Two Navy Guys Readers Group – Exclusive #1

The Pandora Deception

Chapter 1

Kailahun District, Sierra Leone

Dr. Anna Winthrop shielded her eyes against the blazing African sun. She plucked at the neck of her sweaty t-shirt. “I don't see it,” she said.

Her companion, a tall, Nigerian doctor named Ndidi, pointed through the ever-present haze hanging over treetops.

“I can hear it,” she replied. “There.”

Anna squinted past the empty shacks that lined the wide dirt road of red earth running through the center of what passed for a town in the part of the world. The town was located in the Tri-Border region, a thumb of Sierre Leone jabbing into two neighboring countries. A few miles down that red dirt road and she’d be in Guinea. Another few miles in the opposite direction was Liberia. Not that she could pass either way. The US military had established a perimeter around this little speck of dying humanity.

A hot zone, they called it. No one was taking any chances with this deadly strain of Ebola.

She heard the distant, rhythmic thwap of helicopter rotors and spotted a tiny dot on the horizon moving in and out of the mist. She focused on the dot. It grew larger, morphing into a white UH-60 helicopter, with large black letters spelling UN painted on the sides. The craft circled the World Health Organization camp twice, then flared to a landing in the clearing in front of them.

As the rotors of the helicopter slowed and stopped, the side door of the craft slid open and a man emerged. He was tall, late thirties, clad in blue jeans and a loose-fitting shirt with the sleeves pulled up. He had stylishly cut dark hair with just a touch of gray at the temples and gray eyes to match. He strode across the clearing with a cooler used for carrying biological samples hanging loosely from his hand.

Anna plucked at her dirty T-shirt. The thought of dressing up for company had never occurred to her and now she was beginning to regret that choice. The man stopped in front of her, hand extended.

“Dr. Harold Meisner,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.” He had a slight accent that Anna could not place. French, maybe? Exotic, anyway. His eyes locked with hers and she felt a little thrill. He held her hand and she realized she hadn’t responded.

“Anna,” she said quickly. “Dr. Anna Winthrop. And this is my associate, Dr. Ndidi Okafor. Welcome to hell, Dr. Meissner.”

He shifted his attention to Ndidi and Anna took a deep breath. What the heck was the matter with her? Some guy in a tight pair of jeans and an accent gets off a helo and you act like you’re in seventh grade.

Anna knew herself well enough to recognize the signs of depression creeping into her consciousness. She never should have agreed to act as the supervisor to close this site down, but it would look great on a resume someday. She just needed to get through the next few weeks and she’d be back in the good old US of A again. With real food and AC that worked and showers that—

“What is that smell?” Meisner asked, bringing Anna back to the moment.

“That would be the smell of death,” Anna said with what she hoped was a gallows humor smile.

She had gone nose blind to the smell of the crematorium days ago. Normally, the aid organizations had to do outreach to the local community about burial practices. Not so in this case, this strain was so deadly there was no one left to bury the dead.

The military chain of command didn’t want their people handling the corpses, so the WHO solved the problem by bringing in a portable crematorium. Two technicians who spoke only Russian to each other ran the incinerator twelve hours a day. And she thought she had a shitty job.

The man said nothing but clutched his sample case tighter. “So, this really is ground zero.”

Anna swept her hand in a wide arc that encompassed the empty village nestled into the clearing in the forest. “Yep, this is it,” she said. “One month ago, population five hundred. Today? Six. But we stopped the virus cold. It ends here—except for the samples in the storage locker over there and the ones you’re taking for the Army at Fort Detrick.” She tried to keep her tone light, but it galled Anna that the only organization allowed to remove samples was the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, better known in the field as USAMRIID.

Dr. Meisner looked at her with those intense, gray eyes and she felt a little flutter in her chest. “You must be quite an asset to the WHO to have this kind of responsibility.”

“Well, there’s four of us here. We’re short-staffed as usual, so the bulk of the unit moved on to the next disaster.”

“I think you undersell yourself, Dr. Winthrop.”

“I think we should see about those samples, Anna,” Ndidi said.
Anna nodded. “Tell you what, Ndidi. I’ll escort Dr. Meisner.”

Ndidi shrugged and walked away leaving her alone with the mysterious man from the Army Research Labs.

“I meant what I said,” he continued. “I’ve heard your name talked about with some very senior people.”

Anna blushed. “Really?”

When she graduated from Columbia four years ago, Anna envisioned a life of service. Save the world by day, but somehow still being able to order Chinese food and watch Netflix at night with some handsome guy named Brad. She’d heard about Ebola in medical school, of course, but just one course on tropical diseases—it didn’t apply to her.

Then the job with the World Health Organization arrived. She was going to save the world and look fabulous doing it.

The reality? Tough living conditions, brutal heat and humidity, and death. Lots and lots of death. Most days she was proud of herself and what she was doing. Other days, like today…

She shook her head to clear her thoughts.

“This outbreak was unlike any we’ve seen so far,” she said. “Typically, Ebola has an 80% mortality rate at the highest. In this town, one hundred percent. Since the first case twenty-nine days ago, we have had zero survivors. Zero.”

The man's eyebrows went up and Anna nodded again for emphasis.

“The incubation period is about three days with this virus. Infection, no symptoms for three days later, then it’s like a hammer between the eyes. The patient is dead within 24 hours. Have you ever seen an Ebola patient die, Dr. Meisner?”

His eyes seemed to be scanning the compound, noticing everything. “I’m mostly a lab rat. I don’t get out in the field much.”

Anna grimaced as she held open the door to the patient pod. “If you're not a religious person, you might find yourself praying after this. It's unlike anything you've ever seen, like watching a human being melt.”

Dr. Meisner paused at the doorway. The area around them still showed the imprint of the prior buildings. Anna followed his gaze.

“We used to have six patient pods here. Each one could hold sixteen patients and they were all full. Today, just one left.” Anna pointed to a shipping container next to a running generator. “Sample storage. We decided to hold all samples on site and move them all at once after we close this place down next week. Once we’re gone, the military will burn everything to the ground.” She nodded at his case. “You’re the one exception. You must have friends in high places.”

He grinned at her. “Don’t look at me. I just work here.”

Anna followed Meisner into the robing area for the patient pod. She pulled two prepackaged yellow hazmat suits off the shelf and tossed one to Meisner. Then she stripped off her T-shirt and dropped her cutoff jeans so that she was wearing only bikini briefs and a bra. She pulled a set of scrubs off the hook. When she turned, she found Meisner staring at her.

“Sorry.” She blushed. “We sort of lose all sense of propriety out here.” She nodded at the shelf. “There’s a set of scrubs there that’ll fit you, I’m sure.”
She watched out of the corner of her eye as he stripped to his underwear and pulled on scrubs. A firm six-pack and sculpted glutes and legs. Dr. Meisner knew his way around a gym.

The procedure to don a hazmat suit safely took all her attention. Latex gloves, yellow coveralls, facemask. Anna was aware that Meisner was watching her and following her lead. She donned the white head covering then indicated he should turn so she could tie his at the back of his neck. He did the same for her. His fingers brushed her neck.

A second facemask, second set of gloves, then an apron and finally goggles. She inspected Meisner to make sure every bit of his skin was covered.

They passed through the airlock into the patient area. Six beds ran down each side of the building, the foot of each bed facing toward the center.

Her voice was muffled by the layers of filters. “Brace yourself. This is not pretty.”

As they lumbered down the center aisle, Anna felt a familiar sheen of sweat building up over her entire body.

Anna often thought about how she would describe an Ebola patient to a civilian. Early on she decided the most apt analogy was leaving a red Jello mold in the hot sun. It would just liquefy into mush.

The male patient in the closest bed was as near death as one could possibly be. He was unconscious, and rivulets of sweat mixed with the blood leaking from every orifice. His thick lips moved and his eyelids fluttered. She heard Meisner gag behind her.

“Take a step back and gather yourself, doctor,” she ordered. She stood in front of him, careful not to touch him and stared into his goggles. “Look at me. Breathe. This happens to everyone the first time. It’s…not something you can prepare for.” Anna took the rack of test tubes from his hand. “Let me get these.”

Anna worked quickly, drawing two vials of blood from each patient, careful to watch the sharp tip of the hypo. An accidental stick with a contaminated needle through her gloves could be death. She gave orders to the two nurses in attendance, but there was very little they could do for these poor people. Saline, painkillers, and oxygen all treated the symptoms, but were not a cure.

“Ready?” she called when she had placed the last test tubes in the rack.

Meisner nodded. His eyes flitted around the room from patient to sample to her own goggles. She felt another flutter in her belly.

They exited the patient area as Anna spoke. “The doffing process can be tricky. Most caregiver infections occur from exposure while taking the hazmat suits off, so take your time and follow the directions of your observer to the letter.”

Two local nurses waited for them in the decontamination area to observe the procedure, a twenty-minute process of unlayering interspersed with frequent handwashing. They ended up at the showers at the same time.

Anna peeled off her sweaty scrubs and tossed them into the hamper. “It’s customary for the rookie to buy his partner a drink after their first time.” She stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut. What the hell was she doing?

She heard the soft plop of Meisner’s clothes hitting the floor then the adjoining shower started up. “There’s a bar here?” he said.

“I’ve got a bottle in my trailer,” Anna responded. She considered inviting him into to the shower and discarded the idea immediately.

“I see.”

She shut off the water and toweled off quickly, then dressed in her sweaty clothes from earlier. This look—and smell—was not the impression she was going for.

“I’m in the last trailer on the right,” she said to his closed shower curtain. “Come find me when you’re ready.”

Anna left the decon area at a fast walk. Get back to the trailer, clean up the mess, put on some clean clothes—what was the sexiest thing she owned?—and find two clean glasses.

Inside the trailer, she turned on the AC and stripped. She rummaged through her footlocker until she found a black dress and a bottle of Wild Turkey. Her hands shook a little as she found a glass and poured herself a shot.

She looked at herself in the mirror and ran a brush through her still damp hair. Makeup? No, he might be here any second. She smiled to reflection. You need this. You deserve an hour of mindless lust with a total stranger.

Anna eyed the bottle and sat on the bed to wait.

After ten minutes, she took another belt of bourbon. Just to make sure she was relaxed.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, enjoy this. You can be a more responsible person in the morning.

In the distance she heard the sound of helicopter rotor blades spinning.
Her head snapped up. What the hell?

Anna stood and slipped on her tennis shoes. She raced out of the trailer and across the compound to the open field, dust puffing out from under her shoes as she ran.

Some part of her realized she looked like an idiot running through the camp wearing a short black cocktail dress and tennis shoes, but she didn’t care. She was pissed.

The rotors had reached full tempo by the time she reached the clearing. She glimpsed Meisner’s face in the window. He waved at her and she raised her middle finger in reply.

The helo lifted off and sped away over the trees.

Anna’s shoulders sagged. Screwing a random stranger in the middle of the wilds of Africa had always been a bad idea, but it had been her bad idea. And now it was gone.

Her feet dragged as she made her way back to the empty trailer. The AC roared, raising goosebumps on her flesh. She welcomed the feeling—any feeling that did not remind her of death. Another shot of Wild Turkey, then another.

Outside, the sun was setting, drawing long shadows across the compound. She stretched out on the bed. She didn’t have another shift until tomorrow morning.

When she opened her eyes, the trailer was dark and freezing cold. Her head throbbed and she fumbled in the dark for a bottle of water.

Bang, bang, bang. Three hard raps on the trailer door. It wasn’t just her head, it was actual noise.

“Coming,” she called out and dropped her feet to the floor. She had the presence of mind to hide the bottle of Wild Turkey before she stumbled to the door.

Ndidi’s dark skin gleamed in the weak light cast by the floodlight near the hospital. “We have a problem,” she said, then turned and walked away.

Anna lurched down the steps. She was still wearing the black dress, no shoes, and her damp hair had dried into a snarl. Her stomach was sour and queasy.

“Wait,” she called after Ndidi’s broad retreating back, but the other woman did not slow down.

Anna ran after her, each step jarring her tender brain. Sweat covered her—Christ, she even smelled like a distillery.

Ndidi angled across the compound to the admin shed where a US Army Humvee, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, was parked. A squat man with thinning hair and a salt-and-pepper beard covering his heavy jowls waited. He took in Anna’s little black dress and bare feet and scowled a greeting.

“Are you in charge here?” he demanded.

Anna tried to assume an air of control. “I’m Dr. Anna Winthrop. I’m in charge of this installation.” She held out her hand. “How can I help you?”

“Harold Meisner. USAMRIID. I’m here for the samples.”

Anna felt like she’d been punched in the throat. “Doctor—we expected you—”

“I got held up in customs in Freetown for eight hours, then my chopper on loan from the UN went missing. I ended up hiring a driver from Freetown to get me here, but the Army won’t let civilian vehicles past the blockade, so…”

“Can I see some ID, please?” Anna felt a roaring in her ears that had nothing to do with the hangover.

Meisner held out his passport. She studied it, then said, “What about an Army ID?”

Meisner frowned, but complied. Anna compared the two photos. Had she even asked the other Meisner for ID? She’d never even thought about it.

She felt the blood drain from her face as the full import of what she’d done swept over her.

Anna Winthrop had given samples of the most deadly version of Ebola virus on the planet to…who? Could she even describe him? A hot guy with a French accent.

“I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake, Dr. Meisner,” she began.

Meisner’s scowl deepened.

Behind her, Anna heard a popping sound, like a firecracker. Then another.
The soldier in the Humvee opened the door and stood on the vehicle frame to get a higher vantage point. “It’s coming from the fuel depot. It’s not gunshots, sounds like—”

Doctor Anna Winthrop squinted into the darkness to see a bright flash like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, then a massive explosion rolled through the camp.

Copyright 2020 by David Bruns and J.R. Olson