by Brian Nelson
That was when the CNO had called. He had excused himself and gone into the wings. “Jim, I’m gonna send a chopper up for you in the morning. Something’s come up, and we need to talk.”
Now, standing in the bitter cold, he turned his attention away from Bancroft Hall and back to the Chesapeake. It was rolling rough and surly, with long, deep swells, as if huge humpbacked monsters were roving just beneath the surface, stretching, trying to break free. A bit of orange sunlight reached his face, and he felt the slightest change in temperature on his lips. At that moment, he heard the approaching thump of rotors, steady and smooth. A minute later, the Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King appeared just over the treetops and banked majestically over the roof of the Nimitz Library.
It was a beautiful sight, and he was touched by a sudden sentimentality. Taken all together—his sleepless night, the history of this place, the brooding Chesapeake, the white Sea King in flight, and the way the sun flash refracted through its dragonfly rotors—it stirred something in his chest. Beautiful. But he dispelled the romantic feeling almost immediately and strode across the snow to meet the chopper. It flared up a moment, then settled onto the snowy field. The door opened immediately, a gangway was lowered, and a marine sergeant stepped out and saluted him. He returned the salute and climbed aboard. Then they were off, rising quickly.
As they banked to the west, he looked down over the Yard. He still hated the place, yet he had to admit, grudgingly, that Annapolis had also given him a great deal. He drew on this place—particularly the fact that he had survived it—over and over again. It came down to something very basic. It had trained him to do things he didn’t want to do. It sounded simplistic, but it was the truth. There was a wide gap between a man who could force himself to do difficult things, and other men who could not. And not just the horrible things he had done: killing a young man with a knife, extracting a bullet from a friend’s guts with rusty pliers, sending men off to die. No, it was the day-to-day things that made the difference: getting up at four thirty every morning, voluntarily going five days without sleep, swimming six miles. Over a lifetime, that discipline added up.
But now, as the school and his past shrank behind him, he feared the meeting with Admiral Garrett because he feared that they were once again going to ask him to do things he didn’t want to do. Terrible, terrible things.
* * *
“These are images from a village called Dagzê, in the Nyingchi Prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region,” Commander Holder said, stepping toward the huge iSheet mounted on the wall. Curtiss was in the Pentagon, at a huge conference table with CNO Garrett and a group of high-level officers and spooks. “The official Chinese media says that these are victims of a new disease, which they are calling Tibetan fever. They claim it only attacks Tibetans and that everyone else is immune, including the ethnic Han Chinese.”
The images were haunting: hospital wards full of sick Tibetans—men, women, and children. Then a scene from a filthy morgue: bodies stiff and stacked like lumber, not even covered with sheets. The camera had caught a weary hospital worker, a young man who looked sick himself, with his eyes open wide, horror legible on his face. Next, an image of a schoolyard with a playground made from wood and plumbing pipes. Four girls in colorful Tibetan clothes: white blouses, sky-blue silk skirts, elaborate beads in braided hair. They lay unmoving on the ground, apparently struck down while at play.
Curtiss found himself pushing his coffee away. As much death as he had seen, he should have gotten used to it. But he never did. In fact, the older he got, the more it seemed to bother him. And those Tibetan girls’ clothes—they were so familiar to him, almost identical to Choctaw dress.
He had seen a briefing on the outbreak yesterday, but he had considered it minor. Wrong assumption. But how could it kill so quickly? It didn’t make sense. Unless …
“This is satellite footage from near the Ganden Monastery, close to Dagzê.”
Now Curtiss had to lean forward to sort out what he was seeing. A green, windswept hillside dropped away to a huge valley with sharp white mountains in the distance. It would have been strikingly beautiful if not for what he also saw there: five huge funnels of black smoke, rising off five distinct hillsides, each ascending like a black tornado into the stratosphere. Massive towers of smoke. And there was something else in the air, also swirling and rotating—a huge column of them. The commander gave an audible, and the image began to zoom down toward the earth. The things in the air were birds, he realized—thousands of them. No, tens of thousands. Tan and brown, resembling eagles with enormous wingspans. The camera seemed to pass very close to them as it fell through their mile-high vortex.
Tibetan vultures.
On the hillsides there were thousands more, in a seething, squabbling mass. Shoulder to shoulder, they pecked and clawed and fought among themselves. Only here and there did he see what was underneath: the red and pink and white of human corpses. Rib cages and spinal columns.
He had to rack his brain to remember his East Asian history. Sky burials. Most Tibetans didn’t bury their dead; it was not the Buddhist way. They laid them out on hillsides, prayed, and sang mantras while the vultures came and devoured the remains. He remembered that nothing was left behind; that would be bad karma. Even the bones were ground up, mixed with meal, and fed to the birds. It had struck him as a ghastly custom, but then again, he supposed being stuck in the ground and fed to worms wasn’t all that pleasant, either. Supposedly, it was soothing to the Tibetans to know that the remains of their loved ones were flying over the earth, quickly recycled into the living.
“When was this footage taken?” asked Brigadier General Corey Wilson.
“This is live,” the commander said, “and it has been going on for three days. The funeral pyres you see are for people of high status, since wood is scarce in this part of Tibet.”
The commander’s words sent a chill through the room. There was something about watching things live that hit you harder.
“Officially, the Chinese say that seven hundred people have been infected and a hundred have died; however, these images show that’s impossible. Our estimates show at least four thousand infected, with almost one hundred percent mortality—sometimes happening very fast, as you can see.
The screen went blank for a moment, as if to emphasize the sensitive nature of what the commander was about to say. “We have a man—I’ll call him the Fly—inside the Tangshan project, who has been updating us on the Chinese program.
“His report of yesterday gave us a shock. The Fly stated that the outbreak is not a real disease at all, but a new weapon system—a nanovirus, designed in the Tangshan lab, that can selectively kill based on a victim’s genetic code. This synthetic virus was intentionally released in four villages in the Nyingchi Prefecture as a weapons trial.”
This caused a stir, and the officers began to whisper and mumble among themselves. Curtiss kept his mouth shut.
“We believe his report is accurate for many reasons. We already knew that the Chinese were working on a weapon system like this, but we thought they were at least seven months from completing it. Also, the choice of villages is significant—this was the epicenter of the 2021 uprising and the headquarters of the Gedhum Freedom Movement (GFM), which has been sabotaging Chinese infrastructure projects for years.
“Indeed, our reports say that while the four villages have been decimated in the literal sense—with one in ten citizens dying—the GFM has been completely wiped out. All the members that we track, which is close to three hundred people, are believed dead, along with most of their families. The Fly says that the nanovirus was able to seek them out specifically from blood samples taken when many of them were arrested after the uprising.
“As you know, there is a complete media blackout in Tibet, and the only news that reaches the outside world is what the Chinese government decides should be released. However, an attaché from State obtained
this video, taken yesterday in the house of Kwetsang Rinpoche, the leader of the GFM.”
A shaky image appeared on the iSheet. Admiral Curtiss saw a modest kitchen, a card table with mismatched wooden chairs, and peacock feathers decorating the walls.
And bodies.
A woman lay on the floor near the sink, and a girl was sprawled out at the table with her hands over her head. The cameraman was speaking in Tibetan, his words indiscernible but feverish with emotion. He seemed to be saying the names of the dead, his voice cracking, holding back tears. The camera spun into another room. At a desk, head down, face tilted toward the camera, was a wide-eyed man of no more than forty. This, the admiral somehow knew, was Kwetsang Rinpoche. Although he wore no robes, his head was shaved like a monk’s. He had a gentle face that struck Curtiss as too kind for a guerrilla leader. The camera panned. A crude bassinet stood in one corner of the room. Mercifully, the camera did not approach it.
The camera moved down a dark hallway and turned into a bedroom. On the floor lay a teenage girl. Her posture, now frozen, spoke of incredible pain—her back was arched too far, like an overextended gymnast’s. On the bed was the body of a teenage boy, facedown, naked from the waist up. Curtiss involuntarily leaned forward in his chair. Of all the images he had seen today, from the morgue until now, this one affected him the most. That young man … There was something about him. It was in the shape of his back. He must have been sixteen or seventeen, with the look that boys have at that age: lean, sinewy, and strong, but not yet as bulky as a man. Logan, Curtiss’s oldest son, was sixteen, and he had a physique that was almost identical. He knew that back. He saw it when Logan leaned into the refrigerator after soccer practice, his sweat-soaked shirt over his shoulder, he saw it when the boy walked down the hall after a shower with a towel around his waist, and he saw it when he woke the boy in the mornings.
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.
“As you can see,” the commander continued, “the nanovirus must have killed Kwetsang and his family almost instantly. The Fly’s report indicated that this was unexpected. The Chinese were surprised that it killed so quickly, and they actually hope to slow it down for future, um, applications. They also hope to design different viruses that will mirror the symptoms of other diseases, so that the deaths do not raise suspicions and are essentially undetectable.
“Of course, the impact of all this is enormous. With just one sample of a person’s DNA, the Chinese can assassinate anyone they wish, and only the most detailed autopsy would be able to prove foul play.”
Everyone started talking at once, but the commander raised his hand for quiet.
“While it does look bleak, it’s important to remember that this virus is crude compared to what will be possible after replication. Yes, it can identify DNA strands and decide whether to switch on or off, but it is not truly programmable, and the Chinese are still a long way from replication. Which, of course, is the real prize.” There seemed to be a hopeful gleam in Holder’s eye when he said, “the real prize,” which Curtiss didn’t like. Be careful what you wish for.
Curtiss looked around the room. There were eight officers and two suits—Edmund Peters from Langley, and Bill Dawson from NSA. He knew them all, had worked with them (and occasionally against them) for decades, across wars and conflicts covering much of the globe. He checked off his assessment of each of them as he glanced at their faces: prick, asshole, prick and asshole, insufferable sycophant, pussy.
There were only three he admired: CNO Garrett, his boss; Edmund Peters (CIA), the most competent spook they had; and Lieutenant General (marines) Ellis Carlson, admittedly a bastard, but a straight shooter and one of his only true friends from Annapolis. All the officers outranked him (O-9s or higher), and all but those three hated his guts. That made him a little uneasy. He still didn’t know why he was here, but he suspected he wouldn’t be leaving this room without a size-seven asshole.
“Which is why we have to move fast,” the commander continued, breaking Curtiss from his thoughts. “With the right team and the right leadership, we can still beat the Chinese.”
Admiral Garrett crossed his huge meaty forearms and leaned back in his chair. He was looking straight at Curtiss now, and Curtiss didn’t like it. Garrett was the head of the whole damn navy, and he was made for the part: a huge, fat Texan with a bald head and dazzling blue eyes that should have belonged to a movie star. He was known as the Preacher because, most of the time, he was gregarious and affable and could make you feel all warm and fuzzy. Duty, honor, country, and all that shit. Enormously likable—people wanted to please him. Which was perfect for him. In fact, most of the time, you didn’t even feel as though you were receiving orders; he’d make it seem as if you had thought it up yourself. “What we maybe oughta do is …” or, “You might want to consider …” And the next thing you knew, you were busting your hump for him, but you didn’t care, because it just seemed like the right thing to do, and besides, you certainly didn’t want to disappoint the Preacher, because you knew he had another side to him, a side you didn’t want to see.
Garrett’s stare, combined with Holder’s last words—with the right team and the right leadership—was enough to make it click.
They had chosen him. They wanted Curtiss to lead the project. They knew everything he’d done in his thirty-seven-year career: Annapolis, Dive School, BUD/S, SEAL Team 4, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, his Purple Heart, the Navy Cross, and, of course, Syria. They knew what kind of sailor he was. The navy was split into thirds: engineers, bureaucrats, and soldiers. He wasn’t an engineer, and he wasn’t a bureaucrat. That alone told him what they thought about this little project. This was war.
But Syria. He had been sure they would never give him another command after Syria. Now he realized they wanted him not in spite of Syria, but because of it. Even for those in the room who hated him, Syria had solidified his reputation as a man who was ruthless, calculating, and, when necessary, very, very cruel. To them, he was not the man who had returned with so many body bags, but the man who had ended the war so succinctly, annihilating the enemy.
Looking at their faces, he knew they had fought over the decision. They had fought, and Garrett had eventually gotten his way. Because it was Garrett who knew him best. Garrett knew what he had become—the change that had started in Annapolis and ended in Syria. And Garrett alone knew the whole truth.
Curtiss stared into Garrett’s eyes, and in that moment, he hated him. He hated him for insisting that he come back, that he reach into himself one more time for the hardness, for making him once again become the man they wanted, the man who would sacrifice other men and women for a greater good.
It was Garrett who spoke, realizing that Curtiss understood full well why he was here. “Jim, this is now the nation’s top security priority. The job is straightforward: make sure our team wins this race. No matter the cost, no matter the consequences. To do that, the first thing you have to do is get one man: Bill Eastman. He’s got more smarts than a rattlesnake whip, and that’s more than most of those Chinamen put together.” Garrett leaned forward for effect, his meaty forearms heavy on the table. “Get me Eastman and you’re halfway there.
“Now, I realize all this nano-crap might be throwing you for a loop, so Ed is going to fill you in on what it’s all about. If you thought this little trick in Tibet was impressive, you’d better pucker up your o-ring, because what Ed’s about to tell you is gonna knock you on your Indian ass.”
Ed Peters got up, cleared his throat, and began to speak.
* * *
Seven hours later, Curtiss left the Pentagon. Shaken. Foggy. Overwhelmed. And a little angry. Why didn’t you put all the pieces together yourself? A part of him kept rejecting what they had told him. That was his gut reaction: to deny that it was true. It would be much easier to return to his old understanding of the world. To go back to the world of this morning, to that sunrise in Annapolis
… But that was what other men would do. And wasn’t that the sort of denial that had gotten them here in the first place? That was why they were so far behind the Chinese: because people refused to see what was happening.
His assistant opened the car door for him. Vacantly, he got into the black Lincoln. Safe behind tinted glass, unseen by any subordinate, he pulled his hand down his face.
Again, he lectured himself. Why didn’t you see it coming?
He had always prided himself on being keenly aware of the evolution of warfare. He had studied it with a professor’s discipline ever since Annapolis. He had measured it in the changes from one war to the next—the fits and starts and sometimes startling leaps in technology, and their gruesome effects. It was plain to see in specific battles, usually in the first encounter between sides: the musket wars of New Zealand, the German invasion of Poland in 1939—the Polish cavalry against the machine guns of the Wehrmacht. The rate of technological change since that day, September 1, 1939, was equally startling. War had been the great catalyst. World War II had begun on horseback and ended with a B-29 Superfortress dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima six years later. Only fifteen years after that, the world was locked in mutually assured destruction, with ICBMs poised to make their insane volleys over the North Pole.