U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Fort Detrick, Maryland

Colonel Benjamin Platt, M.D., didn’t question Commander Janklow’s order. He was used to taking orders whether they included jumping out of an aircraft into the Persian Gulf while wearing full scuba gear or organizing a biocontainment team and heading out to suburbia. Although back in his jumping days he was a bit younger and much more idealistic. Still, he wouldn’t question his orders. Instead, he hurried down the hallways, his stride confident, the heels of his spit-n-polish shoes clicking hard against the tiles, the only indication of nervous energy.

Platt wouldn’t question the commander’s orders, but he couldn’t help wondering if the man might be blowing this situation out of proportion. New to his post with less than three months under his belt, Commander Jeremy Janklow was an outsider, a political appointment that most everyone viewed as a favor rather than a competent leader of USAMRIID (pronounced You-SAM-Rid), one of the most respected research facilities in the world. Platt worried that Janklow had spent too much of the last decade behind a desk. Was it possible the commander was simply looking for a crisis? A fire to put out that might boost his reputation?

One of the lab doors opened before Platt got to the end of the hallway and the stocky, bearded man who emerged waved Platt to the office next door. Neither said a word, not even a greeting, until they were inside and the door closed.

Michael McCathy slipped off his lab coat and exchanged it for a navy cardigan, cashmere and not a speck of dust on it. McCathy was older and bigger than Platt. Any signs of his long-ago days as a linebacker had been replaced by pale skin, sagging jowls, a slight paunch and tired deep-set eyes, magnified by wireless eyeglasses. Platt, on the other hand, was lean from a daily workout that included running five miles and a half hour of lifting weights. His summer tan was only now beginning to fade, his brown hair still lightened by hours in the sun coaching Little League and now soccer. Platt had a frenetic energy about him, almost a complete opposite to McCathy who always moved with slow and deliberate motions.

Even now McCathy was arranging his crisply pressed lab coat on a hanger, placing it on the coat tree in the corner as though he had all the time in the world. Platt watched McCathy’s methodical gestures, each grating on his nerves. The man was obsessive-compulsive about everything. He was egotistical, and annoying as hell. Platt could only take him in small doses. But the new commander, Janklow, thought McCathy was a genius and insisted he be included in this mission.

A law enforcement dropout, somehow McCathy had ended up at USAMRIID as a civilian microbiologist, a biohazard expert, apparently content to spend his days with test tubes and microscopes, concocting and speculating terrorist scenarios that might include biological warfare.

Platt and McCathy had little in common except for a shared fascination of biological agents, particularly viruses and filoviruses. Platt had held Lassa, a Level 4 virus, in his gloved hands while inside a makeshift medevac tent outside of Sierra Leone. McCathy had been a bioweapons inspector in Iraq who claimed to have seen and handled canisters filled with biological soup. He insisted there were hundreds more just waiting for a weapons delivery system. He and his team were the last ones that Saddam Hussein threw out before the war and their testimonies were part of the argument used to go towar. Platt respected the work McCathy had done. It didn’t mean he liked the man.

“I thought you said your team would be in civilian clothes?” McCathy gave Platt’s uniform an up-down glance like a disapproving headmaster.

“Civilian clothes and civilian vehicles, except for the panel truck.” Platt tried to contain his impatience. He didn’t need to explain himself to McCathy. It’d take him five minutes in the locker to change into jeans, a T-shirt and his leather bomber jacket. “They’re almost ready at the loading dock. Do you have everything you need?”

McCathy nodded but now was taking off his rimless eyeglasses and cleaning them with absolutely no sense of urgency. “It’ll be tight if we have to change in the truck. And slow going. Probably only one at a time with a two-man support team. You sure there isn’t someplace on-site we could use for a staging area?”

Platt hated this, McCathy questioning him, second-guessing him. McCathy constantly reminded everyone that as a civilian he didn’t have to take orders from anyone except his boss, the commander.

“It’s residential,” Platt explained, even though he’d already told McCathy this on the phone.

“What about a house next door?” McCathy asked, pulling a small bottle of disinfectant from his trouser pocket and squirting some in his hand.

“Orders are to not evacuate. We don’t want a panic.”

“You’ve got to be pulling my leg,” McCathy said under his breath to emphasize his disgust. “What if it’s something?”

“Then we’ll be prepared to contain and isolate.”

McCathy smiled at him and shook his head. “We both know that won’t be enough if this ends up being anthrax or goddamn ricen.”

“Evac team is on standby.”

“Standby.” McCathy repeated with another smile. No, this was a smirk. And Platt recognized it and the tone. McCathy used it in meetings to show his disdain for authority and for rules in general. Platt wondered why McCathy would want to work at a military research lab. He carried himself like a man with some special entitlement, smug in his cashmere cardigan, as though he was the only one brilliant enough to see incompetence, and he seemed to see it running rampant all around him.

McCathy was older than Platt and had been at USAMRIID for much longer, reasons enough in the scientist’s mind to dismiss Platt. Also, as a civilian, McCathy didn’t have to adhere to a rank-and-file hierarchy. It didn’t make a difference to him if Platt was a sergeant or a colonel. He still wasn’t going to take orders from him. To top things off, McCathy had managed to draw the attention and favor of Commander Janklow.

None of that mattered to Platt. McCathy didn’t intimidate him in the least. Platt had seen things and done things that would shock the fluorescent-skinned McCathy who, outside of his stint as a weapons inspector, was used to living in his sterilized, controlled lablike world. No, men like McCathy didn’t intimidate Platt. They simply annoyed him. He was in charge of this mission and he wasn’t going to be lured into a pissing contest, especially with someone like McCathy.

“I’ll meet you on the dock in ten,” he told McCathy and he didn’t wait for a response.