The Coward's Way of War

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “I’m glad to be back,” Al agreed, truthfully. After a week of lying in a sealed quarantine ward, he would have cheerfully agreed to fight the entire Russian Army stark naked, as long as they let him out of the isolation chamber. He understood what the doctors had been worried about, but the experience had been driving him insane. He wasn't one for remaining inactive, not after Paris Island and years of service as a Marine. “What’s going on here?”

  Jones waved a hand towards the group of protesters. It was a weird protest line, certainly compared to some of the ones that had shaken New York over the years. The protesters all wore masks – some wore HAZMAT suits and other forms of total protection – and they were keeping their distance from one another. They should not have been on the streets at all, but the police force hadn't had the manpower to force them to disperse. He shook his head in disbelief. Didn’t those fools know that if a single one of them was infected, they would all come down with the disease?

  “It seems that our dear Mayor has screwed the pooch,” Jones said, not without a certain amount of relish. Mayor Hundred had had ideas about how the NYPD could expand its remit and he hadn't hesitated to cut the department’s core competences to allow time and resources for his pet projects. The NYPD had sent more officers to community networking events, courses on sexual, religious and racial harassment and other absurdities, while ordinary policing, the backbone of the NYPD, had been allowed to wither. He still shuddered at the memory of a mandatory course on sexual relationships, including claims that some people were asexual and – therefore – the proper course of action was to avoid confronting them with anything that might remind them that others did have sexual relationships. “His office was giving out vaccine to his strongest supporters first, before dealing with anyone else.”

  He grinned. “And then someone broke the story and all hell broke loose,” he added. “If it wasn't for the disease, half the city would be out on the streets.”

  “And getting infected by the disease,” Al said, tightly. The NYPD, he’d discovered, had been pushed right to the limits over the past week. The vast majority of the population might be remaining indoors, now that the military had sealed the city up tight, but there was a soaring crime rate in the less well-off districts. All over the city, the supply of illegal drugs was drying up, forcing the drug dealers to raise their prices. Their addicts were being forced to steal just to obtain their daily fix.

  Al had no sympathy for either the pushers or the silly fools who got themselves addicted, but he understood their problem. The military prevented anyone from getting into New York, even people who had relatives in the city, which meant that there would be no more drugs from outside sources. With outbreaks of Henderson’s Disease in Columbia and Mexico, it was unlikely that normal services would ever be resumed. A great many addicts would find themselves forced to go cold turkey, once the supply ran out completely. The crime rate was likely to rise even higher, even with the NYPD authorised to open fire on looters without the normal legal hassles surrounding the use of deadly force.

  “Yeah,” Jones said. He didn't sound too unhappy, but then, as a police officer, he would have been among the first to receive the vaccine. “Maybe all the protesters will do us the favour of dropping dead.”

  Al opened his mouth to deliver a savage reprimand – that sort of talk had no place in America, let alone the NYPD – but then he saw the signs. Jones hadn't just been doing the normal run of overtime, not when the entire city was in crisis. He would have been surprised to discover that the younger man had had more than a few hours sleep over the last week, leaving him a tired nervous shell. Back in Iraq, tiredness had led to more than a few tragic accidents, but in New York the consequences could – would – be a damn sight worse.

  “You need some sleep,” he said. Chewing Jones out for his words wouldn't achieve anything. “Christ, when was the last time you slept?”

  “Tell me about it,” Jones said. He lit a cigarette and offered Al the pack, who politely declined the offer. “I slept...fuck it, I can't remember when I slept last. I haven’t been home in days.”

  Al looked back at the protesters. At least they didn't look violent, although there was a dark mood in the air that could easily turn savage, given the opportunity. He’d been briefed, long ago, on just how badly things could go to hell if the general public lost all faith in their elected leaders. The Mayor had not only shot himself in the foot, he’d stabbed the NYPD and the other emergency workers in the back. Who would have faith in them now?

  “Tell the supervisor that you need some rest,” Al said, tightly. If every other NYPD officer was like Jones, pushed right to the limits, there was going to be trouble. Perhaps half of the force could get a good night’s sleep, enforced by a sedative. Or perhaps he was just deluding himself. “You’re no good for anything like this.”

  ***

  Doctor McCoy scowled as he stepped into the Marigold Hotel, cursing the HAZMAT suit under his breath. It wasn't as bad as the MOPP suits they’d worn, back when they had had no idea what they were dealing with, but the emergency call from the Marigold had been very near hysterical. The hotel’s rich and famous guests, which included a number of billionaires and celebrities, were demanding immediate medical treatment. Someone, perhaps the Mayor, had insisted that Wildfire send a team at once, even though New York’s own medical establishment could have dealt with the body. By now, everyone was used to finding dead bodies in odd places.

  The hotel room, he decided as he followed one of the maids up the stairs and into the apartment suite, would have cost him a year’s salary just to spend a night there. He didn't have time to admire it, though; the maid was already leading him into the bathroom. McCoy blinked in astonishment as he took in the sight in front of him, realising that the hotel’s manager might have been right to panic after all. The body looked as if it was on the verge of melting down completely into a pile of goo.

  “Stay back,” he ordered, as he examined the body. His suit’s camera was already flashing away, taking pictures and transmitting them to the labs. The CDC would certainly want to take a careful look at them, just in case it was something new. The thought was not a pleasant one, but it had to be faced. If the terrorists – or whoever – had unleashed smallpox, why not something nastier? “In fact, go down to the HAZMAT vans and report for quarantine.”

  He ignored the maid’s departure – it was downright criminal to force her to work in such an environment without protection – and bent down to take a closer look. At first glance, it was impossible to tell if he were looking at a male or female victim, not with the colossal damage inflicted upon the face. Carefully, he touched the body’s cheek and recoiled as pustules burst, scattering virus material over his gloved hand. The HAZMAT team would have to make very sure that they were all clean before they risked removing their garments.

  The body seemed to weaken under his touch, twitching slightly. He pulled at the clothes and realised that he was looking at a male, although the body’s sexual organs seemed to have been completely destroyed. The pustules, ironically, were a good sign, even if they were unusually advanced, for they proved that the body had died through smallpox. But then, most victims of Henderson’s Disease had died long before their bodies collapsed so completely.

  “Poor bastard,” he muttered, as he continued removing clothes. There was not a single piece of unblemished skin on the man’s chest. The pustules dominated everything. It struck him that the man must have died in terrible agony, yet no one had heard screams or come to the rescue. Just when, he wondered, had he contacted Henderson’s Disease? The hotel staff would know when he’d returned to his suite and never emerged. The FBI teams would have to seize their records and interrogate the staff. “Who are you? Who could you possibly be?”

  He stood up and stepped back from the body, leaving it lying in the bathtub. A full team would be required to transport it out of the city, where it could be dissected at leisure. He tapped his radio, making a brief report and
ordering up the remainder of the team, before he walked back into the suite. The dead man had lain on the bed, he guessed, growing unwell...and hadn't left the suite to seek help. McCoy was no Sherlock Holmes – CSI and other entertainment dramas bore little relationship to reality – yet it didn't take Doctor Watson to realise that something was very wrong. Judging from the condition of the patient, he might well have died before Cally Henderson had been discovered. And if that were the case, it suggested all kinds of unpleasant possibilities.

  “I want a full investigative team up here as well,” he ordered, keying his radio. “I want to know everything about this person; who he is, where he came from and just what he was doing before Henderson’s Disease was discovered.”

  He kept his final thought to himself. No matter how they looked at it, Cally Henderson couldn't have infected all of the early cases, not when there were so many unexplained broken links in the chain of transmission. The only logical solution was that there was an unidentified index case out there. He looked back towards the bathroom door and shuddered. Unless he missed his guess, they’d just found the index case, which might just lead them towards the answer to the most important question of all. Who, in the entire world, had done this to the United States of America?

  ***

  “I think that you should know that you are in a lot of trouble, young lady,” the man in black said. Neither he nor his comrade, a man wearing a grey suit, had bothered to give their names. “You have caused a panic. You may have caused hundreds of deaths.”

  Mija pasted a brave expression on her face, refusing to show them any sign of fear. They’d come for her in the office, explaining to the editor that they needed Mija to help them with their enquiries. Whatever they’d shown him, it had made him unwilling to stand up for one of his reporters, although that might have been because his own position was at stake. Mija was willing to believe his claim that he hadn't known that the Mayor had marked him and his family for early distribution of the vaccine, but it hadn't mattered. Nearly a third of the staff had refused to come into work, while the remainder could only be described as sullen.

  “Your blog post was reposted all over the internet,” the man in grey said. He spoke in a boring voice, dull and atonal, as if he had long ago lost the will to live. “The entire world now knows what Mayor Hundred intended to do.”

  “You say that as if it were a bad thing,” Mija said, tartly. The two government agents – they had the right attitude, even if they had refused to tell her which service they worked for – glared at her. “The public has a right to know.”

  “You reporters are always the same,” the man in black said, coldly. “You believe that you have a right to publish everything, no matter how much harm it will cause when it finally gets out. Do you know how many people went onto the streets to protest the Mayor and demand his immediate resignation? Every one of those people may now be infected with Henderson’s Disease.”

  “I didn't tell them to go onto the streets,” Mija protested. “I didn't...”

  “You don’t have the right to scream about fires in crowded cinemas either,” the man in black pointed out. “You know as well as we do that New York is on a knife edge right now. All over the city, the food that people had on hand is running out. They are starting to starve and starving people grow desperate. We do not need a panic, young lady. The relief efforts are running poorly as it is.”

  “I would really prefer it,” Mija said, coldly, “if you would stop calling me young lady.”

  “We would find it easier to treat you as an adult if you acted like an adult,” the man in grey said. “You should have forwarded the email you received” – Mija scowled at the confirmation that they’d been through her email accounts – “to the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. They would have seen to it that the Mayor’s little scheme would have been derailed, without the panic that you caused.”

  “I did what I thought best,” Mija said. “I was not going to allow you to cover it up and...”

  “You journalists,” the man in black sneered. “Has it not ever occurred to you that there might be good and sufficient reasons for keeping something from the public? We would have seen to it that the Mayor’s scheme not only failed, but he would have been quietly offered the chance to resign and leave office, instead of being threatened with a public lynching. Do you feel that justice would not have been done?”

  “The price of justice is eternal publicity,” Mija countered. She had to admit, privately, that they had a point, but she had no intention of admitting it aloud. The irony struck her a moment later. Dear God, she was acting just like Lois, who she assumed was still cooling her heels in jail. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask,” the man in black said. “We make no promise to answer.”

  “Good,” Mija said. “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not at the moment,” the man in grey said.

  “So I can leave,” Mija said, standing up.

  “Sit down,” the man in black ordered. “You are not free to go.”

  “That sounds like an arrest, or an unlawful detention,” Mija said. If words were her only weapons, she would use them to the best of her ability. “Under what grounds are you holding me here?”

  “A state of emergency has been declared,” the man in black said. He managed a sneer. “We can hold you indefinitely without trial, if we believe it to be necessary. You have proven yourself to be dangerously irresponsible. It would be remiss of us not to deal with you.”

  “I did not intend to cause a panic,” Mija said, genuinely shocked. It was her first real experience with the coercive power of the state, something that most Americans never really experienced, outside the IRS. “I...”

  “You did alert us to something we needed to know about,” the man in black said. “The Mayor will be...detained once we have prepared our case against him. Do you know who sent you that email?”

  “No,” Mija admitted. The newspaper’s tech support hadn't been able to trace it back to a specific sender. “I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to blow the whistle on the whole damn conspiracy.”

  “That’s what they’re calling it on the streets,” the man in grey mused. “A conspiracy, a plot intended to kill off the lower ten percent of society, creating a world where all the rich folk will survive and the poor will die. Complete nonsense, of course, yet people are starting to believe it. Desperation can lead to desperate actions.”

  He shrugged. “We have been empowered to make you an offer,” he added. “You will cooperate with us fully in drawing up the case against the Mayor. In exchange, you will be offered a chance to embed with the military, once we have a target for our rage. If you refuse to accept those terms, you will be transported to a detention centre where you will be held until the crisis is over. The choice, I need not add, has to be made now.”

  Mija scowled at him, and then nodded. “I’ll cooperate,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The inspection procedures can only succeed with the full cooperation of the host government. Needless to say, that cooperation is very rare. Iraq was able to conceal large parts of its program for years, simply by using the resources of a powerful state and the rules that the UN inspection bodies had to operate under against it. The only way to make the procedure effective is to enforce it with military force. That, too, is very rare.

  - Doctor Nicolas Awad

  Moscow, Russia

  Day 13

  Nicolas tensed as Air Force Two started its long descent towards the unnamed airfield, only a few miles from Moscow. The President, in order to convey just how seriously she – and the entire American Government – took the crisis had ordered the inspection team to use the Vice President’s personal aircraft and its callsign as their transport, accompanied by a handful of fighter jets and a pair of CIA aircraft. The latter were part of a secret rendition program that had existed ever since 9/11, hunting down, capturing and
interrogating terrorists in dozens of different countries, including some that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had fought at all.

  The President’s instructions had been clear, yet he had no illusions about the difficulties facing them. He had never been to Russia – the bilateral inspections mandated by treaty had been a dead letter for years – but he had visited European and Indian research facilities, along with Iraqi WMD sites that had been captured during the invasion. The discovery of just how much the Iraqis had concealed still caused sleepless nights among America’s intelligence community, even though the global population had largely come to believe that there had never been any WMD in Iraq. The post-war inspectors hadn't found a smoking gun; they’d found a disassembled gun. A few years without sanctions and no international inspectors poking their noses into the country would have seen Saddam, a man who had gassed hundreds of Kurds and Iranians, armed with a terrifying array of biological and chemical weapons. The Middle East, Nicolas firmly believed, had dodged a bullet.