The Coward's Way of War (8 page)

“Madam President,” he said.  He had to swallow twice before he could finish the message.  “We have five new cases of smallpox in America.”  He didn't want to say the next words, but there was no choice.  “Two of them are in New York, but the others are in three different cities; Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.  It's spreading.”

“Whatever decision I make,” the President said slowly, “people are going to die.”

Nicolas shook his head.  “People are going to die anyway, now that the disease is loose,” he said, grimly.  She had to understand just what was at stake.  “Your decisions will make the difference between losing a few thousand people and losing the entire country, if not the world.”

Did you ever see that movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones?  It hi
t upon a very good point about the human condition – a person is smart, but people, a mob, is a panicky mass of stupid idiots.  You can't tell the people the truth at once, for they can't handle the truth.  How far would Bush have been able to go if he’d told the world the truth – that we would be at war against the terrorists for decades – or Roosevelt – that Uncle Joe Stalin was in fact a very nasty man?  People are stupid; remember that
.

- Press Secretary Fiona Dü
rst

New York, USA

Day 5

“
Doug!”

Douglas Mann looked up in surprise from where he was weeding the garden.  Lindsey – his wife – had been nagging him for days about the need to work on the garden and he had finally set aside some time to work on it.  The last thing he had expected was his wife interrupting him, not after it had taken so long to convince him to do it in the first place.  He would have much rather have spent his day off with a beer and a few good movies – or a good novel, if there had been nothing on television or DVD – but his wife had insisted.

“I’m here,” he called.  Despite his wife’s nagging, he was rather proud of the garden, even though he rarely had time to work on it.  Life as an investment banker was rewarding, but not full of free time, not with the economic crisis still underway.  “What is it, dear?”

Lindsey burst out of the backdoor and ran into the garden.  At thirty years old, she was still the brown-haired beauty he had married, back when he’d been a young man.  She had borne two children and then gone straight back to work as a nurse, for they had needed two salaries to make ends meet.  Even now, when Doug was far more wealthy and successful than either of them had ever believed possible, she still worked when she could.  He had never tried to stop her, for he knew that caring for her patients meant a great deal to his wife.

“Your bleeper is sounding,” she said, in alarm.  Doug looked up sharply.  As a part-time National Guardsman, the last time his bleeper had sounded had been during a riot in New York, two years ago.  The National Guard had been called up, but had never been deployed, not like the old days when they had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan several times.  As a younger man, he had enjoyed those testing times, but they had been hard on his marriage.  “What do they want with you today?”

Doug shrugged, looking up into the blue sky.  It was just after noon and it was a lovely day.  He’d even considered suggesting that they forgot the garden for a day and headed to the beach, except his wife would never have forgiven him.  It could be anything, he knew, from an unannounced drill to a genuine emergency.  At least he wasn’t at work.  It was technically illegal to discriminate against National Guardsmen, who could be called to the colours and away from their workplaces at any moment, but employers hated losing them at unpredictable intervals.  Doug knew several of his comrades who had never found a permanent job because they could be called away, even though the employers had never quite admitted that that was what they were doing.  The National Guardsmen knew the truth.  There were times when he wondered if the country was truly worth defending, the way it treated the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of their country.

“I have no idea,” he said.  He pulled himself to his feet, passed the garden fork to his wife and stepped back inside the house.  The blessed cool from the air conditioning struck him right in the face and he smiled in relief.  New York was cool compared to the sandbox, but working in the garden had made him feel hot and bothered, a reminder that he was not as young as he had once been.  His bleeper was where he had left it, mounted on the wall where he could hear it anywhere inside the house.  It was bleeping incessantly and would continue to do so until he shut it off.

He picked the small device up and tapped his code into the system, accessing the message.  As he had expected, it was pithy and uninformative, ordering him to report at once to the nearest muster point.  It wasn’t a command he could disobey.  The Army National Guard would regard it as desertion, which carried a prison sentence and permanent disgrace.  He smiled as he placed the bleeper on his belt, knowing that Lindsey would not be pleased.  Reporting in to the Guard meant that he wouldn't have to carry on with the gardening.

“They want me instantly,” he called, as he found his coat and ID card.  He had a bag packed and stored in the cupboard for immediate deployment, a precaution he’d been taught by the old sweats when he’d first transferred into the Guard.  “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.  It’s probably just an exercise.”

Lindsey came into the house, her dark eyes worried.  She might play the harridan at times, but he had never doubted her love for him, or her fear that one day he might get permanently crippled – or killed – while on deployment.  In some ways, a National Guardsman’s wife was worse off than a soldier’s wife, even though she saw her husband most of the time.  She might never know when he would be plucked from her arms and sent to fight the foe.

“Just an exercise,” she repeated, nervously.  They both knew that it could be a great deal more.  “Take care of yourself, all right?”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, and then turned away, hiding her eyes from him.  Doug understood and allowed her to conceal her tearing eyes.  He patted her back awkwardly and walked out towards the car parked in the driveway, hearing – as he left – the sound of another bleeper behind him.  Lindsey’s bleeper was permanently tuned to New York’s Emergency Medical Department, which could summon her at any moment to help deal with a medical emergency.  The implications worried him, for he didn't think that his muster orders and her summons were just a coincidence.  The National Guard had trained for disaster relief and civil disturbance as well as actual war-fighting; he looked into the distance, half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud rising up like a dark harbinger of death.  There was no sign of any attack.  The suburb seemed perfectly safe and tranquil.

He climbed into the car, started the engine and pulled out of the drive.  Whatever was going on, he was sure, he would know the truth of it soon enough.  Perhaps it was just an exercise, after all.

***

“
Hey, kitty cat,” one of the other junior reporters called.  “Did you hear the news?”

Mija Cat looked up impatiently.  Young Olson had delusions of grandeur, a fairly common delusion among the reporting community, suggesting that he would probably be the first to make senior reporter.  He not only fancied himself a great reporter, but also a real ladies man, hitting on every female who came into the office with a distressing rate of success.  Mija had never liked him, although she had to admit that he was good at worming information out of people.  The nasty side of her mind wondered how much he had learned during pillow talk.

“No,” she said, crossly.  She was still trying to figure out what was going on, but very few people seemed prepared to talk to her.  All the signs pointed towards a major medical emergency – every medical professional in New York seemed to have been called to duty, along with every policeman and fireman in the city – but no one who was willing to talk knew what was going on.  “What’s happened?”

“The editor sent Lois down to Town Hall to get an interview with Mayor Hundred himself,” Olson said.  He grinned openly; Lois was not only the star reporter, but a woman with a reputation as a real ball-buster, hated and adored in equal measure.  Privately, Mija considered her a snooty bitch.  “About seven minutes after she entered his office, two policemen came in and arrested her, carting her off to the police station in handcuffs.”

He leered at her.  “I even have pictures,” he added, passing her a small palmtop.  Mija couldn't stop herself from smiling at the image, with Lois pinned between two burly policemen.  “I bet you that that will be all around the city by tonight.”

“No bet,” Mija said.  Her mind caught up with her and she stopped, astonished.  America wasn't known for arresting reporters, not even the most obnoxious of the breed...and if Mayor Hundred had ordered Lois arrested, he could kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.  The
New York Times
would definitely file a lawsuit on her behalf, something that would smear not only the Mayor, but the NYPD as well.  Why had he taken the risk of arresting her?  “Do you know why?”

“Perhaps she asked him the wrong question,” Olson speculated.  He winked at her and recovered the palmtop.  “Or perhaps she asked the
right
question.”

He swaggered off towards a young intern’s desk, leaving Mija behind thinking hard.  All the signs pointed to a biological emergency of some kind, which meant...she suddenly became aware of silence falling across the office, broken only by the speakers.  The row of plasma screens mounted along the walls, which followed CNN, FOX, the BBC and other famous television channels, had all switched to a single broadcast.  The President’s face looked out at them, somehow subtly wrong.  It took Mija a moment to realise that she hadn’t gone through make-up; indeed, she looked worried.  Mija looked down at her computer and saw that the President’s speech was being fed online as well as over the television and radio channels.  The entire country would be hearing the speech.

“My fellow Americans,” President Handley said.  The most powerful woman in the world sounded worried, as if she knew that things were very bad.  “It is with heavy heart that I must confirm to you that the country is under attack.  A number of people within our country have been infected with smallpox, a disease thought to have been exterminated in the wild decades ago.  The nature of the infection suggests that the outbreak was not natural.  Those people are the first victims of the greatest terrorist attack since 9/11.”

There was dead silence in the office.  Mija had never known it to be so silent, not during the worst global crisis.  “There is no need to panic,” the President continued.  She sounded almost as if she were making the words up as she went along, adding a deeper layer of horror to her speech.  “Although the infection is serious, it
can
be treated and, with care, can be prevented from spreading further.  I have therefore, with the concurrence of my Cabinet, Congress and the State Governors, declared a state of emergency over the entire United States.  The National Guard has been called up and, along with the police and regular army units, will enforce the state of emergency.

“The disease spreads through social contact, so we will shut down as much social contact as possible.  All public transport systems will be shut down.  All schools, malls, sports stadiums and other places where people might congregate will be closed for the duration of the emergency.  I urge all civilians to return to their homes and remain there until the end of the emergency, leaving them only for emergencies.

“There are those who will say that these measures are not constitutional and that, in enforcing them upon the country, I am breaking the law.  I can only remind them that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and that, if we honour the letter of the law, we risk spreading the disease further.  So far, it remains limited; we can, with prompt action, keep it limited.  If Congress wishes to impeach me, they can do so after the emergency is over.”

Her voice tightened.  “Over the next few days, we will be vaccinating the entire country against smallpox,” she concluded.  “There is enough smallpox vaccine in the country for everyone.  Please do not panic, or demand immediate vaccination; we will get to everyone before the disease can spread further.  At the moment, panic is our worst enemy, not the disease.

“We do not know who has done this to us, not yet,” she concluded.  “I swear to you, however, that we will find them and, when we do, we will extract the most horrific revenge.  There will be no safe place for the terrorists to hide.  We will utilise the entire military might of the United States, with or without our allies, to exterminate the terrorists.  No one will be allowed to stand in our way.