The Anthrax Protocol

by James Thompson

  A quiet chuckle, clearly one of derision from Shirley came through Mason’s headset. “Au contraire, my dear friend. You’ve been working with viruses so long you’ve forgotten your microbiology and your medical history, if you ever knew any to begin with.”

  “Oh?” Jakes sounded sure of himself. “And just where am I going wrong, Dr. Cole?”

  “Almost everywhere, Sam. In the first place, the anthrax vaccine is ineffective against inhaled forms of anthrax, and in the second place, the treatment protocols for anthrax have undergone lots of changes since penicillin was used back in the dark ages when you were in medical school.”

  “What are the new treatment protocols, Shirley?” Mason asked.

  “Antibiotics known to be effective in varying degrees are ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin/clavulanate or Augmentin, doxycycline or tetracycline, clindamycin, rifampin, vancomycin, and chloramphenicol.”

  “So what’s our problem?” Jakes asked, smiling. “We just pump anyone who comes down with this bug full of antibiotics and go on our merry way.”

  “I have a feeling from the expression on Shirley’s face that it’s not going to be that simple, Sam,” Mason said.

  “You’re right, Mason. In the first place, we’ve only had less than a hundred cases of anthrax in the antibiotic era, so only a handful of cases have actually been treated with these antibiotics, so the possible combinations and dosages haven’t been fully worked out yet, and to make matters worse, Bacillus anthracis makes beta-lactamases, which often makes the bacteria resistant to antibiotics even while under treatment.”

  She hesitated, and then she continued in a grave voice, “Believe me, if this mutant form of anthrax gets out of the Mexican jungle we’ll be looking at a plague that could make the influenza pendemic of 1918, which, by the way, killed fifty thousand people in the United States alone, look like the common cold.”

  Everyone remained silent while Mason and Jakes absorbed this latest news. Finally, Mason said, “Okay. Then it’s our job to make certain this mutant strain, or subspecies, or whatever the hell it is, stops here and to make absolutely sure it is anthrax we’re dealing with. I want those special stains done now, and I want some cultures set up to see if it’ll grow on the normal anthrax medium, which it may not since it’s either a mutated form or even a completely different subspecies.

  “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

  Mexico City

  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-in
fested 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.

  The agent straightened the bills and counted out the amount of the ticket, handing Fitzhugh his change and ticket folder. She brushed her hands against her dress to dry them from the dampness of the money.

  “You’ll have to hurry, señor, your plane leaves from Gate Five in ten minutes.”

  Fitzhugh swept up the ticket and bills in his hand and walked rapidly through the terminal thanking his lucky stars he was in Mexico City, where the security wasn’t nearly as tight as it was in the United States. On the way to Gate 5, he ducked into a restroom, fearing he was about to throw up.

  He leaned on a sink, looking into a mirror at his reflection. His face was flushed, almost scarlet in color, and perspiration beaded his forehead. He sleeved the sweat off with a forearm. He was burning up. Every muscle in his body ached and he felt as if he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. He knew from previous malarial attacks his fever had to be a hundred and two.

  “Jesus, I haven’t had an attack this bad since Costa Rica three years ago,” he mumbled to himself. He bent to splash his face with water, not noticing its pink tint as it dripped into the sink.

  He blew his nose in a wad of toilet tissue and dropped the bloodstained paper onto the floor as he hurried to catch his plane, dry swallowing a handful of aspirin to bring his fever down.

  Twenty minutes later, he was airborne. He leaned his seat back and wrapped his arms around his duffle bag and tried to sleep, hoping he would feel better when he awoke in Houston.

  Inside his body, the plague organisms multiplied by the millions, growing exponentially. With every breath, Fitzhugh exhaled the deadly bacteria, which were sucked up by the plane’s air recycling system, passed through the ancient and inadequate air-filters, and blown out through the air returns to eventually infect every passenger on the airplane.

  When the 230 passengers arrived at Houston International Airport and made their connecting flights, the plague would be on its way throughout the United States and into fifteen foreign countries less than two days after a lone man had breached the Mexican Army’s quarantine perimeter in the jungles south of Mexico City.

  Fort Detrick

  Colonel Woodrow Blackman was awakened by his telephone at four a.m. He swung his feet off the bed and took the call while trying to clear his head of sleep fog.

  “Hello?”

  “A coded message just came through from Janus, Colonel. It is marked ‘Eyes Only.’”

  “How the hell did you know Janus’s code, Lieutenant?”

  “You gave it to me, sir, and told me to call you if anything from Janus came through.”

  “I suppose I did,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder to see if the call had disturbed his wife’s slumber. “I’ll get dressed and drive down in a minute. Make damn sure nobody else knows about this.”

  “Yes sir. I mean, no sir. No one else will know.”

  “Keep the fuckin’ control room locked. Even if the president shows up, don’t let him in. Nobody goes in there.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  He hung up and padded into the bathroom, deciding against a shower and shave . . . for now. If something had come through from Tlateloco at this hour it had to be important, damned important to USAMRIID.

  He dressed as quietly as he could after brushing his teeth and slipped out of the house, climbing into his Buick Skylark for the short drive to Fort Detrick Headquarters Building.

  Although a practical man, he refused to buy a Japanese or other foreign-made car even if they did get twice the gas mileage as American automobiles. While he was often the butt of jokes among his superiors at Fort Detrick for driving “gas guzzlers,” his reply was always the same— he’d be damned and French-fried before he’d support the industry of slant-eyed gooks who should have been bombed off the face of the earth during World War II.

  He stubbornly held to the belief that America’s economy was going to ruin because we let Japs and Chinks and commie Russkie bastards send television sets and stereos and cars to our shores while they refused to be pressured into allowing a single American-made item into their countries without exorbitant tariffs and taxes.

  Blackie would only buy American-made TVs and electrical appliances. If a lone part was manufactured elsewhere, he refused to purchase it on patriotic grounds, nor would he allow his wife to buy imported wines or perfumes.

  “Fuck ’em,” he would say, his final word on any potentially foreign-made acquisition to the Blackman household. “Let the little yellow bastards starve.”

  * * *

  He passed through two electronically operated security doors requiring his palm print before he reached the control room door, finding Lieutenant Jeremy Collins standing there with a deep flush in his cheeks.

  “Why aren’t you in there?” Blackie snapped.

  “The security device won’t let me back in, sir. It does not recognize my palm print now.”

  Blackie slapped his hand atop the metal plate and the door slid open. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. I changed the code last night ’cause I’m workin’ on something supersensitive right now, Collins,” he said. “As soon as I get what I need from one of our moles I’ll put your prints back in the system. Now, stay in front of this door an’ don’t let anybody in.”

  “Not even General Cushing, sir?”

  “Especially not the general. We don’t need him mucking about in our business right now. Hell, he’s home in bed now anyway. He told me his wife wakes him up every morning an’ makes him ‘cuddle’ with her before he can come to work.”

  Blackie made a face and shivered elaborately. “God, but she’s an ugly woman. I hate to think I’d have to cuddle the bitch.”

  He waited for Collins to chuckle at his joke, which the soldier did with a strained look on his face, and then he repeated, “You stand in front of the door, Lieutenant, until I get this coded message run off an’ the chip’s memory wiped clean.”

  “Yes sir, Colonel.”

  Blackie shut the door and pushed a button to secure the control room and went to his panel. A flashing light told him a message was stored in his “Top Secret” electronic mailbox. He sat down and punched in his access code, PATTON, watching the screen until the descrambler did its work.

  A small LCD began passing a message in front of him.

  Janus: This i
s it. Hot-bug is a bacteria, not a virus as we suspected . . . repeat, hot-bug is of bacterial origin. It is believed to be previously unknown form of airborne anthrax. Not recognizable under scope. Gram-positive and rod-shaped, but with anomalies. Human-to-human transmission confirmed. Send “Paco” to Mexican Army quarantine command post fifteen hundred hours for handoff. Sample is containerized, but must use all BL Four precautions. This baby is hotter than hot. Janus out.

  “Anthrax,” Blackie whispered. “It can’t be. It shouldn’t be human-to-human transmission if it’s anthrax. Something’s gotta be wrong.”

  They’d tested every known form of anthrax for years and not one variety of rod-shaped bacilli showed any promise. In cattle the transmission of anthrax among others in the same species was rampant, as well as in horses.

  Humans only contracted respiratory anthrax from one type of anthrax bacillus, called woolsorter’s disease because it was only found in sheep and in the early days of woolen manufacture the women who sorted the skins for manufacture were the only ones who’d ever caught the respiratory form of the disease. But the idea that a deadly respiratory anthrax affecting humans might exist, clearly in some mutant form found only in Mexico, was exciting, a revelation.

  The offensive weapon they’d been looking for since biological warfare became a science might be respiratory anthrax, if this mutation could indeed be transmitted from human to human and if they could formulate an effective vaccine to protect our troops.

  While an army wearing the proper protective gear would be immune, a rather simple breathing apparatus with a filter, mistakes would always happen, and pictures of our troops bleeding out and dying horrible deaths playing on twenty-four-hour news outlets would be disastrous.

  Unsuspecting armies, on the other hand, would be devastated. Untreated anthrax in its respiratory form was almost eighty percent fatal, if he remembered the data on woolsorter’s correctly. He made a mental note to call up all files they had on woolsorter’s later to see what their data bank had on it.