179After Captain Matt Stryker and his men picked Dr. Larry Buck out of the ocean in a Zodiac, along with a large waterproof bag containing his equipment, they took him to the ship.

Thirty minutes later, dressed in a state-of-the-art Racal suit to prevent contamination, he was examining Jersey and Coop in the cabin used as a medical ward.

He had Jersey sit up in bed, her back propped up against pillows, and raised her gown. He put a stethoscope to her chest, just under her left breast.

"Breathe in and out slowly," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled inside the self-contained helmet of the orange Racal suit.

Jersey looked much better after her course of antibiotics, but she was still having fever and chills and still coughing frequently.

After listening for a few moments, Buck nodded and stepped back from the bed. "Your lungs are sounding better, Jersey. Some of the pneumonia is clearing."

"They don't feel much better," she complained. "I still feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest."

He nodded. "That's typical of respiratory anthrax, but if Captain Stryker's medic hadn't pumped you full of antibiotics, you'd be dead by now."

From the next bed, Coop, who'd turned his head when Jersey's chest was bared, spoke up. "I always said Jerse was too d.a.m.ned tough for any bug to kill."

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Coop, who hadn't been as far along in the sickness when the antibiotics were started, was looking almost well.

Buck examined him by listening to his lungs and poking around on his stomach to see if the swelling in his liver had gone down, and p.r.o.nounced him cured of the infection.

"Jersey, however, is going to have to stay in quarantine for a few more days."

Coop bounded out of bed and began to put his clothes on. "Looks like you're going to lose your roommate, Jerse," he said with a grin.

She turned her pale face toward him and tried to smile. "I never thought I'd say this, Coop, but I'm gonna miss you."

He stepped to her bedside and leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on her cheek. "I'm gonna miss you too." He stood up and smiled. "But I'm sure as h.e.l.l not going to miss those blasted needles the medic has been sticking in me every hour."

Buck smiled and shook his head. "No, I don't believe you are going to miss those, Coop. Now that you're cured, your blood is full of antibodies to the bacteria. We're going to need to get lots of it to tryand use it to make a vaccine against this new strain of anthrax."

Jersey gave a short laugh. "Poor Coop. Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"You mean I'm gonna have to be stuck some more?" he cried, a look of horror on his face.

"Lots more, I'm afraid," Buck.

Coop held out his arms, showing the doctor the myriad black and blue spots where needles had penetrated. "I don't think I have any veins left in my arms to get blood out of, Doc," he said.

Buck shrugged and winked at Jersey so Coop couldn't see. "Well, if that's the case, we can always draw it from your femoral vein."

"My femoral vein? Where in the h.e.l.l is that?" Coop asked, a look of disbelief on his face.

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Buck pointed at his groin. "Right there, next to your pubic bone."

Coop covered himself with both hands. "Oh, no, you don't. I'm sure you can still find a small vein or two in my arms," he said, nodding his head.

"I hope so," Buck said, " 'cause a femoral stick is very painful."

"s.h.i.t," Coop said, putting his hand on his forehead. "I think I feel a relapse comin' on, Doc. Maybe my antibodies aren't quite ready yet."

Buck laughed and said, "Get the h.e.l.l out of here, Coop. I need to talk to Jersey for a while. Tell the cook to fix you a couple of steaks. We need to build your blood up for the upcoming tests."

"Yeah, I already feel like I'm a quart low," Coop said dejectedly as he walked out of the room.

Jersey looked at Buck as he sat on the edge of her bed. "Any progress with the cultures so far?" she asked.

He nodded. "It looks like the scientists took a regular strain of anthrax and played with it until they got the mutation they wanted.

Normal respiratory anthrax is only caught by inhaling spores, and isn't capable of being pa.s.sed person to person. This strain, however, in addition to being much more virulent, can evidently be caught from anyone who is infected."

"That's right," Jersey said. "I was the only one who was in actual contact with the liquid sample I took from the lab. Coop caught the bug from me."

"That's what I feared," Buck said, a serious look on his face.

"But why didn't our previous vaccine work against this strain?" she asked.

"I think, actually, it did to a small degree," Buck said. "Otherwise you would never have made it as long as you did without treatment.""How long will it take the new vaccine to do its job?"

"In most cases, we need to vaccinate troops at least two 182.

weeks before they're exposed, or the new vaccine won't have time to build up the antibodies necessary for full protection."

"But what if the meres use it before we're ready?"

"What I plan to do is to give all of our troops shots of gamma globulin now, to kick their immune systems into high gear while we're making the new vaccine. That may buy us a little time until the vaccine takes effect. And it should cut the response time down to one week instead of two."

"I'm afraid that's still gonna be cutting it close," Jersey said. "The meres were all ready to move out last week."

Buck nodded. "Yeah. We just heard from Ben on the radio that the attacks have already begun in Mexico."

Jersey held out her arms. "Then take all the blood you need, Larry. We need to get that vaccine ready as soon as possible."

"I'm already working on it, Jersey." He walked toward the door to her cabin. "With any luck, we'll have the first vials of vaccine coming out in less than a week, thanks to yours and Coop's blood."

General Bradley Stevens, Jr., walked into Claire's office and threw a sheaf of papers onto her desk.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Reports from our radar installations. There was an unidentified plane flying over our airs.p.a.ce last night."

"How high?"

"It never got below twenty thousand feet."

"You think it was a bomber?"

He shook his head. "No. If it had planned to drop bombs, it would have dropped to ten thousand feet or less for a night drop."

She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowed. "Parachute troops?"

He shrugged. "I just don't know. If they were going to parachute troops in, I'd think there would have been many more 183.

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planes. And I don't see how they'd be able to drop troops from that alt.i.tude."

"Where did the flight originate?" she asked, knowing somehow Ben Raineshad some dirty trick or another up his sleeve.

"Looks like it came from Louisiana, curved over the panhandle of Texas, then straight up toward Iowa."

"Iowa? What the h.e.l.l would they want with Iowa? You think maybe the SUSA's short of corn or grain?" she asked with a sarcastic smile on her face.

"No, but Iowa's one of the few places where we don't have a strong military presence. It also happens to be the state with a populace more sympathetic to Raines and his brand of government than most of our other ones are."

"Well, General," she said, leaning forward to put her elbows on her desk, "if Raines wants Iowa, he's welcome to it. As far as I can see, the state is practically worthless."

"Except it produces almost a third of our foodstuffs, Madame President.

And I don't know if the people are going to put up with much more rationing."

She slammed her hand down on the desk. "The people will do what I d.a.m.n well tell them to do, and don't you forget that for a moment, General Stevens."

He clamped his jaw shut. He'd forgotten how resistant Claire was to anything she didn't agree with. It was her worst failing as an administrator. She continually surrounded herself with yes-men who didn't dare to tell her the truth, unless it was favorable to her beliefs. She reminded him of Adolf Hitler in a lot of ways, and, he reminded himself, Hitler had managed to lose a war that he should have won.

"What would you like me to do about these reports?" he asked.

She thought for a moment, then said, "Send a platoon of troops from the nearest base we have over there to check it out. Make sure they carry some radios that can contact us with what they find. If Ben Raines is trying something sneaky, I want to know about it."

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"Yes, ma'am," Stevens said, saluting and leaving the room before he got himself in further trouble by speaking his mind. That was one of the worst sins you could commit in Claire's presence, speaking the truth.

When he got to his office, he called his aide and said, "Send a squad of troops to Iowa, the Cedar Rapids area. Check 'em out a helicopter and tell 'em to report any suspicious sightings or happenings in the area."

After he gave the order, he went back to his battle plans. Claire had ordered him to step up the activity on the southern border with the SUSA, and he needed to make sure it was done right.

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Lieutenant Tommy Bell sat in the rear compartment of the Huey helicopter with the rest of the eight men that had been sent to check out a radar sighting over Cedar Rapids, Iowa.He was plenty p.i.s.sed off. The rest of his battalion was moving south to confront Ben Raines's Rebel forces, and here he was playing nursemaid to a squad of men doing police duties.

d.a.m.n, he thought, I'll never get promoted unless I get to see some action. Both of his brothers, neither of which had graduated from Officers' Candidate School with grades as high as his, were a full rank ahead of him. Due mainly to their luck in being in the right place at the right time and seeing heavy action in the last war.

As the Huey circled lower and lower over Cedar Rapids, Bell leaned out the hatchway and took a close look at the town. Nothing seemed amiss.

People were moving about on the street; traffic, what little there was of it due to stringent gasoline rationing, seemed to be moving normally; and except for the roadblocks on the highway leading into town, all was as it should be for a sleepy little farming town.

Bell grabbed the intercom mike and said, "Put her down in the town square, there near the police station."

As the big, ungainly chopper settled to the ground on its skids, Bell jumped from the hatch, his M-16 cradled in his arms, and jogged across the gra.s.s-covered square toward the main police station. He intended to ask the officer in charge 186.

if anything strange had been reported the night before and to get him to explain the purpose of the roadblocks.

Jim McAfee and Joey Rodriguez, his corporals, followed him toward the station after telling the rest of the men to stand easy in the chopper.

The three soldiers entered the police station, their rifles at the ready in case of trouble.

The ready room of the station was empty, except for a short Asian man sitting behind the main desk with a sign on it that said DESK SERGEANT.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" he asked, evidently not taking much notice of their rifles.

"Who's in charge here?" Bell asked, looking around the room suspiciously. There wasn't much action, but then it was early in the day and a town this small probably didn't have a whole lot of crime anyway.

The desk sergeant wrinkled his forehead. "Why, that'd be the chief of police, Jackie Malone," he answered.

"Would you get him down here?" Bell asked.

"Sure," the man answered, "only it's a her, not a him."

"What?" Bell asked.

"The chief is a lady," the desk sergeant answered with a smile as he walked to a nearby door that had CHIEF OF POLICE written on it.He knocked on the door, opened it, and stuck his head inside. "There are a couple of gentlemen to see you, ma'am."

After a minute or so, a slim, attractive woman wearing a blue uniform walked into the room from the office.

She and the desk sergeant stood in front of Bell and his corporals.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"We're here to see if anything out of the ordinary was reported last night. We had a radar sighting over in Indianapolis of an unidentified plane flying over this area."

Before she could answer, Jim McAfee c.o.c.ked his M-16 and lowered the barrel to point at the two police officers.

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"There's something fishy here, Tommy," he said, glaring at the two people in front of him.

Bell glanced at Jim, thinking his corporal had gone crazy. "What's the matter with you, Jim?"

McAfee pointed with his rifle. "Looky there. Their name badges are all wrong."

Bell turned around to look. The name badge on the Asian man's pocket said Myron Appbgate, while that on the female's chest read John Malcolm.