Chapter Ten
T he helicopter hovered only long enough for the four of them to grab all the equipment bags before it took off as rapidly as it had descended.
Everyone had to carry their personal pack and weapons in addition to one duffel bag. Max worried that Ali would be overloaded, but she made no complaint as she hoisted the duffel she’d grabbed over her shoulder.
The Green Berets and Ali had their MK 16s strapped on under their ponchos, partially hiding them from sight, but still easily accessible.
Max didn’t carry one. He had two weapons, besides his brain. A 9mm Beretta and a knife he kept strapped to his right calf under his clothes. It was one of those survival knives that had a hollow hilt filled with a flint, wire and fishhook. He couldn’t fight his way out of a cardboard box with it, but having the minimal survival gear attached to his body always gave him an extra degree of confidence.
They’d been dropped off next to a rutted road. The terrain was rocky, and with the temperature only a few degrees above freezing, the only vegetation around was winter brown.
Ali talked with Bull for a moment, then started off in the point position. The two Special Forces soldiers nodded at Max to follow, putting him in the protected position as they brought up the rear.
They headed perpendicular to the road until they got about one hundred feet away, then they paralleled it to avoid highwaymen, robbers or other armed bandits.
Ali set a good pace. Her head constantly moved from side to side as she looked for threats.
How did she define a threat? Was it anyone who saw them, or anyone with a weapon who saw them? One person or more than one?
He sometimes got the impression that she saw everyone as a threat, until you proved you weren’t. Until then, your continued existence was in question and your ability to keep breathing in doubt.
Was he a threat? Was that why she didn’t stay, sleep with him?
Ali suddenly stopped moving and crouched, giving a hand signal for him, Bull, and Tom to do the same.
Max tried to find what she was looking at. There it was. A boy sat on a rock about twenty feet away. A dog crouched near him, along with seven or eight goats.
The boy watched them graze with an unmoving face, like he couldn’t see them at all.
Tom rose and ambled over. He sat down near him and offered the child something. The boy accepted whatever it was, said a few words, then Tom got up and came back.
“Shepherd,” he reported. “His family lives in the village. What’s left of his family, anyway. His father and four brothers were killed when the first group came through. He’s the oldest man in his household now. His mother is sick and at the makeshift hospital in the village. I told him we had a doctor, so he’s going to tell anyone who might come this way he’s never seen us.”
The continued blankness on his young face said the boy had already seen far too much.
They marched on. The terrain got rockier and Max found himself following without really looking too far ahead. He was busy watching where he stepped and trying to avoid twisting his ankle.
Ali slowed, then came to a stop.
The village was in sight, but it wasn’t what he was expecting. Stone-and-wood houses dotted the opposite side of a small valley, and seemed to be organized mostly in a circle, perhaps surrounding a well. Most of the buildings and houses appeared intact, but a few looked damaged and others burned out.
It was the couple hundred or so tents set up around the buildings, extending down into the valley, that were the surprise. He’d been told there might be one or two hundred refugees from the neighboring town. This was no one or two hundred. If each tent represented one family, they were looking at several hundred extra people.
Ali glanced at him. “In and out, huh?”
“It appears my information was incomplete,” Max intoned as if he was James Bond.
Bull snickered.
“Very fucking funny,” Ali said in the voice all women used when frustrated by a man acting like an idiot.
Suddenly, he felt very, very tired. “This doesn’t change anything. It might even make it easier for us to get our job done without the wrong people being the wiser.”
Ali didn’t respond to that, just sighed and said, “Let’s go.”
The walk down into the valley took longer than he thought it would. Ali and the Special Forces soldiers adapted their pattern of walking from efficient and alert to tired and unobtrusive. Like four men who didn’t want anyone to pay too much attention to them because they didn’t have anything interesting.
Except they all had duffel bags slung over their backs.
As they came upon the first tent, a couple of men casually blocked their way.
Bull moved forward to look at them. All he did was stare.
Max wasn’t sure what the living roadblocks saw on Bull’s face, but they got out of the way within seconds.
No one else seemed interested in making it difficult for them after that.
Max looked for his contacts. Most of the aid groups that helped in these kinds of high volatility situations had interesting people on the ground. People who were quite capable of defending themselves, but were even better at blending in.
They cleared the tents and entered the village itself. Shortly after that a man came toward them. He looked like a local—bronzed skin, dark hair with a full beard—except for one major difference. He smiled and made direct eye contact. Something no local would do.
“Welcome, cousin ,” he said in Arabic to Max. He spread his arms and Max went along with the triple cheek kiss that was the way men greeted their relatives in this part of the world.
“I’m sorry it took so long to get here,” Max replied in the same language.
“No, no, don’t apologize. The world is a crazy place, yes?” He put a hand on Max’s back and guided him and his three shadows to a house near the outskirts of the village proper. A tent had been attached to it, doubling its size.
Max’s cousin opened a flap and waved the four of them in.
The tent had been added to the front of the house. The front door stood open and a sort of clay potbelly stove sat in the middle of the canvas room. All around it were people on cots and pallets. People who were coughing.
Max immediately pulled his mask and gloves out of his pocket and put them on.
Ali, Bull, and Tom followed suit.
Max’s cousin pulled one up out of the scarves around his neck and hooked it around his ears.
There were fourteen people that he could see on the cots and pallets.
“Are there more sick inside the house?”
“Yes, cousin.” The man’s voice was sad. “Many more. All day the sick have been coming to see grandmother, but she died an hour ago and we have no more medicine. Did you bring any with you?”
Not enough for all these people. “Is there somewhere I can show you?” Max glanced at the other bags.
“Yes, yes. Come.” Cousin led them into the house and to what might have been a bedroom, but it was mostly empty. Two dirty and stained windows filtered the winter sun, turning the room a hazy grayish brown.
Max put his duffel down and nodded at Ali, Bull and Tom to do the same. He stepped close to his cousin and said in English, “Are we safe?”
Cousin replied in kind. “No. My name is Jonah Cornett. I’m with the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development. The ACTED is a French disaster relief organization. Dr. Amanda Beaulieu from the WHO contacted you...Dr. Maximillian?” For the first time the man sounded uncertain.
“Yes, Colonel Maximillian with the US Army’s Biological Rapid Response Team. Dr. Beaulieu asked for an infectious disease specialist to come and identify the pathogen making all those people sick.” Max glanced back through the doorway into the house full of sick people. “Where is Dr. Beaulieu?”
“We thought we had an influenza,” Cornett said absently. He shook himself like a wet dog trying to dislodge water, and continued in a stronger tone. “But half the people who were sick last night have died.”
“How many is that?”
“Thirty.”
“Where are the dead? I didn’t see any bodies as we came in.”
“The locals have a place up in the hills where they bury their dead. I don’t know if they’re all in the ground, but most of the bodies were taken away.”
A cold rock formed in Max’s gut. “Thirty, that’s eighteen more sick and twenty-six more dead than I knew about.”
“In the past four hours, a dozen people have stumbled into this house, three of them are already dead.”
Holy fuck. “Of what?”
Cornett shrugged. “Pneumonia?”
“What symptoms did they present with when they arrived?”
“A high fever, vomiting, dehydration, and a wet, racking cough.”
Pneumonia? Sudden onset of fever and vomiting followed by dehydration, pneumonia, and death. Pneumonia was a common secondary infection of flu, but it didn’t usually happen so fast. Could this be a swine flu outbreak?
“It’s the blood that’s upsetting people.”
Cornett’s words took a moment to register. “Blood?”
“Come, let me show you.”
Max stepped in his path. “Where is Dr. Beaulieu?” Behind him, he could feel Ali and the boys tensing up, preparing for...anything.
Cornett’s eyes looked sunken and black above his mask. “That’s who I want you to see.”
He led them to another room next door. This one was furnished with bedroom furniture, but the person on the bed was shrouded with a sheet. There were three other bodies stacked against the far wall, also wrapped in either blankets or sheets.
Cornett unwrapped the sheet from around the head of the body.
She appeared to be a woman in her early thirties. There were blood trails leading from the corners of her mouth and both nostrils. The skin of her face was unblemished.
“I need to see her arms and torso.”
“Why?” Cornett asked.
“I’m looking for lesions or blisters.”
Cornett unwrapped her upper body and Max helped him push her clothes aside so he could see her skin.
“No lesions,” he reported aloud.
“Is that good or bad?” Tom asked.
“Since she’s dead, it doesn’t mean much,” Max explained. “I need a sample of mucus from the nose or mouth of a person who’s recently begun showing symptoms. Actually, I’d like to test samples from a half-dozen people.” He looked at Cornett. “Will that be a problem?”
“No.” Cornett’s shoulders were hunched and his head hung like it was too heavy. “Everyone is frightened now and afraid they’re going to die.” He glanced at the body, then turned to Max and said, “You can start with me.”
“ Fuck ,” Bull said behind him.
“Rewrap the body,” Max told Cornett. “I’ll have a swab ready when you’re done.” He walked back into the room where he’d left his bag and crouched down to open it. Ali and the boys added their bags to his.
“What do you need?” Ali asked in a voice only one decibel louder than a whisper.
“I need to set up my equipment and gather the samples. The first test is quite quick. Takes about fifteen minutes. That test isn’t very specific, though, so if it’s positive for flu, I’ll have to do a second one that takes a little longer.”
“What do you need from us?”
“Keep people from interrupting me.”
She smiled—he could tell from the wrinkles dancing around her eyes. “We can do that. Bull is especially good at roadblocks.”
“One of my favorite things to do,” the soldier said with a nod.
“Just don’t be a pain in the ass when you do it,” Tom told him.
“Don’t worry, Max,” Ali whispered loud enough for the two men to hear. “I’ve got you covered. I’ll keep these two bozos from tripping you up.”
They were making fun of the situation, a common coping strategy among soldiers. Soldiers who had a bond with each other. Trust. And they’d invited him in. “I feel so much better knowing that.” He glanced over his shoulder at Ali, who crouched next to him, and the two men standing behind her. He gave them all a nod. “Carry on.”
He began pulling out what he needed to get the samples. Given that there were a lot of people in the vicinity, he left the analyzer in the bag.
“Is Cornett close by?” Max asked Ali.
She moved away, but was back in only a couple of seconds. “He’s talking to someone in the hallway.”
“As soon as he’s finished, ask him to come in. I want to give him some of the extra medical supplies I managed to jam into these bags.”
“Sure.” She left the room.
Max pulled out six sterile swabs for collecting mucus and set them aside. He then went through all the bags and pulled out IV sets and bags of saline. Of all the symptoms the patients seemed to be experiencing, dehydration was the easiest to combat. A liter of fluid would go a long way to helping the sick survive long enough for the flu virus to run its course.
As long as there were enough trained people to set up the IVs.
If Dr. Beaulieu was dead, who was left to treat the sick?
Cornett came into the room and looked at all the stuff on the floor. He seemed only mildly curious.
“Do you have medical training?” Max asked him.
“Some,” he replied. “But not enough to put one of those into someone’s vein. I’m here to determine the needs of areas like this one. Food, shelter, and other necessities. I’ve already told my people not to send anyone else here. Until you determine what’s causing the deaths, they’re going to coordinate with the UN and the WHO to make sure no one else sends in relief teams.”
“Good. The last thing this place needs is more people. Any other doctors or nurses in the village?”
“A couple, but we’re overrun.” Cornett’s face turned bleak for a moment and he looked like he was about to be sick. “There were more, but when I went looking for them, I couldn’t find them. Their tent, yes. Them, no.”
Max sighed. “I didn’t come here with the intention of running a hospital.”
“How could anyone plan for this?”
Max considered the situation. If these people didn’t get help now, a lot of them were going to die. He had only a finite number of IV sets and when they were gone, they were gone.
Tom was standing with Bull in the doorway.
“Tom,” Max said.
The Special Forces soldier strode over and crouched next to him. “Yeah?”
“You and I are going to triage the people in this house. I need to collect samples and you’re going to set up IVs for as many as you can. Got it?”
Max turned to Cornett. “You’re going to get a cot or whatever set up in here for yourself and lie down. I need someone in this room to keep an eye on the equipment when I have to step out. Okay?”
“Yes, cousin,” Cornett said in Arabic.
Max glanced out the door. A couple of men stood there arguing with Bull about talking to a doctor. They were staring at the IV sets and bags of saline.
Cornett walked over to them. “This is my cousin, a doctor in a hospital in the city. He took some supplies with him when he left, but it wasn’t enough. So many more people are sick today than yesterday.”
One of the men said, “Give it to the children. To my son. He’s twelve years old and strong, but now he lies on the ground breathing like a winded horse. His lips are blue.”
Max paused. Rapid breathing resulting in not enough oxygen? He stood and joined them in the hallway. “Take me to your son.”