Third World War (53 page)

He brought the aircraft down on the roof of the newly built Citic Towers Hotel, dropped off Caroline and her two secret service agents and took off again immediately. A figure in a red biohazard spacesuit was waiting for her.

'John Pincher, Dr Brock. Special adviser to FEMA, and reporting directly to Tom Patton.' He held out a gloved hand to her. Caroline wanted to shout back a reply above the noise of the helicopter engines, but Pincher's voice through his respirator was calm and slow.

'Thanks for meeting me,' she answered.

'The hotel has been evacuated. Nothing you're going to see will be a pleasant sight.'

Pincher led them down a flight of stairs to where firemen held the lift.

'Anything left of the bomber?' asked Caroline.

'The head is pretty much intact. We hope to have an ID on him soon. Otherwise, bits of his jacket, a buckle - and we've found a brass battery connection.'

'We need to get the blood sample from the head to Fort Detrick right away. We might be dealing with a rogue strain of the variola major.'

'You mean, the vaccine--' muttered Pincher.

'Might not work. Correct,' said Caroline, cutting him off. 'Until we can find out exactly which strain we're dealing with.'

The lift stopped and the door opened. Caroline gasped and put one hand towards her mouth, forgetting that the hand was gloved and that her face was sealed off by a mask.

Laid out in the hotel lobby, row after row, stretching from the reception desk to the grand piano and in towards the bar, were the naked bodies of the wounded and of those who had just died, all mixed together, with troops armed with weapons watching over them. Hoses with shower heads were being used to spray over them. Where the hoses wouldn't reach, they were being drenched with buckets of disinfected water.

'Formaldehyde,' said Pincher. He shook his head. 'It's dreadful. It's humiliating. But it's necessary.'

They picked their way through towards the lobby door, where heavy-duty plastic sheeting had been put up to conceal what was happening inside.

'Are the ventilation ducts still operating?'

'They are,' said Pincher, lifting the sheeting to let Caroline through.

'Shut them down in all the buildings,' she said, pausing just for a moment at what she saw in front of her. 'We don't want air going in or out.'

She turned to face Pincher, knowing that her brusque instructions were a facade to cover her emotions. Her eyes were watery, yet she couldn't wipe the moisture away.

'I know it means the heating. But turn it off. Find them blankets. Until we've got an all-clear.'

The site of the explosion was not as dreadful as the scene inside the hotel. It seemed uncannily less man-made - the act of just one individual, not of an institution. She was amazed at how swiftly America could mobilize. It was less than two hours since the attack, and here was a cordon with order inside it. The bodies of those killed instantly lay where they had fallen with yellow tags tied to their left ankles. If limbs had been severed, they were individually tagged, too. New York Police Department photographers moved easily around FBI forensic agents, firemen and others who were slowly clearing dangerous debris while being careful not to destroy evidence.

'Fifty-eight dead,' said Pincher. 'Two hundred and thirty injured. We reckon about another fifty won't make it.'

She could feel the edge in his voice. The bomb had not been that big. The lower windows of the buildings around Times Square itself were shattered. Firemen hosed down cars that had piled up, but they had not been flung in the air, as would have happened with a more powerful explosion. The electricity remained on, with the neon signs working as if the world was still a safe place. Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Panasonic, McDonald's had all survived. Even the red news electronic display ran unbothered by the death beneath it.

'US marines land in North Korea. Heavy fighting across DMZ. Seoul in flames. Bioterror scare.' Caroline stopped looking before it came round to the suicide attack in Times Square.

'I need to get the sample, take a look, then I need to be choppered to Fort Detrick. We need one sample to go there and another to go to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.'

While Pincher repeated her command into his radio, Caroline ran the implications through her mind. If a week went by before symptoms appeared, it would mean the IL-4/variola major strain might not be as lethal as she feared. But it was a big 'if'. Very big.

There was an uncanny discrepancy between the smallness of the explosion and the marshalled enthusiasm of the rescue teams going about their work. They were resolute, almost embracing the task, as if they were back at Ground Zero. There was a great American optimism about what they were doing, a belief that once it was cleared, however long it took, and once the grieving was over, life would go back to normal.

Caroline walked forward and stepped over a leg with a yellow plastic sandal still on the foot. A paperback novel lay pushed up against the edge of the pavement, squashed and burnt, but with the cover still somehow intact. Three cabs had concertinaed into each other, their yellow paint stripped off in the heat.

Where the bomber had stood was a small crater. The explosion had ripped through the paving slab and cracked a pipe where water was dribbling out, creating an oily black pool which oozed on to the pavement. A body lay there, a pedestrian close enough to die but far enough away for the body to stay intact. It was covered with a thin layer of dust and debris. A flashlight beam lit the corpse's face. She was young, her face purposeful and pretty, with no fear there at all.

'Excuse me, ma'am,' said a voice behind Caroline. She shifted to one side, as two firemen knelt down to try to look inside the crater and stem the water flow without disturbing the body.

'Get back. Everyone, just keep back.' Another voice, and Caroline glanced over and saw police linking arms as a crowd of onlookers stumbled in the crush to get a better view. How strange that everyone was so caught up in the experience. They were detached and curious, because the tragedy had not directly affected them. For a moment the rescuers and onlookers were liberated from dreary routine. Whether inside or outside the cordon they were confronted with the evidence of evil, which gave value to their own purpose. Here was the underbelly of war, the dark fascination that drew people to it time after time.

Caroline stepped over a complete corpse, the top of the beige raincoat it was wearing unscathed, but the collar lying in a pool of dark coagulating blood. The rest of the body was charred and shrivelled, reminding her of some of the photographs from Delhi.

But this was not Delhi. It was a single small suicide bomb - and initial traces of variola major. That was what nagged at Caroline more than anything. In the Wake Island missile the capsules had drifted down on a fixed propeller, limiting the trauma experienced by the virus and enabling it to survive. No explosives had been detected. So the Times Square bomb had not been a method of distribution, she concluded, just a signal of terror.

****

65*

****

Washington, DC, USA*

Mary Newman, her eyes sore and her hands bruised from the Osprey winch cable, flung her arms around Jim West, not caring who was watching. Lazaro Campbell held back, just inside the door, and edged round to where Kozerski was.

'What does Dr Brock say?' said Patton, speaking into one telephone and, while listening to the answer, giving instructions into another. 'Every piece of thermal imaging equipment, with SWAT teams, on every central square in every city. Anyone carrying a suicide vest, we want to see them and take them out. State capitals first--'

'It'll be a hundred dead in Times Square,' said Kozerski quietly to Campbell. 'But the casualties in South Korea are already over ten thousand - that includes 2,500 American troops.'

'Japanese air and seaborne invasion at Najin and Chongjin,' said Pierce to no one in particular. A colonel lit up the two cities on the eastern North Korean coast on the huge map now displayed on the situation room wall. 'OK, we're getting satellite imagery in from Yanji. Chinese troops are - Mr President - the Chinese are going into North Korea on the eastern seaboard.'

'We hold with the Japanese,' said West, his hand resting on Newman's shoulder. 'Tell Yamada that Sato might have messed up. He shouldn't have done what he did. But our security treaty must hold.'

Pierce stepped towards the satellite-imagery screen to get a closer look. 'That looks like Chinese mobilization at Dandong as well. If they cross into Sinuiju they'll get the rail and road link down to Pyongyang.'

'Are we sharing this imagery with the Japanese?' said West.

'Yes, sir.'

'Good.'

'They don't have to fight each other,' said Newman. 'You can stop it, sir.' The 'sir' hung strangely after her affectionate entrance.

'Chris, how long have we got?'

'No Chinese planes are in the air yet. If they scramble, it'll be minutes. Otherwise, let's say an hour.'

West slipped his hand down to Mary's elbow and guided her towards the door. 'John, we're going to get some daylight for a few minutes. Campbell, you come and join us.'

'Sir,' said Patton. 'Dr Brock has confirmed interleukin-4 agent within the virus samples.'

West stopped and turned towards his Homeland Security Secretary. 'Do we know exactly what that means and how to deal with it?'

'Not yet, sir.'

'I don't want to know anything unless we know what it means.' West's anger filled the room. 'There are too many goddamn things happening for the President to be fed unprocessed data.'

West wasn't too sure where he was going. He needed a change of scenery. His short temper was a warning that either his thinking was becoming muddled or that there was too much for one man to decide on. And who was to say that his decisions were worth anything? Every step he had taken had led the world closer to its own destruction.

He walked on ahead, lost in his thoughts. As yet, none of the great powers had come into direct conflict with another. Could he keep it like that? If the trail went back to Zhongnanhai, would he want to keep it like that? Would it be a secret between him and Jamie Song which no one would know about until long after they were all dead.

He found himself heading for the residence. Maybe he was seeking a memory of Valerie's colours and something that would take him back to an era when he had a wife and the White House was an aspiration, a novelty, a prospect to be explored with pride. Today, Jim West would like to have been walking down a disused railroad in Oregon collecting firewood. He wouldn't listen to the radio or TV. If someone had told him about war, he would have muttered about 'those damn politicians' and kept walking, believing that the war would never reach him and his family. Whatever happened now, his aim must be to keep as much of the United States in that womb of self-assurance as was possible. Times Square had gone. The rest must hold.

'This OK for you two?' he queried humbly. Newman and Campbell, straight from the flight from Mongolia, simply nodded. They needed a shower and sleep. But first he needed their help. West opened the door to a stream of late-winter sunlight.

'Dad,' said Lizzie. She stood next to Meenakshi, the two of them facing West like warriors. 'Caroline's on the phone. She's been chasing you. And Tom Patton's been calling.'

'I'll take Caroline's call,' said West.

Lizzie handed him a cell phone. 'Caroline . . . George Washington? . . . when? . . . OK. And where are you? . . . and when will you be there? . . . Fine.'

West cut the call. 'A thirty-five-year-old woman arrived at the emergency room of George Washington Hospital with a temperature of 103 degrees Farenheit, that's just under 40 degrees Celsius. She complained of severe muscle aches. The first blood tests showed a slightly lowered white blood cell count. That was thirty-six hours ago. She's now been diagnosed with smallpox, having been infected by contaminated airborne droplets. Her name is Juliet Mary Diamond. Dr Brock says other similar cases are being reported and that the A&E files at George Washington show that some people checked in but were sent home having been diagnosed with a presumed viral infection.'

No one spoke. The hospital was barely four blocks away. From the window, West could see across the White House gardens to the streets beyond. He couldn't tell that anything was amiss.

Lizzie stepped over and stood next to her father. 'Dad, take ten minutes off and do nothing,' she said gently, squeezing his hand. He nodded, turned, walked over to a soft, flowered sofa and sat down, patting the cushion next to him for Lizzie to sit as well.

'Mr President, Jim,' said Newman, glancing across to Lizzie, too. 'I'd like to get a line up to Beijing. We think we can contact Jamie Song, and we think he is still in charge.'