Executive orders - Tom Clancy [203]
That's it, the State Department officer pronounced. That's the whole military leadership. But not one civilian out of the Ba'ath Party.
So we know who the sacrificial goats are. That observation came from Ed Foley.
Yep, Mary Pat answered with a nod. And it gives a chance for the senior surviving officers to arrest them, 'process' them, and show loyalty to the new regime. Shit, she concluded. Too fast. Her station chief in Riyadh was all dressed up with no place to go. The same was true of some Saudi diplomats who'd hastily put together a program of fiscal incentives for the notional new Iraqi regime. It would now be unnecessary.
Ed Foley, the new DCI-designate, shook his head in admiration. I didn't think they had it in 'em. Killing our friend, sure, but coaxing the leadership out this fast and this smooth, who would've thunk it?
You got me there, Mr. Foley, Vasco agreed. Somebody must have brokered the deal-but who?
Get buzzin', worker bees, Ed Foley told the desk officers, with a wry smile. Everything you can develop, ASAP.
IT LOOKED LIKE some sort of awful stew, the darkened human blood and the red-brown nephritic mush of monkey kidneys, just sitting there, marinating in flat, shallow glass trays under dim lights shielded to keep ultraviolet light from harming the viruses. There wasn't much to do at this point except to monitor the environmental conditions, and simple analog instruments did that. Moudi and the director walked in, wearing their protective garb, to check the sealed culturing chambers for themselves. Two-thirds of Jean Baptiste's blood was now deep-frozen in case something went wrong with their first effort at reproducing the Ebola Mayinga virus. They also checked the room's multi-stage ventilation systems, because now the building was truly a factory of death. The precautions were double-sided. As in this room they strove to give the virus a healthy place to multiply, just outside the door the army medical corpsmen were spraying every square millimeter to make sure that it was the only such place-and so the virus had to be isolated and protected from the disinfectant as well. Thus the air drawn into the culture chambers had to be carefully filtered, lest in their effort to stay alive the people in the building killed that which might kill them if they made another sort of mistake.
So you really think this version might be airborne?
As you know, the Ebola Zaire Mayinga strain is named for a nurse who became infected despite all conventional protective measures. Patient Two-he had decided it was easier not to speak her name-was a skilled nurse with Ebola experience; she did not give any injections; and she didn't know how she might have contracted the virus. Therefore, yes, I believe this is possible.
That would be very useful, Moudi, the director whispered, so faintly that the junior physician had trouble hearing it. He heard it even so. The thought alone was loud enough. We can test for it, the older man added.
That would be easier on him, Moudi thought. At least he wouldn't know those people by name. He wondered if he was right about the virus. Might Patient Two have made a mistake and forgotten it? But, no, he had examined her body for punctures, as had Sister Marin Magdalena, and it wasn't as though she might have licked secretions