The team was polite but firm. In case there was any doubt as to the seriousness of their visit, they brought a lot of backup. They were extremely well armed and had brought along two armored personnel vehicles. And though he couldn’t see them, he sensed at least two snipers out in the darkness.
It would have been a good fight. Hell, it would have been a great fight, but Carlton had been absolutely clear — no resistance.
Their ruse was very convincing. They even took his vitals and conducted a brief intake survey. It was designed, as best he could tell, for two reasons.
The first was to gain his cooperation — we’re from the government and we’re here to help you. The second was to put on a show for the neighbors — he must be sick, that’s why they came to take him.
Using a public health crisis as cover for rounding up the people you wanted out of the way was clever. It certainly showed a lot more imagination than just pulling them out of their homes and shooting them in the head. If for no other reason, they got points for style. They even brought an ambulance and in doing so had answered one of his most pressing questions — was he immune? There was no reason to go to all of this trouble if he wasn’t.
The same could be said for Chief Justice Leascht, as well as the members of Congress who had suddenly popped up on the new Main Core list. You didn’t expend these kinds of resources on people likely to die in the worst global pandemic in history.
But if the people on the Main Core list were immune, how did that happen? Why them and not the President and so many others? He had raised that question with Carlton, as well the question of whether Pierre Damien had fled to Mount Weather. The Old Man was doing all he could to figure out both.
As if there was any doubt that the ambulance was only part of the charade, soon after leaving Bishop’s Gate, their convoy pulled off Mount Vernon Memorial Highway into the parking lot for Grist Mill Park, where a DHS Astar helicopter sat waiting. He had wondered how they were going to maneuver through so much heavy traffic in order to get him to the transit point. Now he had his answer.
When they were taking his vitals, Harvath had asked one of the hazmat-suited men where they were planning on transporting him. “Fort A.P. Hill,” he replied.
“Why?” Harvath had asked. “What’s at Fort A.P. Hill?”
“The hospitals are being overwhelmed. A wellness center has been established there.”
Wellness center, my ass, Harvath had thought. It was an internment camp.
While Carlton’s contact inside DHS didn’t know anything about Main Core, he did know that FEMA had identified a list of potentially infected citizens who were going to be sent to a supposed field hospital at Fort A.P. Hill, seventy-five miles south of D.C.
When asked how they were going to get there, his contact had explained that they would be going by train from Union Station once the first wave had been assembled.
Harvath was escorted out of the ambulance and handed over to another hazmat-suited crew sitting on board the helicopter.
As the helo lifted off, he looked down onto the phalanx of DHS vehicles already streaming out of the parking lot, onto the next name on their list. He wondered how many other teams there were at this very moment, doing the exact same thing in every state throughout the country. How many other “wellness centers” were out there?
The streets and highways leading in and out of D.C. were jammed-up rivers of red brake lights as people fled the city or fought to get home. From this elevation, Harvath could see that several fires had broken out. There were too many of them to be accidental. The thin veneer of civilization was stripping away. Looting had begun.
The helicopter landed in front of Union Station. Traffic had been blocked off and barricades erected. Thousands of angry people were attempting to push through. There were families with small children, the elderly. A group of young men had already breached one barricade and were helping lift a man in a wheelchair over it. D.C. and Amtrak Police were overwhelmed. It was a tinderbox and now matches were being struck.
Four uniformed DHS officers with heavy Kevlar vests, respirators, and latex gloves met the helicopter. As soon as they had cleared the rotors, Harvath was told to put his arms out so they could pat him down.
Yelling above the roar of the idling helicopter, one officer shouted to him, “Where’s your paperwork?”
Harvath just looked at him.
“Your paperwork,” the man repeated. “Where are your papers?”
Realizing Harvath had no idea what he was talking about, the officer ran back to the helicopter and banged on the copilot’s door before they could take off.
Returning with a sheaf of documents, the officer nodded to his colleagues, and they led Harvath inside.
A flow of civilians was being let in, but only if they already held a ticket or a train reservation. They were kept well away from DHS activities.
A long folding table had been set up. Sitting behind it were more DHS officers, masked and gloved.
“Harvath, Scot Thomas,” said the lead DHS officer as he handed over the paperwork. “One T in Scot.”
The corpulent, ruddy-complexioned officer behind the table accepted the documents and then pointed a temperature gun at Harvath’s head to get a reading.
“Ninety-eight point six,” he said, not even making eye contact.
Harvath’s temperature had dropped back down. Considering how much physical activity he had been engaged in earlier, he hadn’t been surprised to see it slightly elevated previously.
“Any symptoms?” the man continued.
“Any symptoms of what?” Harvath replied.
“Muscle aches, headaches, chills, vomiting, or diarrhea?”
“No. There’s nothing wrong with me. What’s going on?”
“You had contact with a known infected. You’re being transported to a FEMA wellness center for observation.”
“What’s a wellness center?”
“I don’t know,” said the officer.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you at least know who I was exposed to?”
The officer leafed through the paperwork. “It looks like somebody at your office.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if it’s someone from my office, does that mean everybody I work with is going to this wellness center too?”
“I don’t know,” the man repeated. He then made a couple notes on the paperwork, reached into a box behind him, and removed an oversized campaign style button with a bright blue square in the middle. “Put this on.”
“What is it? Wait, don’t tell me, you don’t know.”
“You’re a smartass, huh?” he asked, finally looking Harvath in the eye.
Smiling at him, Harvath replied, “I don’t know.”
“Get him out of here,” the officer snapped, before shouting, “Next!”
Harvath and his entourage had made it only about twenty feet away from the table when the fat processing officer yelled for them to wait and came trundling up behind them. He was already out of breath.
“I gave you the wrong button,” he said, pointing to the one on Harvath’s chest. “Give that to me.”
Harvath unpinned it and handed it over.
“This is yours,” he said, slapping the new button into Harvath’s hand and waddling away.
Harvath turned it over. In place of the blue square, he now had a gold star.
“What’s this mean?” he asked one of the DHS officers standing next to him.
“Stop asking questions and put it on,” the man replied.
Harvath did as he was told.