He rotated his head, trying to stretch tight, cramped neck muscles inside his hood, thinking a massage would do wonders for his aching back. Unbidden, an image of Lauren intruded, breaking his concentration. There was no way he could keep his focus while thinking of a massage and of Lauren at the same time. He glanced around the lab.
Everything was in place waiting for the damned bacteria to grow enough in culture mediums to do required biochemical and genetic testing to determine what species they were dealing with. He figured he might as well break for coffee and breakfast while he waited. There was nothing else for him to do here until cultures were ready. And he could check on Lauren and see if she had been able to get some sleep in the crowded dorm. He noticed she’d looked exhausted by the time they were able to crawl into their cots last night.
He stepped into the shower room and washed his Racal with disinfecting solutions, hung it up, and then took his body shower, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of chlorine in the water. Finally, he changed into his scrubs and went into the dining room. His staff and Lauren were finishing their morning meal when he arrived.
Joel Schumacher looked up from his powdered eggs and toast. “Hey Mason, how’re you doin’ this morning?”
“Good morning, Joel. Okay, I guess, other than feeling about ten years older than yesterday. How about you?”
“I’m cool. I got the Comsat link hooked up and we’re tied into the mainframe at CDC. We’re now officially on-line to Big Mamma.”
“Good. How about downloading everything the computer has on anthrax, especially technical specifics for identification and differentiation of all known subspecies and other bacilli that look like anthrax? I’ve checked the reference books we have here, but the computer will be more up-to-date and may give us some hints on other tests we can run.”
“Sure, boss. No problemo.”
Suzanne Elliot wiped orange juice off her upper lip and said, “Joel, while you’re doing that could you ask Mamma to give us all she has on incubation periods, infectivity, and modes of transmission of anthrax, as well as a printout of all previous outbreaks, especially ones that occurred in more modern times? I’d like to start a feasibility study of vector tracking and indexing of cases assuming a worst-case scenario if this bug happens to break our quarantine. Pretty soon I’ll have to issue a CDC BOL bulletin to doctors in Mexico City listing symptoms of respiratory anthrax.”
“You ought to know the symptoms of anthrax by heart, Suzanne. Didn’t you work with that bug when you were at Fort Detrick, developing all those germ warfare killers?” Jakes asked with his typical sarcasm.
Suzanne fixed Jakes with a flat stare. “No, as a matter of fact we didn’t. It didn’t fit the protocol since it wasn’t transmissible from person to person and there was no effective vaccine available to prevent infection of our own troops.”
Lauren nodded good morning to Mason, and then she asked Suzanne, “What’s a BOL bulletin?”
Suzanne glared at Jakes for a moment more and then she turned and smiled at Lauren, “Sorry about the jargon, Lauren, it’s just verbal shorthand we use among ourselves. BOL means ‘Be on the Lookout’ for. It’s a warning we send to local health departments and hospitals in areas where we fear an outbreak of a certain illness, especially a rare one like anthrax. The symptoms are rather general, a flu-like illness that rapidly develops into a severe bronchitis or pneumonia, followed as you know by bleeding problems. If this bug does escape the jungle and get into the city, we want doctors there to be able to recognize it and notify us of any new cases as early as possible so I can assign an epidemiology team from CDC to start to track them down and isolate any of their contacts. It’s the first step in stopping the spread of any infectious disease.”
“I see,” Lauren replied sleepily.
Mason poured himself a cup of coffee and heated an MRE containing eggs in the microwave. “Lauren, you’re looking rested this morning. I hope Sam’s snoring didn’t keep you awake last night.”
Lauren started a smile, which degenerated into a yawn. “A bomb could’ve gone off in the room last night and I wouldn’t have heard it. I can’t remember ever being so tired in my life. I don’t know how you people do it.”
Lionel Johnson chuckled and said in his deep voice, “Don’t think this is typical for us either, Lauren. Being a CDC investigator is kinda like being an obstetrician, ninety-five percent boredom and five percent terror.”
When Lauren laughed, Mason said, “Lionel’s right. Most of our work consists of reading health department reports and keeping statistics on routine disease outbreaks like flu and meningitis and AIDS. Only occasionally do we have a real Wildfire emergency and have to do intensive fieldwork, like now.”
“That reminds me, why do you call your group the Wildfire Team?” she asked.
Mason turned away as Shirley spoke up, “Mason’s an inveterate reader, Lauren, and his taste runs to medical thrillers. His secretary started using the term Wildfire Team from Michael Crichton’s book The Andromeda Strain, and it stuck. Our official title is CDC Special Pathogens Group, but that’s a little pompous for us, so we use the Wildfire designation among ourselves.”
Jakes poured himself a glass of tomato juice. “And it’s a lot of foolishness if you ask me,” he muttered.
Shirley couldn’t resist an opening for a shot at Dr. Jakes. “I don’t recall anyone asking you, Sam,” she said, winking at Lauren.
“Still, naming ourselves after a fictional potboiler, it’s undignified,” Sam replied.
“No,” Shirley said, giving Lauren another wink, “undignified is you wearing scrubs that droop in the rear showing your butt-crack every time you bend over like some redneck plumber.”
“What?” Jakes yelped, looking back over his shoulder at his rear end.
“Just kidding,” Shirley said sweetly, earning a scowl from Jakes.
“Now that you’ve heard from our resident experts on dignity,” Mason said, “would you mind accompanying my team on a search for the last missing student? We need to get the list of casualties finalized as soon as we can, so you can get back home.”
Lauren arched an eyebrow and her lip curled in a sly smile. “Trying to get rid of me? Is my company that bad, Dr. Williams?”
A few of the others grinned when Mason seemed embarrassed. “No, certainly not. It’s just that… um… I don’t want you to stay in a danger area any longer than necessary, that’s all.” As he finished talking the members of the team couldn’t help but notice his face was flaming red all the way to his ears.
Suzanne stood up, brushing crumbs from her hands as she looked from Mason to Lauren, a speculative gleam in her eyes. “Come on everyone, the chief is hinting that we’ve wasted enough time sitting around here shooting the breeze. Time to get to work.”
“While you’re searching the area, Joel and I will download CDC data on anthrax from Mamma and I’ll get the lab ready for tests on our cultures as soon as they’ve finished cooking,” Mason said, trying to regain some semblance of authority.
“By the time you get back, I’ll be ready to do specific tests to see if we’re really dealing with anthrax.”
Shirley asked, “Do you think we need to wear those damned Racals or just face masks?”
“I think we’d better err on the side of caution right now. Let’s use the Racals until we’re one hundred percent sure our bug is transmitted air to air only and not by contact. We should know for certain by this afternoon.”
Guatemotzi watched the soldiers from deep shadows below the jungle canopy, wondering why they wore those curious masks. In heat so intense under a midafternoon sun he felt they must be suffering greatly, for he knew they were unaccustomed to the heavier air of summer.