She was more concerned with getting a couple of Bandino burgers for the flight than getting Mary Brogan's clothes from the Teller's. Besides, the genuine "Mercy Jail" sweats weren't uncomfortable, she thought as she got into the helicopter that landed behind the police station.
Normally chopper flights didn't bother her. She'd been on enough. The nightmare of Threshold had begun with a chopper flight to the M.S.C. Bighorn. But the vibration and rocking bothered her this time. Morning sickness? Not so soon. It had to all be in her head.
Thankfully she managed to keep her burger down long enough to land at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. A commercial jet had been commandeered. Armed guards escorted a dozen people onto the plane. Arizona Senator John McCain was seated next to her. He was in jeans and boots. He looked at her sweat top. "Mercy jail?"
She nodded, taking a bite. "It's a long story, Senator. How about you?"
"My carry on luggage is forty pounds of elk jerky. Does that explain everything?"
She nodded. "Any casualties among your family?"
"Fortunately, no."
Notebooks and cell phones were stowed. The plane took off.
She took another bite of burger. She noticed that Senator Jim Kyl was chewing on a steak two rows over. "Sir, what's the mood on the Hill?"
"John. We're in this war too deep to stand on titles. The Hill is in a panic. Tollman and Kramer were both Democrats. When they were killed in that plane crash, the balance of power shifted. Last night, the Republican margin got even stronger. More Democrats died. In the Senate, the Democrats lost Clinton, Boxer and Kennedy. We only lost Dick Lugar." He shook his head as he started into a stick of elk jerky. "Why?"
Molly shook her head. "Three affluent women living within five miles of each other get exposed at the same time and from the same source. Two become healthy infectees and one dies horribly. We couldn't track down why." She thought for a moment. "They didn't infect those that they didn't think could make it. But all of them they thought would die within five or six years anyway."
"What?"
"Something I heard in Mercy. They deliberately didn't expose some people because they didn't think they would make it. But they weren't concerned because they would all die before the radiation hits Earth anyway."
"I've seen a lot of pork barreling in my time. I thought Threshold was part of it. I was about to put it on my web site as another example of government waste when I got the details from Senator Chambers. Then I really got scared."
She phoned Sean in the jail cell from the plane. She spent most of the flight on the phone trying to talk with him. The taxpayers would get quite a bill, but today she didn't care. The taxpayers were used to it. It wasn't even the first time Threshold had squandered their money – not with Arthur's on line gambling addiction. She needed it. This was all she could do.
More armed guards met them Reagan National. She was separated from the others and taken to a helicopter. In a few minutes, she was landing at the White House.