Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (130 page)

“End of the week, at best,” F
ORCE
C
OM
replied. “I have an officer on it.”

“I got the 366th Wing at Mountain Home. They're all clean,” Air Combat Command reported. “We have the F-16 wing in Israel. My European units are being held hostage, though, all of them.”

“Airplanes are nice, Paul,” F
ORCE
C
OM
said. “So are ships, but we need soldiers over there in one big fucking hurry.”

“Cut warning orders to Fort Irwin,” Jackson said. “I'll have the SecDef authorize their release within the hour.”

“Done.”

“M
OSCOW
?” C
HAVEZ ASKED
. “Jesu Cristo, we are getting around.”

“Ours is not to reason why.”

“Yeah, I know the second part, Mr. C. If we're going to the right place, I'll take that chance.”

“Your carriage awaits, gents,” Clayton said. “The blue suits are turning the airplane over for you.”

“Yeah, that reminds me.” Clark pulled the uniform shirt out of the closet. In a minute, he was a colonel again. Five minutes after that, they were off for the airport, soon to leave the Sudan to the ministrations of Frank Clayton and memories of “Chinese” Gordon.

T
HERE WAS AN
aspect of schadenfreude about it. O'Day assembled a team of FBI agents to go over the personnel packets of every Secret Service agent who got close to the President, both the plainclothes and Uniformed Division officers. There were quite a few. Ordinarily some would have been tossed for obvious no-hit indicators—a name like O'Connor, for example—but this case was too important for that, and every file had to be examined in full before it could be set aside. This job he left to others. Another team was examining something not widely known. There was a computerized record of every telephone call made in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Legal in a strict sense, the program, had it extended farther afield, would have excited Big Brother-ish outrage from even the most extreme law-enforcement hawk, but the President lived in Washington, and America had lost Presidents there. It was almost too much to hope for. By definition, a conspirator in the Secret Service would be an expert on security measures. Their target, if there was one, would be one of the boys. He might stand out in professional excellence—you had to, in order to make the Detail—but nothing else. He'd fit in. He'd have a good service reputation. He'd tell jokes, bet on ballgames, have a beer at the local hangout—he'd be just like all the others who would willingly guard the life of the President as courageously as Don Russell had done, O'Day knew, and part of him hated the rest of him for having to treat them like suspects in a criminal investigation. It wasn't supposed to be this way. But then, what was?

D
IGGS CALLED BOTH
colonels to his office to give them the news: “We have warning orders to deploy overseas.”

“Who?” Eddington asked.

“Both of your units,” the general answered.

“Where to, sir?” Hamm asked next.

“Saudi. We've both been there and done that before, Al, and here's your chance, Colonel Eddington.”

“Why?” the Guardsman asked.

“They haven't said yet. I have background information coming into the fax machine now. All they told me over the phone was that the UIR is getting frisky. The 10th is mating up with their POMCUS gear right now—”

“B
UFFALO
F
ORWARD
?” Hamm asked. “No warning?”

“Correct, Al.”

“Is this related to the epidemic?” Eddington asked.

Diggs shook his head. “Nobody's told me anything about that.”

I
T HAD TO
be done in Federal District Court in Baltimore. Edward J. Kealty filed a suit naming John Patrick Ryan as defendant. The substance of the complaint was that the former wanted to cross a state line, and the latter wouldn't let him. The filing asked for summary judgment, the vacating of the executive order of the President (strangely, the complaint named Ryan as President of the United States) immediately. Kealty figured that he'd win this one. The Constitution was on his side, and he'd chosen the judge with care.

T
HE SPECIAL NATIONAL
Intelligence Estimate was now complete, and irrelevant. The intentions of the United Islamic Republic were totally clear. The trick now was to do something about them, but that was not, strictly speaking, an intelligence function.

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS

T
HEY DIDN'T SEE IT COMING, AND
it did get their attention. By dawn the next day, all three ground squadrons of the 10th Cavalry were fully deployed, while the fourth squadron, composed of attack helicopters, needed one more day to get up to speed. Kuwaiti regular officers—their standing army was still relatively small, with the ranks fleshed out by enthusiastic reservists—greeted their American counterparts with waving swords and embraces in front of the cameras, and serious, quiet conversation in the command tents. For his part, Colonel Magruder arranged for one of his squadrons to assemble in parade formation with standards flying. It was good for everyone's morale, and the fifty-two tanks massed together looked like the fist of an angry god. The UIR intelligence service expected something to happen, but not this, and not this fast.

“What is this?” Daryaei demanded, allowing his deadly rage to show for once. Ordinarily, it was enough that people knew it was hidden there, somewhere.

“It's a sham.” After the initial shock, his chief of intelligence had taken the time to get a feel for the reality of the situation. “That is a regiment. Each of the six divisions in the Army of God has three—in two cases, four—brigades. And so, we are twenty to their one. Did you expect that the Americans would not respond at all? That is unrealistic. But here we see they have responded. With one regiment, moved in from Israel, and sent in the wrong place. With this they intend to frighten us.”

“Go on.” The dark eyes softened slightly, merely simmering rather than dangerously hostile.

“America cannot deploy its divisions from Europe. They are contaminated. The same is true of their heavy divisions in America. So we will face the Saudis first of all. It will be a great battle, which we shall win. The rump states will surrender to us, or be crushed—and then Kuwait will stand alone, at the top of the Gulf, with its own forces and this American regiment, and then we shall see about that. They probably expect us to invade Kuwait first. We will not repeat that error, will we?”

“And if they reinforce the Saudis?”

“Again, they have the equipment for but one brigade in the Kingdom. The second is afloat. You talked to India about that, did you not?” It was so normal that he might have predicted it, the chief UIR spook thought behind outwardly cowed eyes. They always got nervous just before things started, as though expecting everyone to follow the script they'd written. The enemy was the enemy. He didn't always cooperate. “And I doubt they have the troops to move. Aircraft, perhaps, but there is no carrier within ten thousand kilometers, and aircraft, though they are an annoyance, can neither take nor hold ground.”

“Thank you for making that clear.” The old man's mood softened.

“A
T LAST WE
meet, Comrade Colonel,” Golovko said to the CIA officer.

Clark had always wondered if he'd see the inside of KGB headquarters. He'd never quite expected to be offered drinks there in the Chairman's office. Early in the morning or not, he took a slug of the Starka-brand vodka. “Your hospitality is not what I was trained to expect, Comrade Chairman.”

“We don't do that here anymore. Lefortovo Prison is more convenient.” He paused, set down his glass, and switched back to tea. A drink with the man was mandatory, but it was early in the day. “I must ask. Was it you who brought Madam Gerasimov and the girl out?”

Clark nodded. There was nothing to be gained from lying to the man. “Yes, that was me.”

“You are welcome to all three of them, Ivan . . . your father's name?”

“Timothy. I am Ivan Timofeyevich, Sergey Niko-lay'ch.”

“Ah.” Golovko had a good laugh. “As hard as the Cold War was, my friend, it is good now, at the end of it, to see old enemies. Fifty years from now, when all of us are dead, historians will compare CIA records with ours, and they will decide who won the intelligence war. Have you any idea what they will decide?”

“You forget, I was a foot soldier, not a commander, for most of it.”

“Our Major Scherenko was impressed with you and your young partner here. Your rescue of Koga was impressive. And now we will work together again. Have you been briefed in?”

For Chavez, who'd come to manhood watching Rambo movies, and whose early Army training had taught him to expect going head-to-head with the Soviets at any time, it was an experience which he wanted to ascribe to jet lag, though both CIA officers had noted how empty the corridors were for their passage. There was no sense letting them see faces they might remember in some other time and some other place.

“No, mainly we've been gathering information.”

Golovko hit a button on his desk. “Is Bondarenko here?” A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing a senior Russian general officer.

Both Americans stood. Clark read the medals and gave the man a hard look. Bondarenko did the same. The handshakes exchanged were wary, curious, and strangely warm. They were of an age, raised in one, growing into another.

“Gennady Iosefovich is chief of operations. Ivan Timofeyevich is a CIA spy,” the Chairman explained. “As is his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?”

“Yes, that is certain.”

“Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?”

“Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait,” Bondarenko said. “They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions southeast of Baghdad will be ready to move in three days, four at the most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we will see what their plan is.”

“Any thoughts?”

“We have no more intelligence on this than you do,” Golovko said. “Regrettably, most of our assets in the area have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime have left the country.”

“The high command of the army is Iranian, many were trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they survived the purges,” Bondarenko said. “We have dossiers on many of them, and these are being transmitted to the Pentagon.”

“That's very cordial of you.”

“You bet,” Ding observed. “If they dust us off, next they come north.”

“Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual interests,” Golovko agreed.

“If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then we will have to deal with him in three years,” Bondarenko said seriously. “Better today, I think, for all of us.”

“We have offered our support to Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we will see what we can do.”

S
OME WOULD LAST
longer than others. Some would last less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms. Doctors interviewing her determined that she'd probably contracted the disease by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any intimate contact, because he'd felt too ill even to kiss her after returning from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data, it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information, however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief because the man's condition toward the end was both hopeless and agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer in coming.

The same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while unconscious with his massive dose of painkillers. This, too, came as something of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the country's horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be next.

It was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted, but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word death was being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens, in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure and relaxation, followed by the somber words of reporters who were themselves becoming as familiar as family members—it all entered the public consciousness with an immediacy that was as new and different as it was horrid. It was no longer the sort of nightmare from which one awoke. It was one which went on and on, seeming to grow, like the child's dream in which a black cloud entered a room, growing and growing, approaching despite all attempts at evasion, and you knew that if it touched you, you were lost.

Grumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived on telephones now. Long-distance lines were jammed with calls to ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T, MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use. There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one. There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being.

Reporters, still moving around with their mobile cameras, reported on all that, and in doing so, they both increased the degree of tension, and contributed to its solution.

“I
T
'
S WORKING
,” G
ENERAL
Pickett said over the phone to his former subordinate in Baltimore.

“Where are you, John?” Alexandre asked.

“Dallas. It's working, Colonel. I need you to do something.”

“What's that?”

“Stop playing practitioner. You have residents to do that. I have a working group at Walter Reed. Get the hell over there. You're too big an asset on the theoretical side to waste in a Racal suit doing sticks, Alex.”

“John, this is my department now, and I have to lead my troops.” It was a lesson well remembered from his time in green suits.

“Fine, your people know you care, Colonel. Now you can put the damned rifle down and start thinking like a goddamned commander. This battle's not going to be won in hospitals, is it?” Pickett asked more reasonably. “I have transport waiting for you. There should be a Hummer downstairs to bring you into Reed. Want me to reactivate you and make it an order?”

And he could do that, Alexandre knew. “Give me half an hour.” The associate professor hung up the phone and looked down the corridor. Another body bag was being carried out of a room by some orderlies in plastic suits. There was a pride in being here. Even though he was losing patients and would lose more, he was here, being a doctor, doing his best, showing his staff that, yes, he was one of them, ministering to the sick, taking his chances in accordance with the oath he'd sworn at the age of twenty-six. When this was over, the entire team would look back on this with a feeling of solidarity. As horrible as it had been, they'd done the job—

“Damn,” he swore. John Pickett was right. The battle was being fought here, but it wouldn't be won here. He told his chief assistant that he was heading down to the next floor, which was being run by Dean James.

There was an interesting case there. Female, thirty-nine, admitted two days earlier. Her common-law significant other was dying, and she was distraught, and her blood showed Ebola antibodies, and she'd presented the classic flu symptoms, but the disease hadn't gone further. It had, in fact, seemed to stop.

“What gives with this one?” Cathy Ryan was speculating with Dean James.

“Don't knock it, Cath,” he responded tiredly.

“I'm not, Dave, but I want to know why. I interviewed her myself. She slept in the same bed with him two days before she brought him in—”

“Did they have sex?” Alex asked, entering the conversation.

“No, Alex, they didn't. I asked that. He didn't feel well enough. I think this one's going to survive.” And that was a first for Baltimore.

“We keep her in for at least a week, Cathy.”

“I know that, Dave, but this is the first one,” S
URGEON
pointed out. “Something's different here. What is it? We have to know!”

“Chart?” Cathy handed it over to Alexandre.

He scanned it. Temperature down to 100.2, blood work . . . not normal, but . . . “What does she say, Cathy?” Alexandre asked, flipping back through some pages.

“How she says she feels, you mean? Panicked, frightened to death. Massive headaches, abdominal cramps—I think a lot of that is pure stress. Can't blame her, can we?”

“These values are all improving. Liver function blipped hard, but that stopped last night, and it's coming back . . .”

“That's what got my attention. She's fighting it off, Alex,” Dr. Ryan said. “First one, I think we're going to win with her. But why? What's different? What can we learn from this? What can we apply to other patients?”

That turned the trick for Dr. Alexandre. John Pickett was right. He had to get to Reed.

“Dave, they want me in Washington right now.”

“Go,” the dean replied at once. “We're covered here. If you can help make sense of this, get yourself down there.”