Executive orders - Tom Clancy [370]
O'Day smiled. People keep telling me that. One day I'll have to invite him over for a friendly match.
A grin. Andrea told me. She, uh, pulled your Bureau file-
What?
Hey, Pat, it's business. We check everybody out. We have a principal in here every day, y'dig? Norm Jeffers went on. Besides, she wanted to see your firearms card. I hear you're pretty decent, but I'm telling you, man, you want to play with Russell, bring money, y'hear?
That's what makes a horse race, Mr. Jeffers. O'Day loved such challenges, and he'd yet to lose one.
Bet your white ass, Mr. O'Day. His hand went up. He checked his earpiece, then his watch. They just started moving. SANDBOX is on the way. Our kid and your kid are real buddies.
She seems like a great little girl.
They're all good kids. A couple of rough spots, but that's kids. SHADOW is going to be a handful when she starts dating for real.
I don't want to hear it!
Jeffers had a good laugh. Yeah, I'm hoping ours'll be a boy. My dad-he's a city police captain in Atlanta-he says that daughters are God's punishment on ya for being a man. You live in fear that they'll meet somebody like you were at seventeen.
Enough! Let me go to work and deal with some criminals. He slapped Jeffers on the shoulder.
She'll be here when you get back, Pat.
O'Day passed on the usual coffee refill across Ritchie Highway, instead heading south to Route 50. He had to admit that the Service guys knew their stuff. But there was at least one aspect of presidential security that the Bureau was handling. He'd have to talk to the OPR guys this morning-informally, of course.
ONE DIED, ONE went home, and at roughly the same time. It was MacGregor's first Ebola death. He'd seen enough others, heart-attack failures-to-resuscitate, strokes, cancer, or just old age. More often than not, doctors weren't there, and the job fell on nurses. But he was there for this one. At the end, it wasn't so much peace as exhaustion. Saleh's body had fought as best it could, and his strength had merely extended the struggle and the pain, like a soldier in a hopeless battle. But his strength had given out, finally, and the body collapsed, and waited for death to come. The alarm chirp on the cardiac monitor went off, and there was nothing to do but flip it off. There would be no reviving this patient. IV leads were removed, and the sharps carefully placed in the red-plastic container. Literally everything that had touched the patient would be burned. It wasn't all that remarkable. AIDS and some hepatitis victims were similarly treated as objects of deadly contamination. Just with Ebola, burning the bodies was preferable-and besides, the government had insisted. So, one battle lost.
MacGregor was relieved, somewhat to his shame, as he stripped off the protective suit for the last time, washed thoroughly, then went to see Sohaila. She was still weak, but ready to leave to complete her recovery. The most recent tests showed her blood full of antibodies. Somehow her system had met the enemy and passed the test. There was no active virus in her. She could be hugged. In another country she would have been kept in for further tests, and would have donated a good deal of blood for extensive laboratory studies, but again the local government had said that such things would not take place, that she was to be released from the hospital the first minute that it was safe to do so. MacGregor had hedged on that, but now he was certain that there would be no more complications. The doctor himself lifted her and placed her in the wheel-chair.
When you feel better, will you come back to see me? he asked, with a warm smile. She nodded. A bright child. Her English was good. A pretty child, with a charming smile despite her fatigue, glad to be going home.
Doctor? It was her father. He must have had a military background, so straight of back was he. What he was trying to say was evident on his face, before he could even think the words.
I did very little. Your daughter is young and strong, and that is what saved her.
Even so, I will not