“This is Wolf Blitzer reporting for CNN. We received a shocking announcement this morning from the White House. First Lady Amanda Reynolds, age 41, has come down with the bizarre disease that is afflicting young women all across the country. She was about to address a law enforcement dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. According to eyewitnesses, the First Lady appeared to be confused and couldn’t seem to find her words.
“The disease, which is being referred to as The Syndrome, mimics the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. There are differences, however. A large majority of the women afflicted are quite young, much younger than people we’d expect to be hit with Alzheimer’s. The average age over the past month of hundreds of cases reported is 39. The disease also appears to be tragically fast-acting. We’ve received many reports of a woman first showing symptoms one day, and in the advanced stages of dementia within 48 hours. Oddly, none of the victims are men, at least not in the early age group. Incidents of male Alzheimer’s are what we would expect, with elderly people as the primary victims. Another odd twist to this story is the occupational profiles of the women. To put it simply, the victims appear to be among the most prominent women in the country, Amanda Reynolds being the most stunning example. Secretaries and deputy secretaries of large government agencies, as well as the female heads of major corporations, have fallen victim in the past few months.
“We’ve tried to get word from the White House, but have been told that the President will address the issue tomorrow. He is understandably distraught over the sudden illness of his wife, our First Lady. CNN will bring you updates on this troubling situation as they come in.”
Chapter 28
“Peace be with you, Brother Musif. May Allah heap blessings upon you for the way you are handling the project we call The Scent of Revenge. The list of the heathen women we’ve attacked is growing. Tell me how everything is progressing with our factory in Baltimore.”
“Brother Ali, the Baltimore plant is now fully operational. As you know, we are only able to produce small amounts of the substance each day, but our output is improving.”
“And what about safety precautions? Did I not hear about a young brother who inhaled the substance recently and came down with the disease?”
“Yes, Ali, it happened. I have issued strict orders about how to handle the substance and what must be done to ensure the safety of our workers.”
“How soon do you see us graduating from water bottles to larger delivery mechanisms?”
“At the rate our Baltimore plant is improving, Musif, I expect to see a larger device for delivering the substance. It will not be as direct as spray from a bottle, but soon we can debilitate thousands of infidels in a matter of minutes.”
“Ali, perhaps it is not my place to ask, but why are we limiting our targets to women?”
“Musif, we are attacking the heathen breeders. Soon we will target younger women. After that, as our manufacturing capacity increases, we will deliver The Scent of Revenge to men as well. But for now, our plans are working perfectly.”
“I must agree, Ali. Amanda Reynolds was our best target to date.”
“Soon, Musif, the infidels will spend all of their money on hospitals and nursing homes.”
Chapter 29
Ashley Patterson, age 38, was recently promoted to the rank of rear admiral in the United States Navy, making her the youngest admiral in the nation’s history. A tall, beautiful African- American woman, Ashley is the subject of countless newspaper articles and TV appearances. She’s the Navy’s rising star. Her husband, Jack Thurber, is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
When she was captain of the USS Abraham Lincoln, Ashley ordered an air attack on an Iranian Alvand Class frigate that had fired missiles at the Lincoln. As a result of the attack, the Iranian ship sank. Ashley Patterson is known as a tough and decisive military leader.
In April, Admiral Patterson commanded Carrier Strike Group 1115. Her flagship was the USS Abraham Lincoln, her old command. A strike group, which used to be called a battle group, consists of an aircraft carrier, the Lincoln in this case, a guided missile cruiser, and two frigates or large destroyers.
On April 16, Admiral Patterson walked along the flight deck with her aide, Captain Randolph Simmons, to inspect a plane that had a landing gear problem. A sailor, who was cleaning the aircraft, pointed a water bottle at the admiral, spraying her in the face.
“You’re on report, sailor,” Captain Simmons shouted. But the man was gone in an instant.
Two days later, at 8 a.m. on the morning of April 18, Carrier Strike Group 1115 prepared to get underway and head to sea from its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia. Admiral Patterson was ashore at a pre-deployment meeting. She walked up the gangplank as the shrill sound of the bosun’s pipe sounded and the officer of the deck announced, “Carrier Strike Group 1115 arriving.” This was the traditional Navy way of announcing an arriving dignitary along with his or her position or command. Captain Randolph Simmons, her aide, followed her. He noticed that the admiral failed to salute the American flag when she got to the top of the gangplank, and didn’t return the salute of the officer of the deck, two serious breaches of military protocol.
The plan, as orchestrated by Simmons, called for Admiral Patterson to address the ship over the public address system from the quarterdeck, the area on a ship that served as the place of acting command when a ship was in port. Her words would be carried to the other ships in the Strike Group. He took the microphone from its holder and handed it to her.
“What’s this for?” Admiral Patterson said, looking at Simmons.
“Would you rather address the Group from your office, Admiral?”
“I have an office?”
Captain Simmons, a 25-year veteran, had seen his share of difficult circumstances, including combat operations in the Gulf. But nothing prepared him for this. The admiral did seem a bit off that morning, he had noticed, but this behavior had him stumped. It is standard procedure for the commander of a Strike Group to address all of the ships’ personnel before heading out to sea. Simmons figured he’d take the situation moment-to-moment.
“Yes, ma’am. Would you like me to show you to your office?”
“Do I know you? Why are you wearing that silly uniform? Who the hell are you anyway?”
“Get the admiral a cup of coffee, sailor,” Simmons said to the quartermaster of the watch.
He led Ashley to a chair and suggested she have a seat. He stepped into a passageway next to the quarterdeck, picked up a phone off the bulkhead, and called the bridge.
“Bill, it’s Randy Simmons,” he said to the captain of the Lincoln. “Please come to the quarterdeck immediately. We have a situation here. I think you’ll want to address the Strike Group yourself.”
The deployment of Carrier Strike Group 1115 was delayed on orders of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Admiral Ashley Patterson, age 38, was taken by ambulance to the nearby naval hospital. After a short battery of tests, she was admitted with a diagnosis of severe dementia.
Chapter 30
Ellen sat in the dayroom by the window at the New Horizons Nursing Home. From there, she had a pleasant view of a landscaped courtyard. She wore a dark brown skirt that I had given her last Christmas, a pink blouse, a light blue cardigan sweater, and nursing-home-issued slippers. Her beautiful blond hair was cut short, something I had agreed to a few days ago. The nurse explained that it was better kept short for hygiene.
I sat in the chair next to her and opened a box of Perugina chocolates, her favorite. When I offered the box to her, she shook her head.
“How about a big smile, honey?”
“My name is Ellen.”
“Okay, Ellen, how about a smile for your boyfriend?”
She continued to stare out the window, not looking at me. I stroked her hand as I looked at her. “Is that necessary?” she said as she pulled her hand away.
“No problem, honey, let’s just sit and be with each other.”
“My name is Ellen.”
After a few minutes, Ellen looked at me with her wonderful smile. The little scar on her cheek turned into a dimple. She reached over and squeezed my hand.
“Daddy, where did you go?”
Bennie had been coaching me on how to act when I’m with Ellen. “Don’t mess with her world, Rick,” Bennie said. “Let yourself into it.” Easy to say, but not easy to do when your wife thinks you’re her father.
“I just had to go to the store, Ellen. Here, I brought you your favorite chocolates.” I offered her the box again, but she wasn’t interested.
I felt a tear run down my face. As I wiped it away, Ellen reached over and put her hand on my face and said, “It’s okay, Daddy. Here, have a chocolate.” Not wanting to disappoint her, I did, although I’m not crazy about chocolate.
After an hour, I stood, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t reciprocate, but she didn’t pull away. I took that as progress.
As I walked through the lobby on my way to the door, I heard a voice.
“Hey, Rick, how about a cup of coffee?”
It was Nancy Langdon, one of Ellen’s nurses. I had to get to the office, but I wanted to spend some time with Nancy so she could fill me in on Ellen’s condition.
Nancy was a big woman, not fat, just big. She had a ruddy complexion and a pretty face.
“Nancy,” I said as we sat down, “you know what I do for a living. I’m in a tough profession. One crisis after another winds up on my desk, but what happened to Ellen is the worst thing that ever happened in my life. I’ll be honest with you; I’m having a tough time dealing with this. Ellen and I had a relationship that’s hard to describe. I guess it’s called love. Until a few days ago, she was vibrant, beautiful, and kind. I feel like I’m lost.”
“Rick, I’m not going to coddle you. You’re too big a boy for that. But I will tell you that we all appreciate what you’re going through. I’ve dealt with dementia patients and their families for over 20 years. But there’s a big difference between all of those cases and Ellen. The youngest Alzheimer’s victim I ever cared for was 57 years old. The disease crept up slowly, as is the case most of the time. A family member gradually realizes that a loved one is slipping away. When we were told that this happened to Ellen within two days, we were in shock. You had no time to adjust, no time to slowly change things. Wham, you were hit in the face with a new reality. You and Ellen have been dealt a shitty hand, Rick. Here’s my contact information. Call me at any time whenever you need to talk.”
I didn’t tell Nancy that the cards Ellen and I held were dealt by another human being, not fate. It’s my job to hunt down the dealers.
I didn’t like to think that I would hunt them down and kill them, but that’s exactly what I planned to do.
Chapter 31
I’d just finished my cup of decaf in my office. I’m following Ellen’s plan for fighting stress to the finest detail. Decaf coffee, yoga, meditation, thinking of a joke before answering the phone. Everything except for item number one—sex with Ellen. She also insisted that I shouldn’t dwell on problems, just let them in and confront them. But it’s time to stop stroking myself. It’s time to get to work and find the scumbags who did this.
Bennie and Buster walked into my office for our planned meeting at 11 a.m.
“Did you hear about Admiral Patterson?” said Buster.
“Yes,” I said, “I read about it in an email update from Frank Buchannan. Did you know her?”
“Yes, she and her husband, Jack, are good friends with both me and Bennie. First Ellen, and now Ashley Patterson. This shit is getting up-close and personal.”
“Buster, we have to work fast, which I know is your favorite speed. So, what do you have for us?”
“We know what we’re missing, guys, and President Reynolds knows it too,” said Buster. “We know that The Syndrome is caused by a deliberate act, and we know it’s done with spray bottles. What we don’t know is the identity of the substance. Doctor Buchannan insists that if we discover the substance, we can come up with a vaccine. But until we find it, our heads are up our collective asses. Would you guys agree that our focus has to be to discover the substance?”
“Buster, as usual, you’ve hit it on the head. So now I’m going to raise the obvious question. How the hell do we find the stuff?”
“Imam Mike,” Bennie said. “That man is becoming the key player in this game. He told Rick about the water bottles and the comments about ‘infidel bitches.’ What are the odds that Mike can lay his hands on a bottle of the shit?”
“Hey, we have to be careful with our friendly imam,” said Buster. “The last thing we want is for him to get whacked. He’s a great guy and a team player, but I’m worried that he’s getting a bit too excited with his role as a born-again spy. I don’t think we should encourage Mike to take a proactive role. Let him just listen and report what he hears. And he is plugged into the radical fringes of Islam. It’s just a matter of time before he comes up with a lead, just like he came up with the clue about the water bottles.”
“I’m sure we’ve gone over this with our doctor friends,” I said, “but am I correct that the few autopsies that have been performed found no evidence of any strange chemical or substance?”
“That’s right,” said Bennie. “No traces of any substances other than prescription drugs on any of the bodies. I spoke to Buchannan this morning. He has a hunch, an educated hunch, that we may be looking at a bacteria. It doesn’t linger in the body for long. That could explain why the autopsies showed nothing.”
“Hey, guys, look out the window,” I said. “See that hotel over there. As we’ve been speaking, cleaning people have been spraying hundreds of squirts from bottles. See those window washers? Spray bottles are like another appendage for those guys. The bastard that sprayed Ellen was a window washer.” I reached down into the bottom drawer of my desk. “Look at this—a spray bottle. I’m all in favor of basic police work, but how the hell can we focus on something that’s all over the place?”
“Now that you mention it, Rick,” said Buster, “any leads on the man who sprayed Ellen?”
“A dead end. We interviewed the other window washers who were on duty that day. They all said the guy just showed up as a temp employee. They never thought to ask questions, because that’s the way things are done in that business. And keep in mind, the man who sprayed the First Lady was just an adult at a kid’s game, not a cleaning person.”
“Anything new on the profiles of the victims?” said Bennie.
“I think so. Joe Flynn, my database expert, is excited that he’s on to something. He wanted some more time to finish his preliminary report. He’ll be here after we break for lunch.”
***
Joe Flynn came into our meeting at 1:30. Joe is a good man, a skilled researcher and a dogged fact checker. He’s a great guy to have on your team; but he’s a total computer geek, and sometimes it’s difficult to get him to speak English.
“Joe, you’ve met Bennie and Buster. So tell us, what have you found so far on the victim profiles?”
“Well,” Joe said as he adjusted his glasses, “first let me tell you how I developed the algorithm.”
“Joe, my friend, fuck the algorithm,” I said. “Just tell us about your findings.”
“Well, here it is, gentlemen. On Rick’s suggestion, I looked at any contact with Islam that the women may have had. It wasn’t easy. My team and I interviewed dozens of family members and colleagues. The hypothesis behind our study was revenge, that radicals may have sought revenge on enemies of Islam. Here’s the bottom line. Of the 200 women in the study, every one of them has written or spoken negatively about radical Islam. In the case of Rick’s wife, Ellen, she actually killed an al-Qaeda big shot. And Admiral Ashley Patterson once sank an Iranian ship.”
Joe Flynn went on for 45 minutes, victim by victim, citing speeches or emails or articles that came from the women victims. Every single woman ha
d at some point expressed a negative opinion of Islam, or, in the case of Ellen and Admiral Patterson, actually engaged in combat with an Islamic force.
“Holy shit,” said Buster, “we have a target profile.”
“Joe, I thank you very much. I’m going to put a commendation in your file, and I’ll make sure Director Auletta sees it. Great job. You can go now.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to explain how I derived the algorithm.”
“No, we’re good to go for now, Joe. Thanks again.”
I hate to cut a guy off when he wants to show us his hard work. He was proud of what he’d done and he had every right to be; but we had a lot of ground to cover, and listening to geek speak would only slow us down.
“So, guys, we have a working hypothesis for a target profile: a relatively young prominent woman who has had a negative interaction with Islam, either by opinion or action.”
“Big question,” said Bennie. “Why are they just targeting women?”
“The answer to that is we don’t know. But it may have something to do with the creepy inner workings of the jihadi mind. They think of women as servants, as chattel. When they see a strong woman, such as Ellen, they lash out. When Ellen shot that guy, he was in the process of torturing one of the other female hostages.”
“We can’t assume that they won’t expand their target list,” said Buster. “The fact that they’ve narrowed their targets could mean that the substance can’t be manufactured on a large scale, so they focus their hits to conserve their weapon supply.”
Chapter 32
“Rick, it’s Barbara. Director Watson’s in New York and wants to have a meeting at 2 p.m. Please call Buster. She wants to meet with him too.”
FBI Director Sarah Watson has a well-deserved reputation for starting meetings on time, so the two of us walked into Barbara’s office five minutes early. Watson can get testy as hell when anybody’s late for a meeting.
“I think the director has some important stuff to talk about,” said Auletta.
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