A Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER 13

Allaire had done all he could. Despite his obvious contempt for Rhodes, the man was now en route to Washington. The first of two planned portable airlocks with connecting tunnels was in place. Boxes of supplies were now being sent into the Capitol along a bed of metal rollers. At last report, the second tunnel was nearing completion.

The military continued to request expanded access to the Capitol, but Allaire was keeping them at bay. Until Griffin Rhodes had a chance to evaluate the situation and provide a preliminary assessment, the Capitol would remain off-limits to anyone who wasn’t absolutely essential.

Using House Chamber surveillance video, Allaire and Salitas sorted out the group assignments faster than either thought possible. They used the location of the fifteen aerosol blasts to define the breakdown. Group B, those with moderate exposure, numbered just above three hundred. Group A, lowest exposure, were allowed to remain in the House Chamber. There were sixty people whom Allaire marked as having the heaviest exposure. Those individuals were assigned to Admiral Jakes’s C Group.

They would be the first to die.

Gratefully, Rebecca and Samantha were As.

Sylvia Chen’s reports detailing how WRX3883 spread from host to prospective host gave Allaire the idea to establish the quarantine groups. Chen had presented compelling evidence that extended exposure to carriers with later-stage infection increased the amount of virus passed to a new host. Allaire had good reason to believe those with heavy exposure to WRX3883 would speed up the progression of symptoms in people with less virus in their system.

The president understood that he was largely responsible for this disaster. He should have pulled the plug on Veritas sooner. Perhaps he should have taken more people into his confidence before authorizing the program in the first place. He always felt his job was about being true to himself and standing up for what he believed in.

But this time, he had been wrong. His closest friend and advisor, Gary Salitas, had been wrong. And worst of all, given his background as a physician, the scientists he had decided to believe in had been wrong. They had convinced him that the power of WRX3883 could be harnessed—that the adverse effects of the virus could be eliminated. Now, by having supported their view, he had, in all likelihood, signed his own death warrant, as well as those of his wife and daughter, and many, many others.

The report of crusty Harlan Mackey’s grisly demise had been a terrible jolt. Now, death from the virus had a face—probably the first of many.

At the president’s request, Gary Salitas, Jordan Lamar, and Dr. Bethany Townsend remained in the Hard Room. Allaire strained to get his mind around the enormity of what lay beyond the door. This wasn’t the time for remorse and self-pity. Now, more than ever, he had to connect with what it meant to be presidential, knowing his actions might be among the last of his administration.

The others watched and waited.

“How much are you going to tell them?” the defense secretary asked finally.

“I don’t know. I’d like to hold back on talking about Mackey.”

“Agree. So long as no one starts making a big deal about where he is. And even then I think we can just speculate. What about the virus?”

The president shrugged. “Bit by bit might be best,” he said.

Townsend looked at the two friends curiously, but said nothing. She had been the Allaires’ physician since the man was first nominated, and was widely respected for her candor with the media, and her loyalty to the first family. She had grown comfortable issuing warnings about rising cholesterol levels in the most powerful man on earth, but in this situation, she felt helpless. She was a Group A, but how long before the horrific symptoms that claimed the Jackson family materialized inside her? She could not access the Kalvesta, Kansas, files from within the Capitol, but she could recall specifics from the case in gruesome detail.

Townsend’s vision blurred as a bolt of pain hit just above the bridge of her nose. Another migraine. They occurred infrequently, usually under tense situations, but nobody really knew about them. Or could it be the virus, attacking her body in unexpected ways? From now on, every twinge, every cough or pain would be seen as a possible harbinger of debilitation and death.

Townsend had decided to resign her position as first doctor following Allaire’s initial debriefing. The revulsion she felt over biological warfare of any kind cast doubt over her ability to support the president as his physician, his friend, or even, for that matter, as a fellow citizen.

Then, as he spoke to her, one to one, and requested she remain with him in the Hard Room—he knew her well and sensed her revulsion at his decision to develop WRX3883, and he needed her scientific brilliance and insight, as well as her deep compassion—her anger began to lessen. She had often tried to imagine herself in his position, making gut-wrenching choices on a daily basis that had the potential to affect millions, even billions of lives. In the end, she had learned to think carefully before second-guessing his decisions.

“Gary, what’s our ETA on Rhodes?” Allaire asked.

“He’ll be arriving here at Bolling AFB at approximately oh six hundred hours, Mr. President. We’ve got a chopper standing by to bring him here.”

“Good. I want you to coordinate his entry into the Capitol. How are we progressing in getting ahold of the guy Rhodes wanted?”

“That would be his former lab assistant,” Salitas said, consulting his BlackBerry. “Forbush … Melvin Forbush. We’re ready to set up a call when Rhodes arrives.”

“Do we have anything on the guy? Do you think he was involved in the theft of the virus?”

“The answer appears to be no. We’re checking into all that again right now.”

“And where is he?”

“He’s still at the lab in Kansas.”

“But we closed the place.”

“He’s the only one there, Jim. Sort of a caretaker.”

“But why?”

“Apparently no one else wanted to stay. There were just a couple of dozen in the whole lab installation to begin with. Now, with their only project shut down, it’s just Forbush. We keep the place ready because we don’t have that many Level Four containment facilities, and you never know when we might need one.”

“What a mess. We throw one guy into prison for bioterrorism, and we leave his assistant in charge of the lab.”

“It’s just a shell of a lab, sir.”

“I don’t care. I don’t trust Rhodes, and if this Forbush worked for him, I don’t trust him either.”

“That’s understandable.”

“But Rhodes is our best hope for finding a treatment, or … or a cure.”

“I believe that’s true, Jim.”

“Our best chance to survive this nightmare.”

“I understand.”

Salitas paused and pursed his lips.

“Jim, if you believe he might in some way be responsible for the attack, may I ask why you think he’s cooperating?”

The president glanced over at Townsend and Lamar, then back at Salitas.

“I don’t know that he is cooperating,” he said. “Before I brought you in on all this, Gary, I met in secret with Dr. Sylvia Chen.”

“The Dragon Lady. I know. Smart woman. WRX3883 was her baby.”

“Well, in one of our first meetings she told me about Griffin Rhodes, who was working in her lab developing a vaccine or an antiviral drug that would counter infection with the WRX virus.”

“Go on.”

“Some years before that, he had been working in Africa—Kenya to be exact. From what she told me, he was a cowboy back then when it came to tracking down the sources of outbreaks of the deadliest viruses known to man. Fearless. Like the guys who ride bulls for a living. He was also a computer whiz, who frustrated people around him by refusing to use animals in his research—only computer models.

“Well, according to Chen, back in his Africa days, he was after the source of an expanding outbreak of Ebola infection, which was moving down a mountainside toward a densely populated village. Rhodes found a cave loaded with bat guano that tested strongly positive for the virus. He brought up a crew and sealed several side openings to the cave. Then he dynamited the main entrance closed.

“On the way down the mountain, he came across a hut. Blood was everywhere inside it. The whole family was dead from hemorrhagic fever. Everyone, that is, except one child—a small girl cringing out back beneath a pile of refuse. She was just beginning to show signs of the disease. Rhodes sent all the workers down to the village to avoid them being exposed. Then he carried the child five miles down to the hospital. Seven days later, the girl died and Rhodes developed full-blown symptoms of Ebola.”

“I hadn’t heard any of that,” Salitas said.

“My fault for neglecting to tell you. The proof against him in the theft of WRX3883 was overwhelming. He stole that virus, purely and simply. We had videos of him doing it plus the pile of corroborating evidence you know about. But in the back of my head, I couldn’t get rid of that story Sylvia Chen had told me.”

“Is that why you opted against any kind of torture to find out who he was working with?”

The president shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe. From what I knew of the man, and I had never met him face-to-face, I decided the only logical explanation for his actions was that he had gone crazy. I couldn’t bring myself to torture him for that. Remember, that was before Genesis surfaced. I wouldn’t have connected Rhodes and them anyhow.”

“Unless he is Genesis. So, do you trust him now?”

“No, I don’t trust him. How could I? But we’re in real trouble, Gary. Hours? Days? Maybe a couple of weeks at the most. People are going to start dying soon. You know how contagious that damn germ is. But I also know Griffin Rhodes is the only card we have to play.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, I want a team on the man at all times, and I want you to organize it. Top secret, small numbers. The best we have. From the moment he sets foot off that plane, I want your people to be on him. Can’t be anybody from inside though. Because we’ve all been exposed, we can’t count on anybody to be reliable for long.”

Townsend, who had been silent, finally spoke up.

“Excuse me, sir? I … don’t understand that last statement.”

Allaire and Salitas exchanged looks.

“I’ll fill you in more later, Bethany,” the president said. “But suffice it to say, it’s why I need you here with me right now.”

“And why is that?” Townsend asked.

“Thanks to that virus, it is only a matter of time, possibly very little time, before I will no longer be mentally competent to be president.”