The Devil's Hand

by Carr, Jack

  “Take your seats, please,” the president said. He stood at the end of a large conference table. “Greg, bring us up to speed.”

  “Mr. President, apologies for not being able to brief you ahead of the meeting, but the situation dictated swift protective action due to the nature of the threat. Let me assure everyone that in all likelihood we will not remain underground all year, or even all week. There are not incoming missiles from Russia or North Korea, nor is Iran detonating a dirty bomb in the capital. Before I go on, I’ll give you the bottom line up front: there has been what we suspect to be a naturally occurring outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in the United States.”

  “We’ve seen this before,” Terrance Lowe, director of national intelligence, broke in, clearly annoyed he’d been pulled back to the city on a weekend.

  “Not like this, Admiral,” Farber responded. “This one is airborne.”

  “Please continue, Greg,” the president said, looking at Lowe and regaining control of the meeting.

  “Mr. President, four hours ago the CDC emergency hotline received a call from a hospital in Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas. Late last night that hospital started admitting patients exhibiting signs of severe flu. They were overrun in a matter of hours.”

  “What made them think it’s not just the flu?” the president asked.

  “The hospital invested in an on-site array for symptomatic infectious disease testing during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  “What does that mean?” Lowe broke in.

  “It means that they can rule out twenty-six viruses, including the flu and COVID. It’s a presumptive diagnosis with all twenty-six tests being negative.”

  “So, it could be anything,” Lowe said.

  “Not the twenty-six negatives,” Farber continued, beginning to get irritated with the retired admiral. “The on-site physician is a former Air Force doctor. He observed hemorrhaging in multiple patients’ eyes along with blood in vomit, all symptoms consistent with a hemorrhagic fever diagnosis.”

  “Wait, when you say hemorrhagic fever, you mean Ebola?” Lowe asked.

  “Blood samples were sent to the CDC in Atlanta and here in Washington. Possible hemorrhagic strains include Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, and Crimean-Congo.”

  “Aren’t these strains usually limited and spread via bodily fluid transmission?” Lowe asked.

  “True,” Farber conceded, “but, we’ve never seen an airborne variant.”

  “How do we know it’s airborne?” Lowe asked.

  “On the way into this meeting the director of the CDC called confirming this appears to be a new strain of Ebola. His senior infectious disease specialist compared it to various strains of hemorrhagic fever in the level-four host site lab in Atlanta. It doesn’t match any known samples, which indicates it is a strain that has evolved. The number of patients exhibiting symptoms in Richardson suggests it is airborne.”

  “Jesus…” Lowe whispered.

  “Also, just before I called this meeting, we received a call from a hospital in Denver. Same symptoms. Director Motley?”

  “Mr. President, I received a call from Mr. Farber this morning on the developing situation. As you recall, thirteen days ago you were briefed on a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola.”

  “I remember. It burnt out as I recall.”

  “That is correct, sir. My analysts linked the Angola outbreak with flights from Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport to the United States. Depending on a variety of factors, if we assume that the hemorrhagic fever from Angola is the same contagion now in the United States, it would mean that an infected passenger boarded a flight in Luanda sometime between ten to fourteen days ago. There has been one flight a day since the outbreak from Angola to Johannesburg. From Johannesburg, there have been two flights a day to JFK and Atlanta, with connecting flights to the rest of the country, not to mention the flights out of Johannesburg to the rest of the world. My agency is working with the FBI to track the passengers and flights from Angola to South Africa to the United States. We are reaching out to our counterparts worldwide to find out if there are any other outbreaks. Preliminary analysis suggests that connecting passengers during the time frame in question did take connecting flights to Dallas and Denver.”

  The gravity of the threat momentarily turned a meeting of the National Security Council into a prayer service as silence gripped a group not accustomed to silent reflection.

  “Director Lowe,” the president said, addressing the DNI. “Give me some options.”

  “Sir, certain protocols automatically engage in the event of a threat to critical infrastructure from nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. This naturally occurring event falls under the parameters of that executive order. I’ll turn it over to Director Cruse, who is versed in the details.”

  Cruse stood and addressed the room.

  “Mr. President, as you are well aware, CISA’s mission was envisioned during the Obama administration out of concern for attacks on critical infrastructure. The previous administration officially formed CISA as a component of the Department of Homeland Security, but in times of crisis as an independent agency with direct report to the executive branch for action. The world has never dealt with a respiratory-spread hemorrhagic fever. If the CDC confirms that Ebola is in fact airborne, it has the potential to spread at a rate unparalleled in the history of infectious disease.”

  “What kind of mortality rates are we talking about?” the president asked.

  “Without containment measures it has the potential to kill ninety percent of the country, over two hundred and ninety million people.”

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, the president was at a loss.

  “Greg, do we have contingency plans for an outbreak of that magnitude?”

  “Sir.” Farber hesitated. “The sensitivity of those plans requires a smaller audience.”

  “Smaller than this?”

  “Sir, we are in uncharted territory,” Farber said.

  “This is the National Security Council,” the president said, reasserting his authority. “We will all be briefed on the contingencies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Farber said. “General?”

  General Nathan Seifert stood to address the room. Even though this was an emergency meeting on a Saturday morning, he was clean-shaven, and his uniform was immaculate. Though it was obvious he could no longer pass the Army PT test, he was stern and direct. By his way of thinking, at this stage of his career, the American people were not paying him to pass a two-mile timed run. They were paying him to advise the president of the United States and the members of the National Security Council as the highest-ranking military officer in the country. Though he hid his contempt, he maintained no regard for those senior-level officers who hid their intellectual ineptitude behind their annual PT scores.

  “Mr. President, by way of background, in the years following World War Two it was revealed that the Nazi and Imperial war machines had experimented with bioweapons as a way to destroy the enemy without firing a shot. President Eisenhower tasked the United States military to develop protocols in the event a biological weapon were released in the continental United States. Those containment and eradication plans have been updated on a periodic basis since inception in 1954.”

  “Containment and eradication?” the president inquired.

  “Yes, Mr. President. To stop the spread of either a bioweapon or a naturally occurring highly contagious virus that threatened to destroy the county, a fail-safe last-resort plan was developed in the 1950s. Only a select number of people have ever been briefed on the contingency.”

  General Seifert looked at the secretary of defense, who nodded.

  “Mr. President, there are protocols in place to isolate areas, to include cities, in the case of a contagion event. Troops are staging as we speak in advance of a containment order.”

  “And eradication?” the president asked.

  “If the pathogen escapes the perimeter and threatens
to infect and destroy the nation, we can rapidly expand the containment zone. There are MC-130 aircraft on standby in Hurlburt Field, Florida. Those planes are equipped with GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Fuel Air Explosive munitions, the most devastating nonnuclear bombs in our inventory.”

  The president leaned forward and cleared his throat. “General, are you telling me we have had plans in place to destroy our own cities since the early days of the Cold War?”

  “That is correct, sir. Even the pilots and crews don’t know their mission. The squadron believes they are on standby for a Cuban contingency, more specifically a Chinese buildup in Cuba. Their CAE flight simulators are only programmed for OCONUS contingencies.”

  “And why am I just finding out about this now?”

  “Sir,” the national security advisor offered, “there are several military contingency plans in place, their existence only revealed through a triggering event.”

  Christensen’s head was spinning.

  Dear Lord, give me strength.

  “If I may, sir,” Cruse interjected.

  The president nodded.

  “Mr. President, you may remember Operation Jade Helm in 2015. It was a continental U.S.-based exercise. Twelve hundred troops mobilized across twenty Texas cities. Under the guise of a military exercise surrounding a potential asteroid strike, FEMA tested citizen response to martial law. In 2017, a similar exercise called Operation Gothic Shield moved military forces into and around New York City. This time the cover was an exercise to combat a potential nuclear threat to Manhattan. Martial law was again tested on the citizenry. Based on the findings of Jade Helm and Gothic Shield, CISA was created in 2018 to coordinate a whole-of-government response to a cyber-warfare attack, but its charter more broadly applies to all acts of terrorism against U.S. critical infrastructure. During the COVID-19 crisis CISA conducted trial runs in Portland and Chicago.”

  “What were the findings?” he asked.

  “That small pockets of resistance emerged, organized primarily through social media. Algorithms are now refined and in place through our partners in the technology sector to reduce the spread of information intended to incite violence.”

  The president leaned back in his chair.

  Jesus.

  “Continue,” the president said, weighing the implications.

  “The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 first delegated authorities to HSS. Ill-equipped to handle a crisis of this magnitude, the Department of Homeland Security was tasked with building response mechanisms to a bioterrorism attack. Those same protocols apply to a naturally occurring event like a respiratory-spread hemorrhagic fever in the continental United States.”

  “And what was designated as critical infrastructure?” the president asked.

  “That was and is a ‘living document,’ Mr. President,” Director Cruse said. “There are multiple lists at various government agencies that all vary, not so much as to the definition, but to the entities actually listed.”

  “Explain,” the president said.

  “Under Presidential Directive Seven, there are sixteen infrastructure sectors critical to the defense of the United States, our economic security, and our public health and safety.”

  “What are they?” the president asked.

  “Nuclear, chemical, agriculture, health care, water, energy, critical manufacturing, communications, dams, commercial facilities, emergency services, financial services, government facilities, transportation systems, information technology, and the defense industrial base.”

  “That doesn’t really narrow it down. What’s not on that list?”

  “Initially, critical infrastructure was designated by a working group from Homeland Security. When COVID-19 shut down the country, those on the critical infrastructure list continued to operate. That put ‘critical infrastructure’ on the radar for most Americans, some of whom owned companies and were politically connected.”

  The president knew exactly where this was headed.

  “Political donations began pouring in, followed by requests for certain businesses to be added to the critical infrastructure list through special interest groups and lobbying firms. Today the list includes shopping malls, gaming operations, and stadiums in addition to the list created by Homeland Security working group.”

  The president shook his head and leaned back in his chair.

  “Typical Washington.”

  He looked around the room, his eyes coming to rest on his national security advisor.

  “Greg, approve containment for Richardson and Denver. If it’s respiratory, everyone on those planes could be infected. God knows where they are now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Recommendations,” the president said to the table, his eyes coming to rest on the director of the CIA.

  “Mr. President,” Motley said, “my agency is working with the FBI to confirm we have the manifests from all flights to the United States from Angola. We are coordinating with Homeland Security to quarantine and test those individuals, and with your authorization will institute executive contact-tracing protocols with the technology sector so we can determine how far the virus has spread.”

  “Is that legal?” Christensen asked his national security advisor, noting for the first time that the White House counsel was conspicuously absent.

  “We have memorandums of understanding in place to acquire that information; however, it will take an executive order to mandate isolation for confirmed contact traces. The previous administration prepared one for COVID-19. We can use it as a model and cite it for precedent.”

  “When will we know if it has spread outside of Denver and Richardson?”

  Farber nodded to Motley.

  “We will know in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

  The president looked to his secretary of defense, William Dagher, a quiet and thoughtful former Marine flag officer often uncomfortable in a city where most speak before even bothering to study their history or form a coherent opinion. Born in Oregon of Lebanese descent, he had been one of the few general officers who spoke Arabic when the United States committed large-scale forces to the Middle East and Central Asia. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, during his time in uniform he earned a master’s in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard before being selected as an Olmsted Scholar studying at the University of Jordan in Amman. Upon retirement he accepted a position at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a board position at the president’s former start-up, now one of the most powerful and profitable companies in history. Christensen tapped him for SecDef early in the transition process and his confirmation hearings were the most civil in recent memory.

  “Bill, what does it take to launch the MC-130s? If it comes to that, will those crews drop on an American city?”

  “Mr. President, I have instructed the Fifteenth Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt to forward me SF-86 security paperwork for each crew to determine if they have family in the affected areas. Your executive order will also allow us to access their social media accounts. Those with family and friends in the target cities will be pulled from the rotation and replaced.”

  Turning back to his national security advisor, the president asked, “And, to confirm, so far there are no cases outside of Richardson and Denver?”

  “Correct, Mr. President.”

  “Greg, I am going to address the nation.”

  “Yes, Mr. President, the Basement is designed with that provision.”

  “Not from the Basement. From the Oval Office.”

  “Sir, I strongly recommend remaining on lockdown until we have a clearer picture of how fast this is spreading.”

  “Greg, the American people need to know we are not in a panic. Staying in an actual basement did not play well for leaders during COVID-19. I need to inform the American people that military forces will be containing areas in Texas and Colorado before they see it on the news or walk outside and see HMMWVs and Bradley Fighting Vehicles staging in their local Wal
mart parking lots. General Seifert, what is the status of troops in Texas and Colorado?”

  “They are moving to bases in closer proximity to the affected areas to await your containment order.”

  “Then we don’t have much time. I want to head this off. I don’t see a viable alternative to containment, but by God we need to move heaven and earth to avoid eradication. Let me be clear, there is nothing we will not do to ensure we never have to face the possibility of eradication. We are all going upstairs. I am going to address the nation from the Oval Office at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Make it happen.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Richardson, Texas

  THE RESPONSE CAME UNUSUALLY fast for a town typically mired in the sludge of the literal and figurative swamp. The president’s address from the Oval Office was broadcast live at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. By the time those on the West Coast were pouring their first cups of coffee, it was the talk of cable news. With no shortage of “experts” to choose from after the experience of COVID-19, every channel had panels of talking heads expounding on pandemics, epidemics, hemorrhagic fever, vaccines, masks, shutdowns, and the legality of contact tracing. The hashtag “outbreak” began trending on social media and the 1995 Dustin Hoffman movie of the same name experienced a resurgence on Hulu.

  The events of September 11, 2001, had not only put the country on war footing, they had set in motion a flood of convoluted congressional directives and acts resulting in a series of new authority chains, departments, and agencies that effectively handed additional power to the executive branch. The president now had more control and discretion on applying military force than at any time in the nation’s history. In order to streamline and expedite certain decisions, CISA had automated initial steps in the decision-making process to protect critical infrastructure. In the case of a naturally occurring virus, forces identified as essential to containment measures were put on standby before the president had reached the secure space under the North Lawn.