The helicopter flew across a four-lane highway and plunged deeper into the rock-strewn desert until Smith saw a road below, a WELCOME sign, and at the top of a hill a jumble of piled rocks all painted with the brightly colored logos and patches of units that had been stationed there or passed through Irwin over the years.
They swept on above lines of fast-moving vehicles trailing clouds of dust. It was startling how much the visually modified American vehicles looked like Russian mechanized infantry BMP-2s, BRDM-2s, and armored division T-80 tanks. The chopper swooped over the main post and settled to the desert floor in a cloud of sand. A reception committee was waiting, and Smith was jolted back to why he was here.
Phyllis Anderson was a tall woman and a little heavy, as if she had eaten too many transient meals on too many army bases. Her full face was drawn as they sat on packing boxes in the silent living room of the pleasant house. She had the frightened eyes Smith had seen on so many relatively young army widows. What was she going to do now? She had spent her entire married life living from camp to camp, fort to fort, in on-base or off-base housing that was never her own. She had nowhere to call home.
“The children?” she said in answer to Smith's question. “I sent them to my parents. They're too young to know anything.” She glanced at the packed boxes. “I'll join them in a few days. We'll have to find a house. It's a small town. Near Erie, Pennsylvania. I'll have to get some work. Don't know what I can do…”
She trailed off, and Smith felt brutal bringing her back to what he needed to ask.
“Was the major ever sick before that day?”
She nodded. “Sometimes he'd run a sudden fever, maybe a few hours, and then it'd go away. Once it went on for twenty-four hours The doctors were concerned but couldn't find a cause, and he always got better without any problem. But a few weeks ago he came down with a heavy cold. I wanted him to take some sick days, at least stay out of the field, but that wasn't Keith. He said wars and hostile skirmishes didn't stop for a cold. The colonel always says Keith can outlast anyone in the field.” She looked down at her lap where her hands twisted a ragged tissue. “Could.”
“Anything you can tell me that might be connected to the virus that killed him?”
He saw her flinch at the word, but there was no other way to ask the question.
“No.” She raised her eyes. They held the same pain he felt, and he had to fight to keep it from reflecting in his own eyes. She continued, “It was over so fast. His cold seemed better. He took a good afternoon nap. And then he woke up dying.” She bit her lower lip to stop a sob.
He felt his eyes moisten. He reached out and put his hand on top of hers. “I'm so sorry. I know how difficult it is for you.”
“Do you?” Her voice was forlorn, but there was a question in it, too. They both knew he could not bring back her husband, but might he have a magic remedy to wipe away the endless, bottomless pain that made her ache from every cell?
“I do know,” he said softly. “The virus killed my fiancee, too.”
She stared, shocked. Two tears slid down her cheeks. “Horrible, isn't it?”
He cleared his throat. His chest burned, and his stomach felt as if it had just been invaded by a cement mixer. “Horrible,” he agreed. “Do you think you can go on? I want to find out about this virus and stop it from killing anyone else.”
She was still a soldier's wife in her mind, and action was always the best comfort. “What else do you want to know?”
“Was Major Anderson in Atlanta or Boston recently?”
“I don't think he was ever in Boston, and we haven't been in Atlanta since we left Bragg years ago.”
“Where else besides Fort Bragg did the major serve?”
“Well…” She reeled off a list of bases that covered the country from Kentucky to California. “Germany, too, of course, when Keith was with the Third Armored.”
“When was that?” Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a close cousin of Ebola, had first been discovered in Germany.
“Oh, 1989 through '91.”
“With the Third Armored? Then he went to Desert Storm?”
“Yes.”
“Anywhere else overseas?”
“Somalia.”
That was where Smith had his fatal encounter with Lassa fever. It had been a small operation, but had he known everything that happened there? An unknown virus was always possible deep in the jungles and deserts and mountains of that unfortunate continent.
Smith pressed on. “Did he ever talk about Somalia? Was he sick there? Even briefly? One of those sudden fevers that went away? Headaches?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
“Was he ever sick in Desert Storm?”,
“No.”
“Exposed to any chemical or biological agents?”
“I don't think so. But I remember he did say the medics sent him to a MASH for a minor shrapnel wound and some doctors said the MASH could've been exposed to germ warfare. They inoculated everyone who went through.”
Smith's gut did a flip, but he kept the excitement from his voice. “Including the major?”
She almost smiled. “He said it was the worst inoculation he ever got. Really hurt.”
“You don't happen to recall the MASH number?”
“No, I'm sorry.”
Soon after that he ended the interview. They stood in the shade of her front porch, talking about nothing. There was solace in the normal interactions of everyday life.
But as he stepped off the porch, she said in a tired voice, “Are you the last one, Colonel? I think I've told everything I know.”
Smith turned. “Someone else questioned you about the major?”
“Major Behrens over at Weed, the colonel, a pathologist from Los Angeles, and those awful government doctors who called here on Saturday asking terrible things like poor Keith's symptoms, how long he lived, how he looked at the?” She shuddered.
“Last Saturday?” Smith puzzled. What government doctor could have called on Saturday? Both Detrick and the CDC had barely started their investigations of the virus. “Did they say who they worked for?”
“No. Just government doctors.”
He thanked her again and left. In the glaring sun and hard wind of the high desert, he walked to his next interview thinking about what he had learned. Could the virus have been contracted by Major Anderson in Iraq ? or given to him there ? and then lain dormant over the next ten years, except for unexplained mild fevers, finally erupting into what seemed like a simple heavy cold… and death?
He knew no virus that acted that way. But then no virus they had known had acted like HIV-AIDS until it exploded from the heart of Africa onto the world.
And who were the “government doctors” who had called Phyllis Anderson before anyone outside the CDC and Fort Detrick was even aware that there was a new virus?
Congressman Benjamin Sloat mopped his balding head and took another gulp of Victor Tremont's single malt. He and Tremont were sitting in the dark sunroom that looked out over the nighttime deck and grassy lawn. While they had been talking, a large-eyed doe had strolled across the deck as if she owned it, and Victor Tremont had merely smiled. Congressman Sloat had decided long ago he would never understand Tremont, but then he did not need to. Tremont meant contacts and campaign contributions and a big chunk of Blanchard Pharmaceuticals stock, an unbeatable combination in this high-priced political age.
The congressman grumbled, “Dammit, Victor, why didn't you clue me in earlier? I could've headed this Smith off. Got him and the woman shipped overseas. We wouldn't have a murder to cover up and a damned snooper nosing in the closet.”
