James Tabor: The Deep Zone

“You look tired, Don.” It was just after seven in the evening. She knew he started his workdays at six-thirty A.M.

“That makes two of us.” He stepped back. “You remember Lew Casey? Lew was Delta Lab supervisor when you were here.”

It was only then that she noticed the two men who had been standing off to one side in Barnard’s large office while he and Hallie said hello. Dr. Lewis Casey was a short man in his fifties with milky skin, a blizzard of freckles, and hair like curls of rusty wire.

“I remember him very well. It’s good to see you again, Doctor.”

“And I remember you , Dr. Leland.” Casey stepped forward, shook her hand. “I always admired your work. Tried to steal you for Delta, in fact.”

She looked at Barnard. “You never told me that.”

“Lew was not the only one, I can assure you.” Barnard appeared, very briefly, sheepish.

“Thank you, Dr. Casey. I’m honored to hear you say that.” Despite herself, Hallie was pleased.

“Lew does fine. And I’ll call you Hallie, if that’s all right with you?”

“Of course.”

Barnard turned to the third man, who, Hallie could tell with a second’s glance, was no scientist. Too neat, too polished, too perfect. Could have stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog. He was slim and tan, wearing a tailored, three-piece suit of fine brown wool and what looked to be handmade English shoes. His razor-cut brown hair lay tight against his scalp and he sported a meticulously trimmed mustache. An otter , Hallie thought. Sleek and shiny and uncatchable . CIA was written all over him. His handshake was firm, and when he locked eyes with hers something inside her shuddered. The man had done some things.

“David Lathrop. With Central Intelligence.”

“Hallie Leland. With Deep Enough Dive Shop.”

He got it, laughed. “Don has told us both a great deal about you. His admiration is unbounded.”

She felt herself blushing. “Thank you.”

They settled into red leather chairs at a coffee table across the big office from Barnard’s desk. She hadn’t been sure how it would feel, coming back to BARDA, but here in Don’s office, at least, it was good. Barnard’s time in government entitled him to several rooms with tall windows on the top floor of a building that was, by design, four utterly unremarkable stories above ground and tucked back in a declining industrial park in Prince George’s County. The office walls could have been those of any senior bureaucrat in Washington, covered with framed citations, pictures of Barnard with his wife, Lucianne, and their two sons, plus photos of Barnard with senators and generals and presidents.

“Florida’s obviously agreeing with you.” Barnard looked pleased.

“Sunnier there. Smells better, too.”

“You deserved a respite, Hallie.”

“It’s good for a while. But I’m already starting to feel…”

“Bored?”

“Unchallenged.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Barnard fiddled with the big meerschaum pipe he had not smoked for fifteen years. “Well, you’re surely wondering why you’re here.”

“You could say that. It’s been a short, strange trip.” Fortier and Whittle had put her on a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, which had taken her to a government Citation jet at a restricted airfield, which had flown her to Andrews, where another helicopter had brought her here. It was well after dark now.

“The request originated at the highest level.”

“You mean from the OD?” Office of the Director, CDC, of which BARDA was a part. Despite her fatigue, Hallie was sitting up straight, legs crossed, elbows on the chair arms, fingers tented.

“No. The White House.”

“Yeah, right. Don, I came too far for jokes.”

Lathrop broke in: “He’s not joking, Dr. Leland. I can assure you. Shortly before you arrived we were on a videoconference with President O’Neil.” He smiled. “It wasn’t long, but it was the president.”

Barnard nodded. “I’ve been briefing the president, Vice President Washinsky, Secretary of Homeland Security Mason, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Rathor every day.”

She saw no humor in his eyes, just fatigue, concern, and—something she had never seen before in her former boss—a hint of fear.

“Okay. What’s going on?”

Lathrop’s voice was smooth and modulated, like an FM radio announcer’s, but as he spoke this time it grew tight.

“Almost two weeks ago, one of our soldiers in Afghanistan was wounded at a combat outpost called Terok. Not seriously, but he was admitted to his base’s medical unit. That’s when it started.”

“What started?”

“Watch this. Don?”

Barnard punched buttons on a remote. A large flat-screen monitor on a near wall glowed to life. Hallie watched as the image on the screen showed a room with lime-green walls. It contained a stainless steel table, sinks, scales, trays of evil-looking instruments, and a wall of cold-storage lockers.

A figure walked into the picture wearing a blue Chemturion Biosafety Level 4 suit. Inflated to maintain positive pressure, it looked like the space suits in Buck Rogers movies, right down to the clear, bucket-shaped hood and futuristic backpack containing the battery-powered personal life support system. The attendant opened a locker door and rolled out a stainless steel rack. She unzipped the orange cadaver bag and pushed it open, exposing the body inside.

Hallie came half out of her chair, gaping. “Jesus Christ! Did terrorists do that?”

“Iatrogenic. It happened in Terok’s medical unit.” Lathrop shook his head as he said this, as though having difficulty believing it, despite the grisly evidence before them at that moment.

“How?”

“Just watch for a bit.”

The camera moved. Hallie saw close-ups, plate-sized patches of skin missing, exposed red tissue and even, in a few places, white bone. She had seen skinless cadavers in graduate school at Hopkins, but, treated with formaldehyde and phenol, they’d looked more like pink wax. This body was like fresh meat.

The screen faded to black. Barnard turned to Hallie. “That is … was Army Specialist DeAengelo Washington. A fine young soldier, from what I was told.”

“Was he captured? Tortured?”

“No. He wasn’t the one wounded. That young man is in another locker in the same morgue. It was ACE.”

“ Acinetobacter ? Can’t be. ACE doesn’t do that.”

“What do you know about ACE, Dr. Leland?” Lathrop asked.

“Thirty-one known species, thirty benign. One, Acinetobacter baumannii , is drug-resistant, but not often fatal in healthy adults. Transmissible by inhalation, ingestion, or through damaged skin. Lungs are the primary infection site, but it can also initiate in the urinary tract, stomach, or bowel.”

She paused a moment, not sure how much they wanted to hear. When no one said anything, she continued: “ACE loves hospitals. It can live for months on a stethoscope or examining table. But the biggest infection vectors are catheters. Of all bacteria, ACE has one of the highest transmutation indexes.”

“That’s exactly right,” Don Barnard affirmed. “All ACE species, including baumannii , have an extraordinary ability to exchange genes with each other through carrier viruses called bacteriophages. It’s almost like the way ants communicate with pheromones. Information, including immunity to an antibiotic, can spread through an entire population with astonishing speed. A matter of hours, in some cases. Back in 2005, geneticists at Stanford broke the code of a new ACE strain and found the greatest number of genetic upgrades ever discovered in a single organism.”