The Chimera Sequence (14 page)

Not this time, though. Somehow he had managed to convince his boss that he was needed on the ground. Pox viruses were his specialty, after all, and this was an opportunity to pass on some of the practical skills he had picked up over the years. Tricks of the trade. He smiled. How else were all these junior scientists going to learn the best way to bleed an angry baboon? Or what to do when accidentally poked with a used needle in some mud hut a hundred miles from the nearest hospital? You just couldn’t learn this stuff from a book.

“So are you gentlemen heading to South Africa?” The woman in the middle seat beside him turned her bulky shoulders in his direction.
Oh God, no
. Shackleton hated airplane talkers and thought he might have gotten lucky this time.

“No, actually, just passing through.” Rule number one: never volunteer additional information. She didn’t take the hint.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” the woman said. She wore a bright turquoise t-shirt emblazoned with the words
New Hope Community Church Summer Mission Trip
across the chest. It was oversized even for her generous proportions. “I’ve been twice before and it’s just an amazing place. So many needy people and they just love it when we can provide a helping hand here and there.”

I’m sure they do
. But Shackleton was a kind man, even if he didn’t always feel that way. “Well that sounds very nice, I wish you a successful trip this time around.”

Again, end of conversation.

But alas, she chose to elevate her airplane talker status and proceeded from basic pleasantries to persistent interrogation.

“So if you’re not staying in South Africa, where y’all going instead?”

She gazed at him, apparently oblivious to his growing impatience.

“Heading on to Rwanda, but I’m afraid this delay means we’ll probably miss our connecting flight in Johannesburg.”

“Rwanda, wow.” Her jaw dropped. “That’s a little scary for my taste, but I guess it’s good some people are willing to go places like that. They must need your help real bad since the genocide, huh?”

Shackleton was consistently surprised by the ignorance of his fellow Americans. At least she knew the term genocide and could connect it with Rwanda—that was better than most. But hello, those horrific events were over twenty years ago, and Rwanda was now the poster child for successful economic development in Africa.

It was time to implement the next level of preemptive antisocial tactics. He pulled a book out of the seat pocket.

“If you’ll excuse me, ma’am.”

“Oh, so you’re a reader too?” She reached into the Hudson Booksellers bag on her lap and took out a new copy of
The Hot Zone.
“Have you read this one? I was trying to find something about Africa and Sandra here convinced me to pick this up.”

She nodded to a tiny woman in the seat beside her sporting the same turquoise t-shirt.

Shackleton forced a smile. The situation had just gone from bad to catastrophic. He didn’t like to lie, but sometimes it was for the best.

“No, doesn’t really look like something I’d be interested in.”

He opened his book randomly and brought it up to his face. Maybe he was farsighted?

The intercom crackled to life. Salvation could sometimes be found in the strangest ways.

“Well folks, we’re so sorry to get your hopes up.”

Shackleton crouched down to look out the small oval window. The horizontal downpour made it impossible to see anything past the Boeing 777’s gigantic wing.

“They were able to get four flights off, but we aren’t going to be so lucky.” A chorus of groans rolled through the plane. “Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is officially closed to any further air traffic, so we will be returning to the terminal.”

Crap
. This was going to put a serious wrinkle in their plans.

He caught up with the rest of the team back at the gate.

“Well this is a literal shit-storm, right?” Travis Grinley was grinning. Go figure.

A small Asian woman laughed, but sobered up on seeing Shackleton’s approach. She was a new Epidemic Intelligence Service officer recently assigned to Viral Special Pathogens and still seemed somewhat intimidated by him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. He wasn’t going to let this chance for some fieldwork slip through his fingers. “I’m disappointed, of course, but we’ll make something else work. Anyone have updates on other airports in the area?”

“Yeah, doesn’t look good.” Travis nodded at his phone. “Pretty much everything in the southeastern U.S. is closed for the night.”

“Seriously?” Shackleton found that hard to believe. “Anyway, as long as we can get to New York tonight, we should still be able to reroute through Europe and be on the ground in Kigali by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Love the optimism, boss, but that’s going to be impossible.” Travis looked up from his phone again. “The skies are shut down between here and D.C. We’re looking at a twenty-four hour delay, minimum.”

Shackleton closed his eyes and tried to release the tension in his broad shoulders. He should have known it was too good to be true. But that left them with a real problem.

“Who else do we have in Africa right now?” He looked from face to face. “This investigation can’t wait twenty-four hours, you guys know that.”

The new EIS officer spoke up. “Leila’s at that conference in Gabon—that’s not too far, right?”

She was right. Leila Torabi was a second year EIS officer presenting her research on filoviruses at the International Medical Research Centre’s annual meeting in Libreville. It would still take her a few hours by air to reach Kigali, but that was better than delaying the official CDC response by a whole day. At the very least she could pick up samples to hand carry back to Atlanta.

“Perfect,” Shackleton said. “Don’t know why I didn’t think of her before. Any of you have a good mobile number for our favorite Iranian princess?”

He looked at Travis, eyebrows raised. It was tough to keep a workplace romance secret anywhere, but the CDC rumor mill was especially active.

“Yeah, let me find it.” Travis tapped the screen a couple of times. “It’s a bit late to call her now, though, don’t you think?”

Shackleton smiled. This could just work.

“Give me that phone.”

The land of a thousand hills, wasn’t that what they called it? Leila Torabi pressed her forehead against the small oval window and watched as a patchwork quilt of green and brown appeared below the plane.

Rwanda. The country and its people had fascinated Leila for years, but this would be her first visit. Too bad it was going to be so short, really just a twenty-four hour layover on her way back to Atlanta. But such was life for a globetrotting officer in the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. In all honesty, the thrill of being involved in an exciting outbreak like this was well worth the jet lag and missed tourism possibilities.

She gripped the armrests and tucked her head slightly as the tarmac rushed up to meet them. Over thirty years of international flights, and yet she still freaked out over the landings.

A couple of bounces, and they were safe. Leila stretched her arms.

Thirty-four years, to be exact. She didn’t remember that first flight as a four-month-old infant, of course, but her brother loved to tell the story of the family’s infamous exit from the United States. He always made it sound like they were fleeing for their lives, and the two of them spent many happy hours reenacting the adventure as children. She knew better now.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you to Rwanda.”

The female voice bounced with a joyful African lilt. Leila nodded along as the flight attendant repeated herself. The French was easy—she had studied it all the way through high school. But Kinyarwanda? Not so much. That would take at least one more visit.

“So, have you come for business or for pleasure?”

The short round man beside her had mercifully stayed busy on a laptop for most of the flight. Now he turned to her, white teeth gleaming in a friendly smile.

“Ah, business only this time, I’m afraid.”

Leila was not quite so generous with her teeth.

“That is good,” the man said. “You must know, Rwanda loves business.”

“Yes, I know it’s seen some impressive economic growth over the last few years.”

Leila looked at him more closely. All those years as a diplomat’s daughter had given her an especially sensitive radar to the strange race of men who spent their lives pretending to solve the world’s problems.

“But please, it will be your pleasure to visit the mountain gorillas.” He stood and pulled a sleek leather carry-on from the overhead bin. “They are my country’s most treasured resource.”

Leila smiled as she followed him into the aisle. He wasn’t kidding. She had just read in the airline’s seat-back magazine that mountain gorilla tourism brought in several million dollars of valuable foreign exchange every year. But this guy must not read ProMED.

“You know,” she said. “I’ve always dreamed of doing that, but unfortunately I just won’t have the time.”

Leila was actually terrified of the creatures—thank you,
Goodnight Gorilla
—but there was no reason to go down that road now. She didn’t think she would be seeing any gorillas in Musanze, anyway. Her job was simply to act as an overnight courier, bringing protected samples back to the CDC for further analysis. Bill Shackleton’s middle-of-the-night call had made that clear. Not the most glamorous of assignments, but at least it got her out of that dreaded presentation in Libreville.

A blast of humid warm air met her at the plane’s open door.

The man looked back at her before stepping out onto the stairs.

“Welcome to Rwanda!”

Leila nodded, a faint smile on her lips. It was hard to get annoyed with someone so genuine.

She pulled out her phone as she walked across the asphalt towards the terminal. There it was, the phone number for Dr. Cole McBride. What kind of a name was that, anyway? Almost too American for its own good.

Leila typed a simple message.

Just arrived. Will meet you as planned.

And pressed send.

She was a looker, no question about that. But was she really the best the CDC had to offer? It was clear they weren’t taking his outbreak very seriously yet. Cole gave a wave and lowered his simple printed sign as the woman strode purposefully in his direction. Leila Torabi. Her caramel skin, green eyes and closely cropped dark hair matched the exotic sound of her name perfectly.

He stepped forward with a smile, shouldering his way past a tour operator trying to steal his prime location.

“You must be Leila?” he said, extending a hand.

“Dr. McBride, it’s a pleasure.” The accent was unexpected, mostly British but with something else there too.

“Call me Cole, please,” he said, reaching for her roller bag. “Let me get that for you.”

She held up a hand. “Oh, it’s no problem. I take this thing everywhere with me these days.”

Right.

“Let’s just head out to the truck, then.” Beautiful, and Miss Independent, too. “Plenty of time to get caught up on things once we’re on the road.”

He wove his way through the crowd, checking over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure Leila stayed right behind him. She navigated the chaos surprisingly well. Not quite like Marna, though, whose tall strong body demanded attention and deference wherever she went.

Marna. Cole thought of her body, now racked with fever and shivering painfully in bed back in Musanze. He had left her there hours earlier, with Musamba promising to stay by her side and call him if anything changed. At least this lonely emissary from the CDC was a physician, and apparently a pretty smart one at that. He looked her up that morning after receiving Dr. Shackleton’s call: undergrad at Oxford, medical school and residency at Harvard, and then an infectious disease fellowship at Hopkins. You couldn’t ask for a better pedigree, but did she have any real world experience to back it up? Still, it would be good to have her on Marna’s case for a few hours.

Cole swerved to avoid a dog that jumped in front of his speeding pick-up.

“Crap, that was close. It’s like they have a death wish or something!”

“I’m impressed,” Leila said, laughing. “Even though I grew up overseas, I never had to do any of the driving.”

“So that explains the accent? I’ve been trying to place it, but the closest I got was some kind of generic international school hybrid.”

“Well that
is
about as close as it gets,” she said. “My dad was a diplomat, so—”

“Wait, but I thought EIS officers had to be American citizens.” He’d been waiting for a chance to ask. “Or is there some kind of exchange program you’re part of?”

“Seriously?” He caught her raised eyebrows out of the corner of his eye. “I
am
an American citizen, same as you. And we have a bunch of foreign national trainees in the program too.”

“But you just said—”

“—that my dad was a diplomat, yes.” Her tone made it clear this was a conversation she had far more often than she liked. “And I know, my accent is confusing. I was born while he was studying in the U.S., and some loophole made it possible for me to claim citizenship when I came back for med school.”