by Tom Clancy
Clark nodded. There was nothing to be gained from lying to the man. “Yes, that was me.”
“You are welcome to all three of them, Ivan ... your father’s name?”
“Timothy. I am Ivan Timofeyevich, Sergey Nikolay’ ch.”
“Ah.” Golovko had a good laugh. “As hard as the Cold War was, my friend, it is good now, at the end of it, to see old enemies. Fifty years from now, when all of us are dead, historians will compare CIA records with ours, and they will decide who won the intelligence war. Have you any idea what they will decide?”
“You forget, I was a foot soldier, not a commander, for most of it.”
“Our Major Schcrenko was impressed with you and your young partner here. Your rescue of Koga was impressive. And now we will work together again. Have you been briefed in?”
For Chavez, who’d come to manhood watching Rambo movies, and whose early Army training had taught him to expect going head-to-head with the Soviets at any time, it was an experience which he wanted to ascribe to jet lag, though both CIA officers had noted how empty the corridors were for their passage. There was no sense letting them see faces they might remember in some other time and some other place.
“No, mainly we’ve been gathering information.”
Golovko hit a button on his desk. “Is Bondarenko here?” A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing a senior Russian general officer.
Both Americans stood. Clark read the medals and gave the man a hard look. Bondarenko did the same. The handshakes exchanged were wary, curious, and strangely warm. They were of an age, raised in one, growing into another.
“Gennady Iosefovich is chief of operations. Ivan Timofeyevich is a CIA spy,” the Chairman explained. “As is his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?”
“Yes, that is certain.”
“Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?”
“Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait,” Bondarenko said. “They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions southeast of Baghdad will be ready to move in three days, four at the most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we will see what their plan is.”
“Any thoughts?”
“We have no more intelligence on this than you do,” Golovko said. “Regrettably, most of our assets in the area have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime have left the country.”
“The high command of the army is Iranian, many were trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they survived the purges,” Bondarenko said. “We have dossiers on many of them, and these are being transmitted to the Pentagon.”
“That’s very cordial of you.”
“You bet,” Ding observed. “If they dust us off, next they come north.”
“Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual interests,” Golovko agreed.
“If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then we will have to deal with him in three years,” Bondarenko said seriously. “Better today, I think, for all of us.”
“We have offered our support to Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we will see what we can do.”
SOME WOULD LAST longer than others. Some would last less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms. Doctors interviewing her determined that she’d probably contracted the disease by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any intimate contact, because he’d felt too ill even to kiss her after returning from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data, it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information, however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief because the man’s condition toward the end was both hopeless and agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer in coming.
The same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while unconscious with his massive dose of pain-killers. This, too, came as something of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the country’s horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be next.
It was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted, but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word death was being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens, in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure and relaxation, followed by the somber words of reporters who were themselves becoming as familiar as family members—it all entered the public consciousness with an immediacy that was as new and different as it was horrid. It was no longer the sort of nightmare from which one awoke. It was one which went on and on, seeming to grow, like the child’s dream in which a black cloud entered a room, growing and growing, approaching despite all attempts at evasion, and you knew that if it touched you, you were lost.
Grumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived on telephones now. Long-distance lines were jammed with calls to ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T, MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use. There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one. There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being.
Reporters, still moving around with their mobile cameras, reported on all that, and in doing so, they both increased the degree of tension, and contributed to its solution.
“IT’S WORKING,” GENERAL Pickett said over the phone to his former subordinate in Baltimore.
“Where are you, John?” Alexandre asked.
“Dallas. It’s working, Colonel. I need you to do something.”
“What’s that?”
“Stop playing practitioner. You have residents to do that. I have a working group at Walter Reed. Get the hell over there. You’re too big an asset on the theoretical side to waste in a Racal suit doing sticks, Alex.”
“John, this is my department now, and I have to lead my troops.” It was a lesson well remembered from his time in green suits.
“Fine, your people know you care, Colonel. Now you can put the damned rifle down and start thinking like a goddamned commander. This battle’s not going to be won in hospitals, is it?” Pickett asked more reasonably. “I have transport waiting for you. There should be a Hummer downstairs to bring you into Reed. Want me to reactivate you and make it an order?”
And he could do that, Alexandre knew. “Give me half an hour.” The associate professor hung up the phone and looked down the corridor. Another body bag was being carried out of
a room by some orderlies in plastic suits. There was a pride in being here. Even though he was losing patients and would lose more, he was here, being a doctor, doing his best, showing his staff that, yes, he was one of them, ministering to the sick, taking his chances in accordance with the oath he’d sworn at the age of twenty-six. When this was over, the entire team would look back on this with a feeling of solidarity. As horrible as it had been, they’d done the job “Damn,” he swore. John Pickett was right. The battle was being fought here, but it wouldn’t be won here. He told his chief assistant that he was heading down to the next floor, which was being run by Dean James.
There was an interesting case there. Female, thirty-nine, admitted two days earlier. Her common-law significant other was dying, and she was distraught, and her blood showed Ebola antibodies, and she’d presented the classic flu symptoms, but the disease hadn’t gone further. It had, in fact, seemed to stop.
“What gives with this one?” Cathy Ryan was speculating with Dean James.
“Don’t knock it, Cath,” he responded tiredly.
“I’m not, Dave, but I want to know why. I interviewed her myself. She slept in the same bed with him two days before she brought him in—”
“Did they have sex?” Alex asked, entering the conversation.
“No, Alex, they didn’t. I asked that. He didn’t feel well enough. I think this one’s going to survive.” And that was a first for Baltimore.
“We keep her in for at least a week, Cathy.”
“I know that, Dave, but this is the first one,” SURGEON pointed out. “Something’s different here. What is it? We have to know!”
“Chart?” Cathy handed it over to Alexandre.
He scanned it. Temperature down to 100.2, blood work ... not normal, but ... “What does she say, Cathy?” Alexandre asked, flipping back through some pages.
“How she says she feels, you mean? Panicked, frightened to death. Massive headaches, abdominal cramps—I think a lot of that is pure stress. Can’t blame her, can we?”
“These values are all improving. Liver function blipped hard, but that stopped last night, and it’s coming back ...”
“That’s what got my attention. She’s fighting it off, Alex,” Dr. Ryan said. “First one, I think we’re going to win with her. But why? What’s different? What can we learn from this? What can we apply to other patients?”
That turned the trick for Dr. Alexandre. John Pickett was right. He had to get to Reed.
“Dave, they want me in Washington right now.”
“Go,” the dean replied at once. “We’re covered here. If you can help make sense of this, get yourself down there.”
“Cathy, the most likely answer to your question is the simple one. Your ability to fight this thing off is inversely proportional to the number of particles that get into your system. Everybody thinks that just one strand can kill you. That’s not true. Nothing’s that dangerous. Ebola kills first of all by overpowering the immune system; then it goes to work on the organs. If she only got a small number of the little bastards, then her immune system fought the battle and won. Talk to her some more, Cathy. Every detail of her contact with her husband-whatever in the last week. I’ll call you in a couple of hours. How are you guys doing?”
“Alex, if there’s some hope in this,” Dr. James replied, “then I think we can hack it.”
Alexandre went back upstairs for decontamination. First his suit was thoroughly sprayed. Then he disrobed and changed into greens and a mask, took the “clean” elevator down to the lobby, and out the door.
“You Colonel Alexandre?” a sergeant asked.
“Yes.”
The NCO saluted. “Follow me, sir. We got a Hummer and a driver for you. You want a jacket, sir? Kinda cool out.”
“Thanks.” He donned the rubberized chemical-warfare parka. They were so miserable to wear that it would surely keep him warm all the way down. A female Spec-4 was at the wheel. Alexandre got into the uncomfortable seat, buckled the belt, and turned to her. “Go!” Only then did he rethink what he’d told Ryan and James upstairs. His head shook as though to repel an insect. Pickett was right. Maybe.
“MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE, let us reexamine the data first. I even called Dr. Alexandre down from Hopkins to work with the group I set up at Reed. It’s much too soon for any conclusions. Please, let us do our work.”
“Okay, General,” Ryan said angrily. “I’ll be here. Damn,” he swore after hanging up.
“We have other things to do, sir,” Goodley pointed out.
“Yeah.”
IT WAS STILL dark when it started in the Pacific Time Zone. At least getting the aircraft was easy. Jumbos from most of the major airlines were heading for Barstow, California, their flight crews screened for Ebola antibodies and passed by Army doctors with test kits which were just now coming on line. There were also modifications to the aircraft ventilation systems. At the National Training Center, soldiers were boarding buses. That was normal for the Blue Force, but not for the OpFor, whose families watched the uniformed soldiers leave their homes for the deployment. Little was known except that they were leaving. The destination was a secret for now; the soldiers would learn it only after lifting off for the sixteen-hour flights. Over ten thousand men and women meant forty flights, leaving at a rate of only four per hour from the rudimentary facilities in the high desert of California. If asked, the local public affairs officers would tell whoever called that the units at Fort Irwin were moving out to assist with the national quarantine. In Washington, a few reporters learned something else.
“THOMAS DONNER?” THE woman in the mask asked.
“That’s right,” the reporter answered crossly, pulled away from his breakfast table, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.
“FBI. Would you come with me, sir? We have to talk to you about some things.”
“Am I under arrest?” the TV personality demanded.
“Only if you want to be, Mr. Donner,” the agent told him. “But I need you to come with me, right now. You won’t need anything special, except your wallet and ID and stuff,” she added, handing over a surgical mask in a plastic container.
“Fine. Give me a minute.” The door closed, allowing Donner to kiss his wife, get a jacket, and change shoes. He emerged, put the mask on, and followed the agent to her car. “So what is this all about?”
“I’m just the limo service,” she said, ending the morning’s conversation. If he was too dumb to remember that he was a member of the press pool pre-selected for Pentagon operations, it wasn’t her lookout.
“THE BIGGEST MISTAKE the Iraqis made in 1990 was logistics,” Admiral Jackson explained, moving his pointer on the map. “Everybody thinks it’s about guns and bombs. It isn’t. It’s about fuel and information. If you have enough fuel to keep moving, and you know what the other guy’s doing, chances are you’ll win.” The slide changed on the screen next to the map. The pointer moved there next. “Here.”
The satellite photos were clear. Every tank and BMP laager was accompanied by something else. A large collection of fuel bowsers. Artillery limbers were attached to their trucks. Blowups showed fuel drums attached to the rear decks of the T-80 tanks. Each contained fifty-five gallons of diesel. These greatly increased the tank’s vulnerability to damage, but could be dropped off by flipping a switch inside the turret.
“No doubt about it. They’re getting ready to move, probably within the week. We have the 10th Cavalry in place in Kuwait. We have the 11th and the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard moving now. That’s all we can do for the moment. It won’t be till Friday at the earliest that we can cut any more units loose from the quarantine.”
“And that’s public information,” Ed Foley added.
“Essentially, we’re deploying one division, a very heavy one, but only one,” Jackson concluded. “The Kuwait military is fully in the field. The Saudis are spinning up, too.”
“And the third brigade depends on getting the MPS ships past th
e Indian navy,” Secretary Bretano pointed out.
“We can’t do that,” Admiral DeMarco informed them. “We don’t have the combat power to fight our way through.”
Jackson didn’t reply to that. He couldn’t. The acting Chief of Naval Operations was his senior, despite what he thought of him.
“Look, Brucie,” Mickey Moore said, turning to look right at him, “my boys need those vehicles, or the Carolina Guard is gonna be facing an advancing enemy mechanized force with side arms. You blue-suits been telling us for years how ballsy those Aegis cruisers are. Put up or shut up, okay? By this time tomorrow, I’ll have fifteen thousand soldiers at risk.”
“Admiral Jackson,” the President said. “You’re Operations.”
“Mr. President, without air cover—”
“Can we do it or can’t we?” Ryan demanded.
“No,” DeMarco replied. “I won’t see ships wasted that way. Not without air cover.”
“Robby, I want your best judgment on this,” Secretary Bretano said.
“Okay.” Jackson took a breath. “They have a total of about forty Harriers. Nice airplanes, but not really high-performance. The escorting force has a total of maybe thirty surface-to-surface missiles. We don’t have to worry about a gunfight. Anzio currently carries seventy-five SAMs, fifteen Tomahawks, and eight harpoons. Kidd has seventy SAMs, and eight Harpoons. O’Bannon isn’t a SAM ship. She just has point-defense weapons, but she has Harpoons, too. The two frigates that just joined up have about twenty SAMs each. Theoretically, they can fight through.”
“It’s too dangerous, Jackson! You don’t send a surface force against a carrier group by itself, ever!”
“What if we shoot first?” Ryan asked. That caused heads to turn.
“Mr. President.” It was DeMarco again. “We don’t do that. We’re not even sure that they are hostile.”