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 los-
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ing 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…”
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“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.
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“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 CONNER?” 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.”
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“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.