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and 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 hell 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."
"Shit," 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 hell 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 passed person to person. This strain, however, in
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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
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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 airspace 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."
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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
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planes. And I don't see how they'd be able to drop troops from that
altitude."
"Where did the flight originate?" she asked, knowing somehow Ben Raines
had 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 hell 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 damn
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.
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When he got to his office, he called his aide and said, "Send a squad of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]