"You read it, you see what you think of the evidence he assembles, and you make up your own mind."
"It's not like he was there at the time."
"Often being there at the time," said Cecily, "means you don't see things clearly at all."
Mark looked up at her with his most sarcastic expression. "So you mean just because you have meetings with the President, that doesn't mean you're always right?"
"No, it doesn't," said Cecily, more than a little outraged. "I never said it did!"
Mark didn't even hint at an apology. In fact, he could barely hide his delight at having offended her. This was so not like him—he usually couldn't stand offending anybody and was all over himself with apologies.
He held up the book and backed toward the stairs up to the bedrooms. "I'm going to read this," he said. "I'm going to find out whether Christians are any different from other people."
"No matter what you find out," said Cecily, "you know me and you know our family and you know that you would never have to face a plague like this alone the way Chinma did."
"That's because we're a good family," said Mark. "Not because we're Christians."
"So you agree with Chinma," said Cecily.
"He's the only one around here who's actually lived through a plague," said Mark. And then he was gone.
DEFENDING THE DEAD
Human beings are not designed to keep secrets. Every aspect of our being is shaped for the sharing of information—through speech, gesture, facial expression, posture, and every other deliberate or inadvertent sign of emotion and intent.
Thus it should not surprise us that every would-be dictator, tyrant, conqueror, prophet, colonizer, politician, artist, and dogcatcher in history clearly signaled his intentions long before he acted, and in plenty of time for others to prevent them. Neither Hitler nor Churchill, neither Pol Pot nor Abraham Lincoln, ever did anything they hadn't told us and shown us they would do.
That they are rarely prevented has more to do with our inattention, cowardice, or ambition to ride his coattails than with his particular skill. Dogs might run from the dogcatcher as soon as they see the net, but they rarely tear out his throat and kill him, which is, of course, the only rational course of action for the dog that values its life, liberty, or happiness.
Jungles were not the ideal environment for using exoskeletons. The foliage didn't know it was supposed to get out of the way, and it had a nasty habit of hiding awkward geographical features. So there were no leaping moonwalks in the woods. That was for open country and urban combat. Instead, wearing the Bones allowed them to walk at a brisk, near-running pace without any fatigue.
With UASs patrolling the entire boundary zone between the Muslim north and the epidemic-plagued south of Nigeria—heavily armed drones like Predators and Reapers, or a few old unarmed Shadows and Hunters—Cole had a pretty good idea of where the enemy was, and which t
owns were their targets.
Not that any targets made sense for the Nigerian army—or, more properly now, the Nigerian Muslim army, the northern army, the Hausa-speaking army. Did they really think they could keep the epidemic at bay by creating a no-man's-land between the nicto-ridden south and the Muslim north? This epidemic was going around the edges of any wall you could put up. Eventually, it would get into northern Nigeria through Niger or Burkina Faso or Chad or Cameroon. They didn't have the money or manpower to seal their borders, and someone would get through, sneezing.
But for now, their scorched-earth policy was working—there were no cases of nictovirus reported in the Muslim north. And the Muslim nations of North Africa, beyond the Sahara, were perfectly happy for their brothers in Nigeria to do the bloody work of keeping the plague as far away from them as possible.
Cole's special-ops mission, on the other hand, was to stop the Nigerians from enforcing their quarantine—even as other U.S. forces, now helped by British, Brazilian, Australian, and Indian ships, worked to enforce President Torrent's quarantine. Cole was quite aware of the irony, and if he hadn't been, Cecily made sure his eyes were opened before he left. She was all smiles as she went straight for the jugular.
"So what you're saying, Cole, is that it's wrong for the Nigerian Muslims to use their army to protect themselves from the epidemic, but it's right for America to impose a quarantine on the entire continent of Africa."
"It's not a double standard," said Cole.
"Pray explain the difference," she said, handing him a plate of cookies. "Your bullets are made in heaven?"
"First of all, the government of Nigeria is supposed to be protecting the whole country. Instead, they're savagely attacking their own citizens to protect, not the uninfected, but the Muslim unaffected."
"So they're a bad government," said Cecily. "Name a good one."
"They're an evil government," said Cole, "and I don't have to name a good one, I only have to count the better ones, and that list is in the high double digits."
"So they deserve whatever you guys in your Iron Man suits do to them."
Actually, yes, but Cole understood she believed otherwise. "They're funding this genocidal treatment of the southern Nigerians by stockpiling the money from the sales of oil, all of which is found under the ground in southern Nigeria. So the north is stealing from the south the very means by which they're destroying them."
"The ironies of geography," said Cecily. "Again, is this grounds for your going in and killing?"