Jason Thornton was something of a dark horse. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat in disguise of a Republican. Thomas Jefferson believed in the independent farmer, merchant, tradesman, and craftsman who had an inherent distrust of government. Independent minded citizens who would accept responsibility for their own welfare and held an inherent distrust of government were the fundamental beliefs of what is now termed Jeffersonian Democracy.
Jason Thornton harbored a terrible vision that some day the United States would no longer be a Republic. Like Rome from the First Century A.D. onward, he reasoned, it depended too much on imports, on “slave, read foreign” labor, on having to rely upon foreign mercenaries to man their armies, foreign sources of food, that a tremendous gulf separated the poor and the remainder of society. The only major difference was that the timeline was being tremendously compressed. The middle class would be economically squeezed, with the great majority being forced into the ranks of the poor. The cream of the middle class would rise to the upper class rich, while the remainder of the middle class would be terribly diminished. As one economic advisor told him, “The rich and the poor always gang up on the middle class. The poor can’t afford to pay the taxes for all these social welfare programs, and the rich have the power to see that they themselves don’t pay for them.”
On a budget provided primarily by the center of the middle class and the upper middle class, he borrowed a few issues of the Democratic Party. He stressed that he would create a greater stewardship of the environment, far better than previous Republican administrations. Being something of a hunter, he saw the need for hunting as a means to control selected wildlife populations, such as white-tailed deer that had overgrown their ecological niche in many eastern states. He also campaigned for private ownership of firearms in the west, where the significance of such was brought home as a result of the Mexican raids.
He promised greater border security, tightening of immigration restrictions, limited tariffs and other forms of protection for American manufacturing to counter foreign imports and protection of American jobs. By 2003, 96% of all of the clothes worn by Americans were manufactured overseas. He stressed a return of the clothing and shoe industry to the U.S., especially in the south where cotton was grown and textiles were manufactured, and in the northeast where the garment industry used to exist. He promised greater support to agriculture, since America’s greatest exports were grain and beef. Much of America’s fruit and vegetables were now imported from Central and South America. Much of the processed foods industry had moved south over the last ten years because the labor was so much cheaper. Manufacturers could make and ship processed foods frozen cheaper from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico than they could be processed in the United States. Factory workers in China were making seventy-five cents per hour, while American manufacturing workers were being paid an average of twenty-one dollars per hour. U.S. made goods could not be found on the shelves of almost any store.
In the rust belt, he promised tariffs against imported iron and steel until those industries could make another “adjustment” as they had in the opening years of the twenty-first century.
In foreign policy, he railed against the historical Bretton-Woods agreement, in which the underlying policy concept was founded that economics was the cause of world wars. He preached how this concept of leveling the economic playing field worldwide led to the decline and economic prosperity of the United States. The U.S. trade deficit was approaching 10 trillion dollars, up from 3.5 trillion in 2003. While the United States declined in economic power and other countries increased in wealth, there had been no effect whatsoever in reducing wars and international tensions. Africa smoldered, flared and burned in numerous civil wars based on tribal, religious and ethnic grounds, as well as between countries over boundaries, oil, gold and diamonds. The Central Asian Republics became even more dictatorial through ethnic strife, tribalism and Islamic fanaticism; one tyrannical government replaced another. The Middle East was on the brink of deploying weapons of mass destruction, as democracy was being rolled back on many fronts.
With demographic predictions indicating that in thirty years or less, over one half of the U.S. population would be foreign born, mostly Hispanic, his threat of immigration limitations sparked civil strife in many cities. Barrios in Los Angeles, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas-Fort Worth, Omaha, Chicago, and New York demonstrated against his so-called “racism.” The La Reconquesta movement of Mexican Americans came out in the open as an organized political force supporting Senator Kenneley.
Mexico began to experience small riots and an increase in lawlessness. Small bands of revolutionaries, which the government labeled as “bandits with lawyers” emerged among the native American populations in the states of Yucatan, Jalisco, and Durango. The movement in the state of Durango had an urban element to it as well as a rural one, centered in the city of Durango. The common theme was against corruption in government and a more equitable distribution of resources, particularly land.
Selecting Los Angeles as a site for the Democratic convention backfired on the Democratic Party. Selected to show Democratic support for Mexican Americans, many of the city’s Latino citizens responded with riots and violence against the Democrat’s National Convention. La Reconquesta bussed in Mexicans from nearby border towns to swell their numbers. They provided them with free meals, cigarettes, and massive campgrounds around the city in support of their demonstrations. In the end, the riots of East Los Angeles, the numerous deaths, the destruction of more than a dozen square blocks of the barrio by fire resulted in a backlash originating in the middle class. When it was over, every middle-class person who had a job or even hoped for one voted Republican. The working population of both white and black Americans felt tremendously threatened by the influx of more immigrants, of losing their jobs, of further exportation of service industries, and the very few remaining manufacturing jobs. In a unique movement, middle class Black America voted Republican. Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, and Maine went Republican in the Electoral College. It was enough to swing the election to Jason Thornton.
Jason Thornton’s immediate problems were the relationship with Mexico and the selection of his cabinet. As of the swearing in ceremony, he was still debating on several cabinet positions. Continued long range sniping at soldiers from the Mexican side of the border resulted in pulling American forces a kilometer back inside the U.S. In spite of this, sniping continued. Mexican snipers then began to stalk the American soldiers on American soil. Thornton’s response was immediate. The day after he took the oath of office, he ordered Army sniper teams to retaliate. Counter sniping became the order of the day. Army two-man sniper teams began to cross the Rio Grande at various points and hunt down and kill any armed Mexican civilian they saw. After seven Mexican snipers were eliminated and their rifles collected, the Mexicans stayed on their side of the Rio Grande.
When Mexico’s President Bustamante discovered American soldiers were violating Mexican territory, he angrily denounced in public American intrusion of Mexico’s Sovereignty. Mexico’s ambassador filed a formal protest and called upon President Thornton. Jason Thornton calmly replied to the Mexican ambassador that if Mexico didn’t like it, all they had to do was stop the cross-border raids and sniping. Until then, the United States would take whatever action it deemed necessary to protect its sovereignty and its citizens. President Thornton’s last words to the Mexican ambassador were, “If those responsible for cross border raids were not brought to justice in the near future, it is conceivable that the United States will take appropriate action to see that the responsible individuals are brought to the United States for trial or killed, even if it is on Mexican soil. That is my position, Mr. Ambassador. Please give my kind regards to President Bustamante.”
Somehow, Jason Thornton’s words were leaked to the press without his knowledge or consent. They made a splash in Mexican newspapers that aroused a wave of Mexican nationalism. In the United States, they aroused a wave of support for Jason Thornton.
The October day was cool, the nighttime temperature dropped into the upper thirties, Fahrenheit degrees. The day had been overcast, but no rain. The coming day promised to be similar, only cooler. The humidity hung around 50%. It was 02:00 local time. A ten mile an hour wind was steadily blowing from the north. Gusts of 15 miles an hour occurred frequently. The 100-odd four-man teams emerged from various tunnels and cautiously edged towards a fifty mile long stretch of the fence of the demilitarized zone. All four members of each team carried what appeared to be self-contained breathing apparatus on their backs. The steel tanks were painted dark grey, and the faces and hands of all of the men were painted with earth tone camouflage paints. Foliage was secured in helmet nets. Four hundred meters short of the fence, the four men of each team spread apart, one man every one hundred meters. When they reached the fence, each man extended a collapsible wand ten feet into the air and opened the valve on his tank. Each tank made a low hissing sound as it emptied its contents. It took fifteen minutes to empty a tank. The men turned and slowly crawled back to the tunnels from which they had emerged two hours earlier.
The first cases were reported three days later. At first, the soldiers reported to their battalion aid stations. They were running a high fever, experiencing tightness in the chest, and some reported difficulty in breathing. In the next twenty-four hours, the ranks of the ill swelled. By the fifth day, as much as fifty percent of some units were in sick bay. On day five post release, some began to die. Many were shipped the thirty-odd miles from Camp Casey to Seoul. The abandoned American bases simply could not handle the enormous number of ill South Korean soldiers. Initially, the South Korean government attempted to keep the epidemic quiet. The outbreak was noted in Seoul a week later and reported on international television. CNN spread the word of another attack of the Asian influenza. The World Health Organization committed teams of virologists, bacteriologists, and epidemiologists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, was invited to send its teams to Seoul.
The quick and dirty preliminary epidemiological investigation supported the contention that sixty to seventy percent of the South Korean troops on the DMZ were experiencing the disease. The case fatality ratio, that is, the number dead among those ill seemed to be about twenty-five percent.
Curtis Matthews, MD, forensic pathologist, removed his gloves, placed them in the biohazard materials bag, followed by his mask and gown. He peeled the tape off his pant legs which were stuffed into his disposable booties and deposited them as well. Now naked, he opened the airlock and stepped into the shower. The warm water flushed over him as he scrubbed himself from head to toe. He turned off the shower and turned on the disinfectant spray, allowing it to play over him. The next shower was with clean water to remove any disinfectant. Dripping wet, he moved to the next small area where he toweled dry. Then he moved into the locker room and donned his class B uniform. The eagles of his shoulder boards indicated he was a Colonel in the American Army, a representative of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on the Walter Reed campus in Washington, DC.
Christ, he thought to himself, if I were back in veterinary practice, I would say this was one hell of a case of Pasteurella pneumonia, the cause of shipping fever in a calf. Dr. Matthews had been a veterinarian before he became a physician. After several years of a mixed veterinary practice in Nebraska, with several cattle and hog feedlots in his practice, Matthews decided there had to be an easier way of making a living than delivering calves in March blizzards at minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Going back to Medical School at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, Columbia, was tough. It cost him a great deal emotionally and physically. It cost him his marriage. His wife, an attorney, would not stand for losing her husband to studying. His second year of medical school, she took their son and left for Denver. That year, he signed on for an Army program that commissioned him as a second lieutenant in the US Army. It paid for the next three years of medical school.
He discovered his niche in pathology his sophomore year. His clinical skills were good but not outstanding his last two years. He was promoted to captain upon graduation, as were the other members of the military program. He did an internship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, then was accepted as a pathology resident there. After three years of residency training in pathology, he was promoted to major. He passed his pathology boards examination the next year and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was assigned to Irwin Army Hospital at Fort Sill, OK. After two years at Fort Sill, he returned to the Walter Reed campus as a staff pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He was assigned to the respiratory diseases branch of pathology where he specialized in diseases of the lung. After two years, he became branch chief. Now at 42 years of age, he had no social life. He occasionally wrote his son and visited him once during the Christmas holidays his first year of residency. He did not know his son, who now considered himself to be the son of his stepfather.
“What do you think, Curt?”
“It’s hot, whatever the agent is. I took plenty of tissue samples out of that Korean kid. Bacteriology should have some answers in three or four days. I don’t know why the Koreans haven’t at least figured it out down to the genus level. The hematoxylin and eosin slides I looked at earlier this morning from other cases are suggestive of a red hot bacterial pneumonia rather than a virus. The Koreans are sophisticated enough to figure that out.”
“Any bets as to genus?” Dr. Timmons, an epidemiologist from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention asked as they strolled out the hospital.
Matthews thought for a moment and looked Timmons in the eye. “Look, are you thinking it is a released agent, a biological attack or something?”
Timmons shrugged, “I doubt it, but then, you never know. North Korea’s leaders are a crazy bunch. They are capable of anything. They have bluffed before and backed down at the last minute. They have pursued nukes and bioweapons in spite of everything we have done to prevent it.”
As an epidemiologist, Timmons asked questions others were slow to consider. “Why only here? Why not in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan or some other crowded place as well? Maybe it came out of China, and they are sitting on it, although that is extremely difficult if not impossible in today’s world of information. China today is a far more open society. After the SARS episode, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome with coronavirus in 2003 and 20024 plus Covid-19 in 2020 they learned their lesson about sitting on epidemics and trying to hide them. No, it does seem very suspicious. Hell, we can’t even determine if it is transmissible. It’s odd, but there don’t seem to be any secondary cases associated with caregivers or others. It seems to be extremely infectious but nontransmissible. The fact that the majority of cases initially occurred in line units along the DMZ is very, very suspicious.
“Cases now showing up down here in Seoul indicate that it is a very hardy agent, highly resistant to the environment if it is nontransmissible. It would have to be windborne, lasting for days, not affected by humidity and sunlight. Cases here in Seoul seem to appear in pockets. I have asked meteorologists to look at wind patterns blowing out of the north. It does seem to have a much-generalized center; it is that part of the city that receives the breezes coming out of the Imjin Valley. Far fewer cases appear on the surrounding mountainsides. While we are still doing a lot of case finding, our early distribution maps and epidemiologic curve indicate that it suddenly appeared along a hundred- and fifty-mile front all along the DMZ. Extremely abrupt in its appearance, in a linear distribution, it is very suggestive. It is also very disturbing.”
“Well, if it is the opening shot, we’ll know soon enough. The tanks will roll, and we will be in the proverbial polluted pond. In the meantime, let’s get some lunch over at the officer’s mess. I’m hungry.”
“How can you eat after doing a postmortem on a kid like that? Ugh!”
The city of Seoul was extremely quiet. Very few people were on the streets. All public meetings were cancelled; businesses were, for the most part, closed. Only the food stores and street vendors selling vegetables were open and out. The officer’s mess was understaffed, and it took thirty minutes for them to get a sandwich. A few other officers were scattered about; almost all were Koreans. There were two other Americans in uniform. Their insignias indicated they were colonels of infantry and artillery. Nods were exchanged, but the physicians remained to themselves.
“Are there any other epidemiological indicators which you can share with me as to the nature of this beast, Dr. Timmons?” Matthews asked.
“Well, the veterinarians recently forced us to accept a veterinary epidemiologist on our team. Now, I am glad we have him. He went looking for cases in livestock, found a bunch in goats and sheep, and a few cows. Widespread too, up along the DMZ. Seems like the Koreans decided to establish a small ruminant industry a few years ago. They began to import dairy goats to establish a possible market for goat cheese, and sheep for wool and meat. He did some necropsies and brought back samples, fresh tissues for microbiological and virological culture and isolation, as well as some formalin fixed. His pathology reports indicate a red-hot pneumonia very similar to the descriptions you doctors of the dead are detailing. He says he has seen something like it before in the veterinary files at AFIP when he was a pathology preceptor there. He says it most closely resembles a red-hot strain of tularemia, one from what he called the paleoarctic branch of Francisella, or something like that.”
“You say this vet is a pathologist as well? If so, I would like to meet him.”
“Yeah, he was a veterinary pathologist preceptor at AFIP but isn’t boarded. He has specialty boards in veterinary public health, specializing in epidemiology. He has kind of a funny personality though, almost paranoid around the rest of the team. He doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor concerning us physicians. He’s cynical, almost antagonistic towards us MDs. He seems to think veterinarians are our equals. He has a real attitude problem.”
“Hmm. I guess you didn’t know I was a veterinarian before I was a physician. Veterinary school was harder than medical school. Veterinarians have a saying that physicians are just veterinarians who specialize in one species. I remember a gross anatomy test that was two questions long and took two hours. ‘Trace a drop of blood from the third phalange of the fifth digit of the dog through the entire circulatory system, naming all possible routes and variations.’ The second question was ‘compare that in the horse, pig, and cow and name all possible variations.’ Veterinary medicine today has almost as many subspecialties of human medicine. Small animal medicine today is only a few years behind human medicine in specialization and competence, Doctor.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that, although that does tend to deflate the ego somewhat. As to Veterinarian Major Bradley, I don’t know where he is right now. Probably off again, running around the countryside. One thing about him, though, he raised hell about wanting to carry a weapon. Seems he wanted a firearm of some kind, for his own protection, he claims. Says there are still bandits running around the countryside in South Korea, and he feels that it is likely that the North will come down screaming and running. He wanted both a rifle and a pistol, but the team leader nixed that. Instead, the Koreans gave him two armed guards, both of whom speak English very well, and an old Chevy Blazer to run around in. He seemed quite pleased about that. He says these Korean Rangers are the toughest in the world, and never, ever, get in a fight with them. Seems he did a tour here when he first came on active duty. Knows something about the people and the country. He said he wouldn’t at all be surprised if we are at war within a week. Of course, most the team thought he was full of crap. Now, I am not so sure of anything.”
“Where did he take his samples, do you know?”
Timmons shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. I believe I heard him remark that he split his samples, half to go back to AFIP and half to the Korean Veterinary Institute. He didn’t want much to do with the World Health Organization folks who are around here. I think they have a pathologist here, too, but I am not sure. I think they are over in Pusan. You might run over to the Korean Veterinary School here in Seoul and see what they say. We should be able to get you a driver and interpreter to get you there. As an American officer, they tell me you never, ever want to drive in this country. No doubt they speak English in that veterinary institution.”
The Korean colonel in charge of liaison with the American team looked at the eagles on Matthews’s shoulder boards and the gold caduceus on his blouse and nodded his head in a slight bow. In perfect English, he asked, “What can I do for you, Colonel?”
“I understand our veterinary officer has discovered similar cases in animals and taken samples to your veterinary institute. Is it possible to have a car and driver take me to your Institute of Veterinary Medicine, so that I might confer with them on what they have found?”
