Oath of Office. Jack Mars

was fragile right now, maybe as fragile as it had ever been. The Congress was mostly wiped out and a retired supermodel had been elevated to the Presidency. The United States had been shown to have feet of clay, and if there were any coup plotters still around, there was no reason why they shouldn’t make another grab for power.

      “If you’re going to eliminate the SRT anyway, then this is a perfect time for me to leave.” The more he said things like this, the more real it became to him.

      It was time to put his family back together. It was time to recreate that idyllic place in his mind where he, Becca, and Gunner could be alone, away from these concerns, where even if the worst happened, it wouldn’t matter all that much.

      Heck, maybe he should just go home and ask Becca if she wanted to move to Costa Rica. Gunner could grow up bilingual. They could live on the beach somewhere. Becca could have an exotic garden. Luke could go surfing a couple of times a week. The west coast of Costa Rica had some of the best swells in the Americas.

      Susan spoke for the first time. “It’s a horrible time for you to leave. The timing couldn’t be worse. Your country needs you.”

      He looked at her. “You know what, Susan? That’s not really true. You think that because I’m the guy you happened to see in action. There are a million guys like me. There are guys more capable than me, more experienced, more level-headed. You don’t seem to know this, but some people think I’m a loose cannon.”

      “Luke, you can’t leave me here,” she said. “We are teetering on the verge of disaster. I’ve been stuck into a role I was not… I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know who is good and who is bad. I’m half-expecting to turn a corner and catch a bullet in the head. I need my people around me. People I can put all my faith in.”

      “I’m one of your people?”

      She looked him directly in the eyes. “You saved my life.”

      Richard Monk broke into the conversation. “Stone, what you don’t know is the Ebola is replicable. That wasn’t covered in the meeting. Wesley Drinan told us in confidence that it’s possible people with the right equipment and knowledge could make more of it. The last thing we need is an unknown group of people running around with weaponized Ebola virus, trying to stockpile it.”

      Luke looked at Susan again.

      “Take this job,” Susan said. “Figure out what happened to the missing woman. Find the missing Ebola. When you come back, if you really want to retire, I will never ask you to do another thing. We started something together a few nights ago. Do this one last thing for me, and I’m ready to say the job is finished.”

      Her eyes never left his. She was a typical politician in many ways. When she reached for you, she found you. It was hard to say no to her.

      He sighed. “I can leave in the morning.”

      Susan shook her head. “We’ve already got a plane waiting for you.”

      Luke’s eyes widened, surprised. He took a long breath.

      “OK,” he finally said. “But first I need to get some people from the Special Response Team together. I’m thinking of Ed Newsam, Mark Swann, and Trudy Wellington. Newsam’s on injury leave right now, but I’m pretty sure he’ll come back if I ask him.”

      A look passed between Susan and Monk.

      “We’ve already contacted Newsam and Swann,” Monk said. “They’ve both agreed, and both are en route to the airport. I’m afraid that Trudy Wellington won’t be possible.”

      Luke frowned. “She won’t do it?”

      Monk stared down at a yellow legal pad in his hands. He made a quick note to himself. He didn’t bother to look up. “We don’t know because we didn’t contact her. Unfortunately, using Wellington is out of the question.”

      Luke turned to Susan.

      “Susan?”

      Now Monk looked up. He scanned back and forth between Luke and Susan. He spoke again before Susan said a word.

      “Wellington is dirty. She was Don Morris’s mistress. There’s just no way she can be part of this. She’s not even going to be employed by the FBI a month from now, and she may well be up on treason charges by then.”

      “She told me she didn’t know anything,” Luke said.

      “And you believe her?”

      Luke didn’t even bother answering that question. He didn’t know the answer. “I want her,” he said simply.

      “Or?”

      “I left my son staring at a striped bass on the grill tonight, a striper that we caught together. I could start my retirement from all this right now. I kind of enjoyed being a college professor. I’m looking forward to getting back to it. And I’m looking forward to watching my son grow up.”

      Luke stared at Monk and Susan. They stared back at him.

      “So?” he said. “What do you think?”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      June 11th

      2:15 a.m.

      Ybor City, Tampa, Florida

      It was dangerous work.

      So dangerous that he did not like to go out to the laboratory floor at all.

      “Yes, yes,” he said into the telephone. “We have four people on right now. We will have six when the shift turns over. By tonight? It’s possible. I don’t want to promise too much. Call me around ten a.m., and I will have a better idea.”

      He listened for a moment. “Well, I would say a van would be big enough. That size can easily pull back to the loading dock. These things are smaller than the eye can see. Even trillions of them don’t take up that much space. If we had to do it, we might be able to fit it all in the trunk of a car. But if so, I would suggest two cars. One to go on the road, and one to go to the airport.”

      He hung up the phone. The man’s code name was Adam. The first man, because he was the first man hired for this job. He fully understood the risks, even if the others did not. He alone knew the entire scope of the project.

      He watched the floor of the small warehouse through the big office window. They were working around the clock in three shifts. The people in there now, three men and a woman, wore white laboratory gowns, goggles, ventilator masks, rubber gloves, and booties on their feet.

      The workers had been selected for their ability to do simple microbiology. Their job was to grow and multiply a virus using the food medium Adam supplied, then freeze-dry the samples for later transport and aerosol transmission. It was tedious work, but not difficult. Any laboratory assistant or second year biochemistry student could do it.

      The twenty-four-hour schedule meant that the stockpiles of freeze-dried virus were growing very quickly. Adam gave a report to his employers every six or eight hours, and they always expressed their pleasure with the pace. In the past day, their pleasure had begun to give way to delight. The work would soon be complete, perhaps as early as today.

      Adam smiled at that. His employers were well-pleased, and they were paying him very, very well.

      He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and continued to watch the workers. He had lost count of the amount of coffee he had consumed in the past few days. It was a lot. The days were beginning to blur together. When he became exhausted, he would lie down on the cot in his office and sleep for a little while. He wore the same protective gear as the workers out in the lab. He hadn’t taken it off now in two and a half days.

      Adam had done his best to build a makeshift laboratory in the rented warehouse. He had done his best to protect the workers and himself. They had protective clothing to wear. There was a room in which to discard the clothing after each shift, and there were showers for the workers to wash off any residue afterward.

      But there were also funding and time constraints to consider. The schedule