degree from Yale, and had never even seen a dead person, let alone watched one be murdered in such a gruesome manner.
Ursula had known something big was about to happen. She had noticed Harlan Mackey vanish behind the speaker’s podium.
“Do you still have your BlackBerry, dear Leland? Or did Allaire’s robots take it from you?” Ellis had asked.
“I still have it.”
Gladstone patted his back, where he had concealed the device underneath his white dress shirt and secured it in place using his belt.
“Can it record video?”
“It can. Better than most camcorders too.”
“Follow Mackey. See where he goes. I don’t know what Allaire meant by extreme measures, and O’Neil didn’t come back with anything useful. All O’Neil told me is that Russians or Chinese may be behind the attack, and that they’re preparing us for an extended stay. Supposedly whatever we’ve been exposed to is some type of flu virus. Not that lethal, but presumably very contagious.”
“That sounds like useful information,” Gladstone had said.
“Perhaps. But O’Neil wasn’t the last to leave the debrief and my instincts tell me there’s more Allaire’s hiding than he’s sharing.”
Gladstone, who knew the myriad tunnels of the Capitol nearly as well as did Ellis, chose to follow the passageway one story above the one Mackey had taken. There was only one place the senator could be going. Camera poised, Gladstone knelt by the sill of the window and watched the heavy metal door swing open beneath him. The well-known, distinguished man’s death, incineration, and removal had happened so quickly, and with such organization, that the events had barely registered in Gladstone’s mind while he was recording them.
Now, the aide stumbled back from the mess he had made and used the wall to push himself upward. The military had murdered Harlan Mackey, almost certainly on orders from the president.
Gladstone wondered if Ellis had known her colleague and loyal campaign supporter was in peril.
CHAPTER 12
“Move it, Rhodes!”
As Griff stepped onto the packed dirt of the Florence federal prison exercise yard, guard Donald Spinelli forced him forward using the butt of his nightstick and a single, well-placed jab against his lower spine. Griff stumbled, but fierce winds from the whirling blades helped to keep him from going down. Dust shooting into his eyes stung like sandpaper.
In the months since Griff had last worn his favorite pair of blue jeans, they had gone from comfortably snug to barely staying over his hips. The rotor-driven winds plastered his plaid flannel cowboy shirt against his once wiry, now near-skeletal frame.
The twin-engine helicopter lifted off the yard, touched down again momentarily. It was clear to Griff the pilot was in a rush and not about to stop the rotors. During his virus-hunting days, he had chartered helicopters from time to time back in Africa, but those were ragged machines, better equipped for falling than flying. This aircraft, though, reminded him of images he had seen of Marine One, with its dark green body and white top, American flags emblazoned on the engine casings.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS was painted in white on the chopper’s tail. Griff’s gut had knotted as soon as he realized his removal from the so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies might be a military action. It had been just over nine months since he had last been the focus of another military operation—his final moments of freedom until now.
So many changes.
His beard, a tangled mess of black streaked with gray, immediately collected a fine coating of prison yard dust. He wondered if, in addition to his dark memories of nine months in solitary confinement, that dirt would be all he would ever take away from Florence. It had to be. No matter what lay ahead, he wasn’t going back. Nine months chopped out of a life that had been built around doing the right thing and accepting the consequences for his decisions, such as the Ebola infection. Nine months during which there had been no human contact other than with guards bent on causing him pain. Nine months of confusion about why he had been imprisoned, or what future, if any, he had in store. Nine months during which the only clue he had in that regard was the label
Griff had barely stepped inside the helicopter bay door when he felt the aircraft begin to lift. A soldier, dressed in well-pressed military camouflage, handed him a jet-black flight helmet, then guided him into an unpadded seat. Griff strapped himself in and took one last look out the helicopter’s oval window at Florence, shuddering at the gun towers and concrete block, framed with barbwire, now fast fading from view. He wondered if anyone watching from inside except for the warden and a few guards even knew his name.
The built-in radio inside his helmet allowed Griff to hear the soldier seated across from him over the engine’s roar.
“Dr. Griffin Rhodes, my name is Captain Timothy Lewis, with the United States Marine Corps. By order of the president of the United States of America, it is my honor to welcome you aboard this VH-60N aircraft.”
“Tell the president that nothing he does is going to get me to change my vote.”
The marine smiled. “I think you’ll get the chance to do that yourself, sir.”
“Actually, now that I think about it, I never got the chance to vote at all. In fact, I don’t even know who won the election?”
“I’m sorry, sir. It was President Allaire. He won again, by quite a wide margin, too.”
Griff stared out at the blackness. Of all the theater of the absurd scenarios he had lived through, this military removal from solitary confinement in a supermax federal prison had to be the most bizarre. But now, learning he was up here at the behest of the president topped them all.
“Thanks for the info,” he said. “Any idea why he’s sent for me?”
“Sir, the president will be radioing in at oh two hundred hours eastern standard time. My orders are to transport you to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. From there a plane will take you to Washington, D.C.”
“Washington? What for?”
“Sir, that’s for the president to explain. For now, just relax and enjoy the flight. There are snacks on board if you’d like some.”
“Fresh fruit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hostess cupcakes?”
“It’s possible.”
“I’ll take both plus some bottled water.”
“Done.”
The solider handed Griff a bottle of Dasani from a cooler.
“And a Butterfinger or Heath bar if you have them,” Griff added. “Make that two of each.”
Surprisingly, the captain filled the order right down to the cupcakes.
“Enjoy the trip, sir,” he said, setting a cardboard tray on Griff’s lap.
