agents, only one of the men, tall and angular, had a slightly increased respiratory rate. He could have been hyperventilating because of the tenseness of their situation, or he could have been incubating virus.
It had been just over ten hours since the initial exposure.
“Why are you wearing jackets?” Griff asked. “It’s hot inside these suits and we have fans going. You guys must be baking.”
“We’re wearing shoulder holsters,” one of the women said. “The people in there are upset enough without having obviously armed guards parading about.”
“What’s the room temperature?”
“No idea, but it’s up there. We just got the AC running again. It already shut down on us once. We’re trying to keep the House Chamber and other rooms cool. Body heat wants to turn the place into a sauna.”
“Well, radio somebody right now and tell them to shut that AC off. It’s bad enough there are openings around every window in this creaky old place. We’re talking viruses here, as in small—unimaginably small for most people. And like I said, we don’t know about airflow or how the germ will spread. Let’s not help it along through the ventilation shafts.”
The Secret Service agent sent the order on via radio, and the biocontainment team and their guides resumed their descent into hell. They crossed a polished marble floor and then headed down a short flight of stairs into Emancipation Hall. From there, they passed the model of the Statue of Freedom and up some stairs before emerging into the Great Rotunda. Griff took little notice of the splendor of the dome, lined by cream- and gold- colored toruses, with the Brumidi frieze and stunning fresco at its top. The way things were, the Great Rotunda, and the rest of the Capitol for that matter, had become nothing more than an ornate coffin.
They crossed under the dome in silence, but from up ahead, Griff heard voices. The clamor grew louder as the team approached Statuary Hall.
“Isn’t everybody still inside the House Chamber?” he asked, visualizing the floor plans he had studied on the way across country.
“We’ve moved some people. President’s orders.”
“Varied exposure levels?”
“No one’s told us. They just said who to move and where.”
Griff’s containment suit was sweltering, but still, the scene in elegant Statuary Hall sent a chill through him. Entering between Washington and Jefferson, the team stepped into a large, two-story semicircular space, crowded with people. Many of them were lying on blankets, spread out across the richly polished checkered floor. Others were propped against the pedestals displaying the busts of heroes from each of the states.
In a bizarre, unsettling juxtaposition, those comprising the miserably uncomfortable assemblage were decked in their finest evening wear, much of which had been ripped in response to the heat. A Civil War infirmary scene was Griff’s first impression—minus the bloodied bandages and hand-carved crutches.
Portable lighting augmenting that from the chandelier bathed the scene in an eerie glow.
There were several cots set up in a row along one wall, bearing mostly older men and women with IV drips in their arms. Near them were several large trash cans, filled to overflowing with rubbish, and beside the cans were columns of cartons, stacked five high, with stenciled lettering on the side that read: US ARMY RATIONS.
The voices fell into a deathly silence as Griff and the others made their way into the room. A number of the detainees, haggard, shirts open, hair undone, slowly rose to their feet and followed Griff’s movements with their eyes. Then, without warning, a small, frustrated mob, ten or twelve, with madness in their eyes, rushed him. Some clawed at his suit. Others tried getting at his mask.
“What’s going on?” a woman shouted. “Tell us!”
“Help us! Please!”
“Who are you?”
“For God’s sake, do something! Get us out of here!”
The violent reaction was totally unexpected. One break in his suit, one microscopic tear in the seal between his mask and hood, and he was dead. Griff batted away at their arms. The soldiers and Secret Service agents, also taken by surprise, delayed several seconds before finally wading into the crowd, shoving some people aside and others to the floor. The agents pulled their sidearms and two of the soldiers swung the barrels of their M16s, gashing open a distinguished-looking gentleman’s face. A woman came at Griff from the side. Her hair was matted down with sweat and her makeup had run rivers along both cheeks.
“Please,” the women begged, “I have a son. A husband. If it’s just a flu virus, why can’t we leave?”
“Flu?” Griff repeated. “Is that what you were told?”
“Yes.”
Griff clenched his jaw and pushed his way past the woman, being led and followed closely by those assigned to protect him.
“Wait,” one of the soldiers behind Griff said.
The group turned. He was an African American, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a serious weight lifter. Now, the soldier stood motionless, holding his right arm out. The tape safeguarding his wrist had been torn away, and the weld between the hand and arm was ripped, exposing his skin.
“I’m sorry,” Griff whispered, placing his arm around the shoulders of the man who had quite possibly saved Griff’s life at the cost of his own. “I’m really sorry.”
Without a word, the soldier set his rifle down, placed his helmet beside it, turned, and head high, walked back into Statuary Hall.
For a time, no one could speak.
“Let’s hope you’re worth it, pal,” one of the other men said finally. “Let’s hope you’re worth it.”
The group was led down a hallway to a nondescript door just outside the House Chamber.
“The president is waiting for you inside,” an agent said.
Griff inhaled deeply, then exhaled and opened the door. From his seat at the desk inside the small office, James Allaire rose. For a time, the two men stood several feet apart, sizing each other up.
“You’re lying to these people.”
“I’m the goddamn president of this country. I do what I feel is necessary to maintain order and protect the citizens. I’m counting on you to save their lives.”
“You were wrong about me. You know that? I’m not a terrorist.”
“Well then, prove it.”
CHAPTER 17
The exterior of the S&S Trading Co. mirrored the other garages and rundown brick warehouses lining a quarter-mile stretch of K Street in southeast D.C. Reports of decreased violence in the notoriously high-crime neighborhood amounted to little more than the city’s well-connected Economic Council responding to a steady inflow of landlord payoffs. Homicides were up, prostitution was up, and tax revenues were down. Agitation was increasing to clean up the area in preparation for gentrification, and sooner or later there would be a big-time crackdown.
But not that night.
With every cop in D.C. summoned to the Capitol, patrols were essentially nonexistent, and the street people were out in force. Teenage drug dealers and over-the-hill hookers strolled past the S&S Trading Co. without giving the building a second thought. From the street, they could not see the sophisticated array of satellite dishes set dead center on the roof. Beyond the massive steel sliding door, painted a nondescript reddish brown, two men sat at opposite sides of a folding table, smoking cigars, drinking coffee, and playing cards. The men, one African American, the other Caucasian, were dressed in military fatigues.
A naked bulb dangled from a cord suspended a few feet above them. Smoke drifted through the shaft of light. Seated to one side of the dimly lit space was a third man, copper-skinned and wiry, with a once-handsome face that
