The Genesis Plague

47

Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin estimated that fifteen minutes had elapsed since Crawford’s marines hung an American flag from the cross bar directly behind his patient’s head. They’d also set up a tripod-mounted digital camcorder to record the colonel’s systematic interrogation.

This was no ordinary patient.

As Colonel Crawford fired away his probing questions — mainly queries as to where the convoy had been heading and the rumour that Al-Zahrani was plotting to detonate a suitcase nuke in New York on the anniversary of 9/11 — the subdued Kurdish translator used a marker to scrawl the queries on to a notepad in both Arabic and English.

The patient was highly uncooperative; though not by choice, Levin was certain. He could tell by Al-Zahrani’s withdrawn and hazy gaze — unresponsive when the Kurd held the notepad in direct view — that his condition was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Only five minutes ago, Al-Zahrani had begun coughing. Now that cough was persistent and accompanied by heaving lungs that wheezed and gurgled. Coupled with Al-Zahrani’s fever, malaise and runny nose, Levin suspected that the prisoner had come down with the flu. In a civilian setting where containment was a simple matter of bed rest, influenza wasn’t critical, per se. But in the battlefield, the flu could be as deadly as a roadside bomb — which was why Levin had already used an influenza test kit to analyse the mucus sample swabbed from Al-Zahrani’s nose. However, the test strip had shown a solid blue line that indicated with 99 per cent certainty that Al-Zahrani was ‘negative’ for both influenza A and B.

Not the flu? How could it not be the flu? Or perhaps, not the common flu, he’d thought dreadingly. That prompted him to unpack a second test kit recently made standard equipment for combat medics to simultaneously detect H5N1 avian flu and H1N1 swine flu. With a sterile swab stick pinched between the fingers of his right hand and a fresh test tube in his left hand, he slunk over to Al-Zahrani’s bedside and inserted the swab’s foam tip one inch into the patient’s runny nose.

Crawford paused and cocked his head sideways disdainfully. ‘Couldn’t pick his nose right the first time, Corporal?’

‘Just need to run another quick test.’ He twirled the swab tip around Al-Zahrani’s nostril, pulled it out, and dropped it into the reagent solution that filled the bottom of the glass test tube. ‘There. All done.’ He retreated quickly and Crawford huffed before continuing on with his questioning.

Sitting at his makeshift lab table, Levin twirled the swab stick in the solution and pulled it out. Then he slid the coated test strip that came with the kit into the solution. The results would take ten minutes, so he noted the current time on his wrist-watch.

His left leg bouncing nervously up and down, Levin tried to focus on Crawford to alleviate his mounting anxiety. It seemed that Crawford was brushing away the concerns of everyone around him, including Jason Yaeger. After the tense exchange Levin had witnessed earlier, Crawford still hadn’t called for the backup platoons Yaeger had sensibly demanded. If Yaeger hadn’t been successful in breaking Crawford’s blind stubbornness, Levin had little hope that the colonel would heed a request to have Al-Zahrani airlifted to the nearest hospital for proper treatment, which was what Levin’s gut was telling him the situation might warrant.

He peeked down at the test strip, saw nothing. Checked his watch — five minutes left. He shifted his gaze back to Crawford.

Normally Crawford was cool and collected — a proven leader who performed best under pressure; a guy whose impressive career had placed him on every battlefront in the Middle East over the past two decades. Crawford’s ostensibly prophetic insight into the mind of Islamic terrorists made him an indispensable asset in Iraq. But everything Levin had witnessed thus far today was completely out of synch with the colonel he’d thought he knew. Crawford’s behaviour seemed borderline schizophrenic. Even now he seemed in denial as he persisted in interrogating a man who was barely coherent.

Levin passed his clinical eyes over Al-Zahrani again. Ethical concerns aside, he would prefer nothing more than to disregard Hippocrates’ primary directive, ‘above all, do no harm’, and personally see to it that this most undesirable patient slowly choke to death on his own sputum.

Above all, however, Levin wanted to avoid at all costs Al-Zahrani unleashing a viral Trojan Horse on the platoon. The battlefield was a cesspool of bacteria. Even with decades of technological advances in trauma care, modern warfare was still plagued by more casualties associated with biological infection than friendly fire and hostile gunfire combined. Though troops lived in close quarters to promote comradeship, that thoughtful arrangement also provided a perfect breeding ground for communicable diseases. Particularly since the troops didn’t enjoy the luxury of daily showers or clean toilets.

With a steady flow of US troops moving back and forth between the Middle East and domestic military bases, the Department of Defense had gotten very aggressive in containing even the smallest of outbreaks. Prophylactic treatments for contagions ranging from flu to anthrax were mandatory for all troops deploying to the Middle East — six inoculations over an eighteen-month period, followed by annual booster shots. Yet these measures were far from perfect, especially when it came to the highly virulent influenza microbe, which played an endless game of ‘gene swap’ with animals and humans. The recent swine flu pandemic was a potent reminder of how easily influenza could mutate and render vaccines obsolete.

Another glance at the test strip. Two more minutes to go.

Levin tried to block out the distressing thoughts of Al-Zahrani infecting the troops with some mutated flu strain. Worse yet, the terrorist might already have infected a number of Iraqis during his clandestine movement from city to city.

In Iraq, sparse terrain provided hardy, natural buffers that counteracted disease transmission. But one infected individual could easily ignite a lethal epidemic within one of the region’s densely populated cities. A person infected in that city then travels to a virgin population in another city … and from there, the dominos would keep falling. It was a sobering reminder that most wars in history — from the Mongolian invasion of the Roman Empire, to Hernando de Soto’s conquest of the Americas, to Napoleon’s attempt at world domination — had been determined not by military might and superior weapons … but by germs.

Crawford was quick to label Levin a worry-wart. That was to be expected. Military types focused primarily on munitions and artillery, and needed constant reminding that the most potent threats of modern warfare were not armed militants with an eye on martyrdom. Crawford, in particular, was a diehard battlefield minimalist who believed that a marine could survive with only a Bowie knife. It took a lot of convincing that sensible preventive measures were not intended to soften Crawford’s killing machine.

Even Crawford had learned the hard way that infectious disease should not be ignored. During a reconnaissance mission the previous summer, Crawford’s platoon had been patrolling Iraq’s southern desert, toting sixty to a hundred pounds of gear in scorching temperatures that reached 130deg Fahrenheit. Short on water rations, thanks to chronic logistical problems with contractors deploying Water Buffalo supply trucks, the troops had been forced to drink from untreated local water supplies that were teeming with harmful microorganisms. That led to widespread bouts of dysentery that practically debilitated the entire platoon. Naturally, Crawford wasn’t affected since he’d had plenty of bottled water for himself.

‘Stop worrying,’ Levin told himself. He wiped his clammy hands on his pants.

Suddenly Crawford’s growing frustration with the patient’s hopeless condition hit its crescendo. The colonel yelled bloody murder for a full minute, then kicked over a crate and stormed out from the tent.

‘Lunatic,’ Levin mumbled. ‘That guy is a walking pressure cooker.’ He made eye contact with the Kurd, who shrugged, set down the marker and notepad, then made his way outside. Levin looked down at his watch to see that it was now thirty seconds over the ten-minute mark.

He looked down at the test strip, fully expecting to see a pink stain that would indicate that Al-Zahrani tested positive for swine flu or avian flu. His anxiety kicked into overdrive when he saw a single blue strip.

Negative?