“I know.”
They were well ahead of the timetable.
“Good enough,” he said, nodding his approval of what was really impressive work.
In amazingly little time, the Special Ops team had created a reasonably safe, fully functional decontamination zone between the House side of the Capitol and the subway line connecting the complex to nearby office buildings. He overheard one of the soldiers say that they had just built a doorway between life and death.
Angie materialized beside him.
“How’d we do?” she asked.
“The Special Ops people want to adopt you.”
“Thanks. They were ready to walk through fire for you. More and more you’re reminding me of that cowboy in Kenya that I took such a shine to.”
Her eyes seemed to light up the space behind her visor.
“Are you ready to decontaminate?” he asked.
“Are we ready to go?”
“As soon as Allaire says we are.”
“Lead the way.”
“Simple,” Griff said. “First, we’re going to take an ultraviolet bath.”
He pointed to an area that contained several large saucer lights mounted on tall metal stands. The lights were plugged into a running generator.
“What will they do?” Angie asked.
“Kill any virus still clinging to our suit. From there, we’ll shuffle into the portable airlock.” Griff gestured toward the clear plastic cube erected beside the entranceway separating the Capitol from the subway line.
“Won’t bad air get out when we go in?”
“The airlock is negative pressurized,” Griff said, “so that poisoned air from the Capitol won’t leak out into the tunnel.”
“And who’s gonna drive the train?”
“The system here uses a driverless car to shuttle members of Congress and their guests between the Capitol and the Rayburn building,” Griff said. “One less person to decontaminate.”
“Are you going to be the first through?”
“No, you are,” Griff said.
“Why me?”
“Well, all the women are going first.”
“Why’s that?”
“After the light bath you’re going to take a chemical shower. Then you’ll need to strip naked. There will be a change of clothes waiting for you on the train. You’ll put your biocontainment suit in the red toxic waste bags provided and leave them on the Capitol side of the airlock.”
“You couldn’t set up a divider, huh?” Angie said.
“I told the team that to save time we’d just turn our backs.”
“Anything for our country.”
Angie squeezed his hand and left to join a group of three women at the ultraviolet bath station.
CHAPTER 23
Griff was the last person to pass through the airlock. He came through naked, but rather than feel self- conscious, his thoughts were keyed on the seven hundred people imprisoned in the building he was leaving. This was already hell for many of them.
It was going to get much worse.
He reflected on the remorselessness of Genesis, whoever they were. Death at power stations in New York. Death in a museum in San Diego. Death in a public garden in D.C. And now, death on a truly grand scale. His own passions ran deep in many areas, but none were even close to being intense enough to kill for. He could intellectualize terrorism, but he had never really been able to understand it.
And now, he had been placed squarely in the path of the extremists to whom cause was everything and killing was nothing. Even if he somehow managed to survive, even if it all came together for him in Kalvesta, Genesis might be damaged, but their hatred and their cause would endure. They would come up with something else. Some new demonstration of their commitment and resolve to accomplish—to accomplish what?
And along the way, more people would die.
The best he could hope for was to stay alive and try to disrupt their plan … this time.
Griff stepped onto the waiting train and Angie, facing away, handed him a towel and a set of hospital scrubs.
“We’re going to have to get some meat back on those bones, Doc.”
“You peeked. Well, I did yoga and calisthenics almost every day while I was locked up in solitary, but I guess my equation for staying in shape was missing useful nutrition.”
“When we get to Kansas, I’ll handle the cooking. For the past few years I’ve been on a Chinese kick. You’ll love it. There’s more calories in those bean sprouts than you think.”
“There were times when I considered chowing down on one of the guards.”
“Ugh!” She made room for him on the bench next to her, and instantly he felt stirred by her closeness. “Griff, tell me something,” she said. “Given the status of your research when they arrested you, do you think you can do this?”
“I was getting pretty close to something useful. That may be why they came after me. But at best, what we’re facing is a long shot. I’ve been running through some hypothetical figures while I was waiting for the shower. I came up with a two percent chance of solving the design problems that were there when the militia came and hauled me away.”
“Two percent doesn’t sound like much.”
“Okay, make it three. I’ll be restarting cultures from the blood samples in those containers. In addition, Allaire said he was having a line of the virus flown up from the CDC, where they have it in storage.”
“When you come up with something, I’m going to have one hell of a story.”
“When you get started beefing me up with your cooking, be sure to stir in some of your optimism.”
The team was relieved to be free from the biocontainment suits—especially, it appeared to Griff, those who finally got to cradle their assault weapons in ungloved hands.
“We’re ready to roll,” Sergeant Stafford radioed in.
Moments later, the fiber-optic backbone controlling the Automatic Vehicle Operation engaged, and the fully enclosed trolley moved silently ahead. The car came to a gentle stop at the Rayburn building subway station, and the doors swooshed open.
“I’ve never been to Kansas,” Angie said.
“Just imagine Lake Victoria in Kenya, and the lush jungle surrounding it, and the cries of countless wild beasts, and then flip the scene over to the reverse side.”
Stafford and the other soldiers surrounded Griff and Angie and led them through a maze of corridors and stairwells on their way to the surface. Once outside, Griff took a grateful breath of the cool, early morning air, and held it until he needed to exhale.
The Capitol was to the north of them now. Even from a distance, Griff could tell that the crowd levels outside the barriers had increased substantially, as had the military presence maintaining some semblance of order. There
