Pandemic

Haldane sat in front of the camera, as the technical team remotely assumed control of his computer. The split video window that emerged was unlike the ones he had grown used to in past days. He understood that this hookup was more secure than anything he had seen before, but he knew nothing of the technology behind it.

After a few minutes of technical futzing, Gwen appeared in the smaller box on the right side. In the larger box on the left four people sat on one side of a long oval table. Haldane instantly recognized them, but Ted Hart introduced the group as if Haldane had never heard of the nation's leaders.

"Dr. Haldane, I would like to introduce you to the President, the National Security Advisor, Dr. Home, and the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Whitaker. I'm Ted Hart, the Secretary of Homeland Security," he said equally as unnecessarily, having received more airtime than Larry King and Oprah combined in the past week.

The President leaned back in his leather chair. In his early fifties, he wore a navy suit with an open-collared light blue shirt, and he towered half a head above the others at the table. He had thick salt-and-pepper hair, expressive gray eyes, and a prominent chin. He wasn't classically handsome, but he had a commanding and compassionate countenance. Haldane decided he had a perfectly presidential face for photo-ops.

On the President's right sat his National Security Advisor, Andrea Horne, a handsome African American woman with curly black hair and stylish half-glasses perched halfway down her nose. To the President's left sat his Secretary of Defense, Aaron Whitaker, a scrawny balding man in his mid-sixties with pasty skin and (Haldane knew from his press conferences) a wolverine's disposition. To Whitaker's left sat Ted Hart.

"Hello," Haldane said, feeling unexpectedly bashful in the presence of such executive power.

The President smiled and nodded once into the camera. Home said, "Welcome, Drs. Haldane and Savard," while Whitaker did not acknowledge either of them.

"Gwen, Dr. Haldane, you are up-to-date on the latest developments from Egypt, I trust?" Hart asked.

"Ted, we know of the intercepted e-mail but the details we've heard are sketchy at best," Savard said.

"Allow me to elaborate." Hart glanced at the President who nodded his approval.

A photo of a smiling handsome man, who looked to Noah like a playboy son of some rich emir posing for the paparazzi, appeared at the bottom of his screen. "Meet Hazzir Kabaal — an Egyptian publishing magnate who owns several papers which pander to the pan-Arabic and Muslim Brotherhood movements. Don't let his dapper wardrobe fool you. Kabaal has financial ties to militant groups from the Hezbollah to the Abu Sayyef."

The photo on Haldane's screen switched from Kabaal's unctuous grin to the expressionless face of an army officer with pale blue eyes. "Major Abdul Sabri. Formerly with the Egyptian Special Forces. He specialized in counterinsurgency, but we assume has since switched sides. Apparently, Kabaal, Sabri, and several known associates left Cairo three weeks ago to whereabouts unknown."

"They're in Somalia," the Secretary of Defense grunted with confidence.

The face of an old Islamic cleric replaced Sabri's on the screen. "Sheikh Hassan. A firebrand Islamist and, we believe, the spiritual leader of the group. The same officer who sent the e-mail arrested Hassan and his son at their Al-Futuh Mosque shortly before he was murdered. The Egyptian authorities are holding both men and several others they've rounded up from the mosque. The CIA has already sent a team to Cairo to begin interrogations."

Haldane cleared his throat. "Mr. Secretary, do you believe the policeman's information is correct about the base in Somalia?"

"We have nothing in the way of proof, Dr. Haldane," Andrea Home answered for the Secretary in her clipped Ivy League cadence. "However, the rest of the officer's information has thus far panned out."

"Any idea where in Somalia they might be?" Savard asked.

"Somewhere north of Mogadishu," boomed Secretary Whitaker in a surprisingly powerful voice for his shrunken form. "It's the goddamn Wild West up there. Lawless!"

A map of Somalia popped up in the bottom frame of Haldane's screen. Forming a sideways "V" that hugged Ethiopia and ran along the eastern coast of Africa, it stuck out into the Indian Ocean at its vertex.

"The CIA is reviewing the satellite imagery," Hart explained. "But Secretary Whitaker is right, the north would be the easiest place to conceal a base."

Whitaker shook his head. "We ought to go in en masse."

"Do you remember our last Somali experience, Mr. Secretary?" Home glanced at her colleague with a flicker of annoyance. "The disastrous deployment in the early nineties?"

Whitaker snorted a laugh. "Andrea, we're not talking about a humanitarian mission this time around. We find this terrorist base, and we replace it with a fifty-mile-wide crater."

"Might not be so simple," Gwen said.