She was about to put it back in her pocket and start in with the personal protective equipment again when the phone started buzzing in her hand.
“This is Leila.”
“Leila, it’s Bill Shackleton, and I’ve got Travis on the line, too.” Her boss’s deep round voice was comforting and intimidating at the same time. What was he going to think of her progress so far? “Is everything okay over there? We haven’t heard from you all day.”
“Yes, sorry, everything’s fine.” She paused. Might need to clarify that. “We’ve been crazy busy ever since I landed in Kigali this morning, but I have the samples and should be on my way back to you first thing tomorrow.”
“Leila, it’s me, Travis.” They had only been dating for a few weeks, but his voice had an immediate soothing effect on her. “You don’t sound like everything’s fine. What’s going on over there?”
She took a deep breath.
“There’s a girl here, a South African helicopter pilot working with the park system, who’s sick. Really sick. She might die on me right here.”
“Is it the same virus, Leila?” It was Shackleton again. “Do you have a human case there in Rwanda?”
“According to the tests Dr. McBride is using, yes.” She looked in through the window to see Cole leaning over the bed. It didn’t look like he could hear her, but she lowered her voice anyway. “I can’t say I’m totally convinced he knows what he’s doing, but he promises these assays were developed at the CDC a few years ago.”
“He’s right,” Travis said. “I’ve been looking over the results he e-mailed from the dead Virunga gorillas, and it’s definitely a dead-on match for monkeypox.”
“Well that’s what I’m skeptical about. Sure, the disease looks like monkeypox and tests like monkeypox, but it’s not acting like any monkeypox virus we’ve ever seen before. If this girl really caught the virus from the dead gorillas, or more likely from the orphan that she’s been helping to care for, then we’re looking at an incubation period of less than forty-eight hours.”
“Right,” Shackleton said. “And that wouldn’t just be unique for monkeypox, but for any of the poxviruses known to science.”
“It’s not just the incubation period, though,” Leila continued. “The lesions on this sick orphan gorilla have progressed through all the classic pox stages since they picked him up off his dead mother a couple of days ago. He was right on the edge yesterday, high fever, labored breathing, no appetite, but as of an hour ago he seems to be doing a lot better.”
“Did you get some kind of samples from him?”
“Yeah, fortunately Dr. McBride has a bunch of viral culture transport kits laying around.” She felt for the hard plastic tube in her other pocket. “How am I going to get all this stuff through customs?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Travis said. “We’ll send the export paperwork over to you there.”
“And what about—”
Her boss interrupted. “Our bigger concern, Leila, is whether or not we can even let you travel, now that you’ve theoretically been exposed to the virus.”
She caught her breath. That thought had not even crossed her mind.
“Seriously, Bill? You personally inspected my smallpox vaccination to make sure it took, remember?” She wasn’t going to get stuck there in Rwanda. Not as the only real doctor and representative of the CDC just as a full-blown epidemic reared its ugly head. “And we’ve been following strict BSL-3 precautions. There’s absolutely no chance I’ve been exposed.”
She knew she was stretching the truth just slightly.
No response.
“Look, lock me down in the slammer when I get back there, for all I care. Just don’t make me stay here.”
Still silence. The slammer was a Biosafety Level 4 isolation suite at the CDC, the nickname adopted from an equivalent setup at USAMRIID. Scientists who had been exposed to dangerous pathogens were quarantined there until it was clear they were not actually infected.
Maybe she could try a more noble argument.
“The samples need to get back to you now, if we’re going to figure out what’s really going on with this virus.”
“Much as I hate to say it,” Shackleton finally said, “That might just be your ticket home. We already checked with DHL and FedEx, and neither of them is willing to touch the samples. We need to start the full genomic sequencing as soon as possible, and there’s nowhere in Rwanda that’s set up for that level of molecular analysis. If this virus isn’t monkeypox, or it’s some new mutant strain, we need to know and adapt our response accordingly.”
“Your response,” Leila said. “Does that mean there’s more of a response in the works than sending your newest EIS officer straight into the hornet’s nest?”
The words came out with more stinging accusation than she intended.
“It’s tricky,” Shackleton answered. “All air travel is shut down here on the East Coast due to this hurricane. And now we’ve gotten confirmation that both the airport in Goma and the Congo-Rwanda border crossing are effectively shut down due to the increased rebel activity in the area. The World Health Organization and MSF chartered a flight trying to send a team from Nairobi, but they got turned around mid-way to Goma.”
“Wow.” Leila suddenly felt even more alone.
“If you think you’re in a bad way, just be glad you’re not at that aid hospital in Goma right now. Half their staff and patients are sick, and they’ve just started getting reports of the disease in other parts of the city.”
“I heard,” Leila said. “Apparently their director was supposed to be arriving here last night with samples from the index case, but he never showed up.”
“Not a lot of good news right now.” Shackleton’s voice was steady. “But you’re right. We need those samples, and you’re our safest bet on bringing them back here. Just promise me you’ll be on that plane tomorrow.”
“Yeah, take care of yourself, Leila.”
She could see Travis saying the words in her mind and wished she were already back there, curled up in his arms.
“Bye for now. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Leila lowered the phone from her ear. She unconsciously reached for a new set of protective gear from a box beside the door, her professional call of duty overruling the aching hunger that had hit minutes earlier. But then she paused, remembering the e-mail from her brother that still sat unread in her inbox. Maybe there was time now? A quick peek through the window showed nothing had changed. Cole sat at the bedside, the fingers of one hand wresting against the inside of Marna’s wrist while the other held the propofol syringe.
Maman.
That was all she had seen as she watched the messages slowly load on the lab’s borrowed wireless. The craziness of the last few hours had made it easy to push to the back of her mind.
Such a blunt and unnerving subject line.
Maman
. Momma. And so typical of her brother. She was always glad to hear from him, relieved when he had first reached across the void three years ago to begin mending their fractured relationship. But his messages never brought the healing and reconciliation she was really hoping for. He seemed to believe she was still going to come back one day—to Iran, her parents, and even Islam.
My dear sister.
Sohrab always wrote in their native Farsi, even though his English was still just as good as her own.
Maman is dying of lung cancer. She begs you to come home, to kiss her on the cheek. It is her only wish, and Baba has given his consent. There is not much time.
She read the message again and shuddered.
That was it.
Why this? Wasn’t one woman’s imminent death enough for the day? Leila felt the anger welling up in her chest. Fifteen years of rejection and silence, and now Maman was asking this of her? The last time Leila had seen her parents, she was a fresh-faced, rebellious eighteen-year-old, stepping on a plane to London to begin her biology studies at Oxford. They had drawn the line at an American university—there was just no way to make that work given Baba’s position in the government. But once she tasted that freedom, even the stodgy British version of it, there was no turning back. And when Harvard accepted her for medical school, she’d been issued an ultimatum.
Come home now, or you will have no home with us.
It was an easy decision.
The cigarettes, those hated cigarettes. All the arguments with her mother as a newly health-conscious teenager and aspiring doctor—all for nothing. Leila could almost hear her own pestering voice, watching her mom dig a crumpled pack of Winstons from the trash one more time.
Don’t you want to live to see your grandchildren, Maman?
And yet, somehow Leila never believed she was really going to die from it. Or from anything.
And now this.
Leila closed her eyes. The anger had spread out from her chest to the very tips of her fingers and toes. She wanted to run, and keep running, until she was in a place where no one knew her, no one expected anything of her, no one loved her with such a broken, hurtful love.
The rain started slowly, one drop hitting her bare cheek, then another. Within seconds, it was a downpour, silencing the insects and filling the air with the heavy scent of the eucalyptus above her. Leila relaxed her shoulders slowly, and her eyes spilled over, tears mixing with the rain now soaking her face.
Of course she would go.
She had to.
It was getting loud out there. Too loud. Captain Jake Russell stepped out of his tent and walked over toward the enormous bonfire in the center of the camp. The laughter was universal, but he still had a hard time making much sense of the rapid French that had by necessity become the language du jour with their newest hosts. Apparently a year of Swahili at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey was not enough when you were chasing terrorists across international borders. Jake’s team had started off in South Sudan, spent a few months in the Central African Republic, and just a week ago made the hop down into the Congo. He had yet to figure out how this crazy self-proclaimed prophet and his ragtag army simply melted into the landscape.
The overpowering scent of roasting meat was hard to resist, and as he got closer he could see that his guys were looking longingly at the evening fare of their Congolese counterparts. The carcasses of three young goats, purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars and slaughtered on site that afternoon, were now stretched out over the open flames.
“Hey Mikey,” he called.
Master Sergeant Mike Denison was his chief enlisted soldier and non-commissioned officer in charge of their twelve-man team. He was also the team’s dog handler. Even though Jake had a good six inches on him, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against the career Special Forces operator. Mikey was built like a bull.
The sergeant stepped away from the group around the fire. He held a short black leather leash in one hand but didn’t seem to need it. His multipurpose canine, a tall fawn Belgian Malinois named Rico, stayed right by his side. This was Jake’s first time working closely with a special ops dog team, and he was hooked.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
Jake waited until the two were right beside him, looking back towards the fire.
“That goat smells pretty good, huh.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“Me and Rico here won’t argue with that. Hell of a lot better than whatever MRE I’ll have to suffer through later on tonight.”
The Meal, Ready-to-Eat was the military’s answer to unsanitary and unpredictable local food on missions like this one. Jake’s team had been relatively content to follow the rules so far, but there was no fire-roasted goat menu option in the MREs to go along with the chili and macaroni, pork rib, and hated veggie omelet. And that goat was calling his name, just like he knew it was for the rest of his soldiers. Canine included.
“You know, Mikey, as a commissioned officer in the United States Army, I’m occasionally called upon to use appropriate discretion when faced with what might seem to be contradictory directions.”
Jake spoke slowly and deliberately, letting loose with the south Texas twang that he usually tried harder to mask.
“This is true.”
“On one hand, we’ve been instructed to fraternize with our host nation’s military, learn about their culture and strengths as we work alongside them to achieve our goals. But on the other, we’re told to stick with our provided rations, not endanger the health of the troops by experimenting with local cuisine.”
“It ain’t easy, sir.”
“Well I’ll tell you what.” He threw his head to the side, catching a quizzical expression on Mikey’s face. “I’m going to make an executive decision here.”
“I think I like where this is going.”
A high-pitched beeping interrupted them.
“That’s the sat phone, shit. They might have something for us.”
Jake took off jogging back to his tent.
“Oh come on, man,” the sergeant yelled after him, and Rico let out a single bark. “You’re really gonna leave us hanging like that?”
Jake stopped at the entrance.
“The goats are fair game—just save some for me!”
“Jake, it’s me, Ed.” Colonel Ed Alsina was his boss’s boss, commanding officer of the whole Kony-hunting task force based out of Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti. Jake loved the way everyone in the special ops community was on a first name basis. Even though this relatively small point was often the main thing outsiders noticed, it was really just one of a hundred ways their world was different from the larger military culture. “You guys holding up okay over there?”
“Oh you know us, sir, just sitting around the campfire, holding hands and singing Kumbaya.”
He had filed a SITREP just twenty minutes earlier, so the colonel already knew what they had seen and learned that day.
“Of course, I wouldn’t expect any less of you.” A deep laugh. “Going to patch you through to someone from the NSA. They got in touch with us just now, wanted to share some intel with guys like you who might actually be able to act on it.”
Jake’s eyebrows went up. The National Security Agency did not make a habit of getting in touch, at least not with his little team of operators on their wild goose chase across central Africa. This could be interesting.