Burn (9 page)

Not counting the Innocents, of course.

The Innocents, the Down’s syndrome workers, were not human by a technicality. But they occupied bodies, very valuable bodies, and not one of those two thousand bodies on his roster was visible.

They must have sealed off,
he thought.
They’re buttoned
up in there, and either Hodge doesn’t know it or he’s throwing out a smoke screen.

More than anything, this was what Commander Noas wanted to believe. If either possibility was true, then the Master may be alive. The commander had to admit another line of thought.

What if something got loose with the Master there?
he wondered.
What if the dam was our own cover for a contamination incident?

Contamination would mean, at minimum, a six-month shutdown for inspections, which might lead to further delays. But his real worry centered on the uncomfortable visibility of this vital facility when their camouflage had been working so well.

If the problem was only sabotage and the dam, then shutdown time would be cut from six months to the month that it might take to dig them out of there. Some value could be gleaned from exposing the Catholic terrorists. ViraVax out of commission for six months, however, meant that some very important Children of Eden would not get their prepaid replacement organs. It meant that the Catholic, the Mormon and the infidel farmers squeezed in two growing seasons where they should have none—a delicate reversal that could offer hope to the hopeless.

With hope comes resistance.

And with resistance came the Jesus Rangers, and the inevitable casualties among his troops. David Noas would gladly sacrifice a dozen dams if it meant keeping ViraVax on-line.

Through his Sidekick Noas requested copies of any ViraVax transmissions from the weeks immediately prior to the incident, as well as aerial footage of the dam. The commander turned back to Hodge’s soporific non-briefing.

“This is the time that we must act,” Hodge said. “We must become the terrible swift sword of our own deliverance, and we must strike down the forces that murdered our Master and laid waste his holy work. Our flaming sword must smite the faithless vermin and these godless idolators from the face of the earth. The Garden of Eden is at hand, and the fruits thereof shall be plucked by the faithful. Are you faithful?”

The entire chamber shook with a resounding “Yes!”

“Shall we take back the Garden from those who defiled it?”

“Yes!”

Commander Noas did not like this turn of events. Security was already on yellow alert, no other incidents had been reported and so far, no media. The deaths of the Vice-President and the President’s husband occupied the secular press completely.

A sudden rush of Gardeners to arms in the wake of the Master’s death would guarantee total confusion among their own people. If their blood-lust outraced their selection of a leader, then the life’s work of thousands of people would be for nothing.

Coupled with a contamination situation in Costa Brava, the Children of Eden would be fragmented, paralyzed and hunted down as anathema all over the globe. This was not what David Noas had worked towards his whole life. This was not what the Master wanted. If Hodge knew contamination to be a fact, then he was way out of line by not disclosing it here.

Noas keyed the command channel on his Sidekick and whispered, “Shut that idiot down!”

The first order of business was selection of a new Master, and it would be that Master who would give the orders. The danger, if any, was confined to Costa Brava, and it was the commander’s job to see that it stayed there. Hodge usurped the Master’s role and, with no explanation or by-your-leave, took command of the Sanhedrin under the pretext of delivering information. The Children of Eden had never suffered the death of a Master before, and Hodge, who did not even rate a seat in Chambers, was taking full advantage of the vulnerability of this tragic moment.

As any rising young shark might.

And why this sudden blood-lust from Hodge the Hedgehog? Sending the faithful willy-nilly into the streets was pouring gasoline on the fire. They needed to reaffirm their unity and, possibly, tap their reserves. Besides, orders to the faithful were not the place of someone like Hodge, who rated neither rank nor a seat in Chambers.

Hodge’s image froze on the dozen wall-screens.

The Commander addressed Hodge in a calm, reasoned voice.

“This briefing is appropriate to Special Ops, Mr. Hodge. You will be transferred to the Ready Room where you can complete your report to Sergeant Tekel and Apprentice Bonyon. Our immediate duty is clear: we must select a Master who will consider your data and act accordingly.”

The commander immediately switched his Sidekick back to command channel and whispered to Bonyon, “Was the dam a cover for a contamination? If so, what’s our risk up here?”

The hubbub in Chambers indicated plenty of approval of Hodge’s plan from both Disciples and Acolytes.

“Very well, Commander,” Hodge said.
 

His nose rose when he spoke, and the commander detected the slightest sniff of annoyance that would not be lost in transmission to the others.

“Our people must not let this heinous act go unpunished. . . .”

“Mr. Hodge!” The commander’s voice boomed across the sound system and startled the Sanhedrin members. “You are out of line! I’ll speak to you privately. Switch to command channel.”

The commander stood to address the Sanhedrin and quieted the heated arguments in Chambers with a lift of his hand. He rubbed the throbbing burn scar on his forehead and sighed.

“We must see to some practical matters before getting on with our duty. First, upgrade to red alert to secure the gas station chain, refineries, power stations, reservoirs and communications systems. No mere units on these assignments! Go to communications on our satlinks, command channels only. Reserves, report to your units. All merc and gang teams, stand by for assault assignments. The new Master will decide whether we’ll hibernate or not, and whether we have a fight on our hands. Hodge, scramble your transmission to the Ready Room
now!”

Commander Noas snatched a loaf of ritual bread and a pitcher of water from the table, turned on his heel and left Chambers. When he opened the Ready Room door, the commander saw that Hodge continued his amateur theatrics on the peel. Hodge put on his martyr face for a couple of beats, then addressed the chamber.

“We, the faithful, await your selection of the new Master. Go with God.”

Hodge left them with a last glimpse of the destruction in Costa Brava before he blanked their screens—destruction that included a downed Mongoose
upstream
from the dam.

What do you want, Hodge?
Noas wondered.
Where were you when that little dam blew?

Chapter 13

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and house will fall upon house.

—Jesus

President Claudia Kay O’Connor thought that the long briefing-room table seemed gargantuan with only Secretary Mandell and Senator Myers to take up one end of it. One Secret Service agent stood beside the door, practicing her best blankface. President O’Connor initiated the third replay of the black box recording of the plane crash that killed her husband and the Vice-President. Myers and Mandell fidgeted with their ties, their cuffs and their paperwork as they sat, unspeaking, before the grisly record of the crash of
Eagle Two.

The newshounds reported that a barrage of shoulder-fired missiles had destroyed
Eagle Two
on takeoff from National. For the moment, the President didn’t dissuade them of that notion. The D.C. chapter of the Crack Head Slinks took the credit, though she could see for herself how the plane caught fire. She ordered an urban tactical team in to teach the Slinks a lesson in humility.

If they want the credit, they can take the heat,
she thought.

The Slinks had done her one favor; they bought her some time. Precious time for the President and her advisors to figure out what did happen to her husband.

One New York daily insisted that her marriage was rocky and that this crash was not coincidence, but convenience. That paper was now suffering a massive audit by the IRS, Human Services, Immigration and the FCC.

The peel in front of President O’Connor displayed split-screen images of
Eagle Two’s
instruments, the pilot and copilot at their controls, and the plush office of the Vice-President in the aft compartment. Her husband, Mark, conferred with the Vice-President regarding some changes in the day’s schedule. Three reporters, three Secret Service agents, a press liaison and The Football released their restraints and began the inevitable jockeying towards, and interference for, the Vice-President. Then, for the third time today, President Claudia Kay O’Connor watched her husband die.

The black box showed clearly what the FAA team, the FBI and the DIA had been unwilling to believe: Mark had collapsed, died and then
burst into flame
on the lamb’s-wool carpet of
Eagle Two.

Upon Mark O’Connor’s sudden collapse, everyone rushed to his side and hunched over him. One Secret Service agent—Lampard, from her own team—doubled as the medical officer, and he stretched Mark out on the deck onto his back. The President couldn’t see what happened next, with everyone in the way, but Lampard jumped back suddenly and shoved the Vice-President away. The other two agents immediately pulled the Vice-President into the cockpit and locked the cabin door behind them as Lampard fought a hopeless battle over Mark’s bubbling, smoking body with only his coat and a small fire extinguisher.

The rest of the passengers fled to the forward cabin and hunched against the bulkhead, details of their babble indistinguishable on the unprocessed tape. One reporter had second thoughts, and returned to the agent’s side to try to help control the hot, oily fire that had burst out from her husband’s body.

The pilot and copilot hunched over their controls, crowded tight with three extra bodies in that cockpit. The pilot practiced the same blankface that the Secret Service agents wore, only his eyes betraying the initial widenings of fear.

The pilot’s voice was tight but clear.

“Activating fire suppression.”

The President watched a fine foam splatter the aft cabin, but nothing more was visible through that thick, roiling smoke. A weak thumping of fists stopped completely.

President O’Connor kept looking for something that would explain what had happened to her husband. As a young girl she had read tabloid accounts of spontaneous human combustion, but even now, after watching her husband burn up from the inside, she could not bring herself to believe it.

Somebody did this to him,
she thought.
They can run, but they can’t hide,

More alarms lit up the cockpit instrument panel.

“No gear, port side. No nose gear,” the pilot recited, still as calm as ice.

The wings waggled up and down, then wallowed in a great seesaw as the pilot fought the throttles and reversers, trying to level off and straighten out for touchdown. The two Secret Service agents pushed the Vice-President to the deck and covered him with their bodies as the port wingtip caught the quack grass at the edge of the taxiway.

“Shit!” was the last word from the cockpit.

The onboard computer display lasted another instant. It showed the line drawing of an airplane touching down nearly sideways. The port wing acted as a great lever to flip the fuselage onto its top.

The rest of the tape was blank. The President’s memory accommodated her when it rolled recent news footage of the crash. A full load of fuel spewed out of the mangled tanks; the fuselage flattened down to the baggage compartment and spun at nearly two hundred miles an hour across the taxiway and into two commuter planes on the terminal side of Runway One.

Secretary Mandell reached out and shut down the display when the President moved to replay the scene again.

“We’ve seen enough, Ms. President,” he said. “Tormenting yourself serves no purpose.”

She leaned her forehead on her folded hands for a moment, then sat up, slowly, not looking at either of the older men.

“You say a virus did this?”

“Yes. Or something like it. Probably in his bottled water.”

“And the Gardeners are behind this?”

“Absolutely, Ms. President.”

“How can that be?” she asked. “Those two communities that burned up, the ones Mark visited, they were Gardener communities. Who would do something like this to their own people?”

“Could be a takeover move,” Myers said. “Their top preacher, Casey, died yesterday in a flood in Costa Brava.”

“Mark was so healthy,” she said. “He was a good Catholic, but he always bought Gardener products because . . . because they’re supposed to be so
healthy
. . . .”

She stopped herself from crying with a sudden, deep breath that she let out slowly. She waved aside the offer of a handkerchief from Senator Myers.

“It was probably meant for you, Ms. President,” Mandell said. “Or that you would be with him when it happened.”

“Is it contagious?”

Senator Myers cleared his throat.

“We don’t know that for sure, Ms. President. We’re monitoring the surviving rescue personnel. . . .”

“What
do
you know for sure, Mr. Myers?”

The senator cleared his throat again, and massaged his neck as though that would make the telling easier.

“The Secretary’s son-in-law, a virologist, was killed in Costa Brava by an Artificial Viral Agent. The man went berserk first. He killed several people and attacked his own wife. She shot him, then he burned up. It was part of a ViraVax project—he worked there. DIA speculates he stumbled onto something over his head, and they used him as a guinea pig.”

“And when was this, Senator?”

The President’s brown eyes flashed with the fire she was famous for, and the senator cleared his throat again. Secretary Mandell interrupted and answered for him.

“Ash Wednesday,” he said. “Almost six weeks ago. This was an intelligence matter, and it was handled through channels. . . .”

“It was
not handled,”
the President snapped, and slapped the tabletop. “It was
buried,
or I’d know about it.”

She pushed her chair back from the table in disgust.

“Six weeks
we’ve lost here, gentlemen, because someone’s asleep at the switch or pulling a fast one. This is one more example of how your precious little men’s club has got this country’s dick in a wringer. Now you tell me, gentlemen, and you tell me everything. Exactly how big is this wringer?”

“Very big, Ms. President,” Secretary Mandell admitted. “When my son-in-law died it was an isolated incident, confined to the ViraVax facility in Costa Brava. His hero was Jonas Salk, so when the official report said he’d experimented on himself, we believed it and concurred with the DIA’s cover story. Officials in various agencies had conflicting orders on how this was to be handled. DIA had jurisdiction, and personnel overseeing that facility reassured us that this was an isolated, sterile incident.”

“Trenton Solaris is director for that region, correct?”

“That’s correct, Ms. President.”

“Relieve him and get his ass up here, pronto. That officious little bastard!”

“ViraVax, the facility that produced this . . . thing, was wiped out by a flood last night. That’s where the Master Gardener died. Solaris is overseeing the proper procedures now for sealing off….”

“He didn’t do such a hot job of overseeing procedures in the past,” the President challenged. “What makes you think he’s doing the right thing now? Get somebody in there who can, or I’m sending you down there to handle things personally. Now, ViraVax is a subsidiary of the Children of Eden’s holdings, correct?”

“That’s right, Ms. President. And they’ve given us the best biologics for the best price, with nothing whatsoever to lead us to doubt either their judgment or their caution.”

“They’re mercenaries; their loyalties are with their church or money. So, where do we stand now? And how do we get the bastards who killed my husband and the Vice-President and the hundred and ten innocent people at National Airport?”

Secretary of State Mandell unclipped several sheaves of paper from a stack in front of him and fanned them like a poker hand across the tabletop.

“Other people are dying,” he said. “Specifically, other Gardener facilities. They’ve been going up in flames all night.”

Secretary Mandell told her the ViraVax story, as he had learned it from Toledo and the others, and related how his own granddaughter had been kidnapped in the plot.

“This looks like poisoning, not contagion,” O’Connor said. “Talk to Atlanta and see if those kids can be quarantined someplace more comfortable. But I want these people kept together and under guard. Give them whatever they need to continue their work on this bug. They’re closest to it; maybe they can get us some answers.”

“The virologist, Dr. Chang, says that she needs a quality lab. . . .”

The President raised a hand to stop him.

“Nobody goes anywhere yet,” she said. “Let’s keep all exposures together, and out of this country. They can be isolated without being in solitary. We’ll see what else this thing might do before we bring them up here. Seal off all of the incident sites, troops in full bio gear.”

“Surgeon General and the CDC director flew in from Atlanta, and they’re reviewing the tissue samples now.”

“Tissue samples,” the President said, and shook her head.

Nothing of her husband had been recovered. She would bury an empty box for the sake of the country. She would not weep over an empty box, and once again the press would call her “The Ice Queen” without knowing shit about her or her feelings.

Claudia O’Connor could see already how it would be. She would kneel on a blanket on the grass, within her shield of Secret Service agents, and place a rose bouquet atop her husband’s empty coffin. The usual hundreds of shutters would click like mad insects and the reporters would trample the cemetery lawn into mud without a second thought.

The President loved her husband, in spite of what the press said. They were seldom together because he worked one side of the country while she worked another.

Mark O’Connor had been with the Defense Intelligence Agency for nearly twenty years. He had been aboard
Eagle Two
to assist the Vice-President on a couple of campaign hops and a disaster review. They knew about the embassy bombing in Costa Brava just before . . .

“Ms. President?”

The Secretary of State nudged her back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was already thinking about the funeral.”

For a moment a very busy room got very quiet.

“Yes,” she said, more to herself than anyone, “the dead will keep. Please, let’s adjourn to the more comfortable furniture. An empty table emphasizes loss.”

Her handler led them to the antechamber set up in the old boys’ cigar-and-whiskey days for late-night political head-to-heads. Smoking was illegal in federal buildings, but Claudia had lit up more than one stogy in there to seal a deal.
 

They settled into stressed leather comfort before a low table with trays of coffee, tea, nutless health bars and fruit.
 

Senator Myers set down his cup of unsipped coffee and continued.

“Your husband’s initial field work was in Costa Brava before it was Costa Brava. His roommate at the Academy, and his partner down there, was Colonel Rico Toledo.”

“President Garcia claims that Toledo’s the one-man show who pulled the plug on ViraVax,” Mandell said. “Says it’s a smoke screen for a coup. He’s asking me for troops and for Toledo’s head.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s bullshit,” Mandell said. “They kidnapped his son and my granddaughter, Lord only knows what for, and he went in to get them. A shipment of this stuff could have gone to a warehouse in Mexico City. We’ve sent a contract team in to secure it.”

“You want me to believe Toledo’s a good guy. Why?”

“President Garcia’s a Gardener,” Mandell said. “ViraVax put him in the hot seat, and without them he’ll cook for sure. He’s running scared. Toledo risked his life to save my granddaughter, and a lot of other people,” he added. “That’s good enough for me.”

It always comes down to family,
the President thought.

And now she had none.

Claudia Kay had met Mark O’Connor at a shooting range outside Arlington, a mere five miles from where his headstone would mark an empty grave. She was the most decorated police officer in Washington State history, which had helped her win a controversial bid to the House of Representatives. Mark had been reassigned stateside and was shooting in the lane next to her that night. He was angry at his reassignment, in spite of the promotion, and fired his Galil 10mm so fast and furious that it got too hot to hold. Claudia Kay O’Connor became the first U.S. President in modern history to carry her own sidearm.