The Genesis Plague (2010)

enough.’ Luckily, Jason had used plenty of light to pull the shadows out from the characters. ‘But I’ll need to enlarge it.’
    Flaherty glanced out the window and was surprised to see that the jet was already gliding in low over the runway at Las Vegas International. ‘No problem. I’ll transfer the file to my laptop,’ he said, patting his carry-on bag. ‘The screen is plenty big. You can read it in the car.’
    ‘Awesome,’ she said, beaming. ‘Tommy, we might just get Lilith’s story after all. Do you know what that means?’
    She looked like a kid who’d just been told she’d have to wait to open her birthday presents. ‘Not really, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

47
IRAQ
    Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin estimated that fifteen minutes had elapsed since Crawford’s marines hung an American flag from the cross bar directly behind his patient’s head. They’d also set up a tripod-mounted digital camcorder to record the colonel’s systematic interrogation.
    This was no ordinary patient.
    As Colonel Crawford fired away his probing questions - mainly queries as to where the convoy had been heading and the rumour that Al-Zahrani was plotting to detonate a suitcase nuke in New York on the anniversary of 9/11 - the subdued Kurdish translator used a marker to scrawl the queries on to a notepad in both Arabic and English.
    The patient was highly uncooperative; though not by choice, Levin was certain. He could tell by Al-Zahrani’s withdrawn and hazy gaze - unresponsive when the Kurd held the notepad in direct view - that his condition was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Only five minutes ago, Al-Zahrani had begun coughing. Now that cough was persistent and accompanied by heaving lungs that wheezed and gurgled. Coupled with Al-Zahrani’s fever, malaise and runny nose, Levin suspected that the prisoner had come down with the flu. In a civilian setting where containment was a simple matter of bed rest, influenza wasn’t critical, per se. But in the battlefield, the flu could be as deadly as a roadside bomb - which was why Levin had already used an influenza test kit to analyse the mucus sample swabbed from Al-Zahrani’s nose. However, the test strip had shown a solid blue line that indicated with 99 per cent certainty that Al-Zahrani was ‘negative’ for both influenza A and B.
    Not the flu? How could it not be the flu? Or perhaps, not the common flu, he’d thought dreadingly. That prompted him to unpack a second test kit recently made standard equipment for combat medics to simultaneously detect H5N1 avian flu and H1N1 swine flu. With a sterile swab stick pinched between the fingers of his right hand and a fresh test tube in his left hand, he slunk over to Al-Zahrani’s bedside and inserted the swab’s foam tip one inch into the patient’s runny nose.
    Crawford paused and cocked his head sideways disdainfully. ‘Couldn’t pick his nose right the first time, Corporal?’
    ‘Just need to run another quick test.’ He twirled the swab tip around Al-Zahrani’s nostril, pulled it out, and dropped it into the reagent solution that filled the bottom of the glass test tube. ‘There. All done.’ He retreated quickly and Crawford huffed before continuing on with his questioning.
    Sitting at his makeshift lab table, Levin twirled the swab stick in the solution and pulled it out. Then he slid the coated test strip that came with the kit into the solution. The results would take ten minutes, so he noted the current time on his wrist-watch.
    His left leg bouncing nervously up and down, Levin tried to focus on Crawford to alleviate his mounting anxiety. It seemed that Crawford was brushing away the concerns of everyone around him, including Jason Yaeger. After the tense exchange Levin had witnessed earlier, Crawford still hadn’t called for the backup platoons Yaeger had sensibly demanded. If Yaeger hadn’t been successful in breaking Crawford’s blind stubbornness, Levin had little hope that the colonel would heed a request to have Al-Zahrani airlifted to the nearest hospital for proper treatment, which was what Levin’s gut was telling him the situation might warrant.
    He peeked down at the test strip, saw nothing. Checked his watch - five minutes left. He shifted his gaze back to Crawford.
    Normally Crawford was cool and collected - a proven leader who performed best under pressure; a guy whose impressive career had placed him on every battlefront in the Middle East over the past two decades.