Everyone was bundled aboard. Katie–he’d never met her before–got the jump seat behind the pilots, supposedly the safest place on the aircraft. Alexandre hadn’t rid-
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den in a Black Hawk in years. The four-point safety belt still worked, though. Cathy snapped hers right in place. Little Katie had to be helped, but she loved her helmet, painted pink, with a bunny on it, doubtless some Marine’s idea. Seconds later the rotor started turning.
“This is going a little fast,” Alex said over the intercom.
“You really think we should wait?” Cathy replied, keying her microphone.
“No.” And it wouldn’t do to say that he wasn’t dressed for seeing the President. The aircraft lifted off, climbed about three hundred feet, and turned south.
“Colonel?” Cathy said to the pilot in the right-front seat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Make it fast,” she ordered.
Goodman had never heard SURGEON talk like a surgeon before. It was a voice of command that any Marine would recognize. He dropped the nose and brought the Black Hawk to 160 knots.
“You in a hurry, Colonel?” the backup chopper called.
“The lady is. Bravo routing, direct approach.” Next he called to BWI Airport to tell the controllers to hold arrivals and departures until he’d passed overhead. It wouldn’t take long. Nobody on the ground really noticed, but two USAir 737s had to go around once, to the annoyance of their passengers. Watching from the jump seat, SANDBOX thought it was pretty neat.
“MR. PRESIDENT?”
“Yes, Andrea?” Ryan looked up.
“Your wife is inbound from Baltimore. She needs to see you about something. I don’t know what. About fifteen minutes,” Price told him.
“Nothing’s wrong?” Jack asked.
“No, no, everybody’s fine, sir. SANDBOX is with her,” the agent assured him.
“Okay.” Ryan went back to the most recent update of the investigation.
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“WELL, IT’S OFFICIALLY a clean shoot, Pat.” Murray wanted to tell his inspector that himself. There hadn’t been much doubt of that, of course.
“Wish I could have taken the last one alive,” O’Day remarked with a grimace.
“You can stow that one. There was no chance, not with kids around. I think we’ll probably arrange a little decoration for you.”
“We have anything on that Azir guy yet?”
“His driver’s license photo and a lot of written records, but aside from that, we’d have a hard time proving he ever existed.” It was a classic set of circumstances. Sometime Friday afternoon, “Mordecai Azir” had driven his car to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and caught a flight to New York-Kennedy. They knew that much from the USAir desk clerk who’d issued him the ticket in that name. Then he’d disappeared, like a cloud of smoke on a windy day. He doubtless had had a virgin set of travel documents. Maybe he’d used them in New York for an international flight. If he’d really been smart, he would have caught a cab to Newark or LaGuardia first, and taken an overseas flight from the former, or maybe a flight to Canada from the latter. Even now agents from the New York office were interviewing people at every airline counter. But nearly every airline in the world came into Kennedy, and the clerks there saw thousands per day. Maybe they would establish what flight he’d taken. If so, he’d be on the moon before they managed that feat.
“Trained spook,” Pat O’Day observed. “It’s really not all that hard, is it?”
What came back to Murray were the words of his FCI chief. If you could do it once, you could do it more than once. There was every reason to believe that there was a complete espionage–worse, a terrorist–network in his country, sitting tight and waiting for orders … to do what? And to avoid detection, all its members really had to do was nothing. Samuel Johnson had once remarked that everybody could manage that feat.
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THE HELICOPTER FLARED and landed, rather to the surprise of the newspeople who always kept an eye out. Anything unexpected at the White House was newsworthy. They recognized Cathy Ryan. Her white doctor’s coat was unusual, however, and on seeing another person dressed in the same way but wearing greens, the immediate impression was of a medical emergency involving the President. This was actually correct, though a spokesman came over to say that, no, the President was fine, working at his desk; no, he didn’t know why Dr. Ryan had come home early.
I’m not dressedjor this, Alex thought. The looks of the agents on the way to the West Wing confirmed that, and now a few of them wondered if SWORDSMAN might be ill, resulting in a few radio calls that were immediately rebuffed. Cathy led him down the corridor, then tried the wrong door until an agent pointed and opened the one into the Oval Office. They noted that she didn’t bother with anger or embarrassment at the mistake. They’d never seen SURGEON so focused.
“Jack, this is Pierre Alexandre,” she said without a greeting.
Ryan stood. He didn’t have any major appointments for another two hours, and had shed his suit coat. “Hello, Doctor,” he said, extending his hand and taking in the manner of his visitor’s dress. Then he realized that Cathy had her work coat on as well. “What’s going on, Cathy?” he asked his wife.
“Alex?” Nobody had even sat down yet. Two Secret Service agents had followed the physicians in, and the tension in the room was like an alarm bell for them, though they didn’t know what was going on, either. Roy Altman was in another room, talking to Price.
“Mr. President, do you know what the Ebola virus is?”
“Africa,” Jack said. “Some jungle disease, right? Deadly as hell. I saw a movie–”
“Pretty close,” Alexandre confirmed. “It’s a negative-strand RN A virus. We don’t know where it lives–I mean, we know the place but not the host. That’s the animal it lives in,” he explained. “And it’s a killer, sir. The crude mortality rate is eighty percent.”
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“Okay,” POTUS said, still standing. “Go on.”
“It’s here now.”
“Where?”
“At last count we had five cases at Hopkins. More than twenty countrywide–that number is about three hours old now. Can I use the phone?”
GUS LORENZ WAS alone in his office when the phone rang. “It’s Dr. Alexandre again.”
“Yes, Alex?”
“Gus, what’s the count now?”
“Sixty-seven,” the speakerphone replied. Alex was leaning over it.
“Where?”
“Mainly big cities. The reports are coming in mostly from major medical centers. Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, one in Richmond, seven right here in Atlanta, three in Orlando …” They could hear a door open and a paper being handled. “Eighty-nine, Alex. They’re still coming in.”
“Has USAMRIID put the alert out yet?”
“I expect that within the hour. They are having a meeting to determine–”
“Gus, I am in the White House right now. The President is here with me. I want you to tell him what you think,” Alexandre commanded, speaking like an Army colonel again.
“What–how did you–Alex, it’s not sure yet.”
“Either you say it or I will. Better that you do.”
“Mr. President?” It was Ellen Sumter at the side door. “I have a General Pickett on the phone for you, sir. He says it’s most urgent.”
“Tell him to stand by.”
“John’s good, but he’s a little conservative,” Alex observed. “Gus, talk to us!”
“Sir, Mr. President, this appears to be something other than a natural event. It looks very much like a deliberate act.”
“Biological warfare?” Ryan asked.
“Yes, Mr. President. Our data isn’t yet complete
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enough for a real conclusion, but naturally occurring epidemics don’t start this way, not all over the place.”
“Mrs. Sumter, can you put the general on this line?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. President?” a new voice asked.
“General, I have a Dr. Lorenz on the line, and next to me is Dr. Alexandre from up the road at Hopkins.”
“Hi, Alex.”
“Hi, John,” Alexandre responded.
“Then you know.”
“How confident are you in this estimate?” SWORDSMAN asked.
“We have at least ten focal centers. A disease doesn’t get around like that by itself. The data is still coming in, sir. All these cases appearing in twenty-four hours, it’s no accident, and it’s no natural process. You have Alex there to explain things further. He used to work for me. He’s pretty good,” Pickett told his commander-in-chief.
“Dr. Lorenz, you concur in this?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Jesus.” Jack looked at his wife. “What’s next?”
“Sir, we have some options,” Pickett replied. “I need to get down to see you.”
Ryan turned: “Andrea!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Get a chopper up to Fort Detrick, right now!”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I’ll be waiting, General. Dr. Lorenz, thank you. Anything else I need to know now?”
“Dr. Alexandre can handle that.”
“Very well, I will put Mrs. Sumter on the phone to give you the direct lines to this office.” Jack walked to the door. “Get on and give them what they need. Then get Arnie and Ben in here.”