Lana didn’t need a reminder. Cairo looked all business to her, like most of the SEALs whom she’d gone into battle with.
Lana’s leg wounds paled in comparison to the shocking medical nightmare unfolding down south. The ISIS fighters who’d surrendered so readily in Oysterton, Louisiana, at the End of Summer Jamboree had apparently infected themselves with smallpox well ahead of the attack. So they had, in fact, carried ashore suicide bombs — their own bodies — and spread the deadly contagion to more than a hundred of the men, women, and children who’d crowded around them during the perp walk to take photos, including tons of selfies and videos. Also infected the same day were the news crews, reporters, and sheriff’s deputies who’d proudly paraded their prisoners past all the lookie-loos.
The sheriff himself was stricken with the disfiguring disease; his exposure came after he’d insisted on taking selfies with the handcuffed and ankle-chained men en route to Camp Blanding in central Florida. Now the terrorists he’d treated like trophies he’d bagged on a big-game-hunting expedition were on the verge of killing him. In turn, the sheriff had infected countless others by glad-handing constituents in his boisterous bid for November reelection. The polls were unlikely ever to open for the incumbent sheriff: His voter-ready smile on the campaign trail had been replaced by deeply scarred features on what now appeared to be his deathbed.
All the stricken were housed in isolation units in poorly equipped and vastly overwhelmed rural hospitals in Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. Parts of east Texas had also drawn close scrutiny from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The sheriff was in the same hospital as Jimmy McMasters and the pert piccolo player rescued by the boat racer in the early moments of the beachside invasion. The eighteen-year-old band member had spent many hours smacking skin with Jimmy and exchanging vital bodily fluids, ensuring her own infection and that of five family members, including two older brothers who now promised to tear Jimmy “limb from limb for violating our sister.”
In the past twenty-four hours, she had broken out with the mouth sores that presaged the full onslaught of the disease. She was also running a 104-degree fever.
Jimmy was doing better — so far. His doctors described him as having the constitution of a rhino. Considering what the girl’s brothers wanted to do to him, he wished he had the hide of that creature as well, though it might not be needed: The furious pair now appeared unlikely to last long enough to fulfill their heartfelt vow. But Jimmy wasn’t past the disease’s danger zone yet, and his Kato Kaelin physical charms were succumbing to more pustules with each passing day.
Jimmy sat up in bed and watched a cute nurse exit the room now occupied only by him; a young man had died at sunrise, only an hour ago.
Jimmy could hardly believe how fast his downfall had come. Not only the smallpox and death threats from piccolo’s thuggy brothers, but also his descent from national hero to national goat in a matter of days. Masochistic though it always proved to be, he tuned into the Today Show, where much of the viewing audience was now fixed on Matt Lauer’s battle against smallpox, for which millions blamed Jimmy. NBC’s executives stoked the audience’s anger by replaying, at least once a show, the moment when Lauer had introduced Jimmy, only to have the sturdy good ol’ boy pull the sharply dressed host to his feet for a Louisiana-style bear hug.
Why’d I do that? Jimmy shook his head in regret. He really liked Matt the man. And then he’d gone and fucked him over but good.
The video came right up, as if on cue.
Sheeeee-it.
“Right there,” Lauer’s excited female co-host gushed. “That was when poor Matt got infected, according to his doctors. Right when that boat guy grabbed him.”
Boat guy? I don’t even have a name anymore?
“Doctors say that was point of contact,” the co-host added, shaking her head as she looked directly into the camera.
The beautiful woman could not have sounded more disgusted if she’d been describing the vivisection of a pregnant pig.
The entire news division of the Peacock Network — from multi-million-dollar anchor monsters to the lowliest interns — was now isolated on three floors of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, scrutinized daily by roving teams of medical professionals looking for any signs of sickness — just like the audiences for the NBC’s news shows.
Jimmy glared at the screen. Hugging Matt had been such a great moment for him. How was he to know he’d been contagious?
He’d sent an email apology to Lauer. Jimmy hadn’t heard back. Didn’t expect to. Lauer was said to be running a high fever with pustules weeping pus all over his body. Jimmy figured a simple “I’m sorry” wasn’t going to cut it with Lauer. He wondered if he should go to Lauer’s funeral… if it came to that. Maybe even speak as a great admirer and newfound friend.
He wished he could do something to make amends, anything that would make people stop comparing him to Typhoid Mary. One guy on TV even called him “Smallpox McMasters.” Jimmy swore he’d go to the caliphate himself and spit in the furry faces of ISIS leaders if he had half a chance. But he was unlikely to slip past the end of the corridor, where armed guards kept patients in and visitors out.
You’re not going anywhere. You’re sick, dude.
As if to confirm his status, he walked into the bathroom to check himself in the mirror. Yup, still got it. Not too bad… considering. Like a bad case of acne. His fever this morning had even dropped to ninety-nine, which by smallpox standards was nothing. Staring at his reflection, he knew that getting laid night after night by hero groupies had ended. He was contemplating that dark, lonely future when he heard a Today Show report that fifteen ISIS fighters were battling right at that moment to take control of a poorly defended BP oil rig platform a couple hundred miles off the Mississippi coast.
Jimmy stumbled back to his bed to see helicopter footage of the heavily armed fighters seizing weapons from BP’s defeated security force. Out came the big knives.
Oh, Christ.
No, the network would never show… But they did, and then another head rolled. Those ISIS monsters were tossing them into the Gulf like coconuts. Bodies, too. What the fuck!
And they were hoisting their big black flag with the white circle and weird writing.
Three men on the BP crew had been spared. The reporter in the helicopter said the man in the middle — bald, portly, and wearing nothing but his undershorts — was the platform’s chief engineer. The other two were oil workers. A statement from the attackers, just received in news centers around the world, said the terrorists intended to blow up the well. “We will make the five million gallons from BP Horizon look like a puddle. We will sabotage every emergency device that could cap the well. The Gulf will be poisoned forever.”
To underscore their point, a crew of ISIS suicide bombers had taken the chief engineer’s family captive and threatened to cut off the heads of his three children if he didn’t comply with their wishes in the next seventy-two hours.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Jimmy said to the TV. “Everything’s going from bad to worse.”
He stared at BP’s three men standing under the Gulf’s brutal sun. They looked shiny from sweat. He knew how hot it got out there. He’d even worked on a BP offshore oil rig for three weeks before he’d been fired for partying in the rec room with a pair of exotic dancers he’d smuggled aboard. BP’s execs were very touchy about regulations after the Horizon fiasco. So Jimmy did know something about their operations. Probably just enough to be dangerous, he thought.