Cold Silence

by James Abel

  But the death of my fiancée eighteen months ago isn’t there, nor is the fact that, when summoned, I still run a two-man bioterror team comprised of myself and my best friend, Major Edward Nakamura. My secrets from even my bosses are certainly not there either. That I wake sometimes from dreams of strangling one man and watching another die, frothing at the mouth, in a foreign private hospital, run by a foreign security service. Sometimes when I open my eyes from those dreams, I feel a presence in the room. Not a consciousness. Not a ghost. I don’t believe in that. So I’m unsure what is there, in the room with me. Memory? Blame? Rage? Regret?

  My feeling when I lie awake those nights in my isolated home in Massachusetts, and wait for dawn, is complicated. It’s not guilt. I did what had to be done. Not fear, because I don’t care if something beyond our earthly comprehension is really there. “It’s vigilance,” Eddie once said. “You concentrate on what you need to do to protect others.”

  But Eddie is an optimist. He always thinks things will turn out right.

  Once waking, I thought I saw a small green glow in the corner of my bedroom. But later I decided I probably didn’t see it. Or it was the reflection of a headlight passing on the dirt road. Or an afterimage from rubbing my eyes. I’m a doctor. I’m a scientist. I hunt diseases and believe in facts. I don’t believe in little glowing lights. Or in religion. Or certainly, anymore, in a benevolent God.

  Wilderness Medicine is in the file, too, and it was the official reason that Eddie and I were in Africa, thanks to a secret agreement our director—back in Foggy Bottom—made with Harvard. Wilderness Medicine is a new field, the art of getting fast care to patients in remote parts of the earth. Sometimes they are explorers or adventurers who have been injured in the Amazon, or the Arctic, or the deep sandstone canyons of Utah. A sea snake–bitten National Geographic photographer in Micronesia. A farmer dying from a new, resistant malaria in Peru. WM patients tend to be the very rich, who use the wilderness as playgrounds, or the very poor, who lack even basic medical knowledge or care.

  “But Wilderness Medicine also includes disaster relief, rapid response to hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, outbreaks,” Admiral Galli, the director, had explained when the agreement was signed. “Officially, you’re going to Africa as relief doctors. You’ll work out of the giant aid base in northern Kenya. You’ll treat locals and aid workers. Vaccinations. Health classes. Diet. You’ll be based at the junction of three countries.”

  “And unofficially?” I’d asked as the three of us sat in Galli’s townhouse office, walking distance from the White House, where we mapped outbreak games or war or terror scenarios like the one that had brought us to Africa.

  The admiral frowned. He’s a small man, sixtyish, a former Coast Guard hero. We’ve been through so much that we sometimes address each other more like friends. He’s one of the few people left in Washington Eddie and I trust.

  “Joe, there have been some disturbing reports coming out of East Africa.”

  “What reports?”

  “For two decades we’ve anticipated that if a bio-attack comes on U.S. soil, it will be in some recognizable form. Anthrax. Ricin. Bad stuff, but at least a form we know.”

  I felt a chill. “Something new has appeared?”

  “Threats, Joe. CIA warning. That an Islamic splinter group is trying to develop a new kind of bioweapon, somewhere in that cesspool.”

  “Why go to the trouble to come up with something new, with so much other stuff out there?” Eddie asked. “Hell, someone must have stolen or bought half of those old Syrian germ stockpiles by now.”

  “Because, the rumor is, if this new thing hits, nobody will associate it with an attack. It will be considered a natural outbreak. So no reprisals. Rumor is, the perpetrator will not claim credit, just allow panic to spread. They’ll step in later, after massive damage is done.”

  “Who started the rumor?”

  “The origin is Nairobi.”

  “Who is the perpetrator supposed to be?”

  A frown. The admiral went to his window, gazed out at happy, strolling American U students. State Department workers disappeared into the Metro. “That’s the problem. ISIS? Al Qaeda? They’ve both expanded in Africa. Truth is, no clue.”

  Eddie said, “That’s helpful.”

  “And the new bioagent? What are we looking for?” I asked.

  Washington implies order: streets in a grid, stoplights that function, the Capitol dome that symbolizes—if not cooperation—at least some form of dominance over enemies. But our unit lived in the world of negative possibility. If the public knew what we’d stopped in the last two years, three hundred million Americans wouldn’t sleep at night. The unit hunted down other people’s nightmares. At night, we handled our own, and on our own.

  Galli looked unhappy. “All we hear is, some group’s scooping up diseases. Look, the newest splicing equipment is small and easily available. We face three generations of well-funded bad guys, trained in our own schools. Forget any technical gap. Science-wise, we’re equal. The rumor is, they are close to coming up with something. So let’s hope it’s just one more false thread that won’t pan out.

  “But if they’re there, find them,” Admiral Galli said. “If they’ve come up with something, obtain it, destroy it.”

  “And the people?”

  “Why even ask? Stop them. Kill them if you have to. Either way, get it done.”

  —

  “Lieutenant Rush? It’s Lionel Nash. Remember me?”

  I froze, hearing the name over the sat phone. I’d been wobbling down the empty fuselage toward the cockpit. I had not heard from Lionel Nash in years.

  He’s one of my old Marines.

  The Hercules pitched and I grabbed the wall for balance. “Lionel? How are you?” But then something else hit me. The voice was too old to be him. My old Iraq crew would be in their late thirties or early forties now. But on my sat phone I heard an old voice, sick or half strangled with disease. A ninety-year-old throat cancer victim. A man with terminal emphysema; the wheezing of a smoker struggling to get words out, who would soon require an electronic voice box to aid plain speech.

  “Remember . . . me, Lieutenant Rush? Well, you’re a colonel now, I hear.”

  “Of course, Lionel.”

  How did he get this number? And do I remember him? I’ll never forget him, or what we all found in Iraq.

  The voice tried to be calm, but I heard panic beneath the surface. “We’re sick, sir. Over half of us. Sixteen dead. Hassan won’t let us bury them. He won’t let us leave. He took our phones and then gave me this one back and said make one call. I’m sending you a picture. Hassan thinks we brought the disease here with us.”

  “How did you find me, Lionel?”

  “I called your base from our field camp. I’m with the SUNY Albany East Africa project, sir. I’m an associate professor. I went back to school after the Marines. I’m a geologist now.”

  “You’re out of the same base I am?” I was confused. Eddie and I bunked in an aid camp, not a science camp.

  He coughed. The cough went on. “No, I’m at a satellite camp in the bush. We started out at your base.”

  “Is there a doctor with you?”

  “She died two days ago.”

  “Do you recognize the illness?”

  He wheezed out, “It’s eating us away.”

  “Lionel, who is Hassan? Who won’t let you leave?”

  “He heads the clan fighters who surrounded us. They’re afraid they’ll get sick if they come close. They were arguing whether to kill us or let us call for help. Hassan told me two doctors can come. But only two. My feet . . . my face, sir! Oh God!”

  He sounded like he was strangling. He got out, “We’re just across the border from you. In Somalia, sir.”

  “Somalia?” This was getting worse by the second. Sudan was bad but at least
only two sides were fighting there—rebels and government. In Somalia there had to be at least ten factions, all shifting allegiances constantly. Clan against clan. Muslim fundamentalists against seculars. Bandits against everyone. Pirates on the coast. There was no official government anymore. All forms of higher order had collapsed. To enter Somalia was to cross the line into a patchwork of fiefs where order came from AK-47s, allegiances shifted on an hourly basis, and wandering bands of refugees were followed by lions or hyenas who ate stragglers at night. It was the worst place on Earth—medieval Europe, back in century twelve.

  “What are you doing in Somalia, for God’s sake?”

  He calmed a little. I’d diverted him from his symptoms. “First expedition allowed in, in a decade,” he said with what might have been pride under other circumstances. “For fifteen years scientists have been afraid to come here. The work is important. We’re dating sediments. We paid off the clan for safety . . .”

  I thought, That didn’t work so well.

  Lionel said, “Our work will help determine the age of human remains found in East Africa.”

  “From wars, you mean?”

  Lionel said, “No. Of the first humans. People who walked the earth a million years ago. If we can date the sediments, we can date the remains.”

  “Lionel, tell me your symptoms.”

  “Didn’t you get the photo I sent, sir?”

  “Send again. Meanwhile, list symptoms.”

  His voice was so broken up that I had to strain to hear. His gravelly babbling sounded as if his throat was closing up even as he spoke. “The tingling first. Redness.”

  “What kind of redness?”

  “My feet. They don’t work right anymore. My face. My fingers! Oh God!”

  I was in the cockpit now and the three-man crew—private contractors from Dallas—stared at me, eyes wide.

  “Lionel, do you have a fever?”

  “I . . . I don’t think so.”

  “No? No one? Everyone is sick but no fever?”

  “Maybe a little. I’m not sure. My face, sir. In the mirror! I’m sending another photo now.”

  I checked. Nothing came in. I switched to another subject. “Which clan area are you in?”

  “Hawiye. Aidids,” he said, which started my pulse pounding. Somalia was bad enough, but Aidid was as bad as you could get. Lionel had named the faction that fought U.S. troops in 1993 in Mogadishu, killed twenty-nine, and turned “Operation Restore Hope” into “Operation Flee.” Our guys had been trying to arrest the clan leader of the Aidids. Instead, they left with their tails between their legs, and U.S. corpses being dragged through the streets.

  Lionel and his grad students had been fools to go in there, and the State Department fools to let them go, but that was not the proper subject at the moment. “Tell me more about your face, Lionel.”

  His cough degenerated into a high-pitched series of barks. Or was it laughter?

  “Lionel?”

  “Throat . . . closing. Numb. Fire. Burned. The salve doesn’t help. Those two nuts in tent four won’t stop chanting. End times, sir. Cathy Luo says it’s end times.”

  “Lionel, concentrate. Are you saying you were burned by fire? Or your hand burns? Which one is it?”

  A moan. I felt his despair in a wave washing out of the phone. “We’re gargoyles, man. Just damn gargoyles.”

  “What?”

  “Like on Notre Dame.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In the mirror, sir! I saw it. I did. I saw a gargoyle!”

  “You think you saw a gargoyle?”

  “My wife, Amy! My kids back in Albany!”

  Hallucinations, I added to the list. Throat closed. Possible nerve damage in feet.

  Lionel shouted, “I’ll kill those grad students in tent four! Shut the fuck up!”

  I tried my soothing doctor’s voice and then my Marine colonel voice to keep him focused. He’d been a tough soldier, a brave nineteen-year-old. But he was a professor now, probably softer. He’d gone back to school and gotten a degree and pursued his old interest in rocks. I had a mental glimpse of Lionel—Iraq War One—advancing beside me down a long, concrete tunnel, chem suit on, goggled eyes huge. Alarms roared around us and visibility was almost zero from smoke. Suddenly small figures rushed us, and Lionel opened fire with no hesitation. Completely mastering his fear.

  Now, more than two decades later, he must have held up the phone so I could hear the chanting outside. I heard, faintly, other voices. Male voices.

  And the Lord sent his prophet,

  To walk among the people

  And the prophet smote all evil

  On that great and fearful day.

  “Lionel! Come back!”

  “Shit, shit, I’m not going to see Amy and the kids again, am I?”

  I stared at the phone and suddenly another thought hit me. Is this really Lionel, out of the blue? Or is this a trick to lure us across the border? It wouldn’t be the first time that a foreign journalist or op got pulled in.

  “Hey, Lionel! Remember that photo of your dad’s sheep farm you used to show around? Remember those German shepherd attack dogs your uncle raised?”

  A pause. I heard his labored breathing, in and out. He said, “Shepherds? No, sir. It was cattle, not sheep. Rotties, not shepherds. It’s really me. Hassan will tell you our coordinates. He says only one small plane can come. No troops. No weapons. Bring medicines. You need to land exactly where he says. He’s listening in. Hassan?”

  Through Lionel’s wheezing another voice broke in, deeper and unaccented. As generic as a California radio host. “Hassan Farrah Dir here, Dr. Rush. If you bring more than two, we will shoot. If we see a drone, we will burn these people. Treat them or evacuate them. My brother is sick, among your scientists, inside that camp! He is a cook for them. Help him.”

  “You know I can’t evacuate more than a few survivors in a small plane.”

  The voice remained steely. I tried to remember facts about the Hawiye clan. They were Sunni Muslims. They had fielded many Somali military and religious leaders. Hassan said, “We want your government to know we had nothing to do with this sickness. We don’t want it used as an excuse for attack. Americans get worked up. You need someone to blame. Your people and mine, there is bad history. What has happened here has nothing to do with us. See for yourself. Call me back when you know the plane you will come in, so we do not shoot at it. And, Doctor?”

  “Yes?”

  “Bring many protective clothings. Bring a short-range radio system. I wish to listen to everything you tell each other while you are here.”

  He gave me coordinates. And hung up.

  Is it a trap? Are these the people the admiral sent us to find?

  Lionel’s photo came through ten minutes later. But it was gray and grainy. I couldn’t see a face, just a shape, which looked swollen. The photo was useless. I stared at the odd shape.

  —

  I punched in Eddie’s sat number. Below I saw no roads, just grassy savannah, meandering footpaths, a bombed-out village composed of a dozen mud-wattle huts. We skirted the edge of the Sud, the largest swamp in the world. Biggest crocodiles on Earth. Worst diseases. An immense landlocked maze of black water rivers, mud islands, brackish air, and festering diseases and everything, animal and vegetable, swollen with rain in January, when it should have been dry. Walk into the Sud and just about every life form within a hundred yards turns toward you, sniffing, watching, thinking: Get it!

  The sky, in this longer-than-usual rainy season, bulged with immense gray-black clouds, pressing in on the plane like mountains, granite, solid matter. The pilot flew by sight, not instrument, squeezing the big transport through narrow slot canyons of light, slim spaces between cliff-clouds, as if the clouds might actually rip the wings off the plane.

  Eddie answ
ered from our tent lab, where, he said, he was analyzing blood taken from villagers from Thiet who had contracted leishmaniasis, an ulcerating disease caused by protozoa. The organism enters the human bloodstream in the bite of a sandfly. I told him to take a break and order up one of the base’s small planes, one equipped with the ability to conduct conference calls by satellite. The Gates Foundation had two. I told him to stock the plane with antibiotics, antivirals, biokits, biosuits, and neck-mike radios with multiple headsets.

  “Somalia? Are you out of your mind? Call Washington.”

  “I’ll do it from the air.”

  Eddie turned sarcastic. “That’s a little late, isn’t it? And this Hassan guy listened in? Come on, Uno. Lionel called under duress. He’s a hostage. We go, we’re hostages. Call the admiral and find out about Hassan.”

  “Later. In and out,” I said.

  “Uno, I didn’t argue when you ordered that Hercules to keep going when the engine died, and I didn’t when you treated that potential Ebola case without protection last week.”

  “It wasn’t Ebola and I could see that.”

  “You didn’t know that for sure at the time.”

  “He needed attention, Eddie.”

  “One, since we got to Sudan, you’ve put yourself in every hazardous situation possible. It’s reckless.”

  “Not now,” I said as the Hercules topped a rise, and the sprawling aid camp came into view, a mass of semipermanent dirt streets, a mile-square grid of compounds run by international aid groups . . . sleeping, warehouse and garage tents, prefab Quonsets, rising smoke from a hundred cooking fires and a dozen dining tents. There was a single paved runway and, camped a hundred yards away, a side camp of two thousand Turkana nomads, who had taken up residence near the now twenty-year-old aid city that had sprung up in the bush.

  “Now is exactly the time,” Eddie said. “You didn’t kill her. You saved five thousand lives and even the President said so! I don’t care if you won’t talk about it. I’ll talk about it until you see a shrink, and deal with it instead of working your ass off, burying yourself in the woods, and leaping at every dangerous assignment that comes our way.”