{"product_id":"viral-isbn-9781616952198","title":"Viral","description":"\"\u003ci\u003eViral\u003c\/i\u003e is a world-class thriller.\" -Vince Flynn\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo brothers race to stop a political mastermind's massive bioterrorist plot in this terrifying espionage thriller.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn remote pockets of the Third World, a deadly virus is quietly sweeping through impoverished farming villages and shanty towns with frightening speed and potency. Meanwhile, in Washington, a three-word message left in a safe-deposit box may be the key to stopping the crisis—if, that is, Charles Mallory, a private intelligence contractor and former CIA operative, can decipher the puzzle before time runs out. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhat Mallory begins to discover are the traces of a secret war, with a bold objective—to create a new, technologically advanced society. With the help of his brother Jon, an investigative reporter, can he break the story to the world before it is too late—before a planned “humane depopulation” takes place?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs the stakes and strategies of this secret war become more evident, the Mallory brothers find themselves in a complex game of wits with an enemy they can’t see: a new sort of superpower led by a brilliant, elusive tactician who believes that ends justify means.\u003c\/p\u003e\"Lilliefors' debut thriller doesn't slow down until the last page.... This one will keep you up at night.\" -\u003ci\u003eRomantic Times\u003c\/i\u003e (4 ½ star review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Lilliefors provides enough twists to keep the pages turning. He also manages to develop and humanize his characters including some of the villains.\" -Gumshoe Review\u003cp\u003e\"[T]his cautionary tale can make your blood run cold.... Lilliefors is an author to watch.\" -\u003ci\u003eCrimespace\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Delivers the goods. The international setting. The spies. The unscrupulous, powerful bad guy(s). A sprinkle of romance, a spine shuddering genetically engineered disease, and a mystery that kept me guessing into the final pages.\" -Poptimal\u003c\/p\u003e\"[T]echnologically modernizes Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.\" -\u003ci\u003eThe Mystery Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An ambitious thriller; its villains, no ordinary terrorists, are determined to create a new world (even if it means wiping out a large portion of its population). Solidly plotted and featuring a unique pair of protagonists—you don’t often find a team of brothers as action heroes—the book is sure to appeal to fans of thrillers with Big Ideas and capital-V villains. A sequel is in the works, which is a good thing: readers will leave the book wanting to see more of Charles and Jon.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Fans of intelligently written page-turners will be rewarded.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Software billionaires, media moguls, government henchmen, and a beautiful bio-chem warfare expert enter and exit the story in a whirl of action with all of it leading to a suspenseful race to stop a crime, the magnitude of which is off the scale.” —\u003ci\u003eSuspense Magazine \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eViral \u003c\/i\u003eis a world-class thriller. It doesn’t get any more real than this. Lilliefors has created one of the most compelling novels of international espionage I’ve come across in a long time.”—Vince Flynn, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A crackling good story, so realistic that it's scary. Lilliefors is right up there with the best thriller writers.”—Ben Bova, six-time Hugo Award–winning author of the Grand Tour series.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Viral \u003c\/i\u003eweaves genetics, nanotechnology and robotics into a complex tapestry of international geopolitics and nails the details. Lilliefors' debut is brilliant, with realistic science, tight pacing, and believable characters in a gripping story of the audacity of dehumanized science.”—Jeffrey Anderson, MD PhD, international bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eSleeper Cell\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eImplant\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“James Lilliefors, a brand new thriller writer on the scene, has opened with a bang with his first novel, \u003ci\u003eViral\u003c\/i\u003e.   With the Mallory brothers, Charles and Jon, the insanity that Jim has brilliantly portrayed becomes all too sharply urgent, and certainly timely.  Hats off!”—David Hagberg, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestelling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Expediter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eViral\u003c\/i\u003e is a great read that made me wonder if the author has a secret past life in the dark world of intelligence.... Lilliefors' powerful novel could be both a prediction and a warning of tomorrow's headlines.”—Wes DeMott, former FBI agent, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Fund\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHeat Sync\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWalking K\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An adrenaline-pumping tale of terror that simmers with intrigue and tension. From the very first page, Lilliefors masterfully takes us on a nail-biting journey into the terrifying world of bioterrorism.”—Gary Birken, MD, author of \u003ci\u003eEmbolus\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCode 15\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003eJames Lilliefors is an award-winning journalist and former newspaper editor who has written for \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e and elsewhere. He was raised in the Washington, D.C. area and studied at the University of Iowa and the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fiction Writing Fellow. He currently lives in Florida and is at work on the follow-up to \u003ci\u003eViral.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePROLOGUE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCloud shadows carpeted the African countryside as a privately\u003cbr\u003eowned matatu rattled along the dusty lorry route toward the capital.\u003cbr\u003eFour passengers had been on board as it rolled out of Kyotera just past\u003cbr\u003edaybreak. Now, as the bus neared Kampala, every seat was taken,\u003cbr\u003ewith nine men standing, gripping the overhead straps. Several transistor\u003cbr\u003eradios played incongruously—gospel, raga, soca—their signals\u003cbr\u003ebecoming clearer as the city loomed. The passengers were villagers\u003cbr\u003eand farmers, many of them carrying goods to sell at the open-air markets\u003cbr\u003eof the city: Nile perch and tilapia, tomatoes and maize, basketware,\u003cbr\u003egourds, kikoy cloth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a worn wicker seat at the rear of the bus, a wizened banana\u003cbr\u003efarmer clutched a bark-cloth package and gazed through the sweating\u003cbr\u003ebodies at a spout of rain in the distant terraced hillside. The man\u003cbr\u003ewore a vacant expression, although occasionally he stole glances at\u003cbr\u003ethe other passengers: at the young bearded man who nipped from a\u003cbr\u003eflask; at the toothless woman seated in front of him, who kept falling\u003cbr\u003easleep against the window; at the burly, bare-chested man—the\u003cbr\u003eonly one facing backwards—who held a panting dog in his arms; at\u003cbr\u003ethe tall, handsome woman with the lovely profile on the aisle. The\u003cbr\u003eman was careful not to make eye contact with them, though, or to\u003cbr\u003egive any of the passengers reason to notice him. He had been paid\u003cbr\u003eto make a delivery in Kampala, and the only thing on his mind this\u003cbr\u003emorning was the cold bottle of pombe—fermented banana beer—and\u003cbr\u003ethe plate of mkate mayai that he would enjoy once he returned home.\u003cbr\u003eHe did not think about what he was delivering, or why it might be\u003cbr\u003eimportant to someone. That was not part of his job.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe farmer closed his eyes as they came to another makeshift village,\u003cbr\u003ewhere women were washing clothes in a creek beside the road.\u003cbr\u003eWhen he looked out again, he saw cane and cassava fields and then\u003cbr\u003ea gathering of people by a banana grove, dressed up as if for church.\u003cbr\u003eTwo of the men, he saw, before averting his eyes, were leaning on\u003cbr\u003eshovels. It was the fourth funeral they had passed since leaving\u003cbr\u003eKyotera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe road took them past a roadhouse, where sunken-cheeked\u003cbr\u003ewomen watched blankly from under a cloth awning, and into a\u003cbr\u003esprawling neighborhood of ramshackle apartments and merchant\u003cbr\u003estands, where the air was smoky from roasting meats. As downtown\u003cbr\u003ecame into view, the farmer remembered traveling here as a boy, in\u003cbr\u003ethe years before the dictators—the shouting merchants, the bleating\u003cbr\u003ehorns, the pungent scent of spices from the food stands, the buses and\u003cbr\u003eboda-bodas, the chaotic excitement of so many people sharing space\u003cbr\u003epeacefully.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man got off the bus near Bombo Road and walked into the\u003cbr\u003eopen-air market, as he had been instructed, keeping his eyes on the\u003cbr\u003ecracked pavement. He breathed the beef and lamb smoke, the spiced\u003cbr\u003evegetables, looking at no one until he found a booth far in the back,\u003cbr\u003ebelonging to a fish merchant named Robinson. A nod, pre-arranged.\u003cbr\u003eThe man spoke the sentence he had been instructed to repeat:\u003cbr\u003e“A fresh delivery for Mr. Robinson.” He was handed an envelope\u003cbr\u003econtaining five hundred thousand Ugandan shillings—about two\u003cbr\u003ehundred dollars. No one else saw the exchange. Sweating in the midafternoon\u003cbr\u003eheat, the farmer walked back toward Bombo Road and the\u003cbr\u003ematatu that would take him home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eONE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMonday, September 14, Kampala, Uganda\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory waited in a third-story room of the old colonial-\u003cbr\u003estyle hotel on Kampala Road, studying the foot traffic below,\u003cbr\u003ewatching for men traveling alone or for anything that didn’t fit.\u003cbr\u003eHe liked the haphazardness of this neighborhood—a hodgepodge\u003cbr\u003eof apartment houses, food markets, pavement stalls—and the cover\u003cbr\u003eit lent him. For the past eight months, Charles Mallory had been\u003cbr\u003eworking on a single project—a puzzle that had become a labyrinth\u003cbr\u003eof unexpected turns, finally leading him here, to this busy street in\u003cbr\u003edowntown Kampala. A project his father had handed to him just days\u003cbr\u003ebefore his death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom a paper cup he drank the last of the sweet tea he had bought\u003cbr\u003efrom a merchant down the street, listening to the chuk-chuk-chuk of the\u003cbr\u003eceiling fan in his room, alert for any unexpected sound or movement.\u003cbr\u003eThen he checked his watch: 12:46. Paul Bahdru was late.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMallory had invested seven days in arranging this meeting, communicating\u003cbr\u003ewith Paul through encrypted messages and other, less\u003cbr\u003econventional, means. They had devised a system that was virtually\u003cbr\u003eimpenetrable—or so it had seemed: a series of short, cryptic communiqués,\u003cbr\u003ebased on patterns and information that only the two of them\u003cbr\u003ecould know. It was Paul’s idea that the exchange take place here, at\u003cbr\u003ea café in the bustling neighborhood where he had once lived. The\u003cbr\u003emeeting would be brief: Bahdru would arrive first, purchase a coffee\u003cbr\u003eand take a seat. When Charles Mallory determined that Paul was not\u003cbr\u003eunder surveillance, he would go downstairs and enter the café. Paul\u003cbr\u003ewould pass him his message and an envelope; they would separate. It\u003cbr\u003ewould be over in less than three minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory’s work as a private intelligence contractor often\u003cbr\u003erequired him to deal with government power brokers and morally\u003cbr\u003eambiguous businessmen who spoke their own duplicitous languages.\u003cbr\u003eBut Paul Bahdru was not like that—he was reliable and honorable,\u003cbr\u003eand one of the bravest men Charles knew. Over the past several weeks,\u003cbr\u003eBahdru had learned details of a “high-stakes war,” as he called it, that\u003cbr\u003ewasn’t yet visible. Some of the information he had already passed to\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory; today, he would give him the most important. A\u003cbr\u003especific date. Locations. Along with photos and documentation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMallory and Bahdru had first met in Nairobi in 1998, when\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory was stationed in Kenya under State Department\u003cbr\u003ecover. Bahdru was a journalist then, a reporter for the Daily Nation,\u003cbr\u003eKenya’s largest newspaper. Through a single source, he had learned\u003cbr\u003ethe sketchy details of a plot against American embassies in Kenya\u003cbr\u003eand Tanzania. Mallory had met with him early one morning in a coffee\u003cbr\u003eshop on Radio Road, and afterward relayed what he was told to\u003cbr\u003eWashington—details too vague to be acted upon, although the plot,\u003cbr\u003eof course, had been carried out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBahdru eventually left Nairobi, and journalism, but he continued\u003cbr\u003eto write. His essays angered several high-level African politicians and\u003cbr\u003equasi-intellectuals, who considered him a dissident and dismissed\u003cbr\u003ehis writings as Western-tainted propaganda—perpetuating the cliché\u003cbr\u003eof Africa as a continent sinking in corruption and ethnic strife.\u003cbr\u003eNot long after Paul resettled in the West African nation of Buttata,\u003cbr\u003ehis wife was brutally raped and murdered during a supposed home\u003cbr\u003erobbery—a crime never “solved”—and Paul himself was detained in\u003cbr\u003esolitary confinement for seven days for writings deemed “treasonous”\u003cbr\u003eby the government. But Bahdru’s travails had made him more determined\u003cbr\u003ethan embittered; what he discovered had to be known; and,\u003cbr\u003efinally, it would be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory studied the sightlines between the café and the\u003cbr\u003ewindows of the adjacent buildings, attentive to anything unusual,\u003cbr\u003erecounting the tenuous threads that had led him here, coming\u003cbr\u003etogether and, it seemed, now unraveling. Remembering details,\u003cbr\u003ephrases. “The ill wind that will come through . . . Witness to something\u003cbr\u003ethat hasn’t happened yet . . . the October project.”\u003cbr\u003eHe had checked in at the hotel fifty-three minutes earlier,\u003cbr\u003eusing the name on his passport and identification card—Frederick\u003cbr\u003eCollins—not the one on his driver’s license.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e12:51.\u003cbr\u003eClearly, the meeting had been compromised. For whatever reason,\u003cbr\u003ePaul Bahdru was not going to show. The “why” would have to\u003cbr\u003ebe determined later. Now, he had to find safe passage out.\u003cbr\u003eHe zipped up his bag and took a last look at the people walking\u003cbr\u003ealong the wet, smoky pavement, seeing around the edges of things\u003cbr\u003enow. This was Charles Mallory’s first visit to Kampala in many years.\u003cbr\u003eHe had been pleased, after arriving from Nairobi on a Kenya Airways\u003cbr\u003eflight that morning, to find the city on its feet again, with functioning\u003cbr\u003eutilities, clean water, crowded restaurants. Although in many\u003cbr\u003eways—some obvious, others not—it was still a city rebounding from\u003cbr\u003ethe civil war that followed the 1979 overthrow of Idi Amin. As with\u003cbr\u003emany African countries, Uganda was a patchwork of tribes and customs,\u003cbr\u003eits boundaries drawn by nineteenth-century British colonists\u003cbr\u003ewho had come here to mine the region’s wealth. It was a sad tale\u003cbr\u003ethat he had seen replicated in different ways in a number of Africa’s\u003cbr\u003efifty-three countries, many of which had become breeding grounds\u003cbr\u003efor corruption and dictatorship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Mallory heard a sound: A sudden rain exploded on the tin\u003cbr\u003eawning above the window. He froze. Moments later, another sound.\u003cbr\u003eHe took a deliberate breath and reached for the telephone.\u003cbr\u003e“Yes.”\u003cbr\u003e“Mr. Collins.” He listened to the other man breathing. “Hello, sir.\u003cbr\u003eA package has arrived for you at the front desk. Just delivered,” the\u003cbr\u003eman said, speaking with a lilting Ugandan accent.\u003cbr\u003eMallory felt his pulse quicken slightly. A package. Who could know\u003cbr\u003ehe was here?\u003cbr\u003e“Sir?”\u003cbr\u003e“Yes. I’ll be right down.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe went out, down the creaky wooden steps and along the flagstone\u003cbr\u003epath to the office. It was raining heavily now, thudding on the\u003cbr\u003etin roofs and apartment awnings; scents of wet brick and dirt and\u003cbr\u003etree bark mixed with car exhaust and the smells of meat roasting in\u003cbr\u003ethe sidewalk stalls. Merchants huddled under plastic wraps and trash\u003cbr\u003ebags. It was just an hour past midday but dark like evening.\u003cbr\u003eThe clerk in the office was the same one who had checked him\u003cbr\u003ein. A thin-faced man with small, curious eyes and a slight twist to\u003cbr\u003ehis upper lip, which gave the impression that he was smiling when\u003cbr\u003ehe wasn’t. The man reached under the counter and set a bark-cloth\u003cbr\u003epackage on top of the desk. A small, florist-sized envelope was taped\u003cbr\u003eto it, with his name, “Frederick Collins.”\u003cbr\u003e“Who brought this?”\u003cbr\u003eThe clerk watched him steadily, his brow furrowing. “I don’t\u003cbr\u003eknow.”\u003cbr\u003eMallory turned. Through the wet, greasy side window he saw the\u003cbr\u003ecafé down the street, where he and Paul were to have met. Above it,\u003cbr\u003elaundry blowing on a line, battered now by the rain.\u003cbr\u003e“What did he look like?”\u003cbr\u003eThe clerk lifted his shoulders, as if he didn’t understand. Charles\u003cbr\u003eMallory fished fifty thousand Ugandan shillings from his pocket.\u003cbr\u003e“Not a man,” he said. “A woman. Car stopped outside. A woman\u003cbr\u003edelivered it and walked out.” He looked to the window and, for a\u003cbr\u003emoment, may have grinned.\u003cbr\u003e“A prostitute?”\u003cbr\u003eThe desk clerk gazed back at him, as if a question hadn’t been\u003cbr\u003easked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMallory took the package and walked quickly across the terrace,\u003cbr\u003educked against the rain, and took the stairs two and three at a time\u003cbr\u003eback to the room. He closed the door and twisted the deadbolt. 1:04.\u003cbr\u003eOkay. He looked back at the street, at the windows of the other\u003cbr\u003ebuildings, searching for a set of eyes that might be watching him,\u003cbr\u003ea curtain pulled back. Nothing. Then he sat on the bed and sliced\u003cbr\u003eopen the envelope, careful not to leave fingerprints. The envelope\u003cbr\u003econtained a single business card, with a name on it, in block letters:\u003cbr\u003ePaul Bahdru. “With Regrets” was scrawled in smeared black ink\u003cbr\u003ebelow it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUsing a dry washrag, Charles Mallory placed the card and tape\u003cbr\u003eback in the envelope and tucked it inside a plastic wrapper in his bag.\u003cbr\u003eHe sat on the edge of the bed under the chuk-chuk-chuk of the fan\u003cbr\u003eand began to pick apart the tightly wound bark cloth. It was rectangular,\u003cbr\u003enarrower than manuscript pages or a photo book. He stopped\u003cbr\u003efor a moment to listen to the rain, to make sure it was only that—\u003cbr\u003erain, beating the tin roof. Down below, tires skidded. Horns sounded.\u003cbr\u003eWhat had gone wrong? Had someone followed? Or perhaps Paul\u003cbr\u003eBahdru was watching now, from another window, wanting to make\u003cbr\u003esure no one saw them together. Questions to be answered later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuddenly, Mallory jerked upright.\u003cbr\u003eHe clawed faster at the edges of the bark cloth, pulling the\u003cbr\u003eStyrofoam stuffing from the box.\u003cbr\u003e“No! God dammit!”\u003cbr\u003eThe contents of the package stared back at him. It was Paul\u003cbr\u003eBahdru—his head. The open eyes looked right at him through a thin,\u003cbr\u003esoiled plastic—the corners of his mouth upturned slightly, as if smiling\u003cbr\u003eat some final ambiguity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTWO\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWednesday, September 16\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwenty-six hundred and seventy-three miles away, in the\u003cbr\u003eRepublic of Sundiata, Dr. Sandra Oku gazed numbly through her\u003cbr\u003edusty windshield at the late afternoon light in the baobab trees, the\u003cbr\u003efields of bell peppers and potatoes and cassava, and the devastation\u003cbr\u003ethat had come to her village overnight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku was the only health-care worker in the tiny village of\u003cbr\u003eKaarta, in the Kuseyo Valley. Designated a “district medical officer,”\u003cbr\u003eshe provided antiretroviral drugs to the farmers and villagers\u003cbr\u003ewhen they became available and tried to help anyone else who\u003cbr\u003ewalked through her door—mothers and children, mostly, suffering\u003cbr\u003efrom chronic diarrhea or skin infections or malnutrition. Many she\u003cbr\u003ecouldn’t help, and sent to the hospital in Tihka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was a long-limbed, graceful woman, with large, perceptive eyes\u003cbr\u003eand thick hair she braided and clasped back every morning. Until that\u003cbr\u003eday, she had been living her life in Kaarta with a dream—the sort of\u003cbr\u003edream that most of the villagers could not afford. After the rainy season,\u003cbr\u003eshe had planned to travel nearly a thousand miles to visit a man\u003cbr\u003eshe had not seen in months—seven months next week, to be precise.\u003cbr\u003eA man she had met in medical school, and with whom she expected\u003cbr\u003eeventually to share her life. But there was no room in her thoughts\u003cbr\u003eanymore for dreams; real life had suddenly closed in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku’s most important work wasn’t distributing medicines;\u003cbr\u003eit was teaching preventive methods so the villagers wouldn’t need\u003cbr\u003ethem. Some afternoons, she closed the clinic and drove her old\u003cbr\u003epick-up into town to counsel the laborers and subsistence farm workers,\u003cbr\u003eand to distribute condoms to the nomadic women who worked\u003cbr\u003ethe roadhouse along the lorry route. The women turned their backs\u003cbr\u003ewhen they saw her approaching, because they did not want to be\u003cbr\u003eeducated, or even noticed. They wanted something else, something\u003cbr\u003eshe couldn’t give them. Nearly 20 percent of the villagers were HIV positive,\u003cbr\u003eSandra Oku estimated, and many of them gathered at the\u003cbr\u003etruck stop whenever the faith healers showed up to hawk their healing\u003cbr\u003epotions. Over the past year, conditions had worsened in Kaarta.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWater was scarce, and some residents had taken to fetching it from\u003cbr\u003estreams contaminated with untreated excrement. Since the revolution\u003cbr\u003elast year—when the Sundiata military chief had taken over the\u003cbr\u003egovernment of Maurice Kasuva—the central government’s health\u003cbr\u003eministry had made it more difficult for the rural pharmacies and\u003cbr\u003ehealth clinics to get medicines.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHers was a tiny clinic with just four beds. Twelve-volt automobile\u003cbr\u003ebatteries powered the electrical equipment; the lights were run by\u003cbr\u003ekerosene. Scalpel blades, syringes and needles were more often sterilized\u003cbr\u003eand reused than replaced. She had to make do with what she had\u003cbr\u003eand send the serious cases on to Tihka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku awoke just before sunrise each morning, walked out back,\u003cbr\u003ekneeled in the dirt and prayed for the people of her village. Some of\u003cbr\u003ethem had come to depend on her, although they tried not to bother\u003cbr\u003eher after the clinic closed at sundown, because the clinic building\u003cbr\u003ewas also where Sandra Oku lived. Some mornings, several of them\u003cbr\u003ewould be sitting in the grass out front, waiting for her to unlatch the\u003cbr\u003escreen door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis day, though, had been different. Something strange had\u003cbr\u003earrived in Kaarta overnight. Something she had never seen before in\u003cbr\u003eher thirty-seven years. It began, for her, before dawn, when she had\u003cbr\u003ebeen awakened by an urgent knocking on the clinic’s back door.\u003cbr\u003e“Please, please, will you come see?” A woman’s voice, speaking\u003cbr\u003ebreathlessly, in Swahili. “Dr. Sandra! Can you come help? Please. I\u003cbr\u003ecan’t wake him.”\u003cbr\u003eSandra Oku pulled on a sleeveless night dress and unlatched the\u003cbr\u003edoor, pointing her flashlight at the ground. The eyes of Mrs. Makere,\u003cbr\u003ea farmer’s wife who lived across the dirt fields to the southeast, met\u003cbr\u003ehers with pleading urgency. Dew still glistened on the ground and in\u003cbr\u003ethe baobab trees in the moonlight.\u003cbr\u003e“What is it?”\u003cbr\u003e“He won’t wake up. Nothing will wake him.”\u003cbr\u003e“Your husband?”\u003cbr\u003e“Yes. Please.”\u003cbr\u003e“Okay. Let’s go see.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku grabbed her bag and walked barefoot into the cool morning\u003cbr\u003eto her pick-up truck. It turned over after a reluctant whir-whir-whir\u003cbr\u003esound. They rode together in silence, nearly a kilometer across the\u003cbr\u003eopen plain to a cluster of mud homes where the Makeres and other\u003cbr\u003efarm workers lived—the route Nancy Makere must have just walked.\u003cbr\u003eLike the others, theirs was a small, square-ish, mud-brick house,\u003cbr\u003ereinforced with sticks and cardboard and plastic bags. A pink light\u003cbr\u003ehung in the sky above the rusted tin roof as they arrived. The breeze\u003cbr\u003esmelled of wood smoke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoseph Makere, a large, gray-bearded man known to work ten or\u003cbr\u003eeleven hours a day harvesting soybeans this time of year, was asleep\u003cbr\u003eon a mattress in a corner room, as his wife had said. An open window\u003cbr\u003efaced the lorry route and the small produce stand Nancy Makere ran.\u003cbr\u003e“There,” she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe two women watched him, inhaling and exhaling beneath a\u003cbr\u003ewhite sheet, as if struggling for air, his eyes closed. It was an eerie\u003cbr\u003esound, one Sandra Oku had heard once years before—the sound of a\u003cbr\u003eman about to drown in his own lung fluids.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku pulled a surgical mask over her face. She knelt and\u003cbr\u003etouched his chest, and then felt his pulse, noticed a small, dried\u003cbr\u003etrickle of blood extending from each nostril. Hearing a cough, she\u003cbr\u003eturned; one of the Makeres’ four children was standing beside Nancy\u003cbr\u003enow, her face glistening with a thin film of sweat.\u003cbr\u003e“Where are the others?”\u003cbr\u003eNancy Makere’s eyes pointed. “In there,” she said.\u003cbr\u003eDr. Oku followed her into the other bedroom. She set down her\u003cbr\u003ebag. The three boys were sleeping, unclothed, on a thin mattress, two\u003cbr\u003eon their backs, the other on his right side, breathing with the same\u003cbr\u003edeep raspy sound as their father.\u003cbr\u003eShe knelt beside them and gently shook the shoulders of one, and\u003cbr\u003eanother. She opened the lids of the oldest boy and saw that his eyes\u003cbr\u003ewere bright with fever.\u003cbr\u003e“Have they been ill?” Dr. Oku asked, taking the boy’s pulse. “What\u003cbr\u003esort of symptoms have they had?”\u003cbr\u003e“None. Last night, when they went to sleep, they were fine. We’ve\u003cbr\u003ebeen trying to wake them for—” She looked at the battery clock on a\u003cbr\u003eshelf by her bed. “More than fifty minutes.”\u003cbr\u003e“Okay. Help me carry them to the truck. I’ll need to bring them\u003cbr\u003einto the clinic. They’re contagious and are going to need to be\u003cbr\u003equarantined.”\u003cbr\u003e“Quarantined,” she repeated, a frightened look flickering in her\u003cbr\u003eeyes. Nancy Makere stood still, watching Dr. Oku. “And then what?”\u003cbr\u003e“Then we’ll see. I don’t know yet. We’ll give them oxygen and\u003cbr\u003eantibiotics and see what we can do. Help me now, please.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe two women bundled Joseph Makere in the sheet and dragged\u003cbr\u003ehim to the back of the truck. One at a time, then, they carried the\u003cbr\u003eboys, laying them on the threadbare mattress that Dr. Oku kept in\u003cbr\u003ethe truck-bed for transporting patients. As they rode silently across\u003cbr\u003ethe field back to the clinic, the first crescent of sun appeared above\u003cbr\u003ethe familiar distant mountains, silhouetting random trees on the\u003cbr\u003eplain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the clinic, Sandra Oku lay the four patients on cots and began\u003cbr\u003eto administer oxygen to them one at a time, monitoring their vital\u003cbr\u003esigns. It quickly became clear that there was nothing she could do to\u003cbr\u003ewake them. At 7:22, Joseph Makere stopped breathing. The youngest\u003cbr\u003eboy died twenty-three minutes later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbout an hour before the third boy stopped breathing, a station\u003cbr\u003ewagon arrived from the south village fields with seven passengers,\u003cbr\u003efour men and three women. Normally they would be in the maize\u003cbr\u003eand cassava fields by now. But Sally Kantanga, who owned the farm,\u003cbr\u003ecould not wake them this morning.\u003cbr\u003e“Not any of them. What’s the matter with them?” she asked. Dr.\u003cbr\u003eOku saw that she was sweating profusely, even though the morning\u003cbr\u003eair was still cool.\u003cbr\u003e“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to call Tihka Hospital on the\u003cbr\u003eradio.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy ten o’clock, forty-three people had died at the clinic and in\u003cbr\u003ethe still-moist grasses outside. Many others were lined up or lying in\u003cbr\u003ethe dirt, waiting to see her. Sandra Oku had run out of blankets and\u003cbr\u003esheets to cover the victims, and eleven of the bodies lay uncovered.\u003cbr\u003eSixteen others, including Nancy Makere, her daughter, and Sally\u003cbr\u003eKantanga, were sleeping deeply in what she had called the Recovery\u003cbr\u003eRoom. No one was going to recover this morning.","brand":"Soho Crime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304150847717,"sku":"NP9781616952198","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781616952198.jpg?v=1767743474","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/viral-isbn-9781616952198","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}