“That’s great,” Peyton said.

“Won’t be first class accommodations. It’s a troop and cargo transport, but it’ll get you there. They’ll pick you up at Dobbins Air Reserve Base at one thirty. It’s in Marietta. Just take I-75/85, stay on 75 at the split, and get off at exit 261. You can’t miss it.”

Elliott always gave her directions, even in the age of smartphone navigation, and even to places he likely knew Peyton had visited before, such as Dobbins. She never stopped him; she just nodded and scribbled a note. She figured it was a generational thing, a product of not growing up with a cell phone glued to his hand or Google Maps a click away. It was one of Elliott’s many idiosyncrasies that Peyton had come to tolerate and then to like.

“Speaking of planes,” she said, “I want to get your take on something. One of the Americans, Lucas Turner, was asymptomatic when he arrived at Mandera. Assuming he’s been in close contact with the other man, and assuming this is a viral hemorrhagic fever, I think we should expect him to break with the disease.”

“That’s fair.”

“I want to develop a plan of care for him now. If he breaks with the infection, we can’t treat him in Mandera. Dani Beach Hospital and Kenyatta National in Nairobi are both candidates, but I don’t favor either—we risk spreading the infection to the staff there and the region.”

“You want to bring him back here.”

“I do.”

Elliott bunched his eyebrows up. “What’re you thinking?”

“I want the air ambulance to accompany us to Nairobi, then fly to Mandera and be on standby. If Turner even has a high fever, I want to bring him back to Emory.”

Emory University Hospital was next to the CDC on Clifton Road—close enough for CDC staff to walk there. Emory had a special isolation unit capable of dealing with patients infected with Ebola and other biosafety level four pathogens; it was one of only four such facilities in the US. It had been used, with great success, to treat Americans who had been infected with Ebola during the 2014 outbreak.

“I don’t know, Peyton. Bringing a patient with an unidentified, deadly, infectious disease back to the US? If word gets out, the press will scare the daylights out of everybody.”

“It could also save his life. And we could bring back blood, saliva, and tissue samples from anyone else who’s infected. We could test them here, in our BSL-4. It keeps the samples and testing out of Nairobi, and it enables the Kenyans to keep the outbreak quiet—which I know they’ll want to do. We get to potentially save a life and get a huge head start on figuring out what we’re dealing with.”

Elliott nodded and exhaled deeply. “All right, but I’ll have to get the director’s approval—he’ll have to deal with the fallout and the press if it goes wrong. But I’ll give it my full support.”