That gave them hope. “So what can we do about it all?” Davis asked. The question was rhetorical; procedures already were being formulated. “We assume the CIA is doing all it can. The Coast Guard and Border Patrol is at maximum, with the full cooperation of Canada and Mexico. NDCC and NIH are on the problem.”
“Let’s be truthful and realistic,” Honner, the President’s man, put in. “First, there is no way in hell to seal the borders of the United States. We leak like a sieve and there’s no way we can close all those leaks for a few people here and a few more there. Even the Iron Curtain leaks like mad, and we have nothing approaching it. And for every known possible agent of whoever’s doing this there are three dozen we don’t know about. Inspector Edelman, just how many of the Operation Wilderness terrorists were known to the Bureau?”
“Three,” came the glum response.
Honner nodded. “See what I mean? Three out of —what? Eight? And as for the disease itself—well, suppose we do find a cure or an immunizing agent? They have only to vary the next batch slightly and we’re back to square one again. That’s fine as long as we’re in small towns, but suppose it’s New York or Washington or Los Angeles next? It’s obviously highly contagious.” He didn’t need to go on. It was already in their minds.
“So what do you propose to do about it?” General Davis asked him.
Honner shifted uneasily. “The only defense is preventive medicine within our means,” he said.
Their eyebrows rose. “Which means?” Davis prompted.
“Contingency Plan AOX7647-3,” Honner said flatly.
The rest of them looked puzzled, but Davis appeared shocked. “What the hell? How do you even know about…” He let it trail off.
Honner shrugged. “The President is Commander in Chief. That sort of thing, just its existence, has been rumored for years. We decided to find out, and we did. Presidents can do that sort of thing, you know.”
“I’m confused,” Sandra O’Connell put in. “What the hell is this contingency plan, anyway?”
Davis thought it over, then shook his head. “I don’t think we ought to,” he told Honner. “That’s a little too drastic even for—”
“For what?” Honner exploded, cutting him off. “We are under attack and we have to defend ourselves! It may be the only way!”
“Congress will never buy it,” Davis objected.
“Oh, yes they will,” Honner said. “The people will demand it when this goes on and on and we’re obviously powerless to protect them. They will demand it!”
“You may as well spill it,” Jake Edelman told them. “If you can’t trust the people in this room, who can you trust? Besides, it looks like Honner and his boss—who’s also our boss—already has it in the works.”
General Davis sighed. “You tell them, Honner,” he said, defeated.
“Contingency Plan AOX7647-3,” the presidential aide explained, “is the latest incarnation of a series of plans that’s been drawn up regularly since the Second World War, at least. It is a plan to declare martial law throughout the entire country.”
Most of them gasped. Jake Edelman just nodded. “I thought as much. I can’t see you getting away with it, though. It’s unconstitutional as hell. The Supreme Court at the very least will throw it out.”
Honner shook his head. “During World War II the Supreme Court allowed the internment of all Japanese-Americans, even American-born, and the confiscation of all their property. As far back as Lincoln, this very state of Maryland was placed under military occupation even though it didn’t secede. There were wholesale mass arrests without trial, curfews under which violators would be shot, and so forth. For every man Lincoln pardoned a hundred were jailed for up to five years without charge, trial, or anything else. And the people backed him up! It was the only way. The President and the National Security Council hardly want mass jailings, let alone murders, but we do feel that such a military administration for the limited term of the emergency would be accepted, even welcomed by the people, who are already close to panic. And, unlike Lincoln or the camps, this would not be done without Congress accepting it. What they do can be undone.”
Jake Edelman shook his head sadly. “It’s not that easy to undo,” he replied. “It’s a cure worse than the disease.”
Honner looked a little exasperated at the FBI man. “Can you suggest a better way? Our entire country can be overrun, our military crippled, by these people before we even know who they are. You know it’s the only way.”
Edelman nodded sadly. “I know that, in a blind crisis, people will trade their freedom for security every time,” he admitted. “That’s why the Germans accepted Hitler and the Italians turned to Mussolini.”
Honner jumped to his feet, enraged. “Are you saying President Wainwright is another Hitler?” he shouted, enraged.
“Of course not,” the FBI man said tiredly. “He just ain’t no Abe Lincoln, either.”
Dr. Mark Spiegelman came back with his hundredth cup of coffee and sat again in front of the CRT screen. He glanced at it idly, then turned, did a double-take, and stared again.
The colony of Wilderness Organisms had changed. The great mass on the slide plate wasn’t growing any more.
It was dissolving. The bacteria were slowly breaking apart.
Quickly he was at the computer console, typing away, coffee forgotten. “Of course! Of course! Why didn’t I see it before?” he muttered to himself.
The view changed, shifted, as the computer sampled, looking for what Spiegelman told it to find.
And it found it, almost at the limits of its magnification range.
It was a pattern, like an irregular honeycomb, an alien, odd shape that was growing, rapidly now, at-tacking the very core of the bacteria cells.
“Sure!” he breathed. “Super-bacteria, super-bacteriophage!”
SIX
Dr. Sandra O’Connell made her way through the double security maze to the experimental lab section of Fort Dietrick. The routine military security was almost equivalent to that of an atomic missile launch site—television monitors all over, locked and sealed doors three or more centimeters thick with pressurized compartments, each with its own air supply. Guards and electronic safeguards, too; sets of keys that could be used only from the inside, with ID photos, fingerprints, and retinal patterns checked every step.
The special new security was just as severe. Complete change to sterile clothing, shower which included chemicals designed to kill any forms of micro-organisms, and much more.
The place hadn’t always been a part of the National Institutes of Health. At one time the U.S. Army had been here alone, playing deadly games of chemical and biological warfare, trying to create organisms such as the one someone else had now created. For years its nearly perfect medical security system had been superficially in effect. Only since the Wilderness Organism had arrived had the military returned.
Still, it was here that mysterious organisms were brought, it was here where cancers were probed with the best staff and best equipment to find the keys to switching them off, it was here where microbiology was practiced to the limits of technology and international treaty.
Through the last checkpoint, Sandra followed the sterile wall of pale yellow to the double doors marked Serology Control Center and went in.
Mark Spiegelman turned in his swivel chair and brightened as he saw who it was. He had been alone in here for thirty-four straight hours, after only a few hours sleep before, and he looked like hell. Somewhere in far-off Arlington, Virginia, he had a wife and two kids he hoped understood.