Page 10 of Deadly Strain

She stopped, thinking so hard he could almost hear the gears in her head. “Okay, here’s what I need to happen as quickly as possible. First, I need samples taken from as many people in the village as possible. I also want samples taken from at least six of the cows. I’m going to run a cross section of the samples through the Sandwich to see if it can tell us what we’re dealing with. It’s able to identify most known infectious diseases in minutes. We also need to determine how the agent was introduced into this environment. How were the victims exposed to it? Decontamination can only occur after we’ve gotten all the answers.” As she spoke, her composure firmed up until she appeared as calm and composed as usual.

Hot damn, they had a plan. “Gotcha, Doc,” Sharp said. “Let’s get moving.”

He herded her back to their meeting point and flashed a hand signal. Eight or nine soldiers jogged over.

The four guys from the A-Team formed up in front of them with an unconscious precision that spoke of years in the service. The other soldiers followed suit.

“How many teams?” he asked her.

“Four besides you and me. One to collect samples from the humans and one to collect from the cows. I need a team to collect water samples and the last team to collect samples from any of the food that’s been eaten. You and I will collect additional samples for the lab to investigate further.”

“Good plan.”

He and Leonard got the teams organized while Grace got the equipment ready. By the time he was done and the men were prepared to head out, she was ready to hand out sample kits to them.

The whole thing took about five minutes. Effective and efficient. Just the way he liked it.

Sharp shadowed Grace back to the first house as she took blood samples from every member of the family. Then they removed the clothing from one adult male and photographed his body, front and back. The lesions were visible head to toe, but were concentrated in the sweat regions under the arms, and around the neck and genitals.

He watched her hands and her face, especially when they examined the kids, but she was as calm and composed as ever.

She photographed the other members of the family, careful to maintain proper confidentiality and documentation with each photo. The army had developed procedures for just this sort of situation, with strict rules on how men, women, and children should be treated after death.

She swabbed lesions on each of the other members of the family, as well.

Sharp was surprised at how consistent the lesions were.

Once Grace finished, she prepped the samples for testing in the Sandwich and started the process. The results were ready five minutes later.

She read it. Then read it again. Her gaze fastened on the ticker-tape paper the machine had spit out with a horror he could almost feel. Slowly, she raised it to lock with his.

She looked as shocked as someone who’d just been shot in the chest.

Fuck.

“Doc?” Sharp fit a thousand questions into one word.

“Anthrax,” she told him. “And for it to have acted this fast, it had to be weaponized. If it also killed the cows...” Her voice trailed off.

“We have a treatment for anthrax,” he said. “Ciprofloxacin. We’re vaccinated for it, too.”

Grace’s face paled. “Our military members are vaccinated, but the civilian population isn’t, and I don’t know if the Afghan defense forces are vaccinated.”

He didn’t have to do any math in his head to know this was bad. This was a mostly agrarian society. People traveled to trade and buy goods all the time. “How long would it take to get the vaccine over here?”

* * *

Grace swallowed downa mouthful of bitter fear. “A day, maybe two, but we don’t have a lot of vaccine available to us here and there’s not much Cipro, either. If this spreads, it could get away from us fast.”

“Marshall needs a report.”

“Averypreliminary one. There’s still a lot of work to be done before I’ll be comfortable giving him even a formal preliminary report.”

She walked toward Leonard and Bart and the sat phone, but before they could reach them, Rasker sprinted toward them.

Morebad news?

Sharp immediately brought his weapon up and began searching the surrounding hills for signs of the enemy.

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