James Cobb - The Arctic Event

Smith rolled onto his back and used the grab rail mounted above the entry to draw himself out of the crawlway. “Okay, on the deck.”

“Excellent, Jon. Before you examine the bomb bay could you check a couple of things for me?”

“Sure, as long as it won’t take too long.”

“It shouldn’t. First, I want you to examine the flight engineer’s station. That will be the aft-facing seat and console behind the copilot’s position.”

“Okay.” Smith snapped on his flashlight once more. “It’s a lot roomier in here than I figured.”

“In a standard TU- 4 a lot of the space in the bow compartment would be taken up by the basket of the forward dorsal gun turret. That was one of the weapons mounts pulled in the America bombers.”

“Yeah.” Smith tilted his hood faceplate up. “I can see the turret ring in the overhead. Again, I’m seeing the empty lockers, and the seat cushions and parachutes are gone. Looking toward the bow, I’ve got what looks like the navigator’s table on my left, and another stripped electronics chassis to my right.”

“That was the radio operator’s station. I suspect the plane’s crew built a survival camp somewhere around here, someplace that would provide a bit more protection than the wreck’s fuselage. They must have transferred all of the survival and radio gear there along with the plane’s auxiliary power generator.”

“That camp will be the next thing we’ll be hunting for.” Smith lumbered to the flight engineer’s station and played the light across the gauge- and switch-covered panel. “Okay, I’m at the engineer’s station. What am I looking for?”

“Good, there should be three banks of four levers across the bottom of the console, a big one, a middle-sized one, and a small one-papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear. The big ones are the throttles. They should be pulled all the way back, I imagine, to the closed position. The others are the propeller and fuel mixture controls. How are they set?”

Smith scrubbed at his faceplate and swore softly as the haze turned out to be on the inside. “They’re both sort of in the middle.”

“Most interesting,” the historian mused over the radio circuit. “There would have been no reason to fiddle with them after a crash. All right, there is one more lever I want you to check for me, Jon. It will be located on the control pedestal outboard of the pilot’s seat. It will be very distinctive in appearance. The knob on the end of it will be shaped like an airfoil.”

Smith turned in the aisle between the flight control stations, peering awkwardly over the back of the pilot’s chair. “Looking for it…There’s a hell of a lot of levers all over this thing…Okay, I found it. It’s all the way up, forward, whatever.”

“That’s the flap controller,” Valentina murmured. “This is coming together…This is making sense…” There was a moment of silence over the channel, and then the historian continued with a rush. “Jon, be careful! The anthrax is still aboard that aircraft!”

“How can you be sure?” Smith demanded.

“It will take too long to explain. Just take my word for it. The crew never jettisoned the bioagent reservoir. It’s still in there!”

“Then I’d better have a look at it.” Smith straightened and returned to the forward bomb bay access.

In a mirror image of the rear compartment, it was a circular dished pressure hatch with a round window in its center, located directly below the crawlway tunnel. Smith knelt down.

“Okay, I’m at the bomb bay,” he reported. He paused for a moment to catch his breath and reached for the undogging lever. “I’m opening the ha…” His words trailed off.

“Jon, what is it?”

“So that’s why the tunnel ladder was been moved. Somebody has been here, Val, and recently. Everything in here is covered with frost. Everything but the release handle on the hatch. It’s been wiped off. I can make out the finger marks.”

Smith twisted and whipped the flashlight beam around the cockpit. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could spot the smears and scrapes in the frost cover where someone had moved around the cabin. “He got in through the pilot’s-side window.”

“Did he get inside the bomb bay?”

“We’ll know in a second.” Smith got a grip on the dogging lever, twisting it. The hatch unlatched and swung open with disconcerting ease. Hunkering lower, he peered into the dark opening.

Smith’s strained breath caught in his throat.

It filled the entire upper half of the bomb bay: a great lozenge shape held in place by a network of struts and braces, the iced stainless steel of the case sparkling. The latent death of entire cities whispered from within it, billions upon billons of lethal disease spores slumbering in icy suspension, waiting for revival, waiting for release.

Confronting such horrors were part of Jon Smith’s profession, but he still had to suppress a shudder.

“Val, you were right. It’s in here. Put Major Smyslov on. I’m going to need him.”

As he waited for the Russian to come online, he quartered the interior of the bay with his light, looking for damage to the containment vessel or for the deadly telltale gray-brown stain of spore spillage. After a few moments Smyslov’s filtered voice filled his earphones.

“I gather we have a hit, Colonel.”

“We surely do, Major,” Smith replied. “I’m looking at the reservoir now. From this end at least, it appears to have survived the crash in good shape. The bomb bay doors are partially caved in, but the casing doesn’t appear to be involved. The mounts and bracings seem to be intact as well. Did Val tell you that we’ve had at least one snooper inside the aircraft?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“He’s been in here as well. There is an instruction plate on the front of the reservoir casing directly opposite me. The frost’s been wiped from it. I can see a Soviet Air Force badge, a hammer-and-sickle insignia, and a lot of bright red writing. I’m not up on my Cyrillic, but I gather it’s a bioagent warning advisory.”

“Quite correct, Colonel. That would tell the inquisitive one everything he would need to know about the payload.”

“Then I think we’ve found our information leak. Now, Major, the containment vessel and the anthrax dispersal system are your babies. Walk me through what I should be looking for.”

“Very well, Colonel. If the casing is intact, you should next inspect the dispersal system manifolds to ensure that the manual containment valves on the pressurization ducts are still closed and sealed. The valves shouldn’t have been opened and the system armed until the bomber was coming in on target, but…”

“But, indeed. From those diagrams you showed me, those containment valves should be right over my head.”

With his head and shoulders inside the bomb bay, Smith carefully rolled onto his back and found himself looking up into a tangle of large-diameter stainless steel piping.

“Okay, I’m looking up into the manifold assembly. I see two large lever valves directly above me. The valve gradations seem to just be marked with red and green zones.”

“That is correct. Those are the forward containment valves. How are they set?”

“The levers are turned all the way to the left and right, with their pointers aimed at the green zones. There appear to be intact wire seals on both valves, and the frost buildup hasn’t been disturbed.”

“Very good.” Smyslov sounded relieved. “The containment valves are still closed. The system was never armed for drop. Now, just to the right, looking aft, next to the access hatch, you should see two more levers marked and sealed as were the overhead valves. These control the valves on the dispersal vents at the rear of the reservoir.”