Pestilence

55

General Kirk Lancaster was in Maine when he found out about the detonation. Even during a time of emergency, the one place he didn’t want to be was at the Pentagon. When he was there, he was checking his phone and his e-mail every minute or two and driving himself insane. So instead, he turned off his phone and drove to his family’s cabin in Eastport. He would eventually call up his wife and three boys, but right then, he needed the solitude, more than he had thought he did.

He was sitting in his small fishing boat with the hook in the water, a beer in his hand, and the sun on his face, when he decided he should probably turn on his phone. He had thirteen unheard messages and even more e-mails-fifty-six. He flipped through some, purely out of curiosity, as his underlings should have been able to cover everything for at least an afternoon.

He saw the subject line in one e-mail, and his heart dropped. He immediately called Martin.

“Where were you?” Martin asked.

“I thought you quit?”

“I’m temporarily back. I called all around for you.”

“That’s not important. What the fuck happened?”

“As to the why or how, I don’t have a clue. Clearly an attack within our borders.”

“What do you have?”

“I got witnesses in all four cities. Same thing everywhere. A man and a suitcase and an explosion. Except for LA. The witness there was a nurse working at a hospital. She saw a man lying injured on the ground in their parking lot, and a woman ran away from him. And that’s when the blast occurred.”

“Did any of them survive?”

“No. But it looks like this explosion wasn’t the primary function of the device. The explosion’s diameter was only about twenty feet. The primary function appears to be the release of the mists.”

Lancaster stayed silent on the phone for a long time. “You’re not telling me-”

“I don’t know yet, sir. We’re having the mist properly tested to see for sure. But preliminary assessments are coming back positive for a type of poxvirus.”

Lancaster put his hand over his forehead and bent down. He felt ill. “Holy shit, Martin. Holy shit…”

“Sir, do we have any ideas as to who could have done this?”

“Four chemical weapons simultaneously detonated in the four largest cities? No, Martin. I don’t have a fucking clue who could have done this. I’m guessing it’s not some cave-dwellers in Pakistan. But whoever they are, we better hope they’re not planning something else, ’cause we were just brought to our fucking knees.”