“While you two do that, I’m going to start an IV on Dr. Matos and begin pumping all the antibiotics we have into him as soon as I can. With any luck and an early start, he might just beat the odds.”
“There are two bits of good news,” Shirley added.
“What are they?” Mason asked.
“One is we can get out of these damned Racals. If it is respiratory athrax we’re dealing with, the only protection we need will be millipore-filter face masks and gloves when we’re working with the bodies.”
“What’s the other good news?”
“Now we can make Dr. Jakes smoke those wolf-turds he calls cigars outside.”
Mason wisely said nothing about Sam’s cigars as he stepped through the heavy door at the end of the lab and into the so-called hospital chamber, where Dr. Matos was lying on one of the cots.
As he entered the next room, Mason could hear Shirley saying, “Sam, I prefer gin and Seven-up, and I’ll let you know what my friends drink when we get to the Recovery Room.”
Mason approached Dr. Matos, noting his nose was running and his eyes were already red-rimmed and bloodshot. Matos’s skin was pale, and he was sweating profusely and shivering with chills.
Mason couldn’t tell if these symptoms were due to early infection or merely a manifestation of fear and terror at what he was facing.
He glanced at a monitor suspended above the bed attached to Matos by means of numerous wires and probes. The temperature digital readout showed a fever of 99.7, and his blood pressure had dropped to one hundred over sixty with respirations of thirty per minute. His oxygen saturation, showing the concentration of oxygen in his blood, had fallen from its normal of ninety percent to seventy-five percent — all ominous signs pointing to a severe infection and possible incipient lung involvement.
Jesus, Mason thought, it has only been a few hours since his exposure and Matos is already showing symptoms of infection, serious infection. This was one hell of an aggressive strain, to be manifesting itself so quickly. He began to have doubts that antibiotics were going to be of much use against a bug this virulent.
“Eduardo, how are you feeling?”
“Like hell, Dr. Williams, like hell. I feel as if I am coming down with the flu.” He turned watery eyes on Mason and grabbed him by the arm. “I must again protest this… this incarceration. I need to go to a hospital where I can receive appropriate treatment.”
Mason slowly removed Eduardo’s fingers from his Racal sleeve. “Please, Dr. Matos, be assured we are making real progress here. We think we’ve identified the bacteria that’s making you ill, and the good news is that it’s usually treatable. I’m going to start an IV and begin treatment with a series of antibiotics right away.”
“Oh, thank God!” Eduardo began mumbling to himself in Spanish with his eyes tightly closed.
As he swabbed Matos’s arm with alcohol and started the IV solution, Mason didn’t think it necessary or prudent to tell him his chances of survival were, at best, only fifty-fifty. A flip of a coin would determine whether he lived or died, and if it was to be death, it would be a terrifying, excruciating death with unimaginable suffering.
As he worked over the stricken man, Mason tried not to think about how many other people might end up facing the same kinds of suffering if the bug was allowed to escape the jungle and get loose among the teeming population of Mexico City, just a few hundred miles to the north.
He had a sneaking suspicion that with a bug like this, all the antibiotics in the world might not be enough.
Chapter 13
As the Wildfire Team worked feverishly to save Dr. Matos’s life, Malcolm Fitzhugh waited in line before the Aero Mexico ticket counter in Mexico City.
He grinned to himself as he remembered how frightened he’d been when the big Mexican Army truck filled with soldiers had pulled him over on the road north and how relieved he’d been when he saw the sergeant in charge of the garrison was a man he’d done business with many times.
It was the matter of five minutes to cross the man’s palm with more money than the soldier made in a month to get him back on his way to Mexico City.
He laughed out loud, and now here he was.
Neighboring ticket buyers shied away from the rough-looking and even worse smelling Fitzhugh, who still wore the sweat-stained khaki safari jacket and pants he had been wearing thirty-six hours previously in the jungle when he bought the collar.
Fitzhugh clasped his canvas duffle bag close to his chest as if afraid a thief might attempt to rob him of the treasure it contained. His red-rimmed, crusted eyes flicked nervously back and forth, searching the terminal for policia or customs agents who might be paying attention to him. He knew they would arrest him immediately if they discovered what he was carrying or even suspected he’d come from the jungle near Tlateloco.
The quarantine was all over the news, but Fitzhugh wasn’t worried about catching whatever bug killed those American students. After all, he’d never gotten close to the village, having met the Indio boy a few miles north.
He patted the duffle bag that contained the artifact that was going to make him rich… lucky. Maybe fate was finally smiling down on him after all these years of a hardscrabble existence.
An ex-commando in the British Army, Fitzhugh now eked out a meager living smuggling pre-Columbian artifacts and antiquities from Mexico to the United States. All that was about to change… he had finally hit the big score, a find that was going to reward him with riches beyond his wildest dreams.
He chuckled to himself, thinking fortune had finally repaid him for his years of wandering through bug- and snake-infested jungles searching for small statues and beaten-silver bracelets among the Indios of Mexico and Central America.
The man he had called in Houston was as excited as Fitzhugh about his find and was talking of a fee in the high six figures, an amount that would enable Fitzhugh to leave the jungle forever.
Fitzhugh chuckled again, then choked and covered his mouth as his chest tightened and a deep, phlegmy cough exploded from his lungs. His eyes itched and burned and mucus dribbled from his nose, matting and crusting in his three-day-old beard.
A woman standing in line ahead of him turned and glared at him as he coughed again, spraying her with droplets of phlegm. He held his hand up and attempted to apologize, but she had already turned to her companion, saying something about inconsiderate assholes loud enough for him to hear.
Fitzhugh shook his head and pulled a stained handkerchief from his pocket and held it against his mouth as another cough racked his body. He was mildly alarmed when he saw the bloodstains on it, but attributed his symptoms to the chronic malaria he suffered from, another memento of his years in the jungle.
When he finally got to the front of the line, a pretty young female ticket agent stared at him with a worried expression on her face. “Señor, are you all right? You appear to be ill.”
Fitzhugh waved his handkerchief in the air, “I’m fine, just a touch of malaria.” He coughed again, sending a spray of spittle over the counter in front of the agent who leaned back with a look of disgust on her face as Fitzhugh placed a wad of crumpled hundred-dollar bills in front of her.
“One-way ticket to Houston please,” he rasped through a throat that felt as though it had been flayed with razor blades.