Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

"What the hell's going on?"

"You know, there is something to be said for these things." Alex took a few puffs. "I can tell you what they're going to say up at Detrick, sure as hell."

"Go on."

"Two separate index cases, Dave, a thousand miles apart in distance, and eight hours apart in time. No connection of any kind. No commonalties at all. Think it through," Pierre Alexandre said, taking another worried puff.

"Not enough data to support it," James objected.

"I hope I'm wrong. They're going to be scrambling down in Atlanta. Good people down there. The best. But they don't look at this sort of the thing the way I do. I wore that green suit a long time. Well" — another puff—"we're going to see what the best possible supportive care can do. We're better than anyplace in Africa. So's Chicago. So are all the other places that are going to phone in, I suppose."

"Others?" As fine a physician as he was, James still wasn't getting it.

"The first attempt at biological warfare was undertaken by Alexander the Great. He launched bodies of plague victims into a besieged city with catapults. I don't know if it worked or not. He took the city anyway, slaughtered all the citizens, and moved on."

He got it now, Alex could see. The dean was as pale as the new patient inside.

"JEFF?" RAMAN WAS in the local command post going over the coming schedule for POTUS. He had a mission to complete now, and it was time to start doing some planning. Andrea walked over to him. "We have a trip to Pittsburgh on Friday. You want to hop up there with the advance team? There are a couple local problems that have cropped up at the hotel."

"Okay. When do I leave?" Agent Raman asked.

"Flight leaves in ninety minutes." She handed him a ticket. "You get back tomorrow night."

How much the better, Raman thought, if he might even survive. Were he to structure all the security at one of these events, that might actually be possible. The idea of martyrdom didn't turn his head all that much, but if survival were possible, then he would opt for that.

"Fair enough," the assassin replied. He didn't have to worry about packing. The agents on the Detail always had a bag in the car.

IT TOOK THREE satellite passes before NRO was willing to make its estimate of the situation. All six of the UIR heavy divisions which had participated in the war game were now in a full-maintenance stand-down. Some might say that such a thing was normal. A unit went into a heavy-maintenance cycle after a major training exercise, but six divisions—three heavy corps—at once was a bit much. The data was immediately forwarded to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments. In the meantime, the Pentagon called the White House.

"Yes, Mr. Secretary," Ryan said.

"The SNIE isn't ready yet for the UIR, but we have received… well, some disturbing information. I'll let Admiral Jackson present it."

The President listened, and didn't need much in the way of analysis, though he wished the Special National Intelligence Estimates were on his desk to give him a better feel for the UIR's political intentions. "Recommendations?" he asked, when Robby was done.

"I think it's a good time to get the boats at Diego moving. It never hurts to exercise them. We can move them to within two steaming days of the Gulf without anybody noticing. Next, I recommend that we issue warning orders to XVIII Airborne Corps. That's the 82nd, 101st, and 24th Mechanized."

"Will it make noise?" Jack asked.

"No, sir. It's treated as a practice alert. We do those all the time. All it really does is to get staff officers thinking."

"Make it so. Keep it quiet."

"This would be a good time to do a joint training exercise with friendly nations in the region," J-3 suggested.

"I'll see about that. Anything else?"

"No, Mr. President," Bretano replied. "We'll keep you informed."

BY NOON, THE fax count at CDC Atlanta was over thirty, from ten different states. These were forwarded to Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases— USAMRIID—the military counterpart to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. As chilling as the data was, it was just a little too chilling for snap judgment. A major staff meeting was called for just after lunch, while the commissioned officers and civilians tried to get their data organized. More senior officers from Walter Reed got in their staff cars for the ride up Interstate-70.

"DR. RYAN?"

"Yes?" Cathy looked up.

"The meeting in Dr. James's office has been moved up," her secretary said. "They want you over there right now."

"I guess I better head over, then." She stood and headed for the door. Roy Altman was standing there.

"Anything I need to know about?" SURGEON'S principal agent asked.

"Something's up. I don't know what it is."

"Where is the dean's office?" He'd never been there before. All of the staff meetings she'd attended recently were in Maumenee.

"That way." She pointed. "Other side of Monument Street in the admin building."

"SURGEON is moving, going north to Monument." The agents just appeared out of nowhere, it seemed. It might have seemed funny except for recent events. "If you don't mind, I'll stand in the room. I'll keep out of the way," Altman assured her.

Cathy nodded. There was no fighting it. He'd hate the dean's office for all the big windows there, she was sure. It was a ten-minute walk over, almost all of it undercover. She headed outdoors to cross the street, wanting a little fresh air. Entering the building, she saw a lot of her friends, either department chairmen or senior staffers standing in as she was doing. The director-level people were always traveling, one reason why she wasn't sure if she ever wanted to be that senior herself. Pierre Alexandre stormed in, wearing greens, carrying a folder, and looking positively grim as he almost bumped into her. A Secret Service agent prevented that.

"Glad you're here, Cathy," he said on the way past. "Them, too."

"Nice to be appreciated," Altman observed to a colleague, as the dean appeared at the door.

"Come in."

One look at the conference room convinced Altman to lower the shades with his own hands. The windows faced a street of anonymous brick houses. A few of the doctors looked on with annoyance, but they knew who he was and didn't object.

"Calling the meeting to order," Dave James said, before everyone was seated. "Alex has something important to tell us."

There was no preamble: "We have five Ebola cases in Ross right now. They all came in today."

Heads turned sharply. Cathy blinked at her seat at the end of the table.

"Students from someplace?" the surgery director asked. "Zaire?"

"One auto dealer and his wife, a boat salesman from Annapolis, three more people. Answering your question, no. No international travel at all. Four of the five are fully symptomatic. The auto dealer's wife shows antibodies, but no symptoms as yet. That's the good news. Our case wasn't the first. CDC has cases reported in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Dallas. That's as of an hour ago. Total reported cases is twenty, and that' number doubled between ten and eleven. Probably still going up."

"Jesus Christ," the director of medicine whispered.

"You all know what I did before I got here. Right now I imagine they're having a staff meeting at Fort Detrick. The conclusion from that meeting will be that this is not an accidental outbreak. Somebody has initiated a biological-warfare campaign against our country."

Nobody objected to Alexandre's analysis, Cathy saw. She knew why. The other physicians in the room were so bright that sometimes she wondered if she belonged on the same faculty with them—she had never considered that most of them might harbor the same thoughts. All of them were world experts in their fields, at least four the very best there was. But all of them also spent time as she did, having lunch with a colleague in a different field to exchange information, because, like her, they were all truly fanatical about learning. They all wanted to know everything, and even though they knew that such a thing was impossible, even within one professional field, that didn't stop them from trying. In this case, the suddenly rigid faces concealed the same analytical process.