Free Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller by Bobby Adair Page B

community. “I’m afraid.”
    “Of dying?” Dr. Giovanni asked.
    “Something worse.”
    The Italian doctor waited silently for the
explanation.
    “Are you familiar with the Ebola Reston
strain?”
    “Of course. Named for Reston, Virginia. Did I
say that correctly?”
    Dr. Littlefield shrugged at the accent.
“Close enough.”
    “There was a company there that quarantined
monkeys imported for scientific research. I believe they had five
hundred monkeys on the premises.”
    “Yes, that’s the place. In the monkey house.”
Dr. Littlefield’s heart sank just to be talking about it—the
thoughts had been haunting him for days. “Maybe fifty or a hundred
monkeys died before they figured out it wasn’t Simian Hemorrhagic
Fever, but Ebola. The Army came in and destroyed all the monkeys. I
think four people became infected, but didn’t die. That strain was
damned lethal for monkeys, but it let humans off easy.” He stood up
straight and looked out across the town.
    Dr. Giovanni waited patiently for Dr.
Littlefield to finish.
    “The monkeys didn’t get infected through
direct contact. Monkeys in one room had come into the facility with
the virus, then monkeys in other rooms became infected and started
dying. There was no physical contact between the monkeys.”
    “What are you saying?” Dr. Giovanni
asked.
    “Like Ebola Reston—” Dr. Littlefield
hesitated. It was a frightening thing to think, a hard thing to
say. “ I think this one is airborne .”

Chapter 20
    Nurse Mary-Margaret finished crying.
Sufficient tears had fallen to let her find her strength again.
    Austin was sitting on the ground by then, not
caring that the smell was still coming from the buckets or even
that it seemed to be permanently burned into his nostrils. He was
watching the late afternoon shadows grow across the town.
    “Are you okay?” Nurse Mary-Margaret
asked.
    “I’m okay.”
    “After you clean those, you should rest,” she
said.
    Austin shook his head and said nothing. He
still had a lump in his throat. His thoughts were on Rashid,
Margaux, and Benoit. They’d grown close in the previous seven
weeks.
    He thought about their hike up to Sipi Falls
that first time. It was a little bit dangerous, but thrilling and
magical. They’d met a coffee farmer up there who’d let them sleep
in his storehouse. It was far from fancy—just a dirt-floored
shack—but the family’s kindness eclipsed the accommodations. To
think that a coffee farmer who made less in a year than his dad
made in a week was happy to share what he had with some wide-eyed
mzungu kids gave Austin optimism for the future of humanity. They’d
all become friends after that, and the kids had been up to visit
the farmer several times. It was the kind of experience neither he
nor his friends would ever dream of back in Denver. It was so much
more real than a t-shirt from the Louvre or a postcard from
Rome.
    Austin looked away from his thoughts and
said, “I’ll be okay, Mary-Margaret. You go ahead. I’ll be inside in
a minute.”
    “Okay.” Nurse Mary-Margaret turned and headed
back to the hospital.
    The familiar sound of tires on gravel caught
Austin’s attention. On the road coming into town from the east were
two Land Rovers, with paint shiny under red dust. Curiosity kept
his eyes on the Land Rovers until they came to stop on the road in
front of the hospital building. Car doors opened. Men in bright
yellow Tyvek suits with hoods, gloves, goggles, and surgical masks
got out.
    Thank God. The cavalry had arrived.

Chapter 21
    The sky was getting dark and the cicadas
started their nightly ruckus. Austin walked in through the back
door of the ward with clean buckets in hand. Immediately, he sensed
something wasn’t right.
    The guys in the yellow HAZMAT suits nearly
glowing in the lantern light had arrayed themselves around the
ward, seemingly doing nothing except watching. One was kneeling
over Rashid, hands busy. In the center of the ward, three of