But it wasn’t the VX gas that had everyone watching the skies. The latest toxicology report showed the potency of that nerve agent had rapidly diminished once in contact with the soil.
Instead, she pictured that blackened wasteland — and what was incubating there.
Thank God, no one is still in town.
The evacuation of Lee Vining — with its population of two hundred or so, not counting tourists — hadn’t taken long. She stared at the yellow sign for Nicely’s Restaurant, advertising a breakfast special that would never be served. A little farther, the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore still had the American flag hanging out front, but the place was shuttered up tightly.
Would anyone ever be allowed to return here?
Finally the vehicle turned off the highway and onto Visitor Center Drive. The road wended its way up to the ranger station that overlooked Mono Lake. They didn’t bother stopping at the parking lot and drove right up to the towering glass entrance. The building doubled as a visitors’ center, with interpretive displays, a couple of art galleries, and a tiny theater.
A familiar figure opened the door as they drew to a stop. Bill Howard lifted an arm in greeting. He was dressed in blue jeans and a brown ranger’s shirt and jacket. Despite being in his mid-sixties, he kept his body hard and fit. The only sign of his age was his thinning hair and the sun-crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
She was really glad to see him, but she wasn’t the only one. Nikko hopped out and bounded up to Bill. The dog leaped for a bear hug from her fellow ranger. It was poor discipline, but Nikko only behaved this way with Bill, who more than tolerated it. Then again, Bill had three dogs of his own.
She crossed and hugged Bill just as warmly. “It’s good to see you.”
“Same here, kid. Sounds like you’ve had an exciting couple of days.”
That was the understatement of the year.
Drake climbed out of the vehicle and joined them. “Sir, did you get the information sent by Director Crowe?”
Bill’s back stiffened, going professional. “I did, and I’ve got all the traffic cameras and webcams pulled up. Follow me.”
They crossed through the visitors’ center and into the ranger station proper. The back office was small, with only enough room for a few desks, a row of computers, and a large whiteboard at the back. Jenna saw a long list of vehicles written on the board, along with license numbers, thirty-two of them in total.
Over the past sixteen hours, Painter Crowe had managed to get a full list of personnel working at the mountain research station. He also pulled up their vehicle registrations and any rental car information. It had taken an exasperatingly long time due to the level of security and the multiple government agencies involved — but most of the delay came from the simple fact that yesterday was a Sunday.
Who knew national security could be so dependent on the day of the week?
Bill Howard waved to a line of three computers. “I’ve cued up cameras from here and Mono City, and in case your target slipped past those unseen, I pulled feed from webcams around Tioga Pass headed to Yosemite and down 395.”
“That should cover everything south of the lake,” Jenna explained to Drake.
The gunnery sergeant nodded, satisfied. “Crowe has the sheriff’s department up in Bridgeport searching roads to the north of here. If someone from that base is a saboteur and hightailed it out of there, we should be able to cross-reference the vehicle information with cars passing by one or more of those cameras.”
Jenna pictured the open gates that led to the research station. It would take painstaking effort to check every car against that list, but it had to be done. It was their best lead. That is, if her theory of a fleeing saboteur even held water.
Maybe someone simply forgot to secure that gate.
Only one way to find out.
“Let’s get to work,” Jenna said.
Despite the mind-numbing task before them, she knew better than to complain. Others had it much worse.
“How’s he doing?” Painter asked the nurse.
The woman — a young Marine who was part of the MWTC’s medical staff — snapped off a pair of surgical gloves as she stepped out of the air lock from the quarantined ward. She looked haggard after finishing the night shift, followed by an hour-long decontamination procedure.
She turned to stare through the glass window into the makeshift recovery room. The self-contained BSL4 patient containment unit occupied a corner of a large hangar. The isolation facility had been airlifted from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick and hastily installed in here.
It held a single bed and one patient.
Josh lay there, connected by tubes and wires to a plethora of medical equipment. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. His left leg — what was left of it — was slung halfway up. A light blanket hid the end of his stump.
Two other figures moved inside — a doctor and nurse — both ensconced in biohazard suits, tethered to the wall by oxygen tubes.
“He’s doing as best as could be expected,” the nurse answered, peeling off a surgical cap to reveal auburn hair cut in a short bob. She was pretty, but worry darkened her features. “According to the doctor, he may need more surgery.”
Painter closed his eyes for a breath. He pictured the fall of the axe, the bloody rush out of the hills, the frustrating time lost moving Josh safely from the forward staging area to here. Surgery had to be done under the same level of isolation, with surgeons suited up and struggling to repair the blunt trauma while wearing bulky gloves. Lisa shared the same blood type as her brother and donated two pints — more than she should have — while crying most of the time.
He knew how hard it had been for Lisa to make that decision in the field. Initially, she had kept her composure, knowing Josh needed a medical doctor at that time, not a sister. But once here, after Josh was taken into surgery, she broke down, nearly collapsing in despair and worry.
He’d tried to get her to take a sedative, to sleep, but she had refused.
Only one thing kept her sane, kept her moving.
Painter stared across the hangar to another cluster of white-walled structures. It was the Level 4 biolab installed by the CDC team. Lisa had been holed up with that group throughout the night. The loss of the leg was not the only concern.
“Has there been any sign of contamination?” Painter pressed the nurse.
She gave a small shake of her head, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re doing regular blood work, monitoring his temperature, watching for some sign of a mounting immune response. Every half hour, we check his body for any outward lesions. It’s all we can do. We still don’t know what to be watching for, or even what we’re dealing with.”
The nurse looked in the direction of the larger suite of BSL4 labs on the far side of the hangar.
Everybody was waiting for more information.
Twenty minutes ago, Painter had heard from a team stationed up by the dead zone. The blight — whatever it was — continued to spread unabated, consuming acres in a matter of hours.
But what the hell was causing it?
He thanked the nurse and headed toward the best place to discover an answer to that question.
Over the past twenty-four hours, Washington had been flying in personnel, mobilizing specialists from multiple disciplines: epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, geneticists, bioengineers, anyone who might help. The entire region had been quarantined to a distance of fifty miles from ground zero. News crews fought for coverage at the edges, setting up camps.