“Air systems clean,” Vargas replied.
“Any military activity inside Galilee? Maybe a drone went down, got recovered in town or nearby.”
“Nothing.”
“Do all the victims know each other?”
“Some do. Some don’t.”
Eddie asked, “Did some special event occur recently where townies and base personnel mixed?”
“I told you, the bar. Look, can I ask you a question? If they’re not coughing, how is it passing from person to person?”
“Don’t assume it’s contagious yet,” I said.
Chris Vekey stared at me.
“You still don’t think it’s contagious?”
“I’m just not assuming it’s passing from person to person yet. Could be point source. Water. Food. A building. Tell me about Galilee,” I asked LeHarve. “The town.”
“Anything specific you want to know?”
“Whatever comes to mind.”
LeHarve glanced at Vargas, then shrugged.
“Nothing special, Colonel. Boring old mining town. Its heyday was in the 1950s. Uranium mines nearby. They closed over a quarter century ago. They’re boarded up.”
Eddie’s breath caught. “Uranium?”
The agent’s eyes in the rearview mirror flicked to me. Vargas drove evenly and LeHarve’s voice was low and accented, her “a” an “ahhh,” as in Boston. Three white biohazard suits, folded and wrapped in plastic, lay in the trunk for us. The AC was on in the car, temp control at seventy.
I asked, “Has anyone visited the mines recently? Kids? Researchers? Any chance that water there mixes with the drinking supply for Galilee or the base? Do the town and base share a water source?”
The agents looked at each other. “I don’t know.”
“Well, someone needs to check.”
“I’ll do that,” Chris said.
I continued thoughtfully, “Nobody said anything before about uranium mines. About how radiation can change cell DNA.”
Eddie agreed, agitated over the lapse. “Nobody in D.C. saw a connection between a possible mutant organism and uranium mines? Hell, didn’t anyone think of the new bacteria coming out of Chernobyl? That fucking black fungus there? And how about old nuclear test sites here? The 1950s. Nevada. Anyone check if this location was downwind of those old tests? If this place got a dose?”
Chris said, “I’ll check that, too. But if this microbe originated in Africa, why are you asking about sources here?”
“Because maybe someone here went to Africa. Contracted it here and carried it there. Like the Spanish flu in 1918. Soldiers got it at Fort Riley, Kansas, and brought it to Europe. Agent Vargas, is there any possibility that someone from Creech or Galilee went to Somalia recently? Or Kenya? Missionary work? Scientist? Soldier? Hell, a tourist even?”
It turned out that the agents had not been told that anyone was sick in Somalia so they had not asked—goddamn need to know. Now that they knew, “We’ll check that, too.”
Eddie had had it with the lack of information, with goddamn need to know. He snapped out, “Well, what the hell have you been checking if not water, mines, or travel?”
“So far, sir, possible connections between anyone in Galilee or the protesters and extremist groups. We’ve been checking hard drives, phone records, background, even of locals.”
“Find any? Connections?”
“A couple of those wackos at the gate have visited some pretty dicey websites. We’re also tracking license plates. There’s a woman from Tulsa who is a second cousin of the Oklahoma City bomber, McVeigh. So! Website links to African and Mideast Islamic groups, and links to right-wingers.”
I turned to Chris. “We need a list of victims in Somalia. Background. Family. Travel. Check backward from Somalia, see if there are connections here.”
Chris looked unhappy. “We’re on that. State had a list of everyone in that research camp. SUNY had to submit applications. So far, nothing.”
The problem is that we’re in a race. A minute-by-minute race. Because this thing may be spreading. Leapfrogging. Like a forest fire that suddenly breaks out miles from the source, just touches down, and starts up in a new place.
Chris said, more softly, “Colonel, in the hospital, you take the lead. That’s why I brought you.”
Was that a peace offering? If so, it did little good. I thought, No, I’m here because you fired my boss and threatened me with military prison. Fuck you and fuck Burke, both of you.
Then I pushed away the hurt pride. I owed it to Lionel Nash and the other victims, and the sick people here. As we reached the base hospital, I saw two ambulances pull up to the emergency entrance. Medical personnel in protective gear moved to open the back doors.
Chris said morosely, “If this is spreading naturally, my God, at this speed, we better clamp down pretty damn fast. If it’s seeding, we may be up against the biggest mass murderer in history. I don’t know which is worse.”
SEVEN
Dr. Inoma Okoye, who met us outside at the hospital, was fiftiesh, brisk but personable, a pear-shaped smoker of pipes who smelled of Borkum Riff and Old Spice aftershave. He’d been flown in from Montana to manage the situation. I was glad to see him. In the small world of biowarfare prep, he was a standout. I’d met him at Harvard. I’d also read several of his articles on quarantine procedures in third world countries in Prevention Monthly. He was the kind of person you wanted in charge when improvisation was called for. He had no ego involved. Just smarts.
“Ah, Joe and Eddie! It is good that you came. Too often the decision makers hang back in the capital, and that’s how you make mistakes. And you were in Somalia? Yes?”
“Close as it gets,” Eddie said.
“Maybe you will spot something we missed. We are getting a whole new round of sick. Come.”
Okoye had been born in London to Nigerian diplomat parents. He’d gotten his med degree in Chicago, married here, and stayed. He’d worked in West Africa with Doctors Without Borders, in an Ebola outbreak. He was calm and unflappable, qualities I associated with top emergency doctors. There was no mistaking the quiet alarm in his eyes.
“We face something totally new. I have not seen anything like this, even in Africa. First we had the initial group. Now we are up to twenty-two, with more coming in hourly.”
To accommodate new arrivals, he’d directed modifications in the hospital, normally a fifty-bed facility that could handle emergencies, but not more complex cases.
“Joe, we brought in state-of-the-art portable patient isolator units, the British ones. Blocked off two floors, used air blowers and plastic sheeting to create makeshift air locks elsewhere; chemical showers for doctors; collection tanks for runoff; separate disposal units for biohazardous material.
“We sealed off air vents on other floors, replaced nurses with trained staff from Montana, and upgraded the lab in the basement. Now we can analyze samples here, even as duplicate versions are flown to Atlanta.”
“At least there’s air-conditioning here,” Eddie said.
I told Okoye, after we suited up, and as we headed upstairs, “In Somalia, everyone got sick at the same time. But not here, you said?”
“No. There was a gap. A first group as a mass. Then a one-by-one increase.”
“Uno,” Eddie asked, “you thinking what I am?”
“Yeah. In Somalia, since everyone got symptomatic at the same time, they were all infected at the same time. That suggests point source. Food. Water. Something common. But here, you have an initial infection, then it starts to spread to a different group.”