problem. Besides they would be dead soon. Australia had a fairly decent navy, according to General Newman. Suppose he offered some inducements, additional weapons perhaps, for them to send some troops to Africa and the Middle East? Maybe even South America, at selected ports that could be easily defended. Best to keep a toehold there if they could. At least the Aussies weren’t big enough to turn on the United States and had never developed nuclear weapons. He made another note for Willingham.
He looked at his next brief and scribbled an okay with his distinctive flourish. Defaulting on some of the bonds held by foreigners and releasing the gold in Fort Knox to the citizenry would help stimulate the economy. Of course the default wouldn’t be couched in those terms. It would be worded as a
“postponement in payment”, but he knew the debts would never be paid.
Marshall sighed. Where was Willingham?
A half hour later the man appeared, tie askew and hair uncombed, as if he had been running his fingers through it. The president frowned. He had never seen the man in such a state.
“I’m sorry I was delayed, Mr. President, but a suicide squad just crashed a jetliner into a skyscraper in Chicago, and Turkey and the Kurds are fighting again. What are we going to do?”
Marshall groaned. Would this madness never end? Goddamn it, the Arabs were finished. Why didn’t they just go quietly to their heaven and virgins and so forth and quit this martyr bullshit?
June did the best she could to keep the captives calm and under control and to give what little aid she could to some of the older workers who were prostrate with heat exhaustion. All she could really do was keep pushing liquids and bathing them with cool water. Fortunately, there was plenty of water and the guards allowed them to go to and from the fountains. She avoided the area where the smirking guard lolled in one of the padded lobby chairs, knowing he had turned her into a focal point; a visible object of the misery the blacks were suffering. She was scared of him. She had just finished tending to an older woman whose breathing was becoming irregular, using cool water carried from the drinking fountain, when the guards changed shifts. The smirking black who had been following her all day with his eyes didn’t leave the lobby like the others who had been relieved. Instead, he headed in her direction as she went over to check on a patient.
The wounded and sick staff workers were laid out in rows at the edge of the crowd, where what little air circulation there was could get to them. Most of them were suffering silently, but a few were moaning with pain. June was kneeling by the side of a man, checking his pulse, when she felt a presence behind her. She looked around. The guard who had been watching her was wearing a leer now. “On your feet, bitch. Some other peoples got needs, too.” His lips split into a grin, displaying his missing teeth.
June didn’t move, but simply stared up at him, in the manner of a death row inmate whose cell had just opened for the escort to enter, ready to usher the prisoner on the short but utterly terrifying last steps to the death chamber.
The black’s lips closed in anger at her lack of response. A knife suddenly appeared in his hand as he leaned over her. The point broke the skin on the side of her neck, a pinprick, but it felt as though the knife was entering her body—just as this man planned on doing, and just as brutally as a knife blade would have been. His other hand closed over her upper arm, gripping it painfully. He jerked her to her feet. She felt more pain as he pulled on her, and felt the point of the blade dig in and open up a narrow cut. A second later it was at her back, probing at her spine as she felt blood wetting her blouse below the shallow neck wound.
“This be sharp, bitch. How you like it you be par’lyzed? Move you pussy.”
Stumbling with fear, June complied. She couldn’t endure the thought of the knife blade entering her spine, seeking out her spinal cord. Better to let him have his way and hope she survived. She had seen a figure out of one of the windows who she thought was Amelia, being carried back to the science building on a stretcher, and now she remembered the screams she had heard shortly after Amelia had been dragged off, to the same room this man was steering her toward.
The door opened and a hard shove sent her reeling inside. She landed on the carpeted surface, near where it was already spotted with blood stains. They were still damp and sticky.
Amelia looked worse than when he last saw her, Doug thought. IV bottles were hooked to both arms and her head had been partially shaved to expose a deep gash running from her forehead back past her hairline. The swelling had increased and purpled, like a discolored volcano dome rising under pressure from below. He knew she could barely see to recognize him through eyelids so puffed that they allowed only slits of light, but she was conscious and alert, no longer in shock. She gripped his hand and squeezed feebly. He felt tears leak from his eyes at the sight of her mangled face. He could only imagine what damage had occurred to the rest of her body, and didn’t want to think about the degradation she must have suffered, nor what it might have done to her mind.
“Doug… thank you. I have to make this quick, because I’ve been holding off taking a shot and I’m going to have surgery soon; I’ve got some internal injuries, they said.” She breathed heavily through a miasma of pain, then found the strength to continue. “I found out just before the attack. Johannsen says… Doug, he says the funding and technical data came from us. It was just funneled through the supremacists… Oh God, I didn’t want to believe it, but he swears it’s… it’s true.”
“You mean to tell me the CDC gave him a start on the virus?” He simply couldn’t believe that.
“No, no… it didn’t come from here. It was a private lab, funded by the CIA, he thinks. He… he says Edgar Tomlin was in on it… when he was Director… oh, Doug, please find out if this is true. Please. We have to know.”
Everything Amelia said was filtered through the distortion of pain from her injuries, but he understood almost every word. It made him feel sick inside just thinking that their own government might have been responsible for the catastrophic result of Johannsen’s actions. He stood, stunned, unable to even speak until someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around to see a tired looking young woman in surgical scrubs. Nearby was an operating room gurney.
“We’re ready for her. I’m going to give her the pre-op now.”
Doug came back to reality. “Just one more minute. “Amelia, has he said anything about a cure or a vaccine?”
“No cure. Jenkins thinks the… the data he got from him may… may make a vaccine. And there’s something else he… I can’t think now. I hurt inside.”
“Amelia, I’ll have this tracked to the source, be sure of that. Now you get well.” He squeezed her hand and made way for the medical people. He watched as Amelia was administered a shot by the nurse in scrubs, then transferred to the gurney and wheeled away. A moment later he headed toward the basement where he knew Savak Johannsen was being guarded. If he had time after that, then he would talk to Stephen Jenkins, a scientist June had told him about earlier who was doing research on a vaccine for the Harcourt virus. Every bit of information he could gather might be useful in freeing the hostages.
The thought of hostages brought images of June back into the forefront of his mind. He tried not to think about what Fridge might have found out.
The last thing Doug did before leaving Amelia was to give his personal phone number to Amelia’s nurse and ask her to have Amelia call him just as soon as she recovered from the surgery and was able to talk.
He impressed on her the importance of his message by telling her it might mean the difference between freeing the hostages or not.
“One of your thugs took her off,” a woman Fridge was questioning said bitterly.
“What! Where did he take her? Quick, woman!”
“So you can get in on the action, goddamn you! This is a… a place of science, not a… find her yourself.
I won’t tell you.” She bowed her head, expecting to be hit or slapped.
Fridge didn’t give a damn what she thought right at the moment. Instead of slapping her, he reached out one huge hand and gathered the lapels of her blouse and yanked her toward him. “You fool, I’m trying to save her, not hurt her! Now where is she?”
“Who are… I don’t know who you are. No.”
