Executive orders - Tom Clancy [107]
This is my turf, Roy. She looked around, and spotted the man she wanted to lunch with, heading that way with Altman in tow. Hey, Dave.
Dean James and his guest stood up. Hi, Cathy! Let me introduce a new faculty member, Pierre Alexandre. Alex, this is Cathy Ryan-
The same one who-
Please, I'm still a doctor, and-
You're the one on the Lasker list, right? Alexandre stopped her cold with that one. Cathy's smile lit up the room.
Yes.
Congratulations, Doctor. He held out his hand. Cathy had to set her tray down to take it. Altman watched with eyes that tried to be neutral, but conveyed something else. You must be with the Service.
Yes, sir. Roy Altman.
Excellent. A lady this lovely and this bright deserves proper protection, Alexandre pronounced. I just got out of the Army, Mr. Altman. I've seen you guys at Walter Reed. Back when President Fowler's daughter came back from Brazil with a tropical bug, I managed the case.
Alex is working with Ralph Forster, the dean explained as everyone sat down.
Infectious diseases, Cathy told her bodyguard.
Alexandre nodded. Just learning the ropes at the moment. But I have a parking pass, so I guess I really belong.
I hope you're as good a teacher as Ralph is.
A great doc, Alexandre agreed. Cathy decided she'd like the newbie. She next wondered about the accent and the southern manners. Ralph flew down to Atlanta this morning.
Anything special happening?
A possible Ebola case in Zaire, African male, age eight. The e-mail came through this morning.
Cathy's eyes narrowed at that. Though she was in a completely different field of medicine, like all physicians she got Morbidity and Mortality Report, and she kept current on everything she could. Medicine is a field in which education never stops. Just one?
Yep. Alexandre nodded. Seems the kid had a monkey bite on his arm. I've been over there. I deployed out of Detrick for the last mini-outbreak in 1990.
With Gus Lorenz? Dean James asked. Alexandre shook his head.
No, Gus was doing something else then. The team leader was George Westphal.
Oh, yeah, he-
Died, Alex confirmed. We, uh, kept it quiet, but he got it. I attended him. It wasn't real great to watch.
What did he do wrong? I didn't know him well, James said, but Gus told me he was a rising star. UCLA, as I recall.
George was brilliant, best man on structures I ever met, and he was as careful as any of us, but he got it anyway, and we never figured out how that happened. Anyway, that mini-outbreak killed sixteen people. We had two survivors, both females, both in their early twenties, and nothing remarkable about them that we could ever find. Maybe they were just lucky, Alexandre said, not really believing it. Things like this happened for some reason or other. It was just that he hadn't found it, though it was his job to find it. In any case, only eighteen total victims, and that was lucky. We were over there for six or seven weeks. I took a shotgun into the woods and blew up about a hundred monkeys, trying to find a carrier. No dice. That strain is called Ebola Zaire Mayinga. I imagine right now they're comparing it to what this little kid contracted. Ebola's a slippery little bastard.
Just one? Cathy asked.
That's the word. Method of exposure unknown, as usual.
Monkey bite?
Yeah, but we'll never find the monkey. We never do.
It's that deadly? Altman asked, unable to hold back from joining the conversation.
Sir, the official guess is eighty percent mortality. Put it this way. If you pull your pistol out and shoot me in the chest, right here,