The copilot turned to look back at them and pointed to his headset.

Peyton and Jonas pulled their headsets on. “Where are we?” Peyton asked.

“Dadaab. At the refugee camps,” the copilot answered.

Peyton remembered the Dadaab refugee camp from the State Department briefing. Located inside Kenya, just sixty miles from the Somali border, it was the largest refugee settlement in the world, home to more than three hundred thousand people, many barely surviving. Over eighty percent of the residents were women and children, and nearly all of them were Somali nationals who had fled the drought and wars in Somalia that had lasted for years. Recently, the Kenyan government had threatened to shut the camps down in response to al-Shabaab terror attacks in the area, which they believed might have been perpetrated by followers recruited from the camps. And in the last year, over one hundred thousand refugees had been sent back to Somalia.

“How many are infected?” Peyton asked.

A woman’s voice answered. Peyton instantly recognized her: Nia Okeke, the Kenyan Ministry of Health official she had met at Mandera. She was apparently in the other chopper. “Thousands. At least two thousand refugees are sick. A hundred have already died. There are cases in the Aid Agencies Camp as well, including workers from the Red Cross and UN.”

Nia detailed the layout of the sprawling complex, which was composed of four camps: Ifo II, Dagahaley, Hagadera, and the Aid Agencies Camp.

In the distance, Peyton saw a transport plane landing on a single-strip runway.

“What are you bringing in?”

“Troops and supplies. We’re quarantining Dadaab.”

“How can we help?” Jonas asked.

“We’d like your advice. How would you handle the situation here? Please.”

Peyton and Jonas asked a few more questions, then talked privately, their voices raised to be heard over the helicopter’s rotors. Finally, they settled on a set of recommendations. They suggested that the Kenyans separate the camp into four separate sections: a quarantine area for suspected cases, an isolation zone for confirmed cases, and two support camps. The first support camp would house personnel who had come into contact with potentially infected individuals. The second support camp would be for workers with no contact with the pathogen. Workers from the safe camp would unload transports and conduct any interactions with people from outside the camps.

In their years fighting outbreaks, neither Peyton nor Jonas had dealt with a situation quite like the outbreak in Dadaab; they were largely making it up as they went. They advised the Kenyans to quarantine Garissa, the nearest town, and to close the A3 and Habaswein-Dadaab Road, the two major routes in and out of the camps.

After some discussion of the details, the helicopter turned and began flying back to the village where Jonas and Peyton were camped.

Jonas pulled his headset off and leaned close to Peyton. “This is bad. This could be the worst refugee crisis since Rwanda.”