Blowback

“Do we know if it was intentionally released? Are there any more victims?”

“Apparently, that’s all they know. Hopefully, we’ll have more information by the briefing this afternoon.”

“We’d better have more than just information. You saw how fast that thing moved through that village in Iraq,” replied Vaile, already racing through worst-case scenarios in his mind. “If we don’t get a handle on this, the death count is going to be astronomical. It’ll make the plague look like an outbreak of strep throat-” Vaile was interrupted by a text message that came over his secure pager.

This time it was Lawlor’s turn to read his friend’s visage and inquire as to what was going on.

Looking up from his pager, the director of the CIA said, “The president’s chief of staff is looking for me.”

“Chuck Anderson? Why?”

“They’re concerned that a major offensive with the illness could already be under way and that it’s only a matter of hours before they start seeing casualties inside the Beltway. He wants to talk about moving the president out of DC.”

“If a major offensive is under way, this thing could turn up anywhere. Where do they want to move him?”

Vaile set down his pager. “They want to greenlight the doomsday scenario.”

“Operation Ark?”

The DCI nodded his head. “ Anderson is going to recommend that the president, the cabinet, Congress, and everyone else on the continuity of government shortlist be evacuated to the underground facility at Mount Weather.”

Lawlor was quite familiar with the emergency command and control continuity of government center built more than a mile beneath the surface of an antenna-studded mountain in northwest Virginia near the West Virginia border. It was a top-secret, self-sufficient subterranean city designed during the Cold War to withstand multiple direct hits from the biggest and baddest nuclear weapons America’s most serious enemy, the Soviet Union, might ever unleash. Whenever the media reported the president or members of the government being evacuated in times of crisis to a “secure and undisclosed” location, nine out of ten times it was Mount Weather. “That’s what Anderson ’s paid for,” replied Lawlor, “to plan for the worst.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Vaile. “He’s planning for the worst, all right. The president has already initiated the Campfire Protocol. We’ve got bombers and fighter jets being outfitted with nukes as we speak. “Pausing for a moment to consider what America was on the verge of becoming, he slowly added, “I pity any location in this country that shows signs of this illness taking hold.”

SIXTY-SIX

SWITZERLAND

It was nearly nightfall when the Crossair Saab 340 HK-ABN aircraft touched down on the tarmac at Sion International and taxied toward the military section of the airfield. It was amazing what a difference a few seconds of video on al-Jazeera could make. Harvath should have been leading an assault force of American Special Operations soldiers up to Château Aiglemont, but instead he was standing in the dim overhead lighting of a small hangar, watching the plane arrive, and reflecting on the enormity of the favor he had cashed in only hours before.

When Claudia Mueller had assisted him a couple of years earlier in rescuing the president from a team of Swiss mercenaries known as the Lions of Lucerne, she was merely an investigator with the Swiss Federal Attorney’s Office. Now, though, she was a full-fledged prosecutor with considerably more power and considerably more responsibility. She had reacted to his call just as he had expected she would. At first, she was surprised to hear from him. Their relationship had ended a long while ago and he had never seen the point in keeping in touch. He wasn’t what she wanted and she had made it clear that she was moving on. He couldn’t blame her. Just like he couldn’t blame Meg Cassidy for moving on, but his personal problems aside, he knew Claudia Mueller was the only one who could help him.

Of course, Claudia was skeptical at first, and in all fairness, he would have been too. That was why he had had Ozan Kalachka e-mail her the kidnapping footage showing Timothy Rayburn and then had Kalachka follow it up with a call to one of his contacts within the Swiss government. For his part, Harvath assembled a memo about Rayburn, his aliases, and the credit card information placing him in Le Râleur and sent it to her hoping that it would be enough.