Contagious (8 page)

Thank God we’ve got Dawsey
. Imagine that. The kid was twelve doughnuts shy of a baker’s dozen, and he was their ace in the hole. What would ol’ Charlie have thought if he knew that Dew had almost shot Dawsey in the mouth with the .45?
Sorry, Charlie, our ace in the hole has a hole in his head.
Dew rubbed his face with both hands, then picked up the handset again. The explosion caused by the Strike Eagles’ bomb run would be huge, probably even register on seismographs. Covering up such a thing would require spin, obfuscation and lies. And for something like that, there was no one in the world better than Murray Longworth.
YOU DROPPED A BOMB ON ME
The Situation Room buzzed with conversation. Images of the Marinesco gate lit up most of the flat-panel monitors.
To Murray there was something inherently defeating about that image. Via satellite, drone and surveillance planes, they had watched Ogden’s men attack the gate in South Bloomingville. They had watched it catch fire, watched it burn and crumble, and yet here was a second gate that looked almost exactly the same.
Other monitors showed digital maps of Michigan; a green circle in the Upper Peninsula marking the gate, F-15 icons marking the position of Ogden’s Strike Eagles. Those planes were just edging over Lake Michigan—they had already covered half the distance from South Bloomingville to Marinesco.
One large monitor showed nothing but a countdown: fifteen minutes, twenty-three seconds and counting. When that hit zero, the Strike Eagles would drop their payloads . . . unless the president called off the attack.
Gutierrez had given up on trying to look presidential. Small beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Despite appearances, though, he
hadn’t
given in to the stress. He asked intelligent questions, he demanded intelligent answers and he had the Joint Chiefs jumping at his commands.
“Goddamit, gentlemen,” Gutierrez said. “You can
not
tell me we have no other forces that can reach Marinesco and attack that gate in the next fifteen minutes.”
“That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” said General Hamilton Barnes. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, delivery of most military-related bad news fell to him, although Monty Cooper, the marines’ top man, wasn’t afraid to enter into the conversation uninvited.
“Mister President, sir,” Cooper said. “We are in the middle of fighting two wars and a police action on foreign soil. Even if our troops were not badly depleted because of that, there is no way we could put a company-size element into play in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in less than an hour. The fastest-responding unit is the Division Ready Force, from the Eighty-second Airborne. First-response elements of the DRF can be anywhere in the world in eighteen hours, anywhere in the United States in probably seven, and you have no idea how fast that is in military terms. With all due respect, sir, we can’t just wave a fucking magic wand and make troops appear.”
Barnes turned toward Cooper, obviously to lay down a fast rebuke.
“Save it, General Barnes,” Gutierrez said. “It takes more than a little language to offend me. But don’t do it a second time, General Cooper.”
“Sir,” Cooper said.
Gutierrez’s eyes flicked up to the clock. Murray looked as well. Thirteen minutes, fifty-four seconds.
“How long until Company X reaches the gate?” Gutierrez asked.
“Their Ospreys just took off from South Bloomingville,” Barnes said. “A little under two hours until they can attack. The Apaches are over an hour away.”
Gutierrez gave the table one quick, frustrated fist-pound.
“I don’t understand,” Vanessa said. “How can a colonel have the authority to launch a bombing attack like this? Doesn’t he need to clear it with at least the Joint Chiefs?”
General Barnes answered. “Ogden is the battlefield commander. He has the authority to use any elements at his disposal to achieve the objectives set before him. He doesn’t need approval to deploy resources already under his command.”
“This is ridiculous,” Vanessa said. “He doesn’t need approval for anything?”
“President Hutchins set it up this way for a reason,” Murray said. “In the time it’s taken us to get the information and begin a discussion about what to do, the jets are already halfway to the target. Ogden can order Options One through Three without oversight. Only Option Number Four requires presidential approval.”
“And what, exactly, is Option Number Four?”
“The big whammy,” General Cooper said. “Option Four is a tactical nuke.”
“A
nuke
?” Vanessa said. “On American soil? Are you kidding me?”
“A
tactical
nuke, ma’am,” Murray said. “We have three B61 warheads available. They’re variable-yield warheads. We can dial the blast for anything from point-three megatons to one hundred and seventy.”
“Murray,” Gutierrez said, “how could Hutchins even consider dropping a nuke?”
“We have to acknowledge the possibility that we won’t see a construct in time,” Murray said. “If that happens, it will open up and deliver that initial beachhead force. We don’t know what kind of weaponry or technology we’ll be dealing with at that point. We have to have this level of response in order to take out both the construct and the enemy force.”
“This is insane,” Vanessa said.
“It was approved by President Hutchins,” Murray said.
“
Hutchins
isn’t the president anymore,” Vanessa said. “John Gutierrez is.”
Murray nodded. “And the orders of a former president stand until the current president gives new orders.”
Vanessa turned to face Gutierrez. “So give a new order, Mister President,” she said. “Call this whole thing off.”
Gutierrez sat back in his chair. “These conventional bombs Ogden ordered, what kind of hardware are we talking about?”
General Luis Monroe, the air force’s top man, spoke for the first time. “The GBU-31, version three, is a two-thousand-pound bomb. It’s a bunker-buster, biggest thing we’ve got short of a nuke. The blast will kill everything within a hundred and ten feet of the point of impact and will cause casualties at over a hundred yards. Total blast radius is about four thousand feet.”
“A
radius
of four thousand feet?” Vanessa said. “But . . . that’s a diameter of a mile and a half.”
Monroe nodded. “They’ve worked very well in Iraq and Iran. If it was daylight, the smoke cloud would be visible from twenty miles. All the surrounding towns will feel the impact, probably think it’s a minor tremor.”
“How the hell are we going to keep that secret?” Vanessa asked.
“I have a prepared cover story,” Murray said. “This is a very rural area, remote, so it’s feasible a terrorist cell set up a bomb-building facility. We learned about it, determined it was possible they were building a dirty bomb, so we sent in the F-15Es to take it out. A dirty bomb is a radiation threat, so we can lock down a large area while we investigate. Everyone wins—intelligence got the info, executive branch reacted definitively, military took out the terrorists.”
All eyes watched Murray. The Joint Chiefs weren’t surprised; they’d seen him do things like this before. Donald Martin didn’t look surprised, either. Working his way up to secretary of defense, he’d undoubtedly seen such lies. Gutierrez, Vanessa and Tom Maskill, however, looked astonished.
“Domestic or international terrorists?” Gutierrez asked.
Murray shrugged. “Whichever you prefer, Mister President. I have an extensive background developed for a white supremacist group, if you want to go that route. Or we can go Al-Qaeda. Your call.”
Gutierrez rubbed his hands together slowly as he thought.
“Let’s do the white supremacists,” he said. “I can’t have foreigners building a bomb on U. S. soil.”
“Yes, Mister President,” Murray said. “I can make that work.”
“John,” Vanessa said, astonished. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re going to let those jets drop bombs
and
lie to the American people about it?”
All around the table, eyebrows raised at her use of the president’s first name. She didn’t seem to notice. Neither did Gutierrez.
“I just don’t know what choice we have,” he said.
“We have the choice of telling the truth and trusting the people,” Vanessa said.
General Cooper laughed at her. “Ma’am, with all due respect, where did you learn about the world, from a game of Candy Land? We’re talking aliens and intergalactic gates, caused by an infection that starts as a goddamn skin rash. We tell the people about this and the country will disentegrate in total chaos.”
“I disagree,” Vanessa said. “The people will come together for this.”
Cooper laughed again and started to say something back, but Murray interrupted.
“We need a
decision,
” he said. The screen behind the president changed from a static picture of the gate to a high-altitude cockpit-cam shot. The cool blacks and blues of a frozen Wisconsin forest raced by. A few spots glowed white as the plane passed over houses.
“The Strike Eagles will commence their bomb run in two minutes, Mister President,” Murray said. “If you want to call this off, you have to say so right now.”
Gutierrez sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. He let out a heavy sigh and looked at the ceiling. Murray could sympathize. Carrying out an executive order that could result in civilian deaths was one thing; being the guy to
give
that order, that was another.
The main flat-panel monitor flared with a new light—the construct had just started to glow.
“Damn,” Gutierrez said. “How long do we have, Murray?”
“Based on Wahjamega, maybe fifteen minutes. We’re just not sure, Mister President.”
Gutierrez nodded. “If we drop these bombs, how many people do you think could die? Off the record. Just give it to me straight.”
Murray shrugged. “If we’re lucky, none that aren’t already infected. It’s a very remote area, so if we’re unlucky, ten at the very most.”
Gutierrez nodded. “Proceed with the bombing. Get Tom a briefing paper that covers the high points of your cover story. Call a press conference for eight A.M. Donald, General Barnes, you’ll be with me for that conference.” He turned in his chair to watch the bomb run.
Vanessa wasn’t watching the screens. She was watching Murray. All the values Gutierrez had espoused while running for office had just taken a backseat to reality. In her idealistic mind, she probably blamed Murray for that. Too bad, so sad—the president was making the right choice for the country, and she’d just have to deal with it.
Within seconds the screen’s cool blacks and blues revealed a white dot. That dot quickly grew in size. It was a little shaky, a little grainy, but there was no mistaking the construct’s definitive fishbone shape.
A slash entered the screen from the top right. A split second later, the screen lit up in blinding white. That white quickly vanished, revealing a rising plume of smoke that started out hot-white but soon faded to a flickering light gray.
Everyone sat and silently watched. Donald finally broke the silence.
“I sure as hell hope they didn’t build a third.”
AUTOPSY NUMBER ONE
Margaret watched Gitsh and Marcus push the sturdy autopsy trolley up the ramp and through the right-side door in the back of Trailer A. There was a lot of room in the body bag on that gurney, the little boy’s body inside like a single pea in a pod made for three. She followed the trolley into the white airlock room, then shut the gas-tight outer door behind her. The three of them waited in the narrow airlock as the pressure inside equalized, which had to happen before the gas-tight inner door would open. Smooth white epoxy covered every surface, just as it did in all of the trailer’s biohazard areas. The entire trailer, including the computer room, had a double seal—a continuous epoxy coat, then all wiring and ductwork, then a second epoxy wall. As in any BSL lab, the goal was to remove as many nooks, crannies and edges as possible.
Above the inner door, a light changed from red to green. Margaret opened the door, then followed the trolley into the decontamination chamber. Gitsh closed the inner door behind them. She stood back as the men worked controls that brought forth the high-powered spray of liquid bleach and chlorine gas from nozzles mounted on the walls, floor and ceiling. Gitsh and Marcus moved the body bag around, making sure the nozzles hit every last square inch.
Margaret spread her arms and turned slowly, letting the lethal spray cover her biohazard suit. She checked her heads-up display for breathable air—her suit tank had twenty minutes left. The decon chamber was really the only place they used the oxygen tanks. The rest of the time they connected the helmets to the trailers’ air supply via built-in hoses or just relied on the filter system. The suit’s filters could handle anything a half micron or larger, but chlorine gas would seep right through, burn the lungs and bring a painful death in a few short minutes.
After Marcus and Gitsh finished rinsing themselves in the chlorine spray, Margaret opened the final gas-tight door and stepped into the autopsy room. At eight feet wide by twenty feet long, this was the largest area in the MargoMobile.
Gitsh pushed the trolley all the way to the room’s far end, where it locked in place at the front of an epoxy-coated sink. The two-foot-wide trolley left three feet of space on either side, plenty of room to work. He turned a knob at the foot of the trolley, raising the end one inch. The shallow angle ensured that any fluids would run down the ridges on the trolley’s sides and spill into the sink, which drained into the waste-treatment system.
“Okay, guys, let’s get connected,” Margaret said. Four curled yellow hoses hung from the ceiling. She reached up, pulled one down and handed it to Marcus. He connected the hose to the back of her helmet. She felt a quick hiss as pressurized air slid into her suit, making it puff up a little bit more. In her HUD the internal air-supply timer faded to a thin, ghostly illumination while the circular logo that marked an external oxygen supply glowed to life. The wireless communication icon also faded as the network connection light lit up.
“Let’s get him out of the bag,” Margaret said.
After connecting their own helmets, Gitsham and Marcus unzipped the outer body bag and pulled it off. Marcus put it in a red disposal chute marked with a bright orange biohazard logo. They repeated the process for the second bag and put the child’s body on the table.
Margaret couldn’t suppress a shudder. His Milwaukee Bucks shirt had slid up around his armpits. Dawsey’s kick had smashed at least eight of the boy’s ribs, caving them inward like so much broken pottery. The child’s spine was snapped on the right side of the eighth thoracic vertebra, bending him at nearly a ninety-degree angle to his right. A mask of pure rage had frozen on the boy’s face, a wide-eyed, teeth-bared snarl that broadcast absolute hate even in death. She had seen faces like that too many times. The faces of the infected.