“Gotcha,” Cole said. “Sorry, don’t mean to pry too much.”
“No, that’s okay, I know it’s a little out of the ordinary.”
“Just one more question, I promise.” Cole glanced at her with a wry grin.
“Fine, fine.”
“Where’s your family actually from, then?”
She paused, and then said more quietly. “I’m Persian.”
It took him a minute. That wasn’t something you heard every day.
“Ah, Iran, that’s—”
“—all we need to say about that.” She started digging through her purse. “Sorry, it’s just a part of my past I’m not very proud of, that’s all.”
“Hey, no worries.”
Cole stared at the road ahead of him. Why such a touchy subject? Yes, Iran had been in the news a lot recently, but it’s not as if she needed to be ashamed about that. He tried to remember the article he read the day before, some fanatic government official spouting off about nuclear sovereignty and the Great Satan, as usual.
Torabi. The name had rung a bell when Shackleton first mentioned it on the phone. Torabi. Yeah, that was definitely it. Farrukh Torabi.
He stole a glance at Leila, who was reading something on her phone. It must be a fairly common name, right?
She looked up.
“So tell me a little more about these gorillas.”
The devastation was worse than he had ever seen.
And that meant a lot, for someone who was among the first on the ground during two Ebola outbreaks and managed more cholera epidemics than he cared to remember. Dr. Lars Olsson pulled on another pair of gloves and turned to the thin woman beside him.
“Could you hold off the vein for me?”
She knelt on the dirt floor of the dark tent and pressed a bare thumb into the angle of the moaning teenager’s arm. Although she was reluctant to say much, Olsson had managed to piece together the basics of the woman’s story. Newly minted in Kampala as a graduate nurse’s assistant, Grace returned to her family’s village in northeastern Uganda for her own wedding to a local shopkeeper. The raid was sudden and unexpected, crazed men appearing out of the forest with guns and machetes. After seeing her husband of only an hour hacked to pieces, she was handpicked for captivity by Kony himself. Now two decades later, the woman was long retired from the royal harem and had only been kept around for her medical expertise.
The large firm nodules ravaging the boy’s skin made it difficult to find a decent spot for the stick. Olsson ran an index finger slowly across the forearm and finally inserted the needle with a confident jab. He released a breath as the welcome flash of blood flowed back into the hub, then used one finger to push the rest of the catheter into the vein while removing the needle in a single fluid motion.
“You have a steady hand, doctor.” Grace withdrew her thumb and handed him the tape.
“Only because I haven’t always had competent assistants like you,” he said, a brief smile flashing on his tired face. He watched as the woman slowly injected a simple combination of saline solution and anti-inflammatory drugs. It wouldn’t do much in the face of such a nasty infection, but at least the medication might keep this suffering terrorist slightly more comfortable as he fought for his life.
A suffering terrorist. Olsson shook his head. Why did he even care about this teenaged killer’s fate? It wasn’t the first time, either, that he had been faced with the contradictory proposition of fighting for the life of one who had caused so much suffering. But such was the profession he had chosen, and now was not the time or place to begin making moral judgments about his patients’ life choices. Or lack thereof, as was the case for most of these LRA soldiers. He tried to remember that, as he moved on to the next patient. They were both victims and perpetrators of some of the most atrocious crimes ever recorded.
Olsson grimaced as he watched Grace pull an old glass thermometer from the man’s mouth and place it behind her ear. Oh well, there really wasn’t much of a point in the standard safety precautions at this point. If they were susceptible to the virus, so be it. They would be spiking fevers within days, or even hours, if the story Lukwiya had told him was true.
“What’s this one at?” Olsson asked, crouching down beside the tall form. He recognized the face and involuntarily reached up to feel his own bruised and swollen jaw. The man was almost completely unresponsive—quite the contrast from his flaunting show of violence outside Goma the day before.
“103.7. He’s in the worst of it now.”
“But no sign of the rash yet?” Olsson answered his own question by pulling back the man’s lower lip with a gloved finger. The gums were bright red with inflammation, coalescing ulcers oozing a sticky yellow fluid into the otherwise bone-dry mouth. It was not a pretty sight. And yet it fit the course of disease so perfectly. First, the general achiness and exhaustion, followed by a rapidly rising temperature. Then the rash and ulcers in the mouth, which quickly spread to the face and neck before making a leap down through the rest of the body. The centrifugal distribution of the rash, and growing pus-filled nodules which followed, was classic. Face, arms, legs, hands, and feet, with just a thin scattering across the back and torso.
Classic, yes. But classic for what? In all his forays into Africa, Olsson had never seen a case of monkeypox. Chickenpox, sure, that was everywhere. Even a few cases of camel pox during those first years in Ethiopia. But the monkeypox virus only rarely made the jump into humans, and when it did, it was usually suffered silently among jungle tribes far outside the reach of even his brand of Western medicine.
“Grace, you said you have seen this disease before, yes?”
“Yes, doctor.” She was wiping the man’s sweating face with a wet rag. “But it was not like this.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“The speed, doctor.”
“Yes?” She was clearly not one to volunteer any extra information.
“That other time, there were many days of fever, many days of rash, and many days of the lumps. Now it is all in just one day, maybe two.”
“Anything else?”
“So many are sick, and dying.” She turned away. Olsson knew that one of her sons had been among the first to succumb to the disease. “That other time, there were only three who showed these signs, and one who died. Now, you can see what has happened.”
And so he could.
Five large olive-green canvas tents were packed with over one-hundred young men, women, and children at every stage of the disease. The segregation had only started the night before, when he arrived and found the sick scattered throughout the camp. One pit grave on the edge of the forest clearing was already filled with the first twenty to die, and a second waited for its final occupants before being closed up as well. The only age group that seemed to have been spared so far was the older generation of top LRA commanders and a few mature women like Grace.
A quick assessment had confirmed Olsson’s suspicions. All those over about forty years old bore the telltale dark scarring on the left shoulder of a childhood smallpox vaccination. Unfortunately, these universal vaccination campaigns tapered off and then stopped completely a few years after the final push for eradication of the disease back in the 1970s. What was the point of spending so much money and effort vaccinating against a disease that no longer existed?
That was the theory, at least. But it left billions of the world’s youth unprotected from the most destructive virus ever known. The virus responsible for hundreds of millions of human deaths in the twentieth century alone—a much more prolific killer than the combined efforts of all that century’s violent wars. A virus that in reality had only been contained, not annihilated. Olsson had followed the debate with interest over the years—should the remaining stock of smallpox virus be destroyed, once and for all? Or was there some valid scientific reason to keep holding on to it, year after year, deep in the most secure inner sanctums of the CDC and VECTOR labs? The Americans he could trust, but Olsson had met one too many unsavory Russians trying to profit off the world’s disasters to be completely confident in the Biopreparat.
Olsson rubbed the raised scar on his own shoulder. He hardly remembered getting the vaccine as a young child. Was it really going to have some sort of protective effect now?
He hoped so.
And it did make a lot of sense. In the eighteenth century, the English physician Edward Jenner pioneered the development of the smallpox vaccine using cowpox lesions from a milkmaid’s hands. The same vaccine had been used with positive effect in that unexpected monkeypox outbreak in the States a few years ago. So the potential for cross-immunity with different types of pox viruses was clear.
There was another possibility, though, one that Olsson couldn’t get out of his head. What if his vaccination was only slowing down the course of this disease? Maybe his body, recognizing something similar to those viral particles it was exposed to so many years ago, could hold off the virus for a few extra days. But would it be enough to spare him completely?
Only time would tell.
“Doctor Lars!” A harsh voice interrupted his reflections, and Lars turned to see Vincent Lukwiya entering the tent. Grace froze, a mask of fear settling on her face.
“Mr. Lukwiya,” he replied, setting down a clear bag of saline solution on the edge of a blanket. “I hope you come with good news?”
“You will continue the treatments with the medicines we have provided.”
Lukwiya spat at one of the sick men’s feet.
“That’s a given, yes,” Olsson said. It wasn’t easy to keep the bitter sarcasm out of his voice. “But what of the antivirals? You said they could be flown in today.”
“You will continue with what you have.”
Olsson jumped up and lunged at the rebel leader, catching his leather jacket at the collar.
“And do you realize that your soldiers will continue to die, then?”
A bemused look grew on the man’s face, and Lars could hardly believe his own recklessness.
“There won’t be much of an army left to resist anything, regardless of what your prophet wants to believe.”
Lukwiya grabbed him by both shoulders and tossed him effortlessly against the side of the tent. Olsson bounced off the canvas and tripped over a leg, landing in a heap with one cheek resting awkwardly against the pocked face of a comatose patient. He rolled to his stomach and pulled his feet under him, tempted to try again.
But then he bowed his head and let out a strangled laugh. What was the point? Let them all die, if that’s what they wanted. Lars felt his fleeting rage dissipate into the stifling heat of the tent as he stood up and brushed himself off.
“That will be all, doctor.” Lukwiya turned to leave the tent but stopped just outside the entrance. “If you have any desire to leave these mountains alive, you would do better in the future to keep your emotions in check.”
Lukwiya collapsed into a rusty folding chair at the makeshift desk in his own tent. He felt for the scar on his shoulder again and ran his tongue across his gums. The doctor said he would be immune. Then why did he feel so tired, more tired than he should have been after a slow morning milling around the camp?
Doctor Lars. He was proving to be more trouble than he was worth. As long as there was some chance of getting resupplied, though, he could still serve a purpose.
Lukwiya looked at the shiny iPhone sitting on his desk. It was a Chinese fake, like everything else in the Congo. He knew that, but at least it impressed the young recruits.
And now it sat there, taunting him with its silence.
He had to try again.
The SIM cards were taped one to a page in a small green notebook, each one marked with the dates and locations at which it had previously been used. Those Special Forces swine had made the business of communication much more difficult ever since they joined the hunt, but Lukwiya’s quick implementation of strict controls had done the trick so far. At least the vast web of roaming mobile networks made this itinerate lifestyle somewhat more viable than it would have been otherwise.
He chose a Ugandan SIM that was last used in South Sudan five months earlier and touched a long number that appeared first in the list of recent calls.
Nothing.
He slammed a fist down on the plywood.
No ring. Not even a busy signal. Just a long beep, and then silence.
There would be no antivirals, no face masks, and no new needles. But those were the least of his concerns now. What of the money, and the blue iron drums guarded so carefully in the tent next to his own? It had been over a week since the last communication.
They were cutting ties.
You really mean to tell me that you just left her here?” Leila shook her head slowly as she looked up at him. “And with a Congolese veterinarian, no less?”
Veterinarian. Somehow she made it sound like a dirty word.
Cole glanced at his friend and mentor, Antoine Musamba, who was standing silently in the corner of the room.
“I trust Dr. Musamba’s judgment more than any of the physicians here in Musanze,” he said. “We knew your arrival was the best thing that could happen for Marna right now.”
“I’m sorry.” Leila turned to Musamba, eyebrows raised. The biohazard mask made it tough to interpret her actual feelings. “I’m just very concerned about Marna right now—I hope you can understand that.”
“Don’t even think of it,” the veterinarian replied. “We’re glad you are here to help.”
Cole let his eyes rest on Marna, even though it pained him to do so. Sweet Marna. Was it really only two nights ago that those flawless lips had brushed far too briefly against his own?
Her body contracted in an alarming dry heave, then went back to its persistent shivering. The effort added nothing to a half-filled bucket of vomit that sat at the edge of her bed. Glazed eyes stared into the distance, as they had ever since he and Leila arrived minutes earlier.
“So tell me again the course of her illness,” Leila said. She moved her gloved hands gently down Marna’s swollen neck. “You said she only spiked a fever last night?”