The Coward's Way of War (18 page)

There was a long chilling silence.  “I will speak to the American President,” Nekrasov said, finally.  “We will agree to give her what she wants, on two conditions.”  He held up a hand before any of them could speak.  “The first is that they will
only
have access to the biological warfare research program and its scientists.  We will not be sharing the rest of our defence establishment with them.  The second is that they have to keep our...cooperation a secret.  We do not want word to leak out about this to anyone.”

Zaitsev knew what he meant.  The hardliners, who would be completely opposed to any deal with the Americans – let alone such a humiliating set of concessions – would be horrified and furious once they found out the truth.  Worse, the outside world would be shocked when they realised just how badly Russia had broken the treaties governing biological warfare research and development.  The treaties had been broken almost before the ink had finished drying on the paper.  Hundreds of vitally important trade deals could be at stake.

“I expect each of you to make this happen, without fuss or bloodshed,” Nekrasov finished.  “Igor Ivanovich, stay a few minutes with me.”

The others stood up, recognising the dismissal, and left the two old friends alone.  “Stepan Viktorovich is not happy,” Zaitsev observed, once the door was shut.  “Do you think I should arrange his assassination?”

Nekrasov didn't smile.  “I want you to take the lead on this,” he said.  “You will have complete authority and access to the entire program; feel free to arrest and detain anyone who feels that you shouldn't have such access.  Make sure that you take trustworthy guards with you; in fact, take special security detachments and secure all of the research sites.  We do not want someone trying to hide anything from the Americans.”

His voice tightened.  “There was another piece of news that came in just after the American ultimatum,” he added.  “A man collapsed in a steam bath last night.  When he was finally examined by the doctors, they found red marks on his skin.  Henderson’s Disease has returned to Mother Russia.”

Zaitsev swore.  The average Russian citizen had far less freedom of movement than his or her American counterpart, but there was still a great deal of contact between Russia's different cities and population centres.  And the public health system was alarmingly bad.  The disease could take root in the population very quickly.  Once the population realised the truth, even the traditional Russian methods of fear and repression wouldn't prevent a panic.  They had failed at Chernobyl and they would fail here.

“And now you see,” Nekrasov said, softly.  “Whoever is behind this has harmed Russia badly, even if the Americans do not wage war on us.  I want them found before something even worse than smallpox escapes from the biological research centres.”

If you look at FOX NEWS, you will see that it has a strong right-wing bias.  If you look at CNN, you will see that it has a stro
ng left-wing bias.  The average person can guess which way a channel will jump depending on the issue of the day.  If the mainstream media is permanently regarded as untrustworthy, where will people get their news?  The bloggers may never replace print media, but they are regarded as more trustworthy than the MSM.  Why?  Because, when a blogger is concerned, even his bias is a honestly declared bias.

- Mija Cat

New York, USA

Day 11

“Welcome back,” Officer Jones said, as Sergeant Al Hattlestad walked up to the police line.  “It hasn't been quite the same without you.”

Al scowled at him.  The doctors had finally conceded that he was immune to Henderson’s Disease – they’d named it after the first known victim, which struck him as rather tasteless – and released him back to the NYPD, not without shaving him and putting him through a series of unpleasant medical procedures to ensure that he wasn't carrying the disease, even though he was immune.  He’d protested the procedures until someone had pointed out that Tom Pearson, the rookie officer, was infected with smallpox and not expected to survive the week.  The rookie had died merely by following Al into an apartment block.

“I’m glad to be back,” Al agreed, truthfully.  After a week of lying in a sealed quarantine ward, he would have cheerfully agreed to fight the entire Russian Army stark naked, as long as they let him out of the isolation chamber.  He understood what the doctors had been worried about, but the experience had been driving him insane.  He wasn't one for remaining inactive, not after Paris Island and years of service as a Marine.  “What’s going on here?”

Jones waved a hand towards the group of protesters.  It was a weird protest line, certainly compared to some of the ones that had shaken New York over the years.  The protesters all wore masks – some wore HAZMAT suits and other forms of total protection – and they were keeping their distance from one another.  They should not have been on the streets at all, but the police force hadn't had the manpower to force them to disperse.  He shook his head in disbelief.  Didn’t those fools know that if a single one of them was infected, they would all come down with the disease?

“It seems that our dear Mayor has screwed the pooch,” Jones said, not without a certain amount of relish.  Mayor Hundred had had ideas about how the NYPD could expand its remit and he hadn't hesitated to cut the department’s core competences to allow time and resources for his pet projects.  The NYPD had sent more officers to community networking events, courses on sexual, religious and racial harassment and other absurdities, while ordinary policing, the backbone of the NYPD, had been allowed to wither.  He still shuddered at the memory of a mandatory course on sexual relationships, including claims that some people were asexual and – therefore – the proper course of action was to avoid confronting them with anything that might remind them that others did have sexual relationships.  “His office was giving out vaccine to his strongest supporters first, before dealing with anyone else.”

He grinned.  “And then someone broke the story and all hell broke loose,” he added.  “If it wasn't for the disease, half the city would be out on the streets.”

“And getting infected by the disease,” Al said, tightly.  The NYPD, he’d discovered, had been pushed right to the limits over the past week.  The vast majority of the population might be remaining indoors, now that the military had sealed the city up tight, but there was a soaring crime rate in the less well-off districts.  All over the city, the supply of illegal drugs was drying up, forcing the drug dealers to raise their prices.  Their addicts were being forced to steal just to obtain their daily fix.

Al had no sympathy for either the pushers or the silly fools who got themselves addicted, but he understood their problem.  The military prevented anyone from getting into New York, even people who had relatives in the city, which meant that there would be no more drugs from outside sources.  With outbreaks of Henderson’s Disease in Columbia and Mexico, it was unlikely that normal services would ever be resumed.  A great many addicts would find themselves forced to go cold turkey, once the supply ran out completely.  The crime rate was likely to rise even higher, even with the NYPD authorised to open fire on looters without the normal legal hassles surrounding the use of deadly force.

“Yeah,” Jones said.  He didn't sound too unhappy, but then, as a police officer, he would have been among the first to receive the vaccine.  “Maybe all the protesters will do us the favour of dropping dead.”

Al opened his mouth to deliver a savage reprimand – that sort of talk had no place in America, let alone the NYPD – but then he saw the signs.  Jones hadn't just been doing the normal run of overtime, not when the entire city was in crisis.  He would have been surprised to discover that the younger man had had more than a few hours sleep over the last week, leaving him a tired nervous shell.  Back in Iraq, tiredness had led to more than a few tragic accidents, but in New York the consequences could – would – be a damn sight worse.

“You need some sleep,” he said.  Chewing Jones out for his words wouldn't achieve anything.  “Christ, when was the last time you slept?”

“Tell me about it,” Jones said.  He lit a cigarette and offered Al the pack, who politely declined the offer.  “I slept...fuck it, I can't remember when I slept last.  I haven’t been home in
days
.”

Al looked back at the protesters.  At least they didn't look violent, although there was a dark mood in the air that could easily turn savage, given the opportunity.  He’d been briefed, long ago, on just how badly things could go to hell if the general public lost all faith in their elected leaders.  The Mayor had not only shot himself in the foot, he’d stabbed the NYPD and the other emergency workers in the back.  Who would have faith in them now?

“Tell the supervisor that you need some rest,” Al said, tightly.  If every other NYPD officer was like Jones, pushed right to the limits, there was going to be trouble.  Perhaps half of the force could get a good night’s sleep, enforced by a sedative.  Or perhaps he was just deluding himself.  “You’re no good for anything like this.”

***

Doctor McCoy scowled as he s
tepped into the Marigold Hotel, cursing the HAZMAT suit under his breath.  It wasn't as bad as the MOPP suits they’d worn, back when they had had no idea what they were dealing with, but the emergency call from the Marigold had been very near hysterical.  The hotel’s rich and famous guests, which included a number of billionaires and celebrities, were demanding immediate medical treatment.  Someone, perhaps the Mayor, had insisted that Wildfire send a team at once, even though New York’s own medical establishment could have dealt with the body.  By now, everyone was used to finding dead bodies in odd places.

The hotel room, he decided as he followed one of the maids up the stairs and into the apartment suite, would have cost him a year’s salary just to spend a night there.  He didn't have time to admire it, though; the maid was already leading him into the bathroom.  McCoy blinked in astonishment as he took in the sight in front of him, realising that the hotel’s manager might have been right to panic after all.  The body looked as if it was on the verge of melting down completely into a pile of goo.

“Stay back,” he ordered, as he examined the body.  His suit’s camera was already flashing away, taking pictures and transmitting them to the labs.  The CDC would certainly want to take a careful look at them, just in case it was something new.  The thought was not a pleasant one, but it had to be faced.  If the terrorists – or whoever – had unleashed smallpox, why not something nastier?  “In fact, go down to the HAZMAT vans and report for quarantine.”

He ignored the maid’s departure – it was downright criminal to force her to work in such an environment without protection – and bent down to take a closer look.  At first glance, it was impossible to tell if he were looking at a male or female victim, not with the colossal damage inflicted upon the face.  Carefully, he touched the body’s cheek and recoiled as pustules burst, scattering virus material over his gloved hand.  The HAZMAT team would have to make very sure that they were all clean before they risked removing their garments. 

The body seemed to weaken under his touch, twitching slightly.  He pulled at the clothes and realised that he was looking at a male, although the body’s sexual organs seemed to have been completely destroyed.  The pustules, ironically, were a good sign, even if they were unusually advanced, for they proved that the body had died through smallpox.  But then, most victims of Henderson’s Disease had died long before their bodies collapsed so completely.

“Poor bastard,” he muttered, as he continued removing clothes.  There was not a single piece of unblemished skin on the man’s chest.  The pustules dominated everything.  It struck him that the man must have died in terrible agony, yet no one had heard screams or come to the rescue.  Just when, he wondered, had he contacted Henderson’s Disease?  The hotel staff would know when he’d returned to his suite and never emerged.  The FBI teams would have to seize their records and interrogate the staff.  “Who are you?  Who could you possibly be?”

He stood up and stepped back from the body, leaving it lying in the bathtub.  A full team would be required to transport it out of the city, where it could be dissected at leisure.  He tapped his radio, making a brief report and ordering up the remainder of the team, before he walked back into the suite.  The dead man had lain on the bed, he guessed, growing unwell...and hadn't left the suite to seek help.  McCoy was no Sherlock Holmes –
CSI
and other entertainment dramas bore little relationship to reality – yet it didn't take Doctor Watson to realise that something was very wrong.  Judging from the condition of the patient, he might well have died
before
Cally Henderson had been discovered.  And if that were the case, it suggested all kinds of unpleasant possibilities.

“I want a full investigative team up here as well,” he ordered, keying his radio.  “I want to know everything about this person; who he is, where he came from and just what he was doing before Henderson’s Disease was discovered.”

He kept his final thought to himself.  No matter how they looked at it, Cally Henderson couldn't have infected all of the early cases, not when there were so many unexplained broken links in the chain of transmission.  The only logical solution was that there was an unidentified index case out there.  He looked back towards the bathroom door and shuddered.  Unless he missed his guess, they’d just found the index case, which might just lead them towards the answer to the most important question of all.  Who, in the entire world, had done this to the United States of America?

***

“
I think that you should know that you are in a lot of trouble, young lady,” the man in black said.  Neither he nor his comrade, a man wearing a grey suit, had bothered to give their names.  “You have caused a panic.  You may have caused hundreds of deaths.”

Mija pasted a brave expression on her face, refusing to show them any sign of fear.  They’d come for her in the office, explaining to the editor that they needed Mija to help them with their enquiries.  Whatever they’d shown him, it had made him unwilling to stand up for one of his reporters, although that might have been because his own position was at stake.  Mija was willing to believe his claim that he hadn't known that the Mayor had marked him and his family for early distribution of the vaccine, but it hadn't mattered.  Nearly a third of the staff had refused to come into work, while the remainder could only be described as sullen.

“Your blog post was reposted all over the internet,” the man in grey said.  He spoke in a boring voice, dull and atonal, as if he had long ago lost the will to live.  “The entire world now knows what Mayor Hundred intended to do.”

“You say that as if it were a bad thing,” Mija said, tartly.  The two government agents – they had the right attitude, even if they had refused to tell her which service they worked for – glared at her.  “The public has a right to know.”

“You reporters are always the same,” the man in black said, coldly.  “You believe that you have a right to publish everything, no matter how much harm it will cause when it finally gets out.  Do you know how many people went onto the streets to protest the Mayor and demand his immediate resignation?  Every one of those people may now be infected with Henderson’s Disease.”

“I didn't tell them to go onto the streets,” Mija protested.  “I didn't...”

“You don’t have the right to scream about fires in crowded cinemas either,” the man in black pointed out.  “You know as well as we do that New York is on a knife edge right now.  All over the city, the food that people had on hand is running out.  They are starting to starve and starving people grow desperate.  We do not need a panic, young lady.  The relief efforts are running poorly as it is.”

“I would really prefer it,” Mija said, coldly, “if you would stop calling me young lady.”

“We would find it easier to treat you as an adult if you acted like an adult,” the man in grey said.  “You should have forwarded the email you received” – Mija scowled at the confirmation that they’d been through her email accounts – “to the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security.  They would have seen to it that the Mayor’s little scheme would have been derailed,
without
the panic that you caused.”