Executive orders - Tom Clancy [538]
Gennady Iosefovich is chief of operations. Ivan Timofeyevich is a CIA spy, the Chairman explained. As is his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?
Yes, that is certain.
Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?
Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait, Bondarenko said. They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions southeast of Baghdad will be ready to move in three days, four at the most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we will see what their plan is.
Any thoughts?
We have no more intelligence on this than you do, Golovko said. Regrettably, most of our assets in the area have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime have left the country.
The high command of the army is Iranian, many were trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they survived the purges, Bondarenko said. We have dossiers on many of them, and these are being transmitted to the Pentagon.
That's very cordial of you.
You bet, Ding observed. If they dust us off, next they come north.
Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual interests, Golovko agreed.
If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then we will have to deal with him in three years, Bondarenko said seriously. Better today, I think, for all of us.
We have offered our support to Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we will see what we can do.
SOME WOULD LAST longer than others. Some would last less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms. Doctors interviewing her determined that she'd probably contracted the disease by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any intimate contact, because he'd felt too ill even to kiss her after returning from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data, it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information, however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief because the man's condition toward the end was both hopeless and agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer in coming.
The same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while unconscious with his massive dose of painkillers. This, too, came as something of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the country's horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be next.
It was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted, but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word death was being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens, in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure