But the death of my fiancée eighteen months ago isn’t there, nor is the fact that, when summoned, I still run a two-man bioterror team comprised of myself and my best friend, Major Edward Nakamura. My secrets from even my bosses are certainly not there either. That I wake sometimes from dreams of strangling one man and watching another die, frothing at the mouth, in a foreign private hospital, run by a foreign security service. Sometimes when I open my eyes from those dreams, I feel a presence in the room. Not a consciousness. Not a ghost. I don’t believe in that. So I’m unsure what is there, in the room with me. Memory? Blame? Rage? Regret?
My feeling when I lie awake those nights in my isolated home in Massachusetts, and wait for dawn, is complicated. It’s not guilt. I did what had to be done. Not fear, because I don’t care if something beyond our earthly comprehension is really there. “It’s vigilance,” Eddie once said. “You concentrate on what you need to do to protect others.”
But Eddie is an optimist. He always thinks things will turn out right.
Once waking, I thought I saw a small green glow in the corner of my bedroom. But later I decided I probably didn’t see it. Or it was the reflection of a headlight passing on the dirt road. Or an afterimage from rubbing my eyes. I’m a doctor. I’m a scientist. I hunt diseases and believe in facts. I don’t believe in little glowing lights. Or in religion. Or certainly, anymore, in a benevolent God.
Wilderness Medicine is in the file, too, and it was the official reason that Eddie and I were in Africa, thanks to a secret agreement our director — back in Foggy Bottom — made with Harvard. Wilderness Medicine is a new field, the art of getting fast care to patients in remote parts of the earth. Sometimes they are explorers or adventurers who have been injured in the Amazon, or the Arctic, or the deep sandstone canyons of Utah. A sea snake — bitten National Geographic photographer in Micronesia. A farmer dying from a new, resistant malaria in Peru. WM patients tend to be the very rich, who use the wilderness as playgrounds, or the very poor, who lack even basic medical knowledge or care.
“But Wilderness Medicine also includes disaster relief, rapid response to hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, outbreaks,” Admiral Galli, the director, had explained when the agreement was signed. “Officially, you’re going to Africa as relief doctors. You’ll work out of the giant aid base in northern Kenya. You’ll treat locals and aid workers. Vaccinations. Health classes. Diet. You’ll be based at the junction of three countries.”
“And unofficially?” I’d asked as the three of us sat in Galli’s townhouse office, walking distance from the White House, where we mapped outbreak games or war or terror scenarios like the one that had brought us to Africa.
The admiral frowned. He’s a small man, sixtyish, a former Coast Guard hero. We’ve been through so much that we sometimes address each other more like friends. He’s one of the few people left in Washington Eddie and I trust.
“Joe, there have been some disturbing reports coming out of East Africa.”
“What reports?”
“For two decades we’ve anticipated that if a bio-attack comes on U.S. soil, it will be in some recognizable form. Anthrax. Ricin. Bad stuff, but at least a form we know.”
I felt a chill. “Something new has appeared?”
“Threats, Joe. CIA warning. That an Islamic splinter group is trying to develop a new kind of bioweapon, somewhere in that cesspool.”
“Why go to the trouble to come up with something new, with so much other stuff out there?” Eddie asked. “Hell, someone must have stolen or bought half of those old Syrian germ stockpiles by now.”
“Because, the rumor is, if this new thing hits, nobody will associate it with an attack. It will be considered a natural outbreak. So no reprisals. Rumor is, the perpetrator will not claim credit, just allow panic to spread. They’ll step in later, after massive damage is done.”
“Who started the rumor?”
“The origin is Nairobi.”
“Who is the perpetrator supposed to be?”
A frown. The admiral went to his window, gazed out at happy, strolling American U students. State Department workers disappeared into the Metro. “That’s the problem. ISIS? Al Qaeda? They’ve both expanded in Africa. Truth is, no clue.”
Eddie said, “That’s helpful.”
“And the new bioagent? What are we looking for?” I asked.
Washington implies order: streets in a grid, stoplights that function, the Capitol dome that symbolizes — if not cooperation — at least some form of dominance over enemies. But our unit lived in the world of negative possibility. If the public knew what we’d stopped in the last two years, three hundred million Americans wouldn’t sleep at night. The unit hunted down other people’s nightmares. At night, we handled our own, and on our own.
Galli looked unhappy. “All we hear is, some group’s scooping up diseases. Look, the newest splicing equipment is small and easily available. We face three generations of well-funded bad guys, trained in our own schools. Forget any technical gap. Science-wise, we’re equal. The rumor is, they are close to coming up with something. So let’s hope it’s just one more false thread that won’t pan out.
“But if they’re there, find them,” Admiral Galli said. “If they’ve come up with something, obtain it, destroy it.”
“And the people?”
“Why even ask? Stop them. Kill them if you have to. Either way, get it done.”
“Lieutenant Rush? It’s Lionel Nash. Remember me?”
I froze, hearing the name over the sat phone. I’d been wobbling down the empty fuselage toward the cockpit. I had not heard from Lionel Nash in years.
He’s one of my old Marines.
The Hercules pitched and I grabbed the wall for balance. “Lionel? How are you?” But then something else hit me. The voice was too old to be him. My old Iraq crew would be in their late thirties or early forties now. But on my sat phone I heard an old voice, sick or half strangled with disease. A ninety-year-old throat cancer victim. A man with terminal emphysema; the wheezing of a smoker struggling to get words out, who would soon require an electronic voice box to aid plain speech.
“Remember… me, Lieutenant Rush? Well, you’re a colonel now, I hear.”
“Of course, Lionel.”
How did he get this number? And do I remember him? I’ll never forget him, or what we all found in Iraq.
The voice tried to be calm, but I heard panic beneath the surface. “We’re sick, sir. Over half of us. Sixteen dead. Hassan won’t let us bury them. He won’t let us leave. He took our phones and then gave me this one back and said make one call. I’m sending you a picture. Hassan thinks we brought the disease here with us.”
“How did you find me, Lionel?”
“I called your base from our field camp. I’m with the SUNY Albany East Africa project, sir. I’m an associate professor. I went back to school after the Marines. I’m a geologist now.”
“You’re out of the same base I am?” I was confused. Eddie and I bunked in an aid camp, not a science camp.
He coughed. The cough went on. “No, I’m at a satellite camp in the bush. We started out at your base.”
“Is there a doctor with you?”
“She died two days ago.”
“Do you recognize the illness?”