by Tom Clancy
Ryan, Agent Price saw, was going over his speech. That was one of his few normal acts. They were almost always nervous about speeches—generally not so much stage fright as concern for the content spin. The thought made Price smile. Ryan wasn’t worried about the content, but was worried about blowing the delivery. Well, he’d learn, and his good fortune was that Callie Weston, administrative pain in the ass that she was, wrote one hell of a speech.
“Breakfast?” a steward asked now that the aircraft was leveled off. The President shook his head.
“Not hungry, thanks.”
“Get him ham and eggs, toast, and decaf,” van Damm ordered.
“Never try to give a speech on an empty stomach,” Callie advised. “Trust me.”
“And not too much real coffee. Caffeine can make you jumpy. When a President gives a speech,” Arnie explained for this morning’s lesson, “he’s—Callie, help me out here?”
“Nothing dramatic for these two today. You’re the smart neighbor coming over because the guy next door wants your advice on something he’s been thinking about. Friendly. Reasonable. Quiet. ‘Gee, Fred, I really think you might want to do it this way,’ ” Weston explained with raised eyebrows.
“Kindly family doctor telling a guy to go easy on the greasy food and maybe play an extra round of golf—exercise is supposed to be fun, that sort of thing,” the chief of staff explained on. “You do it all the time in real life.”
“Just do it this morning in front of four thousand people, right?” Ryan asked.
“And C-SPAN cameras, and it’ll be on all the evening network news broadcasts—”
“CNN will be doing it live, too, ’cuz it’s your first speech out in the country,” Callie added. No sense lying to the man.
Jesus. Jack looked back down at the text of his speech. “You’re right, Arnie. Better decaf.” He looked up suddenly. “Any smokers aboard?”
It was the way he asked it that made the Air Force steward turn. “Want one, sir?”
The answer was somewhat shameful, but—“Yes.”
She handed him a Virginia Slim and lit it with a warm smile. It wasn’t every day one got a chance to provide so personal a service to the Commander-in-Chief. Ryan took a puff and looked up.
“If you tell my wife, Sergeant—”
“Our secret, sir.” She disappeared aft to get breakfast, her day already made.
THE FLUID WAS surprisingly horrid in color, deep scarlet with a hint of brown. They’d monitored the process with small samples under an electron microscope. The monkey kidneys exposed to the infected blood were composed of discrete and highly specialized cells, and for whatever reason, Ebola loved those cells as a glutton loves his chocolate mousse. It had been both fascinating and horrifying to watch. The micron-sized virus strands touched the cells, penetrated them—and started to replicate in the warm, rich biosphere. It was like something from a science-fiction movie, but quite real. This virus, like all the others, was only equivocally alive. It could act only with help, and that help had to come from its host, which by providing the means for the virus to activate, also conspired at its own death. The Ebola strands contained only RNA, and for mitosis to take place, both RNA and DNA are required. The kidney cells had both, the virus strands sought them out, and when they were joined, the Ebola started to reproduce. To do that required energy, and that energy was supplied by the kidney cells, which were, of course, completely destroyed in the process. The multiplication process was a microcosm of the disease process in a human community. It started slowly, then accelerated geometrically—the faster it went, the faster it went: 2-4-16-256-65,536—until all of the nutrients were eaten up and only virus strands remained, then went dormant and awaited their next opportunity. People applied all manner of false images to disease. It would lie in wait for its chance; it would kill without mercy; it would seek out victims. All of that was anthropomorphic rubbish, Moudi and his colleague knew. It didn’t think. It didn’t do anything overly malevolent. All Ebola did was to eat and reproduce and go back to its dormant state. But as a computer is only a collection of electrical switches which can only distinguish between the numerals 1 and 0—but does so more rapidly and efficiently than its human users—so Ebola was supremely well adapted to reproduce so rapidly that the human body’s immune system, ordinarily a ruthlessly effective defense mechanism, was simply overwhelmed, as though by an army of carnivorous ants. In that lay Ebola’s historic weakness. It was too efficient. It killed too fast. Its survival mechanism within the human host also tended to kill the host before it could pass the disease along. It was also super-adapted to a specific ecosystem. Ebola didn’t survive long in the open, and only then in a jungle environment. For this reason, and since it could not survive in a human host without killing that host in ten days or less, it had also evolved slowly—without taking the next evolutionary step of becoming airborne.
Or so everyone thought. Perhaps “hoped” would be a better word, Moudi reflected. An Ebola variant that could be spread by aerosol would be catastrophically deadly. It was possible they had exactly that. This was the Mayinga strain, as repeated microscopy had established, and that strain was suspected to be capable of aerosol transmission, and that was what they had to prove.
Deep-freezing, using liquid nitrogen as the refrigerant, for example, killed most normal human cells. When they froze, the expansion of the water, which accounted for most of the cellular mass, burst the cell walls, leaving nothing behind but wreckage. Ebola, on the other hand, was too primitive for that to happen. Too much heat could kill it. Ultraviolet light could kill it. Micro-changes in the chemical environment could kill it. But give it a cold, dark place to sleep, and it was content to slumber in peace.
They worked in a glove box. It was a highly controlled and lethally contaminated environment bordered with clear lexan strong enough to stop a pistol bullet. On two sides holes were cut into the sturdy plastic, and riveted at each workstation was a pair of heavy rubber gloves. Moudi withdrew 10cc’s of the virus-rich liquid and transferred it to a small container, which he sealed. The sluggishness of the process was less from physical danger than from the awkwardness of the gloves. When the container was sealed, he transferred it from one gloved hand to another, then off to the director, who performed a similar switch, finally moving it into a small airlock. When that door was closed, as indicated by a light which read off a pressure sensor, the small compartment was flooded with disinfectant spray—dilute phenol—and allowed to sit for three minutes, until it was certain that the air and the transfer container were safe to release. Even then no one would touch it with ungloved hands, and despite the safety of the glove box, both physicians also wore full protective gear. The director removed the container, cradling it in both hands for the three-meter walk to the worktable.
For experimental purposes, the aerosol can was of the type used for insect spray, the sort one can place on a floor, activate, and leave to fog a whole room. It had been fully disassembled, cleaned out three times with live steam, and put back together—the plastic parts had been a problem, but that had been figured out a few months earlier. It was a crude device. The production versions would be far more elegant. The only danger here was from the liquid nitrogen, a watery-appearing fluid which, if spilled on the gloves, would freeze them immediately and soon thereafter cause them to fragment like black crystal glass. The director stood aside as Moudi poured the cryogenic liquid around the pressure vessel. Only a few cc’s were required for the purpose of the experiment. Next, the Ebola-rich liquid was injected into the stainless-steel inner container, and the top screwed in place. When the cap was sealed, the new container was sprayed with disinfectant, then washed with sterile saline. The smaller transfer container went into a disposal bin for incineration.
“There,” the director said. “We are ready.”
Inside the spray can, the Ebola was already deep-frozen, but not for long. The nitrogen would boil off relatively rapidly, and the sample would thaw. In that time,
the rest of the experiment would be set up. And in that time, the two physicians would remove their protective clothing and have dinner.
THE COLONEL DRIVING the airplane touched down with consummate skill. It was his first time flying this President, and he had something to prove. The rollout was routine, with the reverse-thrusters slowing the jumbo to auto-speed before the nose came around to the left. Out the windows, Ryan could see hundreds—no, he realized, thousands—of people. All there to see me? he wondered. Damn. In their hands, dangling over the low perimeter fence, were the red, white, and blue colors of the national flag, and when the aircraft finally stopped, those flags came up at one time, as though in a wave. The mobile stairs came to the door, which was opened by the steward—to call her a stewardess would have been incorrect—who’d given him a cigarette.
“Want another one?” she whispered.
Ryan grinned. “Maybe later. And thanks, Sarge.”
“Break a leg, Mr. President—but not on the stairs, okay?” She got a chuckle as reward.
“All ready for the Boss,” Price heard over her radio circuit from the leader of the advance team. With that, she nodded at President Ryan.
“Showtime, Mr. President.”
Ryan took a deep breath and stood in the center of the door, looking out into the bright Midwestern sunlight.
The protocol was that he had to walk down first and alone. Barely had he stood in the opening when a cheer went up, and this from people who scarcely knew a thing about him. His coat buttoned, his hair combed down and sprayed into place despite his objections, Jack Ryan walked down the steps, feeling more like a fool than a President until he got to the bottom. There an Air Force chief master sergeant snapped a salute, which Ryan, so imprinted by his brief months in the Marine Corps, returned smartly—and another cheer went up. He looked around to see Secret Service and other Treasury agents deployed around, almost all of them looking outward. The first person to come close was the governor of the state.
“Welcome to Indiana, Mr. President!” He seized Ryan’s hand and shook it vigorously. “We’re honored to host your first official visit.”
They’d laid out everything for this one. A company of the local National Guard was formed up. The band crashed out “Ruffles and Flourishes,” immediately followed by “Hail to the Chief,” and Ryan felt himself to be a singular fraud. With the governor to his left and half a step behind, Ryan followed the red—what else?—carpet. The assembled soldiers came to present arms, and their ancient regimental standard dipped, though not the Stars and Stripes, of course, which, an American athlete had once proclaimed, dips to no earthly king or potentate (he’d been an Irish-American unwilling so to honor the King of England at the 1908 Olympiad). Jack moved his right hand over his heart as he passed, a gesture remembered from his youth, and looked at the assembled guardsmen. He was their commander-in-chief now, the President told himself. He could give orders sending them off to the field of battle, and he had to look at their faces. There they were, clean-shaven and young and proud, as he would have been twenty-odd years earlier. They were here for him. And he always had to be there for them. Yeah, Jack told himself. Have to remember that.
“May I introduce you to some local citizens, sir?” the governor asked, pointing to the fence. Ryan nodded and followed.
“Heads up, pressin’ flesh,” Andrea called over her radio microphone. For as many times as they’d seen it happen, the agents on presidential Detail detested this above all things. Price would be with POTUS at all times. Raman and three others hovered on both sides of him, their eyes scanning the crowd from behind dark sunglasses, looking for guns, for the wrong expression, for faces memorized from photographs, for anything out of the ordinary.
There were so many of them, Jack thought. None of them had voted for him, and until very recently few had even known his name. Yet they were here. Some, perhaps, state-government employees getting half a day off, but not the ones holding kids, not all of them, and the looks in their eyes stunned the President, who’d never in his life experienced anything even close to this. Hands extended frantically, and he shook all that he could, moving to his left down the line, trying to hear individual voices through the cacophony of screams.
“Welcome to Indiana!”—“How are ya!”—“MISTER PRESIDENT!”—“We trust you!”—“Good job so far!”—“We’re with ya!”
Ryan tried to answer back, achieving little more than a repeated thank-you, his mouth mainly open in surprise at the overpowering warmth of the moment, and all directed at him. It was enough to make him overlook the pain in his hand, but finally he had to step away from the fence and wave, to yet another roar of love for the new President.
Damn. If they only knew what a fraud he was, Jack thought, what would they do then? What the hell am I doing here? his mind demanded, as he headed for the open door of the presidential limousine.
THERE WERE TEN of them, down in the basement of the building. All were men. Only one was a political prisoner, and his crime was apostasy. The rest were singularly undesirable people, four murderers, a rapist, two child molesters, and two thieves who were repeat offenders and, under the Koranic law of their nation, subject to removal of their right hands. They were in a single, climate-controlled room, each of them secured to the foot of the bed by leg cuffs. All were condemned to death, except the thieves who were only supposed to be mutilated, and knew it, and wondered why they were here with the rest. Why the others were still alive was a mystery to them, which none questioned but from which none took satisfaction, either. Their diet over the past few weeks had been particularly poor, enough to reduce their physical energy and their level of alertness. One of their number stuck a finger in his mouth to feel his sore and bleeding gums. The finger came out when the door opened.
It was someone in a blue plastic suit, which none of them had seen before. The person—a man, though they could barely make out the face through the plastic mask—set a cylindrical container down on the concrete floor, took off the blue plastic cap, and pressed down on a button. Then he hastily withdrew. Scarcely had the door closed when there came a hiss from the container, and a steamlike fog sprayed up into the room.
One of their number screamed, thinking that it was a poison gas, seizing the thin bedsheet and clasping it over his face. The one closest to the spray was slower-witted and merely watched, and when the cloud came over him, he looked around at it while the others waited for him to die. When he didn’t, they were more curious than fearful. After a few minutes, the incident passed into their limited history. The lights were turned off, and they went to sleep.
“Three days to find out,” the director said, turning off the TV that fed from the cell. “The spray system appears to work well, proper dispersion. They had a problem with the delay device. On the production version, it has to be good for—what? Five minutes, I think.”
Three days, Moudi thought. Seventy-two hours to see what evil they had wrought.
FOR ALL THE money and hype, for all the exquisite planning, Ryan was sitting on a simple folding metal chair, the sort to make a person’s rump sore. In front of him was a wooden rail covered with red, white, and blue bunting. Under the bunting was sheet steel supposed to stop a bullet. The podium was similarly armored—steel and Kevlar in this case; Kevlar is both stronger and lighter—and would protect nearly all of his body below the shoulders. The university field house—a very large gymnasium, though not the one used for the school’s basketball team, already eliminated in the NCAA tournament—was packed “to the rafters,” reporters would probably say, that being the stock phrase for a building with all its seats occupied. Most of the audience were probably students, but it was hard to tell. Ryan was the target of numerous bright lights, and the flood of brilliance denied him the ability to see most of the crowd. They’d arrived via the back door, walking through a smelly locker room because the President took the fast way in and out. The motorcade had come down a highway for most of the way, but in the regular city streets
that had occupied maybe a quarter of the distance, there had been people on the sidewalks, waving to him while their governor extolled the virtues of the city and the Hoosier State. Jack had thought to ask the origin of “Hoosier,” but decided not to.
The governor was talking again now, succeeding three others. A student, followed by the university president, followed by the mayor of the local town. The President actually tried listening to the speeches, but while on one hand they all said mainly the same thing, on the other little of it was true. It was as though they were speaking of someone else, a theoretical President with generic virtues to deal with the misstated duties. Maybe it was just that the local speechwriters dealt with local issues only, Jack decided. So much the better for them.
“... my great honor to introduce the President of the United States.” The governor turned and gestured. Ryan rose, approached the podium, shook the governor’s hand. As he set his speech folder on the top of the podium, he nodded embarrassed appreciation at the crowd he could barely see. In the first few rows, right on the hardwood of the basketball court, were local big shots. In other times and circumstances, they’d be major contributors. In this case, Ryan didn’t know. Maybe from both parties, even. Then he remembered that major contributors donated money to both parties anyway, to hedge their bets by guaranteeing themselves access to power no matter who was there. They were probably already trying to figure how to donate money to his campaign.