People were hunkering down in their houses and staying away from crowds and other people and that also was making a difference. Only people with essential jobs were going to work, so the economy was taking an enormous hit, but compared to the loss of life, no one cared.
Dr. John Meeker at the Houston Baptist Hospital had long since been reduced to sending nurses and orderlies out to nearby supermarkets to buy as much sugar and salt and purified water as they could find, and he was directing the pharmacy staff and all available interns in the arcane art of making saline and glucose solutions from scratch since they were out of the manufactured supplies.
He looked up from a patient he was ministering to when a nurse called excitedly, “Dr. Meeker, you’ve got to come see this!”
He sighed, gave the nurse at his side some quick orders on what to do for the patient, and then he followed the other nurse down the hall and out to the loading bay at the rear of the hospital.
There was a large truck with green canvas over the top of the rear compartment being unloaded. There were cases and cases of IV fluids along with cardboard boxes labeled cephalexin, ciprofloxen, ampicillin, minocycline, and other assorted antibiotics, some of which he hadn’t used in years but which he was delighted to have. They were trying many different combinations of antibiotics on the plague, hoping to hit some fortuitous combination of drugs that would either cure or at least slow down the progression of the illness.
So far they hadn’t had much luck with the cure part but there was some evidence the massive onslaught of antibiotics was slowing the progression of some patients’ disease.
He quietly clasped his hands, looked heavenward, and said softly, “Thank you, Lord.”
And then he rolled up his sleeves and began to help unload the truck.
“Is there anything I can do?” the nurse asked.
He looked over his shoulder. “Yes, get every nurse and intern and orderly who is not directly caring for a patient down here to cart this stuff to the pharmacy so we can begin to use it.”
While they rested in the ward room as the LCAC raced up the coast of Mexico to get them within helicopter range of their Wildfire camp, Mason, Lauren, and Motzi watched TV news about the worldwide plague and its horrors.
After a while, Lauren glanced at Mason, “Why do you suppose this anthrax bacillus doesn’t infect animals as the normal type of anthrax does?”
Mason shook his head. “I don’t know for sure since we’ve been too busy looking for a cure to do a complete DNA sequencing on this particular hot-bug, but I would guess that the same mutation that caused this species to be transmissible from person to person also caused it to be unable to infect animals.”
She wagged her head. “Thank God,” she said. “Can you imagine how much more horrible the plague would be if it was also killing all warm-blooded mammals like the old anthrax did? We would be awash in dead animal bodies and then we’d have other plagues caused by illnesses related to that.”
“I truly doubt mankind could have survived such a plague,” Mason said seriously. “If we can extract a cure for the infection from these plants and even better a vaccine to prevent future infections in the next few days and get the results to the CDC within the week, I think we may be able to keep the worldwide death toll down to fifteen to twenty percent of the population rather than the thirty to forty percent if it is allowed to run its course unhindered by medicine.”
Lauren shuddered. “Fifteen to twenty percent of almost four billion people is still horrendous.”
“You’re right, of course, but right now we must focus on the almost one billion people our cure will save rather than the billion already lost.” He sighed and wiped a hand across his face. “God, the responsibility of what we have in those bags is almost too much for one man to bear.”
“You’re not alone, Mason. You’ve got me and Motzi and a whole lot of Marines who are going to help you get the needed cure, not to mention the support and help from members of your Wildfire Team.”
Just then Commander Piner stuck his head in the door. “I’m told we’ll be in range for your transfer for your flight to your coordinates in Mexico in about six hours, just before sunrise. So, if you’re gonna arrive there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you’d better get some shut-eye. Dr. Sullivan, since we’re not yet coed on this vessel, I’m giving you my stateroom to sleep in.” He glanced at Mason, “Doc, you and Motzi can bunk down here in the wardroom.”
“What about the Marines?” Mason asked.
“Those guys could sleep standing up if they had to, but we’ve fixed up a tarp on the rear deck to keep the sea-spray off of them so they’ll be fine in their sleeping bags.”
Aware of Piner’s eyes on them, Mason walked over to Lauren and gave her a brotherly hug and then he and Motzi dove into their packs to get their sleeping bags ready while she followed Piner out the door toward his cabin.
It was almost midnight before Bear and his team landed at the Mexico City airport. As they piled out of the chopper, they unloaded two duffle bags of assorted plants and flowering bushes, each different type bound together by twine into bunches. They’d spent about an hour roaming around the jungle and picking up anything that looked the least bit exotic or special before they climbed aboard the helicopter for the trip to Mexico City.
“What about the blood samples we don’t have?” Jinx asked Bear quietly as they unloaded their gear.
“Leave that to me,” Bear said. He turned to their pilot and said, “A couple of my men have come down with jungle fever, but I want to make sure they don’t have the plague. Can you direct us to the airport doctor’s office?”
At the mention of the word plague, the pilot blanched almost white, adjusted the white cloth mask that virtually everyone was wearing nowadays, and pointed toward the left wing of the airport terminal. “What do I tell General Mendez? He is waiting to talk to you about your mission.”
“Tell him we’ll meet him in the airport manager’s office as soon as I’m sure my men don’t have the plague… unless he’d like to meet us before we know for sure?”
The pilot held up his hands palms out. “No, no, I am sure the general will be happy to wait until your men have been tested. I will tell him myself.”
“Thank you,” Bear said with a smirk, and then he and his men took off at a jog toward the airport doctor’s office.
Thirty minutes later, they were outside the airport manager’s office with a briefcase containing thirty vials of blood and twenty spit-soaked Q-tips in vials labeled for DNA testing.
“You don’t think we took too much of that doctor’s blood, do you?” Babe asked, a concerned look on his face.
“Nah,” Bear replied. “He’ll heal up fine as soon as he wakes up from that shot of phenobarbital you gave him.”
He knocked once and entered the door without waiting for a reply. Behind a desk at the far end of the room sat a corpulent, sweating, mustachioed Mexican in a Mexican Army general’s uniform.
“You must be General Mendez?” Bear asked, striding forward to shake the man’s hand.
“Sí, and you are Señor Bear?”
“That’s right, General. I assume you can contact Colonel Blackman so we can conclude our business?”
Mendez nodded, his eyes narrow as he glared at Bear’s men standing behind him. “Your men, they are all right?”
“Yeah, just a touch of jungle fever, no sign of anthrax, the doctor said.”
“And the specimens? You have them?”