Executive orders - Tom Clancy [69]
She didn't have time to look more at the patient. Leaving the ward, she walked through the breezeway to the next building. The hospital had a long and honorable history, and had been built to allow for local conditions. The many low frame buildings were connected by covered walkways. The laboratory building was only fifty meters away. This facility was blessed; recently the World Health Organization had established a presence here, along with which had come modern equipment and six young physicians-but, alas, no nurses. All were British- or American-trained.
Dr. Mohammed Moudi was at the lab bench. Tall, thin, swarthy, he was somewhat cold in his demeanor, but he was proficient. He turned as he saw her approach, and took note of the way she disposed of the needle.
What is it, Sister?
Patient Mkusa. Benedict Mkusa, African male, age eight. She handed the paperwork over. Moudi opened the folder and scanned it. For the nurse-Christian or not, she was a holy woman, and a fine nurse-the symptoms had occurred one at a time. The paper presentation to the physician was far more efficient. Headache, chills, fever, disorientation, agitation, and now signs of an internal bleed. When he looked up his eyes were guarded. If petechia appeared on his skin next
He's in the general ward?
Yes, Doctor.
Move him to the isolation building at once. I'll be over there in half an hour.
Yes, Doctor. On the way out she rubbed her forehead. It must have been the heat. You never really got used to it, not if you came from northern Europe. Maybe an aspirin after she saw to her patient.
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8 - PUBLIC IMAGE
IT STARTED EARLY, WHEN two E-3B Sentry aircraft which had deployed from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina took off from the latter at 08:00 local time and headed north. It had been decided that closing down all the local airports would have been too much. Washington National remained closed-and with no congressmen to race there for a flight to their districts (their special parking lot was well known), it even appeared that the facility might remain that way-and at the other two, Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International, controllers were under very precise instructions. Flights in and out were to avoid a bubble more than twenty miles in diameter and centered on the White House. Should any aircraft head toward the bubble it would instantly be challenged. If the challenge were ignored, it would soon find a fighter aircraft off its wingtip. If that didn't work, the third stage would be obvious and spectacular. Two flights, each of four F-16 fighters, were orbiting the city in relays at an altitude of eighteen and twenty thousand feet, respectively. The altitude kept the noise down (it also would enable them to tip over and reach supersonic speed almost immediately), but the white contrails made patterns in the blue sky as obvious as those the 8th Air Force had once traced over Germany.
About the same time, the 260th Military Police Brigade of the Washington, D.C., National Guard redeployed to maintain traffic control. More than a hundred HMMWVs were in side streets, each with a police or FBI vehicle in close attendance, controlling traffic by blocking the streets. An honor guard assembled from all the services lined the streets to be used. There was no telling which of the rifles might be equipped with