Executive orders - Tom Clancy [139]
What are you doing about this? ABC asked.
You mean Kealty or Iraq? Ryan asked. His tone indicated what the subject ought to be.
The Kealty question, sir.
I've asked the FBI to check into it. I expect them to report back to me later today. Aside from that, we have enough things to be done.
Follow-up-what about what you said to the governors in your speech last night, and what Vice President Kealty said this morning? Do you really want inexperienced people to-
Yes, I do. First of all, what people do we have who are experienced in the workings of Congress? The answer is, not very many. We have the few survivors, people fortunate enough to have been elsewhere that night. Aside from that-what? People defeated in the last election? Do you want them back? I want, and I think the country needs, people who know how to do things. The plain truth is that government is by nature inefficient. We can't make it more efficient by selecting people who've always worked in government. The idea the Founding Fathers had was for citizen legislators, not for a permanent ruling class. In that I think I am in agreement with the intentions of the framers of our Constitution. Next?
But who will decide the question? the Los Angeles Times asked. It wasn't necessary to say which question.
The question is decided, Ryan told him. Thanks for coming. If you will excuse me, I have a lot of work to do today. He picked up his opening statement and walked off to his right.
Mr. Ryan! The shout came from a good dozen voices. Ryan walked through the door and around the corner. Arnie was waiting.
Not bad under the circumstances.
Except for one thing. Not one of them said 'Mr. President.'
MOUDI TOOK THE call, which required only a few seconds. With that he walked over to the isolation ward. Outside, he donned protective gear, carefully checking the plastic fabric for leaks. The suit was made by a European company, modeled on the American Racal. The thick plastic was an incongruous powder blue, reinforced with Kevlar fiber. At the back on the web belt hung the ventilation unit. This pumped filtered air into the suit, and did so with a slight overpressure so that a tear would not suck environmental air inside. It wasn't known if Ebola was airborne or not, and nobody wanted to be the first to prove that it was. He opened the door to go inside. Sister Maria Magdalena was there, attending her friend, dressed the same way. Both knew all too well what it meant for a patient to see her attendants dressed in a way that so clearly denoted their fear of what she carried within her.
Good afternoon, Sister, he said, his gloved hands lifting the chart off the foot of the bed. Temperature 41.4, despite the ice. Pulse rapid at 115. Respiration 24 and shallow. Blood pressure was starting to fall from the internal bleeding. The patient had received a further four units of whole blood-and probably lost at least that much, most of it internally. Her blood chemistry was starting to go berserk. The morphine was as high as he could prescribe without risking respiratory failure. Sister Jean Baptiste was semiconscious-she should have been virtually comatose from the drugs, but the pain was too severe for that.
Maria Magdalena just looked over at him through the plastic of her mask, her eyes beyond sadness into a despair that her religion forbade. Moudi and she had seen all manner of deaths, from malaria, from cancer, from AIDS. But there was nothing so brutally cruel as this. It hit so fast that the patient didn't have the time to prepare, to steel the mind, to fortify the soul with prayer and faith. It was like some sort of traffic accident, shocking but just long enough in duration for the suffering to-if there were a devil in creation, then this was his gift to the world. Physician or not, Moudi put that thought aside. Even the devil had a use.
The airplane is on the way, he told her.
What will happen?
Professor Rousseau has suggested a dramatic treatment method. We will do a