Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (116 page)

His neighbor only needed one look. “Tracks.”

“What?”

“They're rotating the tires, like. Tracks wear out, and you put new ones on. The old ones go into the shop to be worked on, replacing pads and stuff,” the former soldier explained. “It's no big deal.”

Closer examination showed how it was done. The new tracks were laid in front of the old ones. The old ones were then disconnected, and attached to the new, and the tank, its motor running, simply drove forward, the sprocket wheel pulling the new track in place over the road wheels. It required several men and was hot, heavy work, but it could be done by a well-trained tank crew in about an hour under ideal conditions, which, the ex-soldier explained, these were. Essentially, the tank drove onto the new tracks.

“I never knew how they did that.”

“Beats having to jack the sumbitch off the ground.”

“What's a track good for?”

“On one of these, cross-country in a desert? Oh, call it a thousand miles, maybe a little less.”

S
URE ENOUGH, THE
two couches in Air Force One's forward cabin folded out to make beds. After dismissing his staff, Ryan hung up his clothes and lay down. Clean sheets and everything, and he was weary enough that he didn't mind being on an airplane. Flight time to Washington was four and a half hours, and then he'd be able to sleep some more in his own-bed. Unlike normal red-eye travelers, he might even be able to do some useful work the next day.

In the big cabin, aft, the reporters were doing the same, having decided to leave the issue of Plumber's astounding revelation to the next day. They had no choice in the matter; a story of this magnitude was handled at least at the assistant managing editor level. Many of the print journalists were dreaming about the editorials that would appear in the papers. The TV reporters were trying not to cringe at what this would mean to their credibility.

In between were the President's staff members. They were all smiles, or nearly so.

“Well, I finally saw his temper,” Arnie told Callie Weston. “Big-time.”

“And I bet he saw yours, too.”

“And mine won.” Arnie sipped at his drink. “You know, the way things are going, I think we have a pretty good President here.”

“He hates it.” Weston had one of her own.

Arnie van Damm didn't care: “Fabulous speeches, Callie.”

“There's such an engaging way about how he delivers them,” she thought. “Every time, he starts off tight, embarrassed, and then the teacher in him takes over, and he really gets into it. He doesn't even know it, either.”

“Honesty. It really does come out, doesn't it?” Arnie paused. “There's going to be a memorial service for the dead agents.”

“I'm already thinking about it,” Weston assured him. “What are you going to do about Kealty?”

“I'm thinking about that. We're going to sink that bastard once and for all.”

B
ADRAYN WAS BACK
on his computer, checking the proper Internet sites. Still nothing. In another day he might start worrying, though it wasn't really his problem if nothing happened, was it? Everything he'd done had gone perfectly.

P
ATIENT
Z
ERO OPENED
her eyes, which got everyone's attention. Her temperature was down to 101.6, entirely due to the cold packs that now surrounded her body like a fish in the market. The combination of pain and exhaustion was plain on her face. In that way, she looked like a patient with advanced AIDS, a disease with which the physician was all too familiar.

“Hello, I'm Dr. Klein,” the professor told her from behind his mask. “You had us a little worried there for a minute, but things are under control now.”

“Hurts,” she said.

“I know, and we're going to help you with that, but I need to ask you a few questions. Can you help me with a few things?” Klein asked.

“Okay.”

“Have you been doing any traveling lately?”

“What do you mean?” Every word she spoke drew down on her energy reserves.

“Have you been out of the country?”

“No. Flew to Kansas City . . . ten days ago, that's all. Day trip,” she added.

“Okay.” It wasn't. “Have you had any contact with someone who's been out of the country?”

“No.” She tried to shake her head. It moved maybe a quarter inch.

“Forgive me, but I have to ask this. Do you have any ongoing sexual relationships at the moment?”

That question shook her. “AIDS?” she gasped, thinking that was the worst thing she might have.

Klein shook his head emphatically. “No, definitely not. Please don't worry about that.”

“Divorced,” the patient said. “Just a few months. No new . . . men in my life yet.”

“Well, as pretty as you are, that'll have to change soon,” Klein observed, trying to get a smile out of her. “What do you do at Sears?”

“Housewares, buyer. Just had . . . big show . . . McCormick Center . . . lots of paperwork, orders and things.”

This was going nowhere. Klein tried a few more questions. They led nowhere. He turned and pointed to the nurse.

“Okay, we're going to do something about the pain now,” the professor told her. He stepped away so as not to crowd the nurse when she started the morphine on the IV tree. “This will start working in a few seconds, okay? I'll be back soon.”

Quinn was waiting out in the hall with a uniformed police officer, a checkerboard band around his cap.

“Doc, what's the story?” the cop asked.

“The patient has something very serious, possibly very contagious. I need to look over her apartment.”

“That's not really legal, you know. You're supposed to go to a judge and get—”

“Officer, there's no time for that. We have her keys. We could just break in, but I want you there so that you can say we didn't do anything wrong.” And besides, if she had a burglar alarm, it wouldn't do for them to be arrested. “There's no time to waste. This woman is very sick.”

“Okay, my car is outside.” The cop pointed and the doctors followed.

“Get the fax off to Atlanta?” Quinn asked. Klein shook his head.

“Let's look at her place first.” He decided not to wear a coat. It was cold outside, and the temperature would be very inhospitable to the virus in the unlikely event that it had somehow gotten on his scrubs. Reason told him that there was no real danger here. He'd never encountered Ebola clinically, but he knew as much about it as any man could. It was regrettably normal for people to show up with diseases whose presence they could not explain. Most of the time, careful investigation would reveal how it had been contracted, but not always. Even with AIDS, there was the handful of unexplained cases. But only a handful, and you didn't start with one of those as your Index Case. Professor Klein shivered when he got outside. The temperature was in the low thirties, with a north wind blowing down off Lake Michigan. But that wasn't the reason for his shaking.

P
RICE OPENED THE
door to the nose cabin. The lights were off except for a few faint indirect ones. The President was lying on his back and snoring loudly enough to be heard over the whining drone of the engines. She had to resist the temptation to tiptoe in and cover him with a blanket. Instead, she smiled and closed the door.

“Maybe there is such a thing as justice, Jeff,” she observed to Agent Raman.

“The newsie thing, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't bet on it,” the other agent said.

They looked around. Finally everyone was asleep, even the chief of staff. Topside, the flight crew was doing their job, along with the other USAF personnel, and it really was like a red-eye flight back to the East Coast, as Air Force One passed over central Illinois. The two agents moved back to their seating area. Three members of the Detail were playing cards, quietly. Others were reading or dozing.

An Air Force sergeant came down the circular steps, holding a folder.

“F
LASH
-traffic for the Boss,” she announced.

“Is it that important? We get into Andrews in about ninety minutes.”

“I just take 'em off the fax machine,” the sergeant pointed out.

“Okay.” Price took the message and headed aft. To where Ben Goodley was. It was his job to be around to tell the President what he needed to know about the important happenings in the world—or, in this case, to evaluate the importance of a message. Price shook the man's shoulder. The national intelligence officer opened one eye.

“Yeah?”

“Do we wake the Boss for this?”

The intelligence specialist scanned it and shook his head. “It can wait. Adler knows what he's doing, and there's a working group at State for this.” He turned back into his seat without another word.

“D
ON
'
T TOUCH ANYTHING
,” Klein told the policeman. “Best for you to stand right by the door, but if you want to follow us around, don't touch a thing. Wait.” The physician reached into the plastic trash bag he'd brought along, and pulled out a surgical mask in a sterile container. “Put this on, okay?”

“Anything you say, Doc.”

Klein handed over the house key. The police officer opened the door. It turned out that there was an alarm system. The control panel was just inside the door, but not turned on. The two physicians put on their own masks and donned latex gloves. First, they turned on all the lights.

“What are we looking for?” Quinn asked.

Klein was already looking. No cat or dog had come to note their arrival. He saw no bird cages—part of him had hoped for a pet monkey, but somehow he knew that wasn't in the cards. Ebola didn't seem to like monkeys very much, anyway. It killed them with all the alacrity it applied to human victims. Plants, then, he thought. Wouldn't it be odd if Ebola's host was something other than an animal? That would be a first of sorts.

There were plants, but nothing exotic. They stood in the center of the living room, not touching anything with their gloved hands or even with their green-trousered legs, as they turned around slowly, looking.

“I don't see anything,” Quinn reported.

“Neither do I. Kitchen.”

There were some more plants there, two that looked like herbs in small pots. Klein didn't recognize their type and decided to lift them.

“Wait. Here,” Quinn said, opening a drawer and finding freezer bags. The plants went into those bags, which the younger physician sealed carefully. Klein opened the refrigerator. Nothing unusual there. The same was true of the freezer. He'd thought it possible that some exotic food product . . . but, no. Everything the patient ate was typically American.

The bedroom was a bedroom and nothing more. No plants there, they saw.

“Some article of clothing? Leather?” Quinn asked. “Anthrax can—”

“Ebola can't. It's too delicate. We know the organism we're dealing with. It can't survive in this environment. It just can't,” the professor insisted. They didn't know much about the little bastard, but one of the things they did at CDC was to establish the environmental parameters, how long the virus could survive in a whole series of conditions. Chicago at this time of year was as inhospitable to that sort of virus as a blast furnace. Orlando, some place in the South, maybe. But Chicago? “We got nothing,” he concluded in frustration.

“Maybe the plants?”

“You know how hard it is to get a plant through customs?”

“I've never tried.”

“I have, tried to bring some wild orchids back from Venezuela once . . .” He looked around some more. “There's nothing here, Joe.”

“Is her prognosis as bad as—”

“Yeah.” A pair of gloved hands rubbed against the scrub pants. Inside the latex rubber, his hands were sweating now. “If we can't determine where it came from . . . if we can't explain it . . .” He looked at his younger, taller colleague. “I have to get back. I want to take another look at that structure.”

“H
ELLO
,” G
US
L
ORENZ
said. He checked his clock. What the hell?

“Gus?” the voice asked.

“Yes, who's this?”

“Mark Klein in Chicago.”

“Something wrong?” Lorenz asked groggily. The reply opened his eyes all the way.

“I think—no, Gus, I know I have an Ebola case up here.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I have the crook. I micrographed it myself. It's the Shepherd's Crook, and no mistake, Gus. I wish it were.”

“Where's he been?”

“It's a she, and she hasn't been anywhere special.” Klein summarized what he knew in less than a minute. “There is no immediately apparent explanation for this.”

Lorenz could have objected that this was not possible, but the medical community is an intimate one at its higher levels; he knew Mark Klein was a full professor at one of the world's finest medical schools. “Just one case?”

“They all start with one, Gus,” Klein reminded his friend. A thousand miles away, Lorenz swung his legs off the bed and onto the floor.

“Okay. I need a specimen.”

“I have a courier on the way to O'Hare now. He'll catch the first flight down. I can e-mail you the micrographs right now.”

“Give me about forty minutes to get in.”

“Gus?”

“Yes?”

“Is there anything on the treatment side that I don't know? We have a very sick patient here,” Klein said, hoping that for once maybe he wasn't fully up to speed on something in his field.

“ 'Fraid not, Mark. Nothing new that I know about.”

“Damn. Okay, we'll do what we can here. Call me when you get there. I'm in my office.”

Lorenz went into the bathroom and ran some water to splash in his face, proving to himself that this wasn't a dream. No, he thought. Nightmare.

T
HIS PRESIDENTIAL PERK
was one even the press respected. Ryan walked down the steps first, saluted the USAF sergeant at the bottom, and walked the fifty yards to the helicopter. Inside, he promptly buckled his belt and went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later he was roused from his seat again, walked down another set of stairs, saluted a Marine this time, and headed into the White House. Ten minutes after that, he was in a sleeping place that didn't move.

“Good trip?” Cathy asked, one eye partly open.