Ode To Defiance Chapter 11

6

Back in the US of A

Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures

― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

What are the consequences of requiring from one's employees a personal guarantee of loyalty above all else, casting aside characteristics such as intelligence, competence, and any sense of morality?

Statistically, of course, the preeminence of loyalty requires a reduction in such secondary virtues. But given a large enough pool of candidates, sufficient selectivity can overcome these obstacles. You can have a sycophant who exhibits superior intelligence, for example.

But…what impact does rabid loyalty have on critical thinking skills? It seems reasonable to guess, for example, that an extreme loyalist would be more inclined than normal to suffer confirmation bias (facts supporting one's loyalty remembered, others forgotten) and various association fallacies—halo effect, wherein things and people endorsed by one's liege receive a glossy sheen—and guilt by association, a tarnishing of any positive qualities for friends of people who oppose him.

At the moment in history when Khalid unleashed his first plague, no good research existed on this topic. This gap in human knowledge would not be closed until a team of researchers and grad students assembled by Lenora Thornhill completed their seminal investigation decades later.

Be that as it may, Cameron Ballard, the Acting Assistant Director of the FBI in charge of the Directorate for Weapons of Mass Destruction, presented all the symptoms of these critical thinking failures.

Ballard read and re-read the report detailing the thousands of deaths throughout the coastal cities with mounting excitement. At last he'd get a chance to demonstrate his skills!

He’d been chomping at the bit for some action ever since he'd gotten the promotion to AAD. Now

that

had been a stroke of good fortune, when his boss, Phil McMullen, had gotten crushed in a freak car accident: a self-driving car had swerved into him just out of the blue while he was walking down the sidewalk on Wisconsin Ave., having just left Crumbs & Whiskers. Phil was still in the hospital and was likely to remain there, possibly until retirement.

But Phil was a feisty old coot. If anyone was curmudgeonly enough to survive, he was.

Phil was an antique holdover from the days before the President had humbly accepted the heavy burden of running the country for the rest of his life. In a shocking display of near-treason, when their leader had ascended to his lifetime status, Phil had refused to take the Oath of Personal Loyalty to the President.

Phil should have been fired, except that the personal oath was not yet quite a legal requirement, and the Blues had done a ridiculous amount of whining about it. So the President’s people had laterally-arabesqued Phil into control of the WMD directorate, which at the time was quiet and uninteresting to the President.

Cameron Ballard had been delighted to take the oath; he was a fan, after all. The President's decisive action had been the only thing that prevented a socialist takeover of the country.

Regardless, it was critical for Ballard that he excel in his acting director position before Phil cranked himself out of the bed where he now lay hooked up like a puppet. If Cameron could show his skills, he was sure they'd force Phil into retirement even if he survived the accident.

But showing your skills when in charge of the department that investigated bioweapon attacks was not as easy as it sounded. The most excitement his team usually got was a letter containing white powder sent to a federal worker. Everyone always leapt into action when that happened, and Ballard made sure the media got wind of a possible ricin attack.

But half the time the powder turned out to be sugar topping from a donut, and the other half it was a puff of cocaine.

So this new measles outbreak was important. According to his reports, the epidemic violated all the laws of dispersal for natural phenomenon, and it was immune to the standard measles vaccine. They were looking at a bioweapon attack on the largest scale.

At last, some action! And he knew just how to get started. Shucks, he already had a list of the most likely suspects. Conveniently, they were all on their way to get together in the same place; rounding them up would be child's play.

It was fortunate for the nation, Cameron realized, that Phil had been put out of the way in time for him to take control of this crisis. Among Phil’s other old-fashioned curmudgeonly attitudes, he was the quintessential embodiment of the old-school FBI stereotype: intelligent but not very creative, careful but slow, and relentless as a Caterpillar bulldozer but loyal only to the search for truth and justice.

In this moment of crisis, America needed someone faster, more creative, and willing to cut the necessary corners. The right person had gotten the right job at just the right time.

Ballard figured on having a confession in forty-eight hours.

Dash was in the cafeteria finishing a scoop of raspberry gelato when her cell went off. "Yes? Dr. Bingham. How can I help you?" She looked at Chance, who looked back quizzically. "It's Simon Bingham, the chief scientist of the CDC." Dash listened on the phone in growing horror. "Are they insane? Yes, of course, I'll help. Give me a few minutes to figure out what to do."

Chance pointed a fork at her. "Crisis?"

Dash still looked horrified. "That measles outbreak they notified us about? It's appeared in most of the major coastal cities in America. Virtually simultaneously. And it's not measles; the measles vaccine has no effect." She shook her head. "But that's not the big problem."

Chance put down her fork, half-rising from her chair as if to start taking action, then sitting again when she realized she didn't know quite what action to take. "That's not the big problem? There's a bigger problem than a continent-spanning epidemic with no cure?"

Dash nodded. "The FBI thinks a scientist at the CDC is responsible since they’re the ones with the means to create such a virus. So the FBI has locked down the buildings at the complex where they do the most sensitive virus work. Dr. Bingham saw the FBI vans swoop into the parking lot as he was arriving and turned around just in time to avoid getting caught. He can't raise anybody in the building."

Chance rose with swift determination. "I'll go get him. I can take one of Matt's Global Express spaceships and be offshore in less than two hours. I'll have Dr. Bingham safe before nightfall." She thought about the distances involved. “Well, before tomorrow morning, anyway.”

Dash shook her head as she too rose. "You and I have more important things to do. With the CDC locked up, it's up to us to figure out this epidemic.” She paused, reluctant to make her next statement, with all its horrific implications. “It's surely a bioweapon attack."

She gasped as she realized the connection, and she and Chance said at the same time, "The missing CRISPIER."

Dash dialed her phone. "I'll call Amanda. And Ping and Jam."

Chance shook her head. "I'll call Ping. And Wolf or Aar, whichever one answers first."

Dash added. "And Matt. He needs to have Kestrel Titans ready to launch." She laughed mirthlessly. "He's going to enjoy this—

him

charging

us

a premium for emergency services for a change."

Chance finished talking to Wolf on the phone. "Who's going to pay for it?"

Dash turned grim again. "I'm sure Dr. Bingham will reimburse us eventually...if he lives. If he's not in jail." She dialed Amanda. "I think Amanda can get the Consortium to pay for the moment." She became even grimmer. "Or barring that, I will pay for it. One way or the other, it has to be done. We have to stop this disease now, not just to keep it from sweeping across America, but—"

Chance finished the thought, "—before it reaches the BrainTrust."

Jam had finally finished tidying up all the details of her work as Expedition Commander for the Fuxing, and she boarded the next scheduled Global Express ship heading to the Prometheus archipelago.

She’d been fascinated listening to the tales of Ping’s exploits, up to and including her acquisition of an entire country. Jam was uncertain whether she was sorry to have missed that episode or not. Surely it would have turned out differently had she been along, but whether it would have turned out better was uncertain. This Shura girl seemed to have had them all wired and dancing like puppets.

Jam heaved a sigh of relief as the ship left zero-g behind and regained gravity for the descent. She really didn’t love this form of transportation, though some of that might just be residual anxiety since the first time she’d been on a rocket, she’d gotten shot down.

Anyway, she was glad when the noise of the engines cut out and the ship bounced gently on the deck of the Prometheus archipelago’s spaceport ship. She sat for a moment, letting the other passengers depart while she made sure her organs had settled properly back into place.

As she got up to depart, Ping hopped through the hatch and dogged it shut.

Jam watched with alarm. “Ping! What’re you doing?”

Ping gave her a huge grin, which Jam watched with a sinking feeling. “Gotta go! Buckle up; we’re outta here as soon as we’re refueled.”

Jammed looked around at the empty cabin. “What about the other passengers? And where are we going?” Her heart leapt in her throat. “Is Dash in trouble?”

Ping half-pushed her into an acceleration couch. “Sort of.” She explained about the measles-like epidemic in America and the takeover of the CDC by the FBI. “So we’re going to America to rescue Dash’s friends and everybody else we need to help fight the virus.”

The engines started rumbling. Jam grumbled, “Just when I thought I was done with freefall.”

Ping laughed. “Isn’t it great?”

Soon they were weightless. Jam tightened her belt, while Ping released hers.

Jam watched her. “Stop bouncing off the walls.”

Ping looked at her from midair quizzically. “What do you mean? I’m perfectly calm.”

Jam frowned. “No, you’re not. But I meant, stop bouncing off the walls.”

Ping was hurling herself from one side of the cabin to the other, literally bouncing off the walls. She just laughed.

Eventually gravity returned, and Ping muttered, “Alas. All good things must end.”

Ping jumped from the acceleration couch as soon as the engines stopped blasting. She started pacing in front of the hatch. "Hurry up, hurry up," she muttered. She banged on the hatch. "Let me out!" She swung her fist at the hatch again—

And almost hit Wolf in the face. "Easy, Empress," he said with a huge grin, a mighty sweep of his leg, and a bow that would have made any member of the French court proud.

Ping glared, then jumped into his arms. "You galoot!" Then she whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Call me that again and you're fish food."

Aar waved her forward. "Let us hurry," he urged. "The copters are ready, and the sub's already on its way."

As they ran for the copter deck, Jam spoke to Aar. "Your turban."

Aar stroked his uncovered head and pointed at her. "Your scarf."

Jam spoke decisively. "I've studied Muslim practices around the world, and I do not believe Allah requires such covering. " She paused as they turned a corner. "And besides, on a mission like this, it's best to blend in."

Aar touched his head again. "As a Sikh, I am allowed to go without my turban in an emergency when lives are at stake." He climbed into a copter ruefully. "Millions of lives are certainly at stake here. It was a painful decision, but not hard."

Wolf took the controls of Aar's copter; Ping took the controls of Jam's copter. Both machines were black, clearly stealth versions derived from the ones for which Jam had been the test user.

It was interesting to ponder why they had stealth copters on the commercial SpaceR spaceport ship that normally anchored off the coast of New York. Ping presumed a number of businessmen preferred to get to America without the hassle of the New York Customs office, which was notorious for making travelers, even Americans, suffer.

Before they closed the hatches on the copters, Jam asked, "So who knows where we're going?"

Ping and Wolf answered in unison, "I do." It turned out they'd both been to Atlanta, where the CDC had its headquarters. Wolf finished smugly with, "So Ping may know her way around the town, but I know where the doctor is hiding out."

A look of irritation covered Ping's face. "How'd you find out?"

Wolf laughed easily. "Found out after we landed. You were still in zero-g."

Ping continued to grumble as they closed the copter canopies and skimmed over the water from the spaceport ship down the coast toward Georgia.

Doctor Simon Bingham hunkered morosely in a clump of trees and bushes outside the parking lot of The Big Chicken restaurant. Ping rustled the bushes. "Hey, Doc, what's up?"

Simon jumped in alarm, then turned to greet them as he calmed down.

Dr. Bingham was short for an American and on the pudgy side, with only a few wisps of hair left to him. But his eyes were bright, and his carefully tailored Oxford shirt would have given him a professional air...had he not been huddled in the bushes, wrinkling everything. He brushed the dirt from the knees of his crisply pressed pants with a certain touch of dignity.

Ping apologized for startling him. "Sorry. Dash sends her best, by the way."

The doctor looked around a little wildly. "Did anybody follow you?"

Wolf answered, "Unlikely. No one particularly knows who we are. Ping and I are just as much American citizens as you are, and no one knows our relationship with you through Dash. We rented a pair of vans and came directly here."

The doctor's whole body relaxed. "Thank God.” He pulled out a kerchief and wiped his brow.

Jam started the discussion of strategy. "We cruised past the CDC's Roybal office complex where you told Dash everyone was being held."

Bingham nodded. "Yes, that's where our best High-Containment Continuity Lab is. All our most expert virologists from all over the country flew in last night to get to work on this epidemic." He voice turned very irritated. "But instead of curing the disease, they're sitting in interrogation rooms."

Jam continued her methodical analysis. "Well, your scientists may be stuck there a while. The FBI has landed an army. They even have snipers set up both on the roofs and in the trees along the edge of the campus. I hope you have an idea of how to get your people out because we'd need every peacekeeper in the BrainTrust to make a frontal assault.'

The doctor wiped the sweat from his lip. "I have a plan for getting in and out of the building, but I'll need help getting our best people out of their clutches."

Jam spoke soothingly. "Not a problem if we can sneak through their perimeter."

Wolf brought up a logistical problem. "You do understand we can't escape with everybody. We have two vans, and a submarine off the coast capable of carrying just about as many people as the vans can bring."

Aar continued. "So I'm afraid you have some difficult decisions to make. You have to pick a couple dozen of the people you most want. We may be able to get the others out of the building, but they'll have to find their own way to the BrainTrust."

Ping added, "Or at least to the spaceport ship off the coast of New York. We've gotcha covered from there."

Simon nodded. “I understand." He turned his attention to his tablet and started writing down the names of the people he most wanted. He jerked suddenly to a halt. "Oh, no."

Ping jumped on it first. "What's wrong?"

Simon looked up mournfully. "Velma Highwalker."

Everyone waited to hear the issue.

"She's one of our very best, and she's on vacation this week." He pondered the matter. "She has a getaway cabin up in the Appalachians, close to the Trail. She's probably there."

Aar made the obvious recommendation. "Better call her and warn her to leave before the cops arrive."

Wolf shook his head. "Unless she's using a phone with BrainTrust chips connected to the Starry Night cell system, the call would lead them directly to her. And also to us," he added darkly.

Simon held his hand up in a placating gesture. "I already know that. You would not believe how much trouble Dash and I had establishing a rendezvous point, knowing they could be listening in." He sighed. "The good news, sort of, is that Velma goes completely off-net when she goes to her cabin. We can't reach her, but they can't track her either."

Jam asked, "What are the chances they know where she is?"

Simon brightened. "There's a good chance they have no clue." He grimaced once more. "Of course, there are a couple of people in interrogation right now who can guess as well as I can. Her getaway cabin wasn't a secret. A coupla folks have hiked the Trail with her and stayed at the cabin overnight."

Jam put her hand to her face. "We don't have a lot of time, then. And the longer we wait to get your people out of Roybal, the more entrenched the FBI will be."

Wolf suggested the only solution. "Split forces."

Simon expanded on Wolf’s proposal. "If two of you are going to come with me to the CDC, and two go to get Velma, I recommend you two—" he pointed at Jam and Ping— "Go for Velma. She's kind of irritable. Well, she’s pretty much a feminazi, hates authority, and has a fierce temper. If she weren't so good at her job..." He pursed his lips. "Anyway, you two have the best chance of talking her into a trip to the BrainTrust."

Ping got the coordinates for the cabin from the doctor and turned to Jam. "Let's go. I've got the van—"

Wolf coughed. "Uh, we're gonna need both vans for the escape from the CDC, don't forget."

An expression of consternation spread over Ping's face.

Jam laughed as she watched Ping. "I guess you know where that leaves us."

Ping whined, "Can't we just go back and get the copters?"

Jam waved her hand at the distance. "Ping, we ditched the copters in the national forest outside Greensboro. Do you really think it would be faster to go back?"

Ping's shoulders slumped. "No. I can't believe what we're gonna do."

Ping sat morosely in the back seat with her arms crossed. She’d been sitting there for half an hour already. She grumbled again. “I can’t believe we’re invading America in an Uber car.”

Jam stared at her fiercely, jerking her finger at the driver. “Ping, stop talking foolishness. What invasion? We’re just going up to visit Velma at her cabin in the woods.” She whispered, “Besides, you remember what Wolf said.”

Ping waved her hand. “Yeah, yeah.” When Aar had started laughing at Ping’s downcast recommendation that they use an Uber driver to get Velma, Wolf had pointed out that in WWI, the French had gotten their troops to the front line facing the Germans outside Paris by using fleets of taxis. This had shut Aar up about Ping’s Folly eventually, but not soon enough for Ping’s taste.

Jam had just shrugged phlegmatically and called for a driver. “Whatever works,” was her only comment.

Now they were speeding through a mixed oak-pine forest, having narrowly avoided hitting a white-tail deer a few miles back. They were on their way along the road toward Amicalola Falls, though they would stop before they got that far.

Indeed, minutes after Ping complained about their Uber assault, the driver announced, “We’re just about to the rest stop where you said she’d meet you.”

Ping bounced in the back. “Great!”

Moments later, Ping waved to the driver as he departed.

Jam was already jogging down the road. “Hurry up,” she called with a hint of laughter in her voice. “Or I’ll get her myself.”

Ping growled and zoomed down the road to pass her.

Less than ten minutes later, they slowed to a halt and crouched in the thick undergrowth across the street from Velma’s house. A black SUV sat outside the wooden shack. Ping whispered, “Too late.”

Sounds of a violent confrontation emanated from the house, led by a woman shouting what sounded like a war cry. Several thumps followed, including an agonized male grunt.

Jam whispered, “Sounds like Velma is softening them up for us. Regardless, shouldn’t be a problem.”

The door swung open, yielding a sequence of three people. First came a button-down FBI agent nursing a growing purple swelling under his left eye. Second came a woman with straight black hair and a reddish-chocolate skin tone that slightly masked the similar swelling of her right eye; her hands remained behind her back, presumably in handcuffs. The woman was followed by another FBI agent, grimacing as he struggled with the woman who kept leaping and twisting in his grasp.

Ping commented in admiration, “Feisty.”

Jam replied repressively, “Untrained. And intemperate. She attacked when unable to win. Where’s the strategy?”

Ping jumped to her feet and strutted onto the road, responding to Jam with, “Completely correctable.” Ping waved at the party approaching the SUV and yelled, “Velma! Who’re these people? You need help?” She glared at the FBI agent in the lead.

Jam growled, slid to her feet, and followed Ping. “I’m calling the cops. Let our neighbor go.”

The lead agent held his hand out placatingly. “It’s OK. Calm down.” He reached into his jacket and flipped open his badge. “We’re with the FBI.”

Ping peered at the badge from a distance, then started trotting. “The other guy too? Show me.”

In no time at all, Ping was leaning over in front of the second agent, studying the badge. “Hey, Jam, how do we know these are even real?”

Jam was similarly leaning over the lead agent’s badge. “Cameron Ballard. What do you want with Velma?”

Cameron relaxed into his standard patter. “She’s a person of interest in an important investigation.”

Jam gave him a skeptical look. “Hmph. Ping, there’s only one way I know of to be sure these badges are real. Ready?”

Ping answered brightly. “Ready.”

Jam sighed. “Now.”

Ping, who had been holding herself so taut she practically quivered, jerked up with lightning speed and delivered an uppercut to her opponent so fast he was still trying to figure out what had hit him when he wrote his report the following day.

Jam reached out and touched Cameron’s badge with her right hand as if to scrutinize it even more closely. As she rose, dragging the badge, and with it Cameron’s right hand, out of the way, she twisted into a left jab that connected with Ballard’s unblemished right eye.

Ballard dropped his badge and, swaying slightly but nonetheless gamely, hurled himself forward. Jam stepped sideways and pulled him past, gently pushing his head down to kiss the hood of the car.

Ping stomped on the other agent’s stomach to get him to raise his head, then kicked him in the chin to smack his head against the gravel roadway. He groaned and lay still.

Jam rifled Ballard’s pockets and tossed the keys for the handcuffs to Ping.

Ping stepped behind the ex-prisoner. “Velma Highwalker, I presume? Nice to meet you.”

As soon as Velma got free, she leapt away and held up her fists. “Who the hell are you people anyway? Are you with the terrorists releasing the plague? Because you better believe I’m going to find a cure.”

Ping eyed the ferocious CDC scientist. “Jam, I see what you mean.” She looked down at Ballard, whose right eye was now swelling to catch up with the left. “You gave him a matched set,” she offered approvingly.

Jam responded with a small smile of acknowledgment. “Martial arts are supposed to be artistic, after all.”

Velma interjected. “I demand you tell me who you are.”

Jam looked her in the eye. “Velma, we’re from the BrainTrust.”

Velma shook her head as if to clear it. “The BrainTrust created the plague? I don’t believe you.” She took another step back and waved her fists again.

Ping reluctantly put her hands up in a combat stance.

Jam spoke soothingly. “Ping, give her a moment. She's pretty shaken up. She’ll figure out we’re the good guys in a second.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Meanwhile, we have to get out of here. I guess it’s time to call another Uber. Wish we could’ve made the other one wait without seeming suspicious.”

Ping turned her attention to Jam. “Uber? Why call Uber?” She pointed behind Jam. “When we have a perfectly nice SUV waiting for us.” Her eyes lit up. “I’ll bet it even has a siren.”

Back in Atlanta, after Jam and Ping had departed in their Uber on their trek to Velma’s house, Wolf had turned to Simon Bingham. “You have a plan?”

Aar looked at Simon eagerly. “It would be most excellent if it were a very good plan. Just taking out the snipers as the first step in a frontal assault would be more exciting than wise, and someone could get hurt.”

Simon hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if my plan is excellent, but it’s not bad. There are utility tunnels connecting all the buildings in the complex.”

Wolf’s eyes glowed. “Very good! Can we get to them without being seen?” He walked over to one of the vans. Aar took the other one.

Simon followed Wolf. “I believe we can. It’s a fairly large campus, and I think the FBI put just about everybody in the HCCL.”

Half an hour later they ditched the vans a reasonable distance from the campus. They came to the place on the periphery that best blended concealment, distance from the FBI around the HCCL, and nearness to a building with tunnel access.

Aar noted a problem. “I believe Dr. Bingham here represents a small issue for us. The way he’s dressed, if anyone happens to look our way, he looks a tad too much like a CDC scientist/terrorist.”

Wolf grunted. He turned an appraising eye on Simon. “Good point. Dr. Ballard, if you would be so good as to ditch the tie? And the jacket. And roll up your sleeves like a working man.”

Moments later the good doctor looked like the foreman for a furniture-moving crew. Aar gestured elegantly toward the nearest building. “Doctor, please lead the way.”

And so the furniture team hustled without running along the sidewalk, into the building, and down into the tunnels.

Upon reaching the tunnels they started to trot, Bingham keeping remarkably good time considering his apparent state of fitness. As they made the final approach to the HCCL building, they slowed down both so Simon could catch his breath, and also so they could watch more carefully for FBI lookouts.

As they rounded a corner, they found themselves confronted by a group of people. Wolf prepared to spring to the attack, but then a woman’s voice shouted, “Simon! What are you doing here? I thought you knew, we’re under attack. By our own FBI!”

Simon, still out of breath, nevertheless ran to her and hugged her. “So glad to see you all got out of their clutches.” He looked at them puzzled. “But…why are you still here?”

Another man answered, “Where else would we go? We’re still trying to figure out what to do.”

The woman sighed. “We’ve been talking about just going back in and giving ourselves up. We can’t get any work done until they let us back in the lab anyway.”

Simon shuddered. “Don’t.”

Wolf explained. “We have labs all set up for you at the BrainTrust.”

The woman lit up. “On board the medical ship, the

Chiron

? I’ve heard a lot about it. That would be great.”

A clamor of conversation followed, from which Simon obtained good intel on locations for the people on his extraction list. Wolf told the others a few strategies for getting to the BrainTrust, assuming they could get off the campus. Aar added a few words of caution with a suggestion. “You might want to stay in the tunnels for a little while. We’ll see if we can create a distraction that’ll give you all a better chance.”

Everyone thought that sounded like a good idea.

Wolf had another idea. He looked at the woman who first hailed them. “Do you happen to have a makeup kit?” He turned to another woman, one with blue lipstick. “And you?”

Both women pulled out their compacts. Wolf asked one more question. “What are your chances, with your red and blue lipsticks, of giving Simon here a makeover? Something that makes it look like he has a black eye?”

Once an appalling black eye had been neatly emplaced, Aar, Wolf, and Simon quietly departed the tunnel for the uppermost basement level of the CCCL building.

Simon looked even more disheveled and battered. “At least it won’t be a difficult acting job pretending I’ve been hunted, beaten, and captured.”

They turned a corner and ran headlong into a pair of FBI agents.

Aar waved and unleashed the full power of his British accent. “Chaps, good to see you. Interpol. We’ve got your missing scientist, Simon Bingham.” He pushed Simon forward.

The FBI agents gaped. “Interpol? What’re you doing here?”

Wolf poked Simon forward as they rapidly approached the agents. “He was up in the ventilation shafts. Classic. Aar had to go up and get him; I didn’t fit.” Wolf was approximately large enough to terrorize the bears at the San Diego Zoo.

Wolf and Aar came within arm’s length of the agents. Time to finish this.

As the agents focused on Simon in the center, Wolf and Aar moved smoothly in opposite directions, outside the agents, and snapped out their arms as if each were a football tackle clotheslining a charging runner.

On the BrainTrust, peacekeepers rarely carried any weapon other than a baton. They trained relentlessly in techniques for pacifying residents without harming them. Today both Wolf and Aar chose the Rear Naked Chokehold for their adversaries: each wrapped one arm around his respective target’s neck so that the windpipe was in the crook of the elbow. With that hand, they then grabbed the bicep of the other arm, and…well, in a few moments, they gently laid the agents on the ground before zip-tying their hands and feet together.

One of the agents was about the same size as Aar, so Aar got to upgrade his clothing to a proper FBI outfit. and Both peacekeepers adorned themselves with FBI headsets.

The rest of the assault went quite smoothly, with Simon leading them from place to place to gather his chosen scientists, stopping to pacify the occasional FBI agent, releasing the occasional cluster of captive CDC employees, learning from them the locations of more of the people on Simon’s list.

They had collected all but two of Simon’s top priority people when the FBI comms told them the jig was up and they needed to hightail it out of there. Most of the released workers besides Simon’s picks agreed to hang around to keep the FBI confused, while others Simon specified went with them as far as the tunnels to ensure they had the best possible chance of escape if or when the FBI departed.

All the people left behind, whether part of the masquerade or hidden below, were invited to make their way to the BrainTrust however they could, where they were guaranteed an enthusiastic welcome.

And so Wolf and Aar, with two vans packed full of the best and brightest virologists, molecular biologists, and epidemiologists in the world, headed back to the coast and to the sub that awaited them.

The sound of a siren blaring in the distance brought Acting Assistant Director Cameron Ballard slowly to his senses. He groaned, rolled to his side, and sluggishly rose. The gravel cut his hands as he pushed himself up. Next he patted down his pants to get the pressed edges realigned.

He was even more certain now that Ms. Highwalker was responsible for the plague than he had been before the arrest.

Long before joining the CDC—over the objections of the FBI agent who’d done her background check, after a direct intervention on her behalf by Simon Bingham—Velma Highwalker had been a radical. Comfortably supported by her share of the profits from the casinos on Cheyenne land, she’d had plenty of time to protest and riot about causes that caught her interest, most of which involved opposition to the policies proffered by the President for Life.

Most notably, she objected vehemently to the President’s ruthless support for racial profiling by law enforcement officers. The President’s enthusiasm often went to the point of pardoning those officers who ran afoul of the Constitution’s protections from unreasonable search and seizure.

Velma was a hot-tempered troublemaker. Just because she’d turned her passion eventually to virology and gotten a doctorate in short order with extraordinary grades, it didn’t change the fact that she was a radical who opposed the presidency.

It was all becoming clearer in Cameron’s mind, leaving him gasping over the size of the conspiracy. Clearly Simon Bingham, Velma’s defender who had also somehow escaped the raid on the CDC, was involved. And Cameron had overheard one of the terrorists who’d rescued her say something about the BrainTrust.

The BrainTrust? Would they really involve themselves in a direct attack on America, when almost half the residents there were American citizens? Yet it made sense. It was an open secret that the BrainTrust had viciously rejected repeated polite requests from the Chief Advisor for medical assistance. They had it in for the President as much as Velma did.

The shape of the bioterror attack made sense too when integrated with all the information he’d acquired between his first readings about the plague and his arrival at the doorstep of the Roybal complex.

The epidemic had broken out simultaneously in all the major cities along the Pacific coast, as well as all the cities along the northeastern seaboard. Looking at the layout of this attack through the lens of a political map, it had struck directly at all the major Blue strongholds—a clear attempt to frame the President and the Chief Advisor.

And it was very interesting indeed that this pattern also left the CDC headquarters on the southeastern seaboard untouched. The perpetrators had not put themselves in harm’s way.

Regardless, the plague had become a media circus at the speed of light. Because the disease expressed symptoms similar to measles, itself caused by the rubeola virus, the newshounds had dubbed the plague Blue Rubola—at once both a riff on the famous Ebola virus while also denoting the political nature of the attack. And the Blue media had wholly bought the idea that the Chief Advisor had released the virus to weaken his opposition. Some of the most extreme Red media had agreed, though they had of course praised the endeavor.

Still a little dizzy, Ballard swayed, caught himself, and turned to help his fellow agent. His partner too had struggled to his feet, and exclaimed in exasperation, “They took our car.”

Ballard nodded. He reached into his pocket to grab his cell. “I’ll call for backup.” A few moments later, he exclaimed in exasperation, “Damn, they took our phones.” He looked down the lonely road. “I guess we’re walking until we find someone to help us.”

An hour later they arrived, dusty and sweaty, at a forlorn mini-market with a lone gas pump outside.

Back in contact with his men, Ballard joined a merry chase, mostly vicariously. A second BrainTrust assault team had appeared mysteriously in the middle of the building housing the High Containment Continuity Lab where the FBI had sequestrated the most likely perpetrators.

Ballard almost swooned as he listened to the growing list of escapees. Could all these people be in on the terrorist bioattack? Why else would they all disappear together?

Then word came of a black SUV with a siren blasting down the roads all through Atlanta. After scaring a couple of children half out of their wits, the SUV had stopped—the driver had shown an FBI badge!—and apologized to the kids and their mother, to whom they gave a ride at full speed to make up for their mistake.

The two FBI agents in the SUV were described as a skinny little Asian and a rather taller more dignified woman of Native American ancestry; the mother figured she was Cherokee or some such. Ballard practically frothed with fury. There hadn’t been an Indian FBI agent in decades since they were all security risks. Couldn’t the mother have noticed that and called someone? Anyway, the driver had been the Asian, who sounded, according to the kids, like she was from the Midwest. Oh, and the kids had had a blast in the back seat, waving at everyone they raced past with sirens wailing.

Having lost all the best suspects, Ballard abandoned the CDC complex to priority-task most of his agents on getting Velma Highwalker, whom he considered the only certain member of the conspiracy. If his prioritization also helped him get his car back sooner—argh!—that was a fine side benefit.

Twenty-four hours later, Ballard’s men found his black SUV. A couple of teenagers making out in the empty bleachers of a high school football stadium had heard a siren roar into the parking lot and then stop. They heard more than saw two black copters land in the field near the fifty-yard line. Some voices of greeting ensued, mostly female, but at least one male with a British accent. Some laughter had followed, then the copters took off again.

Meanwhile, the much smaller team Ballard had set on the trail of the escapees from Roybal managed to track the fugitives to Charleston and onto a handful of small inflatable watercraft bought an hour earlier from Kick’s Sporting Goods. The inflatables themselves were found, neatly roped together, drifting a mile offshore, empty and bearing no signs they had ever born passengers.

As the entire FBI contingent zoomed back to the CDC campus to interrogate the remaining low-priority CDC workers who’d not been whisked away by the terrorists, Ballard finally realized he’d been duped. The wailing siren had been meant to draw his men off, and now the whole CDC campus was deserted. Following a hunch, he quickly verified that at least two of these lesser targets had made it onto a ferry out to the SpaceR spaceport ship. They were now beyond his jurisdiction.

But at least Ballard had his car back. He opened it to find the keys in the cup holder and a note on the dashboard. “Thank you for letting us borrow your car,” the note said, “Sorry for any inconvenience.” A second paragraph offered a warning of sorts. “Oh, and the tank’s pretty empty. You’ll need to get gas first thing. Ping.”

A pair of unhappy local Atlanta police stalked toward him, no doubt planning to yell at him for racing his SUV around town like a maniac and creating a serious road hazard.

But the Acting Assistant Director for the WMD Directorate disregarded them. He stared at the note the terrorists had left him, focusing on the part he didn’t understand.

What did pinging have to do with anything?