"Okay," Arnie told him, as the presidential party assembled to head out the back door. "For a guy who was ready to chuck it yesterday, you did awfully well."
"Mr. President!" a reporter called.
"Talk to him," Arnie whispered.
"Yes?" Jack said, walking over, to the displeasure of his security force.
"Do you know about what John Plumber said this evening on NEC?" The reporter was ABC, and unlikely to pass on the chance to slam a competing network.
"Yes, I've heard about it," the President replied soberly.
"Do you have any comment?"
"Obviously, I do not like learning about all this, but as far as Mr. Plumber is concerned, that's as gracious an act of moral courage as I've seen in quite a while. He's okay in my book."
"Do you know who it was who—"
"Please, let Mr. Plumber handle that. It's his story, and he knows how to tell it. Now if you will excuse me, I have a plane to catch."
"Thank you, Mr. President," the ABC reporter said to Ryan's back.
"Just right," Arnie said, with a smile. "We've had a long day, but it's been a good day."
Ryan let out a long breath. "You say so."
"OH, MY GOD," Professor Klein whispered. There it was on the display monitor. The Shepherd's Crook, right out of a medical text. How the hell had it come to Chicago?
"That's Ebola," Dr. Quinn said, adding, "That's not possible."
"How thorough was your physical examination?" the senior man asked again. "Could have been better, but—no bite marks, no needle marks. Mark, it's Chicago. I had frost on my windshield the other day." Professor Klein pressed his hands together, and pushed his gloved fingers up against his nose. Then he stopped the gesture when he realized that he was still wearing a surgical mask. "Keys in her purse?"
"Yes, sir."
"First, we have cops around the ER. Get one, tell him we need a police escort to go to her apartment and allow us to look around. Tell him this woman's life is in danger. Maybe she's got a pet, a tropical plant, something. We have the name of her physician. Get him up, get him in here. We need to find out what he knows about her."
"Treatment?"
"We cool her down, we keep her hydrated, we medicate for pain, but there isn't anything that really works on this. Rousseau in Paris has tried interferon and a few other things, but no luck so far." He frowned at the display again. "How'd she get it? How the hell did she contract this little bastard?"
"CDC?"
"You get the cop up here. I'll get a fax off to Gus Lorenz." Klein checked his watch. Damn.
THE PREDATOR DRONES were back in Saudi, having never been discovered. It was felt that having them circle over a stationary position, like a divisional encampment, was a little too dangerous, however, and now the overhead work was being done by satellites, whose photos downloaded to the National Reconnaissance Office.
"Check this out," one of the night crew said to the guy at the next workstation. "What are these?"
The tanks of the UIR «Immortals» division were grouped in what was essentially a large parking lot, all evenly spaced in long, regular lines so that they could be counted—a stolen tank with a full basic load of shells was a dangerous thing to have on the loose, and all armies took security of the tank laagers seriously. It also made things more convenient for the maintenance personnel to have them all together. Now they were all back, and men were swarming over the tanks and other fighting vehicles, doing the normal maintenance that followed a major exercise. In front of every tank in the first row were two dark lines, each about a meter across, and ten meters long. The man on the screen was ex-Air Force, and more expert on airplanes than land-combat vehicles.
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."
SURE 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 Gallic 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, Gallic."
"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."
BADRAYN 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.
PATIENT ZERO 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.