Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

THE PAIN WAS so severe that it woke him up from the sleep of exhaustion. Just walking the twenty feet around the bed and into the bathroom seemed like a marathon's effort, but he managed to stagger that far. The cramping was terrible, which amazed him, because he hadn't eaten all that much in the past couple of days despite his wife's insistence on chicken soup and toast, but with all the urgency he could suffer, he dropped his shorts and sat down just in time. Simultaneously, his upper GI seemed to explode as well, and the former golf pro doubled over, vomiting on the tiles. There was an instant's embarrassment at having done so unmanly a thing. Then he saw what was there at his feet.

"Honey?" he called weakly. "Help…"

SIX HOURS OF SLEEP, maybe a little more, was better than nothing. This morning, Cathy got up first, and the father of the First Family came into the breakfast room unshaven, following the smell of coffee.

"When you feel this rotten, you should at least have a hangover to blame it on," the President announced. His morning papers were in the usual place. A Post-it note was affixed to the front page of the Washington Post, just over an article bylined to Bob Holtzman and John Plumber. Now, there was something to start off his day, Jack told himself.

"That's really sleazy," Sally Ryan said. She'd already heard TV coverage of the controversy. "What finks." She would have said "dicks," a newly favored term among the young ladies at St. Mary's School, but Dad wasn't ready to acknowledge the fact that his Sally was talking like a grown-up.

"Uh-huh," her father replied. The story gave far more detail than was possible in a couple of minutes of air time. And it named Ed Kealty, who had, it seemed—unsurprisingly, but still against the law—a CIA source who had leaked information which, the story explained, had not been entirely truthful and, even worse, had been a deliberate political attack on the President, using the media as an attack dog. Jack snorted. As though that were new. The Post's emphasis was on the gross violation of journalistic integrity. Plumber's recantation of his actions was very sincere, it said. The article said that senior executives at NEC's news division had declined comment, pending their own inquiry. It also said that the Post had custody of the tapes, which were entirely undamaged.

The Washington Times, he saw, was just as irate but not in quite the same way. There would be a colossal internecine battle in the Washington press corps over this, something, the Times editorial observed, that the politicians would clearly watch with amusement.

Well, Ryan told himself, that ought to keep them off my back for a while.

Next, he opened the manila folder with the secret-tape borders on it. This document, he saw, was pretty old.

"Bastards," POTUS whispered.

"They really did it to themselves this time," Cathy said, reading her own paper.

"No," SWORDSMAN replied. "China."

IT WASN'T AN epidemic yet, because nobody knew about it. Doctors were already reacting in surprise to telephone calls. Excited, if not frantic, calls to answering services had already awakened over twenty of them across the country. Bloody vomit and diarrhea were reported in every case, but only one to a customer, and there were various medical problems that could explain that. Bleeding ulcers, for example, and many of the calls came from busi-nesspeople for whom stress came with the tie and white shirt. Most were told to drive to the nearest hospital's emergency room, and in nearly all cases the doctor got dressed to meet his or her patient there, or to have a trusted associate do so. Some were instructed to be at the office first thing, usually between eight and nine in the morning, to be the first patient of the day and thus not interfere with the daily schedule.

GUS LORENZ HADN'T felt like being in his office alone, and had called in a few senior staff members to join him at his computer. They noted that his pipe was lit when they came in. One of them might have objected—it was contrary to federal regulations—but she stopped short, looking at the image on the screen.

"Where's this one from?" the epidemiologist asked.

"Chicago."

"Our Chicago?"

PIERRE ALEXANDRE ARRIVED at his office on the eleventh floor of the Ross Building just before eight. His morning routine began with checking his fax machine. Attending physicians with AIDS cases regularly sent him patient information that way. It allowed him to monitor a large number of patients, both to advise treatment options and to increase his own knowledge base. There was only one fax this morning, and it was relatively good news. Merck had just fielded a new drug which the PDA was fast-tracking into clinical trials, and a friend of his at Penn State was reporting some interesting results. That's when his phone rang.

"Dr. Alexandre."

"This is the ER, sir. Could you come down here? I got a patient here, Caucasian male, thirty-seven. High fever, internal bleeding. I don't know what this is—I mean," the resident said, "I mean, I know what it looks like, but—"

"Give me five minutes."

"Yes, sir," she acknowledged.

The internist/virologist/molecular biologist donned his starched lab coat, buttoned it, and headed down toward the emergency room, which was in a separate building on the sprawling Hopkins campus. Even in the military, he'd dressed the same way. The Doctor Look, he called it. Stethoscope in the right-side pocket. Name embroidered onto the left side. A calm expression on his face as he walked into the largely idle ER. Nighttime was the busy period here. There she was, cute as a button… putting on a surgical mask, he saw. What could be all that wrong this early on a spring day?

"Good morning, Doctor," he said, in his most charming Creole accent. "What seems to be the problem?" She handed him the chart and started talking while he read.

"His wife brought him in. High fever, some disorientation, BP is low, probable internal bleed, bloody vomit and stool. And there are some marks on his face," she reported. "And I'm not sure enough to say."

"Okay, let's take a look." She sounded like a promising young doc, Alexandre thought pleasantly. She knew what she didn't know, and she'd called for consultation… but why not one of the internal-medicine guys? the former colonel asked himself, taking another look at her face. He put on mask and gloves and walked past the isolation curtain.

"Good morning, I'm Dr. Alexandre," he said to the patient. The man's eyes were listless, but it was the marks on his cheeks that made Alexandre's breath stop. It was George Westphal's face, come back from more than a decade in Alex's past.

"How did he get here?"

"His personal physician told his wife to drive him in. He has privileges at Hopkins."

"What's he do? News photographer? Diplomat? Something to do with traveling?"

The resident shook her head. "He sells Winnebagos, RVs and like that, dealership over on Pulaski Highway."

Alexandre looked around the area. There were a medical student and two nurses, in addition to the resident who was running the case. All gloved, all masked. Good. She was smart, and now Alex knew why she was scared.

"Blood?"

"Already taken, Doctor. Doing the cross-match now, and specimens for analysis in your lab."

The professor nodded. "Good. Admit him right now. My unit. I need a container for the tubes. Be careful with all the sharps." A nurse went off to get the things.

"Professor, this looks like—I mean, it can't be, but—"

"It can't be," he agreed. "But it does look that way. Those are petechiae, right out of the book. So we'll treat it like it is for the moment, okay?" The nurse returned with the proper containers. Alexandre took the extra blood specimens. "As soon as you send him upstairs, everybody strip, everybody scrub. There's not that much danger involved, as long as you take the proper precautions. Is his wife around?"