by JC Ryan
The least Harper could do, though, was warn Daniel. At mid-afternoon, Harper had a Skype session opened to look his friend in the face when he told him that armed troops would soon be there to essentially place the entire expedition under house arrest. Because he wasn’t as familiar as the Rosslerites were by now with the deadlines imposed by the continent’s weather, it didn’t occur to him that the order would trap the expedition in the valley itself to withstand the Antarctic winter, since getting fuel to the camp would be impossible for the next six months.
“Daniel, have you seen the news?” Harper said, as soon as greetings were exchanged.
“That Iran tried to nuke Israel and the US? Yes, we saw it. Terrible thing. Lucky Israel was ready, and thank God you stopped the others early.” Harper let that go, since it was still classified that it had been America that was ready.
“I’m afraid there’s more, Daniel.” Harper choked back his next words, wanting to break the news as gently to Daniel as he could. But, there was no good way to say it. As Daniel waited for the rest, Harper blurted, “The UN is demanding we send troops to keep you there.”
Daniel’s face reflected disgust at the stupidity, rather than anger. “That’s ridiculous, Nigel. We’re not going anywhere.” Daniel had forgotten in his emotional response that he’d reverted to calling the President by his formal title, despite their friendship and Harper’s urging to first-name him several years ago. Harper didn’t even notice. He was a down-to-earth man, which was why he himself called Representative Demir by his first name when appealing to him as a human being rather than as a representative of a hostile government.
“I know, which is why I agreed to it, but only to keep them from dropping a nuke on you.”
Daniel paled visibly, even across the unimpressive Skype interface. “They wanted…”
“Yes, Daniel. They’ve been demanding it for weeks. You called it yourself when all this started. This is the price of them holding off.”
“Then I guess that’s good news. But, how many are you sending? We’re trying to lay in food supplies for the winter, and it will have to be adjusted. Plus, Summers is going to have a fit about the ecological damage to the valley. We can’t stay in camp, because we won’t be able to get enough fuel for the generators for that long.”
“Don’t worry about food. I’ll make sure they bring their own, and that they’re prepared to be under your guidance as to the impact to the valley. I’m thinking a squad of Marines will be more than sufficient, but they’ll have some UN observers with them.”
“Oh, good grief! Well, make sure none of them are Middle Eastern. I don’t want to think what might happen if any of them get sick and die. You might also want to warn them that it could very well be a one-way trip, and that it could get a little warmer than anticipated if the nuclear bomb advocates get their way.”
“Good point. By the way, how’s your virologist?”
“We’re cautiously optimistic. We were able to keep his fever down, and it appears he may recover. If so, it will be a step in the right direction for figuring this thing out. Every other person of Semitic descent has been dead before this point.”
Daniel’s statement of this news was so low-key that Harper nearly missed the significance.
“Wait, he’s cured?”
“Not cured, recovered. Here, let Rebecca tell you.”
Rebecca, who had walked in at that moment and wasn’t sure to whom she’d be talking, was shaken when she saw the President’s face on the monitor. Daniel repeated Harper’s question for her.
“Since no one’s survived before, we don’t know what the course of his health will be after this. It could be like the herpes viruses and hide in his cells, only to make him sick again later. Or, he could be immune now. We just don’t know,” Rebecca explained.
“Good heavens, I hope it turns out all right for him!”
“We do, too, believe me. He’s a good guy, Mr. President,” she replied.
Chapter 29 - Nigel I have the commander here
Time had virtually stopped for Rebecca when Ben Epstein reported to the infirmary with the virus. Aside from the fact that they desperately needed him to help study it, Ben had become a well-liked member of the team. The thought of him dying from the very illness he had come to study made her sick at her stomach. She was determined to do everything in her power to keep him alive.
It helped that they had by then established it was the high fever that made the virus so deadly. Rebecca reasoned that if she could keep Ben’s fever down, he might be able to fight off the virus on his own. Unlike the others, he did have some antibodies circulating, and perhaps they would be aided by her antiviral medications. Accordingly, she enlisted JR and Daniel in a round-the-clock rotation that had them packing Ben in ice cut from the permafrost outside on a twenty minutes on, two hours off schedule. Twenty minutes was about all Ben was able to stand, and still it was very painful, leaving him shivering uncontrollably. Essentially, the virus tried to cook him from the inside even as his caregivers tried to freeze him from the outside. At times, he wept when one of them told him it was time for the ice. But, Ben wanted to live. If this torture would help him survive, he would take it as long as he could.
During the first week of symptoms, the course of his illness was typical. His symptoms were worrisome only because they knew it was the deadly H10N7 virus, but they were tolerable with normal care. It was at the beginning of the second week, when everyone was worried about the threat of violence to the Boulder group, that the worst of the symptoms began to show up. Rebecca could do little about the vomiting, in spite of giving Ben anti-emetics. When she couldn’t help him keep his food down, she started IV nutrition. Between that and the ice treatments, by the third day of the second week, a point at which all previous patients had entered comas or died, Ben began to improve. It was another week before his fever broke, and he began to exhibit signs of hunger. His three caregivers were exhausted but exhilarated when he woke up on the morning of the eighteenth day of his symptoms to declare himself hungry for real food.
Ben had lost twenty-eight pounds, and most of his hair would now grow in white, but he had become the first to survive the virus. It was cause for celebration. Even as Daniel and Summers worried over stocking enough food to last for six months and where they would house everyone within the valley, JR was asking the cook to put on a feast to commemorate Ben’s recovery.
Of course the good news was reported to the CDC as well as to Harper and Boulder, but because no one knew what was different about Ben’s immune system, other than the genetic anomaly, the announcement wasn’t made worldwide. Still, a handful of scientists were set to the task of studying every component and every protocol Rebecca had used to see if they could identify a successful treatment.
Hannah had been taking blood samples from Ben every day since he turned the corner toward survival, convinced that the anomalous CCR5 allele was somehow responsible for the devastating course of the illness in Middle Easterners. If she could only figure out how and why it made a difference, they might be able to develop a gene therapy that could be delivered far more quickly and more effectively than a vaccine.
On the nineteenth day after Ben’s symptoms began, unexpected guests arrived, along with the expected troops. Encouraged by the breakthrough of Ben’s recovery, the CDC made arrangements with Harper to have five patients of mixed ethnic heritage at the beginning stages of illness sent to Antarctica for care. Rebecca was speechless with anger, not only at the risk to the patients’ lives but also because she didn’t have the manpower to care for them properly. She felt they could have consulted with her before presenting her with a fait accompli. But, there was no way to send them back.
Keeping Ben cooled on a schedule that saved his life was hard enough. Rebecca had no idea how she was going to manage five. To cope while Daniel and JR were busy making arrangements for winter supplies and storing what came in, she pressed Cyndi and Angela into service as practical nurses. Hannah,
however, was happy to have a larger sample of a mixed genome to work with. Her immediate response was to take blood and cheek swab samples from each patient.
The Marines and their UN observers were a different matter. They were Daniel and JR’s problem. The Rossler brothers were trying to come to a reasonable working relationship with Cmdr. Jack Neville, a man who was supremely unhappy at finding himself in command of only fourteen men, a job for a corporal at most. That he and his command were also stuck in an Antarctic wasteland for the winter was infuriating. Neville’s first act was to commandeer the empty dorm building for his barracks, where Rebecca would have preferred to house the new patients until their imminent move to the valley. The infirmary was too small for all five, and she didn’t want them disturbed by the comings and goings of expedition staff.
When Daniel had first told JR that the troops would be arriving, JR’s reaction was to withdraw, working through his emotions in silence and with no help from anyone. His struggle was the dichotomy between being in charge of the logistics of the expedition and knowing that a superior officer was about to arrive. JR had achieved the highest non-com rank he could as an enlisted man who didn’t anticipate a career in the Marines. As such, he was addressed as sergeant, holding the rank of E5. Sergeants of this rank were often heard to bark at any of their men who dared address them as ‘sir’, saying, “Don’t call me sir--I work for a living!” It had been an officer’s decision to send his men into the situation that was responsible for his PTSD, so officers were anathema to him.
However, by using some techniques that Rebecca had taught him, JR was able to come to terms with the idea that yet another person would be there to usurp his authority. Not that Daniel meant to do it—it was just natural for him, since he was the older brother and the head of the foundation. Still, he now shared his authority with Daniel. It wasn’t what he’d expected when he signed on. Well, he would stand up to this Cmdr. Neville. The man didn’t have a clue about Antarctica, probably. He’d have to follow JR’s directions or risk his men. Accordingly, as soon Rebecca came to complain, he sent for Neville, immediately putting him in an inferior position as he met with JR in his office.
“Neville, do you know why you’re here?”
“That’s Commander Neville. And yes, I’m fully aware of why I’m here. What do you want?”
“First, I’m neither in the Marines any longer nor under your command. You’ll do well to stand down, because this continent will kill you and your men if you don’t pay attention to how things work around here. Second, I don’t think you do know why you’re here. You were sent here to appease some radical Muslims, nothing else. You were no doubt told you’re here to enforce a quarantine. Were you told that as soon as you breathed the air inside the compound buildings you would be exposed to the virus as a carrier, and unable to leave yourself?
“Furthermore, if you get a funny feeling between your shoulder blades, it’s because of the nuclear missiles that are pointed at us. For your information, at the last three UN Security Council meetings, nuking us was voted down by only two or three votes. If the radical elements in the UN have their way, you’ve been sent on a one-way trip, along with your men. There was no need to enforce the quarantine, because Antarctica itself is enforcing it.”
“What? There must be some mistake. No one informed me that we wouldn’t be leaving again as soon as the travel season was over. We came to observe, and make sure none of you slip away.”
“Don’t be an ass. You’ve seen the weather conditions out there, and they are only going to get worse. Furthermore, we’re more than a thousand miles from McMurdo and more than two hundred from Amundsen-Scott, which itself is going to be socked in for the winter in another ten days or so. No one is going to ‘slip away’, believe me. Nor are you going anywhere. The situation is bad enough out there without sending more silent carriers into the mix. You could pick up a pack of cigarettes at your local 7-11 and twenty-one days later, the Pakistani clerk would be dead of the virus and his family all sick. Nope, can’t risk it. Use your head for something besides holding your ears apart. You’re here for the duration, or until the Middle Eastern countries get tired of waiting for a cure and nuke us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Are you calling me a liar now? Dude, I have no problem kicking your ass.” JR started up from his chair, taking Neville by surprise by grabbing his lapels. Rebecca, who had been there at the beginning, had seen from JR’s face as soon as the other man challenged him that they were likely to come to blows. With JR distracted, she’d slipped out of the office and had gone to get Daniel. They arrived together just in time for Daniel to put his arm between JR’s enraged face and the commander’s outraged one.
“What’s going on here?” Daniel asked.
“He called me a liar,” JR said, still fuming.
“I need to call my commanding officer and have him confirm what your brother just told me,” Neville answered at the same time.
“What did he tell you?” Daniel asked, with deceptive mildness.
“That we are now quarantined with you and unable to go home. He even had the nerve to claim we might be nuked while we’re here.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“That’s preposterous. I would have been told.”
“Listen, Neville. I came here to stop my brother from physically taking out his frustration on you, but you’re beginning to annoy me, too. So which of us do you want to fight? JR, or me?”
Neville had no answer for that. Abruptly, he sat down. “I would still like to have a conversation with my commanding officer.”
“That’s no problem. But, if he won’t tell you, don’t call my brother a liar, call your captain that. Except, he might not have been told either. Tell you what, you go ahead and talk to him, and if you’re satisfied then, so be it. If not, we’re not going to allow you to make life any more difficult for us here than it already is. You’ll sit in on my next conversation with the President. By the way, how did a Navy commander end up in charge of a squad of Marines, anyway?”
Neville was beginning to wonder if these men were indeed telling the truth, and he’d asked himself the same question. Slowly, he spoke as he thought out loud. “I’m not sure. Except, I’ve been here before. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
“Here? Here in this canyon?”
“No, on the ice near McMurdo. Really, I can’t talk about it.”
“All right, suit yourself. Before you call your captain, do you want to have Summers show you around in the valley, see what we came here to do in the first place? You’re going to have to follow his lead in where you billet your men when we move inside.”
“What do you mean, move inside? What’s wrong with these barracks?”
“Aside from the ambient temperature being around minus 50 degrees when we run out of fuel and can’t get more? Nothing.”
“Shit,” Neville said, forgetting the presence of a lady. “What else didn’t they tell me?”
“I’ll ask Summers to take you in, maybe he can answer that question. But, consider this. What would you have done if they’d told you the truth?”
~~~
Neville elected to talk to his captain first, and as Daniel hinted, the man knew nothing of the real situation. That wasn’t for the attention of the lower-ranking officers, who simply carried out orders that came from above without explanation. Away from the imposing figure of JR Rossler, who he definitely did not want to fight, Neville’s confidence returned and with it his tendency to consider civilians as less than himself. He presented himself to Daniel to call his bluff, with a demand that if he indeed had the president’s ear, he wanted to hear it directly from the Commander in Chief. The smirk on his face gave away his true thoughts. Clearly, he didn’t expect to actually speak to the president.
Daniel checked the time. It wasn’t too late to call the president, and his eyes sparkled with amusement at the trick he was about to play. Inviting Neville to sit down,
he dialed a number and put the line on speaker.
“White House operator, how may I direct your call?” Neville’s eyes widened.
“I’d like to speak to President Harper, please. You may tell him Daniel Rossler is calling.”
“Just a moment while I transfer your call.” Neville began to sweat.
“Oval Office.”
“Clarissa, its Daniel Rossler. Is he available?”
“I think so, let me check.”
The next voice was Harper’s, instantly recognizable to most Americans because of his Southern twang.
“Daniel? How’s it going?”
“We’ve had a little issue with the troops you sent down here, Nigel. I have the commander here. Do you think you can clear up some of his questions?”
Neville’s face had drained of all color when he heard Daniel call the president by his first name. He had no doubt he was about to be relieved of duty by the Commander in Chief himself, for doubting the man’s friend. He swallowed convulsively as he listened to the Harper’s next words.
“What are your questions, Cmdr. Neville?” Oh, shit! The president knew his name. That couldn’t be good.
“Er, no questions after all, Sir. Er, Mr. President. I’m sure Mr. Rossler can answer any I have in the future.”
“Very well. Just so there’s no question, I expect you and your men to cooperate in every way with the Rosslers and their expedition staff. This stupid idea that they needed minders in their quarantine was not mine, but those are your orders anyway. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Carry on, then. G’nite, Daniel.”
“Good night, Nigel,” Daniel answered.
“Would you be interested in that tour of the valley, now, Jack?” Daniel could hardly keep the glee out of his voice. After weeks of bad news, a little harmless fun was just what he needed to feel more cheerful for a while. When Neville got back from his tour of the valley, JR could tell him what he was going to do for Rebecca. Those Marines would be a great help in the round-the-clock care of her unexpected patients.