Colonel Zataki eyed Taylor James calmly. “Ms. James, no melodrama was intended.”
“I agree with Colonel Zataki,” said Dr. Richards, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“So do I,” Secretary Johnston said. “You need to take this seriously.”
“Seriously?” said Taylor. “You’re talking Armageddon. How seriously can we take it when you insist on referring to it as if it were a movie? We don’t want overstatement or melodrama. We want scientific fact. We want—”
“We’re talking a bioengineered virus,” Zataki interrupted in his cool voice, “with an apparent one hundred percent fatality rate within twelve hours. It is one hundred percent infectious, as far as we know, can be communicated via air, touch or in food or liquids. Imagine, if you will, that one person is infected with Chimera. If that person has minimal contact with people, he or she will probably infect twenty or thirty people in one day. Also, if the subject coughs or spits or bleeds onto a surface, that surface will become infectious. It’s not known how long Chimera can survive outside its host. We’ll test for it, but we don’t have time. None of us has time to make assumptions, especially conservative assumptions, about the danger of this virus. Meanwhile, those twenty infected individuals, the second ring of infection, are infecting anywhere from twenty to hundreds of people. This isn’t smallpox with an incubation period of two weeks. This germ is fast, Ms. James. It will burn through the population like a wild fire.”
“More drama,” James said. She was a tall, elegant African-American woman with a brain like a razor. As far as Secretary Johnston was concerned, though, she was far too political an animal for this particular crisis. She said, “Mr. President—”
Taylor James broke off speaking, her eyes wide and staring. At the rear of the room, one of the people sitting there snapped his head back against the wall with a bang. A young, clean-cut man in a three-piece suit, possibly a senator’s aide or somebody from HHS, started to convulse, a foam of saliva pouring from his mouth as he arched his back and fell from the chair. Suddenly the people on both sides of the man began to twitch, drooling, convulsing, vomiting.
Secretary Johnston reacted instantly, leaping across the table, grabbing the President’s arm and hauling him from his chair. “Evacuate!” he bellowed, rushing for the door. “Evacuate!”
Colonel Zataki was right behind him, reaching for the Director of the FBI, who had started to convulse. Zataki, a small man, but strong, hefted him over his shoulder and ran through the now-open door.
With horror they saw that the hallway outside the conference room was littered with bodies.
“Outside,” gasped Johnston. “Outside.”
They raced through the hallways heading for any room with a window, an exit, anything. There were dozens of bodies in the hallways, convulsing.
Johnston felt the President lag and snarled, “Keep moving, goddammit!”
Zataki was struggling, his lungs burning, feeling the effects. He panted out, “Atropine injectors! We need—”
Johnston rushed down a flight of steps, dragging the President, and slammed shoulder-first into a fire exit and out onto the south lawn. The President fell to the ground, gasping. Johnston turned, saw Zataki stumble to his knees, dropping the Director of t he FBI. Zataki, struggling for air, pressed his fingers against the man’s neck, shaking his head.
“Dammit! VX gas! Somehow the White House was attacked with VX gas!”
25
Aaron Pilcher passed through security into SIOC, the Strategic Information Operation Center on the fifth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. There was a constant flow of agents and support staff in and out of the wedge-shaped room. There were a dozen huge screens connected to computers on the walls, dozens of agents working computers and telephones. The Bureau, Pilcher thought, was doing what it did best: marshaling information.
Agent Spigotta, his jaw muscles bunched like he had walnuts tucked in his cheeks, was glaring at one of the huge VDTs on the wall. “How many total?” he growled.
Two agents, one at a computer terminal that controlled the VDT, started counting the figures on the screen.
Pilcher stepped up. Spigotta glanced over and nodded brusquely. “You look like shit, but I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Glad to be alive.” He gestured at the screen. “The parking garage?”
“Three vans, four each,” said the agent doing the counting. She was a willowy redhead with pale blue eyes.
“I want them isolated and start working on IDs,” Spigotta growled.
Pilcher held up the stack of file folders retrieved from the D.C. apartment. “Hang on. I’ve got faces. Let’s see if we can tie them together now.”
Spigotta’s head snapped around. “What’ve you got?”
Pilcher opened the file and held up the clearest photograph of Richard Coffee. “Quite possibly the leader. Ray?”
The agent at the keyboard took a close look at the photograph and started isolating images on the screen. He was a heavyset bald man with a fringe of gray hair and wire-rimmed bifocals. His pudgy fingers flashed on the computer keys.
“There.” The redhead pointed.
“Enhance,” Spigotta barked.
The image dissolved, resolved, closed in, dissolved and resolved again. The four FBI agents stared. “Bingo,” Pilcher said. “Meet The Fallen Angel, formerly known as Richard Coffee, a U.S. citizen, former Special Forces—”
”Domestic?” Spigotta’s face burned red.
“Not really,” Pilcher said. He supplied the sketchy information Derek Stillwater had acquired.
Spigotta raised his hands. “Everybody, listen up. We’ve got a back story. Aaron, you’ve got the floor.”
Taking a deep breath, Pilcher described what they knew so far. When he was done Spigotta pointed at a slight, scholarly-looking man. “Adams, you’re our terrorism guy. Ever heard of The Fallen Angels?”
“No, sir.”
“Get on it.”
“I’d like the photographs you’ve got.”
Spigotta nodded and Pilcher turned them over.
Pilcher said, “Um, John… these could all be bullshit. As far as Coffee goes, I’m a believer. Everything else though… pretty suspect.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Agent Jonathan Adams took the files and rushed out of the SIOC.
“Unrau.” Spigotta pointed at a heavyset woman with brassy brown hair and thick eyeglasses. “Who at the Russian embassy would know about this group?”
“Yuri Arkady Rostovitch,” she said without hesitation.
“Please arrange an invitation for Mr. Rostovitch to join us here.”
“Yes sir.” She turned to leave.
“Bridgette?”
Agent Unrau turned back.
“If he declines, send out a team of agents to deliver him here ASAP.”
She paused, no doubt thinking of the consequences of kidnaping a Russian embassy official, then shrugged and smiled. “I’m on it, sir.”
Spigotta continued to direct his troops. Pilcher took a moment to slip into a chair. Waves of exhaustion washed over him. He leaned back and glanced up at the VDT displaying the vans. To Ray O’Brien, manning the keyboard, he said, “Is the explosion on there?”
Ray looked over, his face flushed. “Yes. You’re lucky.”
“Yeah. Let’s make sure the media doesn’t get hold of that until we want them to.”
“Yes sir.”
Spigotta was in conference with another agent, a serious-minded female agent that Pilcher recognized as one of the senior domestic terrorism people. He didn’t, right off hand, remember her name. His cell phone buzzed. He clicked it on and identified himself.