Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  “The rashes,” Kieling said briefly.

  Tyron had noted that too. Streaks of postulant red cut across the skin of most of the victims. He leaned over one bed. Blood was seeping out from the child’s eyes, nose, and ears. The eyes were looking at him, wide open, rimmed in red, fear and pain evident.

  Kieling glanced about. There were no IVs or any other signs of modern medical procedures in sight. Just nuns in their habits, using what they had to comfort the people, wiping sweat and blood from ravaged flesh. Giving aspirin for the sickness and pain.

  “We have to go,” Kieling said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “Will you help?” Sister Angelina asked.

  “We’ll get you some help,” Kieling promised.

  The two men walked back out of the infirmary, onto the dusty street. A crowd had gathered, and the people stepped back from the two men in their suits. A woman began wailing and Tyron increased his pace.

  “We know Ku had it and we know the day he came here,” Kieling said. “We just got a look at the symptoms. We need to come back and get an idea of the timeline of this thing. Interview some of the patients that are coherent. This is a good break.”

  “A good break?” Tyron repeated incredulously. “They reused the same damn needle they shot Ku up with and infected God knows how many people, and you call it a break?”

  “I didn’t start this disease,” Kieling said. “And I didn’t tell these people to use that needle like they did. It’s what’s done all over this continent where they spend more money in a day on bullets than on medicine in a year. We didn’t create this situation, Tyron, so stop taking everything so fucking personally.

  “It is a break because we know the date and approximate time some of these people were infected. We have the cases here and can look at them more closely. That rash was unique. Ebola causes a rash, but not like the one those cases had.

  “We can see the progression of this thing and also find out how those infected caught it. The needle? Blood? Air vector? We get those answers here.”

  “Shouldn’t we get Major Lindsay to quarantine the hospital?”

  “You saw the imagery. It’s spread far beyond the hospital,” Kieling said. “But we’ll tell him. Remember, though, that the hospital is an Angolan problem. Not Major Lindsay’s.”

  “Why’d you lie to her?” Tyron asked as they decontaminated outside their shelter. He felt overwhelmed. There was too much going on and too many things to deal with at once.

  “About what?” Kieling replied. “I told her the truth. We don’t know what this thing is.”

  “About being from the CDC?”

  “To give her some hope,” Kieling said. “Besides, the people who do this work like Sister Angelina—they don’t like the military—anybody’s military. They hate the military because they have to see and try to save the end result of all the civilians who get maimed and shot and killed in all the wars here. She might not have cooperated with us if she’d known we were from the army.”

  “What about the vector? We think there’s a possibility it is airborne, but you told her it—”

  “I know what I told her. What good would it do if I told her it might be airborne? There’s nothing they can do.”

  “But she’ll find out you lied. You shouldn’t have—”

  “Did you see her eyes?” Kieling cut in. “Her neck? She’s got it, Tyron. She’ll be dead soon. So don’t worry about what’s going to happen in two days. Worry about now.”

  Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 16 June

  “What do we have?” the chief coroner of the casualty identification center at Andrews Air Force Base asked as he suited up.

  “Helicopter crash victims,” his assistant said. “The Pentagon wants to see if we can’t find the body of Jonas Savimbi among that mess. Classified top secret and all that good stuff.”

  “Oh, Christ,” the chief coroner said as he entered the mortuary room. Body parts were laid out on tables. He wasn’t upset about the gory scene, rather it was the number and condition of the parts that dismayed him.

  “We figure we have eleven or twelve cases,” the assistant said.

  “What do we have on Savimbi? Dental? Fingerprints? DNA?”

  “We have dental and finger. No DNA.”

  The chief coroner sighed. “Well, we’ve got a long day ahead of us. Let’s get going.”

  Luanda, Angola, 16 June

  “Yes, sir, I’ll take care of all of that,” General Scott said into the secure satellite phone. “Cacolo is already isolated and I’ll freeze everybody else in country.”

  “I’m going to the president,” General Cummings’s voice rang in Scott’s ear. “It’ll be up to him to decide how to handle this publicly. For now, we’re going with a complete blackout.”

  “Yes, sir.” General Scott watched a fly buzzing around his command complex. They’d appropriated an entire abandoned office building in downtown Luanda as division headquarters. Remembering the lesson of Beirut, all entrances into the building were blocked off and heavily fortified.

  But the fly got in here, Scott thought. And this virus, whatever it was, was much smaller than the fly. The veteran infantryman felt fear. Not personal fear, but fear for his beloved division. “What about SOCOM’s people?” Scott asked, referring to the troops working for the Special Operations Command.

  “I’m putting every swinging dick on the ground there under your direct command,” General Cummings replied. “I’ll talk to Richard about it right after I get off with you.”

  Scott knew that “Richard” referred to Admiral Richard Peters, the JTF commander in chief, aboard a navy ship off the coast. The man in charge of all the forces involved in this operation.

  “That will include the other services too,” Cummings’s voice continued. “You’re the ranking man on the ground and I want you to make the decisions.”

  “Yes, sir.” The fly had landed on the map table and was crossing the acetate overlay that showed all force dispositions in Angola.

  “Good luck. Out here.”

  Scott slowly put the phone down and looked at his waiting staff. What he did know was vastly overwhelmed by what he did not know, but at the least, he had his orders. “Gentlemen, the situation has changed and we have a new priority.”

  Cacolo, Angola, 16 June

  Kieling threw down the latest fax from Fort Detrick. “They’re still working on the sample, trying to isolate the virus.”

  Tyron was looking over the imagery again. “This isn’t right,” he said. “This virus is moving so quickly, yet it’s also so deadly. It doesn’t add up.”

  Kieling agreed with that. “The vector has got to be something quicker than body fluids. But it still doesn’t have to be airborne. Maybe it’s a nonhuman carrier. For all we know this could be getting spread by mosquitoes like malaria and we’re looking in the wrong place altogether.”

  “Rodents?” Tyron offered. He knew Kieling was familiar with the Hanta virus that had appeared in the American Southwest in 1993 and killed more than fifty people. The virus’s vector had puzzled scientists from the CDC and USAMRIID until they tracked it down to mice. Finding that source had allowed them to focus on stopping the spread, although there still wasn’t an effective vaccine against it.

  “We’ll have to go back to the hospital,” Kieling said. “Interview the people there. They are the only known cases we have, other than these villages in the imagery, and I don’t think we want to go out there yet.

  “We need to check their history. Where they were. Did they touch anyone who looked sick? Were they bitten by anything? What did they eat before they got sick? The whole regimen.”

  Tyron looked over at the entrance. He dreaded the thought of suiting up again. Of going out among people who stared at him, protected in his suit, with fear in their eyes. Of going out into a world where death might be as close as a mosquito bite. In his mind, the Kevlar walls of the habitat were growing thicker with each passing hour.

  “F
irst, temperature,” Kieling said, holding up an electronic thermometer. They duly took each other’s temperature. The routine was to ensure they caught as early as possible any chance of onset of a fever. A sign they might have been exposed to a virus. Both were normal.

  Tyron followed Kieling into the entryway, sealing the door behind himself. They pulled on their suits, sealing gloves to sleeves and boots to pants with rolls of tape.

  “Let’s stop by the isolation compound first,” Kieling said as he opened the outer door. “I want to see if any of the people there have symptoms. They were exposed yesterday morning. Today’s day three for the people we saw at the hospital; day two for the people in the ISO compound. We should be seeing the first signs, if any of them are infected.”

  “All right,” Tyron agreed, following Kieling across the field toward the enclosure.

  Inside the wire, Riley watched the two men coming. It had been a restless day so far, and he’d spent a good portion of it simply walking the inside perimeter of the wire. By now he’d made a discernible path in the short grass.

  “Good news or bad?” Conner asked, coming up behind him.

  Riley knew she’d spent most of the late morning/early afternoon working. Keeping busy to keep her own mind occupied. Filming interviews with the other people inside; doing voice-overs on video already taken; and trying to keep Mike Seeger occupied. The cameraman had done his job, saying nothing except in response to a direct question. When not working, he sat on one of his equipment cases, reading from his Bible, his lips silently moving.

  Comsky had spent the time making sure those who had been hurt in the crash were progressing all right. The others had occupied themselves as well as they could. Riley was worried not just about Seeger but also about Lome and some of the other army people. They did not have the type of personality that accepted inaction in the face of danger.

  “Probably no news,” Riley said. “One thing I learned a long time ago in the army was that the guy on the ground is always the last to know what’s going on.”

  “You’re such an optimist,” Conner said.

  “At least I didn’t say it was bad news,” Riley said. “So I guess I’m not a pessimist either.”

  The two men came to a halt just outside the entrance.

  “We found that Sergeant Ku was treated at the local hospital,” the man with “Kieling” stenciled on his chest said. “Some of the staff there are now down with what looks like the same virus.”

  “How long ago was Ku there?” Comsky asked.

  “The morning of the fourteenth,” Kieling replied.

  “Only two days ago,” Comsky calculated. “And already they have symptoms?”

  “Yes. We need you to take everyone’s temperature,” Kieling said. “Check for fever.”

  “And if we have a fever?” Sergeant Lome’s voice was angry. “What then? Do you have a treatment? A cure?”

  “This virus probably isn’t one hundred percent fatal,” Tyron said. “We don’t have any idea what its fatality rate is. There are some variants of Ebola that aren’t fatal at all. Last year I met a woman who had survived Ebola and—”

  “If you’re trying to cheer us up, don’t,” Conner said. “We were with Sergeant Ku and we saw what this virus did to him. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Do you have any idea what this is?” Comsky asked. “They should have had a chance to look at it back in the States by now.”

  “We know it’s a filo-virus,” Kieling said succinctly. “We don’t know how it’s spread. We don’t know what its reservoir is. Quite honestly, we don’t know a goddamn thing about it.”

  “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain!” Seeger cried out.

  “Come on, now, take it easy,” Conner said, putting a hand on Seeger’s arm. To her surprise, he threw her aside, and the burly cameraman dashed forward to the hole in the wire and through it. He grabbed Kieling and lifted him off the ground, the muscles in his arms bulging.

  “Blasphemer!” He shook Kieling.

  “Don’t!” Riley yelled as he saw what was about to happen.

  Seeger tossed Kieling into the barbed wire fence. He then jumped on top of him. The two rolled about in the fence, Kieling encumbered by his suit and unable to defend himself.

  “Stop it!” Riley called out as he ran forward. He grabbed Seeger from behind, only to be shrugged aside. Riley could feel tears in his clothes and skin as he waded back into the fight among the sharp edges of the razor wire. Lome and Comsky joined him and they tried grabbing the civilian. “Take it easy, now,” Riley said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “It is God’s will!” Seeger said, slamming Kieling’s head into the ground. “We cannot stop it.” He gave one last thump on Kieling, then turned and faced Riley and the others.

  “God’s will this, asshole,” Lome said, drawing his 9mm pistol from its holster.

  “Put that away,” Riley said. He leaned forward, feinted at Seeger’s face with his right hand, and, when the man moved to block, slammed his left hand, open palm first, into Seeger’s chest.

  Seeger lay still, gasping for breath, and Riley, Comsky, and Lome quickly subdued him. Several men had come running over from the AOB during the confrontation, and they supplied a couple of sets of plastic wrist cinches with which they restrained the cameraman, pulling him out of the wire.

  Riley reached down and gave Kieling a hand, pulling him to his feet. “You all right?” he asked as he helped him get untangled.

  Kieling didn’t answer. He was looking down at his suit. He reached up and pulled off his helmet, showing his face to the others for the first time. “Well, I don’t need that anymore.” He looked at Riley. “I guess it’s no longer we they.” He peeled off the space suit and they could see the blood from several cuts, seeping through the jumpsuit he wore underneath.

  Twenty minutes later, the situation had calmed down a bit. Seeger was under guard in one of the tents. Tyron had gone back to the habitat, shaken by what had happened to Kieling. Riley and Conner watched as Kieling took temperatures along with Comsky The two medical men conferred quietly when they were done, then turned to the group.

  “Everyone’s normal so far,” Kieling announced.

  “I assume that’s good,” Conner said.

  “So far, so good,” Kieling confirmed, “although it’s only been a day since you were exposed to Ku’s blood. Tomorrow will give us a better idea. The people in the hospital are at that point right now.”

  “What will you do?” Riley asked.

  “I’m going to go where I can be of some use,” Kieling said. “Since I can’t go back into the habitat without destroying its integrity for Tyron, I’m going to go to the hospital in town and lend a hand and try to learn what I can.”

  “Do you two have any more information at all on this?” Riley asked. “Anything from the States? From higher headquarters?”

  “We have some imagery of eastern Angola,” Kieling said. “It shows patterns of the disease spreading around the countryside.”

  “Can I take a look at that?” Riley asked.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know,” Riley replied. “Maybe to feel useful. Just like you’re going over to the hospital.”

  Kieling shrugged. “Sure. Go over to the habitat and ask Tyron to pass it out to you.” With that, he headed toward town. Riley had to admire the scientist. He’d taken what had just happened as if it were no big deal. But then again, Riley reminded himself, of all the people here, Kieling was the best prepared for what they were facing and had probably faced the same threat before. At the very least, Kieling had the advantage of having thought this through and let his imagination do its worst before facing the reality.

  As Riley got set to head to the habitat, Comsky grabbed his arm. “We need to talk.”

  “What’s up, Ape Man?”

  Comsky led him away from the others. “We have four people running fevers.”

  “What?” Riley exclaimed. “But Kieling
said—”

  “I know what he said,” Comsky quietly cut in. “I agreed with him that we not tell anyone. What good would it do? It would just add to the stress and panic, and you saw how well Seeger handled it.”

  Riley could see the logic in that. “Who are the four?”

  Comsky gave a weary smile. “Well, me of course. I about ate Ku’s blood working on him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Riley said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s—”

  “Hey,” Comsky said, “I expected it.”

  “Who else?” Riley asked, half-knowing whom the others would be.

  “The helicopter pilot who got cut up in the crash.”

  “But he wasn’t in contact with Ku,” Riley said.

  “I know. Kieling and I talked about that. It’s one of the reasons he’s going over to the hospital. The way this thing spreads is very strange. Almost like it is airborne to a certain extent. He’s going to see if he can get a handle on the vector. Find a common link among those infected.”

  Riley felt a bead of sweat roll down his forehead.

  “Conner’s hot,” Comsky added.

  “Oh, shit,” Riley muttered. This had been his idea. His responsibility. He looked at Comsky, who was looking away. “And I’m hot, too, right?”

  “One hundred point eight degrees.”

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, 16 June

  Paratroopers were used to delays. “Hurry up and wait” was the unofficial motto of the 82d, and this morning was proving to be no different. There were planes out on the runway, six C-141 Starlifters, but loading had ceased several hours ago and over two thousand soldiers milled about the green ramp, whiling away the hours, waiting for word to embark. The green ramp was a large building with rows and rows of oversized wooden benches. It was the final staging area for all jumps and deployments, and every 82d soldier had spent numerous hours inside there waiting for an airborne operation.