Free The Coward's Way of War by Christopher Nuttall

pocket.  He pulled it out, pressed his finger against the biometric reader concealed within the small device and swore as the message popped up on the tiny display.
     
    “Madam President,” he said.  He had to swallow twice before he could finish the message.  “We have five new cases of smallpox in America.”  He didn't want to say the next words, but there was no choice.  “Two of them are in New York, but the others are in three different cities; Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.  It's spreading.”
     
    “Whatever decision I make,” the President said slowly, “people are going to die.”
     
    Nicolas shook his head.  “People are going to die anyway, now that the disease is loose,” he said, grimly.  She had to understand just what was at stake.  “Your decisions will make the difference between losing a few thousand people and losing the entire country, if not the world.”

Chapter Six
     
    Did you ever see that movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones?  It hi t upon a very good point about the human condition – a person is smart, but people, a mob, is a panicky mass of stupid idiots.  You can't tell the people the truth at once, for they can't handle the truth.  How far would Bush have been able to go if he’d told the world the truth – that we would be at war against the terrorists for decades – or Roosevelt – that Uncle Joe Stalin was in fact a very nasty man?  People are stupid; remember that .
    - Press Secretary Fiona Dü rst
     
    New York, USA
    Day 5
     
    “ Doug!”
     
    Douglas Mann looked up in surprise from where he was weeding the garden.  Lindsey – his wife – had been nagging him for days about the need to work on the garden and he had finally set aside some time to work on it.  The last thing he had expected was his wife interrupting him, not after it had taken so long to convince him to do it in the first place.  He would have much rather have spent his day off with a beer and a few good movies – or a good novel, if there had been nothing on television or DVD – but his wife had insisted.
     
    “I’m here,” he called.  Despite his wife’s nagging, he was rather proud of the garden, even though he rarely had time to work on it.  Life as an investment banker was rewarding, but not full of free time, not with the economic crisis still underway.  “What is it, dear?”
     
    Lindsey burst out of the backdoor and ran into the garden.  At thirty years old, she was still the brown-haired beauty he had married, back when he’d been a young man.  She had borne two children and then gone straight back to work as a nurse, for they had needed two salaries to make ends meet.  Even now, when Doug was far more wealthy and successful than either of them had ever believed possible, she still worked when she could.  He had never tried to stop her, for he knew that caring for her patients meant a great deal to his wife.
     
    “Your bleeper is sounding,” she said, in alarm.  Doug looked up sharply.  As a part-time National Guardsman, the last time his bleeper had sounded had been during a riot in New York, two years ago.  The National Guard had been called up, but had never been deployed, not like the old days when they had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan several times.  As a younger man, he had enjoyed those testing times, but they had been hard on his marriage.  “What do they want with you today?”
     
    Doug shrugged, looking up into the blue sky.  It was just after noon and it was a lovely day.  He’d even considered suggesting that they forgot the garden for a day and headed to the beach, except his wife would never have forgiven him.  It could be anything, he knew, from an unannounced drill to a genuine emergency.  At least he wasn’t at work.  It was technically illegal to discriminate against National Guardsmen, who could be called to the colours and away from their workplaces at any moment, but employers hated losing them at