The Nightmare Scenario (18 page)

AUGUST 3
^RD
, JUST BEFORE SUNSET, DISTRICT HOSPITAL, TERNATE, MALUKU ISLANDS, EASTERN INDONESIA

R
ebecca was exhausted. Melatonin had taken care of the jetlag, and getting out of the HAZMAT gear made work less taxing. The full suits, even with their built-in cooling, became very hot, and in spite of them being pressurized, skin was constantly in contact with one latex surface or another, sticking to it like a leech on a bleeding wound. Still, even being relieved from them, Rebecca was totally beat. She’d only been on site for two days so far, and she was already concerned about her ability to keep leading the operation.

She had to constantly remind herself that Aeolus had chosen her.
He
thought she could do it. She only had to find it within her to do so.

Rebecca, Justin, Yan-Qui and a French doctor, got in the same Jeep that had brought her from the airport,
and set out for the makeshift camp where they spent their nights.

The driver flashed them the same toothless smile, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around them. It was as if he didn’t notice the dozens of sick people packed into an ever-growing field hospital on the grassy courtyard, nor the crying and wailing relatives, begging the overtaxed medical staff to help their loved ones.

Rebecca took one last look at the hospital. She hated what she saw. Soon they would be forced to turn patients away, having neither the space nor the manpower required to attend to them. This was not how medical care was supposed to work.

With a screeching of tires, they set off toward the harbor. Although the populace was growing frightened, the town center still operated as usual. The market was packed and bustling with activity. People were trading in fruits, the names of which, for the most part, were unknown to Rebecca. Others were feasting on local delicacies Rebecca doubted her digestion would agree with, like grilled fish heads.

This wouldn’t last much longer. They were close to the tipping point now. They had 200 patients. Make it 800 in a couple of days and this market would be empty.

They arrived at the harbor, the driver veering abruptly to the right while pulling the handbrake. The skidding vehicle sprayed dirt on a group of boat drivers. The driver was clearly amused – the boat drivers less so.

The harbor wasn’t really a harbor at all. It was just a wooden pier, its planks loosely held together with rusty nails, balancing on wobbly wooden stilts. There were
twenty or so boats, all painted in glaringly bright colors – mainly yellow, green and pink.

She and the others got in their boat and set off for their quarters. The boat had two outboard motors, not for speed, but because they functioned so intermittently that the skipper was always struggling to get one going while the other propelled the boat over the waves. Stops were not uncommon, as he often failed to get one motor started before the other one gave up.

Rebecca steadied herself against the gunwale as the boat, with a far too shallow keel for these waters, violently rocked left and right. Water sprayed over them with each wave, and even though she couldn’t actually feel it through her filter, she could imagine the salty smell of the sea.

The view was majestic. Behind them was the Ternate volcano and ahead was Palau Tidore, rising up into the clouds. Their destination was Mare Island; a small island behind Palau Tidore, where there was an uninhabited beach, impossible to reach except by boat. Any visitors were easy to spot, and keeping the beach isolated was easy enough.

As they passed Tidore, Rebecca caught a glimpse of two bare-chested young boys, standing far out in the shallow water, trying to fish by stabbing two sharpened wooden sticks through the green-blue surface. Rebecca smiled. She’d thought this was something you read about in books, not something people actually did in real life.

The water was azure and crystal-clear. It looked just like the pictures of far-away beaches in travel catalogs –
beaches that never looked quite like that once you went there in person.

She tilted her head back to the sky, exhaled deeply and thought to herself what a great travel destination these islands would have been under different circumstances.

They arrived at Mare and stepped out of the boat. Their next task was the extensive decontamination procedure. It was comparatively low-tech – they were still waiting for the completion of the new facilities being built by the Chinese.

The structure in which they purged themselves of traces of the virus was essentially a square of plastic sheets hung from four vertical aluminum pipes. One by one, they went in and splashed ample amounts of bleach and hydrogen peroxide on every surface of their clothing. Then they carefully removed item after item of their outer protective layers, disposing of them in the burn bag. After washing every inch of naked skin with alcohol and iodine, they finally removed the mask. The HEPA-filters were tested by blowing smoke into them to confirm they were still functional, with no particles passing through. Lastly, they walked away ten meters, were they formed a growing group, chatting about anything but the day that had just passed.

Once through the decontamination Rebecca, as she did every day, chose to walk away from the group instead of joining it. She inhaled deeply, letting the salty sea air fill her lungs. Somehow her brain seemed to subconsciously associate the scent with prior beach holidays,
shifting her mind to a state of blissful calm. She saw tropical sunsets and tasted sweet-and-sour Caipirinhas, forgetting the images of the dying that were burned onto her corneas.

As the French doctor passed through the plastic sheets, Rebecca was horrified to see that he hadn’t smoke-tested his mask. She screamed, “Stop! Your mask! Step back behind the sheet!”

The man jolted and backed inside behind the plastic sheets. He raised his hands, looking at Rebecca with an apologetic expression. “I am sorry, ma’am. Just a bit tired.”

He fitted the exhaust pipe to the mask, and a small trail of gray particles filtered through. The expression of raw fear on his face was clear even from Rebecca’s distance.

“Did you check it this morning?” she yelled.

“I… I don’t know. I mean, I think I did, but…”

“Dammit! Okay, that’s it! You need to be quarantined. Put your gear back on and go back to the hospital. I’m sorry, but we just can’t take the risk.”

The man staggered and slowly, still in shock, started to put his gear back on.

Rebecca sighed and headed toward the camp. People were streaming in to help and that was great, but they weren’t the type of staff she needed. They were amateurs. They had never done this before. Unfortunately, there just weren’t enough real professionals to go around for a situation like this.

AUGUST 3
^RD
, 3PM, THE MEN’S ROOM, WHO HEADQUARTERS, GENEVA

S
ome people had the ability to look sharp even after only three hours of sleep. Aeolus was one of those people. He stood before the full-length mirror in the men’s room next to his office, scrutinizing his appearance. He was satisfied. His appearance was up to the standards required for the next hour.

“It’s moved way too slowly,” Aeolus thought. He and Stan Russell had worked the UN as intensely as they could, cashing in on all the favors they were owed. But still, it hadn’t been enough. They still didn’t have a Security Council resolution supporting the quarantine of the eastern part of Indonesia. The Russians and the Americans were holding out. Aeolus knew how to bring the Russians to the table, but it involved making a call he’d rather not make, not until he was convinced that it was absolutely necessary. That is, not until the Americans were on board.

As Stan had foreseen, the main problem was enforcement. Indonesia vehemently resisted a broader quarantine, which would effectively divide their country into two parts. The Chinese, in spite of their proximity, would clearly never enforce the resolution. They had too much at stake in their international relations with smaller countries in Africa that would not look favorably upon it. This left only the States and this was the reason Aeolus was briefing the president in a few minutes. It had taken almost a week to get to this point. Far too much precious time had been wasted.

They had been lucky. The quarantine of the Maluku Islands had so far held, and the outbreak in Limpong had been contained. The patient had died, but no others had been infected. The local doctor didn’t know it yet, but his career was about to receive a considerable boost, and his hospital considerably more resources.

The number of infected at the Maluku Islands had exploded, growing exponentially with each passing day. As sad as this was for the locals, it offered a broader base of statistics, which was sorely needed. Antiviral drugs, specifically oseltamivir and amantadine, had proven partly effective against the primary infection in a limited number of cases and also improved the chance of survival for the patients with viral pneumonitis. It did, however, do nothing for the large share of patients whose own immune systems went into that destructive feedback loop of overproduction of white blood cells referred to as a cytokine storm.

More important than the drugs, it seemed, had been the modern hospital practices and better equipment that the WHO team had brought. They were the primary reason for bringing down the case mortality rate from sixty to forty-five percent.

Still, they had no assessment of the share of asymptomatic patients and the diagnostic test the Singaporeans were working on was still not ready. But the outbreak had been contained.

They had been lucky indeed.

Just before turning towards the door Aeolus felt a pang of anxiety. He had caught something in the corner of his eye. Something was not right.

He was not a man prone to nervousness, and going before the president was nothing that would raise his heartbeat even the slightest. He had an unshakable inner conviction of his purpose, mission and unique ability to rise to this particular challenge. But he was neurotic about perfection in dress. When something was off with his clothes, he could think of little else. It would preoccupy him, interfering with his mental acuity to such a degree that he could barely hold a conversation.

He went at it systematically. His bespoke dark-charcoal Anderson & Sheppard three-roll-to-two-and-a-half single-breasted suit sat snugly in the collar, and had the slouchy appearance, with just enough drape around his chest, to make him look well dressed without pretension. His powder blue Turnbull & Asser shirt, made from Sea Island cotton, protruded exactly that quarter-inch at his wrists that had been accepted as the gold standard since the mid-1930s, the edge
stitching bringing that certain crispness to the collar those off-the-rack shirts lacked. He wore a burgundy Marinella tie in a four-in-hand knot with just the right tilt of asymmetry. His dark-blue Hermès pocket-square perfected his immaculate appearance. His perforated cap toes were as polished as a mirror. So where was it?

He finally found it. His right sock had slipped down and was bunching around his ankle. He knelt and corrected the flaw. His calm returned. He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. This was going to be the most important meeting in his life. The words of the Old Man came back to him: “No one likes the smartest kid in the class.”

Aeolus looked down at the silver knob that topped his cane. It bore his family’s insignia, adopted by his father, and the inscription: “
Ad utrumque paratus
.” His father’s motto. Literally translated, it meant “prepared for either case” and was an ambiguous phrase adapted as a motto by both the University of Lund in Sweden and the Spanish submarine fleet. The cane had been a gift from his father, to whom it meant “Ready for either offense or defense.” In his father’s mind, these were the only two proper ways to approach any given situation. No middle ground. Aeolus thought that he’d been stuck in second gear for too long. It was time to go on the offense.

AUGUST 2
^ND
, 10 AM, THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON D.C.

H
ank leafed through his briefing papers one last time. It was not often he got to present to the big boss. And he knew how it felt to screw up in his presence. He wasn’t about to let that happen again.

They were in the main conference facility of the Situation Room, a room Hank associated with bad memories. It was Hank who had organized the meeting that the WHO had requested. He’d chosen the participants carefully. Some were a given, like the president’s Chief of Staff. Also, there had to be enough clout in the room, and enough counsel within different areas of expertise. But within those parameters there was always a choice. Hank had chosen the Secretary of State over the National Security Advisor and consciously excluded Michener from the USAMRIID.

He wanted the room filled with his friends, friends who wouldn’t backstab him in front of the president, if given the chance. And with Aeolus Hughes on the other side of the video link, there would be plenty of such chances.

He reminded himself to keep his cool, think before speaking and make sure not to fall into any of that bastard’s traps.

The door opened and the president entered the room, followed by the Chief of Staff. They were laughing, apparently very pleased with the recent poll numbers.

As people found their places, Hank wiped his palms, damp with sweat on his trousers.

The president looked at the daily schedule his aide had just handed him. He glanced around the room to see who was present and asked, “And the topic of this meeting is this breakout in Indonesia?”

Hank was quick to answer, “Yes, Mr. President. The meeting has been called by the WHO and we have, via video, their Director-General, Mr. Hughes.”

The president nodded and Hank connected the video call.

As Aeolus appeared on the screen, Hank noted with satisfaction that he was alone on his end. The image was not from the SHOC, but some other room, probably his office. That was good. He must have excluded his staff in fear they would embarrass him in front of the president. For sure this had to mean that even Aeolus was a bit nervous as well.