“Then why’d you quit the SEALs, abandon your comrades?”
“That again?” Trace paused, slowly shook his head, then said, quietly this time, “I demand to be released.”
“You won’t be released unless you confess your crimes.”
“I haven’t committed any crimes,” Trace said. “You said so yourself. I’m being held because of what you think I might do, not for what I’ve done. There’s nothing for me to confess.”
“You must confess,” said the officer, “otherwise we won’t let you go. We have the evidence against you.”
“If you have the evidence against me, why do you need my confession?”
“It’s the procedure. You’re in the system. Four times. You’re on the watch list. So now you must follow the procedure and confess.”
Trace sighed.
“This is an endless loop. You’re talking in riddles. Your argument is bootstrap. I haven’t committed any crimes, any offenses against America, and I don’t intend to.”
“If that’s so, Mr. Austin, why are you locked up here?” the major said, smiling smugly. “The mere fact that you haven’t committed any crimes, but are here anyway, proves you are likely to commit an offense in the future.”
Trace was appalled by the man’s density. He shook his head, then shut down, at a loss what else to say to get through to the officer. He stood mute, staring at the major.
The major broke the silence. “I’m asking you again, one last time. I suggest you answer me. Why did you quit the SEALs?”
“Let me try this again, very slowly,” Trace said. “Maybe, just maybe, if you pay real close attention, Major, this time you’ll get it. Are you ready?” He paused. “Here goes: It was personal. That’s all I’ll say about it. Personal. Nobody’s business. Just mine and my wife’s.”
He paused again, but then added, “It had nothing to do with my loyalty. I haven’t done anything wrong, and, again, I don’t intend doing anything wrong. You’re making a mistake holding me. Now, do whatever you want to me, I have no more to say. I’m done here.”
“So,” the major said, “you still think we made a mistake?” He glanced at the back wall. “Many traitors say that when they’re brought here, but that’s a narrow, foolish attitude.” He looked down at a file, then spoke again.
“Think about it. There are almost two hundred thousand people in the Quarantine Zone. Of all of them, why would you be brought here rather than one of them if you weren’t the one who’s guilty?”
Trace stood mute, stared, and thought once again of Franz Kafka.
The major nodded at Trace. “It’s clear to me,” he said, “even if you don’t admit it’s clear to you. You were entered into the system and placed on the watch list because you either committed an offense or are likely to commit one. Maybe even more than one. That remains to be seen. The mere fact that you’re in the system four times is, itself, a crime. You can’t deny you’re guilty of that, can you.”
He grinned and nodded again. “So, there you are, Mr. Austin. Now, I’ve answered your question, you answer mine.”
Trace sighed again. It was pointless to argue.
“Which question? I’ve lost track.”
“Why did you leave the SEALs when you did?”
Trace said nothing. He didn’t know what else to do in the face of the man’s absurd reasoning. He shook his head in disgust and remained quiet.
When it became clear that Trace wasn’t going to say anything else, the major walked out of the room, leaving Trace alone with his thoughts, one armed guard, and his unseen observer behind the one-way window.
Trace couldn’t begin to guess how long the major was gone. He lost all track of time as he paced the perimeter of the room under the watchful eyes of the guard.
Eventually the door opened and the major walked back in. He took his time settling himself behind the desk, then looking through a file he carried in with him. He made a conspicuous show of writing notes.
Trace waited for him to ask his favorite question again: Why’d you quit the SEALs?
Instead, when he finally spoke, he said to Trace, “You’re free to go. Pick up your belongings at the property clerk’s window on your way out.”
Behind the window, unseen by Trace, General Vista turned off the videotaping machine. He wrote a note in a small spiral-bound notebook and put it into his jacket pocket. Then he stood and left the observation room.
CHAPTER 59
Quarantine
Day 24
The day his interrogation ended, as Trace slipped his key into Nanna’s front door, he wondered what sort of reception he would receive from Isabella. He’d been away almost thirty hours.
Even though it now was late afternoon, he considered the possibility that Isabella might have been awake during the night with Nanna, so she’d be napping now. He pushed the door open slowly with his left hand and looked inside before stepping in. What he saw pulled him up short. The living room had been ransacked.
Isabella sat on the floor in front of the sofa. She had her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms around her legs, and her head resting on her kneecaps. She looked up at Trace as he pushed open the door.
One glance told Trace that Isabella was crying.
Trace ran over to her and, dropping to his knees, took her in his arms. “Bella, are you all right? What happened?” He looked around the disheveled room.
Isabella looked at Trace through clouded, wet eyes. She pushed him away. When he reached out to her, she held up her palm and shook her head.
“Where’ve you been?” she said. “I’ve been frantic.”
She got up and walked to the far end of the sofa, sat down, but then immediately stood again. She turned back to face Trace.
“Why didn’t you call? I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. I can’t stand it when I don’t know what’s going on. You know that.”
She walked back and forth as she reprimanded him, going first to one side of the room and then to the other.
“The authorities picked me up and were holding me, Bella. Didn’t Jenna call you? She said she would.” He walked over to her.
“Who’s this Jenna person you’re talking about? How do you know her? Why did she know what happened to you, but I didn’t?” She stopped pacing and faced Trace. “What do you mean they picked you up? Who did?”
“She’s the young woman I met the other day with the two young men. I told you about them,” he said.
Isabella reluctantly nodded. “Why were you with her now?”
“I ran into her on the street when I left to see what was going on outside. I wrote you a note. Didn’t you see it?” Trace said. “We were on our way to see her friend, Ibrahim, but were stopped by soldiers. They let her go, but held me. I gave her this phone number and asked her to call you so you’d know what had happened to me. She said she’d call.”
“Well she didn’t. I’ve been worried sick.”
“Bella, what happened here?” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Where’s Nanna?”
His questions provoked a new round of crying. Isabella sank down onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands.
“Damn it, Trace, why weren’t you here when I needed you?”
She stood up and walked across the room, then turned back to face him.
“What happened here?” she said, using a tone of voice that mimicked Trace’s voice. “Do you really want to know?” She paused, then said, before Trace could answer her question, “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened here, Trace. I’ll tell you exactly what happened.”
She walked back to the sofa and sat.
Trace was bewildered by the intensity of her anger.
“Bella—”
“Be quiet, Trace. Just be quiet and listen.”
Trace nodded and walked across the room. He lowered himself to the floor, his back against the wall, to give her the physical and mental space she seemed to need.
“My mother is gone,” she said.
Trace’s jaw slackened. “Oh, Bella, I’m so sorry. Oh, God. I hope, at least, she died peacefully.”
Isabella stiffened. “No, Trace. She’s gone. Not here,” Isabella said, “not dead.”
“What’re you talking about, Bella? Start at the beginning.”
“I don’t know where she is,” Isabella said. “This afternoon some county health people came with soldiers. They said we were in violation of some Field Order for not reporting mom’s illness. They said she had to be tested again. We all do.” She wiped her eyes.
She stood up and paced two steps away, then turned back.
“They took my mother away, wouldn’t say where. I wanted to go with her, but they wouldn’t let me.”
Trace frowned and looked around the room. “Did they say anything that might help us figure out where she’s at?”
“I don’t know,” Isabella said. “It all happened so fast. I was screaming at them. They wouldn’t let me talk to her before they took her. She was so frightened.”
Trace thought about this. “Let’s start over,” he said, deliberately speaking softly, nodding his head as he spoke.
“Tell me everything that happened since I went out the other morning. Try not to leave out anything even if it doesn’t seem important.”
Trace walked over to Isabella, and hugged and kissed her. He moved to the other end of the sofa, sitting with his legs tucked under him, facing her.
“. . . and then,” Isabella said, “there was banging on the door. It frightened me. When I opened the door there were soldiers in the hall. One had a battering ram. I guess he was about to knock down the door.” She shook her head slowly. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re doing fine,” Trace said. “Take your time.”
“The soldiers rushed in wearing some kind of biohazard suits, pointing their guns, racing around like madmen. They kept shouting, ‘Who’s here? Tell us who else is here.’”
She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “It was so confusing. There was so much happening so fast. And so much screaming by the soldiers. I was terrified.”
Trace nodded, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to break her mood by telling her this was standard, by-the-book penetration protocol intended to cower the occupants of the place invaded. Let her keep unloading information now, he thought, tell it all to me while she has momentum.
“The men looked in at my mother, asked about her, and then left her alone, closing her door. They looked through everything, every drawer, every shelf, every closet in every room. They tossed away things as they finished with them.” She looked over at the chaos in the living room. “They made me feel like a criminal.”
Trace nodded. “You’re doing fine,” he said.
“Trace, what’s going on? Where’ve you been? I don’t want to lose you, too. First Pete. Now my mother . . . .”
Trace stood and went to Isabella. He sat alongside her, pulled her in close to him, and held her. She put her head on his shoulder and began to cry.
After a few minutes she pulled away, sat upright and said, “Where was I? Oh, yes . . . .”
She shuddered briefly. “The soldiers ordered me to sit at the breakfast table while they tore the place apart. They copied the hard drive from Pete’s laptop and took all his CDs. They asked me if we had any other computers or smartphones, iPods, iPads or other smart devices.”
Trace nodded, but kept quiet.
“They asked me mom’s name, to spell it. They wouldn’t tell me why. Then they left except for one soldier who stood guard in front of my mother’s bedroom door. He wouldn’t even let me go in to check on her.”
Isabella turned her head and looked over at the closed door leading into her mother’s bedroom. She turned back to Trace.
“They must have reported my mother to someone because this afternoon other people came with soldiers and took her with them. Now I don’t know where she is. They gave me a telephone number to call later, after eighteen hours, they said. What should we do?”
“We can’t do anything yet, Bella, not today, not with the curfew in an hour or so. We need to think this through.”
Isabella nodded. She looked at the debris scattered around the living room. She sniffled, wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue, and said, “I’ll pick up in here. You get some rest, Trace. Then tell me what you’ve been through while you were gone. I’m sorry I was angry before. It’s just—”
“No problem, Bella. No problem at all,” Trace said.
With that, Isabella bent over, picked up some placemats from the carpet and carried them to the buffet’s top drawer which was sitting empty on the floor.
Trace grabbed some scattered cloth napkins from the floor, refolded them, and placed them in the same drawer.
As he gathered up the buffet’s scattered contents, Trace wondered why Jenna hadn’t called Isabella.
CHAPTER 60
Quarantine
Day 24
“Let’s get started,” the deputy secretary of defense said, so we can wrap this up and get back to our offices.”
He glanced briefly at his notes. “As we’ve discussed at our other meetings, we are continuing to study the control population in Fort Lauderdale. As part of that, we recently made a small amount of meds available to ameliorate symptoms of the terrorists’ disease. Now we’ll take it to the next step and see what happens.”
“Aren’t we going to send in more meds?” the undersecretary of Health and Human Services asked?
“We’re going to implement a secret triage program,” the deputy said, ignoring the woman from HHS. “Under this new program, meds will be withheld from everyone under age four or over age seventy. Physicians who have these groups of patients in their care will also see to it that they will be given only the minimum amount of food necessary to sustain their lives, no more.”
“You can’t do that,” the undersecretary of HHS blurted out. “That’s criminal.”
“This is wartime, Madam,” the deputy said, as he glared at her.
“But you don’t need to do that,” the woman said. “There are sufficient stores of medicine and food elsewhere in the country that can be brought to Fort Lauderdale. Think what you’re doing,” she said.
“That’s not the issue,” the deputy said, spiking his voice with maximum sarcasm. “Of course we have sufficient stores of meds and food to bring in, and we’ll make them available in due course.
“In the meantime, this is our rare chance to see how a population might react in circumstances where we are unable to deliver food and meds to it. We are fortunate the terrorists afforded us this opportunity, and we have no intention of wasting it.”
CHAPTER 61
Quarantine
Day 25
Trace and Isabella, exhausted from their separate but shared ordeals, slept well that night. Isabella backed up against Trace’s body, pressing into his stomach and chest, curving her body to fit snuggly into his. Trace slept with his arm draped over Isabella, holding her firmly in his sleep as if he was afraid she would float away if he let go. He fell asleep with his lips pressed against the back of her neck.
They woke a little after 10:00 a.m., first Isabella, then Trace, both surprised how late they’d slept. After showers and some basic primping, they rendezvoused at the kitchen table.
Trace picked up the box of cereal and emptied the last of its contents into Isabella’s bowl. He took both hands and pretended to strangle the inverted box, trying to squeeze out some unseen cereal from its dark, empty interior. Nothing came out. He crumbled the empty box into a rough, cardboard ball and tossed it in a lazy arc across the room into the sink. He walked across the room to the refrigerator and looked inside.
“The fridge looks like when we were first married and broke,” he said. He reached deep into the refrigerator, took out a mostly empty carton of orange juice and handed it to Isabella.
She checked the sell-by date, looked at Trace, then nodded her head. She poured the juice over her cer
eal. “Not quite my idea of the breakfast of champions,” she said.
“Beats dry cereal, I guess.”
Isabella shrugged and pushed the bowl over to Trace. “Have some,” she said. “We’ll share. I’m not eating this stuff alone.”
Trace put up his palm to stop her. “I’ll pass for now. I’ll have something later. What’s left in the cabinets? Anything edible?”
“Half-empty jar of peanut butter. Not even the kind you’re crazy about,” she said. “It’s chunky. A tin of unbaked dinner rolls, a few cans of soup. A box of raisins. Stale crackers. Plus a few things in the freezer.”
“A half-full jar of peanut butter and other stuff,” Trace said. “Not enough to carry us for long. I’ll go out, look for more. Want to come?”
“Yes, I do,” Bella said, “but I can’t. I want to be here in case my mother comes home while you’re out.”
“Okay,” Trace said. “I’ll call those kids I told you about, Ibrahim and Jenna. I want to talk to them about possibly teaming-up with me to get through the quarantine.”
“A SEAL team?” Bella said.
“A SEAL-like team,” Trace said. “If they’re trainable, that is.”
Trace called Ibrahim. He and Jenna agreed to meet Trace someplace where their presence would not violate Field Order No. 2.
Food was scarce in the Quarantine Zone. Existing stocks had become depleted soon after the quarantine began. Fresh vegetables, fruits and meat disappeared from general circulation once farmers realized that the return they made under ODMC price controls did little to offset the cost of producing and harvesting their crops, then bringing them to town. The choices among farmers came down to letting their crops ripen and rot in the fields, feeding it to their ever-diminishing herds of livestock, or selling the crops on the black market.
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