The Coward's Way of War (19 page)

“I did what I thought best,” Mija said.  “I was not going to allow you to cover it up and...”

“You journalists,” the man in black sneered.  “Has it not ever occurred to you that there might be good and sufficient reasons for keeping something from the public?  We would have seen to it that the Mayor’s scheme not only failed, but he would have been quietly offered the chance to resign and leave office, instead of being threatened with a public lynching.  Do you feel that justice would not have been done?”

“The price of justice is eternal publicity,” Mija countered.  She had to admit, privately, that they had a point, but she had no intention of admitting it aloud.  The irony struck her a moment later.  Dear God, she was acting just like Lois, who she assumed was still cooling her heels in jail.  “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask,” the man in black said.  “We make no promise to answer.”

“Good,” Mija said.  “Am I under arrest?”

“Not at the moment,” the man in grey said.

“So I can leave,” Mija said, standing up.

“Sit down,” the man in black ordered.  “You are not free to go.”

“That sounds like an arrest, or an unlawful detention,” Mija said. If words were her only weapons, she would use them to the best of her ability.  “Under what grounds are you holding me here?”

“A state of emergency has been declared,” the man in black said.  He managed a sneer.  “We can hold you indefinitely without trial, if we believe it to be necessary.  You have proven yourself to be dangerously irresponsible.  It would be remiss of us not to deal with you.”

“I did not intend to cause a panic,” Mija said, genuinely shocked.  It was her first real experience with the coercive power of the state, something that most Americans never really experienced, outside the IRS.  “I...”

“You did alert us to something we needed to know about,” the man in black said.  “The Mayor will be...detained once we have prepared our case against him.  Do you know who sent you that email?”

“No,” Mija admitted.  The newspaper’s tech support hadn't been able to trace it back to a specific sender.  “I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to blow the whistle on the whole damn conspiracy.”

“That’s what they’re calling it on the streets,” the man in grey mused.  “A conspiracy, a plot intended to kill off the lower ten percent of society, creating a world where all the rich folk will survive and the poor will die.  Complete nonsense, of course, yet people are starting to believe it.  Desperation can lead to desperate actions.”

He shrugged.  “We have been empowered to make you an offer,” he added.  “You will cooperate with us fully in drawing up the case against the Mayor.  In exchange, you will be offered a chance to embed with the military, once we have a target for our rage.  If you refuse to accept those terms, you will be transported to a detention centre where you will be held until the crisis is over.  The choice, I need not add, has to be made now.”

Mija scowled at him, and then nodded.   “I’ll cooperate,” she said.  “What do you want to know?”

The inspection procedures can only succeed with the full cooperation of the host government.  Needless to say
, that cooperation is very rare.  Iraq was able to conceal large parts of its program for years, simply by using the resources of a powerful state and the rules that the UN inspection bodies had to operate under against it.  The only way to make the procedure effective is to enforce it with military force.  That, too, is very rare.

- Doctor Nicolas Awad

Moscow, Russia

Day 13

Nicolas tensed as Air Force Two started its long descent towards the unnamed airfield, only a few miles from Moscow.  The President, in order to convey just how seriously she – and the entire American Government – took the crisis had ordered the inspection team to use the Vice President’s personal aircraft and its callsign as their transport, accompanied by a handful of fighter jets and a pair of CIA aircraft.  The latter were part of a secret rendition program that had existed ever since 9/11, hunting down, capturing and interrogating terrorists in dozens of different countries, including some that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had fought at all. 

The President’s instructions had been clear, yet he had no illusions about the difficulties facing them.  He had never been to Russia – the bilateral inspections mandated by treaty had been a dead letter for years – but he had visited European and Indian research facilities, along with Iraqi WMD sites that had been captured during the invasion.  The discovery of just how much the Iraqis had concealed still caused sleepless nights among America’s intelligence community, even though the global population had largely come to believe that there had never been any WMD in Iraq.  The post-war inspectors hadn't found a smoking gun; they’d found a disassembled gun.  A few years without sanctions and no international inspectors poking their noses into the country would have seen Saddam, a man who had gassed hundreds of Kurds and Iranians, armed with a terrifying array of biological and chemical weapons.  The Middle East, Nicolas firmly believed, had dodged a bullet.

And yet, it was impossible to be really sure.  A nuclear research facility was clearly identifiable as such.  A biological research facility could pass for a hospital or even a program intended to develop defences against biological attack.  A small sample of smallpox could be concealed within a kitchen freezer and stored until the day it was to be defrosted and used to start an epidemic.  Iraq had been a large country, roughly the size of Texas, but Russia was many times larger.  The President’s orders had been clear – the moment he felt that they were being impeded, they were to withdraw back to the planes at once – yet it would be easy for the Russians to stalemate them without being obvious about it.  The inspection team had discussed it while they were preparing for departure, but no one had been able to suggest any real solution.  The Russians would play ball or they wouldn't.

The President’s words echoed in his head.  “We will go to war, in all our power and fury, and we will not stop until Russia is no more,” she’d said.  Nicolas believed her.  So far, she’d shown herself to be a quick and decisive leader.  He had no doubt that she would unleash the American military on Russia without hesitation, if the Russians tried to screw with the inspection process.  And, if that happened, the entire inspection team was likely to find itself at ground zero.  The UN had lost inspection teams to hostile natives before and he had no intention of it happening to him.

Captain Darryl Tyler came into the compartment and nodded to Nicolas, who smiled up at him.  Tyler was a former Ranger who had, in a long and varied career, served in several Third World countries as part of close-protection details.  He’d been snapped up by Wildfire and offered the chance to command an unusual close-protection detail, one that would protect Wildfire’s medical researches when they went into red zones.  Nicolas had served with him before, in a brief visit to Nigeria, and trusted him completely.  Civilian doctors might have hesitated at the thought of being escorted and protected by the military, but Nicolas knew better.  The Wildfire teams went into some of the most dangerous places in the world, including countries where an American accent was a death sentence.

“Doctor,” Tyler said, “it’s time for the final briefing.”

Nicolas nodded and stood up, following Tyler into the main compartment.  It was normally used to house the press corps, but now it held thirty experienced biological warfare researchers and a handful of other disciplines.  Nicolas had experienced a mild guilt trip over pulling so many men away from other duties in America, yet the President had reassured him that there was no real choice.  They had to send their best and brightest to find out the truth.  He hadn't socialised much with them on the flight, reading the secure updates from Washington.  Panama, after discovering several cases of Henderson’s Disease in Panama City, had declared a complete lockdown and closed the Panama Canal to all traffic, particularly American shipping.  The CIA believed that Venezuela, which had cut all in and outbound traffic the day the US declared a state of emergency, was behind the move, with Chávez clearly trying to squeeze some advantage out of the crisis.  Nicolas silently wished him luck.  The chances were good that Henderson’s Disease was already loose in his country.

“The Russians have promised to behave themselves,” Tyler said, without preamble.  “I believe that they will put very little in our way, although they have warned – and the President has accepted, at least for the moment – that we will not be allowed access to non-biological sites.  I expect, however, that we will be under surveillance as soon as we get off the plane.  Diplomats have been known to leave their embassies and come back covered in bugs – and I don’t mean little creatures that go buzz.”

There were some nervous chuckles.  “Be careful what you say anywhere we don’t control,” Tyler added.  “They have promised us hotel rooms; I bet you anything you care to put forward that the phones will be tapped and there will be microphones in the showers.  We will only hold secure conversations on the aircraft, after everyone has been though the bug detectors.  There will be no exceptions.  Be careful of the Russians themselves, by the way; that pretty girl chatting you up at the bar may have more in mind than a one-night stand.  We have caught Russian agents who spent a night with a Russian girl and were then blackmailed by her superiors.  I strongly advise you not to do anything that could be used against you later; if you have to go out and get fucked, kindly remember that blackmail will not be accepted as an excuse for treason back in the states.”

He looked over at Nicolas.  “Doctor,” he said.  “Do you want to say a few words?”

Nicolas nodded.  “This is not going to be easy,” he said.  “The important thing is to find out the truth as soon as possible – that is our absolute priority.  We will be polite and firm, but we are not going to lord it over the Russians.  I do not want to put this team in danger.  If there is a real problem, we will withdraw and leave it to the diplomats.”

He scowled.  “Record all of your work and burst-transmit it to the satellites at regular intervals, so there is a record even if something happens to you,” he concluded.  “And, if any of you are feeling religious, why not spend some time before we land reminding God who’s side He’s on.”

The intercom buzzed.  “We are just coming into land now,” the pilot’s voice said.  Air Force Two, like its more famous counterpart, flew so gently that there was no need to be seated, or to wear safety belts, but Nicolas started to return to his seat anyway.  “If you will look out the port windows, you will see our escort.”

Nicolas turned and looked out over the Russian countryside.  A pair of dark-coloured fighters was pacing them, matching their course and speed.  The Russian fighters, he had been assured, were inferior to the best that America could produce, but somehow that wasn't so reassuring now he could see the Russian aircraft and the missiles slung under their wings.  Air Force Two was a great aircraft, but the Russian fighters could have blown her out of the sky with ease.  It would have started a war, yet would the Russians care?  A chill ran down his spine as he realised the truth.  They didn't know for sure just what they were flying into, or just what was going on in Russia...

***

General Zaitsev
– he had made certain to don his dress uniform to remind everyone just who was in charge – watched dispassionately as Air Force Two came in to land, followed by a pair of smaller aircraft that were completely unmarked.  The unnamed airfield, isolated from Moscow by forest and armed guards, seemed to hum to life as the three jets slowly rolled to a halt, with ground crews struggling mightily to bring up the stairs for the plane’s passengers.  In Moscow, it would have been far more practical, but no one had wanted the Americans to land in Moscow.  It would have been too humiliating.

At the orders of his superior, the Russian President, he had sealed off the entire airfield with loyalist troops, backed up by armed vehicles.  The Americans would wonder if it was a show of force, something that worried him, yet there was no choice.  He knew enough to fear what the hardliners might do if they got a clear shot at the Americans, even though it would risk causing the destruction of Russia.  Those few in the know about the American visit – and the ultimatum that had forced Russia to accept the inspection teams – knew why the President had allowed them to visit, yet not all of them had accepted it.  The hardliners, in particular, had used every trick in the book – and some they’d invented themselves – to keep the biological warfare program active.  They’d succeeded so well that it had remained funded even during the worst of the post-soviet years.  That was real clout, a level of control that was none the less impressive for remaining hidden.  No one, not even Yeltsin, had been able to dismantle the program – and Yeltsin’s successors hadn't even tried.