“They’re not chem-trails,” I said with the last fragment of patience. “They’re contrails.”
We were in the briefing room and I was pretty close to throwing my cup of coffee at the smug little bastard who hosted the conspiracy theory radio show. Jim Peabody. He had a lean, oddly angular birdlike body and looked like an affronted egret. He had the kind of face you wanted to throw a coffee cup at. Even if you like coffee as much as I do. It was very hot coffee and it would hurt. So, the struggle was real because I wanted him to shut the fuck up.
“Just listen to him, sugar,” said Joan Holliday, the head of our integrated sciences division. She looks like a six-foot-plus version of Dolly Parton. All the glam, glitter, curves, and sass of the singer, but thirty years younger and a shelf full of MDs and PhDs. She called everyone sugar. Or honey bunny. Or sweet cheeks.
“Why bother?” I demanded. “We’ve got some freaks threatening to release bioweapons in fifty countries. Fifty. Five-zero. We’re standing on the brink of the actual apocalypse. We are a couple of very bad days away from living in either a disease-infested wasteland or a dystopia in which only those entitled assholes who can afford it are going to survive. That isn’t the plot of a summer blockbuster, it’s happening right now. So excuse the living fuck out of me if I’m not all that concerned about some crackpot belief trending with the tinfoil hat crowd.”
Peabody actually recoiled from me, then took a half step forward. “Colonel Ledger, if you’d just listen to—”
“I’ve been listening,” I said. “And all I’m hearing is bullshit.”
“No, sir,” said Peabody officiously, “you’re hearing but not listening. You’re not paying attention.”
“‘Paying attention’?” I had to smile. “Do you want to know what I was doing when I got the call to come in for this briefing? I was hunting for a group of terrorists suspected of smuggling a bioweapon delivery system into Athens. Do you know how many people live in Athens? Do you know how many people we’re trying to keep alive in Athens? And Rome, and London, and Paris, and New York, and—?”
“Colonel . . .”
It was Mr. Church who’d spoken. A single word. Quiet, without emphasis.
I stopped my rant. We all looked at him. Church is a big man, black and strong. Somewhere in his sixties, but that isn’t what made him the adult in the room. He was the adult in any room. You look at him and immediately want to check your fingernails to see if they’re clean. I’ve seen generals and heads of state react that way, too.
“Every JSOC and private SpecOps team in the world is on the hunt for the bioterrorists. Our people, MHI, SEAL Team 666, Chess Team, Sigma Force . . . It’s doubtful there’s ever been a more concentrated hunt than what is currently ongoing. And, as valuable a field asset as you are, Colonel, cutting you out of that pack to deal with this is not likely to be the deciding factor in keeping the world on its hinges.”
Doc Holliday pretended to whisper, but said, “You got spanked.” And she said it in a little musical singsong. I glared nuclear death at her.
“Okay, okay,” I said with bad grace and turned back to Peabody—who, for the record, looks like a Peabody. A classic example of the type. “Chem-trails. Sure. Fine. Explain to me how that’s not a conspiracy theory.”
Peabody pushed his glasses up his nose and said, “Well, Colonel Ledger, understand that I would normally agree with you. In all circumstances. Contrails are actually condensation trails. Line-shaped cloud formations created by changes in air pressure as aircraft cruise at certain altitudes and under certain atmospheric conditions. Water vapor in the engine exhaust interacts with low ambient temperatures, leaving lines of ice crystals. And some contrails are formed by changes in air pressure in wingtip vortices. Some disappear quickly and others can last for hours.”
“Thank you, Bill Nye,” I muttered. “Get to how that equals some kind