watching the vehicle returning up the dirt roads. They'd headed into it just after the President's announcement. They were Guardsmen, and they were far from home, and they were worried about their families. That had distracted them badly, since they hadn't had time to let things settle down a little, to call home and make sure things were okay with Mom and Dad, or honey and the kids. And they'd paid for it, but professional soldier that he was, Hamm knew it wasn't fair to mark this one down against the Carolina brigade. This sort of thing wouldn't happen in the field. Realistic as the NTC was, it was still play. Nobody died here except by accident, while at home the real thing might well be taking place. That wasn't how it was supposed to be with soldiers, was it?
CLARK AND CHAVEZ had their blood drawn by an Army medic who also ran the screening test. They watched it with morbid fascination, especially since the medic wore thick gloves and a mask.
'You're both clean,' he told them, with a sigh of his own.
'Thanks, Sarge,' Chavez said. It was very real now. His dark Latino eyes were showing something other than relief. Like John, Domingo was putting on his mission face.
With that, they bundled into an official car for the drive to Andrews. The streets in the Washington metropolitan area were unusually empty. It made for a swift passage that didn't assuage the sense of foreboding they both felt. Crossing one of the bridges, they stopped and had to wait for three other vehicles to pass a checkpoint. There was a National Guard Hummer in the middle of the eastbound lanes, and when Clark pulled up, he showed his CIA picture-pass.
'Agency,' he told the MP.
'Pass,' the Spec-4 replied.
'So, where we going, Mr. C.?'
'Africa, via the Azores.'
51 INVESTIGATIONS
THE MEETING WITH THE Senate leadership went predictably. Issuing them surgical masks had set the tone of the evening for them—again, van Damm's idea. General Pickett had been to Hopkins to review procedures there, then flown back to give the main part of the briefing. The fifteen senators assembled in the East Room listened gravely, only their eyes showing above the masks.
'I'm not comfortable with your actions, Mr. President,' one of them said. Jack couldn't tell which one.
'You think I am?' he replied. 'If anybody has a better idea, let's hear it. I have to go with the best medical advice. If this thing is as deadly as the general says, then any mistake could kill people in the thousands—even millions. If we err, we have to err on the side of caution.'
'But what about civil liberties?' another one demanded.
'Does any of those come before life?' Jack asked. 'People, if anyone wants to give me a better option, I will listen—we have one of our experts here to help evaluate it. But I will not listen to objections that are not based on scientific fact. The Constitution and the law cannot anticipate every eventuality. In cases like this, we're supposed to use our heads—'
'We're supposed to be guided by principle!' It was the civil liberties Senator again.
'Fine, then let's talk about it. If there's a balance between what I have done and whatever else will keep the country moving—and safe! — let's find it. I want options! Give me something I can use!' There followed a silence and a lot of crossed looks. Even that was hard. The senators were spaced out in their seating.
'Why did you have to move so fast?'
'People may be dying, you jackass!' another senator snarled at his good friend and distinguished colleague. He had to be one of the new crop, Jack thought. Someone who didn't know the mantras yet.
'But what if you're wrong?' a voice asked.
'Then you can hold your impeachment trial after the House indicts me,' Jack replied. 'Then somebody else can make these decisions, and God help him. Senators, my wife is in Hopkins right now, and she's going to take her turn treating these people. I don't like that, either. I would like to have your support. It's lonely standing up by myself like this, but whether you support your President or not, I have to do the best I can. I'll say it one more time: if anybody here has a better idea, let's hear it.'
But nobody did, and it wasn't their fault. As little time as he'd had to come to terms with the situation, they'd had less.
THE AIR FORCE had managed tropical uniforms for them out of the Andrews Post Exchange—a medium- sized department store—since their Washington clothes were a little too heavy for a tropical environment. It made for good cover, too. Clark wore the silver eagles of a colonel, and Chavez was a major, complete with silver pilot's wings and ribbons donated by the flight crew of their VC-20B. There were, in fact, two sets of pilots. The backup crew was sleeping in the two most-forward passenger seats.
'Not bad for a retired E-6,' Ding noted, though the uniform didn't fit all that well.
'Not bad for a retired E-7, either, and that's 'sir, to you, Major Chavez.'
'Three bags full, sir.' It was their only light moment. The military version of the Gulfstream business jet had a ton of communications gear, and a sergeant to run it. The documents coming over the equipment threatened to exhaust the on-board supply of paper as they passed over Cape Verde, inbound to Kinshasa.
'Second stop is Kenya, sir.' The communications sergeant was really an intelligence specialist. She read all the inbound traffic. 'You have to see a man about some monkeys.'
Clark took the page—he was the colonel, after all—and read it, while Chavez figured out how the ribbons went on the blue uniform shirt. He decided he didn't have to be too careful. It wasn't as though the Air Force were really a military service—at least according to the Army in which he'd once served, where it was an article of faith.
'Check this out,' John said, handing the page over.
'That's a lead, Mr. C.,' Ding observed at once. They traded a look. This was a pure intelligence mission, one of the few on which they'd been dispatched. They were tasked to gather vitally important information for their country, and nothing else. For now. Though they didn't say so, neither would have objected to doing something more. Though both were field officers of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, both were also former combat soldiers (in Clark's case, a former SEAL) who more often than not dropped into the DO's paramilitary side, where they did things that the pure spooks regarded as a little too exciting. But often satisfying, Chavez told himself. Very satisfying. He was learning to control his temper—in fact, that part of his genetic heritage, as he called it now, had always been under tight control—but it didn't stop him from thinking about finding whoever it was who had attacked his country, and then dealing with him as soldiers did.
'You know hini better than I do, John. What's he going to do?'
'Jack?' Clark shrugged. 'That depends on what we get for him, Domingo. That's our job, remember?'
'Yes, sir,' the younger man said seriously.
THE PRESIDENT DID not sleep well that night, though he told himself, and was told by others, that sleep was a prerequisite to making good decisions—and that, everyone emphasized, was his only real function. It was what the citizens expected him to do above all other things. He'd only had about six hours the previous day after an exhausting schedule of travel and speeches, but even so, sleep came hard. His staff and the staffs of many other federal agencies slept less, because, as sweeping as the executive orders were, they had to be implemented in a practical world, and that meant interpretation of the orders in the context of a living nation. A final complication was the fact that there was a problem with the two Chinas, who were thirteen hours ahead of Washington; another potential problem with India, ten hours ahead; and the Persian Gulf, eight hours ahead; in addition to the major crisis in America, which stretched across seven time zones all by itself, if one counted Hawaii—or even more if you added lingering possessions in the Pacific. Lying in bed on the residence floor of the White House, Ryan's mind danced around the globe, finally wondering what part of the world wasn't an area of some kind of concern. Around three he gave up the effort and rose, put on casual clothes and headed to the West Wing for the Signals Office, with members of the Detail in tow.
'What's happening?' he asked the senior officer present. It was Major Charles Canon, USMC, who'd been the one to inform him of the Iraqi assassination… which had seemed to start everything, he remembered. People started to jump to their feet. Jack waved them back into their seats. 'As you were.'
