the building, or if they noticed them it didn’t seem interesting. There was nothing going on here.
The television men returned to their van and sat in it for a while, hoping that someone would happen or that someone would show up so that they could get some sound bites for the evening news, but this was getting to be boring, it was an awfully cold day, and the light was fading. It did not occur to them to go around the side of the building and point their video camera toward a window. If they had done that, they would have gotten enough footage to fill the entire evening news, with something left over for CBS’s 60 minutes. They would have gotten footage of soldiers in space suits smeared with Ebola blood, engaged in the first major biohazard mission the world ever knew, and they would have gotten shots of biohazard buddies coming out into the staging area in pairs and being stripped of their suits by the supporting team. But the news crew didn’t walk around the building, and so far as I know, there is no video footage of the Reston action.
Meanwhile, the two women lay on their back in the van for many minutes. Suddenly the television crew left. Gene Johnson, poking his head around the corner of the building, reported that the coast was clear. The women got dressed and then hurried off to relieve themselves in the wooded area behind the building. That was where they found the needles—two used hypodermic syringes with needles attached to them. The needles were uncapped and bare, obviously used. It was impossible to tell how long they had been lying in the grass. Some of the safety people put on gloves and picked up the needles, and as they searched the area, they found more needles in the grass.
The last person to come out was Jerry Jaax. He emerged around six in the evening, having lost between five and ten pounds of weight. It was fluid loss from sweating, and his face was ashen. His hair, instead of look silver, looked white.
There was no food for the soldiers, and they were hungry and thirsty. The soldiers took a vote on where to eat, and it came out in favor of Taco Bell. Gene Johnson said to them, “Don’t tell anyone why are here. Don’t answer any question.”
The caravan started up, engines roaring in the cold, and headed for Taco Bell. The soldiers ordered soft tacos with many, many jumbo Cokes to replace the sweat they’d lost inside their space suits. They also ordered a vast number of cinnamon twists—everything to do—yeah, put it in boxes, and hurry, please. The employees were staring at them. The soldiers looked like soldiers, even in jeans and sweat shirts—the men were bulked up and hard-looking, with crew cuts and metal-framed military eyeglasses and a few zits from too much Army food, and the women looked as if they could do fifty push-ups and break down a weapon. A man came up to Sergeant Klages while he was waiting for his food and said, “Where were you doing over there? I saw those vans.” Sergeant Klages turned his back on the man without saying a word.
After midnight on the water bed in the master bedroom of Jaax house on the slopes of Catoctin Mountain, Nancy and Jerry Jaax caught up on the news while their daughter, Jaime, slept beside them. Jerry told her that the day’s operation had gone reasonably well and that no one had stuck himself or herself with a needle. He told her he hadn’t realized how lonely it is inside biohazard suit.
Nancy wrapped herself around him and rested her head against his neck in the way they had held each other since college. She thought he looked shrunken and thin. He was physically more exhausted than she had seen him in years. She picked up Jaime and carried her to bed, then returned and folded herself around her husband. They fell asleep holding each other.
A BAD DAY
December 6, Wednesday
For the past several days and nights, an Army scientist named Thomas Ksiazek had been working in his space suit in a Level 4 lab trying to develop a rapid test for Ebola virus in blood and tissue. He got the test to work. It was called a rapid Elisa test, and it was sensitive and easy to perform. He tested urine and blood samples from Milton Frantig, the man who had vomited on the lawn and who was now in an isolation room at Fairfax Hospital. Frantig came up clean. His urine and blood did not react to the Ebola test. It looked as if he had the flu. This was a mystery. Why weren’t those guys breaking with Ebola?
The weather warmed up and turned sunny, and the wind shifted around until it blew from the south. On the second day of the massive nuking—Wednesday—the Army caravan flowed with commuter traffic to Reston and deployed behind the monkey house. Things went more smoothly. By eight o’clock in the morning, the teams had begun their insertions. Gene Johnson brought a floodlight, and they set it up in the gray corridor.
Jerry Jaax went in first and fed the monkeys. He made his rounds with Sergeant Amen, checking each room, and here and there they found monkeys dead or in terminal shock. In a lounge, they found some chairs, and dragged them into a hallway and arranged them in a semicircle so that the soldiers could sit on them while they took their rest breaks and filled up syringes. As the day wore on, you could see exhausted soldiers and civilians in orange space suits, men and women, their head bubbles clouded with condensation, sitting on the chairs, in the hallway, loading syringes with T-61 and sorting boxes full of blood tubes. Some talked with each other by shouting, and others just stared at the walls.
At midmorning, Jerry Jaax was working in Room C. He decided to take a break to rest and check up on his people. He left the room in charge of Sergeants Amen and Klages while he went out into the hallway. Suddenly there was a commotion in Room C, and the monkeys in that room burst out in wild screeches. Jerry ran back to the room, where he found the sergeants outside the door, looking in, in a state of alarm.
“WHAT HAPPENED?”
“A MONKEY ESCAPED, SIR.”
“AW, SHIT!” Jaax roared.
The animal had bolted past Sergeant Amen as he opened the cage, and the sergeants had immediately run out of the room and shut the door behind them.
A loose monkey—this was what Jerry had feared the most. They can leap long distances. He had been bitten by monkeys himself, and he knew what that felt like. Those teeth went in deep.
They looked into the room through the window in the door. The whole room had exploded in activity, monkeys whirling in their cages and shaking them violently, giving off high, excited whoops. There were about a hundred screaming monkeys in that room. But where was the loose monkey? They couldn’t see it.
They found a catching net, a pole with a baglike net at the end. They opened the door and edged into the room.
The events that followed have a dreamlike quality in people’s memories, and the memories are contradictory. Specialist Rhonda Williams has a clear memory that the monkey escaped from the room. She says she was sitting on a chair when it happened, that she heard a lot of shouting and suddenly the animal appeared and ran under her feet. She froze in terror, and then burst out laughing—nervous, near-hysterical laughter. The animal was a small, determined male, and he was not going to let these people get near him with a net.
Jerry Jaax insists that the monkey never got out of the room. It is possible that the monkey ran under Specialist Williams’s feet and then was chased back into the room again.
The loose monkey was very frightened and the soldiers were very frightened. He stayed in the room for a while, running back and forth across the cages. The other monkeys apparently grew angry at this and bit at the monkey’s toes. The monkey’s feet began to bleed, and pretty soon it had tracked blood all over the room. Jerry got on the radio and reported that a monkey was loose and bleeding. Gene Johnson told him to do whatever had to be done. How about shooting the monkey? Bring in a handgun, like an Army .45. Jerry didn’t like that idea. Looking into the room, he noticed that the loose monkey was spending most of its time hiding behind the cages. If you tried to shoot the monkey, you’d be firing into the cages, and the bullet could hit a cage or a wall and might ricochet inside the room. Getting a gunshot wound in this building might be fatal. He decided that the safest procedure would be to go into the room and capture the monkey with the net. He took Sergeant Amen with him.
As they entered the room, they could not see the monkey. Jerry proceeded forward slowly, holding the net
