“We don’t know what it is yet,” Alex said. She walked back to her seat. “As far as we can tell, it looks like a mine and a refinery and maintenance buildings because, well, it is a mine and a refinery and maintenance buildings. But there is plenty of space to hide a few offices and a small lab without raising any eyebrows. There’s no question there was something going on inside, out of sight of the satellites. If you look here, near the entrance of the mine,” she said, and flicked her fingers on the screen, zooming in until they could all see that what had appeared to be simply part of the building was actually a group of figures. Maybe two dozen in all. “Soldiers. Or something to that effect. You can see here and here, automatic weapons, but the thing that made us start thinking this might not be a military or research facility that we’d missed is what the soldiers are doing.”
“Their guns.” The president sat up and gestured toward the screen.
“Yep,” Alex said.
Manny didn’t see it. “What about them?”
Steph pointed hard at the screen. “They’ve got their guns aimed toward the building, not away from it. The soldiers aren’t trying to keep people out, they’re trying to keep people in.”
There was a buzz of voices in response to the president, but Manny saw that Alex wasn’t trying to speak yet. She was sitting up straight and looking around the room, and as she did so, Manny watched her and saw the way Alex seemed to be counting who was in the room. She was hesitating. Manny looked around the room and tried to figure out who she was seeing that made her not want to speak, and then, after a moment, he realized it wasn’t a single person, but the simple fact that there were too many people in the room. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. Nobody else noticed, but he tilted his head toward the door and Alex nodded. Okay, Manny thought. She wanted the room cleared. He had to trust her.
He stood up and clapped his hands twice. The room quieted. Steph was looking at him with a smirk, but she’d missed the transaction between him and Alex. She thought he was just trying to quiet the room down.
“Everybody out. Billy, Ben, Alex, you stay; everybody else out.” He gave them only half a second to look confused before he yelled it. “Out! Get the fuck out of here!” The aides and staff scrambled, and suddenly it was just the president, the national security advisor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretary of defense, and all of them were staring at Manny and waiting for him to speak.
Alex looked at him calmly. Even if he didn’t actually know the specifics of why he’d done it, why he’d cleared the room, it was what Alex had been waiting for: whatever it was she was about to say, he’d been right that she hadn’t wanted to say it to everyone in the room. She turned to address Steph. Manny, just for a moment, thought that Alexandra Harris had arrived a generation too soon; she was somebody who could have held the presidency if she’d been born at the right time.
“Look, I don’t have anything here,” Manny said, “but Alex clearly does, and she can correct me if I’m wrong, but it is something she didn’t want to say in front of a crowd.” Everybody turned to look at Alex, and she didn’t correct Manny. “You all know me, and you know I don’t hold back, and if this was politics or whatever, fine, but the Chinese just dropped a nuclear fucking bomb. This is one of those ‘history is going to look back and judge us’ kinds of moments, and I, for one, think we better get it right. Or, maybe more importantly, we can’t afford to get it wrong. I have no clue what the deal is, but there is clearly something Alex knows that she needs to share with us but doesn’t exactly want to say.”
Steph cleared her throat. “Just tell me it isn’t zombies. Did you catch that asshole on the news saying there was a possibility that the nuke was to cover up a zombie outbreak?” Manny had watched the news with Steph and had actually been kind of amused at the earnestness of the commentators. He’d long ago gotten used to talking heads who made their livings bashing the administration. They were the ones who never seemed to let facts or journalism stand in their way. “I swear to God, if I hear the word ‘zombies’ out of anyone’s mouth, I’m ordering the Secret Service to take you out to the Rose Garden to have you summarily executed.” Ben Broussard and Billy Cannon both chuckled, but Alex’s expression didn’t change.
“Bugs,” Alex said. Her voice was soft.