Chapter 28. Containment
Present day. Mackinac Island, Michigan.
Cedric Murphy was panicked. He had driven those sick people to the hospital seven days ago. The man had been coughing and throwing up all over the place, and Cedric had been the one to hose out the golf cart. He surely had contracted the virus. What else would explain his red eyes and symptoms?
The government had begun testing at Fort Mackinac. Cedric had received his number for testing. Judging by how high his number was, and how slowly the testing was going, he would not get seen for two or three more days. Cedric was certain that would be too long. He was convinced that he was infected and needed immediate medical help. He tried to convince the government workers in the HAZMAT suits at Fort Mackinac that he was infected and needed to go to the head of the line, but they had their procedures, and some scary looking Army guys with guns had told him to back off. He had to wait his turn.
Cedric was not going to die sitting here on this rat hole of an island. Why had he taken this stupid job to begin with? His mom thought he might meet a respectable girl on the island. What he had met, instead, was the Ebola Virus. Of all the luck, he thought. The one person in a zillion who contracts the Ebola Virus on American soil chooses his golf cart to go to the hospital. What are the odds of that? Gotta be smaller than getting mauled to death by rabid gophers, he thought. He laughed for a moment. Rabid gophers. That would be funny. His matted red hair stuck to his forehead. It was hot. How could he get off this fucking island?
Then he thought about the Wave Runners. The hotel had six of them down by the docks. And he, Cedric, was one of the few people with access to the keys. The more he thought about it, the more convinced Cedric became that the Wave Runners were his only way out. He would ride across the Straits to the mainland and then go to a hospital. They would have to treat him if he got that far. Cedric coughed and a spray of blood hit the dirt by his feet. He felt like his guts were melting from within. His stomach felt red hot.
That night, Cedric, dressed in a black shirt, black baseball cap worn backwards, and black Adidas sweatpants, silently crept down to the marina. He used his keys on the padlock by the chain link fence and then walked down to the docks. The Wave Runners were tied to the docks, in a series of slips. The keys were kept in a padlocked wooden locker bolted to a post by the third slip. Cedric used his keys to open the locker and took a set of Wave Runner keys. Then he went to the blue Wave Runner and checked the gas. There was a full tank. Cedric slid the ropes off the posts on the pier and jumped on the blue Wave Runner. As he gunned the motor and pulled away from the marina, he heard some commotion and yelling far away on shore. He didn't stop to look back, but gunned the Wave Runner to full throttle and took off into the channel. It was hard to see at night, but Cedric had ridden the Wave Runners at night before.
Cedric rode for about ten minutes until he got to the opening where the bay dumped into the Straits of Mackinac. He drove for about a half hour more when he saw the Mackinac Bridge. He pointed the Wave Runner straight to the shore. He looked at his fuel gauge. He did not have much left, but he would probably make it to shore. As he gunned the vessel forward, when he was several hundred feet from the shore, he again saw movement along the shoreline, and within a short time, saw a blue police strobe dart from the docks. He soon recognized that this was a U.S. Coast Guard or Michigan Water Patrol motorboat. He knew the motorboat was faster, but he had a significant head start. He powered the Wave Runner at full throttle, smashing up and down along the waves, and kicking up a considerable wake. As he got close to the shore, he heard a loudspeaker and wailing siren behind him.
"Stop! This is the Michigan State Water Patrol! Do not proceed to the shore! Surrender your vessel immediately!"
He ignored the warning and continued his sprint to the shore.
"I repeat, stop! If you do not stop, we will shoot you!"
Shoot me? The police are going to shoot me? For riding a Wave Runner at night? That's stupid, they are not going to shoot me, he thought. Cedric powered the Wave Runner with another thrust, now only twenty feet from the docks.
"This is our last warning! Stop or we will shoot!"
Cedric continued forward and two shots rang out, hitting him in the left shoulder and neck. He fell off the Wave Runner, sinking down into a red pool of death. The official cause of Cedric Murphy's death listed by the coroner the next morning was drowning. His own family would never know that he was executed by his own police force.
White House. Washington, D.C.
"Yes, Madame President, we can confirm that this strain of Ebola, which we are calling Mackinac Ebola, is definitely airborne."
"You are joking me."
"No, ma'am, I am not," said Jacob Roessler, from a speakerphone at the C.D.C.
"I thought Dr. Jendel was certain that Ebola is never airborne," said the President.
"Madame President, this is Dr. Jendel. Obviously, Madame President, I was wrong. This is a unique strain we have never seen before."
"This is a nightmare. Are you absolutely sure?"
"As certain as we can be, yes, ma'am. We conducted animal studies and the disease was able to spread through the air."
"How easily can this spread? How close do you have to be to get it?"
Jacob Roessler spoke up. "If you are in the same room with someone, and you are standing a good distance away, you probably will not catch it. If you are wearing a mask and gloves, you probably will not get it. So, for example, we have determined that there is a possibility, but not a high likelihood, that the disease can spread through an air duct, for example. Most air ducts have filters, and these molecules are stopped pretty easily through filters. It spreads kind of like the flu. If someone coughs on you, or breathes on you very close, or if you shake their hand or something, you can catch it. Obviously, it also can spread through bodily fluids, as we have seen."
"Then why do we have no reported cases in New York or any of the other cities?" asked the President.
"It is what Captain Tsung suspected. The disease is not contagious in the first seven or eight days. After that it is highly contagious," said Roessler.
"The good news, Madame President," said Colonel Dennis White of USAMRIID, "is that we have successfully isolated this thing to Mackinac Island. Thank God those chimp researchers went to an island for their vacation, or we could be looking at a global epidemic."
Sheila Simms, the Director of Homeland Security, opened a file. "Madame President, we know this thing started in a small town in Tanzania. We have successfully locked down all flights coming into the U.S. from Tanzania. Our European Allies have done the same thing."
"So we have no reports of this virus anywhere else but in Mackinac Island and in the hospital at Ann Arbor?" asked the President.
"That is correct," said Col. White.
"What about the people in Mackinac? How many are infected?" asked the President.
Governor Bill Swift of Michigan spoke up. "We have had only ten reported cases, and all of those patients have been flown to the hospital in Ann Arbor and are in the quarantine wing there. Blood tests are proceeding on schedule, and it will take another two or three days to finish those, but I think the numbers are going to be small, Madame President. We did have one unfortunate eleventh case last night. It appears that a hotel employee who had contracted the virus got impatient and stole a hotel Wave Runner, trying to make it to shore. He was stopped before he got there."
"What do you mean stopped? Where is he now?" asked the President.
"The Water Patrol shot him, Madame President. He was twenty feet from shore. He ignored police commands to stop. If he got away, he could have caused an epidemic in our state. We had no choice."
"You shot him?! Oh my God, you have to be kidding me! Where was the security at the hotel? Listen, Governor, I want you to secure and confiscate every motorboat, Wave Runner, pontoon boat, rowboat, kayak and paddle on that goddamn island right now! I thought we were clear on this--no one gets in or out. Jesus! He was shot! What have you told the relatives?"
"The coroner has listed his cause of death as drowning," said the Governor.
There was a pause in the room. A cover up was obviously not good. But shooting one of our own citizens? The President thought for a moment, and decided, as a politician, that she would let this one sit in the Governor's lap. If it blew up, it was his mess. He was a Democrat, after all. The President said nothing and changed the subject.
"Where are we on confirming that this has no connection to terrorism, Sheila?"
"Our agents have talked to Kelly Monahan before she passed, and she confirmed what we thought. She was a chimpanzee researcher. She had no connections to terrorist groups. It seems clear that she contracted it from an infected monkey. But we have boots on the ground and assets in the air right now en route to Tanzania. We will conduct a thorough investigation so we can make sure this bug never gets to our shores again."
"How are we on a cure?"
"Madame President, this is Dr. Berkhoff, Infectious Disease Specialist at the University of Ann Arbor. After we got an FDA Fast-Track for the experimental drugs, we have been treating the infected patients with AVI-6002 and AVI-6003. For the one patient who was in Day Two of the disease, the drugs were a complete cure. For the four patients in Day Seven and over, the drugs provided no help whatsoever. For the five patients who were in Days Four, Five, and Six of the disease, the drugs at first appeared to provide some help, and then after several days, the virus won out, and the patients succumbed."
"Is there a vaccine we could develop which would immunize everyone?" asked the President.
"I don't know. You would have to ask the drug company. But I think it would take quite a bit of time to develop."
"Sheila, we need to get the researchers from AVI Biopharma on the line and get them working on a vaccine. I want a vaccine that we can use on everyone in the country."
"Yes, Madame President. Will you be addressing the nation any time soon?"
"I want to wait two or three more days until the testing in Mackinac is done. Then we will know where we stand. If the crisis is over by then, I will be able to reassure everyone."
"Madame President, I don't mean to second-guess you," said Col. White, "but we need to know right away if anyone has caught this thing in any other city. If you address the nation now, and if someone in Omaha or wherever has this thing, we can quickly get them treated with the AVI drugs before it spreads. If we wait, who knows what we could be facing."
The President considered White's comments. He had a point, but the best evidence now was that the disease was contained in Mackinac and Ann Arbor. If she waited, the crisis could be over by the time she addressed the nation. It was a tough call, but she decided to wait.
"Thank you, Col. White, I always welcome contrary opinions. But my decision stands."
The President disconnected the call and then privately met with Sheila Simms in the Oval Office.
"Madame President, this kid on the jet ski that they shot. That concerns me."
"It concerns me, too, Sheila, but I think the Governor can probably defend his men's actions, considering the crisis and the possibility of a nationwide epidemic. I think most Americans are going to sleep easier knowing that the kid never made it to shore. On the other hand, if worse comes to worst, I am throwing the Governor under the bus. Those were state Water Patrol agents, not the U.S. Coast Guard. No way I am taking the blame for that."
"I see what you mean," said the Director of Homeland Security.
"Who do we have on the ground in Tanzania? Do we have a good team?"
"Our CIA Field Office in Egypt already sent three men and they are in country in Tanzania right now, keeping their eyes open. Then today, we will be sending a special team consisting of Jacob Roessler, Bjorn Jendel and Murielle Winston from the C.D.C., Captain Roger Tsung from USAMRIID, and Senior Agent James Pond from CIA."
"You've gotta be kidding me," said the President.
"What?"
"He is a spy for the CIA and his name is James Bond?"
"It's Pond, with a P. And yes, he has obviously heard that joke before many times. His friends in the Agency call him Double-0-7. He goes by Jimmy, not James. Anyway, he is black, 6 foot 4, 32 years old, born in Uganda, nothing but muscle, speaks English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Swahili, as well as the native Indian language of Gujarti. Has six years of field experience in African countries. He is the best man for this job."
"Why no Special Forces?"
"At this time, there is no indication of terrorism at all. So really what we need is not soldiers but investigators and scientists. We need to know where this thing started, how far it has spread, and what is the best way to contain it. We believe this team will be able to handle it. If we need more forces later, we can always add them."
"Does Col. White like the team?"
"Yes, he does, Madame President."
"OK, that's good enough for me. When will they be in Tanzania?"
"They are going out this afternoon. When they get near Tanzania, they will go in by helicopter. They should be on the ground very late tonight."
"OK, I want round-the-clock updates on everything, Sheila."
"Of course, Madame President."
"And can you get me an executive summary regarding everything we know about the Ebola virus. I want to be fully educated about not only Mackinac Ebola, but all kinds of Ebola. I have a feeling in the days ahead, I am going to have to answer a lot of questions about this thing, and I want to know what I am talking about."
"Yes, Madame President, right away."
The President looked out the window, lost in thought. "I have good friends in Michigan. I pray to God this crisis will be over in a few days."
Skype call between a laptop in the United States and one in Guadalajara, Mexico.
"It looks like our friend is not leaving Michigan."
"That's very good news."
"It appears there is some help for our friend in the first two days, but after that, he is out of luck."
"That is also good news."
"But they are working on a permanent solution."
"How long 'til they get it?"
"I would guess at least four to six months, maybe a year, but I would not delay. For everything to work, we must act fast."
"That is no problem. We have our own solution here. And it has been successfully tested. We are in production now."
"Will we meet the deadline?"
"Absolutely. We are on schedule."
"I have to go."
"See you soon."