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"Who?"
"Admiral James Sa
ndecker. Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
A look of annoyance crossed Fawcett's face. He took his role as the guardian of the President's time seriously and resented any intrusion on his territory. Any penetration of his protective ring was a threat to his power base. How in hell had Sandecker sneaked around him? he wondered.
Megan read his mood. "The President sent for the admiral," she explained. "I think he's expecting you to sit in on the meeting."
Pacified to a small degree, Fawcett nodded and walked into the Oval Office. The President was seated on a sofa studying several papers strewn on a large coffee table. A short, thin man with red hair and a matching Vandyke heard sat across from him.
The President looked up. "Dan, I'm glad you're here. You know Admiral Sandecker?"
"Yes."
Sandecker rose and shook his hand. The admiral's grip was firm and brief. He nodded wordlessly to Fawcett, curtly acknowledging his presence. It was not rudeness on Sandecker's part. He came across as a man who played straight ball, encasing himself in a cold, tensile shell, bowing to no one. He was hated and envied in Washington, but universally respected because he never chose sides and always delivered what was asked of him.
The President motioned Fawcett to the sofa, patting a cushion next to him. "Sit down, Dan. I've asked the admiral to brief me on a crisis that's developed in the waters off Alaska."
"I haven't heard of it."
"I'm not surprised," said the President. "The report only came to my attention an hour ago." He paused and pointed the tip of a pencil at an area circled in red on a large nautical chart. "Here, a hundred and eighty miles southwest of Anchorage in the Cook Inlet region, an undetermined poison is killing everything in the sea."
"Sounds like you're talking oil spill?"
"Far worse, replied Sandecker, leaning back on the couch.
"What we have here is an unknown agent that causes death in humans and sea life less than one minute after contact."
"How is that possible?"
"Most poisonous compounds gain access to the body by ingestion or inhalation," Sandecker explained. "The stuff we're dealing with kills by skin absorption."
"It must be highly concentrated in a small area to be so potent."
"If you call a thousand square miles of open water small."
The President looked puzzled. "I can't imagine a substance with such awesome potency."
Fawcett looked at the admiral. "What kind of statistics are we facing?"
"A Coast Guard cutter found a Kodiak fishing boat drifting with the crew dead. Two investigators and a doctor were sent onboard and died too. A team of geophysicists on an island thirty miles away were found dead by a bush pilot flying in supplies. He died while sending out a distress signal. A few hours later a Japanese fishing trawler reported seeing a school of nearly a hundred gray whales suddenly turn belly up. The trawler then disappeared.
No trace was found. Crab beds, seal colonies-wiped out. That's only the beginning. There may be many more fatalities that we don't have word on yet."
"If the spread continues unchecked, what's the worst we can expect?"
"The virtual extinction of all marine life in the Gulf of Alaska.
And if it enters the Japan Current and is carried south, it could poison every man, fish, animal and bird it touched along the West Coast as far south as Mexico. The human death toll could conceivably reach into the hundreds of thousands. Fishermen, swimmers, anyone who walked along a contaminated shoreline, anybody who ate contaminated fish-it's like a chain reaction. I don't even want to think what might happen if it evaporates into the atmosphere and falls with the rain over the inland states!"
Fawcett found it almost impossible to grasp the enormity of it.
"Christ, what in hell is it?"
"Too early to tell," Sandecker replied. "The Environmental Protection Agency has a computerized mass data storage and retrieval system that contains detailed information on two hundred relevant characteristics of some eleven hundred chemical compounds.
Within a few seconds they can determine the effects a hazardous substance can have when spilled, its trade name, formula, major producers, mode of transportation and threat to the environment.
