by Doug Raber
That has to be him. Elmer. Jillian remembered my call sign! Sarah grabbed the microphone, pushed the transmit button, responding as calmly as possible. “This is N4MEX. I read you loud and clear.”
“Just a second N4MEX.” The male voice had an accent that Sarah couldn’t quite place.
“Sarah, listen carefully.” It was Jillian. “It’s getting worse out here. They’ve stopped all vehicles from entering or leaving the area, and now they’ve cut all telephone contact. The cell phone towers have been disabled. We can’t even make local calls.”
“AFG411,” said Sarah, looking at her pocket notebook, where she’d jotted down Elmer’s call sign. If being secretive was how this needed to be done, she could play that game, too. “I don’t understand what’s going on out there. Is this just some sort of civil defense exercise? Nobody should be getting upset about chickenpox, even if it is a severe strain. Everything I’ve read says that it will all be over soon.”
“Sarah, listen to me!” It’s not getting better, and it’s not chickenpox. And more children have died. Her next words were the most chilling Sarah had ever heard. “It’s smallpox.”
There was complete silence for several seconds.
“That’s impossible.”
“N4MEX,” said the male voice. “It’s not impossible. Some of us here on the reservation remember the stories. It’s smallpox. And it’s not the first time that Indians have been smallpox victims. That’s why we’re calling. We need help.”
Sarah was stunned by the emotion—more accurately, the lack of emotion—in his voice. “I don’t know what I can do.”
“You’re a reporter!” It was Jillian again. “Ever since you decided to become a reporter, you’ve talked about Vietnam and Nixon and the Pentagon Papers. And the torture memos, and the Iraq war. You said that the free press, the first amendment, those were the keys to the safety of our country. You’re a reporter, Sarah. Report.”
“Okay.” She said it quietly. “I’ll start working on it.”
“N4MEX,” said the man’s voice. “If you happen to get out this way, look up an old friend in Cortez, Colorado, by the name of Raymond Morgan. Write down this number …”
“AFG411, I’ve got the number.” She repeated it.
“N4MEX, over and out.”
* * *
Chapter 6
National Security Council
Future generations will know by history only that this loathsome disease has existed.
—Thomas Jefferson‡
Day 23: Back to Washington
The National Security Council met in emergency session on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
For the NSC staff, much of the Thanksgiving holiday had been spent contacting officials who would be needed at the meeting. Many were out of town, celebrating the holiday with family or friends, and someone had to interrupt Thanksgiving dinner.
Telling people about the meeting was only the start. Making travel arrangements was next. Everything was jammed on Thanksgiving night: bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Interstates, trains filled to capacity, and overbooked flights at the airports. Cabinet Secretaries could get a helicopter, and the Defense Department helped with its regularly scheduled military flights, and additional flights were added for high-ranking civilians. The emergency meeting provided whatever bureaucratic justifications were necessary. But commercial flights were a different story. The overworked staffers found themselves wheedling, cajoling, even begging airline representatives to find a space for their “essential personnel.” And all of the arrangements had to be made in a way that would not create a panic.
Arthur Hayes spent Thanksgiving in an office at the White House, using the title “Acting National Security Advisor.” At three o’clock on Thursday afternoon, in response to a directive from the President, he found himself placing a call to T. Parker Cunningham, the President’s National Security Advisor, the person who effectively ran the National Security Council, even though it was officially chaired by the President.
“Acting” didn’t mean that he took over the position. This was a bona fide crisis, and his first order of business was to get the real number one back in the saddle. He could hear the phone ringing at the other end.
Parker’s daughter handed him the phone. “This is Cunningham.” The hum of conversation and laughter Hayes had heard while he waited for his boss made Hayes feel guilty for interrupting.
“Arthur Hayes here, sir. Sorry to disturb you, but we need you back in Washington. Immediately.”
“We’re visiting family in Ohio, Hayes. What is this about? It’s Thanksgiving!”
“I repeat, sir. You’re needed back here in Washington. We’ve made travel arrangements, and a car from Wright Patterson will be arriving in a few minutes to take you to the airport. We can’t talk on the phone—at least not until you get on the aircraft with a secure phone. But sir? I’m not sure that right now we have all that much to be thankful about.”
* * *
Day 24: Laying the Groundwork
On the day after Thanksgiving, a few hours before the start of the National Security Council meeting, four men met in a secure conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Vice President Richards had quietly summoned Quentin Walker, the Secretary of Defense; Robinson Edwards, the Under Secretary for Intelligence at DOD; and George P. Radisson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was to be a meeting of the minds—military minds—to develop a strategy for the National Security Council meeting—a strategy to assure a decisive and immediate military response to the attack.
Richards suspected that other Council members, in particular the Secretary of State, might be having a similar meeting a meeting that in his mind would be treason. Any attempt at negotiation with terrorists is treason, by definition. As he saw it, there was only one choice. We have to bomb the bastards back into the stone age!
The Vice President assailed the Secretary of Defense as soon as he arrived for the meeting. “Just what the hell is going on, Walker? We’ve got a giant clusterfuck here, and you didn’t see fit to give me advance notice? That’s not why I got you into Defense in the first place, and you’d better remember that.”
The two men had a long history. Trevor B. Richards, a graduate of West Point, had cut his teeth in combat as a young officer at the tail end of the Vietnam War, earning commendations for bravery as combat operations were winding down. During the substantial period of peacetime that followed, his military career flourished, aided by advanced degrees in military history and political science. He’d been introduced to the political landscape of Washington, D.C., during an assignment at the Pentagon, when he was detailed to the White House as a military attaché to the National Security Council. He had spent more time than any other NSC member in the conference room where that group soon would soon convene.
Like many of his contemporaries, Richards’ views had been shaped at a time when the primary threat to the United States was the Soviet Union. The fall of the USSR had left many in the military without direction while they sought a new enemy. But not Richards. Then a Colonel, he had understood that change was on the horizon, although he didn’t quite know what that change would be. From a military viewpoint, it didn’t matter that much. What he saw was a change in how wars would be fought. Vietnam was just the first instance in which guerilla tactics were a major part of the enemy’s approach. He knew there would be more.
His superior command abilities gained the attention of the top brass during the Bosnia-Serbia campaign, and he was rewarded with promotion to Brigadier General. He earned a second star during the Persian Gulf War. He developed widespread support and respect both at the Pentagon and with the public. Not since Colin Powell had an active military figure been discussed so widely as a possible candidate for national office.
So, when James Fallon Alexander was nominated for President by his party, Richards was seen as an ideal balance for the cerebral Alexander, whose Quaker background was be
ing used by his opponent to label him as reluctant to defend his country. The vice presidential candidate promptly reminded the electorate that Richard Nixon’s Quaker background hadn’t kept him from continuing to send troops to Vietnam, nor did it dissuade him from initiating the bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos. Richards greatly strengthened the ticket, and the pair achieved a narrow victory in the general election.
An integral part of the Alexander Administration, Richards was consulted on all of the President’s appointments in the areas of defense and national security. That gave Richards the opportunity to push Quentin S. Walker, Jr. for Defense Secretary. Walker became the administration’s most vocal hawk, Richards its most powerful.
After a mediocre undergraduate career at the Louisiana State University, Walker had, through family ties, managed to get an appointment to the Coast Guard Reserve, which allowed him to avoid Vietnam. He did have to put in some time on what his friends always called “weekend cruises” in the Gulf of Mexico. He’d always felt guilty about dodging meaningful military service in Vietnam, where too many of his high school and college friends had died. He also harbored a deep anger over those deaths, which his guilt and narcissism caused him to take as personal rebukes.
Walker had been too old for military service by the time of the Persian Gulf War, but he had decided by then that he would honor those who served the nation by doing whatever was needed to support them and their families. He also understood that war was sometimes necessary, and he would not hesitate to send the country’s men and women off to fight—and to die—in the cause of the nation.
Walker worked in his father’s shipbuilding and dry-dock operations for a dozen years after college, taking two years off in the middle of that time to earn an MBA. He was no academic star, but for the most part, he did attend the classes and pass the exams. And, more important, he began to make political contacts.
During his last several years at the shipyard, where he and his younger brother worked as managers, his political star began to rise. A decline in the shipbuilding industry hit their part of the Gulf, and Walker bet on the wisdom of working with the unions. He bet right. The result was increased profits for the business, along with modest growth that helped people find jobs. He became a bit of a local hero, and when the political contacts he’d made while working on his MBA came calling, he agreed to run for a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He barely won that election, finishing ahead of his opponent by just a few votes. But he understood the game and how it was played. He worked tirelessly to bring new business and dollars into his district. With this approach—and an uncanny ability to stay on the right side of ethical issues, or at least not get caught while on the wrong side—he had been reelected a dozen times.
Quentin Walker had become one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives, and he served as a highly influential member, whether in the majority or minority, of the House Armed Services Committee. In that role, he was an unfailing proponent of anything the Pentagon might request.
As Walker’s star ascended in Congress, so Richards’ did in the military. The two men crossed paths many times, first, during Walker’s occasional visits to the White House when Richards was detailed to the Security Council, and later, when Richards would testify before the Armed Services Committee as a representative from the Pentagon. Richards recognized that Walker would always support Pentagon requests, even when the justification for the requests might be flimsy. When the time came for President-Elect Alexander to name his cabinet, Richards had been a strong—and ultimately, successful—advocate for appointing Walker to the position of Secretary of Defense.
While Vice President Richards publicly praised Walker as an unfailing supporter of the military, he also saw the appointment as one that would give him—and him alone—an additional source of power. He knew how to manipulate Walker’s guilt about Vietnam to ensure that Walker supported him on each and every question of national security.
Walker wasn’t offended when the Vice President greeted him with a stream of profanity. Neither the foul language nor the accusatory tone bothered him. It was just the way Richards spoke under stress. Walker also respected the office that Richards held. “Mr. Vice President, we couldn’t give you advance notice about what happened. We didn’t know. Nobody knew. This was a terrorist attack—a surprise attack on innocent people.”
“Let’s hear the details. What do we know?”
“First of all, let me report where we are. Then we’ll tell you—actually, Under Secretary Edwards will tell you—how we’ve learned what we now know. The whole thing started when we received a call from a Dr. Steven D. Rasmussen at CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Actually, he called Col. Jason Bradshaw at Fort Bliss in Texas. You recall that we’ve started up these rapid-reaction forces to respond to domestic disasters or terrorist attacks? Well, Bradshaw commands the rapid-reaction brigade down at Fort Bliss. He’s worked with Rasmussen on simulation exercises. Rasmussen is the—let me see, here—the Director of CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. That’s a mouthful. I’m told they just call it COTPER.”
“Get to the goddamn point, Quentin. What did they tell you? I don’t like being kept in the fucking dark.”
“Sorry, Mr. Vice President. Just trying to give you all the background. Well, on Tuesday, three days ago, some small-town doctor called CDC to say they might have a case of smallpox. The guy’s not even an American, from the sound of his name—and everybody thought he was just some nut case. But CDC did what they had to do. They sent one of their top guys out to New Mexico to investigate. And then all hell broke loose. On Wednesday they confirmed the illness as smallpox. There were several cases, and one death. A little kid. An Indian kid—this is by the Navajo Reservation out there—but it was still a little kid. So CDC decides to implement their smallpox response plan.* That’s when Rasmussen called Col. Bradshaw.”
“And Bradshaw called you?”
“Actually, he called Under Secretary Edwards here. He realized right away that this needed to be hush-hush to avoid a panic, so he did the right thing. He went right to the top of our Military Intelligence operations. He and Edwards know each other. That’s when they called me in. This was on Wednesday. And I approved a full counter-terrorism response.”
“And you didn’t contact me? Or even the President?”
“Yes sir—I mean actually, no sir. It was just out there on the Indian reservation—out in the middle of nowhere. And even with the CDC call, we weren’t really sure at the start that this whole thing was real. That it was actually smallpox, I mean. We needed to be certain first. So we set everything up like a training exercise. Bradshaw said he could get his first troops there by the end of the day—that was the day before Thanksgiving—and start sealing off the area with a full quarantine. That first wave would go in by helicopter, and the real troop strength would begin moving out that same afternoon by motor vehicle from Fort Bliss. Troops would arrive in Farmington—that’s where the reservation is. It’s in an area that they call the “Four Corners.” It’s where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona all meet at one place. Bradshaw said it was about 400 miles by road, so the bulk of his troops couldn’t get there until after midnight. It was already Thursday, yesterday, when it was Thanksgiving.”
“I don’t need all this bullshit detail, Quentin. I’m trying to figure out why you didn’t call me right off the bat. I’ve been involved in counterterrorism for a long time. The Defense Department has been brought into the terrorism-response effort, but that’s fairly recent. It was always the CDC, the public health people, that had the authority and responsibility.”
“Yes sir. That’s right. When we—I mean Bradshaw, Edwards, and me. When we talked on Wednesday, I said maybe we should call your office, and the President too, of course. But they said … I mean I decided that action was more important than words in a crisis. We needed to get those troops up ther
e to Farmington without delay, and a bunch of meetings would clearly slow things down. So I just approved the operation. Right then and there. It was the right thing to do. This was a terrorist attack, so we threw the entire response into high gear.”
“Quentin, have you actually read the official CDC Smallpox Response Plan?”
“Of course I have. I mean, I looked at it when it first came across my desk. I wouldn’t claim I knew every word by heart.”
“But maybe you remember the parts about how open communication was one of the cornerstones of the plan? That the public must have complete confidence in the public health system?”
“Well, yes. But this was different. It was a terrorist attack, and that could have caused a panic. So we decided—I decided—that the best way to keep the public confident was to not scare them in the first place. The outbreak—the attack—was in such an isolated area that Bradshaw and Edwards said we could contain it completely. So we imposed a complete blackout on the area. We’ve completely cut all communications as well as all traffic by air and land. All the roads are closed as of yesterday afternoon. We’ve got this under control, Mr. Vice President.”
“Something like this happens again, you tell me first, Quentin, but I like the way you handled it. The rapid-reaction force out of Fort Bliss is in charge. I like that. It’s a lot better than the way they wrote up the CDC plan, which put the medical people in charge. They don’t know anything about real emergencies. But the Army? They know how to take care of things. If you get any push-back on this, you let me know. Our country is under attack, and we don’t want a bunch of pussies telling us that it’s ‘Be Kind to Terrorists Week.’ We need real men in charge.”
