The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

46

'It's come down north of Wake Island,' said Kozerski, his ear still to the receiver, with Mehta listening on the line which had remained open to India. Kozerski recited the information as he was hearing it from the Pentagon, 'That's midway across the Pacific to Hawaii. The wind is prevailing to the north-east. One freighter and one oil tanker are in the vicinity. We're checking their registration and the nationality of the crew.'

'Wake Island is a US airbase,' said Patton. 'The only one around for miles.'

'Was that the target?' asked West, perching on the edge of the desk and addressing the speaker phone to Mehta. 'Are you hearing this, Vasant?'

'Yes, Jim,' said Mehta. 'Keep the line open. We'll talk it through when all the news is in.'

West pressed the button on his intercom. 'Jenny, can you break the Defense Secretary out of his meeting in New York? I need him in Washington now.'

'Yes, sir,' said Rinaldi with the same calmness as if West had asked for a resupply of paper clips.

'And where is Mary?'

'In the air, sir. Three hours out of Tokyo.'

'Get her on the phone for me, please.'

'I want complete surveillance of all the Koreans on our lists,' said Patton, talking into his mobile, and getting up to find a clearer signal near the window. 'Cancel leave. The four at the top of the list, move the SWAT teams in to hit them at any time I say— No, I don't give a damn about warrants. On my word, you move in. And I'm not going to ask if my orders are clear, because the President is right here with me and is witness to them.'

'F-16s with biodetector apparatus are three minutes from the target area,' said Kozerski. 'Mr President, do you want to hear this?'

'Patch it through,' said West, glancing at the speaker phone, and wondering if perhaps Mehta should not hear such highly classified primary intelligence. 'Vasant, who have you got with you there?'

'Deepak Suri and Ashish Uddin,' said Mehta. 'That's it and the line is secure.'

'OK. We'll keep you on.'

'Mr President, this is Squadron Leader John Tucker. We are about to enter the target area. I will relay directly—'

'Target location 29.15 North, 175.23 East,' said Kozerski. 'That's about three hundred miles north of Wake Island.'

'Nuclear radiation: negative,' said Tucker. 'Anthrax: negative. CX: negative. Sarin: negative. I'm through the target area, turning back and descending to one thousand feet.'

'What was the range of the launch?' asked West.

'Ball park, two thousand miles,' said Kozerski, studying a map draped over the coffee table in the middle of the room. 'Launch site is Chunggang-up, 41.46 North, 126.53 East. That puts it above the fortieth parallel.'

'If you're referring to Jamie Song's condition of no strikes above the fortieth,' said West, 'that's become immaterial.'

'The base was designed in 1990, specifically to target Okinawa,' continued Kozerski, relaying information from his earpiece. 'It was modified in 2005 to take the long-range Taepodong-2—'

'Variola major detected,' said Tucker.

'Smallpox,' whispered West.

'Liquid form, with stabilizing additive,' continued the pilot. 'There's an unidentified agent. We're bringing it into the aircraft and hope to hell it survives enough to find out what it is.'

'Smallpox,' repeated West to himself. God, how he missed Peter Brock.

'Mr President, I have the Secretary of State on the phone for you, sir.'

'Thanks, Jenny. Can you find Caroline Brock and ask her to come here right away?' His hand hovered over the speaker phone. 'Vasant, you still there?'

'Yes, Jim, I heard.'

'I'm cutting the line now. I beg you, don't do anything until we've talked again. We've got smallpox dropped in the middle of the Pacific and a home-goal nuclear strike on Pakistan. So far there aren't many casualties. Let's keep it that way.'

'Mary,' said West, cutting the line to Mehta. 'North Korea has launched a missile carrying the smallpox virus. Have you got enough fuel to go straight to Beijing?'

'I'll check.'

'The Secretary of Defense will be with you within the hour, Mr President,' said Rinaldi over the intercom.

'Get him on the line.'

'Anybody with any suspect disease, I want to know,' said Patton. A second mobile was ringing in his jacket pocket. He brought it out and flipped it open. 'Tom Patton,' he said. 'Tell the Surgeon General I want a report every six hours that we have no outbreak of any bioweapon-related disease. Six hours until I say it stops. Just hold a second.' He shifted his concentration to the incoming call. 'Sorry… he says he wants to defect… A MiG-29… No. He does not come to the mainland. He wants to defect, he can fly into Guantanamo… fine, then he can ditch and we'll pick him out of the sea. No alien aircraft is coming near the US today.' Patton switched back to the second phone. 'No, every hospital. I don't care how small it is. Every goddamn hospital in this country.'

'Tucker, how long before you can identify that agent?' said West.

'I'll be back at Wake Island in five minutes, Mr President,' said Tucker. 'They should have something ten minutes after that. We've a plane standing by to fly the samples to Hawaii.'

'Do we have everything we need in Hawaii?'said West to no one in particular.

'John, can you get me Matt Lemont at Fort Detrick?' said Patton to Kozerski. Then he turned to West. 'I'll get you an answer to that in a couple of minutes, sir.'

'The Secretary of Defense, sir,' said Rinaldi.

'Chris,' said West, picking up the phone. 'North Korea has released the smallpox virus from a missile launch in the Pacific.'

'Dear God!' said Pierce. 'Where has it landed?'

'In the middle of nowhere. Three hundred miles north of Wake Island. A Taepodong-2 launched from a base near the Chinese border.'

'Mary was right.'

'And you're a gentleman to acknowledge it. Are we ready to strike?'

'We are, but—'

'I don't see any buts, Chris.'

'We're ready to attack, sir,' said Pierce. 'I'll put through the call.'

'When can you move?'

'Missile strikes could begin within the hour.'

'Put them on standby, then get yourself here. I need to hear your objections face to face.' He was about to switch lines with the button on the receiver, but stopped, with his finger hovering. 'Chris, what did the Cubans say?'

'They deny it. I don't think the ambassador himself knew.'

'You gave them the deadline?'

'I sure did.'

'Can we handle Cuba and Korea at the same time?'

'We can, sir. But not much more, particularly if handling Cuba means handling China.'

'Thanks. On second thoughts, Chris, hold there. I'm bringing Mary in. I need both your views on where we go next.' West switched lines to a conference call. 'Mary. You there?'

'Yes, Mr President,' said Newman. 'We can get to Beijing without refuelling.'

West saw Patton signalling from across the room. 'A team from Fort Detrick is leaving now for Hawaii,' said Patton. 'Roughly, twelve hours and we'll have all the answers.'

'Any preliminaries from Wake Island?'

'Tucker's just landed. We should have something in a few minutes.'

'Mary, Chris. Are you both across the line?'

'Yes, Mr President,' said Newman.

'I'm here,' said Pierce.

'In twelve hours, if the tests on the samples are conclusive,' said West, 'I plan to strike every military installation in North Korea. The strikes and bombing will go on until Park Ho and his cronies surrender. Chris?'

'I would like to have China and Russia onside,' said Pierce. 'I would like to have our troops away from the ceasefire line. Right now, Mr President, we don't have new casualties. I don't think any of us want to wake up tomorrow morning to find the first body bags of 37,000 Americans being zipped up and loaded on to transport aircraft home.'

'Point taken,' said West, softly, realizing that Pierce's argument was exactly the one that he had put to Mehta. 'Mary?'

'First, and I hate saying this,' said Newman. For some reason, her line carried the roar of the aircraft, making some of her words difficult to distinguish. 'But better the casualties are among troops than among the civilian population in the US, which is what it would be if the smallpox virus was released there.'

'But it's not been released in the US,' broke in Pierce.

'Second,' said Newman, ignoring the interruption, 'I have a hunch Park might not attack across the border.'

'Was that a "might not"?' said West.

'Exactly, Mr President,' confirmed Newman. 'Park Ho might not attack across the border. And if our troops were withdrawn, I'm pretty certain he wouldn't.'

'Where the hell you get that from, Mary?' said West. Newman's deep intake of breath was audible over the line. West remembered the meeting, not that long ago, when he had snubbed her in favour of Pierce. If they had hit Park Ho then, perhaps he would be neutralized by now. Jamie Song would have taken it on the chin. Toru Sato would be satisfied for the time being, kicking his heels until another opportunity arose for him to fight the 'good war' he was seeking. Cuba would have been sorted out as a single issue, unconnected to wider events. Song, Kozlov and he could have found a way through with India and Pakistan, and most important of all, Peter Brock would still have been alive. The past was a slippery thing, and difficult to balance. What Mary had suggested then had been too dangerous. Just as right now what she was saying seemed to be completely off the wall. 'Go ahead, Mary,' said West gently. 'We're listening.'

'Cho's view is this,' she said. 'Park Ho wants to kick American butts. He wants to be hailed as the man who threw the US out of Asia and brought Japan to book. If he ends up fighting fellow Koreans in the south, he will have failed. If we launch air strikes on North Korea, he will retaliate against our bases in Japan, and he probably has a handful of missiles with a range to hit our western seaboard. But we have the defences to handle that. The only motive for him to attack the South is to defeat the US troops holding the front line. If they are removed, his motivation is removed as well.'

'Do you believe him?' said West, pensively, 'when he said he had developed a nuclear capability?'

'I do, Mr President,' said Newman. 'There is no point in declaring a nuclear weapon to an ally unless you propose to use it to help them. Cho's reading of Park's mind is better than any of us can have.'

'If we let Cho do that,' said Pierce, 'then Japan is bound to follow.'

'OK, thanks, Mary,' said West, in a manner that indicated the conversation was closing. 'I'll think about the balance between 37,000 dead Americans and two new nuclear states. Mary, if we go ahead with the strikes, I want you in Beijing, preferably standing right next to Jamie Song. Chris, see you here shortly. And I need to talk to you both again when you're not in airplanes. So Mary, get yourself to the embassy as soon as you arrive.'

West closed the call and spoke to Rinaldi. 'Jenny, get me Jamie Song, right away.'

Kozerski caught West's attention. 'Caroline Brock is on her way up.'

'Four hundred million doses are fine,' said Patton bluntly into one of his mobile phones. 'But we need them disseminated… No… get them to distribution areas which are within two hours of any hospital in the US… Yes, now, but no vaccinations without my… OK, service personnel, I'm not talking about… No, firemen, doctors, nurses… OK, take your point, draw up a list of who has and who has not been vaccinated.'

As soon as he flipped shut the phone, Rinaldi's voice came through on the intercom. 'Secretary Patton, the US Coastguard needs to talk to you.'

Patton dropped his head, drew a breath, and Kozerski pointed to a red light flashing on a phone on the coffee table. Patton picked it up, while filling a glass with mineral water. 'He's ditched… OK, fish him out, and get him to Guantanamo… I want a bioreading from the area of splashdown.' He looked up, catching the eye of Kozerski and West and saying to neither in particular. 'Does anyone know if this virus survives in sea water?'

West and Kozerski looked at each other and shook their heads. 'We know damn all,' muttered West.

When the call was finished, Rinaldi came across the line. 'Jenny,' said Patton, 'can you get me General Bill Dayan, the commander at Guantanamo?'

'Sure,' said Rinaldi. 'And please tell the President that President Song of China is on the line. He wishes to speak in English.'

West put up a finger and switched the line to the speaker phone. 'Jamie, Jim West here,' he began. 'Thanks for coming on so swiftly. I assume you're aware of the North Korean launch.'

'We are,' said Song cautiously.

'Are you also aware that the missile was carrying the smallpox virus?'

'No,' said Song. 'I am not.'

'I've asked Mary to divert from Tokyo and come to you early.'

'I'm not sure if we're—'

'Jamie, she's touching down in a couple of hours. She's my personal envoy. I need her to tell me what the hell role China is playing in all this mess. And if you don't want her, I'll send her to take a couple of days off in Taiwan.'

'Point taken,' said Song smoothly.

As soon as the call was over, Jenny Rinaldi said: 'I've asked Mrs Brock to come through.'

Caroline Brock's appearance at the door of the Oval Office had an immediate calming effect. Her face was shadowed and disturbed, her eyes still tired and dried out of tears. She clasped her hands nervously in front of her and stepped in. She was fighting grief with concentration, and in the mixture of expressions that flitted across her face in those seconds was one of gratitude that Jim West had called her out of her loneliness to help avenge her husband's death.

West walked straight up to her, put his hand on her shoulder, guided her inside, bent over, touched the pot of tepid coffee on the table, poured some into a cup and handed it to her. 'Thanks for coming,' he said softly. 'We badly need you here, Caro. The North Koreans have—'

He was interrupted by Kozerski. 'The Wake Island tests are through. Variola major is confirmed. They need the equipment from Hawaii before they can make a final identification.'

'Smallpox?' whispered Caroline.

'Park Ho launched a warhead carrying it into the Pacific,' explained West.

Caroline sat down, sipped the lukewarm coffee and put the cup heavily back on the table. 'Do they know what strain?' she asked Kozerski.

'Do you have the strain?' repeated Kozerski into the phone. He looked at Caroline and shook his head. They need more tests.

'I need the DNA sequences from our library of smallpox strains,' said Caroline. 'Most specifically, Bangladesh-1975 and India-1967. If this does come from the Pokrov theft, it will be the India-1967 strain, which the Soviets preferred for weapons development. Even without IL-4, more than 30 per cent of infections were fatal, it retained stability during traumatic delivery and kept its virulence for long periods.' She paused and Patton repeated the question he had earlier asked West and Kozerski. 'Yes, Tom, it might well survive in sea water. Do we know exactly how it came down from the missile?'

Kozerski relayed the question. 'They're still studying the imagery,' he said. 'But right now, they believe a capsule broke off from the warhead, and then opened up like cluster bombs.'

Caroline nodded. 'A Soviet design,' she said. 'It was meant for the SS-18 long-range ballistic missile. They made it interchangeable between nuclear and biological warheads. If Park Ho was using a full payload, the infected area could be more than a 100 square kilometres. I doubt, though, that he would do that. This is his way of declaring his potential, telling us he has the virus and can use it.'

'General Dayan,' said Patton, back on a mobile again. 'Tom Patton, Homeland Security, here… Yes… you have the Cuban pilot coming your way. I need you to do two things. I'm flying some specialists down for the interrogation. They should be with you in a couple of hours. If he starts talking before that, let him talk. If he gets beyond shitbagging the regime and on to substance, I want to know — particularly anything about China, Chinese weapons, anything like that. Secondly, I want every pore on his body checked for smallpox — or any other bioterror disease… Vaccinating?… Yes, of course… I thought, they had been since 2001… Then if you have the doses, vaccinate them for Christ's sake—'

'Tom,' interrupted Caroline, shaking her head. 'No, don't do it.'

'General, hold back on that last instruction. I'll get back to you.' He cut the call, keeping his large hand wrapped around the tiny telephone.

'What do you mean?' said West.

'Mr President, if this is India-1967 and IL-4 or a sister agent—'

'Mr President,' said Rinaldi over the intercom. 'An urgent call from—'

'Jenny, give me a couple of minutes.'

'—IL-4 or a sister agent,' resumed Caroline. 'Then we do not have a vaccine against it. And we have no idea how IL-4 will react with the vaccine stocks we have.'

'You mean—' West let his question hang.

'I mean it could make it worse, much, much worse, if we use the vaccine.' She dropped her head. 'I told you at Camp David that you probably had six months before you needed to worry. I was wrong, Jim. I'm so, so sorry. It seems he had it up and running even as we discussed it.'

'What are you saying, Caro?' said Patton, flipping open his mobile and punching in the autodial number for Fort Detrick.

'I'm saying that if Park Ho has, say, 10 tons of this and can deliver it, he could infect maybe 4,000, maybe 10,000 square kilometres of territory. With the unknown factor of the IL-4, we just don't know. But he could destroy the United States as a functioning society.'

A silence enveloped the room. A telephone rang unanswered. West sat down heavily behind his desk. Kozerski remained absolutely stationary, still on the line, but not speaking, not relaying anything in. Patton stood, a telephone in each hand, one vibrating with a call, gazing through the window at the drizzle floating around a lamp outside. Caroline put her chin in her hands and said softly: 'There's a manual that was compiled by the Centre of Virology in Zagorsk. It has the recipes for culture conditions, nutrients and formulae for chemical additives to extend the life of the virus. There's an off chance the Soviets might have experimented with an agent like IL-4. We should check.'

But she knew it was a long shot, and no one answered, each wrapped in his own thoughts and responsibilities.

West only looked up when the door opened without a knock and Jenny Rinaldi stepped in. 'I didn't mean to barge in, Mr President, but something terrible has just happened.'

Jenny Rinaldi leant against the door frame and burst into tears.