Executive Orders

49 REACTION TIME

COLONEL GOODMAN WAS surprised by the call. He was having a late lunch after a check-flight for a spare VH-60 just out of the maintenance shop for engine replacement. The one he used for SURGEON was on the ramp. The three-man crew walked out to it and spooled up the engines, not knowing why the schedule for the day had changed. Ten minutes after the call, he was airborne and heading northeast. Twenty minutes after that, he was circling the landing pad. Well, there was SURGEON, with SANDBOX by her side, and the Secret Service squad… and one other he didn't know, wearing a white coat. The colonel checked the wind and began his descent.

The faculty meeting had gone on until five minutes before. Decisions had to be made. Two complete medical floors would be cleared and tooled up for possible Ebola arrivals. The director of emergency medicine was even now assembling his staff for a lecture. Two of Alexandre's people were on the phone to Atlanta, getting updates on the total number of known cases, and announcing that Hopkins had activated its emergency plan for this contingency. It meant that Alex hadn't been able to go to his office and change clothes. Cathy was wearing her lab coat, too, but in her case it was over a normal dress. He'd been wearing greens—his third set of the day—for the meeting, and still was. Cathy told him not to worry about it. They had to wait for the rotor to stop before the Secret Service allowed their protectees to board the aircraft. Alex noted the presence of a backup chopper, circling a mile away, and a third circling closer in. It looked like a police bird, probably for security, he imagined.

Everyone was bundled aboard. Katie—he'd never met her before—got the jump seat behind the pilots, supposedly the safest place on the aircraft. Alexandre hadn't ridden in a Black Hawk in years. The four-point safety belt still worked, though. Cathy snapped hers right in place. Little Katie had to be helped, but she loved her helmet, painted pink, with a bunny on it, doubtless some Marine's idea. Seconds later the rotor started turning.

"This is going a little fast," Alex said over the intercom. "You really think we should wait?"

Cathy replied, keying her microphone. "No." And it wouldn't do to say that he wasn't dressed for seeing the President. The aircraft lifted off, climbed about three hundred feet, and turned south.

"Colonel?" Cathy said to the pilot in the right-front seat.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Make it fast," she ordered. Goodman had never heard SURGEON talk like a surgeon before. It was a voice of command that any Marine would recognize. He dropped the nose and brought the Black Hawk to 160 knots.

"You in a hurry, Colonel?" the backup chopper called.

"The lady is. Bravo routing, direct approach." Next he called to BWI Airport to tell the controllers to hold arrivals and departures until he'd passed overhead. It wouldn't take long. Nobody on the ground really noticed, but two USAir 737s had to go around once, to the annoyance of their passengers. Watching from the jump seat, SANDBOX thought it was pretty neat.

"MR. PRESIDENT?"

"Yes, Andrea?" Ryan looked up.

"Your wife is inbound from Baltimore. She needs to see you about something. I don't know what. About fifteen minutes," Price told him.

"Nothing's wrong?" Jack asked.

"No, no, everybody's fine, sir. SANDBOX is with her," the agent assured him.

"Okay." Ryan went back to the most recent update of the investigation.

"WELL, IT'S OFFICIALLY a clean shoot, Pat." Murray wanted to tell his inspector that himself. There hadn't been much doubt of that, of course.

"Wish I could have taken the last one alive," O'Day remarked with a grimace.

"You can stow that one. There was no chance, not with kids around. I think we'll probably arrange a little decoration for you."

"We have anything on that Azir guy yet?"

"His driver's license photo and a lot of written records, but aside from that, we'd have a hard time proving he ever existed." It was a classic set of circumstances. Sometime Friday afternoon, "Mordecai Azir" had driven his car to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and caught a flight to New York-Kennedy. They knew that much from the USAir desk clerk who'd issued him the ticket in that name. Then he'd disappeared, like a cloud of smoke on a windy day. He doubtless had had a virgin set of travel documents. Maybe he'd used them in New York for an international flight. If he'd really been smart, he would have caught a cab to Newark or LaGuardia first, and taken an overseas flight from the former, or maybe a flight to Canada from the latter. Even now agents from the New York office were interviewing people at every airline counter. But nearly every airline in the world came into Kennedy, and the clerks there saw thousands per day. Maybe they would establish what flight he'd taken. If so, he'd be on the moon before they managed that feat.

"Trained spook," Pat O'Day observed. "It's really not all that hard, is it?"

What came back to Murray were the words of his FCI chief. If you could do it once, you could do it more than once. There was every reason to believe that there was a complete espionage—worse, a terrorist—network in his country, sitting tight and waiting for orders… to do what? And to avoid detection, all its members really had to do was nothing. Samuel Johnson had once remarked that everybody could manage that feat.

THE HELICOPTER FLARED and landed, rather to the surprise of the newspeople who always kept an eye out. Anything unexpected at the White House was newsworthy. They recognized Cathy Ryan. Her white doctor's coat was unusual, however, and on seeing another person dressed in the same way but wearing greens, the immediate impression was of a medical emergency involving the President. This was actually correct, though a spokesman came over to say that, no, the President was fine, working at his desk; no, he didn't know why Dr. Ryan had come home early.

I'm not dressed for this, Alex thought. The looks of the agents on the way to the West Wing confirmed that, and now a few of them wondered if SWORDSMAN might be ill, resulting in a few radio calls that were immediately rebuffed. Cathy led him down the corridor, then tried the wrong door until an agent pointed and opened the one into the Oval Office. They noted that she didn't bother with anger or embarrassment at the mistake. They'd never seen SURGEON so focused.

"Jack, this is Pierre Alexandre," she said without a greeting. Ryan stood. He didn't have any major appointments for another two hours, and had shed his suit coat. "Hello, Doctor," he said, extending his hand and taking in the manner of his visitor's dress.

Then he realized that Cathy had her work coat on as well. "What's going on, Cathy?" he asked his wife. "Alex?" Nobody had even sat down yet. Two Secret Service agents had followed the physicians in, and the tension in the room was like an alarm bell for them, though they didn't know what was going on, either. Roy Altman was in another room, talking to Price.

"Mr. President, do you know what the Ebola virus is?"

"Africa," Jack said. "Some jungle disease, right? Deadly as hell. I saw a movie—"

"Pretty close," Alexandre confirmed. "It's a negative-strand RNA virus. We don't know where it lives—I mean, we know the place but not the host. That's the animal it lives in," he explained. "And it's a killer, sir. The crude mortality rate is eighty percent."

"Okay," POTUS said, still standing. "Go on."

"It's here now."

"Where?"

"At last count we had five cases at Hopkins. More than twenty countrywide—that number is about three hours old now. Can I use the phone?"

GUS LORENZ WAS alone in his office when the phone rang.

"It's Dr. Alexandre again."

"Yes, Alex?"

"Gus, what's the count now?"

"Sixty-seven," the speakerphone replied. Alex was leaning over it.

"Where?"

"Mainly big cities. The reports are coming in mostly from major medical centers. Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, one in Richmond, seven right here in Atlanta, three in Orlando…" They could hear a door open and a paper being handled. "Eighty-nine, Alex. They're still coming in."

"Has USAMRIID put the alert out yet?"

"I expect that within the hour. They are having a meeting to determine—"

"Gus, I am in the White House right now. The President is here with me. I want you to tell him what you think," Alexandre commanded, speaking like an Army colonel again.

"What—how did you—Alex, it's not sure yet."

"Either you say it or I will. Better that you do."

"Mr. President?" It was Ellen Sumter at the side door. "I have a General Pickett on the phone for you, sir. He says it's most urgent."

"Tell him to stand by."

"John's good, but he's a little conservative," Alex observed. "Gus, talk to us!"

"Sir, Mr. President, this appears to be something other than a natural event. It looks very much like a deliberate act."

"Biological warfare?" Ryan asked.

"Yes, Mr. President. Our data isn't yet complete enough for a real conclusion, but naturally occurring epidemics don't start this way, not all over the place."

"Mrs. Sumter, can you put the general on this line?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. President?" a new voice asked.

"General, I have a Dr. Lorenz on the line, and next to me is Dr. Alexandre from up the road at Hopkins."

"Hi, Alex."

"Hi, John," Alexandre responded.

"Then you know."

"How confident are you in this estimate?" SWORDSMAN asked.

"We have at least ten focal centers. A disease doesn't get around like that by itself. The data is still coming in, sir. All these cases appearing in twenty-four hours, it's no accident, and it's no natural process. You have Alex there to explain things further. He used to work for me. He's pretty good," Pickett told his commander-in-chief.

"Dr. Lorenz, you concur in this?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Jesus." Jack looked at his wife. "What's next?"

"Sir, we have some options," Pickett replied. "I need to get down to see you."

Ryan turned: "Andrea!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get a chopper up to Fort Detrick, right now!"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"I'll be waiting, General. Dr. Lorenz, thank you. Anything else I need to know now?"

"Dr. Alexandre can handle that."

"Very well, I will put Mrs. Sumter on the phone to give you the direct lines to this office." Jack walked to the door. "Get on and give them what they need. Then get Arnie and Ben in here."

"Yes, Mr. President." Jack walked back to sit on the edge of his desk. He was silent for a moment. In a way, he was now grateful for the failed attack on his daughter. That had hit him with a dreadful immediacy. This one as yet had not, and though intellectually he knew that the ramifications were far worse, he didn't need the emotional impact for the time being.

"What do I need to know?"

"Most of the important stuff we can't tell you yet. The issues are technical," Alex explained. "How easily the disease spreads, all we have now is anecdotal and unreliable. That's the key issue. If it spreads easily by aerosol—"

"What's that?" POTUS asked.

"Spray, little droplets, like a cough or a sneeze. If it spreads that way, we're in very deep trouble."

"It's not supposed to," Cathy objected. "Jack, this bug is very delicate. It doesn't last in the open for more than— what, Alex, a few seconds?"

"That's the theory, but some strains are more robust than others. Even if it can survive just a few minutes in the open—that's pretty damned bad. If this is a strain we call Mayinga, well, we just don't know how robust it is. But it goes farther than that. Once a person gets it, then they take it home. A house is a pretty benign environment for pathogens. We have heating and air-conditioning to make it that way, and family members are in close contact. They hug. They kiss. They make love. And once somebody has it in their system, they're always pumping the things out."

"Things?"

"Virus particles, Mr. President. The size of these things is measured in microns. They're far smaller than dust particles, smaller than anything you can see."

"You used to work at Detrick?"

"Yes, sir, I was a colonel, head of pathogens. I retired, and Hopkins hired me."

"So you have an idea what General Pickett's plans are, the options, I mean?"

"Yes, sir. That stuff is reevaluated at least once a year. I've sat in on the committee that draws the plans up."

"Sit down, Doctor. I want to hear this."

THE MARITIME PRE-POSITION Ships had just gotten back from an exercise, and what little maintenance had been required was already done. On receiving orders from CIN-, they initiated engine-start procedures, which mainly meant warming up the fuel and lubricating oils. To the north, the cruiser Anzio, plus destroyers Kidd and O'Bannon, got orders of their own and turned west for a projected rendezvous point. The senior officer present was the skipper of the Aegis cruiser, who wondered how the hell he was supposed to get those fat merchants into the Persian Gulf without air cover, if it came to that. The United States Navy didn't go anywhere without air cover, and the nearest carrier was Ike, 3,000 miles away, with Malaya in the way. On the other hand, it wasn't all that bad to be a mere captain in command of a task force without an admiral to look over his shoulder.

The first of the MPS ships to sortie from the large anchorage was USNS Bob Hope, a newly built military-type roll-on/roll-off transport displacing close to 80,000 tons, and carrying 952 vehicles. Her civilian crew had a little tradition for their movements. Oversized speakers blared "Thanks for the Memories" at the naval base as she passed by, just after midnight, followed by four of her sisters. Aboard, they had the full vehicle complement for a reinforced heavy brigade. Passing the reef-marked entrance, the handles were pushed down on the enunciators, demanding twenty-six knots of the big Colt-Pielstick diesels.

THEY WAITED FOR Goodley and van Damm to come in, and then it took ten minutes to bring them up to speed on what was going on. By this time, the enormity of it was sinking into the President's consciousness, and he had to struggle with emotions now in addition to intellect. He noted that Cathy, though she had to be as horrified as he was, was taking everything calmly, at least outwardly so. Well, it was her field, wasn't it?

"I didn't think Ebola could survive outside a jungle," Goodley said.

"It can't, at least not long-term, or it would have traveled around the world by now."

"It kills too fast for that," SURGEON objected.

"Cathy, we've had jet travel for over thirty years now. This little bastard is delicate. That works for us."

"How do we find out who did it?" This came from Arnie.

"We interview all the victims, find out where they've been, and try to narrow the focal centers down to one point if we can. That's an investigative function. Epidemiologists are pretty good at that… but this one's a little big," Alexandre added.

"Could the FBI help, Doctor?" van Damm asked.

"Can't hurt."

"I'll get Murray over here," the chief of staff told the President.

"You can't treat it?" POTUS asked.

"No, what happens is the epidemic burns itself out over several generational cycles. What I mean by that—okay, one person gets it. The virus reproduces in them, and then they pass it on to somebody else. Every victim becomes an imperfect host. As the disease reproduces and kills the victim, the victim passes it on to the next one. But, and here's the good news, Ebola doesn't reproduce efficiently. As it goes through these generational cycles, it becomes less virulent. Most of the survivors in an outbreak happen toward the end, because the virus progressively mutates itself into a less dangerous form. The organism is so primitive that it doesn't do everything well."

"How many cycles before that happens, Alex?" Cathy asked.

He shrugged. "It's empirical. We know the process, but we can't quantify it."

"Lots of unknowns." She grimaced.

"Mr. President?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"The movie you saw?"

"What about it?"

"The budget for that movie is quite a bit more than all the funding for research in virology. Keep that in mind. I guess it isn't sexy enough."

Arnie started to say something. Alex cut him off with a raised hand. "I'm not on the government payroll anymore, sir. I don't have any empire to build. My research is privately funded. I'm just stating a fact. What the hell, I guess we can't fund everything."

"If we can't treat it, how do we stop it?" Ryan asked, getting things back on track. His head turned. A shadow crossed the South Lawn, and the roar of a helicopter came through the bulletproof windows.

"AHH," BADRAYN OBSERVED with a smile. The Internet was designed to give access to information, not to conceal it, and from a friend of a friend of a friend who was a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, he had the password to crack into that medical center's electronic mail. Another keyword eliminated all of the clutter, and there it was. It was 1400 hours on America's east coast, and Emory reported to CDC that it now had six cases of suspected hemorrhagic fever. Better yet, CDC had already replied, and that told him a lot more. Badrayn printed up both letters, and made a telephone call. Now he really had good news to deliver.

RAMAN FELT THE DC-9 thump down in Pittsburgh after a brief flight that had allowed him to sit alone and think through several options. His colleague—brother—in Baghdad had been a little too sacrificial in his attitude, a little too dramatic, and the detail around the Iraqi leader had been pretty large, actually larger than the one on which he himself served. How to do it? The trick was to create as much confusion as possible. Perhaps when Ryan walked into the crowd to press the flesh. Take the shot, kill one or two of the other agents, then race into the crowd. If he could make it past the first line or two of spectators, all he had to do was hold up his Secret Service ID, better than a gun for getting through things—everyone would think that he was chasing the subject. The key to escaping from an assassination—the USSS had taught him this—was in the first thirty seconds. Survive that, and you have a better-than-even chance of surviving it all. And he would be the one setting all the security arrangements for the Friday trip. How, then, could he get the President to a spot in which he would have that option? Take POTUS. Take Price. Take one other. Then melt into the crowd. Probably better to fire from the hip. Best if the citizens didn't see the gun in his hand until after the shots. Yes, that might work, he thought, taking off the lap belt and standing. There would be a local Treasury agent at the end of the jetway. They'd go right to the hotel whose large dining room would host President Ryan's speech. Raman would have all day and part of tomorrow to think it through, under the very eyes of fellow agents. How challenging.

MAJOR GENERAL JOHN Pickett, it turned out, was a graduate of Yale Medical School, added to which were a pair of doctorates—molecular biology from Harvard, and public health from UCLA. He was a pale, spare man who looked small in his uniform—he hadn't had time to change and was wearing camouflage BDUs—making his parachutist's wings look very out of place. Two colonels came with him, followed by Director Murray of the FBI, who'd raced over from the Hoover Building. The three officers came to attention as they walked in, but now the Oval Office was too small, and the President led them across the hall into the Roosevelt Room. On the way a Secret Service agent handed the general a fax that was still warm from the machine in the secretaries' room.

"Case count is now one hundred thirty-seven, according to Atlanta," Pickett said. "Fifteen cities, fifteen states, coast-to-coast."

"Hi, John," Alexandre said, taking his hand. "I've seen three of them myself."

"Alex, glad to see you, buddy." He looked up. "I guess Alex has briefed everybody in on the baseline stuff?"

"Correct," Ryan said.

"Do you have any immediate questions, Mr. President?"

"You're certain that this is a deliberate act?"

"Bombs do not go off by accident." Pickett unfolded a map. A number of cities were marked with red dots. One of his attending colonels placed three more down: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.

"Convention cities. Just how I would have done it," Alexandre breathed. "Looks like Bio-War 95, John."

"Close. That's a wargame we played with the Defense Nuclear Agency. We used anthrax for that one. Alex here was one of our best for planning offensive bio," Pickett told his audience. "He was Red Team commander for this."

"Isn't that against the law?" Cathy said, her face outraged at the revelation.

"Offense and defense are two sides of the same coin, Dr. Ryan," Pickett replied, defending his former subordinate. "We have to think like the bad guys do if we're going to stop them."

"Operational concept?" the President asked. He understood that better than his wife did.

"Biological warfare at the strategic level means starting a chain reaction within your target population. You try to infect as many people as possible—and that's not very many; we're not talking nuclear weapons here. The idea is for the people, the victims, to spread it for you. That's the elegance of bio-warfare. Your victims actually do most of the killing. Any epidemic starts low and ramps up, slowly at first, like a tangential curve, and then it rockets up geometrically. So, if you're using bio in the offensive role, you try to jump-start it by infecting as large a number of people as you can, and you opt for people who travel. Las Vegas is the tip-off. It's a convention city, and sure enough they just had a big one. The conventioneers get infected, get on the airplanes to fly home, and they spread it for you."

"Any chance of discovering how they did it?" Murray asked. He showed his ID so that the general would know who he was.

"Probably a waste of time. The other nice thing about bio weapons is—well, in this case the incubation period is a minimum of three days. Whatever distribution system was used has been picked up, bagged, and trucked off to a landfill. No physical evidence, no proof of who did it to us."

"Save that for later, General. What do we do? I see a lot of states with no infection—"

"That's just for now, Mr. President. There's a three- to ten-day lead time on Ebola. We don't know how far it's gotten already. The only way we can find out is by waiting."

"But we have to initiate CURTAIN CALL, John," Alexandre said. "And we have to do it fast."

MAHMOUD HA) I WAS reading. He had an office adjoining his bedroom, and actually preferred working here because of the familiar surroundings. He did not enjoy being disturbed here, however, and so his security people were surprised at his response to the telephone call. Twenty minutes later, they let the visitor in, without an escort.

"Has it begun?"

"It has begun." Badrayn handed over the CDC printout. "We will know more tomorrow."

"You have served well," Daryaei told him, dismissing him. When the door was closed, he made a telephone call.

ALAHAD DIDN'T KNOW how circuitous the link to him was, merely that it was an overseas call. He suspected London, but he didn't know and wouldn't ask. The inquiry was entirely routine, except for the time of day—it was evening in England, after business hours. The variety of the rug and the price were the key parts, telling him what he needed to know, in a code long since memorized and never written down. In knowing little, he could reveal little. That part of the tradecraft he did fully understand. His own part came next. Placing the Back in a Few Minutes sign in his window, he walked out, locked the door, and went around the corner, proceeding two blocks to a pay phone. There he made a call to pass on his last order to Aref Raman.

THE MEETINGS HAD started in the Oval Office, were transferred to the Roosevelt Room, and were now all the way down the hall in the Cabinet Room, where more than one image of George Washington could watch the proceedings. The Cabinet secretaries arrived almost together, and their arrival couldn't be a secret. Too many official cars, too many guards, too many faces known to the reporters.

Pat Martin came, representing Justice. Bretano was SecDef, with Admiral Jackson sitting on the wall behind him. (Everyone brought a deputy of some sort, mainly to take notes.) Winston was SecTreas, having walked from across the street. Commerce and Interior were survivors from the Durling presidency, actually having been appointed by Bob Fowler. Most of the rest were of undersecretary rank, holding on from presidential apathy in some cases, and in others because they appeared to know what they were doing. But none of them knew what he was doing now. Ed Foley arrived, summoned by the President despite CIA's previous loss of Cabinet rank. Also present were Arnie van Damm, Ben Goodley, Director Murray, the First Lady, three Army officers, and Dr. Alexandre.

"We will be in order," the President said. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. There's no time for a preamble here. We face a national emergency. The decisions we make here today will have serious effects on our country. In the corner is Major General John Pickett. He's a physician and scientist, and I will now turn the meeting over to him. General, do your brief."

"Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, I am commanding general at Fort Detrick. Earlier today, we started getting some very disturbing reports…"

Ryan tuned the general out. He'd heard it all twice now. Instead he read over the file Pickett had handed him. The folder was bordered in the usual red-and-white-striped tape. The sticker in the center read TOP SECRET — AFFLICTION, rather an appropriate code name for the special-access compartment this one was in, SWORDSMAN thought. Then he opened the folder and started reading OPPLAN CURTAIN CALL. There were four variants of the plan, Jack saw. He turned to Option Four. That was called SOLITARY, and that name, too, was appropriate. Reading through the executive summary chilled him, and Jack found himself turning to look over at George, hanging there on the wall, and wanting to ask, Now what the hell do I do? But George wouldn't have understood. He didn't know from airliners and viruses and nuclear weapons, did he?

"How bad is it now?" HHS asked.

"Just over two hundred cases have been reported to CDC as of fifteen minutes ago. I emphasize that these have all appeared in less than twenty-four hours," General Pickett told the Secretary.

"Who did it?" Agriculture asked.

"Set that aside," the President said. "We will address that issue later. What we have to decide now is the best chance we have to contain the epidemic."

"I just can't believe that we can't treat—"

"Believe it," Cathy Ryan said. "You know how many viral diseases we know how to cure?"

"Well, no," HUD admitted.

"None." It constantly amazed her how ignorant some people could be on medical issues.

"Therefore containment is the only option," General Pickett went on.

"How do you contain a whole country?" It was Cliff Rutledge, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy, sitting in for Scott Adler.

"That's the problem we face," President Ryan said. "Thank you, General. I'll take it from here. The only way to contain the epidemic is to shut down all places of assembly—theaters, shopping malls, sports stadia, business offices, everything—and also to shut off all interstate travel. To the best of our information, at least thirty states are so far untouched by this disease. We would do well to keep it that way. We can accomplish that by preventing all interstate travel until such time as we have a handle on the severity of the disease organism we are facing, and then we can come up with less severe countermeasures."

"Mr. President, that's unconstitutional," Pat Martin said at once.

"Explain," Ryan ordered.

"Travel is a constitutionally protected right. Even inside states, any restriction of travel is a constitutional violation under the Lemuel Penn case—he was a black Army officer who was murdered by the Klan in the sixties. That's a Supreme Court precedent," the head of the Criminal Division reported.

"I understand that I—excuse me, just about everybody in the room—was sworn to uphold the Constitution. But if upholding it means killing off a few million citizens, what have we accomplished?" POTUS asked.

"We can't do that!" HUD insisted.

"General, what happens if we don't?" Martin asked, surprising Ryan.

"There is no precise answer. There cannot be, because we do not know the ease of transmission for this virus yet. If it is an aerosol, and there is reason to suspect that it is— well, we've got a hundred computer models we can use. Problem is deciding which one. Worst case? Twenty million deaths. At that point, what happens is that society breaks down. Doctors and nurses flee the hospitals, people lock themselves in their homes, and the epidemic burns out pretty much like the Black Death did in the fourteenth century. Human interactions cease, and because of that the disease stops spreading."

"Twenty million? How bad was the Black Death?" Martin asked, his face somewhat ashen.

"Records are sketchy. There was no real census system back then. Best data is England," Pickett replied. "It depopulated that country by half. The plague lasted about four years. Europe took about one hundred fifty years to return to the 1347 population level."

"Shit," breathed Interior.

"Is it really that dangerous, General?" Martin persisted.

"Potentially yes. The problem, sir, is that if you take no action at all, and then you find out that it is that virulent, then it's just too late."

"I see." Martin turned. "Mr. President, I do not see that we have much of a choice here."

"You just said it was against the law, damn it!" HUD shouted. "Mr. Secretary, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and although I think I know how the Supreme Court would rule on this, there has never been a case in point, and it could be argued, and the process would have to deal with it."

"What changed your mind, Pat?" Ryan asked.

"Twenty million reasons, Mr. President."

"If we flout our own laws, then what are we?" Cliff Rutledge asked.

"Alive," Martin answered quietly. "Maybe."

"I am willing to listen to arguments for fifteen minutes," Ryan said. "Then we have to come to a decision." It was lively.

"If we violate our own Constitution," Rutledge said, "then nobody in the world can trust us!"

HUD and HHS agreed.

"What about the practical considerations?" Agriculture objected. "People have to eat."

"What kind of country are we going to turn over to our children if we—"

"What do we turn over to them if they're dead?" George Winston snapped back at HUD.

"Things like this don't happen today!"

"Mr. Secretary, would you like to come up to my hospital and see, sir?" Alexandre asked from his seat in the corner.

"Thank you," Ryan said, checking his watch. "I am calling the issue on the table."

Defense, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce voted aye. All the rest voted no. Ryan looked at them for a long few seconds. "The ayes have it," the President said coldly. "Thank you for your support. Director Murray, the FBI will render all assistance required by CDC and USAMRIID to ascertain the focal centers of this epidemic. That has absolute and unconditional priority over any other matter."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Mr. Foley, every intelligence asset we have goes into this. You will also work in conjunction with the medical experts. This came from somewhere, and whoever did it has committed an act of war, using weapons of mass destruction against our country. We need to find out who that was, Ed. All the intelligence agencies will report directly to you. You have statutory authority to coordinate all intelligence activities. Tell the other agencies that you have my order to exercise it."

"We'll do our best, sir."

"Secretary Bretano, I am declaring a state of national emergency. All Reserve and National Guard formations are to be activated immediately and placed under federal command. You have this contingency plan in the Pentagon." Ryan held the CURTAIN CALL folder up. "You will execute Option Four, SOLITARY, at the earliest possible moment."

"I will do that, sir."

Ryan looked down the table at the Secretary of Transportation. "Mr. Secretary, the air-traffic-control system belongs to you. When you get back to your office, you will order all aircraft in flight to proceed to their destinations and stop there. All aircraft on the ground will remain there, commencing at six o'clock this evening."

"No." SecTrans stood. "Mr. President, I will not do that. I believe it to be an illegal act, and I will not break the law."

"Very well, sir. I will accept your resignation effective immediately. You're the deputy?" Ryan said to the woman sitting behind him.

"Yes, Mr. President, I am."

"Will you execute my order?"

She looked around the room without really knowing what to do. She'd heard it all, but she was a career civil servant, unaccustomed to making a hard call without political coverage.

"I don't like it, either," Ryan said. The room was invaded by the roar of jet engines, an aircraft taking off from Washington National. "What if that airplane's carrying death somewhere? Do we just let it happen?" he asked so quietly she could barely hear.

"I will carry out your order, sir."

"You know, Murray," the former—he wasn't sure yet—SecTrans said, "you could arrest the man right now. He's breaking the law."

"Not today, sir," Murray replied, staring at his President. "Somebody's going to have to decide what the law is first."

"If anyone else in the room feels the need to leave federal service over this issue, I will accept your resignations without prejudice—but please think what you are doing. If I'm wrong on this, fine, I'm wrong, and I'll pay the price for that. But if the doctors are right and we do nothing, we've got more blood on our hands than Hitler ever did. I need your help and your support." Ryan stood and walked out of the room as the others struggled to their feet. He moved fast. He had to. He entered the Oval Office, turned right to the presidential sitting room, and barely made it to the bathroom in time. Seconds later, Cathy found him there, flushing down a bowlful of vomit. "Am I doing the right thing?" he asked, still on his knees.

"You've got my vote, Jack," SURGEON told him.

"You look great," van Damm observed, catching POTUS in rather an undignified posture.

"Why didn't you say anything, Arnie?"

"Because you didn't need me to, Mr. President," the chief of staff replied.

General Pickett and the other physicians were waiting when he came back into the office. "Sir, we just had a fax from CDC. There are two cases at Fort Stewart. That's the 24th Mech's home base."