Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  There were two varieties of the deadly Ebola virus: Ebola Sudan and Ebola Zaire. Zaire had a kill ratio of 90 percent of those infected, the Sudan variety not too far behind. It might not be a virus, Tyron hoped. It might be nothing—but he knew nothing didn’t kill like that. It had to be something.

  “Maybe,” the man replied. He was dressed casually in cutoff jean shorts and T-shirt. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties but Tyron knew that Michael Kieling was only twenty-nine. He’d had a tough life. He had black hair hanging down to his collar, and framing his face was the outline of a two-day beard—Tyron wondered how Kieling always managed to look forty-eight hours from his last shave.

  Kieling was the resident genius on level four bio-agents at USAMRIID. He had a PhD in epidemiology and four years’ experience in the field. “Could be Marburg, but I don’t think so. He has those welts, but they don’t seem to be the same as Marburg lesions. It’s hard to tell from this feed,” Kieling continued. “Plus he has his hair.” Marburg virus usually caused the victim’s hair to fall out. Just like radiation poisoning.

  “Who’s the case?” Tyron asked, realizing he was no longer referring to the victim as a person.

  “An Angolan native,” Martin said. “We don’t have anything on him yet, except that he was assigned to the American Special Forces as an adviser.”

  “So he was on the helicopter?” Tyron asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are those people now?”

  “They’re returning to a camp at Cacolo. A town in northeast Angola,” Martin said.

  “How’d we get the video?” Tyron asked.

  “An SNN crew was also on the bird. Their feed goes through military satellites, downlinks at the Pentagon, where the censors take a look. They saw this and someone with a few brains gave us a call.”

  “This is out on the news?” Tyron was stunned.

  Martin shook his head. “No. They’re holding it at the Pentagon.”

  Tyron turned back to the screen. “Are they quarantined at Cacolo?”

  Kieling laughed. “Come on, man, get real. We just saw this. They don’t have a clue over there, although whomever that medic was who did the quick autopsy for our benefit, he’s smart. He definitely has a good idea what he’s got there. The brass at the Pentagon don’t know. The only ones who really know right now is us. And from this, well, we really don’t know too much either.”

  Kieling could speak like that, Tyron knew. He was a civilian on contract with USAMRIID. Inside the tight community of scientists who dealt with deadly infectious diseases, Kieling was known as a virus cowboy. Someone who traveled around the world looking for microscopic bugs that killed. Corralled them. Brought them back to level four. Then tried to take them apart to find a way to beat them.

  Tyron backed the tape up to a picture of the man just after he died. “Have you ever seen this before?” Tyron asked, aware that Colonel Martin was watching him carefully. Martin wasn’t an epidemiologist. He was a regular army doctor, sent here to over watch the bunch of scientists and doctors to make sure they could still remember how to put on the uniform and salute and to remind them every once in a while who paid their salary. Except of course, as it turned out, Martin had been absorbed by the Institute rather than the opposite happening, hence his casual outfit. Regardless, Tyron knew, as the ranking army epidemiologist, this was his problem to make decisions about.

  Kieling looked at the screen. “I can’t see a damn thing on that other than they had a crash-and-burn.”

  A crash-and-burn was the Institute’s term for the final stages of a victim carrying a deadly agent. The bug had taken over the body and consumed it and was ready to move on, having killed its host.

  “Could it be X?” Tyron asked, referring to the fourth of the deadly filo-viruses to come out of Africa.

  “Don’t know.” Kieling scratched his chin. “Only way we’re going to find out is to go there.”

  “I’ll contact the Pentagon,” Colonel Martin said. “I’ll have them hold the footage indefinitely and close down Cacolo.” He pointed at Tyron, then Kieling. “I’ll get you a plane. Be ready to move in an hour.”

  Angola-Zaire Border, 15 June

  “That’s the spot,” Trent said.

  Quinn looked at the border crossing. The rest of the mercenaries were farther back, hidden in some low ground. There was only the faint impression of a trail cutting across the ground. No border post. No sign that there even was an international border.

  “We’ll keep surveillance on it,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t put it past Skeleton or some of those ghouls who work for him to have a trap set for us now that they no longer need us here to work the rebels or diamonds.”

  Trent turned to him. “You think he’d do that?”

  Quinn shrugged. The less said about what’s been going on in this country, the better, would be their outlook on things, I suppose. We haven’t exactly been legal here.”

  Trent glanced toward where the other men were. “Some of the men are jumpy. They’ve seen the jets. They know the Yanks are here. They want to get out before we run into something we can’t handle. And six are sick. Killibrew is in real bad shape. He’s throwing up blood.”

  Quinn had been thinking about that. “All right. I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s better for us to go small. The rebels got more to worry about right now than us, and this big a group is sure to catch some American interest. Let those go who want to and get rid of all that are sick. They can go to a clinic in Zaire and get treated.” Quinn checked his map. “Here. At Sandoa there’s some of those international aid people running a clinic. Tell them to go there. We’ll keep about four good men who you trust and who want some extra money.” He looked about. “Also, if we do have a tick from Skeleton, let’s hope we’re getting rid of him.”

  Trent paused. “What about pay for those who go?”

  “They got their half up front. The other half is waiting in Kinshasa. Give them the codes for their accounts.” He paused. “Unless Skeleton has reneged on everything, in which case it won’t matter much.”

  “If Skeleton reneged on their money, we’ve got the diamonds,”

  Trent noted. “We can always black-market them. We won’t get as much, but we’ll get something.”

  Quinn’s hand strayed to the pouch around his neck, but his mind was elsewhere. “We’ll have something better than the diamonds.”

  Trent was puzzled. “Eh? What’s that?”

  “Whatever this guy is coming after, it’s worth a million to Skeleton. And, after we get him where he wants to go,” Quinn added, “we’ll have both the guy and whatever it is.”

  Cacolo, Angola, 15 June

  Riley looked across the cargo bay of the Chinook. Comsky was staring down at his hands, and beneath his stubble of beard, the medic’s face was pale. It had taken a while for the Chinook to show up, then a bit longer for them to get the disabled Black Hawk hooked up for sling-load. The smaller helicopter now hung below the double bladed Chinook and they were just about back to Cacolo. The pilots of the Chinook had to fly slower than normal to keep the load from getting out of control. Ku’s body lay in the center of the cargo bay, tightly wrapped in waterproof ponchos. The Black Hawk’s copilot’s body was still trapped in the airframe suspended below.

  Riley stepped over Ku’s body and squeezed in next to Comsky. “What’s up, Ape Man?”

  Comsky pointed at his hand. There was a gash on the back, running from his middle knuckle to his wrist. “I cut this in the crash.” He nodded at the corpse. “I’m fucked. I had his blood all over me.”

  “AIDS?” Riley asked.

  Comsky laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. “Shit, Dave, that’s the least of my worries right now. Yeah, there’s always a chance he had HIV. But whatever took Ku down wasn’t AIDS. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “You sure it was a bug?” Riley asked. “Maybe he had cancer or something.” Conner had come over and she knelt down next to them, listening i
n on their conversation. Captain Vickers was lying on the floor, just in front of Comsky, her eyes closed, strapped in tightly to a stretcher.

  “I pray it wasn’t a virus,” Comsky said. “But there was no wound or anything from the outside. And it wasn’t cancer. The way he was bleeding and his insides getting torn about. I never heard or seen anything like it. Something ate him up from the inside out. When that happens it’s usually some sort of virus. That’s why I wanted them to get that footage to Fort Detrick. That’s where the army has its specialists on viruses.”

  Riley grabbed hold of Conner as they felt the helicopter jerk. The sling-loaded Black Hawk had been put down. The sling was released. The Chinook moved over, then set down, and the back ramp was opened; but they were halted before they could get off. Major Lindsay was the first man up the ramp into the helicopter, and he did not look happy. Captain Dorrick was behind him. He indicated for everyone to remain in place. They all waited as the pilots shut the helicopter down. Dorrick was holding back, afraid to come too close to anyone, but Major Lindsay walked right up into the middle of them.

  Silence descended. Lindsay looked down at the form in the poncho, then back up. “I don’t know what is going on, but we’ve got big trouble.” He looked at Conner and Seeger. “Whatever you filmed lit a fire under somebody’s ass in the Pentagon. We’re shut down here. Nobody comes in or goes out of the AOB. Beyond that, I’m to keep everyone on this helicopter separate from the rest of the population here at Cacolo. Captain Dorrick will take you to your new billets. I’ll be by to debrief you in a half hour.”

  Riley turned and looked at Comsky. The medic’s face was now ashen and he was looking at his hand as if it were some strange specimen he’d discovered.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Comsky said. He pointed down at Lieutenant Vickers. “She needs medical attention.”

  “My orders are to make no exceptions. You’re going to have to take care of her yourself,” Lindsay said. “Your medical kit is in the isolation area.”

  Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 15 June

  Since viewing the videotape, Tyron had been on the move, gathering equipment together and packing. Two helicopters had landed on the lawn in front of the Institute. One for Tyron and Kieling and their personal baggage, and the other for the specialized gear they would need to take biosafety level four precautions to Angola with them and to try and find out what had killed the man in the video. They were now flying to Andrews Air Force Base, where the colonel had arranged their overseas transportation.

  Tyron had let Kieling take charge. The other man had much more experience in traveling and going places. In fact, Tyron was now counting his blessings that Kieling had gone on the “jaunt” three years ago. The jaunt was part of the lore at the Institute, and Tyron had heard more than a few stories about it.

  There were two things that were of primary importance to be discovered when a new virus appeared. The first, of course, was to determine exactly what the virus was and to isolate it. The second was to find out where it came from. With those two facts, they at least had the basics needed to try and defeat the bug.

  In 1994 a virus had erupted out of southern Zaire. Of course, since southern Zaire wasn’t a media hotspot, the word got out slowly. The disease burned along the Zaire-Zambia border with a kill rate of over 90 percent of those infected. Thousands upon thousands of people died.

  After two weeks ripping through the countryside, the virus made a toehold in the Zambian city of Ndola. The Zambian president had the city cordoned off by troops. Roads were blocked, the airport was shut down, and travel was prohibited. The president was prepared to lose the city to save the country.

  And just as swiftly as it had appeared, the virus went away. The last of the victims died and their bodies were burned. Life went back to normal along the border, save for the forty thousand people who had died. But forty thousand dead in Africa barely made a blip on the world media. Except among those at the Institute.

  From Zairean doctors, they managed to get samples of the virus in the form of frozen tissue samples sent by plane. They quickly isolated the deadly agent. It was a filo-virus, a cousin to Marburg and the two Ebolas. But it wasn’t any of them, and for lack of a better name the new virus was christened X. The name filo-virus was derived from the Latin— “thread virus.” Had they not already seen Marburg and Ebola at the Institute, they might not have so quickly caught on to X, but as soon as the strange, thin, elongated forms showed up in the electron microscope they zeroed in on it.

  They had X, but they didn’t know anything else about it other than that it killed. So Kieling proposed to go and track down where the virus had come from. He took a trip to Zaire and investigated. Like a detective, he backtracked the line of death that the few survivors remembered. As best as Kieling could determine, X had probably originated not in Zaire but somewhere on the southeast side of Lake Bangweulu in Zambia. He managed to hire a small plane pilot to fly him up there. They flew over mile upon mile of swampland bordering the lake. It was a dismal-looking place, full of wildlife and little visited by man. Kieling tried to get the pilot to land at a small town on the edge of the swamp, but as they descended, the odor of rotting corpses was so great they could smell it in the cockpit of the plane and the pilot refused to land.

  Kieling came back to the Institute and proposed an expedition to Lake Bangweulu to try and find out the birthplace of X. His justification was that if it had come out once, it might come out again, and the next time it might not go away. Forty thousand dead and a 90 percent kill rate made for a very effective argument. The funds were appropriated and Kieling went back to Zambia with a team of experts and the proper gear to work with level four bio-agents in the field, something that had never been done before.

  They went into the swamp and, after two weeks of searching, found an island where Kieling suspected the disease might have originated among the local monkey population. A few local survivors told him that swamp people went to that island occasionally to capture monkeys for export to medical labs for experimentation. That might help explain how the disease got out of the swamp, Kieling reasoned. They suited up and went onto the island as if it were hot. But they found nothing on the island and eventually Kieling had to order them to pack up and head back.

  Kieling never found out where X came from, thus the nickname the “jaunt” for the entire exercise. But he had learned a lot about taking the lab to the field, and for that Tyron was now very grateful, because most of the equipment on the second helicopter was prepackaged gear that Kieling had used on the jaunt. Kieling had used his expertise to put together easily movable equipment that they had stored in Conexes in back of the Institute. If ever there was a need to go virus hunting again, Kieling had wanted to be ready.

  And now they were off hunting. One dead man in a video didn’t necessarily mean they had another X on their hands, Tyron knew. But if they did, at least they wouldn’t be starting from scratch preparing this expedition.

  In the past several decades X, Ebola, and Marburg had broken out occasionally in Africa and killed with ruthless efficiency—or propagated with amazing strength, depending on one’s outlook, Tyron thought. Then they had disappeared. There was still no vaccine for those known scourges—never mind something new. It was a sore point at both USAMRIID and the CDC in Atlanta that they hadn’t broken any of the filo-viruses’ codes. The only thing they had accomplished in the past several years was to come up with a field test to determine if someone had Ebola or Marburg. X was still an unknown.

  The choppers came in the flight path for Andrews Air Force Base and landed near a group of hangars. Several air force officers were waiting for them.

  “Major Tyron?” the ranking man asked, running up to the chopper.

  Tyron nodded. “Yes.”

  The man pointed at a hangar. “We’ve got your ride in here.” He looked at the other chopper where men were taking off the lab gear. “Might take us a couple of minutes to get your stuff loaded. This whole th
ing is kind of unorthodox, but we’ll get you out of here as fast as we can.”

  Tyron looked around, wondering why there would be a problem loading the gear. “What type of plane are we going to use? C-141?”

  The air force general smiled and gestured for Tyron and Kieling to follow him. “No. We were told to get you there as fast as possible.”

  They walked in through a small door on the side of the hangar. A sleek B-l bomber painted coal black sat inside.

  “Cool” was Kieling’s comment.

  “The B-l normally has a crew of four,” the general explained. “We’re taking off the offensive and defensive systems operators and replacing them with you two. We’re putting your gear in the bomb bay. That’s what’s going to take a few minutes as it’s not exactly configured for cargo.”

  “How long will it take us to get to Luanda?” Tyron asked.

  “At Mach one point two five,” the general said, “about eight hours. You’ve got enough fuel to get there without in-flight refueling.” The general looked around, making sure that no one else was in earshot. “If you don’t mind, could you tell me what the big rush is?”

  “In eight hours,” Kieling said, his eyes still on the bomber, “certain viruses can replicate themselves almost six million times. That is the rush.”

  Chapter 10

  Cacolo, Angola, 15 June

  “Go slow and explain it so that we can all understand,” Riley said.

  “Who the fuck put you in charge?” Master Sergeant Lome demanded.

  The group gathered in the GP medium was tense and confused. Major Lindsay had had several tents set up a quarter mile away from the main encampment. The isolation area was surrounded by rolls of barbed wire, but Riley had the feeling the wire’s purpose was to keep those inside where they were rather than to protect against attack. Everyone who had been exposed to Ku’s blood on the mission where he had died was there: Riley, Conner, Seeger, Lome, Lieutenant Vickers, Comsky, Brewster, Oswald, Tiller, and the crew of the Black Hawk.