by Tom Clancy
Physicians all across the country were frantically busy. It was rapidly known that the initial presentation of Ebola was similar to flu symptoms, and any doctor could relate that people could think themselves into those. Telling the truly sick from the hypochondriac was rapidly becoming the most demanding of medical skills.
Despite it all, however, people dealt with it, watched their televisions, looked at one another, and wondered how much substance there was to the scare.
THAT WAS THE job of CDC and USAMRIID, aided by the FBI. There were now five hundred confirmed cases, each of which had been tied directly or indirectly to eighteen trade shows. That gave them time references. It also identified four other trade shows from which no illnesses had as yet developed. All twenty-two had been visited by agents, all of whom learned that in every case the rubbish from the shows had long since been hauled off. There was some thought that the trash might be picked through, but USAMRIID waved the Bureau off, and said that identifying the distribution system would mean comparing the contents of thousands of tons of material, a task that simply was not possible, and might even be dangerous. The important discovery was the time window. That information was made public at once. Americans who had traveled out of the country prior to the start dates of the trade shows that were known to have been focal centers were not dangerous. That fact was made known to national health services worldwide, most of which tacked on from two days to a full week. From them, the information became global knowledge within a few hours. There was no stopping it, and there was no purpose in keeping the secret, even if it were possible to do so.
“WELL, THAT MEANS we’re all safe,” General Diggs told his staff at the morning conference. Fort Irwin was one of the most isolated encampments in America. There was only one way in and out, and that road was now blocked by a Bradley.
That wasn’t true of other military bases; the problem was global. A senior Army officer from the Pentagon had flown to Germany to hold a conference with V Corps headquarters, and two days later collapsed, in the process infecting a doctor and two nurses. The news had shaken NATO allies, who instantly quarantined American encampments that dated back to the 1940s. The news was also instantly on global TV. What was worse in the Pentagon was that nearly every base had a case, real or suspected. The effect on unit morale was horrific, and that information, also, was impossible to conceal. Transatlantic phone lines burned with worry headed in both directions.
THINGS WERE FRANTIC in Washington, too. The joint task force included members of all the intelligence services, plus FBI and the federal law-enforcement establishment. The President had given them a lot of power to use, and they intended to use it. The manifest of the lost Gulfstream business jet had started things moving in a new and unexpected direction, but that was the way of investigations.
In Savannah, Georgia, an FBI agent knocked on the door of the president of Gulfstream and handed him a surgical mask. The factory was shut down, as were most American businesses, but that executive order would be bent today. The president called his chief safety officer and told him to head in, along with the firm’s senior test pilot. Six FBI agents sat down with them for a lengthy chat. That soon evolved into a conference call. The most important immediate result was the discovery that the lost aircraft’s flight recorder hadn’t been recovered. That resulted in a call to the CO of USS Radford, who confirmed that his ship, now in drydock, had tracked the lost aircraft and then had searched for the sonar pings of the black box, but to no avail. The naval officer could not explain that. Gulfstream’s chief test pilot explained that if the aircraft hit hard enough, the instrument could break despite its robust design. But it hadn’t been going all that fast, the Radford’s skipper remembered, and no debris had been found, either. As a result of that, the FAA and NTSB were called in and told to produce records instantly.
In Washington—the working group was in the FBI Building—looks were exchanged over the masks everyone was wearing. The FAA part of the team had run down the identity of the flight crew and their qualifications. It turned out that they were both former Iranian air force pilots, trained in America in the late 1970s. From that came photos and fingerprints. Another pair of pilots, flying the same sort of aircraft for the same Swiss corporation, had similar training, and the FBI’s legal attaché in Bern made an immediate call to his Swiss colleagues to request assistance in interviewing them.
“Okay,” Dan Murray summarized. “We got a sick Belgian nun and a friend with an Iranian doctor. They fly off in a Swiss-registered airplane that disappears without a trace. The airplane belongs to a little trading company the leg-alt will run that down for us pretty fast, but we know the flight crew was Iranian.”
“It does seem to be heading in a certain direction, Dan,” Ed Foley said. Just then an agent came in with a fax for the CIA Director. “Check this out.” He slid it across the table. It wasn’t a long message.
“People think they’re so fuckin’ smart,” Murray told the people around the table. He passed the new dispatch around.
“Don’t underestimate ’em,” Ed Foley warned. “We don’t have anything hard yet. The President can’t take any action at all on anything until we do.” And maybe not even then, his mind went on, as gutted as the military is right now. There was also the thing Chavez had said before flying off. Damn, but that kid was getting smart. Foley wondered whether to bring that up. There were more pressing matters for now, he decided. He could discuss it with Murray privately.
CHAVEZ DIDN’T FEEL smart as he dozed in his leather seat. It was another three-hour hop to Khartoum, and he was having dreams, fitful ones. He’d done his share of flying as a CIA officer, but even on a plush executive jet with all the bells and whistles, you got tired of it in a hurry. The diminished air pressure meant diminished oxygen, and that made you tired. The air was dry, and that dehydrated you. The noise of the engines made it like sleeping out in the boonies with insects swarming around all the time, always ready to suck your blood, and you could never make the little bastards go away.
Whoever was doing whatever was happening wasn’t all that smart. Okay, an airplane had disappeared with five people aboard, but that wasn’t necessarily a dead end, was it? HX-NJA, he remembered from the customs document. Hmph. They’d probably kept records because they were shipping out people, rather than monkeys. HX for Switzerland. Why HX? he wondered. “H” for Helvetia, maybe? Wasn’t that an old name for Switzerland? Didn’t some languages still call it that? He seemed to remember that some did. German, maybe. NJA to identify the individual aircraft. They used letters instead of numbers because it made for more permutations. Even this one had such a code, with an “N” prefix because American aircraft used that letter code. NJA, he thought with his eyes closed. NJA. Ninja. That generated a smile. The sobriquet for his old outfit, 1st Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment. “We own the night!” Yeah, those were the days, humping the hills at Fort Ord and Hunter-Liggett. But the 7th Infantry Division (Light) had been deestablished, its standards furled and cased for retirement, or maybe later use ... Ninja. That seemed important. Why?
His eyes opened. Chavez stood, stretched, and went forward. There he woke the pilot with whom Clark had had that little tiff. “Colonel?”
“What is it?” Only one eye opened.
“What’s one of these things cost?”
“More ’n either one of us can afford.” The eye closed back down.
“Seriously.”
“Upwards of twenty million dollars, depending on the version and the avionics package. If somebody makes a better business jet, I don’t know what it is.”
“Thanks.” Chavez returned to his seat. There was no sense in trying to fade back out. He felt the nose lower and heard the engines reduce their annoying sound. They were starting their descent into Khartoum. The local CIA station chief would be meeting—excuse me, he thought to himself. Commercial attaché. Or was it political officer? Whatever. He knew that this city wouldn’t be as friendly as the last two.
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br /> THE HELICOPTER LANDED at Fort McHenry, close to the statue of Orpheus that someone had decided was appropriate to honor the name of Francis Scott Key, Ryan noted irrelevantly. About as irrelevant as Arnie’s idea for a fucking photo opportunity. He had to show he was concerned. Jack wondered about that. Did people think that at times like this the President threw a party? Hadn’t Poe written a story like that? “The Mask of the Red Death”? Something like that. But that plague had gotten into the party, hadn’t it? The President rubbed his face. Sleep. Have to sleep. Thinking crazy shit. It was like flashbulbs. Your mind got tired and random thoughts blinked into your mind for no apparent reason, and then you had to fight them back, and get your mind going on the important stuff.
The usual Chevy Suburbans were there, but not the presidential limo. Ryan would ride in the obviously armored vehicle. There were cops around, too, looking grim. Well, everybody else did, too. Why not them?
He, too, was wearing a mask, and there were three TV cameras to record the fact. Maybe it was going out live. He didn’t know, and scarcely looked at the cameras on the short walk to the cars. They started moving almost at once, up Fort Avenue, then north onto Key Highway. It was ten fast minutes over vacated city streets, heading toward Johns Hopkins, where the President and First Lady would show how concerned they were for other cameras. A leadership function, Arnie had told him, picking a phrase he was sure to recognize as something he had to respect whether he liked it or not. And the hell of it was, Arnie was right. He was the President, and he couldn’t isolate himself from the people—whether he could do anything substantive to help them or not, they had to see him being concerned. It was something that did and didn’t make sense, all at the same time.
The motorcade pulled into the Wolfe Street entrance. There were soldiers there, Guardsmen of the 175th Infantry Regiment, the Maryland Line. The local commander had decided that all hospitals had to be guarded, and Ryan supposed that was one of the things that did make sense. The Detail was nervous to have men around with loaded rifles, but they were soldiers, and that was that—disarming them might have made the news, after all. They all saluted, masked as they were in their MOPP gear, rifles slung over their shoulders. Nobody had threatened the hospital. Perhaps they were the reason why, or maybe it was just that people were scared. Enough that one cop had remarked to a Service agent that street crime had dropped to almost nil. Even the drug dealers were nowhere to be seen.
There were not very many people to be seen anywhere at this hour, but all of them were masked, and even the lobby was heavy with the chemical smell that was now the national scent. How much of that was a necessary physical measure, and how much psychological? Jack wondered. But, then, that’s what his trip was.
“Hi, Dave,” the President said to the dean. He was wearing greens instead of his suit, masked like everyone else, and gloved, too. They didn’t shake hands.
“Mr. President, thank you for coming.” There were cameras in the lobby—they’d followed him in from outside. Before any of the reporters could shout a request for a statement, Jack pointed, and the dean led the party off. Ryan supposed it would look businesslike. Secret Service agents hustled to get ahead as they walked from the elevator bank to the medical floor. The doors slid open to reveal a busy corridor. Here there was bustle and people.
“What’s the score, Dave?”
“We have thirty-four patients admitted here. Total for the area is one hundred forty—well, was the last time I checked. We have all the space we need for now, and all the staff, too. We’ve released about half of our patients, the ones we could sign out safely. All elective procedures are canceled for now, but there is the usual activity. I mean, babies are being born. People get sick from the normal diseases. Some outpatient treatments have to be continued, epidemic or not.”
“Where’s Cathy?” Ryan asked, as the next elevator arrived with a single camera whose tape would be pooled with all the networks. The hospital didn’t want or need to be crowded with extraneous people, and while media management people had made a little noise, their field personnel weren’t all that eager, either. Maybe it was the antiseptic smell. Maybe it affected people the same way it affected dogs taken to the vet. It was the smell of danger for everyone.
“This way. Let’s get you suited up.” The floor had a doctors’ lounge, and one for nurses. Both were being used. The one at the far end was “hot,” used for disrobing and decontamination. The near one was supposed to be safe, used for suiting up. There wasn’t time or space for all the niceties. The Secret Service agents went in first and saw a woman in bra and panties, picking a plastic suit that was her size. She didn’t blush. It was her fourth shift on the unit, and she was beyond that.
“Hang your clothes over there.” She pointed. “Oh!” she added, recognizing the President.
“Thank you,” Ryan said, taking his shoes off and taking a clothes hanger from Andrea. Price examined the woman briefly. Clearly she wasn’t carrying a weapon. “How is it?” Jack asked.
She was the charge nurse for the floor. She didn’t turn to answer. “Pretty bad.” She paused for a second and then decided she had to turn. “We appreciate the fact that your wife is up here with us.”
“I tried to talk her out of it,” he admitted to her. He didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it, either, and wondered if he should or not.
“So’d my husband.” She came over. “Here, the helmet goes on like this.” Ryan experienced a brief moment of panic. It was a most unnatural act to put a plastic bag over one’s head. The nurse read his face. “Me, too. You get used to it.”
Across the room, Dean James was already in his. He also came over to check the President’s protective gear.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” Jack was sweating now, despite the portable air-conditioning pack that hooked on his belt.
The dean turned to the Secret Service personnel. “From here on, I’m the boss,” he told them. “I won’t let him get into any danger, but we don’t have enough suits for you people. If you stay in the corridors, you’ll be safe. Don’t touch anything. Not the walls, not the floors, nothing. Somebody goes past you with a cart, get out of the way. If you can’t get out of the way, walk to the end of the corridor. If you see any kind of plastic container, stay clear of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” For once, Andrea Price was cowed, POTUS saw. As was he. The psychological impact of this was horrific. Dr. James tapped the President on the shoulder.
“Follow me. I know it’s scary, but you are safe in this thing. We all had to get used to it, too, didn’t we, Tisha?”
The nurse turned, now fully in hers. “Yes, Doctor.”
You could hear your breathing. There was the whir of the A/C pack, but everything else was muted. Ryan felt a frightening sense of confinement as he walked behind the dean.
“Cathy’s in here.” He opened the door. Ryan entered.
It was a child, a boy, aged eight or so, Jack saw. Two blue-clad figures were ministering to him. From behind he couldn’t tell which one was his wife. Dr. James held his hand up, forbidding Ryan from taking another step. One of the two was trying to restart an IV, and there couldn’t be any distractions. The child was moaning, writhing on the bed. Ryan couldn’t see much of him, but he saw enough for his stomach to turn.
“Hold still now. This will make you feel better.” It was Cathy’s voice; evidently she was doing the stick. The other two hands were holding the arm in place. “... there. Tape,” she added, lifting her hands.
“Good stick, Doctor.”
“Thank you.” Cathy went to the electronic box that controlled the morphine and pushed in the right numbers, checking to be sure that the machine started functioning properly. With that done, she turned. “Oh.”
“Hi, honey.”
“Jack, you don’t belong here,” SURGEON told him firmly.
“Who does?”
“OKAY, I HAVE a line on this Dr. MacGregor,” the station chief told the
m, driving his red Chevy. His name was Frank Clayton, a graduate of Grambling, whom Clark had seen through the Farm some years earlier.
“Then let’s go see him, Frank.” Clark checked his watch, did the calculations, and decided that it was two hours after midnight. He grunted. Yeah, that was about right. First stop was the embassy, where they changed clothes. American military uniforms weren’t all that welcome here. In fact, the station chief warned, few things American were. Chavez noted that a car followed them in from the airport.
“Don’t sweat it. We’ll lose him at the embassy. You know, sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t a good deal when my folks got kidnapped out of Africa. Don’t tell anybody I said that, okay? South Alabama is like heaven on earth compared to this shithole.”
He parked the car in the embassy’s back lot and took them inside. A minute later one of his people walked out, started the Chevy, and headed right back out. The tail car went with him.
“Shirts,” the CIA resident officer said, handing them over. “I suppose you can leave the pants on.”
“Have you talked to MacGregor?” Clark asked.
“On the phone a few hours ago. We’re going to drive over to where he lives, and he’s going to get into the car. I have a nice quiet parking spot picked out for our chat,” Clayton told them.
“Any danger to him?”
“I doubt it. The locals are pretty sloppy. If we have anybody tailing us, I know what to do about it.”
“Then let’s move, buddy,” John said. “We’re burning moonlight.”
MacGregor’s quarters weren’t all that bad, located in a district favored by Europeans, and, the station chief related, fairly secure. He lifted his cellular phone and dialed the doctor’s beeper number——there was a local paging service. Less than a minute later his door opened, and a figure walked to the car, got in the back, and closed the door a second before it moved off.