by Stuart Slade
The truck flipped over as it crossed the hard shoulder, bounced off an emergency telephone pole, destroying the system in the process, and cartwheeled down the embankment. As it did so, the lightweight structure of its rear disintegrated, throwing wreckage and bodies all over the crash site.
Five cars behind the crash site, Police Officer Sidona saw the truck crash off the road and roll down the bank. He'd seen the truck swerve and was already preparing to give chase when it all happened. Priorities had changed though; changed in an instant. The big rig was already coming to a halt as fast as it could. Sidona guessed that his job would be to give first aid to the wounded truck crew and perhaps get a statement from the big rig driver, not hand out the ticket for reckless endangerment that he had planned. Pulling his Ford onto the hard shoulder, he started on the slope down to the wreck. His mind noted the still-turning front wheels and then, almost negligently counted the bodies strewn around. There were HOW MANY!"
Then, he remembered the alert that had come through, a bulletin to all police patrols on A-19. ‘If you see a truck with a large number of passengers, report and detain. DO NOT APPROACH.' How they were supposed to do that was never explained. This time, the problem had been solved for him. The truck had stopped itself. Now, the next problem, isolate the truck. Already cars had stopped and people were getting out of them to help the wounded down below. The big rig driver was already walking back. They must not approach the wreck. Sidona didn't know why but those were orders and such odd orders must have a reason. There was a bull-horn in his police cruiser and he used it.
"STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT APPROACH THE CRASH!"
Most of them stopped but a few either didn't hear, the words didn't register or they decided to ignore them. Well, the police cruiser had an answer for that as well. In clips by the driver's seat was a PPS-45, a Russian sub-machine gun the Mexican Police had purchased for issue to its patrol officers. In the wilds of Mexico, instant firepower was sometimes the only way to stay alive and the steel-cored Tokarev Magnums fired by the PPS-45 would rip through any vehicle he wanted to stop. A burst fired into the air stopped the remaining would-be helpers just as efficiently.
Except one. A woman stayed on her way down. Sidona sighed, took careful aim and fired another short burst, spraying her with dirt from the impact points a meter or so in front of her feet. That stopped her. She turned and made her way towards him, every gram of her bearing rigid with fury.
Deal with her later. Sidona spoke quickly into his radio. "Kilo one-six here. We have a truck crash on the A-19 curve again. This one has many wounded, I think it is the one we were told to watch for. I have isolated the scene. Please send assistance."
By the time he'd finished the woman had reached him, her skin tight with rage. "I am a nurse. There are people down there who need help. They may die if they do not get it. How dare you stop me! How dare you shoot at me."
"Senora if I had shot at you, you would now be dead. We have strict orders. In crashes such as this, with trucks and other vehicles carrying many passengers, nobody is to approach the scene until proper help arrives. Why we have these orders I do not know. But they are strict orders and offer no room for argument." That wasn't strictly true but Sidona had a bad feeling about this whole business.
The nurse didn't seem to care about his orders. She was still red-faced with sheer anger. "Who are you to deprive the sick of care?"
That did it. One did not speak to police officers that way in Mexico. Sidona grabbed his black book with his free hand and waved it in her face, shouting as he did. "I am a police officer and you will do as you are told. If not I will arrest you and you will spend the time between now and the time you go to jail laying on the road in handcuffs. Do you understand me?"
The woman stepped back. Sidona wasn't sure whether it was his words, his mirrored sunglasses or the submachine gun in his left hand that had scared her more. But she backed off and turned to look down at the wreck.
In the distance, Sidona actually saw the Kaman Rotodyne take off from the heliport at El Paso over the border. The Americans were involved? It made the short hop, circled the area then landed down by the wreckage. Men in white suits got out and started picking up the people down below. One of the men laying on the ground did something, moved threateningly perhaps. It was too far away to see but some shots rang out and the man didn't move any more. Then his body was picked up and bagged. Sidona raged inside, as far as he knew he had just seen cold-blooded murder committed in front of him and he was powerless to do anything about the casual contempt for his country's laws.
His reflections were interrupted by the nurse who was equally appalled at what she was seeing although for very different reasons. "Those are biological isolation suits." The nurse's voice was small, frightened. "Why would they use those?"
She was apologetic as well as frightened and Sidona was a gentleman in the best sense of the word. "I do not know, Senora. It must have something to do with the orders we received. I am sorry I frightened you but when we get strange orders it is always best to obey them and find out the reasons later."
"Officer, has anybody been down to the wreck site?"
Sidona turned around in shock. A man had appeared behind him, in a strange gray camouflage uniform that seemed to slide away from his eyes every time he tried to look at it. Without being told, he guessed this was one of the mysterious SEALs who did strange things in his country and then vanished as silently as they had arrived. Sidona bitterly resented the men who made free with his country's law on his patch but there was nothing he could do about it.
"No. I kept everybody away, at least sixty meters."
The SEAL nodded. "Officer .... Sidona. You have saved many lives today."
Behind him, Mexican police had taken over the traffic direction and were slowly clearing the jam that had built up around the accident scene. Sidona hardly noted the road of the Rotodyne taking off but he did note the wave of heat as the wrecked truck and everything around it was burned. He got back into his police cruiser, returned the PPS-45 to its clip and started the engine. Instead of moving off, he looked at the intense fire burning where the truck had been. That alone told him that something very important had happened. He just didn't know what.
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington D. C.
"Mister President, Thank you for seeing me so quickly."
Nixon looked up at his visitor. "Seer, please tell me you have brought good news."
"I have indeed Sir. Three down, none to go. We got the lot. Not that we're dropping our guard but it does look like we dodged the bullet on this one."
Nixon's relief was palpable. "So it didn't have our name on it then."
"Sorry Sir?"
"The bullet we dodged. It didn't have our name written on it."
"Sir, on a battlefield, the one bullet with my name on it never worried me. It was the thousands marked ‘to whom it may concern" that scared me. Still, it does look like this particular threat is contained."
CHAPTER NINE: FORMING UP
SAC Headquarters, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.
"The border intercept plans worked then." General Myers sounded as relieved as he felt; the attack could have bypassed all of the defenses America had so laboriously built up against attack. His feelings transmitted through the elaborate conference facility that linked him with Washington.
At the other end of that link, the Seer hesitated. "Sir, we lucked out, I mean we really lucked out. The last group of plague carriers weren't intercepted by us, their truck crashed about six miles short of Ciudad Juarez. A local cop was on the scene and he isolated the crash site and prevented anybody entering or leaving. We flew in a delousing team and picked up the bodies then sanitized the site. Pure chance, if that truck hadn't crashed, the plague carriers would be crossing from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso tonight."
President Nixon shuddered at the thought, he'd read the reports on blackpox and his mind's eye saw himself being flayed alive by the disease whil
e his body bled out. "Have AMRIID come back with a link on the disease?"
"‘We have a preliminary report, yes. AMRIID and CDC will be confirming as soon as the tests are done but their initial finding is that the infectious agent in the bodies and prisoners we recovered is the same as that in the samples sent to us by the French. They have to confirm whether it is first-generation the same as used in Algeria. If it is, then we have proof positive, smoking gun evidence that this was a Caliphate attack. The really good news is that they are developing a broad-band vaccine that will immunize people against this disease and offer some protection against other smallpox variants."
"Then start to generate the attack plan. Generate two, a Big One that takes out the whole Caliphate, and a Little One that destroys their biological and chemical infrastructure."
General Myers did a double take at that; he'd assumed the response would be to wipe the Caliphate from the map. "‘Sir?"
"Two plans General. I want to have options. I want to make the decisions."
"Sir. There's something else." The Seer was as surprised as SAC HQ at Nixon's demand but there were more important things to deal with. "We dodged the bullet on this one because the Caliphate screwed up badly. This whole thing went off half-charged because they didn't understand the people they were dealing with. The Medellin people's plans crossed them too badly. They'll learn, we may face this again, sooner than we would like. We have a plan, called Project Lifeboat, to deal with this possibility. It exploits our space program. . . ."
"I don't like the space program. It's expensive and it's a Democrat Party boondoggle. Just gets them free publicity. I want to close it down."
"We can't do that, Sir. I mean we literally can't. Our surveillance and future attack capabilities all use manned space facilities. We'd be stripping away most of our technology lead over the rest of the world. We need space stations and they provide a backbone for the another program, one that involves putting a core of people and everything we know in an easily-isolatable environment. Sir, you need to attend briefings on what we need to do and why. In the meantime, we need to get information on the Caliphate industrial capacity so we can prepare your alternate plans.
"How will we be doing that?"
"Partly observation from space, but mostly we'll be reactivating an old spy ring we used once."
Top Floor, Bank de Commerce et Industrie, Geneva, Switzerland.
Branwen bumped the door open with her hip before maneuvering the trolley carrying the food through and putting it next to Loki's desk. A man was in the office with Loki, an old-looking man with a graying mustache and keen, deadly eyes.
"Henry! I haven't seen you for a couple of years. Since the Grand Teton business."
"Hi, Branwen. Yeah, it's been too long. And much too long since I was last here. ‘46 wasn't it?"
‘"46 indeed. A very good year." Loki's face clouded for a moment as he remembered the year that came afterwards. And all of his people who'd died with the German cities they'd lived in. "Smoked herring, Henry, try some. 1946, those were good times. Remember Hartzleff?"
"Hartzleff. Yes indeed. Big man, from Bavaria. What was he, six-six? At least? He used to boast he was the German counter-intelligence man here because he was tall enough to see over the Alps. Remember his face when he stepped into an elevator and found you'd removed the bolts that held the floor in place?"
Loki burst out laughing and shook his head affectionately. "I really felt bad about that. Anyway, you didn't fly all the way over here on a Superstream just to discuss old times. What can we do for you?"
"Some more of this herring would be great. Never tried this before."
"You wouldn't. The Seer destroyed the herring fisheries." Branwen cleared her throat. Loki looked embarrassed for a second.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Question stands though, what can we do for you."
You know very well what we want Henry thought. You told us you had it after all. But you want The Seer to ask you for it. He glanced at Branwen and the two shared a moment's empathy. This stupid feud between Loki and the Seer was wearing on the people around them. "You told us that you'd collated information on Swedish exports of machinery and chemical production equipment to the Caliphate?"
Loki munched on some herring and toast. "Yes indeed. Have some beer. It's good Swiss beer. We started to collect it as a result of our futures trading activities and we didn't like how it fitted together. So we collated some more and we liked that even less." He pulled out a file and handed it over. A ring binder, three inches thick and bursting. "Look at those products, capabilities and locations."
Henry McCarty looked down the list and shook his head. "Loki. I'm a pistolman, not a scientist. This is all double Dutch to me. Ammonia is something our maids use to clean the kitchen. This means nothing to me."
"I got one of our chemists here to put it together and Isambard looked at the engineering side. The report's in there. Just an example though. This facility here at Salman Pak. It produces ammonium nitrate, urea fertilizer, Pharmaceuticals and baby milk. Or so it says." Henry's face was still confused. "Those products just don't fit together Henry. It's ohhh, like trying to carry a shotgun in your hat band. Ammonia, urea and nitrates are dirty, agricultural industries. Filth, pollution, you name it. Pharmas and so on need clean surroundings, sterile clean. These plants aren't what they are supposed to be. They're biological warfare plants. Baby milk is a great culture medium for bioweapons. And given what's happening in Algeria right now. . . ."
Henry nodded. And what nearly happened in Mexico he thought but carefully didn't say. "So by checking where the suspect plants fitted together, you've listed the Caliphate biowarfare plants?"
"That's right. The Swedes are about the only people who will sell advanced chemical processing facilities to the Caliphate. So that's the list and we think it's all of them. So tell The Seer that's where blackpox is coming from."
Prime Minister ‘s Palace, New Delhi, India.
"Suddenly, it doesn't seem to matter too much, does it?"
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee shook his head, then hesitated and decided to clarify the matter. "You are correct, John. Our little squabble out here seems very insignificant now."
Australian Prime Minister John Barry Gardinier, JBG to his friends, of whom Prime Minister Vajpayee was not one, leaned back in his seat and looked out of the window, east towards where America sat in the darkness of its night. When dawn reached the country nobody doubted that SAC's fleet of bombers would be taking off and heading towards the Caliphate. Nobody doubted that at all. The crews were being briefed, the aircraft were being prepared, the bombs and mines were being winched up into the cavernous bellies of the Stratofortresses and Valkyries. Across the world, people were watching and holding their breath, knowing what was to come. There was no doubt, none at all. The Americans were furious and when they got that angry, countries vanished.
First there had been the announcement that the new strain of smallpox, the terrifying disease named blackpox had been identified as coming from the Caliphate. That it had been identified as an air-and surface delivered biological warfare agent and that a number of disease carriers, plague rats the Americans had called them had been killed or captured trying to enter the United States. They had been infected with the same strain of blackpox, exactly the same strain, and that meant they had to have been infected from the same mass cultures.
Then, at 18:00 Eastern Standard Time, President Nixon had made an address to the nation, explaining what had happened and how the attack on the US border cities had been averted. He'd made it clear that the attack had been traced back to the Caliphate and that the appropriate action would be taken. Then there had been silence.
The Caliphate had made a statement a little later, accusing the world of Islamophobia, denying their involvement and claiming they too had been hit by the disease. They had claimed it was a French plot, a conspiracy to incriminate Moslems and goad the Americans into attacking Caliphate terri
tory. The Americans had remained silent.
A few hours later, the Caliphate had released another statement, a tirade of hatred directed at the United States and describing the plague rats and the Caliphate subjects who'd died of blackpox as martyrs. The Americans had remained silent.
"Perhaps, the Caliphate will fold, rather than be bombed. They did last time." JBG looked around, almost defensively. "They might."
"Last time, the Americans gave them an ultimatum, a way out, something they could accept. They haven't made that mistake this time." The Ambassador delicately licked a last morsel of cheesecake off her fork, then returned it and the small plate to the credenza in one corner of the office. "This time the Americans have said nothing. That means they consider there is nothing left to say. Or rather, there is, but their bombers will say it for them."
"Why are they waiting then? If not to give the Caliphate a last chance to surrender?"
The Ambassador looked at the buffet arranged in one corner of the room and succumbed to temptation. She collected another slice of cheesecake and resumed her seat. "They'll want to brief the crews. They've probably been refining their attack plan and selecting targets. They'll want the aircraft to arrive over their targets at what they consider to be the best time. Many of their bombers are based in the north eastern states, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and it's winter up there. We can check the weather reports but they're probably waiting for the best time to take off." She turned her attention to the slice of cheesecake, carefully selected an area where the white chocolate frosting covered the jellied raspberries and speared it with her fork.
