What the hell was it? Allen lowered his 9mm to a shooting angle and rushed forward to cover the threat. He had covered about half the distance to the intersection when something rounded the corner in front of him and charged up the corridor in his direction. It was low and moving fast through the darkness, its rapid steps drumming on the deck plates. It was some kind of animal, shaggy and four-legged. A dog? Allen’s 9mm jerked downward to cover the animal as it ran toward him. He sighted in on it, ready to shoot it before it could attack him the way it had attacked Blandy. Would it go for his throat or his groin? His finger began to squeeze the trigger, and then he got a good look at the animal. He broke into laughter.
It wasn’t a dog. It was a goat. Blandy’s terrifying attacker was a goat.
Still laughing, Allen stepped aside and let the frightened animal run past him.
OSC Deacon crawled to his feet and began dusting himself off. “Was that what I think it was?”
“That,” Allen said with a grin that threatened to split his head in half, “was a highly trained attack goat. It’s a miracle Blandy wasn’t killed.”
Blandy got to his feet. “That’s not funny. That’s not funny at all.”
Chief Deacon holstered his 9mm and bent down to retrieve his boonie hat from the deck. “That is where you’re wrong, kid. I can tell you already that this is one of those stories that’s going to get funnier every time I tell it.”
Allen holstered his own 9mm and turned on his flashlight. “You can count on that, Goat Boy.”
Allen turned and walked back down the corridor to the doors of the container they had been set to inspect. Blandy and the chief followed him a few seconds later.
Allen grasped the latching handle of the Conex box and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. He clipped his flashlight to his belt, freeing up his left hand. “Hey, Blandy, come help me with this.”
The chief stepped forward. “I’ll help. Blandy, you keep an eye out for goats, sheep, and other farm animals with terrorist leanings.”
“Cute, Chief,” Blandy said. “Real cute.”
Between them, Allen and the chief were able to wrestle the reluctant latching handle up into the released position.
Allen swung the door open and shone his flashlight inside. He whistled through his teeth. “Uh … Chief? I think you need to take a look at this.”
OSC Deacon looked over his shoulder. “What have you got?”
The beam of Allen’s flashlight revealed stacks of gray crates with stenciled lettering in yellow spray paint: FALKE ANTI-AIRCRAFT RAKETENWERFER.
“Holy shit,” Chief Deacon said. “I don’t know what Ratken-worker means, or whatever the hell that is, but the anti-aircraft part I can figure out.”
Allen sounded the syllables out slowly, “Rak-eten-werf-er … I think that’s Arabic for ‘somebody’s in a shitload of trouble.’”
CHAPTER 10
On the state floor of the White House, sandwiched between the enormous East Room and the sumptuously appointed oval Blue Room, was the Green Room. Once the dining room of Thomas Jefferson, the Green Room was now a parlor, usually devoted to small receptions. It was a soothing place; the green watered-silk wall coverings and striped silk damask draperies seemed to invite introspection. President Chandler liked the Green Room a lot. He often went there to relax, and he nearly always left the little parlor with a smile on his face.
He was not smiling this evening, as his chief of staff opened the door for him and stepped back to let him in. Through the open doorway came the background murmur from the East Room: numerous voices mingled with the muted tones of light orchestral music.
Perched delicately on a nineteenth-century Duncan Phyfe settee, Gregory Brenthoven rose quickly to his feet.
The president waved him back. “Sit,” he said. He nodded over his left shoulder toward the East Room. “I’ve got fourteen South American diplomats out there, and at least half of them are trying to pinch Jenny’s bottom. So let’s try to make this quick, before my lovely wife dislocates someone’s jaw and causes an international incident.”
Veronica Doyle followed her boss into the room and closed the door behind her. “The first lady is looking especially attractive tonight.”
The president tugged at his bow tie, loosening it a fraction. “She is, indeed. But I still think it’s rude of our esteemed guests to leave their fingerprints on her anatomy.” He sighed and looked at Gregory Brenthoven. “What have you got, Greg?”
“Germany,” the national security advisor said.
“All right,” the president said. “We’ll get to that in a minute. First, what’s going on with the British Embassy?”
“Sir, you’re scheduled for back-to-back Situation Room briefings at nine thirty and nine forty-five,” the chief of staff said. “The topics of interest are developing events in China and the status of the British Embassy investigation.”
“That’s fine,” the president said. “But the embassy attack is on my front burner; Greg can give me the ten-cent version now.”
Brenthoven paused for a second as though mentally shifting gears.
“The casualty count has stabilized. Sixty-eight people dead and forty-nine still in treatment. With the possible exception of two who are still on the critical list and could go either way, the doctors are expecting all of the remaining victims to recover.”
“Both of those numbers are higher than the ones I got from homeland security,” the president said.
The national security advisor nodded. “Yes, sir. The FBI has been tracking down people who came in contact with the agent at the embassy, but were somewhere else when they developed symptoms. They’re using the embassy visitors’ logs as a checklist, and they think they’ve found them all now.”
“That’s one piece of good news,” the president said.
“Here’s another one, sir,” Brenthoven said. “So far, everyone who’s come down with symptoms has actually been to the embassy. CDC was right. The bio-warfare agent used isn’t robust enough to spread by human contact. The concentration level has to be pretty high to ensure infection.”
“Have we identified the agent yet?”
Brenthoven nodded. “Yes, sir. CDC ran the micrographs, and USAMRIID cross-checked them. It’s a strain of T2, a trichothecene mycotoxin that comes from corn or wheat mold.”
The president frowned. “Mold? Clark told me that the highest agent concentrations were in the carpet. If we’re talking about mold, that seems like something that could occur naturally. Can we be certain this isn’t some kind of rare natural phenomenon? I remember reading an article on Sick Building Syndrome where the ventilation ducts become infected with mold or a virus and then spread it through the building.”
Brenthoven shook his head. “No, sir. There is no room for doubt.
Natural forms of this mold grow on corn or wheat, not carpets. Besides, the agent used was not actually a mold at all; it was a chemically engineered mycotoxin that is manufactured from mold. The T2 mycotoxin doesn’t exist anywhere in a natural form. It’s strictly a man-made agent.”
“So we are one hundred percent certain that this was a biological warfare attack?”
“Yes, Mr. President. We also know how the agent was introduced into the building — in carpet cleaning machines. It went right past the security dogs, because they’re trained to smell explosives, not biological agents.