Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (9 page)

Dr. Giovanni waited patiently for Dr.
Littlefield to finish.

“The monkeys didn’t get infected through
direct contact. Monkeys in one room had come into the facility with
the virus, then monkeys in other rooms became infected and started
dying. There was no physical contact between the monkeys.”

“What are you saying?” Dr. Giovanni
asked.

“Like Ebola Reston—” Dr. Littlefield
hesitated. It was a frightening thing to think, a hard thing to
say. “
I think this one is airborne
.”

Nurse Mary-Margaret finished crying.
Sufficient tears had fallen to let her find her strength again.

Austin was sitting on the ground by then, not
caring that the smell was still coming from the buckets or even
that it seemed to be permanently burned into his nostrils. He was
watching the late afternoon shadows grow across the town.

“Are you okay?” Nurse Mary-Margaret
asked.

“I’m okay.”

“After you clean those, you should rest,” she
said.

Austin shook his head and said nothing. He
still had a lump in his throat. His thoughts were on Rashid,
Margaux, and Benoit. They’d grown close in the previous seven
weeks.

He thought about their hike up to Sipi Falls
that first time. It was a little bit dangerous, but thrilling and
magical. They’d met a coffee farmer up there who’d let them sleep
in his storehouse. It was far from fancy—just a dirt-floored
shack—but the family’s kindness eclipsed the accommodations. To
think that a coffee farmer who made less in a year than his dad
made in a week was happy to share what he had with some wide-eyed
mzungu kids gave Austin optimism for the future of humanity. They’d
all become friends after that, and the kids had been up to visit
the farmer several times. It was the kind of experience neither he
nor his friends would ever dream of back in Denver. It was so much
more real than a t-shirt from the Louvre or a postcard from
Rome.

Austin looked away from his thoughts and
said, “I’ll be okay, Mary-Margaret. You go ahead. I’ll be inside in
a minute.”

“Okay.” Nurse Mary-Margaret turned and headed
back to the hospital.

The familiar sound of tires on gravel caught
Austin’s attention. On the road coming into town from the east were
two Land Rovers, with paint shiny under red dust. Curiosity kept
his eyes on the Land Rovers until they came to stop on the road in
front of the hospital building. Car doors opened. Men in bright
yellow Tyvek suits with hoods, gloves, goggles, and surgical masks
got out.

Thank God. The cavalry had arrived.

The sky was getting dark and the cicadas
started their nightly ruckus. Austin walked in through the back
door of the ward with clean buckets in hand. Immediately, he sensed
something wasn’t right.

The guys in the yellow HAZMAT suits nearly
glowing in the lantern light had arrayed themselves around the
ward, seemingly doing nothing except watching. One was kneeling
over Rashid, hands busy. In the center of the ward, three of the
Tyvek-clad guys were squared off, facing Dr. Littlefield and Nurse
Mary-Margaret in their pitifully inadequate—by
comparison—protective gear. Between them stood a tall man in some
kind of light blue protective suit.

Austin couldn’t make out what was being said,
but it sounded tense. The body language was combative.

He quietly crept through the ward, trying not
to be noticed, placing the empty buckets back in the spots where
they’d been, and carefully navigated around the rows of patients to
get to the center aisle, a six-foot wide strip up the center of the
building. It was the only part of the floor not covered by a cot or
colorful plastic woven mat.

Careful not to get too close to Dr.
Littlefield and the others, he worked his way across the rows of
villagers lying on the floor. He approached Rashid from the
opposite side of the man who was tending to him.

Things weren’t making sense. The
HAZMAT-covered aid workers weren’t rendering aid to anyone except
Rashid. Austin looked down at Benoit as he stepped over him. Benoit
was unconscious, pale, and splotched. Austin knelt beside Rashid
and said to the person in the yellow suit, “Who
are
you?”

The man in yellow looked up at Austin, said
nothing, and went back to his work.

Seeing that one of the men in yellow was
coming toward them, Austin said to the man at Rashid’s side, “I’m
Austin Cooper. This is my friend, Rashid.” When the man didn’t
respond, Austin ventured a guess. “Are you Najid? I’m the one who
called you.”

The other Tyvek-clad man arrived and roughly
put his hand on Austin’s shoulder.

The guy at Rashid’s side gestured to the
other and the hands came off of Austin. He said, “I am a doctor.
Mr. Almasi brought me here.”

“Najid Almasi? Rashid’s brother?” asked
Austin.

“The same.”

Austin looked down at Rashid. “Can you help
him?”

“I don’t know.”

Austin was finding it very strange talking to
a man clad in a yellow Tyvek suit, with goggles and a
duckbill-shaped surgical mask. He felt like he was talking to a
mannequin. “Is it Ebola?”

“It would seem.”

“Do you have a name?” Austin asked.

“Yes.”

Austin waited for the name, but the yellow
doctor didn’t share it.

The doctor pointed at a big cardboard box in
the center aisle that had gone unnoticed by Austin until the doctor
pointed. The doctor said something in Arabic, and the man with the
rough hands knelt down and dug into the box, coming out with a few
IV bags. He brought them over and elbowed Austin aside.

Keeping his comments to himself, Austin
stepped to the other side of Benoit, becoming aware of raised
voices coming from the people at the center of the ward. Looking
around, he figured the guys in yellow Tyvek were together. The guy
in the blue plastic suit, with goggles and mask, had to be the
doctor from the WHO Nurse Mary-Margaret mentioned. He was pissed
and raising his voice as he towered over the other men in yellow.
The angrier he got, the more pronounced his Italian accent became,
until Austin heard a word that took his breath away.

“Airborne
.
”

Airborne?

Oh my God.

Austin had no medical training but he knew
enough to understand that the words Ebola and airborne were a
bone-chilling combination.

“Ebola is
not
an airborne disease.”
The man at the center of the yellow trio was doing the talking for
the Tyvek-clad group. His stance and the tone of voice indicated he
was in charge. Austin surmised he was Najid Almasi.

“Look around, you fool!” the Italian man
yelled. “There is no explanation for all of this except Ebola. Even
if it isn’t airborne, how could you take the chance? Do you know
how many people you would kill if it
is
airborne? Do you?
Including yourself? Is
that
what you
want
?” The
Italian doctor looked past Najid at the other HAZMAT guys, and
yelled, “Is that what
any
of you
want
?”

Not a one of them reacted to the
outburst.

Dr. Littlefield said, “Please, Mr. Almasi,
I’m asking you not to take Rashid out of here. But
do
understand, I
will
forbid it. This is not a decision for the
family to make. It is a medical decision.”

“You forbid it?” Najid laughed. “You are
mistaken, Doctor.”

The Italian doctor spoke up, “No,
you
are mistaken.” He pointed at Rashid. “That boy will not leave this
place until he has recovered. Do you understand?”

Najid didn’t say anything after that, instead
staring inscrutably from under his protective gear.

The Italian doctor wasn’t intimidated. He put
his hands on his hips and made it clear that he had no intention of
considering any position other than his own.

After a few tense moments, Najid abruptly
turned, and without a word walked toward the door. As he passed
Rashid’s bed, he said something in Arabic to the doctor. The doctor
responded with a few Arabic words. Except for the doctor at
Rashid’s side, all of the other men in bright yellow filed out
after Najid.

Austin looked at Dr. Littlefield, the Italian
doctor, and Nurse Mary-Margaret. They seemed as surprised as
Austin.

A moment later, Rashid’s doctor came to a
stopping point, stood up, and followed the others out the door.

It wasn’t that Paul Cooper was pro-gun or
anti-gun. He simply didn’t have one. He didn’t have any interest in
hunting. He didn’t worry that his house would be burglarized or
that he’d get mugged and have to shoot the mugger. He never
imagined himself taking up arms against the government or
threatening to shoot the neighbor’s dog. And though he often
fantasized about shooting holes in the cars of particularly
obnoxious drivers, those thoughts never evolved past the fantasy
phase. There was no scenario in Paul’s imagination that required
him to have a gun in his hands.

However, when the fifth case of Ebola on
American soil was reported on the news, he worried. And he worried
enough to find himself sitting in his truck before work, parked in
a little strip mall parking lot, ambiguously positioned for access
to the little barbecue joint or the gun store next door—a gun store
he knew about only because it was next door to the barbeque
joint—the only gun store he could find without Googling.

Five cases of Ebola in New York in two
days.

The first had prompted that trip to Costco.
Now he was sitting in front of a gun shop wondering if he was crazy
for thinking prepper thoughts. Did Colorado have a mandatory
waiting period on handguns? Would he pass a background check? Did
that even pass in the last election? What about assault rifles? An
AR-15 would be cool. At least that’s what he’d been thinking in the
back of his mind ever since he’d held his buddy John’s AR-15. What
about a shotgun? He remembered hearing that shotgun purchases
didn’t require a waiting period. But the truth was, there wasn’t a
thing he knew about guns that he didn’t pick up from watching TV.
That meant he probably knew just enough to hurt himself with a
gun.

And that brought his thoughts back around to
the top of the circle. Did he need a gun? Was he overreacting to
the news?

He’d had similar thoughts when he was
stocking up with prepper food at Costco. And though it embarrassed
him when Heidi told the neighbor, he felt better knowing he had it.
Why? Because if an Ebola epidemic spread across the country,
everything would go to shit. Of that, he was sure.

With people bleeding out in the street from
Ebola, who would go to work at the grocery store—or anywhere for
that matter? When contact with a coworker or a customer could lead
to a horrific death, going to work would be the last thing on
anyone’s mind. Not even the police or the National Guard would be
on duty. They’d all be home, either afraid of the virus, or
choosing to put the protection of their families above the
protection of strangers. Not an unreasonable position to take.

That implied supply systems would break down.
Law and order would crumble. Power systems might stop delivery, and
water might stop flowing. The most modern country in the world
would take a hard backward turn to the Dark Ages, leaving three
hundred million people a few days or a few weeks away from their
first ever experience with real hunger.

That’s when things would turn ugly.

Paul was a parent. And whenever he asked
himself that one question—what wouldn’t he do for the welfare of
his children—the answer was always the same. There was pretty much
nothing
he wouldn’t do for his children’s sake.

It stood to reason that other parents felt
the same.

That led to the next step in the logical
chain. A parent who had to look at his starving children would go
to the grocery store and get the last of what was available,
despite the infection risk and the risk that bad people would be
out doing bad things. But it wouldn’t be long before even those
grocery store shelves emptied out. Where would a man with hungry
children turn after that?

The neighbors’ houses. That was the simple
answer.

He’d look at his neighbors, but he’d be
afraid to go into the houses where the residents had died of Ebola.
Instead, he’d open his gun safe and decide that his odds were
better going to the house of the guy who’d put the Obama sticker on
the back of his car while living in one of the reddest counties in
the country.

Because in Paul’s mind, people who voted
Republican were more likely to own a gun than people who voted
Democrat. He guessed he wasn’t the only person in the country who
thought that way. So that bumper sticker—long since removed—was a
target for those neighbors of his who remembered he’d put it there.
It said,
Come take my food. I don’t have a gun
.

Of course, Paul knew he could be wrong. He
was letting his fears run around in escalating circles, but he
still thought rationally enough to know that. As he sat in his
truck, looking at the gun shop, smelling barbecue, and working
himself into a panic, he couldn’t get past the fear that Ebola was
coming. And when the food ran out, his neighbors that were still
alive were coming, too. They’d have their guns, and thanks to
Heidi, they’d know he had a hoard of food in his basement.

Paul needed a gun.

Standing on the porch, evaluating his
options, Najid waved his men away. “Dr. Kassis, stay up here with
me.”

The other six men spread out by the Land
Rovers and took to keeping lookout over what they could see of the
village in the dark.

Najid turned to Dr. Kassis. “Do you think
they are lying?”

“Who is to say? I was never good at reading
other men’s hearts.”