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She walked backtoward Lucas and Rae and found a thickset man with glasses and a wide-brimmed canvas hat staring at them from the aisle. He looked heavily harassed. She asked, “Can I help you with something?”
He looked at her, his pasty white indoor face bobbing up and down for a second or two, and then he asked, “Are you Letty?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“So that’s Lucas Davenport and Rae Givens?”
“Yes…”
“I’m with USAMRIID. I’m supposed to go with you to Los Alamos to look for a virus lab.”
“Uh, who sent you?”
He had an envelope in his hand with some notes scratched on it: “My boss, but the request came from a Billy Greet? I don’t know him, but he’s with Homeland Security, and my boss sounded scared to death, so he must have some serious clout?”
“Actually, Billy’s a she,” Letty said.
“Yeah? I thought Billys who were shes spelled it B-i-l-l-i-e,” he said.
“Well, she’s originally from Oklahoma, and maybe they don’t spell so well out there,” Letty said. “What’s your name?”
“Walter Packer.” He stuck out a hand to shake, and when she took it, realized he was missing the middle, ring and little fingers on that hand, leaving her with nothing but the index finger, thumb and a wad of scar tissue to hold on to.
“Come on over and meet the others…”
She led him to Lucas and Rae, who were looking at a notebook on Rae’s lap. When they came up, Lucas immediately spotted thedamaged hand and after Letty introduced him, Lucas asked, “You mess with fireworks when you were a kid?”
“Actually, I made some C-4 when I was a kid. I made my own chemistry set with ordinary farm chemicals. I can’t recommend it.”
Rae: “So you’re a scientist?”
“You need a PhD to get in the scientist club. I’ve only got an MA, all-but-thesis at this point, so I’m a technician.” He sighed and dropped his shoulders, said, “I checked all my stuff. I had to lie about some of it.”
“Like what?”
“I have a pressurized air tank in my bag. It’s not obvious, so I didn’t tell them. Maybe it won’t get there and I can go home.”
“You afraid of Marburg?” Rae asked.
He held up his mangled hand. “Ask the hand,” he said. “The hand has opinions about high-risk activities. Especially the ones you’re sent on at the last minute by sauerkraut-eating bureaucrats.”
“We know them well,” Rae said. “With that attitude, we’ll get along fine.”
“They have a Cinnabon place here?” Packer asked, looking around.
“If they do, get me one with extra frosting,” Rae said.
—
The flight toAtlanta was quick, the layover short. Since they couldn’t talk, they all tried to get some sleep on the three-hour flight to Albuquerque, with mixed success. Lucas had trained himself to fall asleep, when necessary, and got more than two hours; Rae got less than two hours. Letty got a restless hour and spent time reviewing the notes that she’d made with Hawkins. Packer spent the time staring out into the dark, his lips moving silently, as if in prayer.
—
The Albuquerque airportwas compact, with a bag-rattling brick floor that seemed an odd choice for a place that had thousands of bags dragged over it every day. Greet had reserved three compact SUVs for them, with reservations at a Holiday Inn Express in Santa Fe.
“I thought you’d probably have to go places separately, so I got three cars,” she said, when Letty called her from ABQ. “The drive up to Los Alamos looks tricky, and you won’t get out of Albuquerque much before eleven, so I decided to put you in Santa Fe, which is halfway up to Los Alamos. There’s a Hampton Inn in Los Alamos, you can check in there tomorrow if you need to. It’s only about a forty-five-minute drive from Santa Fe to Los Alamos.”
“Okay. Did you hear back from the Secretary?”
