Sooner more likely than later, WRX3883 was going to escape.
The crowd nearest to where Griff debarked noticed him right away.
“Who is that, the Unibomber?”
“Is there anyone else coming out of there?… Nope, he’s it.… He’s it?”
“Maybe he’s the prime minister of someplace.”
“I can’t believe they’re going to let him in there without giving him a bath.”
“Looks like the ghost of Howard Hughes.”
Griff battled back the urge to stop and tell the growing crowd that if they knew what was going on inside, none of them would want to be within five miles of the place. Instead, he pulled up the hood of his field jacket and trudged ahead, flanked by a cordon of soldiers, all wearing similar military camouflage.
Behind him, the rotors slashed to a stop. Ahead, a tall, ramrod-straight man, bareheaded with a gray flattop, emerged from the visitors’ pavilion. He was dressed like the other soldiers, but Griff could tell right away he was brass.
“Dr. Rhodes, I’m General Frank Egan, head of the U.S. Northern Command,” the man said, extending his gloved hand. His steely gaze remained fixed on Griff’s face, clearly taking measure of him. “I am under orders from the president to get you inside the Capitol complex and to escort you to the House Chamber as quickly as possible.”
“Well, then, escort away,” Griff said.
“We’ve had our best people here for a few hours now. There’s a staging tent set up over there for you and the others who will be changing into field biological gear. They are Racal spacesuits, positive-pressurized, HEPA superfiltered air supply, with redundant battery power. There are more on the way. I believe that’s what you requested.”
Griff nodded grimly and smiled inwardly at the fact that the highly technical descriptions were like something from a child’s primer to him now. No one who had been around him during the weeks following his sister’s death would have ever predicted the transformation that was about to occur.
As his sullenness and oppositional behavior had intensified, the powers in his high school met with his aunt and uncle—his only remaining relatives. They in turn brought in their minister, and after that, the police community relations officer, who had done his best but failed to reach the brooding, disenfranchised teen. Throughout the meetings, Griff had sat stoically, staring at the wall or out the window, saying little. Then, after a three-week absence from school, spent sleeping on the basement couches of friends, or in abandoned buildings that for years had been his haunts, he suddenly marched into class and aced an exam in a chemistry course he had never attended.
“Is this the team who will be escorting me in?” Griff asked Egan, pointing to the six soldiers who stood confidently at ease behind the general.
“Yes, they are.”
“I’m guessing they aren’t biocontainment experts.”
“You are guessing right.”
“They armed?”
“Does it matter?”
“Allaire wants me to save the day, but he doesn’t trust me, is that it?”
“I have my orders, Dr. Rhodes. These soldiers are prepared to sacrifice their lives for this mission. They will suit up and accompany you every step of the way.”
Griff just nodded. The general surprised him though, when his hard eyes suddenly softened.
“Dr. Rhodes,” he said, “I don’t know what in the hell is going on inside, but it’s an understatement for me to say that your being flown here as you have been is of the utmost importance to the people in there and to our country. The president has shared with me some of where you’ve been for the past nine months and why. All I can say is please do your best to help him and those people with him.”
“I will do that, General,” Griff said, his mouth unpleasantly dry.
Egan studied him.
“I believe you will,” he said finally.
“General, one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I hate to be a pessimist here, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst.”
Griff flashed on his work with Project Veritas, specifically on his computer models, which he had been working on for years in his efforts to steer clear of experimenting on animals. His latest programs rendered flawless CGI animations of various combinations of the ribonucleic acid (RNA) pattern of the WRX3883 virus, as well as other, related RNA viruses like SARS and hepatitis C, and many deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) viruses as well.
His programs, the most promising of which he had code named Orion, could generate countless three- dimensional combinations of the molecules that formed the backbone of the submicroscopic germs. But they could not, to this point at least, develop a sequence that would effectively kill them.
At that moment, however, he did not need a computer simulation to tell him what he already knew. Within fourteen days—twenty-one at the outside—everybody inside the Capitol would die in a manner as horrible as his worst Ebola nightmare.
Over the years before his arrest, despite all the financial support and equipment he could ask for within the tight security of the Veritas project, Griff had failed to uncover the missing link in his RNA sequencing that would create an effective viral kill-drug. It was naive of Jim Allaire to believe that within fourteen days, the answer would suddenly appear.
“Looks like I’ve traded one cell for another,” Griff said, gesturing at his escorts.
“Think of them as bodyguards,” the general said.
“Is that how President Allaire described them to you?”
“Not exactly.”
Not ready to deal with Egan and his militia, Griff turned and walked back toward the crowd. Immediately, a second helicopter, hovering two hundred feet overhead, turned a powerful spot directly down on him. The glare hurt his eyes.
“Guess they’re worried I’m going to run for it,” he said to no one in particular.
He slowed, but continued walking away, enjoying the sense of freedom, however artificial. Behind him, no one followed. The spot remained on—Egan hedging his bets. As Griff neared the crowd, which seemed to have doubled in size since his arrival, people again began shouting.
“Hey, crazy man!”
“You with the beard!”
“Can you tell us what’s going on?”
“Here, over here. Let me get a picture of you. Just one shot.”
Flashbulbs popped.
In the clamor and cacophony of voices, suddenly one stood out—a woman’s voice from somewhere deep within the crowd. It was enough to make Griff peer ahead, looking for her. But every minute was crucial, and with the spotlight glaring off the sea of frozen breath, there was no chance. He turned and walked back toward where the head of the U.S. Northern Command stood waiting. As he reached the man, he heard the woman’s voice once more above the din.
Of all those voices shouting at him, hers was the only one calling him by name.
CHAPTER 16
Griff lifted the vinyl flap of the camouflage-colored field tent and stepped inside. At this point, he decided, there was no sense in trying to explain to the head of the Northern Command that he had a lingering issue with the
