The Navy Intelligence petty officer conducting the third briefing of the staff sergeant was clearly at the end of a long day. He was thorough, the staff sergeant thought, going through the postmission checklist and asking every pertinent question, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it. After all, the Sergeant had already conserved every question earlier. Still, he did his job. It was only when they got to the description of the truck and its deceased occupants that his ears pricked up.
“Ten, you say?” he asked, pausing from his scribbling, a look of interest on his face.
“Yes. I counted them.” The staff sergeant repressed a shudder as the men’s faces loomed before him, blackened and distorted. “Twice.”
“And two in the front seat.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The sergeant put down his pencil and shut his eyes, rubbing his fingers at the corners. A frown creased his forehead and he sighed. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ve been using patrols composed of seven men. You’ve got twelve in the truck. That tells me it’s not two patrols and it’s not one. Were they all roughly in the same state of decomposition?”
“Looked like it.”
“Were the keys in the truck?”
The staff sergeant stared at him. “I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“Think about it.”
The staff sergeant shut his eyes, picturing the interior of the vehicle. Worn, more than it should have been. There had been a crack in the windshield, something they should have fixed. One side window missing, along with part of the instrument panel. And there, where the ignition should have been—“Gone,” he said, opening his eyes. “No keys.”
“No keys,” the intelligence sergeant echoed, now frowning. He stood up abruptly and said, “Wait here. The intelligence officer is going to want to talk to you.”
The officer. But why? Just because there weren’t keys in the ignition? The staff sergeant ran through the possibilities, trying to decide what it was that alarmed the other sergeant. He had just concluded that he didn’t know when the sergeant returned, an Army captain following him.
“Captain Henry,” the officer said by way of introduction. He slid into the seat opposite the staff sergeant. “Sergeant has been telling me what happened. I have a few questions for you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When you examine the truck cab — no keys, right? Was it in gear or neutral? And was the parking brake set?”
The staff sergeant shut his eyes, visualizing the hellish interior once again. “Neutral, I think. And no parking brake. Not that they’d need it on that terrain.”
“Shit.” The officer stood, backing away from them. “Staff Sergeant, where are the rest of your men?”
“Probably at chow,” the staff sergeant said, now growing alarmed. “You don’t think that—?”
“I don’t know.” He grabbed his own sergeant by the arm, and they backed away until they stood at the doorway. “You understand, I’ll have to ask you not to leave this room.” With that, he left. Moments later, the staff sergeant heard the loudspeaker summoning the rest of his squad to sick bay.
Cold fear ran through his veins. It all made sense now — the odd number of men, no keys, the truck left in neutral. It hadn’t been driven there — it had been towed. And left to be discovered.
What had they been thinking? Why were they so certain that somebody would examine the damned thing before an air strike took it out? What were the odds of that? Had we been close enough to — to—
To catch it. Whatever they had, whatever they were infected with, whatever had killed them. How did they know we would be close enough to breathe the air, that we wouldn’t take precautions — that we wouldn’t be suspicious?
Biological warfare, the thing that struck terror into the hearts of most ground soldiers. If they could see it, they could kill it, and if they died trying, so be it. But this form of warfare, the invisible, deadly weapon of bacteria and spores, that was something else. You couldn’t see it — you didn’t even know when you were exposed. And once you had been exposed, there was very little you could do.
From outside the doors, he could hear the beginnings of an uproar. The receding steps on hard linoleum, the rustle of uniforms, muffled orders to clear the area. Still the staff sergeant waited, motionless. He knew the order to clear the area didn’t apply to him.
Moments later, two soldiers clad in full NBC warfare gear came into the office. They walked over to him slowly and stood beside him. No words were necessary. “Lead the way, boys,” he said, standing up. The movement made him slightly light-headed, and he felt a flash of annoyance at what he thought was fear. He rested one hand on the table to steady himself. But the blackness continued encroaching on his sight, narrowing his field of vision down to a narrow tunnel that seem to be filled by the two monstrous men. He staggered again, and after a moment’s hesitation, one of them reached out and caught him by the elbow. The other darted to a telephone and punched the numbers in with fingers made clumsy by the gloves. “We’ll need a gurney. And make sure the rest of the squad is in isolation — quarantine — immediately.”
The staff sergeant heard the words coming as though from a long distance away. A loud buzzing filled his ears, drowning out everything else. He sank slowly to the floor, then crumpled. One of the soldiers unfolded him and stretched him out on his back. The staff sergeant coughed and the soldier jerked back.
By the time the gurney arrived, the staff sergeant had long since lost consciousness. Blood was seeping from his ears and nose and other orifices, and even the whites of his eyes were turning red. He was coughing up blood, too, when he had the strength to do so, but it continued to seep into his lungs at an alarming rate. No energy, no energy to fight it off. Slowly, quietly, he suffocated in his own blood.
Two days later, infectious disease specialists at Walter Reed Army Hospital would confirm what both the intelligence officer and his sergeant had suspected. The plague — the black death. And by that time, more than one hundred soldiers had been exposed to the deadly disease.
Wexler’s voice, amplified by the microphone, rang out confident and sure. “I must ask this body to renew its long-standing resolution providing for a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Middle East. As to the justification, I think recent events provide more than enough. As you all know, our aircraft carrier, the USS United States, was attacked while in international waters outside the Persian Gulf. Fortunately, due to the efforts of her crew, the damage was minimal. Additionally, we have credible evidence of stockpiles of biochemical weapons being maintained just across the Kuwaiti border. Both of those facts reflect the continuing instability in the region and the need for coordinated supervision to maintain law and order.”
“Any response?” the Secretary General was from the Bahamas, and his musical accent provided a sharp contrast to her strident tones.
The delegate from Pakistan rose, pointedly turning away from Wexler and the American contingent. “Uh-oh,” Brad whispered to her. “I think we’re about to see some payback.”
“No kidding,” she murmured, keeping a neutral expression plastered on her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the British ambassador stir uneasily.
Any opposition to the motion to extend the peacekeeping forces would be absolutely ludicrous. Pakistan was far closer to the region than the United States was, and if open warfare broke out, it would surely suffer just as much as anyone in the region. It was in Pakistan’s interest to keep peace in the area, and she thought it was something that at least Pakistan and India could agree on.