Cold Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

cages, screaming and crying, substitutes for the human beings that Saddam’s planners hoped to one day infect.
    When we emerged back into the sunlight, we were changed men. That lab sent Eddie and me to medical school on the Marine dime, and made us experts on toxins. The desert, the rocks and starkness, had excited Lionel Nash in a different way, sent him to school, made him a geologist.
    Now was he leading us into a trap?
    â€”
    The deceptive thing about technology is the way it makes the world seem smaller. The world is not really smaller, but by eliminatingmental distance, our devices deceive us into thinking the person on the other end is exactly like us. Somalia is sixteen hours from Washington, just like Minneapolis if you drive. So people who fly around the world begin to think that the difference is small between Washington and Somalia.
    Hey, let’s all sit down and talk and we’ll see our differences are minor, and you’ll see things my way.
    Big mistake.
    â€œIn other words, Colonel, you waited to alert your director until you thought it would be too late to stop you from going.” The man on my laptop screen sneered.
    Eddie and I were the only passengers in a twelve-seat prop plane entering Somali airspace, but at the same time we were in a meeting in Washington, where it was 6 A.M. Something was wrong back there. My call had summoned the admiral from a meeting, but why was he in a meeting so early in the day? When I’d forwarded him the grainy photo Lionel Nash had sent, he’d put me on hold, and three minutes later I was startled to see the whole group.
    Eddie leaned over and slipped me a note.
Look at the water pitchers. They’re in the Situation Room.
    In each square on-screen, looking back, was a tense-looking member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Bioterror Preparedness. I’d addressed the group a few times, during war games at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Rhode Island Avenue, designing scenarios—anthrax attack, food contamination, rail hit.
    The committee met rarely, and these meetings, which were theoretical, never occurred before noon.
    Frank Burke—glaring at me now—was the committee head, a high-profile presence in Washington and a study in contradictions, who “doesn’t like you, to say the least,” the admiral had told me. The Assistant Homeland Security Secretary was an ex–police commissioner ofDallas, a forty-seven-year-old ex-Congressman and tough fireplug with a unique background—off-the-charts IQ, forest ranger parents, Interpol experience, most decorated cop in Texas history. He often made the
Post
social pages, which covered his penchant for squiring around famous actresses, his leadership in Capitol Hill prayer meetings, his fancy dress boots, and his belief, reported in the
Washington Post
during confirmation hearings, that evolution was “just a theory that I don’t believe in. I believe in the Lord.”
    Burke had tried to get our small unit moved from the Defense Department to Homeland Security. He disapproved of having an ex-Coastie running a bioterror group. “You’re a sailor, not a warrior,” he’d told the admiral. He’d also tried to get my contract canceled, twice, and failed.
    â€œYou’re the kind of man I would have kicked off my police force,” he’d told me once, in a men’s room, during a war game break. “I saw your file. The real one. Some guys work for the right side for the wrong reasons. That’s you, Rush. You’ve tortured. You
strangled
someone. You deny it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, use my committee as cover to hurt people—even guilty ones—and I don’t care that the President protects you. I’ll bury you in Leavenworth and you’ll never get out. You’ll never even get a lawyer. You get it?”
    Overhearing the remark, Eddie had said, “He’s honest at