Which is probably why he’s always on Wolf News.
I wonder what they pay him for that?
Roscoe found a seat from which he could have a good view of one of the television sets hanging from the ceiling. Then he made three trips to the bar, ultimately returning to his seat with two glasses of Scotch whisky, a glass of water, a glass of ice cubes, a bowl of mixed nuts, and a bowl of potato chips. Then he settled in for the long wait.
When he looked up at the television, he saw C. Harry Whelan in conversation with Andy McClarren, the anything-but-amiable star of Wolf News’s most popular program, The Straight Scoop.
The screen was split. On the right, McClarren and Whelan were shown sitting at a desk looking at a television monitor. On the left was what they were watching: at least two dozen police cars and ambulances, almost all with their emergency lights flashing, looking as if they were trying to get past some sort of gate.
A curved sign mounted over the gate read WELCOME TO FORT DETRICK.
Their passage was blocked by three U.S. Army HMMWVs, each mounting a .50 caliber machine gun. HMMWV stood for “high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle.” With the acronym a little hard to pronounce, the trucks were therefore commonly referred to as “Humvees.”
“That was the scene earlier today at Fort Detrick, Harry,” Andy McClarren said. “Can you give us the straight scoop on what the hell was going on?”
You’re not supposed to say naughty words on television, Roscoe thought as he sipped his Scotch, but I guess if you’re Andy McClarren, host of the most-watched television news show, you can get away with a “hell” every once in a while.
“A lot of arf-arf,” Whelan said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Careful, Andy. That’s two “hell’s,” probably the most you can get away with. Three “hell’s,” like three small boxes of wooden matches, will see the federal government landing on you in righteous indignation.
“That’s the sound—you’ve heard it—dogs make when chasing their tails.”
“You said that earlier today, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. To describe various senior bureaucrats rushing around, chasing their tails.”
“And so did President Clendennen. Or his spokesman, What’s-his-name.”
“John David Parker,” Whelan offered, “more or less fondly known as ‘Porky.’”
“Okay. So, Porky said the press was playing arf-arf, too. Which meant they were chasing their tails, right?”
“And so they were. Andy, do you really want to know what I think went on over there?”
“I want the straight scoop,” McClarren said. “That’s what we call the show.”
“Okay. Take notes. There will be a quiz,” Whelan said. “You know, Andy, right, that the United States has vowed never to use biological weapons against our enemies?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This was largely because Senator Homer Johns, the junior senator from New Hampshire, thinks that while it is perfectly all right to shoot our enemies, or drop a bomb on them, it is unspeakably evil to use poison gas or some kind of biological weapon on them.”
“You think poison gas is okay, Harry?”
“I think poison gas and biological weapons are terrible,” Whelan said. “But let’s talk about poison gas. In World War One, the Germans used poison gas on us, and we used it on them. It was terrible. In World War Two, the Germans didn’t use poison gas, and neither did we. You ever wonder why?”
“You’re going to tell me, right?”
“Because between the two wars, the Army developed some really effective poison gas. When we got in the war, and American troops were sent to Europe, so were maybe a half-dozen ships loaded with the new poison gas. We got word to the Germans that we wouldn’t use our poison gas first, but if they did, we were prepared to gas every last one of them. They got the message. Poison gas was never used.”
“Interesting.”
“Then science came up with biological weapons. Our Army, in my judgment wisely, began to experiment with biological weapons. This happened at an obscure little Army base called Fort Detrick. The idea was that if our enemies—we’re talking about Russia here—knew we really had first-class biological weapons, they would be reluctant to use their biological weapons on us.”
“Like the atom bomb?”
Harry Whelan nodded. “Like atomic bombs, Andy. We weren’t nuked by the Russians because they knew that if they did, then Moscow would go up in a mushroom cloud. They called that ‘mutual assured destruction.’ The same theory was then applied to biological and chemical weapons.
“Then we had a President running for reelection. Senator Johns and his pals thought painting him as a dangerous warmonger would see their guy in the White House. When the incumbent President saw in the polls that this was working, he quickly announced that he was unilaterally taking the United States out of the chemical-biological warfare mutual destruction game. He announced we wouldn’t use them, period, and ordered the destruction of all such weapons sitting around in ordnance warehouses.
“This saw him reelected. But Johns wouldn’t let him forget his campaign promise. So the Army’s biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick were closed and the fort became the home of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Matériel Command. What could be more opposite to biological warfare than medical research?
“Even Senator Johns was satisfied that the forces of virtue had triumphed, and we would never use evil biological warfare against our enemies.
“But Army medical research should, it seemed logical to assume, concern itself with what would happen to our soldiers—even our civilian population—should our enemies use biological warfare against us.
“With that in mind, the medical corps began to study the biological weapons in the Russian inventory. If they knew what the Russians were going to use against us, we could come up with antidotes, et cetera.
“How would we know what biological weapons the Russians had? Enter the CIA.”
“Really?”
Harry Whelan nodded again. “They bribed the appropriate Russian scientists, and soon samples of the Russian biological inventory began to arrive at Fort Detrick for evaluation by the medical corps.
“Since it was the CIA’s duty to evaluate the efficacy of enemy weapons, and since the best place to determine that was Fort Detrick, and since the medical corps was a little short of funds, the CIA thought it only fair that they pay for the investigation.
“This had the additional benefit—since CIA expenditures are classified—of keeping Senator Johns and his pals from learning what was going on. Getting the picture, Andy?”
“That’s a hell of an accusation, Harry.”
Whelan did not reply directly.
“And inasmuch as the CIA was interested in knowing how soon the United States could respond in kind to a biological attack, they asked the medical personnel at Fort Detrick to determine how the Russian biological weapons were manufactured, and to estimate how long it would take—should the unthinkable happen—for us to get our manufacture of such up and running. Or even to compare the Russian biological weapons against our own from the bad old days—samples of our own had been retained for laboratory purposes—and see how long it would take to start to manufacture whichever seemed to be the most lethal.”
“What you’re suggesting, Harry,” Andy McClarren said solemnly, “is that the CIA once again was engaged in doing things they’re not supposed to. Once again doing things that the Congress had forbidden them to do.”
“You sound like Senator Johns, Andy. And once again, you’re both wrong. The CIA has the responsibility—given them by Congress—to find out as much as they can about our enemies’ capabilities and intentions. That’s what they were—are—doing at Fort Detrick. And thank God that they are.”
“Give me a for-example, Harry,” McClarren said, thickly sarcastic.
“How about a hypothetical, Andy?”
“Shoot.”<
br />
“Let’s suppose that the CIA, which really is not nearly as incompetent as you and people like Senator Johns think it is—or for that matter as incompetent as the CIA wants people like you and Johns and our enemies to think it is—”
“Run that past me again, Harry,” McClarren said.
“They call that ‘disinformation,’ Andy. The less competent our enemies think the CIA is, the less they worry about it. Can I get back to my hypothetical?”
“Why not?” McClarren said, visibly miffed.
“Let’s say the CIA heard that the bad guys, say the Russians, were operating a secret biological weapons factory in some remote corner of the world—”
“You’re talking about that alleged biological weapons factory in the Congo,” McClarren challenged.
Whelan ignored the interruption.
He went on: “—and they looked into it and found that there was indeed a secret factory in that remote corner of the world.”
“Making what?” McClarren challenged, more than a little nastily.
“They didn’t know. So what they did was go to this remote corner of the world—”
“Why don’t you just say the Congo, Harry?”
“If that makes you happy, Andy. Let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the incompetent CIA went to the Congo and, violating the laws of the sovereign state of the Republic of the Congo, broke into this factory and came out with samples of what the factory was producing—”
“Ha!” McClarren snorted.
“—and took it to Fort Detrick, where it was examined by the medical corps scientists. And that these scientists concluded that what the CIA had brought to them was really bad stuff. And let’s say that the CIA took this intelligence to the President. Not this one, his predecessor.
“And let’s say the President believed what the CIA was telling him. What he should have done was call in the secretary of State and tell her to go to the UN and demand an emergency meeting of the Security Council to deal with the problem.
“Now, let’s say, for the purpose of this hypothetical for-example, that the President realized he—the country—was facing what they call a ‘real and present danger.’ And also that the minute he brought to the attention of the United Nations what the CIA had learned, the bad guys would learn we knew what they were up to.
“By the time the blue-helmet Keystone Kops of the UN went to the Congo to investigate these outrageous allegations—and this is presuming the Russians and/or the Chinese didn’t use their veto against using the blue helmets—the factory would either have disappeared, or been converted to a fish farm.”
“So he acted unilaterally?”
“And thank God he had the cojones to do so.”
“And it doesn’t bother you, Harry, that he had no right to do anything like that? We could have found ourselves in a war, a nuclear war! That takes an act of Congress!”
“You’re dead wrong about that, too, Andy,” Whelan said patronizingly, rather than argumentatively. Whether he did so without thinking about it, or with the intention of annoying—even angering—McClarren, it caused the latter reaction.
The one thing Andy McClarren could not stand, would not tolerate, was being patronized.
His face whitened and his lips grew thin.
“How so?” he asked very softly.
“Under the War Powers Act—I’m really surprised you don’t know this, Andy; I thought everybody did—the President, as commander in chief, has the authority to use military force for up to thirty days whenever he feels it’s necessary. He has to tell Congress he’s done so and if they don’t vote to support him within those thirty days, the President has to recall the troops. But for thirty days he can do whatever he wants. ...”
Damn it! Andy McClarren thought as his face turned red. The President does have that authority under the War Powers Act.
Either this condescending smart-ass just set me up to make an ass of myself, or—worse—without any assistance from him, I just revealed my ignorance before three point five million viewers.
The only thing that can make this worse is for me to lose my temper.
Whelan went on: “So you see, Andy, in this hypothetical for-example we’re talking about, the President did have the authority to do what he did.”
McClarren knocked over one of the two microphones on the desk. They were props, rather than working microphones. But McClarren’s three point five million viewers didn’t know this.
McClarren thought: Jesus! What can I do for an encore? Spill coffee in my lap?
Whalen smiled at him sympathetically, and went on: “He didn’t have to ask Congress for anything. The whole event was over in three days. What they call a fait accompli, Andy.”
McClarren straightened the microphone, and then flashed Whelan a brilliant smile.
“I don’t believe a word of that, Harry,” he said.
“You weren’t expected to,” Whalen responded, every bit as condescendingly as before. “It was all hypothetical, Andy. All you were supposed to do was think about it.”
“What I’m wondering is what all your hypothetical stuff has to do with all those police cars at the gate of Fort Detrick. Have you got the straight scoop on that, or just more hypothesis?”
He made “hypothesis” sound like a dirty word.
“Well, Andy, my gut feeling—my hypothesis, if you prefer—is that when Porky Parker made his statement, he was doing something he doesn’t often do.”
“Which was?”
“Porky was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There was some kind of accident in one of the laboratories. Somebody dropped an Erlenmeyer flask on the floor. Six white mice or a couple of monkeys escaped their cages. I have no idea what. Something happened. The material in those labs is really dangerous. They did what they were supposed to do: They declared a potential—operative word ‘potential’—disaster. The post was closed down until the problem could be dealt with. When it was dealt with, they called off the emergency procedures.
“While all this was going on, the CIA and Homeland Security and every police force between here and Baltimore started chasing their tails—arf-arf—and when the ever-vigilant press got wind of this, they got in their helicopters and flew to Fort Detrick, where they chased their tails in the sky—arf-arf—until they were run off. If there was any danger to anyone at Fort Detrick today, it was from the clowns in the helicopters nearly running into each other. The Army scientists there know what they’re doing.”
“That could be, I suppose,” Andy McClarren said very dubiously. “But what I would like to know is—”
Roscoe J. Danton saw the image of McClarren on the Club America TV replaced with an image of the logotype of Aerolíneas Argentinas and a notice announcing the immediate departure of Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 1007, nonstop service to Buenos Aires from Gate 17.
“Christ,” Danton complained out loud. “They told me it was delayed for at least two hours.”
He stood up, and a firm believer in the adage that if one wastes not, one wants not, drained his drinks.
The Aerolíneas Argentinas announcement then was replaced first with the whirling globes of Wolf News, and then by the image of an aged former star of television advising people of at least sixty-two years of age of the many benefits of reverse mortgages.
Roscoe, who had been hoping to get another glimpse of the royally pissed-off Andy McClarren, said, “Shit!”
Then he hurriedly walked out of Club America.
[ONE]
United States-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas
0730 5 February 2007
“What the fuck is that?” United States Border Patrol agent Guillermo Amarilla inquired in Spanish of Senior Patrol Agent Hector Hernandez as the latter stepped hard on the brakes of their green Jeep station wagon.
The station wagon skidded on the rutted dirt road, coming to a stop at nearly a right angle. On one side of the road was a sugarcane field. On the other
was waist-high brush. The brush extended for about one hundred fifty yards, ending at the bank of the Rio Grande. The demarcation line between the United States and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos was at the center of the river, which at that point was just over one hundred yards wide.
The dirt road, ten yards from where the Jeep had stopped, was blocked.
An oblong insulated metal box was sitting on a plank suspended between two plastic five-gallon jerrycans.
Nailed to the plank was a large sign hand-lettered ¡¡PELIGROSO!! and ¡¡DANGER!!
Amarilla and Hernandez, without speaking, were out of the vehicle in seconds. Both held Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump shotguns. Crouching beside the station wagon, Hernandez carefully examined the brush, and Amarilla the sugarcane field.
“Undocumented immigrants” sometimes vented their displeasure with Border Patrol agents’ efficiency by ambushing Border Patrol vehicles.
Amarilla straightened up and continued looking.
After perhaps sixty seconds, he asked, “You hear anything?”
Hernandez shook his head, and stood erect.
“You think that’s a wetback IED?” Amarilla asked.
Both men had done tours with their National Guard units in Iraq, and had experience with improvised explosive devices.
“It could be a fucking bomb, Guillermo.”
“I don’t see any wires,” Amarilla said.
“You don’t think a cell phone would work out here?”
Hernandez sought the answer to his own question by taking his cell phone out of his shirt pocket.
“Cell phones work out here,” he announced.
“Maybe they left,” Guillermo offered.
“And maybe they’re waiting for us to get closer.”
“Should I put a couple of loads in it and see what happens?”
“No. It could be full of cold beer. These fuckers would love to be able to tell the story of the dumb fucks from La Migra who shot up a cooler full of cerveza.”
Guillermo took a closer look at the container.
“It’s got signs on it,” he said.
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