Blowback

EIGHTEEN

The president stood staring through the glass doors of the Oval Office onto the Rose Garden and said, “I couldn’t be more serious. I want this entire thing to go away, Chuck. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. Believe me, we all want it to go away, but just wishing isn’t going to make it happen. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Not now.”

“I don’t care about putting it back in the goddamn bottle,” snapped Rutledge as he turned to face his chief of staff. “I just don’t want some self-aggrandizing senator forwarding her career by pulling the mask off of one of the good guys. After everything he’s given to his country, forcing Scot Harvath to wear a scarlet letter is not only unfair, it’s just plain wrong.”

“With all due respect, sir,” replied Charles Anderson, “it’s not Harvath she wants wearing that scarlet letter. It’s you.”

The president turned away from the doors and walked back over behind his desk. “Then why doesn’t she come after me?”

“She is coming after you, Jack. This is how it’s done. You know that.”

“Well, the way it’s done stinks.”

“I’ll second that,” agreed Anderson.

“You don’t ruin good people who this country depends on. If she wants me, she should come get me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that when she gets here. If you have any compromising photographs of yourself that you’d like to hand over to me now, maybe I could get her to agree to a trade.”

The president appeared to smile, but it could have very well been only a grimace as he mentally moved on to his next topic. “What do we have from the Joint Chiefs and USAMRIID?”

Anderson removed a briefing report from the folder in front of him and said, “It’s not good. USAMRIID has cultured the illness, but it seems resistant to everything they’re throwing at it. They’ve got representatives from the CDC and the Mayo Clinic’s exotic disease department working with them now, but they’ve yet to make any progress. At least it’s still contained to that one incident in Asalaam.”

“For now,” replied the president, “and that’s only because for the moment it suits the purposes of whoever’s behind this thing. What’s our state of readiness if it makes an appearance here?”

Anderson referred back to his briefing report and replied, “First responders are going to be primary care physicians and hospital emergency rooms. We’ve put out a bulletin via the Healthwatch system to report any cases involving the symptoms we’re aware of to their local public health department. Those departments will report back to a crisis center at the Department of Homeland Security. The key is being able to contain any outbreak as quickly as possible.”

“What do we do if we can’t contain it?”

Anderson tried to calm the president. “Let’s worry about that if and when it happens.”

“Chuck, you know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. They may have finally been able to come up with the biggest stick on the playground. A stick that spares only the most faithful to their beliefs.”

“Which makes us confident there has got to be a way around it — a way to be immunized against it.”

Rutledge wanted to share his chief of staff’s optimism, but he’d always been one to prepare for the worst and then, and only then, hope for the best. “If we can’t contain it and we can’t immunize against it, what then?”

“USAMRIID is still developing scenarios.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. What are we talking about worst case?”

The president’s chief of staff was reluctant to answer, but he had little choice. “Worst case, we initiate the Campfire protocol to guarantee we stop this thing dead in its tracks.”

The color drained from Rutledge’s face. “Making me the first U.S. president to ever authorize a thermonuclear strike on his own soil and against his own people.”