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“The state police have set up checkpoints,” Greet said. “We’re told they’ve got all roads covered, and they’re all looking at photos of Scott and Catton, though if Catton’s dead…Anyway, they’ve got photos of Scott, and they’ve been told that he’s suspected of being a serial child killer, so they’re taking it seriously. Let’s hope that the insulin pen gives us another name and another photo.”
As they were finishing the conversation, another helicopter was coming in, and circled overhead, kicking up dust. Letty told Greet, who said, “Get the stuff from the bus and turn the chopper around. You gotta get that moving.”
“We will. I’ll call you when they’re off.”
—
The helicopter landed,disgorged two more men and two women, and another pile of oversized duffel bags. At the same time, the five people at Catton’s house came back down to the parking lot,having locked the empty house behind them. When everybody knew what everyone else had done, the samples collected by De León and Moscowitz were placed in the heavy duffels, along with the box of glass tubes from the bus.
Underwood, leader of the Detrick team, said, “We need to take samples in the bus, and we need to do it now, so we can ship it with this load.”
Tank, the police chief, had watched the proceedings from a distance, and now walked up and said, “Everybody? It’s gonna be dark in a couple of hours, and when the sun goes down, it gets dark real quick. What are we gonna do about Ms. Catton’s house?”
Lucas said, “They cleaned the place out before they left. If Danny doesn’t need it for more samples, I say burn it.”
Tank: “You could start one hell of a forest fire…”
Lucas: “Okay, burn it carefully.”
Underwood said to Tank, “We don’t have to do anything right now. I think you people…with guns…should watch the place overnight, and by tomorrow, we’ll have decided what to do.”
Tank: “I’ll talk to the fire chief and the forest service…I’ll have my guys take turns sitting on the house overnight.”
“Do that,” Letty said. “The working group in Washington thinks we should leave the sick people on the RV, bring in food and water, get their IDs if we can. Which means we’ll have to put more people inside the bus, right now, and we’ve got to hurry.”
—
Lucas asked Tank,“When you saw the SUV leaving…you said you thought Catton was inside.”
“I believe it was her. She was driving. She’s got long silver hair down on her shoulders, and that’s what the driver had.”
“Maybe she’s not dead,” Lucas said.
“If she’s not, then the people on the bus are still cooperating as part of the conspiracy,” De León said. “We need someone who can get harsh with them. We need to tell them how the vaccine won’t save them now—that if anyone dies from a release of the Marburg, they’ll be tried for murder, found guilty, and executed.”
Lucas said, “Aw, hell. Give me another suit.”
Hawkins, who’d been standing on the edge of the circle, behind Letty, said, “I should do it. I interview would-be terrorists from time to time. Threaten them, get unpleasant when I have to. I know how to do that, and I have an Oxbridge accent…which their boss had. Psychologically, that could work for us.”
All the people with guns looked at each other, and Lucas said, “When you’re right…I mean, be my guest.”
14
A second doctor, named Suzanne Lasch, would be getting on the bus with Hawkins. Before suiting up, Hawkins went to his suitcase, dug around, and came back with a device that looked like a cell phone. “Fingerprints,” he said.
Lasch, a thin woman in her forties, said, “Show me how to use it, if it’s simple. Then you won’t have to touch them. I have to anyway.”
“Okay.” He showed her—it was simple enough, press a finger against a screen, and the pressure would trigger an internal camera to image the fingerprint and store it. They would take images of both thumbs on each man. When the prints were stored, they could be transferred to a cell phone with Bluetooth.
When she understood it, they suited up. Lasch went first, spent a few minutes checking temperatures with a no-touch infrared thermometer, then took blood samples from each of the three sick men.After each sampling, she carried the syringe to the RV’s door and dropped it into a non-penetrable bag that was immediately sealed.
That done, she told the sick men that she was going to take a “differential blood pressure,” and made the thumbprints, and the print recorder was passed out the door into a transparent isolation bag. Hawkins, working through the transparent plastic of the bag, transferred the prints to his cell phone and used his messaging app to send them on to Letty, who sent them to Greet.
“I need one of those fingerprint gizmos,” Letty said.
“If you can afford to buy me a Panama hat, you can afford one of these,” Hawkins said. “They’re dirt simple and dirt cheap.”
She got in front of him and poked him in the chest: “When you’re in there…easy does it.”
