Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero

by James Abel

  Her final emotions came wordlessly, as she looked up at the two faces.

  Terror.

  Surprise.

  THIRTEEN

  I’d expected a conference but got an inquisition.

  The Rangers drove me to the lab building on the tundra, within view of troops positioned a few hundred yards off, beyond concertina wire. We removed our boots beneath the NO DIRTY FOOTWEAR! WARNING! AVOID LAB CONTAMINATION! sign. In a foyer, rows of metal racks held pairs of combat boots. Mud dried on the floor.

  Despite the somber mood there was something silly about Rangers, M4s on backs, walking around in stocking feet.

  The building had no elevator. The guards followed me up concrete stairs, and past a glassed-in conference room where, grouped around a long conference table, standing and arguing, were about ten soldiers and civilians. A diorama of confusion: Merlin and the mayor at the far end of the table, standing, arms crossed, as if to say, We do not like what we’re hearing. A couple of Ranger officers poking something on the table, a map probably, and gesturing as if trying to convey orders. This is what we want you locals to do. The two CDC doctors watching, in an attitude of semi-helplessness. We haven’t found out anything yet that can help you. I saw a naval officer. A couple of state public health officials. And a man and woman sitting together, in uniform, glancing up sharply to meet my gaze as I passed, giving me a look of interest and recognition. Army investigators maybe. We’ve heard about you!

  But Homza wasn’t there. The Rangers escorted me down the hall to the lab I shared with Eddie, where the general waited with a cute, gamine, Asian woman, in her mid thirties, in an Army sweater. Homza cradled a mug of steaming coffee. The woman sipped a Diet Pepsi from a can.

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Ng, who’s running our special investigation unit,” Homza, said, his gray eyes probing. “She’ll report directly to me twice a day. I report to the White House every six hours.”

  Both of them regarded me with a flat, appraising intensity bordering on suspicion. Their careers would be elevated or destroyed by what happened over the next few days. I was the bug under a microscope. They needed to know if I could hurt them or help.

  Homza nodded at Ng. It meant, Go ahead.

  Ng said, “I want straight answers, please. Did you have anything to do with the eruption of this outbreak?”

  “What?” I was stunned.

  “You were assigned to Alaska to seek out organisms that might be harmful. You’re dead center in this. Yes or no? Did this thing come from your work, your lab?”

  “No, Colonel.” I felt myself growing warm.

  “Did you, at any time this summer, find what you were sent here to look for, illness resulting from a U.S. government program?”

  “No.” The warmth was turning to heat.

  “Did you or Major Nakamura discover the existence of any prior testing program—directed by any branch of the armed forces—that may have caused this disease to erupt?”

  Homza just watched and weighed. I said, “How can you ask that? We’re the ones who reported the rabies.”

  “Which could mean you had prior knowledge,” came the high, musical voice of Amanda Ng. “It could mean you’re playing catch-up, minimizing damage.”

  “You’re accusing us?” I asked, disgusted.

  She shrugged. “Asking. I want to get to the bottom of this, as quickly as possible, and for this quarantine to end. I assume you do, too.”

  “No,” I snapped. “I like it this way.”

  She turned to the general. She had a mildly exotic look. Her face was heart shaped, her nose and mouth small. She was well proportioned, her honey-colored skin glowed, and her hair, almost blue-black, was cut in a shag that brushed the nape of slender neck. Her eyes were burnished light, and seemed to catch the fluorescent laboratory glow. The Army sweater she wore had built-in patches on the shoulders, and was thickly knit. A gold cross hung from her neck.

  “General,” she said, shrugging, “Colonel Rush may well be telling the truth but I still think he should be removed from any further investigation. That way, if he’s culpable, he cannot impede work. We’ve got independent experts here from the CDC for disease tracking. My suggestion is to put him on the medical side. Use him as a doctor. Sideline him and Major Nakamura from our part; available, but out.”

  I smiled bitterly. “So far, your independent experts have missed half the clues, Colonel Ng.”

  The edge of the general’s mouth twitched. He nodded at her, but to show that he heard, not necessarily that he agreed yet.

  The general turned his gaze on me. “You’ve been part of cover-ups before,” he said. “I’ve got your records now, all of them. Colonel Ng is familiar with them, too.”

  I knew what was coming next and felt sick. I was under orders not to discuss this with anyone. My orders had been clear when I was awarded the presidential medal by the last occupant of the White House, not the one who sat there now.

  Never bring up what happened in Afghanistan.

  I felt a tickling in my throat. In my head I saw a caravan of tarp-covered Army trucks driving toward a joint Army/Marine base in Asia. I saw the dust they threw up. I saw all the trucks but one pull to the side of the road when I ordered them to over the radio. I saw one truck race toward the concertina wire and sandbag gate, where I stood.

  “You killed eight Marines, Colonel,” Ng said.

  My throat had gone dry. “Yes.”

  “You fired a .50-caliber gun at the truck, knowing full well that it was filled with fellow Marines.”

  “Yes. I blew that truck up.”

  “And the incident was covered up. Anything you want to explain?”

  In my mind I smelled alkaline dust and oil fumes and the faint latrine/diesel odor of a tent camp filled with thousands of military personnel. I heard the driver of the approaching truck, a Moslem-American, a kid from the Midwest, a tortured and disappointed man who had sneaked chemical-packed oil drums into that truck, singing prayers over the radio. The Marines in back—who could not hear him—were returning from a humanitarian mission, a food drop at a refugee camp. They did not know that the driver was trying to ram the wire. The servicemen and women in the base didn’t know they were being attacked. The guards were too stunned to fire. I leaped into their post and gripped the twin handles of the .50-caliber. The guards stared in horror. I watched the tracers arc into the hood of that truck, watched the canvas top engulf in flame. We felt the shock wave roll across the dun-colored desert, and watched the mustard-like gas cloud drift from the wreckage, reach a small flock of sheep, and their shepherd. They began to convulse, puke, go into mass seizures.

  You saved a thousand lives, the president told me when he awarded me the medal. I’m sorry no one will ever find out.

  “It was the worst day of my life,” I said now. “I would do it again.”

  Homza sipped coffee. I couldn’t read him. He was probably one hell of a poker player. Lieutenant Colonel Ng seemed to take my admission as confirmation of twisted proclivities. She told Homza, “Cover-ups become SOP.” She meant standard operating procedure. “I don’t know this officer. I don’t know if he is covering up something now.”

  Homza sighed. “Colonel Rush, this is why I’ve never liked the idea of all these little independent units.”

  My God! He’s playing politics right now!

  We all sat on lab stools, bar-stool height, except the smell in here was Lysol, not beer, formaldehyde, not peanuts. I comprised the third point of a triangle where the other two edges were hard stares.

  Otherwise the lab seemed normal. There were tables on which sat books and a microscope, a computer, printouts. Rabies studies. Rabies treatises. Rabies histories.

  I wish I’d had time to call Karen.

  Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Ng said, “Tell you what, Colonel Rush. If there’s something you need
to tell us, do it now and there will be no consequences.”

  “My word on it,” said Homza.

  “I’ve told the truth, sir.”

  General Homza stood and brushed off his uniform pants. He said, noncommittal, “The others are waiting for us. Why don’t we go down the hall and all have a chat.”

  • • •

  I KEPT REMEMBERING KAREN IN THE BACK OF THE AUDITORIUM. KAREN doubling over, coughing. Karen rushing out.

  I hope she is okay.

  Homza sat at the head of the table, Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Ng on his right. The power seats. On Homza’s left were a couple of majors: Kevin Jackson and Kendall LeMoyne, who commanded the day and night shifts out on the wire. Jackson was towheaded and crew cut, with a flinty New England accent, slate-gray eyes and the remains of a bad case of acne scars on his sallow face. LeMoyne was a bulked up, dark haired and neatly mustached man who occasionally touched his gold wedding band, or glanced at the map of Barrow on the corkboard. Little black pins in the board denoted troops, white ones were food distribution points, green ones showed important civilian locations: Borough Hall, the hospital, the prison, and there was a jagged curl shape drawn around the town, like a strand of rotini. That was the wire.

  On the left side of the table, moving down, were the CDC epidemiologists who’d been testing and retesting victims for rabies over the last two days, and who, in my opinion, had caused the delay in quarantine while they questioned their own findings.

  They were a sharp-faced, balding black man named Dr. Harlan Morgan, from San Antonio. And a wide-hipped, sloppy-looking woman from New York, Dr. Janette Cruz, who wore wire-rimmed glasses around her neck on a string, and showed small food stains on her white coat. They’d both looked mildly hopeful when Amanda Ng suggested that Eddie and I might have had something to do with the outbreak. I guess that would make their failure to identify the virus less embarrassing.

  Eddie called the two CDC docs the Tweedledums. They always agreed with each other, even finished each others’ sentences. Karen had told me she thought they were lovers. She’s good at spotting this stuff.

  The number two with the Army’s investigative unit was Captain Raymond Hess, out of D.C. The two Iñupiats, Merlin and the mayor, still seemed resentful that I’d not warned them of the quarantine. They sat at the far end of the table, clearly relegated to the status of locals privileged to get any information at all, and there to take orders.

  Homza said crisply, “Captain Hess? Where are we? Theories? Foreign attack? Probe? Terrorism?”

  Hess wore a West Point ring. He spoke confidently and made good eye contact with Homza. “Sir! At this point, foreign attack seems unlikely. The victims are civilians. There’s no military target of note here. The spread seems random. Domestic terrorism is a consideration. A bigger outbreak could impact domestic oil supply, although if it was an attack, why not hit Prudhoe Bay. Why here? We’ll be looking into victim background, spread pattern, lab samples, and anyone,” he said, glancing at me, “who worked with rabies this summer. It’s quite possible the outbreak is natural in origin.”

  Homza’s eyes slid right. “CDC?”

  Dr. Harlan Morgan said, “Spread. We’ll do a house-to-house survey, seeking connections. We’ll watch the monkeys. Is the illness contagious or spreading in another way? We’re monitoring anyone coming into the hospital. Blood tests on family members. Daily blood from anyone who’s come in contact with a victim. I suggest that we set up four or five satellite medical posts, to avoid crowding.”

  Dr. Cruz added that she and Morgan awaited results of the DNA tests on the strain taken from George Carling, to see if it was a known one, if it came from nature, or if it was man-made and had come to life in a lab.

  Amanda Ng asked, “You can tell the difference?”

  “Absolutely. There are hundreds of strains around the world but we’ve analyzed them. A couple of days, we’ll know if we’re dealing with a known strain, lab strain, or mix.”

  The naval officer—from the sub—explained that the Virginia and the icebreaker would remain offshore as long as ice stayed away and allowed it. Major Kevin Jackson went to quarantine logistics, patrol schedules, areas where electronic jamming was in effect, two monitored rooftop areas where authorized sat calls could go out, rules on public gatherings, and efforts to keep the troops separate from civilians, in case the rabies spread and vaccinations did not work. It was a quagmire of problems.

  “At night we’ll have searchlights mounted on the Humvees,” Jackson said, eyeing Merlin and the mayor, who’d been pretty much ignored up to then. “It would be a good idea if police came with our patrols, house to house. We’ll be doing spot checks, mobile teams, looking for home laboratories or sick people hiding away and—”

  Merlin spoke up. “You want my people going with you through all the homes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Merlin and the mayor exchanged glances. They didn’t like it. Merlin nodded. He’d do it.

  “Good! Also, we want an announcement from you, Mr. Mayor, that people should stay away from the wire. No gatherings of more than five. No one out after eight P.M. You will—”

  Mayor Brower cleared his throat, interrupted the major. The mayor shook his head vigorously, agitated. “Actually,” he said. “You will not tell my people what to do.”

  On the table sat mugs of steaming Maxwell House coffee, a sugar bowl, a half gallon of milk, and a glass bowl piled with chocolate – and coconut-flavored PowerBars.

  The major blanched, glanced at the general for assistance. Homza handled the interruption smoothly, showing none of the harshness of which he was capable in private. “With all respect, Mr. Mayor . . .”

  The mayor cut him off. “‘Respect’? You didn’t respect us enough to tell us you were coming. Or to let us know that a protocol four event—yes, General, I know what it is—had occurred. You’re not putting my police under your command, or this major’s command, or anyone’s. Plain and simple.”

  Homza sat back and sighed, refusing to be baited. My sense of him as a thinking commander had been rising all morning. He said, low key, “I understand that you are upset, Mayor. But martial law is in effect. Cooperation would be best for all. I have trained experts here, highly qualified to end the quarantine as safely as possible.”

  “The same experts who failed to recognize rabies, even after Joe told them it was here?”

  The general’s eyes flicked to me. He was playing it soft before he made threats. That’s the way drills suggest we do it. “Mayor, believe me. In this kind of situation, it is best to work together.”

  “You’ve run a quarantine before?” the mayor said.

  Homza pursed his thick lips. “We’ve planned them, gamed them out in great detail, sir.”

  “Gamed. You’ve gamed them.” The mayor drew himself up; he was small and gray haired and wore a button-up blue-and-white-striped cotton shirt and a spotted sealskin vest with a walrus-ivory bolo tie. I’d been in a hundred meetings on “ways to handle locals.” The mayor was the guy D.C. paid no attention to. And now he addressed the meeting with dignity and force. “Martial law ends at some point, General. And when it does, you’ll want cooperation with building permits, pipelines, bases, training. Cooperation as any federal Arctic projects go forward.”

  “I don’t see how that is relevant just now.”

  “Yes you do. We’re not rubes here. You fly in and see a few houses. Ice. You figure you can do what you want. We’ve got lobbyists in D.C., good Georgetown lawyers. I can pick up this phone and call our Senators. We’ve stopped the oil and can do it again, and if we do, when we do, I’ll make sure everyone knows you are the cause. You personally. General Wayne Homza. Who fucked up the North Slope.”

  “Mayor, there’s no need to make threats.”

  The mayor’s finger went up. “There’s more. The weather’s going bad. You have no housing if
you bring in more people. You can’t kick us from our homes. That’ll look bad. You’re unprepared for Arctic ops. You don’t have the men to manage a growing crisis. Will you bunk your people in the infected zone? You really think you can do your job without us, and get out of here before the big freeze hits? Because once it hits, your guys will freeze out there in those stupid tents. How will you explain that failure in Washington? They’ll want a scapegoat. They always do.”

  In the beat of silence, Homza pulled out a pipe and packed it. I would have guessed him a cigar man. I was unsure whether he was thinking about his career, the best way to run the quarantine, or both. He asked the mayor, “You’re suggesting an alternative?”

  “Joint,” said the mayor, as if he’d never made a threat. “You and us. Together. My people do NOT work under yours. We split up jobs. However we agree to do it.”

  I sensed muscles working beneath the general’s bland expression. “Done,” he said, ignoring the anger flashing on Lieutenant Colonel Ng’s face.

  She tried to fight it. She invoked the two magic words, or at least magic to her: national security. She reminded us that the law specified that where a national threat exists, the task force has the lead. “General, Mayor, may I respectfully point out that we have jurisdiction?”

  “Meaning, I have that,” said Homza.

  I flashed to Karen in the auditorium, coughing. I was worried about Karen’s health. I was only peripherally aware of a soldier entering the room, whispering to the general, until the halt in conversation snapped me back to the present. But this time the expression in Homza’s face was not accusatory, and what I saw filled me with dread.

  “Joe, let’s go outside for a moment,” said the general. That use of my first name, not my title, ratcheted up the fear. Homza looked softer. Ng looked confused. Hess was staring. What just happened?

  But somehow I knew. I was a Marine officer who had visited the homes of men killed in the line of duty. I knew that expression on Homza’s face. I’d seen mothers faint under it, and strong fathers weep. I’d worn that expression myself in the past, a look that officers shared with priests. A look that said afterward . . . too late.