The Deep Zone by James M. Tabor Page A

breakfast.”
    Carol put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, Hallie. I’ve missed you.”
    Hallie smiled, patted her hand. “I’ve missed you, too, Carrie. You
and
Don.”
    After a moment, Carol left them. The men poured cups of coffee but took nothing to eat. Hallie gobbled half a sandwich, poured coffee, dumped in cream and sugar. Not her usual way, but she needed energy.
    “So where do things stand now?” She got the words out through a mouthful of roast beef.
    “Colistin is buying us some time.” Barnard did not look relieved saying that.
    “But it’s like water building up behind a dam. Colistin is the dam,” Lew Casey put in. “Those four cases from Terok remained at CENMEDFAC for three days. During that time they came in contact with dozens of patients and staff.”
    “Where did the cases go here in the U.S.?”
    The two scientists looked at Lathrop.
    “Reed got one, Bethesda another, and two went to the burn center in Georgia.”
    Hallie stopped chewing. “Those places are full of people with compromised immune systems. ACE will burn through them like fire in a hay barn.”
    “And it will keep going,” Barnard continued. “There’s constant interchange between military facilities like those.”
    “This is horrific. You’ve got thousands of sick and wounded soldiersin facilities all over the country. They might have survived combat injuries only to be killed in our own hospitals.” Feeling her eyes fill, Hallie set her cup down. “Sorry, gentlemen.”
    “Don’t worry. A little emotion is good for the blood,” said Barnard, and the others nodded. “But it gets even worse. If this ACE can really attack healthy subjects as well …”
    “The entire armed forces could be decimated. Not just the sick and wounded.”
    “You see now why your presence is so important.”
    “You need the drug we had been working on. Superdrug for a superbug.”
    “Yes. You were close. Another few months and I believe you’d have had a whole new family of antibiotics.”
    “Weeks, maybe.” Hallie recalled the research very well.
    “That’s why Don wouldn’t let me spirit you away, actually.” Lew Casey sounded rueful.
    “But I never finished. For obvious reasons. So Al must not have done it, either.”
    Barnard shook his head. “Dr. Cahner—Al—is a very good microbiologist. I know the two of you got on well. And did fine work together.”
    The two of them
had
worked well as a team, but it had been more complicated than that. More than twenty years older than Hallie, Al had reminded her, at first meeting, of those men she saw scrutinizing labels in supermarket aisles and reading books over the daily specials in chain restaurants. For their first months in the lab together, he spoke of nothing but work and always lunched by himself. He was never rude, just solitary.
    But month after month they worked, pressed together in the microbiology laboratory, always conscious that they were in the company of Level 4 pathogens that had killed hundreds of millions of people throughout history. She came to respect Cahner’s grace under pressure and the precision of his lab techniques. She sensed, too, that he recognized her own dedication to good science and,even more, admired her ability to handle demons like
Yersinia pestis
with steady hands.
    After eight months they started eating lunch together in the canteen. His meal never varied: a Red Delicious apple, a carton of V-8 juice, tuna salad on whole wheat with lettuce and tomato. He wasn’t much for idle chat, but she learned that he’d happily talk about microbiology. One day she mentioned that the CDC had just sent a team of pathogen hunters to some caves in Gabon.
    Munching a bit of sandwich, he said casually, “Those African caves are nasty. I was in Bandubyo myself.”
    She almost dropped her coffee.
“Bandubyo?”
    He looked sheepish, meeting her astonished gaze. “Well, yes. It was back in—let me think—’03 or maybe