A Heartbeat Away (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

DAY 1
10:00 P.M. (EST)

Allaire led his team past the Secret Service agents guarding the mahogany double doors located directly to the right of the rostrum. The corridor, accessible only to members of Congress and their staff, had reinforced walls that dampened the din from within the House Chamber.

Near the end of the passageway, the president used a keycard to unlock another wooden door. Sensors detected movement inside the pitch-black room, and turned on several banks of overhead fluorescent lights.

Allaire proceeded to a keypad on the right-hand wall. Punching in his code, he waited for the hydraulics to engage. In seconds, the wall opposite him slid noiselessly downward and disappeared, revealing the Hard Room. The array of communication equipment—satellite phones, wall-mounted monitors, radios, printers, radar imaging systems, and laptop computers—gave him a brief flare of confidence that his government possessed the power to prevail against any adversary. Then he reminded himself that this was no ordinary adversary—this was WRX3883 in the hands of depraved killers, and at this moment, nothing existed inside this room, or any other, that could defeat that combination.

The large conference table in the center of the room would serve as their briefing area. Two Cabinet secretaries—Salitas and Broussard—took their seats, along with Allaire’s physician Bethany Townsend, the vice president; uniformed Admiral Archie Jakes (the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff); the head of the Capitol Police force, Hank Tomlinson; Architect of the Capitol Jordan Lamar and White House Chief of Staff Megan McAndrews. O’Neil, square-jawed and swarthy, remained standing against the back wall.

“Where is Paul Rappaport?” Allaire asked.

“Paul is at home in Minnesota, Mr. President,” McAndrews said, “tending to his daughter.”

Minnesota.
Allaire groaned. He had personally approved the trip.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Sorry.”

For this year’s State of the Union Address, Paul Rappaport was the so-called designated survivor.

No State of the Union Address, inauguration, or other momentous occasion occurred without there being a DS—referred to by some as the Doomsday Successor. The DS was the only one of the fifteen Cabinet members officially in line to succeed the president who was deliberately not in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. He or she was chosen for the job by the military through the President Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC—the same unit with operational control of the Hard Room.

Given that every member of the Cabinet wanted to be near the POTUS during major events, the chosen DS, usually at or near the bottom of the chain, had no desire to be the one selected. Paul Rappaport’s appointment, however, was a logical one—one that the former governor had actually requested.

Not only was the Homeland Security secretary a logical choice, being the most recently established Cabinet position, but just a week earlier, Rappaport’s daughter’s condo had been broken into and ransacked while she was in the shower. Stolen were her purse, wallet, laptop computer, iPad, cell phone, silverware, and jewelry. Even worse, the president had been informed, her underwear had been removed from her bureau drawer, cut up, and spread out on her bed. The daughter, Renee, had a history of profound anxiety and depression, and suffered a breakdown as a result of the invasion. She had just been discharged after several days in a psychiatric hospital, and was at her parents’ place.

Allaire imagined that the flamboyant, furiously patriotic Rappaport, protected by a small detachment of Secret Service agents, was with his wife and only child at the moment, watching what had been the president’s address, and still unaware of how close he suddenly was to history.

“Sir, I respectfully suggest we get on with this briefing,” said Gary Salitas, Allaire’s closest friend in Washington.

Allaire perked up. He had been quiet too long, lost in thought as the weight of evolving events descended upon him.

“Yes, of course, Gary. Thank you. Sean, can you give me an update on the mobile device roundup?”

The Secret Service agent stepped away from his position against the Hard Room wall.

“Agents are collecting them as you ordered, Mr. President. It’s a difficult assignment, though, as you can well imagine. Many of those out there aren’t used to being told what to do. I doubt the press people are being forthcoming in handing over all the phones they have. We may have to resort to searching them.”

Allaire sighed. The most probable scenario, and an alarming one at that, had word already spreading to the outside world via text messages, phone calls, broadcasts from network and cable television operators’ mobile units from outside the Capitol, and transmissions via the Internet—all reporting something epic happening at the State of the Union, but nobody knowing exactly what. Speculation would spread quickly to every country in the world, from major cities to any remote village with even the slightest bit of communication technology.

Crisis at the Capitol.

It was likely that CNN’s producers had already ordered the graphics.

The best Allaire could hope for would be to slow the spread of information and misinformation until he could work out a strategy as to how it should be presented and disseminated, and how to prevent the reaction that would ensue from any perceived lack of leadership.

He looked over at Salitas for suggestions.

“We need to think bigger, Mr. President,” Salitas, a graying MIT grad, said. “We should disrupt all communications—cellular, landline, Internet, TV broadcast, for say, a five-mile radius around the Capitol.”

“Can we do that?”

“We can try.”

“And still allow me to broadcast to the people?”

“With any luck.”

“Do it.”

Salitas crossed to the communications center at the far side of the room and began making calls.

“Okay, it’s time,” Allaire said. “I’m going to brief you all. Soon I’ll share this information with the other victims out there.”

“Victims?” HHS secretary Kate Broussard asked.

“Yes, Kate. Victims. That’s what we are now. All of us.” He described the message on the teleprompter. “Assuming the exploding glass containers in those bags and briefcases contained aerosolized WRX3883, we must consider that every single person inside the Capitol tonight has been exposed or will soon be exposed to one degree or another.”

“What on earth is WRX3883?” Broussard said.

“It’s a biological agent we’ve been tracking for some time now.”

From his position across the room, Salitas’s eyes narrowed. He gave what Allaire took to be a look of warning.

“Whose biological agent? Are we talking Al Qaeda?” Admiral Jakes managed to ask between sudden spasms of coughing.

“No. Genesis has taken credit for this one. It’s a virus we know about, though. Apparently they stole it.”

“Why weren’t we made aware of this before? What does it do?”

“I’m sorry, Archie. I chose to keep all information about the virus in house until we knew more of what we had. The microbe was ours. It was initially developed at Columbia University in New York. We took it over and were working on it at a Level Four containment facility in Kansas. About nine months ago, I pulled the plug on the project. Apparently, Genesis found a way to steal some.”

“Well, now that it’s been released, how real is the threat to public health?” Broussard asked.

Once again, Allaire and Salitas exchanged minuscule glances.

“This is a flu variant,” Allaire said. “It … um … attacks respiratory functions much the same way a flu virus would, only more rapidly.”

Broussard, a Ph.D. in immunology, frowned.

“So this is like weapons-grade flu?” she said. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s not a type A flu virus, specifically,” Allaire said, assuming Broussard would know that type A influenza was the only one of the three classes of the virus that had ever caused a pandemic.

Vice President Henry Tilden spoke for the first time.

“What can we expect? Symptoms? Spread? Outcome? Is this like SARS?”

Tilden, a former senator from Alabama, had come close to defeating Allaire in the primaries before his first election, and had been appointed as his running mate as a political concession to Southern conservatives. He was respected for his laconic wit and his cool under fire, but like most of the vice presidents before him, had all but disappeared from sight during his first term.

“I don’t know, Henry. I intend to contact our experts at the Centers for Disease Control.”

Hank Tomlinson, the sturdily built Capitol Police chief, pushed himself to his feet.

“And just how did somebody manage to sneak this virus inside the Capitol and detonate fifteen weapons?” he asked. “There was only one entrance open, and we had our most sophisticated screening equipment in operation. In addition, we did an inspection of every bag or briefcase.”

“Well, Hank,” Allaire said, “as head of the security unit here, that’s something I expect you to figure out.”

“Yes, sir,” Tomlinson muttered.

He took his seat and kept his eyes fixed on his hands.

“We’ve got to tackle this like any crisis situation,” Allaire said, “and that means first things first. I promise you, we will overcome this challenge. And we’ll do it together.”

“What do you need us to do, Jim?” Tilden asked.

“While we’re in this waiting game for data about the virus, we need to focus our efforts on two fronts: people and communication. The perception that the entire U.S. government is in imminent danger will send the global economy into a tailspin. We need to minimize that as much as possible.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Craft a message, Henry. You can use my speechwriters if you need them. Let the world know that we’re going to be okay, but until we’re absolutely sure there is no immediate public danger of the virus spreading, we’re going to err on the side of caution. You can say there was an exposure to a highly contagious pathogen. But our microbiologists are hard at work identifying it, and breaking it down. Let the people know that we’re going to be okay, but we need time to complete our thorough assessment.”

“Got it,” Tilden said, seeming actually buoyed to have been given the responsibility.

Allaire watched as the man furiously wrote down notes.

“Work with Megan on this, Henry. Let me read what you have when you’re ready. We’ll use Connie Lawson from NBC to break the story. She’s got the right demeanor to keep facts ahead of emotions.”

Admiral Jakes raised his hand.

“Mr. President, I will mobilize—” He stopped to cough—deep and wet.

“—mobilize the military,” Allaire finished for him.

Jakes, in his mid-sixties, looked gray and almost glassy-eyed. Broussard and McAndrew, seated on either side, subconsciously slid their chairs away an inch or two, and glanced over at him with mixtures of apprehension and revulsion. Allaire nodded at Salitas, who ended a phone call and brought the admiral a cup of water.

“I want to divide everybody out there into three groups. Each group will be relocated to a different room within the Capitol complex to facilitate resource distribution. Admiral, I would like you to be the leader for the C Group. You’ll mobilize in the Senate Chamber and set up operations there. Assign the other chiefs to help with each group, and also the Capitol Police.”

“Who will be in my group?” Jakes asked.

“Gary and I will personally oversee the group designations. We’ll need a little time to complete the list.”

Uneasy looks were exchanged. Allaire sensed the team thought his chosen task was unbefitting a president in the midst of a crisis situation. But they could not know that at the moment, the assignment he had given to himself and Salitas was the most important of all.

“What should we do in the interim?” the admiral managed.

He coughed again. A sheen of perspiration had materialized across his forehead.

“Make a list of supplies you think you will need,” Allaire went on. “Kate, I’d like you to lead Group B and Henry will take the A Group. A Group can stay in the House Chamber, and we’ll move people assigned to Group B into Statuary Hall. Confer among yourselves as to what you think we’ll need for a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour stay. Enlist help from the rest of the Cabinet and anyone else you wish. Megan will act as my liaison. I’ll leave it up to you to work out bathroom usage, but it’s important that we don’t mix the groups as we move people around.”

“Why is that?” Broussard asked.

“For inventory control, Kate. We’ll manage our supplies by group size and we don’t want people thinking they can freely migrate between them.”

The Health and Human Services secretary did not look as if she were buying Allaire’s plan any more than his explanation of what they were up against.

“Yes, Jim,” she said through nearly closed lips.

Sean O’Neil was instructed to mobilize the Secret Service agents to maintain security.

“Report back to me as you make progress. Megan, please make an announcement that in twenty minutes I’ll address the House Chamber. At that time I’ll give an update on our status and share our plans to take care of everyone while we’re sorting things out.”