“Yes, Mr. President.”
Jack walked back to sit on the edge of his desk. He was silent for a moment. In a way, he was now grateful for the failed attack on his daughter. That had hit him with a dreadful immediacy. This one as yet had not, and though intellectually he knew that the ramifications were far
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worse, he didn’t need the emotional impact for the time being.
“What do I need to know?”
“Most of the important stuff we can’t tell you yet. The issues are technical,” Alex explained. “How easily the disease spreads, all we have now is anecdotal and unreliable. That’s the key issue. If it spreads easily by aerosol–”
“What’s that?” POTUS asked.
“Spray, little droplets, like a cough or a sneeze. If it spreads that way, we’re in very deep trouble.”
“It’s not supposed to,” Cathy objected. “Jack, this bug is very delicate. It doesn’t last in the open for more than– what, Alex, a few seconds?”
“That’s the theory, but some strains are more robust than others. Even if it can survive just a few minutes in the open–that’s pretty damned bad. If this is a strain we call Mayinga, well, we just don’t know how robust it is. But it goes farther than that. Once a person gets it, then they take it home. A house is a pretty benign environment for pathogens. We have heating and air-conditioning to make it that way, and family members are in close contact. They hug. They kiss. They make love. And once somebody has it in their system, they’re always pumping the things out.”
“Things?”
“Virus particles, Mr. President. The size of these things is measured in microns. They’re far smaller than dust particles, smaller than anything you can see.”
“You used to work at Detrick?”
“Yes, sir, I was a colonel, head of pathogens. I retired, and Hopkins hired me.”
“So you have an idea what General Pickett’s plans are, the options, I mean?”
“Yes, sir. That stuff is reevaluated at least once a year. I’ve sat in on the committee that draws the plans up.”
“Sit down, Doctor. I want to hear this.”
THE MARITIME PRE-POSITION Ships had just gotten back from an exercise, and what little maintenance had been required was already done. On receiving orders from CIN-
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, they initiated engine-start procedures, which mainly meant warming up the fuel and lubricating oils. To the north, the cruiser Anzio, plus destroyers Kidd and O’Bannon, got orders of their own and turned west for a projected rendezvous point. The senior officer present was the skipper of the Aegis cruiser, who wondered how the hell he was supposed to get those fat merchants into the Persian Gulf without air cover, if it came to that. The United States Navy didn’t go anywhere without air cover, and the nearest carrier was Ike, 3,000 miles away, with Malaya in the way. On the other hand, it wasn’t all that bad to be a mere captain in command of a task force without an admiral to look over his shoulder.
The first of the MPS ships to sortie from the large anchorage was USNS Bob Hope, a newly built military-type roll-on/roll-off transport displacing close to 80,000 tons, and carrying 952 vehicles. Her civilian crew had a little tradition for their movements. Oversized speakers blared “Thanks for the Memories” at the naval base as she passed by, just after midnight, followed by four of her sisters. Aboard, they had the full vehicle complement for a reinforced heavy brigade. Passing the reef-marked entrance, the handles were pushed down on the enunciators, demanding twenty-six knots of the big Colt-Pielstick diesels.
THEY WAITED FOR Goodley and van Damm to come in, and then it took ten minutes to bring them up to speed on what was going on. By this time, the enormity of it was sinking into the President’s consciousness, and he had to struggle with emotions now in addition to intellect. He noted that Cathy, though she had to be as horrified as he was, was taking everything calmly, at least outwardly so. Well, it was her field, wasn’t it?
“I didn’t think Ebola could survive outside a jungle,” Goodley said.
“It can’t, at least not long-term, or it would have traveled around the world by now.”
“It kills too fast for that,” SURGEON objected.
“Cathy, we’ve had jet travel for over thirty years now. This little bastard is delicate. That works for us.”
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“How do we find out who did it?” This came from Arnie.
“We interview all the victims, find out where they’ve been, and try to narrow the focal centers down to one point if we can. That’s an investigative function. Epidemiologists are pretty good at that. . . but this one’s a little big,” Alexandre added.
“Could the FBI help, Doctor?” van Damm asked.
“Can’t hurt.”
“I’ll get Murray over here,” the chief of staff told the President.
“You can’t treat it?” POTUS asked.
“No, what happens is the epidemic burns itself out over several generational cycles. What I mean by that–okay, one person gets it. The virus reproduces in them, and then they pass it on to somebody else. Every victim becomes an imperfect host. As the disease reproduces and kills the victim, the victim passes it on to the next one. But, and here’s the good news, Ebola doesn’t reproduce efficiently. As it goes through these generational cycles, it becomes less virulent. Most of the survivors in an outbreak happen toward the end, because the virus progressively mutates itself into a less dangerous form. The organism is so primitive that it doesn’t do everything well.”
“How many cycles before that happens, Alex?” Cathy asked.
He shrugged. “It’s empirical. We know the process, but we can’t quantify it.”
“Lots of unknowns.” She grimaced.
“Mr. President?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“The movie you saw?”
“What about it?”
“The budget for that movie is quite a bit more than all the funding for research in virology. Keep that in mind. I guess it isn’t sexy enough.” Arnie started to say something. Alex cut him off with a raised hand. “I’m not on the government payroll anymore, sir. I don’t have any empire to build. My research is privately funded. I’m just stating a fact. What the hell, I guess we can’t fund everything.”
“If we can’t treat it, how do we stop it?” Ryan asked,
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getting things back on track. His head turned. A shadow crossed the South Lawn, and the roar of a helicopter came through the bulletproof windows.
“AHH,” BADRAYN OBSERVED with a smile. The Internet was designed to give access to information, not to conceal it, and from a friend of a friend of a friend who was a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, he had the password to crack into that medical center’s electronic mail. Another keyword eliminated all of the clutter, and there it was. It was 1400 hours on America’s east coast, and Emory reported to CDC that it now had six cases of suspected hemorrhagic fever. Better yet, CDC had already replied, and that told him a lot more. Badrayn printed up both letters, and made a telephone call. Now he really had good news to deliver.
RAMAN FELT THE DC-9 thump down in Pittsburgh after a brief flight that had allowed him to sit alone and think through several options. His colleague–brother–in Baghdad had been a little too sacrificial in his attitude, a little too dramatic, and the detail around the Iraqi leader had been pretty large, actually larger than the one on which he himself served. How to do it? The trick was to create as much confusion as possible. Perhaps when Ryan walked into the crowd to press the flesh. Take the shot, kill one or two of the other agents, then race into the crowd. If he could make it past the first line or two of spectators, all he had to do was hold up his Secret Service ID, better than a gun for getting through things–everyone would think that he was chasing the subject. The key to escaping from an assassination–the USSS had taught him this–was in the first thirty seconds. Survive that, and you have a better-than-even chance of surviving it all. And he would be the one setting all the security arrangements for the Friday trip. How, then, could he get the President to a spot in which he would have that option? Take POTUS. Take Price. Take one other. Then melt into the crowd. Probably better to fire from the hip. Best if the cit-
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izens didn’t see the gun in his hand until after the shots. Yes, that might work, he thought, taking off the lap belt and standing. There would be a local Treasury agent at the end of the jetway. They’d go right to the hotel whose large dining room would host President Ryan’s speech. Raman would have all day and part of tomorrow to think it through, under the very eyes of fellow agents. How challenging.