by Mara, Wil
Abbott nodded. “We’ve never dealt with anything this potent before.”
“Has it spread beyond New Jersey?” the president continued.
“Yes, sir. It is now established in New York and Connecticut, eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Delaware. We’ve tried to restrict movements of citizens within the epicenter of the outbreak in northern New Jersey, but to keep all people confined to their homes is virtually impossible.”
… without a presidential order, was the unspoken sentiment that lingered in the air. Obama didn’t react to it, as he didn’t believe Abbott was either baiting or insulting him. She had proven herself to be a dedicated, objective, and focused individual, which was why he appointed her to the top of the CDC in the first place. But he was not yet ready to intercede with the executive order she had been advocating for the last few days.
“What about our continental neighbors to the north and south?”
“No cases reported yet in either Canada or Mexico, and that’s probably due to a combination of our efforts to keep the public informed and educated and, strangely enough, the media’s efforts to keep the public frightened. Nevertheless, it is my belief that the outbreak will cross an international border sooner or later.”
Obama nodded. “Do we have any idea what we’re dealing with, Sheila? I’m talking about the causative agent now.”
Causative agent … The president had taken the time to educate himself on the subject at hand rather than rely purely on the support of his advisers. This habit, born of an insatiable curiosity for all things as well as the belief that well-informed leaders made the best decisions, had earned him a great deal of respect; even the begrudging variety of his most determined opponents.
“Not nearly enough,” Abbott said. “Based on the samples we have taken from the victims, we know it is a spherical virus rather than elongate. We also believe it to be reverse transcribing, which means it has an RNA template that the virus feeds into a host cell, forcing that cell’s DNA to replicate the virus’s characteristics. In essence, this means—”
“The virus hijacks a person’s cells in order to create copies of itself,” Obama said flatly, “like any other virus.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“But you have not yet been able to identify exactly which one this is?”
“No, sir. We are examining samples here in Atlanta, and we’ve sent more to the National Institute for Medical Research in London. We’re hoping to come up with a match or something close to one of the roughly six thousand known viruses worldwide, but so far no luck.”
“Do you feel it is a mutant? Maybe something entirely new?”
“At this point, I’m not prepared to make that claim. If it is new, that may only mean it’s new to us. For all we know, it could have existed in nature for millions of years, and we’re only seeing it in humans now. Whether or not it is a true mutation remains to be seen. The probability is very high, though, since viruses mutate all the time. It could be a recombinant between two other, more common strains. It could even be another case of a virus that’s common in animals migrating to humans and becoming more virulent as it adapts, as we’ve seen before in recent years.”
“And you’re sure this is not smallpox? Not even a previously unknown variant?” This question came from the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs.
If there was one word the media was getting good mileage out of, it was smallpox. It seemed to be set in a larger font every day. The fact that there was no evidence thus far of the virus being a new strain of either Variola major or Variola minor—the only two contagions responsible for smallpox—didn’t seem to matter.
“We are, of course, looking into that. Some symptoms are similar, but then others are not.” She replied. “That said, it’s inaccurate, not to mention irresponsible, for news outlets to report that this is a smallpox outbreak. Of course, some are saying the end of the world is upon us. So I don’t know how much responsibility we can really expect.”
“Could it be a new smallpox variant?
“I don’t consider that a very strong possibility.”
The president and his people had been harping on the smallpox angle for days, in spite of assurances that the odds of this outbreak being related were slim to none. Abbott couldn’t help but wonder if they had some intelligence data leading them to believe some terrorist cell had gotten their hands on samples of the virus and successfully integrated it into a workable, deliverable weapon. Since the World Health Organization declared smallpox globally eradicated in 1980, the government had stuck to the official story that the only remaining samples of Variola were sitting in locked freezers in two labs around the world—one at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, the other in the WHO repository in Moscow—and kept for the purpose of benign research. But anyone who took the trouble of investigating further, even via the few reliable sources on the Internet, would know that this was far from the truth. Rumors abounded of loose stocks being taken from the Moscow supply in the handbags and briefcases of defecting scientists. Also, Russia’s bioweapons program, supposedly dismantled on several occasions, continued with the development of a particularly virulent strain of the virus in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, of which they were a leading signatory. In April of 1992, then-president Boris Yeltsin confessed to several of these violations and, in a show of good faith, ordered that further research be discontinued. This included a deep slash of funding, which left the weapons labs virtually deserted—and leftover strains of Variola and other weapons-grade bioagents ripe for the taking. By the second half of the year, only a handful of guards remained, poorly paid when they were paid at all. Intelligence communities around the world screamed that this provided an open invitation for terrorists, but their cries fell on deaf ears. Abbott could not help but wonder if Obama’s staff was worried that the current outbreak was somehow related.
The president turned to Gibbs and said, “Tell the press that there is no evidence of a connection to smallpox at this time, and add Sheila’s point that to imply otherwise is irresponsible and dangerous—emphasize dangerous—to the public’s interest. People are already panicking everywhere; the press has to stop throwing fuel on the fire.”
“That won’t stop them from writing about the situation.”
“No, but hopefully the salient facts will get through.”
“Very good, Mr. President.”
Obama turned his attention back to Abbott. “Sheila, where are we with treatment at this point?”
“There are tailor-made drugs for other viruses, called antivirals, that interrupt the virus’s replication or release process. Ribavirin, for example, when used with interferon medication, has proven an effective nucleoside analogue. But there’s no such drug for this virus because it’s new, and it often takes months or even years before we understand a specific virus well enough to design an effective medication. Obviously we are already working on this, and hoping for some luck to fall our way. It does happen from time to time. Remember that AZT, also known as zidovudine or Retrovir, was first introduced in the 1960s as a cancer treatment when it was believed cancer was a viral condition. When it didn’t work, it was put on a shelf and forgotten. Then someone decided to try it in the mid-’80s as a combatant against AIDS, and suddenly we had the first HIV ‘wonder drug.’”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could replicate that kind of good fortune,” the president said.
“Indeed.”
“So how are patients being handled in the meantime?”
“For the time being, we’re relying on sedation to keep them comfortable during the early stages of the infection. In the later stages, when they begin to experience dementia, heavier doses are necessary. Sometimes a patient has to be restrained.”
“And containment of the outbreak? Steps are being taken, of course.”
“Yes. We have over a hundred people in the field—basically walking around the epicenter—looking for people with early symptoms.”
“That’s a bit primitive, isn’t it?” someone seated in the middle of the table grunted.
“It is, but it works. And we have no better options. If this were smallpox, we could at least set up vaccination sites. But this is something new, which means a whole new set of rules and procedures, some of the latter being very ‘grassroots’ in their approach. Beyond that, we are also posting flyers everywhere—not just at hospitals but in every public place you can imagine—urging people to report any case they happen to see or even suspect. The flyers have an easy-to-remember number for the CDC Emergency Operations Center, for which we’ve hired two hundred extra people to man the phones. We are working fully in conjunction with health officials in New Jersey, and soon in other states I’m sure, to support their local and state emergency plans. But truly, there’s only so much that can be done at this stage. To completely contain something that spreads this fast and with this kind of virulency … a lot of luck would have to be involved, too. That’s just the ugly truth of the matter.”
“Speaking of vaccines, is there any progress on creating one?” This came from Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“We now have teams working in three separate locations around the clock. But this is time consuming because it’s so hit-and-miss. Since this virus is new, creating a vaccine is like reinventing the wheel. It could take a week, a month, or a year. The reason people still get the flu is because the virus mutates from year to year, making it all but impossible to produce a permanent vaccine. Let’s hope this one doesn’t have that capacity. Also, we can experiment on animals only, which means whatever we eventually come up with might have no effect on humans—or, like other vaccines that have been hastily formulated, it could end up doing as much damage as the disease itself.”
She was thinking of the Fort Dix incident. In February of 1976, a young military recruit at New Jersey’s Fort Dix died unexpectedly from an unfamiliar strain of the influenza virus that also had characteristics of a contagion infecting domestic hogs. Then it was discovered that thirteen others were infected. The government, fearing the public could not adapt quickly enough to the new variant, ordered a vaccine be developed and delivered as soon as possible. Just weeks after the population began receiving inoculations, however, more than two dozen recipients were dead while others developed nerve damage, some to the point of permanent paralysis. Further inoculations were cancelled, and the government became the target of lawsuits totaling more than a billion dollars. Ironically, no other deaths from the original Fort Dix outbreak occurred, and the illness passed. Nevertheless, many people became gun-shy about vaccines thereafter, never realizing that the great majority worked exactly as intended and were completely safe.
“Okay, Sheila,” the president said, “thank you for the update. Keep your people working on this around the clock.”
“I will, Mr. President. Thank you.”
* * *
The screen went blank and most of the attendees filed out of the room. The president, however, remained seated, as did CIA Director Leon Panetta.
“Leon, do you have reason to believe there’s a terrorist connection to this?”
Panetta, the affable son of Italian immigrants who would go on to nine terms in the House of Representatives and serve as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff before becoming Obama’s “top spy,” said, “There is no evidence to suggest it as of yet. Naturally, several groups are claiming responsibility, but none are credible. In the upper levels of terrorist society, no one’s saying a word.” The president didn’t seem eased by his comments. “Do you have a specific concern, sir?”
Obama shook his head. “No, but it’s something we have to consider. I’m trying to improve our relations around the world, but it would naïve to think that it could be accomplished everywhere. Syria, Iran, North Korea … Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas … the Taliban, the remaining fragments of Al-Qaeda … There are still plenty of people who would like to see America brought to its knees.”
“No doubt.”
“If this does turn out to be something manufactured rather than natural, I’ll have no choice but to respond.”
Panetta nodded. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“Not what you want to be doing with one hand while holding out an olive branch with the other.”
“No, sir.”
The president spent another moment in his private thoughts. Then, “Okay, keep the agency’s ear to the ground, and the rest of us will keep our fingers crossed.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And please operate quietly. If the press gets wind of any suspicions on our part…”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
“Thank you.”
* * *
Ahmed Aaban el Shalizeh stood watching a large CRT television propped on a munitions trunk turned on its side. A small cadre of men lingered around him, but he was the one a random observer would notice first. His robes were tattered and filthy, the leather on his bullet belt dried and rotted. His black turban matched his beard almost perfectly, although the latter was starting to show the first signs of silver. It was his eyes, however, that frosted everyone he met—the left one was as blue as the Pacific, whereas the right was cloudy and lifeless, an orb of dead tissue. Shalizeh had constructed the legend of losing half his vision in the first battle of his career, a firefight in the Malakand region of Pakistan where he was born and raised. The truth was a bit more prosaic—his mother, naturally left-handed, destroyed it through repeated strikes to that side of his head. Shalizeh had cultivated many dramatic stories about himself over the years, to the point where even he had begun to forget where the facts ended and the fiction began.
The makeshift camp was located in a remote desert sector of Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan. It was originally intended as a hydroelectric plant until construction ceased due to lack of funding. The main building had a slanting, corrugated roof and large bay doors at either end. A twin pair of smaller buildings, made from cinder blocks and with no glass in the windows, stood on either side. Beyond that were about two dozen canvas tents of varying sizes. A gravel road snaked its way to the site, and a pair of aging RVs were parked at the spot where it abruptly terminated. A swift river bordered by scant shrubbery hugged the encampment on the eastern side, and a rope bridge had been built immediately after the current residents arrived. About a hundred yards beyond the adjacent shore lay the foothills of a nameless mountain, and within those foothills was a network of caves that provided suitable cover when necessary. Shalizeh said they could hide in the caves when foreign intelligence agencies flew overhead, either in manned or unmanned planes, to take pictures of them. But they had been here just under one year and so far that hadn’t happened yet.
Al Jazeera reported the latest figures from America. On the screen, they showed random images from around the country to underscore the horror—bodies being taken out of a home in shiny black bags, a screaming baby with a hideously swollen face, the unsteady cell phone movie of an infected man jumping from the top of an apartment building. A middle-aged woman in a business suit was crying as someone off camera held out a microphone. Between hitches and sobs, she said that her husband and twelve-year-old son had contracted the illness while she was away on a company trip, and when she got back she found them both dead. It wasn’t the illness that had ultimately taken their lives, however, but a bizarre joint suicide in which they pointed shotguns at each other’s heads.
Shalizeh turned, grinning. “Wonderful,” he said in his native Urdu. “Simply wonderful. This is truly a sign from the heavens.” He walked over and draped his arms around two of his men. “Did I not tell you? Did I not foresee it?”
A graduate of Bahria University with a degree in psychology, he was charismatic, intelligent, passionate … and thoroughly crazy. He could quote the Koran from memory and was a superb storyteller, dazzling his followers with battlefield tales whose authenticity was doubtable at best. But
beneath the intriguing exterior he was a sociopath, plain and simple. He and his men had killed on many occasions—the difference was they believed they were doing it for a cause, whereas he did it largely for pleasure.
“Your faith has not been misplaced,” he continued, addressing the entire crowd now. “All is happening as I have predicted, and Lashkar-al-Islam will rise once again. We will rise again!” He removed his rifle from his shoulder and fired it into the ceiling. There were hundreds of holes in the corrugated surface from similar outbursts.
The others did likewise, cheering like giddy children. They were twelve miles from the nearest settlement, mostly to discourage escapees. Shalizeh had already tracked down two. It was rumored he shot both in the legs, then buried them up to their necks in the sand. It was this kind of over-the-top lunacy that had slowly diminished his standing in the fundamentalist community. At its peak, Lashkar-al-Islam received weaponry, training, and financial aid from sympathetic factions as diverse as Abu Sayyaf, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestine Liberation Front. But Shalizeh’s ultraradical tactics, too gruesome even for “mainstream” terrorists, drove away these supporters one by one until the organization was hanging by a single thread—a thread held by the government of Iran. Then the Iranian people elected a new president, and Shalizeh was not only cut off but targeted as well. He narrowly escaped capture and soon became obsessed with two objectives—revenge against Iran’s new reformist administration, and returning Lashkar to its former glory. The opportunity to do both would come, he had said repeatedly.
Now he believed that opportunity had finally arrived.
He walked over to one of his lieutenants, a Syrian named Ashur, and said, “Contact Abdulaziz and send him what he needs.” The others braced themselves. The two men had not been getting along lately, mostly on this point.
“My leader, please, this is not a good idea.”
“My friend, trust m—”
“I beg of you, do not do this.”
“I assure you—”
