Al-Hassan and Griffin were last.
Victor Tremont gestured them to him. “Watch Smith carefully. I don’t want him to shave without your knowing when, where, and how close.” He looked down at the glowing coals of the fire as if they were oracles for the future. Suddenly he lifted his head. Al-Hassan and Griffin were just turning away to leave. He called them back.
When they stood close in front of him, he said in a low, hard voice, “Don’t misunderstand me, gentlemen. If Dr. Smith proves to be trouble, of course he has to be purged. Life is a balance of risk and security, victory and loss. What we might lose in a few pointed questions about the coincidences of his and his fiancée’s deaths could prove to be more than offset by stopping him from revealing the circumstances of her death.”
“If he’s really digging around.”
Tremont aimed his analytical gaze at Bill Griffin. “Yes, if. It’s your job to discover that, Mr. Griffin.” His voice was abruptly cold, a warning. “Don’t disappoint me.”
___________________
CHAPTER
TWELVE
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10:12 A.M., Wednesday, October 15
Fort Irwin, Barstow, California
The C-130 transport from Andrews Air Force Base touched down at the Southern California Logistical Airport near Victorville at 1012 on a warm, windy morning. A military police Humvee met Smith on the runway.
“Welcome to California, sir,” the driver greeted Smith as he grabbed his bag and held the vehicle’s door open.
“Thanks, Sergeant. Are we driving to Irwin?”
“To the helicopter landing area, sir. There’s a chopper from Irwin waiting for you there.”
The driver heaved Smith’s bag into the rear, climbed behind the wheel, and careened off across the tarmac. Smith hung on as the big combat vehicle bounced across ruts and potholes until it reached a waiting helicopter ambulance marked with the logo of the Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment— a rearing black stallion on a diagonal red-and-white field. Its rotors were already pivoting for takeoff.
An older man wearing the gold leaf of a major and a medical caduceus stepped out from beneath the long blades. He held out his hand and shouted, “Dr. Max Behrens, Colonel. Weed Army Hospital.”
An enlisted man took Smith’s bag, and they climbed into the vibrating ambulance chopper. It lurched into the air and banked at a steep angle, low across the desert. Smith looked down as they passed over two-lane highways and the buildings of small towns. Soon they were following the broad four lanes of Interstate 15.
Dr. Behrens leaned toward him to yell over the wind and noise “We’ve kept close watch on all units on the base, and no other cases of the virus have appeared.”
Smith said loudly, “Mrs. Anderson and the others ready to talk with me?”
“Yessir. Family, friends, everyone you need. The colonel of OPFOR said you’re to have anything you want, and he’d be glad to speak with you himself if that’d help.”
“OPFOR?”
Behrens grinned. “Sorry, forgot you’ve been at Detrick awhile. That’s our mission— Opposing Force. What the Eleventh Cav does here is act the role of enemy to all the regiments and brigades that come through for field training. We give them one hell of a hard time. It entertains us and makes them better soldiers.”
The helicopter flew across a four-lane highway and plunged deeper into the rock-strewn desert until Smith saw a road below, a WELCOME sign, and at the top of a hill a jumble of piled rocks all painted with the brightly colored logos and patches of units that had been stationed there or passed through Irwin over the years.
They swept on above lines of fast-moving vehicles trailing clouds of dust. It was startling how much the visually modified American vehicles looked like Russian mechanized infantry BMP-2s, BRDM-2s, and armored division T-80 tanks. The chopper swooped over the main post and settled to the desert floor in a cloud of sand. A reception committee was waiting, and Smith was jolted back to why he was here.
__________
Phyllis Anderson was a tall woman and a little heavy, as if she had eaten too many transient meals on too many army bases. Her full face was drawn as they sat on packing boxes in the silent living room of the pleasant house. She had the frightened eyes Smith had seen on so many relatively young army widows. What was she going to do now? She had spent her entire married life living from camp to camp, fort to fort, in on-base or off-base housing that was never her own. She had nowhere to call home.
“The children?” she said in answer to Smith’s question. “I sent them to my parents. They’re too young to know anything.” She glanced at the packed boxes. “I’ll join them in a few days. We’ll have to find a house. It’s a small town. Near Erie, Pennsylvania. I’ll have to get some work. Don’t know what I can do…”
She trailed off, and Smith felt brutal bringing her back to what he needed to ask.
“Was the major ever sick before that day?”
She nodded. “Sometimes he’d run a sudden fever, maybe a few hours, and then it’d go away. Once it went on for twenty-four hours The doctors were concerned but couldn’t find a cause, and he always got better without any problem. But a few weeks ago he came down with a heavy cold. I wanted him to take some sick days, at least stay out of the field, but that wasn’t Keith. He said wars and hostile skirmishes didn’t stop for a cold. The colonel always says Keith can outlast anyone in the field.” She looked down at her lap where her hands twisted a ragged tissue. “Could.”
“Anything you can tell me that might be connected to the virus that killed him?”
He saw her flinch at the word, but there was no other way to ask the question.
“No.” She raised her eyes. They held the same pain he felt, and he had to fight to keep it from reflecting in his own eyes. She continued, “It was over so fast. His cold seemed better. He took a good afternoon nap. And then he woke up dying.” She bit her lower lip to stop a sob.
He felt his eyes moisten. He reached out and put his hand on top of hers. “I’m so sorry. I know how difficult it is for you.”
“Do you?” Her voice was forlorn, but there was a question in it, too. They both knew he could not bring back her husband, but might he have a magic remedy to wipe away the endless, bottomless pain that made her ache from every cell?
“I do know,” he said softly. “The virus killed my fiancée, too.”
She stared, shocked. Two tears slid down her cheeks. “Horrible, isn’t it?”
He cleared his throat. His chest burned, and his stomach felt as if it had just been invaded by a cement mixer. “Horrible,” he agreed. “Do you think you can go on? I want to find out about this virus and stop it from killing anyone else.”
She was still a soldier’s wife in her mind, and action was always the best comfort. “What else do you want to know?”
“Was Major Anderson in Atlanta or Boston recently?”
“I don’t think he was ever in Boston, and we haven’t been in Atlanta since we left Bragg years ago.”
“Where else besides Fort Bragg did the major serve?”
“Well…” She reeled off a list of bases that covered the country from Kentucky to California. “Germany, too, of course, when Keith was with the Third Armored.”
“When was that?” Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a close cousin of Ebola, had first been discovered in Germany.
“Oh, 1989 through ’91.”
“With the Third Armored? Then he went to Desert Storm?”
“Yes.”
“Anywhere else overseas?”
“Somalia.”
That was where Smith had his fatal encounter with Lassa fever. It had been a small operation, but had he known everything that happened there? An unknown virus was always possible deep in the jungles and deserts and mountains of that unfortunate continent.
Smith pressed on. “Did he ever talk about Somalia? Was he sick there? Even briefly? One of those sudden fevers that went away? Headaches?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
“Was he ever sick in Desert Storm?”,
“No.”
“Exposed to any chemical or biological agents?”
“I don’t think so. But I remember he did say the medics sent him to a MASH for a minor shrapnel wound and some doctors said the MASH could’ve been exposed to germ warfare. They inoculated everyone who went through.”
Smith’s gut did a flip, but he kept the excitement from his voice. “Including the major?”
She almost smiled. “He said it was the worst inoculation he ever got. Really hurt.”
“You don’t happen to recall the MASH number?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Soon after that he ended the interview. They stood in the shade of her front porch, talking about nothing. There was solace in the normal interactions of everyday life.