“Excellent, I’ll send a team over to take a blood sample from her.”
“Already sorted. Staff Sergeant Montagne is taking her, as we speak, to haematology at the Froedtert Hospital. She’s already agreed to give a unit of plasma concentrate. I’ve already squared it away with a Dr Juliet Meisel at the haematology centre. She said that they would put Mariah on the apheresis machine straight away.”
“Great. When can we expect the plasma?”
“As soon as it’s been drawn and prepped for transport. I’ve taken the liberty of commandeering a helicopter so Montagne can be picked up from the roof of the Froedtert as soon as the stuff is ready. You should have it in the lab in three hours max.”
“Thanks Phil, there’s a very appreciative group of people here who will all want to thank you personally when you return to Fort Detrick.”
“That’s OK. If there’s nothing else, I’ll get on with the re-interviewing. I should be back with you tomorrow. One thing that I haven’t done yet is to send a team over to the aerosol manufactures, Cooper’s at their Meadowvale plant, in Silver Ridge. I didn’t know how to play that seeing that we have no confirmation yet that the air fresheners are the source of the contagion.” Phil laughed. “I wouldn’t want to cause a panic, or a law suit.”
“Yes, you were right to hold off on that. I have everyone here who can make that decision, but a few discrete enquiries won’t go amiss. We’ll get onto it straight away. We’ll see you tomorrow then, Phil. I don’t think any of us will be going home tonight so we’ll all be here to meet you when you get back.”
“OK Mike, I’ll email you my preliminary report once it’s finished and I’ll do that when these interviews are completed. See you tomorrow then.”
“Cheers Phil.”
Mike looked around the conference table with a smile that would rival the ‘Cheshire Cat’. The atmosphere in the room was charged.
***
Lieutenant Colonel Mike Morrison and a team of handpicked virologists analysed the contents of three cans of air freshener that had arrived that afternoon from Milwaukee. The analysis took place in USAMRIID’s specialist biosafety level four, (BSL-4) clinical laboratory, one of the most advanced facilities for bio-containment in the world.
BSL-4 containment laboratories are mandatory for the most dangerous, life-threatening diseases. Access to the laboratory is strictly controlled and the 40 personnel licensed to work in the lab are closely supervised by the facility’s most experienced scientists. Access to the laboratory is through an outer changing room and shower, then a series of positive pressure air locks to an inner changing room where all personnel change into specialist clothing – undergarments, track pants and top, gloves and bootees. Every piece of this clothing is autoclaved, then laundered. Before any of the scientists enter the lab, they must don a one piece, fully enclosed, positive pressure safety suit, ventilated by a self-contained life support system. These very expensive suits have a very short working life, as the scientists wearing them must pass through a noxious chemical shower to decontaminate the suits before they can leave the work area.
Within each work area, all the investigative work is carried out in Class III biological safety cabinets. These are essentially gas tight glove boxes, totally enclosed containment cabinets in which the work has to be carried out via a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves attached to the side of the box. To ensure that the biohazards in these cabinets cannot leak out accidentally, the air into and out of the cabinet passes through a series of special high-efficiency particulate air filters (HEPA). All the services – gas, water and electricity – entering the lab, pass through specially sealed ducting and all waste air and water leaves the lab after passing through a series of filters before being chemically disinfected.
Depressurising the aerosol cans safely was the first problem, though a little ingenuity from Corporal Vince Beddoe in the engineering section soon had that solved. Once in the BSL-4 area, the cans were opened and the volatile solvents were concentrated to 1/6th of their original volume. Samples of this concentrate were then sent to the electron microscopy suite and to the virus culture room. By the end of that first afternoon, USAMRIID had photomicrographs of the virus subtype and before the end of the week they confirmed the presence of the H5N1 subtype by viral genotyping assays. They had also identified the mysterious yellow, wax-like material on the inside of the pressure relief valve was egg yolk.
Soon Mike Morrison had all the information he needed to confirm that the Meadowsweet Lavender air fresheners, from batch number LV 2005105 239645, had all been contaminated with the H5N1 subtype of the influenza virus and a protein from eggs. Teams had already been dispatched to the Meadowvale plant of C & W Cooper, in anticipation of the lab results confirming that the air fresheners were indeed the initial source of the contagion.
***
Charles Cooper was one of the fifth generation of Coopers, since Curtis Cooper developed his Patented Furniture Polish in 1887. A tall white-haired elegant man, Charles Cooper, was devastated by the news of the contamination. As he lifted a glass of water to his lips, his hands were shaking so much that he spilled down some on his shirtfront and tie. Within ten minutes of hearing what the USAMRIID captain had discovered about the lavender air freshener, Charles had stopped all the manufacturing processes in the Meadowvale plant. Over 2000 the employees were given the devastating news that afternoon. Before they were allowed to leave the plant all were photographed and interviewed by army personnel. All co-operated with the investigation. C & W Cooper was still a family business and the founding principles upon which Curtis Cooper himself had built his company had endured into the 21st century. Family values were at the heart of the company, values that nurtured tolerance and co-operation. When faced with the fact that their company had been infiltrated by terrorists and that their products had caused so many deaths around the world all the staff were shocked to the core. This would be a black day for C & W Cooper as Charles Cooper realised that millions of their loyal customers would abandon the use of Cooper products in fear that all were all contaminated. It was going to take a miracle to save the company now. In the U. S. and across the world there would be thousands of redundancies, and plant closures.
***
Charles Cooper worked tirelessly with Captain Phillip James to locate and isolate the air fresheners of the suspect batches. He also gave the USAMRIID team details of the manufacturing processes that were involved with their Meadowsweet product. This would be thoroughly analysed by staff at USAMRIID, in an effort to locate where in the manufacturing process the terrorists had introduced their deadly concoction. Phillip James also investigated the deaths of Brian Burford and Viktor Czerny, who had been employed at the research and development lab. Viktor had kept an immaculate research diary and it didn’t take long to discover what Viktor and Brian had been doing prior to their illness.
The research diary revealed that not only had they discovered that the air freshener cans had been contaminated, they had also started to investigate where in the manufacturing process the contamination may have taken place. Tests on the company’s stock of solvents and aerosol propellants had shown that none were contaminated. However, there was a note at the bottom of the last page of Viktor’s notes stating that tests would need to be undertaken on all the fragrance stock and that any empty drums that could be located should also be tested. The diary was invaluable. The protein testing that Viktor had used was simple and effective, something that the USAMRIID teams could use as a screening procedure to pinpoint the source of the contagion days before the virology test results would be known. Viktor had saved them time, and less time meant fewer deaths.
Very quickly an investigative plan swung into action. Every suspect item was triple sealed and hauled away to Fort Detrick in a score of large articulated trucks. That meant all the factory stocks of fragrance, solvents, and propellants, as well as the empty aerosol cans. It was a mammoth task as Phillip James was not prepared to expose any of his te
am or anyone else in the Meadowvale plant to what could turn out to be concentrated sources of the viral contagion. Each item would have to be tested under very controlled conditions back at USAMRIID’s BSL-4 laboratory. It would take weeks to secure the Meadowvale plant and just as long to test all the samples. They would also have to test all the cans they had recovered from the North Eastern States and all the recalled stock that came in from shops and warehouses all over the country. They may have discovered the source of the contagion, but now they had to find every single contaminated item, however small and insignificant it appeared to be.
***
“Thank goodness for Viktor Czerny’s work identifying that whatever the source of the virus there would also be the tell-tale egg protein. That fact alone is going to save us weeks of testing and countless lives,” said Phillip James to his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Morrison.
“Yes, the guy deserves the Medal of Honour for what he did, even if he didn’t realise the significance of what it was. In giving his life he has saved hundreds. You and your team also need recognition too Phil for what you’ve achieved in such a short time. And I’ll see that you get it too.”
“Thanks Mike, but we’re a team, this isn’t about individuals. Besides I’m going to be cooped up here in Silver Ridge for some weeks tidying up the investigation. It’s down to you guys now, and what you can discover from the material we’re sending you.”
“What about the management at Meadowvale, any problems there?”
“No, they’ve been brilliant, Charles Cooper is a gem. The factory is shut down and the product recall is going to cost the company millions of dollars, yet he and the other board members I have spoken to haven’t mentioned a single word about profit loss or when can they start the plant up again. They’ve been magnificent, they really have.”
“That’s good, the last thing you need is some pencil pusher from accounts following you around with a calculator. Now we’ve identified the source of the virus, the hard graft really starts. Keep me up to speed on your progress, say 6pm every day?”
“Yes, will do.”
Mike turned to the assembled experts in the conference suite.
“As you have just heard, we have a mammoth task ahead of us. I propose that if we at USAMRIID concentrate on testing all the material recovered from the Meadowvale plant, we might then be able to discover how this stuff came into the country. Then, with luck we can prevent any more of the stuff being released into the environment. Julie, if your people at the CDC could concentrate on testing the recalled air freshener cans, you guys may be able to discover which batch numbers are affected, then inform the public which cans need to be avoided. Is that OK with you?”
“Yes Mike,” said Dr Julie Gerberding, the director of the CDC in Atlanta. “Dr Ellen Augustein will be co-ordinating that, we’ll get onto it as soon as possible.”
“Thanks. The second thing we need to do is see if we can isolate any antibodies against the H5N1 subtype from the plasma donated by Mariah Toombs, who appears to be immune to the virus. I propose that we all share that burden between USAMRIID, the CDC and your guy’s Julian at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. If we co-ordinate our resources properly we should be able to prevent any unnecessary repetition of the work, and so get a faster result. The third task will be to produce suitable monoclonal antibodies to combat the disease, and ultimately, to develop a vaccine. However, that’s down the track a little. Terry, if you and your team can co-ordinate the Outbreak Response tasks and also co-ordinate the efforts of the police and the FBI to identify the terrorists, that would be great.”
Terry Bowen, who had helped develop the Bioterrorism and Epidemic Outbreak Response Model, nodded in agreement. Then he added;
“Now we’ve identified the source of the disease, we need the FBI to be brought into this, shall we say, think-tank. They need to know what we’re doing so they can feed their information into the loop. I know they have the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTFF) in Atlanta. Their task force co-ordinates and monitors intelligence gathered from all civilian and military sources. It has responsibility for the development of strategic policy that might help eliminate future terrorist attacks. It’s also involved with the tactical response to attacks once they have occurred. I’ll get them up to speed directly, then let you know what’s happening, Mike.”
“Great. It was an oversight by me not to have them here this evening, but I had no idea that we would have achieved such a break-through so quickly.”
29. Hope
Hope is a good thing; it sustains us to persevere through the most desperate of times. When our world is shrouded in evil, hope remains the faintest light at the end of the tunnel. Time becomes the journey that we all must take between what is bad and what is good. Time, the fourth dimension, so cruel when evil dwells amongst us yet so joyous when goodness prevails.
The super-flu epidemic seemed to last forever, a time when hope was just the faintest of beacons.
Time, endless days, that melded into one long period of hell, where death struck the fit and healthy, not just the weak and unwary. Time that saw the final lonely gasps of the dying witnessed only by the attending physicians. Moments followed by the shedding of tears that became the transient stains on a mountain of white hankies. And as the echoes of such mournful cries faded slowly on those wintry days, the spectre of death shrank slowly back into the shadows. From the ashes of broken lives and the worst of days, rose the hope of new days to come.
H5NI was slowly forgotten, as no matter how appalling the death of a loved one was, the dead silently transform people into statistics. In the U.S., with a population of nearly 296 million, only 1534 died, choking and suffocating from H5NI. However, five times that number contracted that influenza subtype and survived after modern medical intervention. Tens of thousands of innocent people were saved from the tortured obscenity of anoxic death because of the trace amounts of egg yolk that miraculously blocked the aerosol nozzles of the terrorist's weapon of choice. Hundreds of thousands were spared because H5NI did not, inexplicably, spread easily from one victim to another. Perhaps as many again were saved by the skill and tenacity of the investigation teams that tracked down the source of the disease so quickly. The epidemic that Lieutenant Colonel Mike Morrison thought might herald the apocalyptic horsemen and a plague of biblical proportions, proved not to be. Across the world, in eleven different countries, a further 3124 died. With a world population of over seven billion, the death rate was just a drop in the ocean. Such statistics paled into insignificance when throughout the three months of the bioterrorist epidemic, over 9000 died in the United States from the common endemic Type A influenza viruses and over 51 000 people were hospitalised.
Sadly though, such a terrorist weapon does not have to notch up thousands of victims to be successful. Its success is derived from the terror, fear and panic it causes amongst the innocents. Its success is counted not by the numbers of dead but the numbers of dollars it costs, in this case billions of dollars. To other fearful countries around the world, it cost millions more.
Ironically, of the 14 deaths from the H5N1 subtype in Zagreb, one was in the family of Matej Korošec. Such is the nature of a crude sightless terror weapon, a cruel heartless killer that randomly strikes the very hand that orchestrated its creation. Matej Korošec’s daughter, Terezija, was one of those who died miserably in the University Hospital for Infectious Diseases, on Mirogojska 8, in the heart of Zagreb.
***
Henry Govens, far from the normality of C & W Cooper’s customer care department, looked across the hospital room to his carer Melonie Kostermann, she had fallen asleep in the armchair that she had occupied morning and evening for the past five days. Melonie had become Henry’s faint hope. She was the beacon who sustained him through the pain and the suffering of H5N1.
Henry was an only child and born into a family on the verge of poverty. Poverty created by his father’s alcoholism. George Govens was a brutal man who drank himself i
nto oblivion, though not before making his wife’s existence a living hell. George was a cowardly man who beat his wife, Charlotte, mercilessly with his boots as well as his fists. In a drunken rage one night he went too far and put Charlotte in hospital with a ruptured spleen, a broken arm and a fractured skull. Charlotte had put herself in harm’s way when George had attacked Henry with the buckle end of his belt. Cut and bruised, it was Henry who had given a statement to the police, a statement that had been instrumental in putting his father in prison.
When George was released from prison he broke into the home and the violence started all over again. However, this time there were no witnesses to aid Charlotte as she fought for her life on the bloodied kitchen floor. When Henry returned that night his mother was barely alive and his cowardly Father had run away. Charlotte Govens survived but was left paralysed. Eventually caught after a brawl in a bar that left one man bleeding to death George was sentenced to life in prison. He lasted eighteen months and died of wounds sustained after he had beaten a bull-queer’s catamite lover. The week after George was sentenced Henry and his mother moved to Silver Ridge to start a new life. Charlotte never complained and despite her handicap, raised Henry without assistance. As Charlotte got older and her paralysis worsened and it was Henry’s turn to support her.
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