The bouncer silently floated down until it was less than a foot above the ground. Kenyon and Norward opened a couple of the cases they had inside and pulled out blue, full-body suits.
“One size fits all,” Kenyon said, handing one to Turcotte. He also handed him a hood and a large, heavy backpack.
Turcotte stepped into the suit. He gave Yakov a hand and they zipped each other up. The hood had a full-face, clear plastic mask. With a little help from Norward, they got completely garbed, settling the heavy backpacks on their shoulders and hooking up the hoses from it to the suit properly.
Turcotte felt the slight rush of bottled air as Norward turned a switch on the pack. A small boom mike was built into the hood.
“How much air do we have?” he asked.
“Three hours,” Norward’s voice sounded tinny coming through the receiver.
The pilot of the bouncer had just a hood on, breathing from a tank strapped next to his seat. He hit a release and the cargo nets on the outside of the craft dropped loose, tumbling the large cases the USAMRIID men had brought to the ground. The bouncer still had not touched the ground, hovering two feet above the earth.
Turcotte climbed the ladder to the top hatch. He opened it, then, with great difficulty, clambered outside. He slid down the sloping side of the bouncer until he was at the lip. He then hopped off onto the ground. Kenyon came next, followed by Norward, then Yakov, who had shut the hatch behind him. The bouncer immediately went back up into the air, to hover a hundred feet above their heads.
“Norward,” Kenyon’s voice came over the radio. “You and Yakov set up the habitat. I’ll find us a specimen.”
Turcotte listened to the quiet thump of the re-breather tank on his back. He’d never worn a suit like this before and hoped it was working properly. He could easily remember the sight of the man dying on the video.
He followed Kenyon as the other slowly walked toward the town. Behind them, Yakov and Norward were opening a large case.
A dusty trail led through the trees at the west end of the clearing. Kenyon led the way. Turcotte was already hot inside the thick suit, feeling a small stream of sweat making its way down his back.
They passed a small hut. Kenyon swung the door open and leaned in. “Nothing.”
They continued down the path. A cinder-block building appeared on the left side of the road. The rest of the town of Vilhena lay beyond it, going downslope to the muddy river. It wasn’t very large, less than a mile and a half long by a half mile cut into the jungle. Turcotte estimated about five thousand people could live there.
Kenyon walked to the opening of the building, which was covered with a blanket, and pulled it aside.
“We’ve got bodies,” he said.
Turcotte followed him inside. There were six bodies. All had bled out badly. Turcotte glanced at Kenyon, but he couldn’t see the other man’s face behind the glazed plastic of the suit mask.
“I’ve never seen symptoms exactly like this.” Kenyon was kneeling next to the body of a woman. “They’re like Ebola, but the rash is something different.” With a gloved hand he touched flesh. “Notice these pustules on the black welts? Does sort of remind me of the plague.
“The thing that bothers me is the timing,” Kenyon continued. His fingers were probing the body. “Ebola takes two weeks. Here it sounds like a couple of days, maybe three.” He reached into a waist pack and pulled out a sample kit. He pressed the end of a tube into the body’s flesh, then capped it and put it back in the case. He also got a sample of the body’s blood.
The process was repeated several times, Kenyon moving from body to body.
“We’ll know shortly what it isn’t,” Kenyon said as he headed toward the door.
Back at the field, Yakov and Norward had been hard at work. The first large case they had opened had contained a medical habitat. Norward knew it had not been designed for this use. It was an inflatable tent designed for MASH units to be able to operate in a chemically contaminated environment. It had two flexible Kevlar walls — an inner and outer — with the space between filled with compressed air from tanks they had brought with them, allowing it to be set up very quickly. On the inside it was relatively spacious, with just he and Yakov in there along with their gear.
The air coining in and out was ventilated through special air filters. It wasn’t the most perfect Biolevel 4 facility, but it was the best thing Kenyon had found available in the government inventory when he’d conducted the jaunt.
The entryway was cramped, and with great difficulty Yakov and Norward had disinfected the outside of their suits and the other plastic cases they stacked in the entryway. Then they unsuited, placing the garments into sealed plastic bags and shoving the empty cases back outside.
Norward was setting up the equipment when Turcotte and Kenyon arrived at the entry. The two disinfected and unsuited, passing through the air lock. Kenyon carefully carried the samples, sealed inside his waist pack.
To handle a Level 4 bio-agent required either a full suit or a glove box. On top of the table, Norward set up the latter. It was a device four feet wide, by three tall, by three wide. It had its own one-way mini air lock so they could put samples in — once in, the sample had to stay there until they took the box back to the Level 4 lab and could sterilize the inside.
There were numerous compartments so they could keep samples separate and not contaminate each other. There was also a microscope built into the box, so they could examine the samples.
“What are you doing?” Turcotte asked. He was wiping sweat off his forehead with a towel. Yakov was sitting on the floor of the habitat, taking a drink of water from a canteen.
Kenyon was placing the waist pack inside the air lock for the glove box. “What we have to find is a brick — a block of virus particles. A brick contains billions of virus particles, gathered together, waiting to move on to the next host.” Turcotte glanced at Yakov. The Russian shrugged.
Finished with the mechanical task of getting the box ready, Kenyon went to work. Stepping up to the side of the box, Kenyon stuck his hands through two openings, flexing his fingers into the heavy-duty gloves inside. Deftly, he opened the pack, removing the tubes holding the various samples. He sorted those out, placing the tubes in racks.
“I’m going to test it for Ebola, Marburg, and Ebola3,” Kenyon said. He took samples and mixed them with solutions in preset tubes that had an agent that would react to the specific virus. The tubes were blue.
“They’ll turn red if the virus was recognized,” Norward explained as Kenyon worked.
While they waited for a possible reaction, Kenyon put another sample from the brick onto a slide and put the slide into the other end of the scope and pressed his eye up against it.
Kenyon’s voice startled Turcotte. “I don’t think it’s Ebola3.” Kenyon pointed at the microscope and gestured to Norward. “Take a look.”
Norward bent over and peered. All he could see was a mass of particles — there was no chance of seeing an individual virus to get a visual ID.
“How can you tell that’s not Ebola3?”
“I know Ebola3 and I’ve seen bricks from Ebola3,” Kenyon said. “That doesn’t look like an Ebola3 brick.”
“One of the other two Ebolas?” Norward asked.
Kenyon looked down into the box at the four test tubes with the various Ebola reactants. They were still blue. “No.”
“Marburg?” Norward asked, hoping that at least they would know what they were up against. Even though there was no cure or vaccine for each of the viruses he had just mentioned, knowing the enemy would help clarify the situation.
Kenyon was looking in the box. “No.” All test tubes were still blue and the requisite time had passed. “It’s not a known. Could be a mutation of a known.”