Executive orders - Tom Clancy [229]
Your predictions were entirely correct.
The Russians called these things 'objective conditions.' They are and remain unbelievers, but their formulas for analysis of problems have a certain precision to them, Badrayn explained. That is why I have learned to assemble information so carefully.
So I have seen. Your next task will be to sketch in some operations. With that, Daryaei pushed back his seat and closed his eyes, wondering if he would dream again of dead lions.
MUCH AS HE wished for a return to clinical medicine, Pierre Alexandre didn't especially like it, at least this matter of treating people who would not survive. The former Army officer in him figured that defending Bataan had been like this. Doing all you could, firing off your best rounds, but knowing that relief would never come. At the moment, it was three AIDS patients, all homosexual men, all in their thirties, and all with less than a year to live. Alexandre was a fairly religious man, and he didn't approve of the gay lifestyle, but nobody deserved to die like this. And even if they did, he was a physician, not God sitting in judgment. Damn, he thought, walking off the elevator and speaking his patient notes into a mini-tape recorder.
It's part of a doctor's job to compartmentalize his life. The three patients on his unit would still be there tomorrow, and none of them would require emergency attention that night. Putting their problems aside was not cruel. It was just business, and their lives, were they to have any hope at all, would depend on his ability to turn away from their stricken bodies and back to researching the microsized organisms that were attacking them. He handed the tape cassette to his secretary, who'd type up the notes.
Dr. Lorenz down in Atlanta returned your call returning his call returning your original call, she told him as he passed. As soon as he sat down, he dialed the direct line from memory.
Yes?
Gus? Alex here at Hopkins. Tag, he chuckled, you're it. He heard a good laugh at the other end of the line. Phone tag could be the biggest pain in the ass.
How's the fishing, Colonel?
Would you believe I haven't had a chance yet? Ralph's working me pretty hard.
What did you want from me-you did call first, didn't you? Lorenz wasn't sure anymore, another sign of a man working too hard.
Yeah, I did, Gus. Ralph tells me you're starting a new look at the Ebola structure-from that mini-break in Zaire, right?
Well, I would be, except somebody stole my monkeys, the director of CDC reported sourly. The replacement shipment is due in here in a day or two, so they tell me.
You have a break-in? Alexandre asked. One of the troublesome developments for labs that had experimental animals was that animal-rights fanatics occasionally tried to bust in and liberate the animals. Someday, if everyone wasn't careful, some screwball would walk out with a monkey under his arm and discover it had Lassa fever-or worse. How the hell were physicians supposed to study the goddamned bug without animals-and who'd ever said that a monkey was more important than a human being? The answer to that was simple: in America there were people who believed in damned near anything, and there was a constitutional right to be an ass. Because of that, CDC, Hopkins, and other research labs had armed guards, protecting monkey cages. And even rat cages, which really made Alex roll his eyes to the ceiling.
No, they were highjacked in Africa. Somebody else is playing with them now. Anyway, so it kicks me back a week. What the hell. I've been looking at this little bastard for fifteen years.
How fresh is the sample?
It's off the Index Patient. Positive identification, Ebola Zaire, the Mayinga strain.