by Tom Clancy
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 the 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.”
“The ambassador thinks they are,” Bretano told them.
“Admiral DeMarco, that equipment has to be delivered,” the President said, his own face coloring up.
“The Air Force is deploying to Saudi now. Two extra days and we can deal with it, but until then—”
“Admiral, call your relief.” Secretary Bretano looked down at his briefing folder. “Your services are not needed here anymore. We don’t have two days to bicker.”
That was actually a violation of protocol. The Joint Chiefs were presidential appointments, and while they were titularly military advisers to the Secretary of Defense and the President, supposedly only the latter could ask one to resign. Admiral DeMarco looked to Ryan’s place in the center of the conference table.
“Mr. President, I have to give you my best feel for this.”
“Admiral, we have fifteen thousand men standing in harm’s way. You can’t tell us that the Navy will not support them. You are relieved of duty effective now,” the President said. “Good day.” The other uniformed Chiefs glanced at one another. This hadn’t happened before. “How long before contact with the Indians?” Ryan asked, moving on.
“About twenty-four hours, sir.”
“Any way we can provide additional support?”
“There’s a submarine there also, loaded with torpedoes and missiles. She’s about fifty miles in advance of Anzio,” Jackson said, as a stunned admiral and his aide left the room. “We can speed her up. That risks detection, but the Indians aren’t all that swift on ASW. She would be an offensive weapon, sir. Submarines can’t defend passively. They sink ships.”
“I think the Indian Prime Minister and I need to have a little chat,” POTUS observed. “After we get through them, then what?”
“Well, then we have to transit the strait and make it up to the unloading ports.”
“That I can help you with,” the Air Force chief of staff promised. “We’ll have the F-16s in-country and in range for that part of the passage. The 366th Wing won’t be ready yet, but the boys from Israel will be.”
“We’re going to need that cover, General,” Jackson emphasized.
“Well, God damn, the Navy’s asking for help from us Air Scouts,” the Air Force said lightly, then turned serious. “We’ll kill every rag-head son of a bitch who gets in the air, Robby. Those forty-eight-16-Charlies are locked and cocked. As soon as you’re within a hundred miles o
f the Strait, you have a friend overhead.”
“Is it enough?” the President asked.
“Strictly speaking, no. The other side has four hundred top-of-the-line airplanes. When the 366th gets fully set up—in three days, minimum—we’ll have eighty fighters for air-to-air, but the Saudis aren’t bad. We have AWACS in place. Your tanks will fight under a neutral sky at worst, Mickey.” The general checked his watch. “They should be getting off right about now.”
THE FIRST FLIGHT of four F-15C fighter-interceptors rotated aloft together. Twenty minutes later, they formed up with their KC-135R tankers. There were six of them from their own wing, and others would join from the Montana and North and South Dakota Air National Guard, their home states as yet untouched by the epidemic. For most of the way to the Arabian Peninsula, they’d hold position ten miles from the lead commercial aircraft coming out of California. The flight path took them north to the Pole, then over the hump and south toward Russia, continuing over Eastern Europe. West of Cyprus, they would be joined by an Israeli escort, which would convey them as far as Jordan. From there on, the American Eagle fighters would be augmented by Saudi F-15s. They might make the first few arrivals covertly, the planning officers thought in their own commercial transports, but if the other side woke up, then there would be an air battle. The pilots in the lead Eagle flight really didn’t mind that very much. There was no extraneous chatter on the radios as they saw dawn to their right. It would be a flight of two dawns. The next one would be to their left.