which apparently means you don’t need physical contact to get it. It can be spread in the air.”
From her op in Pakistan, Nova was all too familiar with the early symptoms of the Ebola Zaire strain: fever, headache, muscle ache, rash, diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain. The Zaire strain was the first one recorded, named after the African country of Zaire, where the first outbreak was recorded. To date, it was the most lethal strain, with a fatality rate of eighty to ninety percent. During her pre-op briefing for Pakistan, she’d been shown a photo that had been taken during an outbreak in Gabon. A woman held her child, both of them in the final stages of the disease. A bloody rash covered their bodies and they were bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose. They would likely die from shock before they bled out.
Nova shuddered. She thought about the Reston strain and what she knew about it. As bad as Ebola Zaire was, becoming infected required physical contact with body fluids. The Reston strain was not as fatal, but had the potential to be much worse because it could be transmitted through the air.
“So you’re saying that someone is selling the information needed to take the rather tame but airborne Reston strain and turn it into a deadly, airborne strain. Right?”
Joe shook his head. “What does it mean if it has a ‘carrier phase’?”
Bad to horribly bad! “What that means is that they have modified it so that a person can have the disease but not show symptoms for quite a while. Days or even weeks. And all the time they’re walking around, they’re spreading it.”
“Holy shit!”
“Is it the virus that’s being sold, or just the know-how to make it, if someone gets their hands on some Reston?”
Joe shrugged. “Don’t know. The message only said that SISMI had evidence that someone has their hands on the formula for creating a new strain of Reston Ebola virus with a carrier phase and is going to sell it. I presume it refers to the formula.”
“Let us pray that it doesn’t refer to the actual virus, either the original Reston or, even worse, the modified form.”
They
